Today I have mainly been finding and editing photographs for the manifesto and I’ve also been reading the book Utopia written by Thomas More.

In this book, a case is being made that to achieve Utopia, you need at least two social classes. One which are the elites and benefit from the Utopia and the other class that makes that Utopia possible. I think at this point though it is necessary to put this book into context, it was written in 1516 by someone who was at the top of the social class, he was educated at Oxford, and became a lawyer, philosopher, statesman and even a saint of the catholic church. He isn't exactly going to be the person who can relate to peasant life and so had the perspective of someone who had a privileged life. It was also written before the English Civil War and so he lived in a monarchy, which means that the political system of a dictatorship would be natural to him and the thought of having democracy would be utterly alien.

But it is interesting of how this idea of Utopia has remained even to this day, that there is a hierarchy of power that is used to exploit one social class over another. It can be a case that Utopia is a process of excluding certain people from certain social classes, for instance, the Nazis in 1930s Germany wanted to exclude virtually anyone who was not of Arian descent to produce a pure and Utopian society.

So, Utopia is only really possible for people of who have the power to control a different social group to themselves. With this being the case it would be possible to concentrate on imagery with a perspective of being the lower social class, the group that is controlled and subjugated by the social class that has the ability to use power and control.

With this being the case I am starting to make artwork that is trying to reflect the elements of power and control, such as images of police or guns. Also I have started to make political comments that are relevant to current affairs, such as George Osborne holding a card saying “I Love Google”. I’ve also started to keep the images simple and straight forward and am only using 2 or 3 images per photo montage. This has had the effect of making the artwork more simpler, easier to understand and more cohesive. It feels less random than my first attempt and better than the second because of the simplicity. I’ve also started to connect the politicians to the Nazi regime, which I think fits rather well as the document I am using, the conservative portfolio, was made by the people that have the power to control, manipulate and suppress.