Listening to local radio in 2010 I over heard the tale of Hugues D'Isigny. He was a soldier in William the Bastards army back in 1066. Profiting in the Norman conquest Hugues D'Isigny's decedents eventually emigrated to Canada and then to the USA. Time and dislocation contracted the family name. One of Hugues decedents had success in Hollywood, America and then the world. This descendant was Walt Disney. Isigny-sur-mer is small town less than 80km to the south of where my army and I are based.
La Bataille D'Isigny.
In December 2018 I visited Isigny-sur-mer for the first time in consideration of Disney. A few weeks later in January 2019 I went back for a second look with man-camera-Martain. Inspired, I asked m-c-M to take a picture of me whilst I posed. Conducting research online I discovered the French term for Quai side mooring posts is 'bittes d'amarrages'. I was immediately struck by this, because in French, the word 'Bitte' is common vulgar slang for the male sex organ... roughly equivalent to 'cock' in English.
In July 2019 I visited Isigny again. I focused on the fishing quai just West of the town centre and took photos of my paper soldiers arranged about the mooring posts as if they were conducting a reconnaissance - as reported at the time on the Battle Of walkerloo Blog.
Les Bittes d'Amarrage D'Isigny. (the mooring posts of Isigny)
All along the Isigny Quai side there are iron mooring posts. In the C17-C19 obsolete or damaged ship cannon were fixed into place and used as sturdy convenient quai-side mooring posts. So much so that the cannon became a common form for mooring posts throughout the world. In French such mooring posts are called 'bittes d'amarrage'. In Isigny it seemed to me the 'bittes d’amarrages' lining ether side of the quai are batteries of sky cannon defending the town skyscape and its dreamy cloud menace.
La Bataille d'Isigny Strategic Model. (LBdISM)
At the centre of the exhibition space in my 2021 show 'Le dragon Baligan, myTHself & Autres Monstres' was the LBdISM (La Bataille d'Isigny Startegic Model). The model surface/battle scape was comprised of a two part painting (in cute pink and blue 1.2 x 2.8m) of a google image search for the word Disney, framed on two sides with a printed google maps satellite image of both sides of Isigny quai. Various paper soldier and symbolic models of myTHself were placed about the terrain together with London's cock mushroom cloud impact explosions rising at perpendiculars over the symbolic Disney surface.
I knew my next major project would be 'La Bataille D'Iisgny' and this symbolic object was constructed to enable me to engage visitor's in the idea and its potential forms.
Symbolic pieces deployed across the model included:
Walkerloo Toy Soldiers ;
The Chinese Miners Marching With My Dad's Pit Banner ;
Google Panto Horse Corporate Beasts ;
and a few proto-type myTHself Trinity paper soldier figurines not yet published.
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I began making paper soldiers in 2000 - I didn't really know they were a thing.
In early 2008 I took my production industrial. Raising capital I had 180,000 soldiers made in a factory in Chatillon-sur-Sienne. The paper soldiers were printed near Paris with vegetable inks. They were glued onto two sides of a re-cycled cardboard and then precisely die cut. In June of 2008 whilst the 193rd battle of Waterloo anniversary re-enactment raged all about I launched my army of toy soldiers before the public in the museum of Napoleons last HQ. Over the coming months I took my soldiers to museums and events all about culminating in a season of Christmas artisan markets in London. But there was opposition.
Star Wars launched its movie based toys in 1977. I was in the first childhood cohort to encounter the global toy phenomenon. Ever since that success, legions of plastic movie related toys have advanced across the toy shop shelves to capture the imagination of children around the globe.
But toy soldiers are made for real pretend war - specialists. In Spring 2009 I began to lead my troops in real pretend play battle with the plastic toys from movies and TV that are their opposition.
I identified three major sources of spumic plastic toy adversary. The movie studios of Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel. Disney bought Pixar in 2006 ($7.4 billion). Disney bought Marvel late 2009 ($4 billion). Disney bought Star Wars late 2012 ($4 billion). And so my three major adversaries became one.
I prosecuted play war with my soldiers in short films, text and pictures. But against the largest mytho-picture controlling corporation the world has ever seen - an entity who's form boils via global propagation, sale by the billion of material objects under cover of all pervasive legalistic control. My paper soldiers were over whelmed. I realised I must devote more of myTHself to their mission.
