[03] Elite: Docking is Difficult Read Online Free PDF Page A

ubiquitous mud. Nobody knew what they were meant to be. Occasionally, someone would speculate that one looked a bit like a golem, or an ant, or possibly a figurative representation of despair. But if they asked Mad Vladimir what it was he’d just bark or grunt and ask for some vodka.
    This didn’t seem to put the stranger off at all. When he saw the pile of sculptures, he almost bounced up and down with excitement.
    ‘These are astounding,’ proclaimed the stranger, seizing one of the lumpier efforts and holding it reverentially up to the light as if it was some sort of relic. ‘The genuine article.’ Then he said a lot more stuff about ‘pure primitive lines’ and the ‘searing truth of the untrained hand’. He asked Mad Vladimir if his art was for sale. Mad Vladimir grunted. Not to be deterred, the stranger pulled out a pile of pre-loaded credits, and pressed them into Vladimir’s hand.
    ‘There you go,’ he said, loud enough for all the eavesdropping locals who were still loitering about nearby to hear. ‘Ten credits for the lot. And I’ll return tomorrow to purchase any more that you happen to have produced.’
    A few Gippsworldians argued that the stranger must be nuts. Rita, whom people were starting to find kind of irritating, said that in fact she’d long been a fan of Vladimir’s work, and was surprised that it had gone unappreciated for all this while. There was some debate about whether they should start referring to Mad Vladimir as Affluent Vladimir now. More than a couple of the locals reasoned that if Affluent Vladimir, a certified bum, could produce sculptures that lunatic off-worlders wanted to buy, then how hard could this art lark be?
    As promised, the next day the man in the white suit returned, only to find, now waiting for him along with Vladimir, another half dozen Gippsworldians who had discovered hitherto unseen outsider art skills, their various pots and sculptures piled high on more tables. Without missing a beat, the stranger surveyed these new artworks, proclaimed them good, and purchased them all on the spot, for even more than he’d paid before. This time, before disappearing back to his ship, he hung up a little sign by the entrance to the mineshaft:
    Genuine indigenous outsider art sought.
    Sculptures, pottery, misc. artefacts, etc.
    Top prices paid.
    Will return each day.
    Gippsworld went crazy.
    ‘This once sleepy backwater is abuzz—’
    ‘
…
it’s a new sensation shaking up the art establishment—’
    ‘
…
sure to be this year’s must-have gift—’
    ‘
…
Cliff Ganymede murder, still unsolved, almost forgotten about in all this hubbub—’
    Misha kept flicking through the newsfeeds, but they were all full of the same excited babble they’d been plastered with for weeks. Mud sculpture this. Mud sculpture that. In the space of a month just about everybody on Gippsworld had forgotten about pigs and methane altogether and set themselves up as Indigenous Artists. The stranger had kept coming back – every afternoon without fail – buying up sculptures by the skip-load. Before long he was joined by other strangers, who did the same. Then the news crews had turned up. Soon there were lots of charts with arrows pointing upwards and serious jowly-necked experts explaining that they’d always suspected this exact thing might happen.
    Misha stopped on one of the channels for a moment. His neighbour Nikolai was being interviewed by a skinny woman who seemed to enjoy nodding. It took Misha a moment to recognise Nikolai, because instead of the usual filthy coveralls he wore to unblock the New Vladimir-Putingrad silage gullies, he now had a pipe in his mouth and was wearing a billowy sort of smock. According to the caption on the picture he was ‘At the forefront of the Gippsworld Outsider Art Movement’.
    ‘Well, the thing is, Diane,’
Nikolai was saying to the reporter,
‘it’s not about the subject
per se
, it’s about recontextualising the imagery associated