Michael Forbes

Changing Ideas Award
My family were cleared from Reay in the Highland Clearances of the 1800s, they moved further South and avoided forced emigration to Canada. The many were thrown off the land to be replaced with sheep so the few landowners could become fantastically wealthy.
Gravity keeps us all on the surface of planet Earth and getting off the land is not really an option. We must all occupy a piece of land with every step we take. The imaginary invisible border lines of countries exist on maps and these lines move and change shape throughout history. Where you stand on the planet today might not be allowed tomorrow. Your home , your country , your nation are all agreed conceptual ideas between apes. Once the line is drawn and you stand on one side of it , those who stand on the other side become different , strange , unlike us , alien.
We invest in this agreement because it gives us an identity, it makes you part of “us” and everyone else is “them”. Israel can bomb children in Gaza , because they are bombing “them “, just as Trump threatened to annihilate 88 million Iranians in one night , because in his mind he didn’t see them as “us”. Yet there is only us ,we are all we have , standing on a large round rock , travelling through a vacuum at ,1, 000000 miles per day together. - the artist