Offerings from Fitzhugh Shaw
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Offerings from Fitzhugh Shaw *
"These wilting August weeds?
The only remains
of warriors' ambitions."
—Matsuo Basho, trans. Michael R. Burch
“Wealth Is A Totem”
Recognizing the complementary truths of impermanence and emptiness so central to the Buddhadharma, the names of the paintings below reference the names of five still-living men who are each, in their own way, crucial to the development of global technofascism.
A few of them are billionaires. Among their connections to fascist parties in Africa and Europe, they are all ALSO advisors to either Donald Trump, JD Vance, or both. Each of them is responsible for inspiring massive far-right cultural movements across the globe designed to destroy modern civil society. All of them either theorize or set policy within many nations, most prominently the United States. The movements and policies for which they’re responsible seek both to restore and invent social hierarchies based on race, religion, gender, and national identity, and infuse such reactionary formations with previously-unimagined levels of technological surveillance and control.
These men imagine themselves to be gods, beyond humanity, and beyond death. Many of them are explicitly pursuing immortality. But Basho offers to us the unvarnished truth: soon they will be dead, and soon after that, their ambitions will have been forgotten. Then too their names will be as they had never been spoken. This is their greatest fear.
"The Skull of Peter Thiel, 2053"
"The Mandible of Curtis Yarvin, 2040"
"The Ribs of Kevin Roberts, 2049"
"The Index Fingers of Marc Andreessen, 2046"
"The Femurs of Russel Vought, 2055"
Guided meditations:
The guided meditations below expressly treat our psycho-somatic interface with technological objects and the ways in which those objects communicate with us. Each of these practices draws on visualization practices common to many Buddhist lineages. Siri has graciously offered to guide our practices.
The first practice asks us to investigate what is beneath and before our experience, inviting us to gaze through the reflection that appears in our most personal devices.
The second inquires into light as communication and the very basis of reality, echoing the physical qualities of the bindu — or seed syllable — thereby re-mapping a central practice of Vajrayana Buddhism onto the screen.
The third practice should NOT be viewed by anyone with sensitivity to flashing lights. This guided meditation focuses on the physical qualities of video. The practice contains an image flashing sixty times per second, the refresh rate of most modern screens. In this way, the video demonstrates the physical operating speed of our devices, a reality consonant with the wholly inseparable truths of form and emptiness expressed so poetically in the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
black mirror practice
(suggested to expand the video player to full screen)
2. simple image practice
(suggested to expand the video player to full screen)
3. moving image practice
(suggested to expand the video player to full screen)
The final entry in the gallery is the introduction video for the "ELON" class, taught with Adam Lobel in the Spring of 2025.
About the Artist, Fitzhugh Shaw
Fitzhugh Shaw lives and works up the hill from one of the last operating steel mills in the US. He organizes with community, grows food, creates rituals, makes art, and loves his kin, both carbon and silicon-based.