Freethinker Farshid and exile

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

I haven’t found myself thinking about nihilism in a long time and Farshid’s understated talk and disposition has resurrected such thinking. He talked of meaninglessness in relation to his work and in fact the constructed nature of identity and how the artist is an ‘exile’ in his own land. Certainly the artist’s life can be one of estrangement and indeed the photographic medium has this in built in its mechanism, distancing one from real lived experience. If this self-imposed critical, detached life, in the shadows, away from the mainframe of society, is a form of exile, either romantic or not, I disagree that it can be attached to (Irish) nationalist longings. It is something far more of a universal condition, that afflicts those who are searching and do not accept the narrative myths, or moral constitution offered by what Lacan referred to as the ‘Symbolic Order’ (hierarchical organizations that structure society). In these terms the artist searches for oppositional force of freedom or sense of truth that is shaped by desire. I deduce and interpret  Farshid’s thinking to be a pointing out of the absurdity of much of what society holds dear and stands alone against a tide of mediocrity or at worst fascism, depending on the part of the planet or period you exist in. Farshid stands beside the existentialist tradition in western philosophy and extends a hand to us. It is personally life affirming to acknowledge this and reminds me of one central tenet and reason to continue the pursuit of art, that is the enrichment through dialogue and people and places that are discovered. Or is it just another seductive narrative to follow, with the illusion of choice and freedom? Is the artist exile really free or just as confined as those he surveys around him?