In an age where 'Personality' supersedes such taboo things as 'quality thought', challenging and creative debate. 'Film Stars' are now our metaphorical super heroes that are over-promoted via newspapers, the television and other corporate dominated propagandist outlets. It is obviously apparent that real talent will be (and has been) filtered out of the 'Mediation Machine'. In this and promotion rather than in view of declaring reality, extricating re-evaluation and collective learning. We will have to come to terms with the fact that Art and other creative means has its own agendas, via institutional control.

Well known and over promoted artists are tools of the state. Especially in times of great upheaval. A good example is Bush's attempt to court with Hollywood asking for help in this time of War. Artists who are state imposed, do not reflect the true Art that is happening world wide. They are not designed to, for using such light-weight figureheads as representative signifiers of what is happening in the Art world is a lie, a misrepresentation. Think of the Turner Prize, another example of enforced delusion promoted via mediation and state self reference.The death of the image (and even ideas) has happened via the over production of altered realities using media resources to justify them as a means to an end.

The state now owns our images, representing them on their terms and this is what kills our visions - get it! It is the very institutions themselves who supposedly the Arts that will choke and kill Art, due to a self conscious fear of losing control and policing over the ideas and the artists themselves. We already know that Postmodernism as a creatively political tool has now succumbed to the desire of sitting on that comfy throne and has become part of the matrix. And as the duped, Bimbo generation gets excited about believing the press that they are special due to them using amazing new materials for Art, not realizing that their ideas (if they have any that is) are just quirky space fillers in a very hungry corporate controlled, means of production scheme.

At present the most interesting and radical art still lies within conceptual territories, and even more interesting if it does not fit into the scheme of things. The most least radical, is the Art that pretends that it is radical, yet it does not challenge universally or challenge politically, it either thinks it is special just because of the medium itself or because it has been officially supported. Sorry that is not enough! Back to the drawing board and start afresh, liberate the self from the restraints of imposed histories as though they are religious truth's, escape the myth.Our cultures, exist in a world that live by the function of the magpie.

All that glitters or shines is gold, not true. For the radiation dominated screens that impose sensationalized conformities into our craniums are part of our problem. Mediation creates pulp fiction - part of the spectacle injecting infected plasma in an already dead corpse of a corporate run regime. Thus Art is alienated, and we only see the favored media type puppies who are all too keen to be placed on the pedestal. And those who concede to the illusory press talk, who flippantly celebrate death of any Art celebrates the imposed promotion of alienation of artists. The less that creativity is part of a commodity based culture, the less it is a conformity. So when certain critics propose certain Art being dead, be careful not to believe the hype, for what they are really saying, is that the Art itself is not being represented successfully in the modern age - in
the 'New Media' age.

This notion of having prerequisite for creativity is dangerous and can only serve as a weapon to further disengage artists and
creative individuals, groups alike to flourish on their own terms.It seems that now, the most poetic and radical gesture and statement would be to dare to pick up a paint brush and paint a landscape. For it is (now) a non accepted form of visual creativity, for it does not hold well in the modern age of technology based Arts. Technology has become the paint brush
for artists to use now, for if anyone does use such an 'so called' unfashionable art tool they are very likely ignored.

Some would argue that it is critical ideas within Art's own questioning, that has helped move creativty to where things are now. I would say that this is partly true, yet this is via institutions handing to students information by accepted theorists. Therefor supporting a Time's Cannon, whatever the content.

The burden of being a creative intellectual (unofficially outlawed in the UK by the way) is that one can't help but challenge the function and context of institutionally imposed ideologies that have brainwashed each generation of students. The original intention and reason of why many people actually decided to make Art gets diverted by curriculum based directives. The original feral based intensities are watered down by the constant injection of information, informing the individual(s) concerned of an invented history (supposedly real) that they themselves must comply to or they will be failed by the course itself. Very much like the process of being mediated, socially constructed, very much like being part of a religion, a group, a gang. For it is mob appropriation that rules the day and not insights and self realized and learned revelations.

Like any Nationhood syndrome, many artists and critics conform to certain aspects and delusions to justify their ideas, via institutional acceptance, without even knowing that they are subjugating their self and will, to a regime doctoring their independence. Some of these handed down sentiments and ideas might even seem radical, exciting and stimulating, much like a script from a film already processed and mediated for your own pleasure. Yet at the same time a type of simulation of the imagination is happening, pushing aside original, cerebral context of ideas that one could of had the joy of using in the first place.

Money is the deciding factor of what creates Art. For instance, Bill Viola makes Art that is intrinsically technologically based. His projects demand a lot of cash, where did he get it from? Who pays for it? Give an artist too much money and they tend to create an art that is decadent, like a pop star who buys too many shiny cars, the artist will churn out too many shiny forms that are more to do with sensationalism falling into the realm of the
spectacle. It becomes pompous, out of touch. The Smith's song rings true
'Hang the DJ, because the music that they constantly play says nothing to me about my life'.