A Giant Pasty

SSSHHHHHpppppppwwwwwwwaaaaaiohrop34ignw;gjk8`***^&^6%^&%$%*EGed-0abortabortabortabortq3r9quglkgd;lmaydaymaddaynsoije mroi wewe ieio ro giewr  - is the sound of my head exploding!!!!

Meg!  What do you mean? we are each made up of a giant pastiche of archetypes and repetitions of things that have gone before.  To deny that is surely to deny yourself?  (Or do I misunderstand...?)  

Even in making work, nothing, NOTHING is original but something begged borrowed stolen yoked together with something else. THis makes me wonder if the process rather than the product is something that perhaps can be original.

But why do we have to strive so hard to be original and new and surprising anyway... what if we went back to one piece of work that we agreed upon - I dunno say our favourite thing that we've submitted so far an tried to recreate without too much reference to it.

what would happen then?

XX

So to sum up:

• I’m a bit confused and lacking in understanding in where we are going. 
• “Product”, we seem to have established, seems to be a negative thing and is becoming a dirty word!  Why is this?  Are we afraid of it?  I get this sense of reaction / friction from you Meg but does Liz feel this way too? 
• In the spirit of process I am unsure about whether the process of posting everyday is working, (well it wasn't for me last week anyway) and I suppose this is why I might have stopped writing.  Logisically, I need more time than 24 hours to think and respond rather than just respond to some fairly heavy duty responses!  But I am interested in thinking why it isn’t…

Somehow our responses and shared collectiveness is getting harder and harder to sustain. 

Why is that?  Was it just goodwill at the beginning that fuelled our first flurry of responses or was it the new environment which is getting less new for you guys?  Is our methodology flawed?  Are the mediums that we find so expressive  (dance, visual art, words) not enough for the others perhaps, or not pushing us enough in terms of process? 

What is the expectation of the shared collective “work” anyway?  

Was it to create something strangely nebulous – but rich?

Finally I have been reading Jung who talks about a deep collective consciousness that exists within all humanity that connects us in a deep elemental level through our use of symbology in dreams for example (what we identify as benign, attractive, dangerous.) 

I don’t know what these means for our project but there is undeniably some kind of parallels, like we are all talking in a different language and trying to understand each other.  I'd like to keep this chatter going for as long as possible.

What I am not so into:

Is the idea of a product.  I’m not sure of where this project is going, but the leaps forward into the product of a workshop or gallery installation feel some how premature.  I thought the point of this month was to somehow articulate, share and reflect our “dreaming” stage, and then go into editing shape and structure.  Having said that I have no idea when the chalk farm workshop will be and what the pressures are in sorting ourselves out maybe we should be thinking about that now.

I have to say I am less enthusiastic about the dependence of “audience participation” process expecting or demanding them to do things.  I’m just not that clear on what we’re asking them to do or why?   I interested in creating a world for them to engage in.  But that might be too “productive.” 

I know your reservations about product and making artistic products, but I also think it’s a bit of a fallacy to ignore people’s archetypal expectations.  I want to know what the effect of all this is meant to be.  What are we trying to achieve?  I’m not sure if I’m satisfied with seeing what the audience come up with.  

What I like:

Responding to stimuli however strange that connect me in someway to where you are.  We started off thinking about journey and what that means.  This is still interesting to me (being stuck at home!)  

Personally I would really like it if you took the camera out and just showed me more of where you are in someway or you and how you are operating in your current context, or certain objects that are representative or not (haha!) of the place you are in.

In response to your recent post, I really like the idea of something that we can export, whatever it maybe to Bosnia, Japan, the US anywhere that we might go…

But I think this should be kept as simple as possible.  Meg, if you are interested in your idea for a workshop I think this needs simplification and more discussion on content: what are we trying to achieve here, and does the film that we / you create reflect any of our agendas, motivations?

Ultimately we'd get another big collage is that a product too and does it matter if it is?

To me it looks technically difficult.  However it did put me in mind of a guy that works on the ACA executive team who is a technical genius and interactive designer / play specialist he did a sort of similar thing to the thing you sent us.  Check him out

http://www.chrisoshea.org/hand-from-above

x

I am trying my best not to make this an essay!

