Badger Kull
Badger Kull. One of the great dividers of Welcome To The Dark Ages and, for me, the hardest to get a pulse on.
Was there a point to it? And if so, what was it? Honestly, I almost hoped there wasn’t—then I wouldn’t have to sit here racking my brains. But once again, patterns, iconography, and meaning are things I can’t stop myself from applying to the actions of The JAMs.
If I wanted, I could spiral off into symbolic history, mythical references, Discordian connections. (Some fans already have — even tying it back to the 1st-century BC figure Moritasgus.) But that feels like overreach.
Thankfully, after sitting with it a couple of days — and hearing Oliver Senton’s brilliant summation, as well as talking things through at the first Liverpool Arts Lab meeting — the penny dropped. The point wasn’t obscure mythology. It was simple.
I’ve started to see Badger Kull in the same light as The Day of the Book: a gift and a push.
The more I think about it the more it makes sense that Badger Kull was step one in our Dark Ages education.
I’ve already discussed how The Day Of The Book (as well as providing surplus of creative energy for the ritual that followed) provided us with the smallest of pushes, out of our comfort zones and into our imaginations allowing us permission and freedom to create in any way we saw fit.
Badger Kull’s role was to show us how easy it could be in the first place… Whilst taking the piss out of the music industry (because I love that idea and come on it’s so JAMS ).
Welcome To The Dark Ages was like a fast track training programme.
Day 1: Show how easy creating something can be.
Stage one needed more scaffolding. The JAMs handed us everything — band name, framework, even hype. “Here’s the kit, now go make a band.” Within hours there were superfans, social media accounts, logos, photo shoots, and merch. A whole music industry in miniature, created from scratch. The lesson? You don’t need much. Just willingness.
Day 2: Show how easy it is to find inspiration.
This was The Day of the Book. We’d already seen how simple creation could be; now they showed us how inspiration can be pulled from anything — even a random page in a book. After this, none of us should ever be allowed to mutter “I just need inspiration” again.
Day 3: A Sprinkling Of Chaos.
This spilled across the second and third days. A reminder that it’s okay to break rules sometimes, to embrace mischief and disorder. If we were going to keep creating, we’d have to get comfortable with it.
Graduation
And then came Graduation. What do you graduate from? A course. Suddenly it all felt obvious.
Was the training course a success? Only time will tell through the future creations of the 400, The JAMS have done as much as they can, but if the first meeting of the Liverpool Arts Lab is anything to go by they’ve done a fine job.
I don’t want to give too much away in regards to the Arts Lab because if you’re interested in it, you should be there. Needless to say ideas evolved at a rate of knots. Not all of the attendees were in the 400 but it certainly feels like we’ve picked up where they left off.
All we need to do is remember the three things The JAMS taught us;
- Resources or lack of make no difference. It’s all about what using what skills and materials you do have in an effective and enthusiastic way.
- Inspiration can be found anywhere. If you’re ever stuck for any ever again I would even suggest repeating their example. Pick up a random book, turn to a random page, go make something.
- Be prepared to break the rules, or introduce a little chaos. Basically, have some fun.
Oliver put it perfectly and has made a summation of my own redundant this time out so I’ll leave you with his words.
“See how easily you can make a new band, with the will to do it and a bit of hard work? See how much art and inspiration we can create in a very short time, if we want to? There will be no new music, we were told… But oh, HOW much music we made! Chanting and choiring and thrashing bass guitars. WE made the music. WE made the art. The means of production was laid bare around us; all we had to do – all we have to do – is pick it up.”
A comment from @LoneResident
I’ve taught on the college level for a long time, and even though I love and respect my students dearly, there is one habit they repeat year after year that I would thoroughly destroy forever if I could.
It’s the one whereby they ask permission to be creative (usually expressed with an underlying and nagging hesitancy to act. Whether because of the perceived lack of access to resources and/or fixation on obstacles disguised as pre-established rule sets, they often seem to be waiting for a signal from beyond.
What Bill & Jimmy have always inspired and managed to do so brilliantly has been to demonstrate how utterly untrustworthy and malleable our perceptions of reality, authority and established structures are. Nothing feels safe in their hands because nothing is safe in anyones hands, they’re just reminding us of that.
I feel these were lessons learnt by many of us Gen X’ers while coming of age, but they’re not exclusive to us. Bill & Jimmy just help themselves to tools most folks think require prior authorization. They don’t ask, they act. Watching them go at it again after so many years was fucking grand and I’m very happy their inspiration lives on.
I’ve been a fan of all things Bill & Jimmy for a long time, so I excitedly followed all three days as best I could, albeit looking through the keyhole of Twitter. It was a bit of a downer to be relegated to observing only from the outside (I’m in Kansas for fuck’s sake), but there was no other meaningful way to experience what was actually happening on the ground.
So, the Badger Kull gimmick was an interesting gift of sorts. I had no way of knowing what its real intent was or whether it was important or annoying in relation to the JAMs true motives – or to the 400’s experiences – and I didn’t care.
Half if not more of everything we do is based on partial understandings anyway (in my opinion) so why should this be anything more than what it was? However, whether intended or not, I do think there was a unique facet to it. I can only speak for myself obviously, but whatever the Badger Kull stuff meant to Bill & Jimmy and the 400, it also turned out to be one of the only real points of entry for those of us outside the project.
Welcome to the Dark Ages was a spectacle that was clearly structured as an exclusive event, even though some of its moving parts were very visible and unfolded publicly. If you weren’t one of the 400, you were at best only able to partially participate via the Internet – certainly not formally. The JAMs made no provisions to tend to the curiosities of onlookers from afar, or to allow for meaningful participation by anyone other than those on the ground.
Yet, there were also no formal restrictions from trying. The obstacles were mostly unavoidable after all. The thing has to happen someplace and not everyone can be there that wants to be. Wanting to go beyond the silent social media voyeur role, I simply began making and posting Badger Kull art starting day one and had a great time doing it.
Whether it was superficial or meaningful involvement didn’t matter to me. Everyone in Liverpool seemed to be having a ripping good time and I just wanted to join in. I doubt I’ll ever have a real sense of what happened, but that’s OK. The JAMs are back and, as I said the first day, 2017 has been officially redeemed.