How Culture Colonizes Perception. Field Notes on an Organism I Have Begun Calling 'The One Who Counts'

I cannot say with certainty when I first encountered it.

Like most successful organisms, it avoids dramatic entrances.

It prefers inheritance.

By the time you notice it, it has usually been living inside your language for years.

I don’t know what it looks like.

I’ve only seen the identities it borrows.

Yesterday it borrowed the face of someone I hadn’t met in almost a decade.

We exchanged the usual rituals of remembering. Somewhere between the weather, work and the years that had quietly disappeared, I mentioned that I had spent four years studying painting and would soon spend another two pursuing my master’s.

The organism stirred.

“That takes guts.”

It always announces itself through measurement.

not of paint, not of attention.not of curiosity.

It measures probability.

Security, Risk.

It seems genuinely bewildered that anyone would devote years to something whose outcome cannot be calculated.

Curiously, I have never seen it express the same astonishment towards those who devote an entire lifetime to work that never once asks for their imagination.

Perhaps the ordinary has become its camouflage

⸻

The organism appeared again a little later.

This time we were speaking about repurposed cardboard.

Not the cardboard itself, but what becomes once its no longer useful.

I told him that many of my paintings begin with discarded cartons.

The organism became alert.

“I know another artist who does that.” a pause.

“A French minister owns his work.”

There it was again. Nothing in the room had changed. The cardboard remained cardboard.

The absent paintings remained absent.

somehow the weight of the work had increased.

Not because of the object. Because of proximity.

The organism possesses a remarkable inability.

It cannot perceive value directly.

It must first watch someone else look.

Only then does it turn its head.

⸻

I recognised it from somewhere else.

some time ago a well known artist visited our university.

I remember liking the work before hearing the words.

Several times he asked the room the same question.

“Thousands graduate from art schools every year. How many become famous? How many names do you know?” The organism loves educational institutions.

They provide ideal breeding conditions.

I remember looking around the room.

No one had stopped loving paint.

Yet suddenly everyone had become aware of arithmetic.

As if every unfinished canvas had quietly transformed into a lottery ticket.

The organism is astonishingly efficient.

It can replace a lifelong investigation, an ongoing inquary in to perception , identity ,dreams with a scoreboard . how many exhibitions ? how many collectors? followers? how many famous people own your artwork? none of these questions are inherently wrong , the problem is they quietly become substitutes for the original inquiry.

⸻

I have become increasingly suspicious that this organism does not survive on money.

Money is merely one of its fruits.

Its true nourishment is comparison.

It feeds on rankings, Collectors, Followers.

Reviews, Invitations, Prices.

Names spoken with lowered voices.

It grows stronger whenever perception is outsourced.

Whenever someone asks,

“Who else thinks this matters?”

before asking,

“What do I actually see?”

⸻

I should admit something.

I have found traces of it within myself.

It leaves behind peculiar symptoms.

The urge to compare.

The urge to calculate whether a painting has travelled far enough.

Whether enough people have seen it.

Whether enough important eyes have rested upon it.

The organism is patient.

It knows that artists are especially vulnerable.

It whispers,

“Paint if you must…”

“Just make sure someone important notices.”

⸻

Forests appear to possess an unusual immunity.

I have never witnessed a banyan tree wondering how many birds know its name.

Moss refuses awards.

Fungi negotiate entire civilizations beneath the soil without publicity.

Perhaps this is why I keep returning to them.

Not because they are symbols.

Because they seem to remember a mode of existence untouched by the organism.

Or perhaps they simply host different ones.

I don’t know.

These are only field notes.

The species remains largely undocumented.