And in a way this probably includes about a week’s post in one.  So I have broken it up into a few.

Posting every day is really difficult.  We’re like ships in the night, which is to be expected but makes the possibility of connection all the more remote.  In deciding not to shape and make clearer what our aims and objectives for the work we’re doing, I am still in the dark feeling my way.  

On the whole I feel my role has been reactive and therefore more passive as opposed to assertive, but then this is probably because I am at home doing this between work.  

Initially when we talked about this idea first of all this was going to be a series of films about your feet making a journey on the way to work!!  I know this was the first idea and it’s good that we progressed from it, but I am finding it difficult to see how we have the common theme in our “collage” that is going to make it work?

Results of the Autopoesis workshop.

Martin – found that he can now communicate with birds.

Jennifer – found that she now no longer grinds her teeth in her sleep.

Milly – can now practice Lunatic Aquaception: the practice of birth control by the balance of water in the body and position of the moon.

Roger – no longer hates his brother-in-law.

Tim – has found new sight in a slit in his right field of vision.

Tina – can control her own body temperature

Rob – has learnt the art of punctuality.

Anna-Kaye – has learnt to orgasm.

Peter – knows what spices complement each other the best

Carol – can hear The Music of the Spheres

Jerry – has learnt how to use an i-phone

Felicity – can self clean her body like a cat

Dennis – is no longer scared of his grandma

Eleanor – can inhale spirits

Toby – can anaesthetize different parts of his body

Mo – knows to the tiniest degree what is truly fair

Quentin – can now hold his breath underwater for longer than 3 minutes.

Charlie – has discovered that she is related to Genghis Khan and has equestrian skills

Wesley – can control traffic lights.

Breakfast Time

Peanut butter sticks to the roof of my mouth,

we talk about social planning in communities.

You find a safety in your work,

and speak elegantly and articulately

about how vested interests can co-opt the democratic process.

Shifting about uneasily – not least because I don’t really understand

the topic or care much I apply bigger and bigger amounts of

creamy peanut butter to toast in an attempt to distract

you  (I know how you feel about proportion.)

I respond claggy with texture.

I’m wondering if you want to talk about it,

The elephant in the room,

Which arrived two – maybe ten days ago

and sat itself down by the bathroom door.

At first it seemed a bit apologetic trying to keep its

painted feet neatly together under the bulge of it’s belly.

And, in a bashful way, feeling slightly overdressed

for a weekday morning took care with his trunk to tuck in the

colourful fringing of his festive jacket so that it didn’t

splay out onto the floor. 

Yet as the days slip past I think he’s become

resigned to being here.  And a little offended that no one has

even mentioned the fact, or offered him so much as a

carrot or glass of water in welcome.  He is now reclining a lot more

casually on one of the sofas in the living room,

his chipped painted feet hanging off the arm.

The brightly coloured fringing is balding it keeps

getting snagged on things and there are

tell-tale bits of it in the shower, kitchen and even,

a couple of times, the bedrooms –

So perhaps I should just say something because he’s helping

himself to all the biscuits and, I don’t know if you noticed,

he spilled tea all over your clean white sheets.  

Response to Meg’s Presentation and Liz’s Pictorial Response.

YES.  The art object is dead in that it is inanimate but was it ever alive?  The process of creation is live, and moment of reception and interpretation is alive too, the inanimate object lies dead in between.   (Strange thought)

Creation = dead = experience.

Literature students endlessly ponder Roland Barthes essay The Death of the Author which states that the moment the word has left the pen of the author the minute the book has been printed and bound and lies in the hands of the reader the author dies: Sudden Death.  In the hands of the reader / interpreter the work takes on a new life, that the author has no claim over.

But Liz’s marks look full of life.  The patterns bob and bounce off the page below a donkey – they remind me of Japanese characters that have been predetermined and repeated again and again.

I can see the strokes where the brush went down I can’t help but think there is evidence of life there the impression of it – where there was white space nothing before now there are witnesses.

I can see that galleries are like morgues,

that we are expected to wonder silently through

and in a joyful way, identify those we can claim

as our own in some way.

Even in the hushed dark of the theatre we are waiting

passively for moments of resonance we understand

performance is “live” and it is the experience

that is the product we wish to export.

The experience you can’t get in the shops

yet a product that can’t quite be recreated ever again.

The experience is a negotiation ½ by the spectator and ½ by the creator.  A shared transaction.  Or, to move away from fiscal terms, where two people meet face to face in the middle of a bridge.  Or, go and stand on completely different bridges, and see the other, a lonely figure, further down on another bridge.  And are angry or, at least, regretting that they aren’t on the same bridge as the other person staring out into another pair of eyes.

If performance is (only?) representation then experience is equally repeated and we have as Nietzsche suggests lived our lives ad infinitum, repeating each moment infinitesimally: 

The greatest weight – What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you:  ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.  The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

            Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?  Or have you experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”  If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you.  The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight.  Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal?

“I know you are but what am I? I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I? Etc ”

I WANT THE EXPERIENCE (At this stage in life, long may it continue!)

We are, according to Jung, made up of archetypes.

Archetypes are an original model of a person, ideal example, or prototype, upon which others are copied, patterned or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all.

Archetypes are present in mythology often transcending cultures, times and place present in folklore, and pre-historic artwork, in recurring archetypal images taking priority over language.

Jung suggests the existence of universal forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behaviour with certain probable outcomes.
“We come into the world bearing with us an archetypal endowment which enables us to adapt to reality in the same way as our remote ancestors.”

We experience this inheritance of collected consciousness or humanity in ways that unique only to ourselves, but nevertheless they perform the same functions in human beings everywhere.

If we are all archetypes then isn’t resonance in art or performance a moment of us identifying or remembering something similar we see in something foreign. 

It is not just on Face book and the virtual world where we frame ourselves.   According to Jung there are 5 archetypes:

The Self: the regulating centre of the psyche.

The Shadow: our unacceptable traits that are hidden and repressed, traits that are not even recognizable by our ego but possibly present in our deepest nemesis or enemy.

The Persona: the “face” we present to the world; how we codify ourselves in a form we hope will prove acceptable to others.

The Anima: whom you love: the feminine image in a man’s psyche *

The Animus: the masculine image in a woman’s psyche. *

*Although this is slightly different when applied to homosexual desire.

vegans

Jen pokes at her salad warily and says in her warm kiwi drawl.  “Of course the thing is when you’re doing a detox the trick is to treat it like a relationship –“ She looks up at Phil flirtily and fixes him with an arched expression.  “You can’t cheat.”  Phil shifts in his seat.  She continues.  “It’ s hard!  It’s really hard – I know - but the benefits are just amazing.”  Phil blinks. 

“I’m doing an amazing diet right now.”  She continues leaning forward confiding in him breathily.  “It’s fin-testic.” 

“How long you been doing it?”  Phil asks, hearing his own voice sounding strangely bumpkin-ish against her antipodean lilt. 

“Oh you know a couple of weeks , but I’ve noticed heaps of difference already – heaps!  And like, I’ll probably be doing it –“ Jen pauses as if signing off the years above her head “well maybe not for the rest of my life – but for at least the next year.”

“What do you do?”  Phil asks.

Jen takes an important breath.  “Well it’s no fruit, no sugar” she lists, “no dairy, no wheat – you have to be really careful.  I mean even in a place like this.”  She presses her nails delicately on the rim of the table, “you have to be. So. Careful.”  Her eyes are beyond him now furtively peering at the lanky man behind the food counter, his dreadlocks packed bulging into a hair net, reading a book.  “Places like these seem benign” she fixes her eyes back onto Phil and leans in with such secrecy that he has to bend his head to hear her, “but there’s no guarantee!  Greenwash is everywhere!  All it takes it one little inorganic mushroom grown on the shit of a dairy farmed cow and it’s over: you are directly contributing to the meat industry.  DyouknowwhatImean?”

Phil looks at her, she thinks a little helplessly.

“Don’t get me wrong!” She smiles brightly,  “I’m sure that tofu lasagne is spot on!  It’s just – if you want to be 100% on what you’re eating then to be honest – and this the best piece of advice I can give you -”  She reaches out and lightly pats the top of his hand, “the best thing you can do, when you eat out, is Go Raw.”  She nods at him with large brown eyes willing him to understand.

Phil looks down at his half-eaten tofu lasagne a little disappointed.  It was mostly lasagne sheets pressed together anyway, some tangy tomato sauce lining the dense wedge of pasta in his eco-box.  He’s fucked up, made the wrong choice – he should have had the cous cous.   “I drink smoothies.” He hears himself say a little too quickly. 

“Ah yeah!” enthuses Jen “that’s a great thing to do!”  Her hand is on his again and he feels a little squeeze of encouragement.  He looks up and Jen’s face has split into a wide grin, “I used to do that too!  All the time!” And then the tiniest shadow crosses her expression, like the smallest passing of trapped wind, “That is, until I stopped eating bananas.”

Ludic: def

an adjective literally meaning playful derives from the Latin ludus play.  The term is used in philosophy to describe play as an act of self-definition; in literary studies the term may apply to works written in the spirit of festival.

Homo Ludens: the concept of the ludic self as fundamentally defining human beings can be expressed by the Latin phrase Homo Ludens “the human who plays” (compared to Homo Sapiens the human who thinks)

Ludic philosophy has also influenced the study of literature.  Works such as Don Quixote and Seven Gothic Tales are considered ludic texts because of their absurd nature.

Professor & Crow

The Professor sat in the early morning light on the common bench, a shaft of sun had struck him full in his face and he had closed his eyes and softly exhaled into the warmth.  He was dreaming.  It was a cold morning, Mary was off the lead, had seen a squirrel and had gone of dashing off into the shrubs rustling and snuffling with excitement and interest.  He would just wait for her here, in this warm, sunny corner, an old man – dozing on his stick. 

He had got up at first light, and washed and shaved, pressed his trousers and shirt, two pairs of socks these days, two jersies, cup of tea, an egg, toast and marmalade.  Give Mary had a bowl full of biscuits and off up to the common, their morning ritual.  It was barely 7.30, and not many were out.  It was early Spring and clear.  He could hear a waning chorus of birds that had dwindled to mostly the alto section of crows cawing to each other from the treetops.   He suddenly felt exhausted, life’s catching up with me, he thought.  So he’d sat down rather than his usual exercise of swinging his arms about and jogging-on-the-spot and swiveling and touching his toes, he’s sat rather heavily on the bench and was now breathing regularly ignoring the familiar view from the hill the whole of the city stretching out before him, the warm sunshine on his ancient brow. 

His thoughts were interrupted - A shadow flitted across his face – and he heard a caw quite close above his head.  Crows.  He thought, Mary would see it and come running over.  Again it flitted and cawed it must be circling – perhaps it thinks I’m some kind of carrion - must be getting there, he admitted.  He wondered if he should open his eyes, but the sun was getting stronger and warmer and to break this happy doze  would be – Whumpf!  Something heavy hit him on the crown of his head knocking his hat off.  The force of it sending his head rolling slightly forwards out of the sunlight.  He opened his eyes, expecting the counter motion to send him back again, but the heaviness did not lift, rather it remained and juddered causing more shadows and a rush of air.  The professor could feel cold rubbery points on his crown.   A single black feather floated down past his nose and settled on his knee. 

With his head bent under the unshifting weight the professor could see his shadow in the sun to the right of him, awkwardly crooked under the form of a rather large crow.  An alarmingly close caw confirmed this and the Professor feeling the five or six points on his head – were they talons? – looked at the shadow of the curved beak and wondered what to do.

how to hang a door

Measure the opening

Purchase a door that is 2” less than your opening

Mark the door for trimming (use a pencil) and trim (with a saw) sand the edges until smooth (use sand paper)

Check if the door fits.  Get someone else to help you – it must be perfect a second opinion is always helpful.

Place the hinges: determine which way the door will open (usually into a room), take note of where the light switches are and place hinges on opposite side accordingly.

Draw around hinges with a pencil and cut out hinge recesses with a chisel.

Drill pilot holes and then screw on the hinges

Position door and mark out where the hinge falls on the door frame.

Cut out hinge recesses with a chisel on frame.

Drill pilot holes and then screw on the hinges onto the frame.

Kneeling figure Taken from Epic Gilgamesh

So  Endokin

was tamed through a

 skilled harlot named Shazah

who emerged from a Babylonian

  Temple in the city and went out onto  the

    wild mountainside and made love with him

for seven days and nights in a cave among

the sheep and Endokin                          who

         was more animal than                              man                      

 felt soft perfumed                                      skin for

             the  first time against his                              own rough hide               

              and tasted sweet fruits                                  and refined sugars

                       from the Babylonian city he                            followed Shazah back

                                       between the dry deserted canyons                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

back to the gardened walls of the city 

                     where the bustling heat of 

                         strangers set him on edge  

and it was only her gentle humming in his ear

that stopped him from striking out back to the windy

mountainside among the dusty goats and scrub.

seafaring

As a nation of sailors we have lost our way.  At one point in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century nearly every family had someone who was away at sea.  Many men never came back.  Often there families weren’t told for months sometimes years after. There was a rich reward for whoever could construct a timepiece that could work out at sea so the sailors could calculate their position in degrees of longitude and latitude in the open sea. 

World liner cruises became popular in the early twentieth century.  For the best part of 50 years cruising enjoyed a hey dey among our island people, who congaed late into the night across the Mediterranean, through quoits at targets along the Atlantic and enjoyed the queues for sunny, outdoor buffets serving local delicacies as well as the more familiar fare, which meant one didn’t have to dress for dinner.  Another reason cruises were popular was that alcohol was served at a quarter of its original price.

people watch you when you run

Different eyeballs of different hues, each with their different lenses contracting to focus point at a figure who is hunched and slow.  The jacket she wears is too big and smells of fags and deep fat fryers; the chippie of a Friday night and twenty thousand Royals.  The figure moves slowly tentatively, perhaps painfully, holding something close to her sheltering it in the stiff structure of her coat.  Light refracts into the different eyes, lenses, triggered by electrical pulses snap  into focus the vision of the huddled figure retreating as it disappears from view.  

A camera flicks onto green, and slowly rotates on it’s electrical axis as she walks  past.  Another engages and then another, careful not to lose sight of her.  She’s faster now more determined as if suddenly someone has shown her the way.    The camera follows like relays flicking from one screen to the next: face on she passes below, in profile she hurries by, down the steps one-two, one-two and then she jumps the final four.  Then she’s running.  The cameras are trying to get a long shot in so they can zoom in on her face, but it’s streaked with hair and she’s still holding something with one arm but the other is swinging in steady momentum as she pelts past – a retreating shadow.  The cameras are working overtime unseen hands are scrabbling with note and remotes to make sure that all areas are covered.   

She comes into view pounding down the corridor head bobbing and suddenly she’s gone.  Swift change to a different angle on another wall she’s not there.  To another and another and there is a figure sprawling out on the floor her legs entangled, one arm outstretched as she hurtles down onto her stomach and slides until she comes to a crumpled stop.  

Tube

Religious text on his Blackberry absorbing religious salvation on his way to work.  Be you Christians…? 

9.35 Northern Line Friday morning.

This train will not be stopping at Bank passengers are advised to seek alternative routes.  This train is NOT stopping at Bank if you wish to get to Bank you are advised to walk from London Bridge or back from Moorgate.

“Hello!  Fancy seeing you – Where you going?” 

“The Passage” p795 first line of chapter 67 reads.  THEY WERE CRIMINALS. 

Both women opposite have ripped trousers in their adjacent legs.  One of the holes is wear the other looks structural. 

This station is Bank High Barnet Branch. 

Man leans out and looks up to the station order the undulating line of his form: swollen belly over belt, flat chest, pregnant jowl, chin lost – he reminds me of a pigeon.  Everyone in front has chins jutting, some angular, chunky, rounded like bottoms, long tapered J’s, beared, be-stubbled, be-moled, masticating slightly, masticating vigorously.  Eyes: open glazed, fixed above, demurely down, all in various states of preparation and mediation for the day ahead.  Weight loss, want results we deliver.

The structural tear of the two torn trouser ladies is steadily inclining her head towards the foreign shoulder of the Wear-and-Tear.  She tips and stops.  She tips and stops.  The shoulder seems aware and wants to turn away.  I want to laugh.  With every jolt of the tube the head veers ever closer.  Vigorous Masticator taps her, apparently they know each other although you wouldn’t have guessed it.  She wakes a little embarrassed.

On The Run

By the end of the year Larry Garraghan will be bald, hairless. He doesn't have cancer, he doesn't have alopecia, he doesn't even, at thirty five and to the amazement of his dentist, have any fillings. He's not particularly stressed apart from when he thinks about his hair. It's more political than that: the maternal gene asserting itself over the father's. Despite the proud tufts on his father's aging head, her DNA was getting in there early, beating him to it, leaving their only son as bald as a post.

Each morning when he wakes up and goes to the bathroom for a pee he looks in the mirrored cupboard which hangs above the toilet. His hairline guiltily cringes back at him while his forehead beams out a bright Good Morning. Larry scowls. The widows peak seems sharper than before, more beak-like retreating to extreme points on his ever-visible crown.

If he lived in New World America, when driving wagons and fighting off Indians were your only problems, he wonders, would the American Indians find his molting scalp worthy of a trophy? Might they be slightly disappointed? Might they throw it back at him laughing or worse keep it in the shadows of the teepee tucked embarrassingly away behind all the others? Whatever happened to less is more?

Lucky that Larry’s on/off girlfriend Suzy is on hand to reassure him that no, his hairline is exactly how he left it when he went to sleep yesterday. He has a fine head of hair. When Larry does the measure with his index finger from eyebrow to innermost edge she grows impatient.
“Stop driving yourself crazy! You’re paranoid and you’re making me late for work. There are people out there,” she jabs at the window, “with real problems!” It’s true, Suzy is a paramedic and, as she often tells him, the difference between 9 o’clock and 9.15 could be the difference between life and death for some people.

“Honestly!” She softens and strokes his temple, “it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.” But Larry has slumped into a despondent gloom. When Suzy asks him if he’ll join her and The Team tonight for drinks at The Fallback he shrugs moodily. “Fine!” she says and grabs her keys.
“Could you -?” he says quickly holding out the camera with pleading eyes. She sighs and then snatches it off him as he dutifully bows his head like a monk in prayer.

He looks at the photo and flicks back a few days to compare it to the previous ones. “Did you do it with the flash?” he asks, but the door slams and she is gone. Larry anxiously zooms in on the evidence, there is definitely a thinning circle appearing slowly on his head, like an alien crop formation. He thinks of running after Suzy to show her – or just texting her, that he’d been right all along. Maybe he would send the picture as an email. With the subject heading "Tonsure." That was it! The word bubbled out into his brain the “ton” sound slowly filling out across his tongue, spreading out across his head.

Although Larry could never fully comprehend this, there was at that very moment a cosmic realisation between body and mind. For what Suzy doesn’t know and what Larry is belatedly beginning to suspect is that Larry’s forehead is conspiring in a revolution against him: It has finally asserted it’s dominance, and is indeed in the process of carrying out a programme of displacement and deracination against the offending bristles with which it has shared a home for the past 35 years. One by one the hairs on Larry’s head are packing up. They’ve had their orders and are systematically ripping up their roots, clearing out the follicles and launching themselves kamikaze-style off the top of Larry’s head. As they flutter down around Larry’s shoulders catching on his jumper here, landing briefly on an eyelash there they dream of a better life before sinking sadly into sleep.

Behind them, with a determination and a force rarely seen in Larry's mother, Grace, saved only for the Mother's Race at Sports Day, the shiny progress of Larry’s pate continues unstoppable. A kind of vicarious vengeance on Larry's father for two and a half decades of philandering. It's not always obvious, and of course sometimes it is, but there is a strong karmic relationship between hair loss and fidelity.