so much.
It's taking a while to take the tandemonium apart and tidy up, been up there several times and makeing progress. I have to be sensibly ruthless about binning stuff. then i need to get the rest down to the cellar.
the crochet jacket is also taking a while, gonna do a bit more on it tonight. in some ways i don't want to finish it, i'd like to be at the gallery now, crocheting as 'performative art'. why tho? Because i know it facinates people. Because people aren't usually invited to watch. coz it takes so long and it's very linked to time (four fold time)... because i'd like to play the punk music in the gallery at the same time for the contradiction of crochet and punk... it's in west wales though, they may not appreciate it. so, if the car's fixed i might head down there tomorrow.
managed two turns on the slack rope - one a bit of a fluke, the second much more controlled. also have taken a few short videos while slack roping - from the palm, not 'of me'. interesting shots, you wouldn't really be able to fake it, it;s a bit like when someone has accidentally phoned you from their pocket. took a few in the park, a few down 'the island' and a few in the pro-cathedral. there's a spot near stapleton road station that looks good. four locations should be enough. I also want to strap the camera to my sternum, see how that affects the shot and maybe my ankle. chop it all up, put it to music. but which music? and black and white or color? Better maybe to view this as a practice - i'd rather do a more controlled thing in grainy sepia and do somethink in super8 in colour.
I think it'd be good if I made all the music for one version - junk instruments, the saw, the flute (the fiddle?), singing etc could even use the feral choir. Also there's the gramaphone songs. Also there's clogs. also there's Male Instrumenty.
Male Instrumenty - saw them at the arnolfini and oh my god i loved them. such a fantastic sound. it's funny how if you have an idea and then look around, then you'll find people doing the same. I wanted to be a one woman band using kids toy instruments as a big reaction to being a mum and thus unable to attend rehearsals/otherwise make work with other people. This was blended with the automata on bikes idea, no longer sure in which order. The double bill at the arnolfini was musicians with kids instruments and someone making automata music. the only thing missing is the bikes! They were fab tho, absolutely amazing. wow. such diverse musicians, tight as anything,, all using lots of different instruments. a gorgeous slightly out of tune sound, all clashing and with unusual tones. I found it really easy to listen to and enjoy, lots of different moods within the set. just amazing. the automata was fantastic and interesting and different but a bit dull. easily the most exciting thing i've seen this week, or even in ages. so glad i went and that they let me take my son in!
http://smallinstruments.com/media.php
And the visit to the arnolfini. well i was expecting more really, i suppose i didn't realise it was only 1 hour. and for an hour it was good. I guess it had to be broad as it was for students who although on a creative degree course, might not actually think the arnolfini's relevant to them. But surely for fine art students there should be a longer more indepth tour? I don't feel like i know any more about it now than i did through being an engaged individual and that's not the educational facilitators (or whatever Nic's job title is) fault. In an hour you can't really find much out about anything, an hour wasn't even enough time to experience the exhibits. I found some things interesting, i liked the copper tape/noise installation, reminded me of the graphite/noise project that was described to me recently. I 'liked' the expanding lungs or found them facinating and was saddened by the photos of the strikes, also thought about the role of arts to explore and disseminate 'messages'. Coal's a subject i'm concerned with but i'd not heard about the particular rescourse being mined in Nigera (?). I heard about it first in the arnolfini. I would have cared had i come accross it elsewhere, will it stick in my mind more for the artistic interpretation? Probably. It may even have linked it more to myself and my phone and my secondhand guilt. I enjoyed the computer generated love letters but as a general rule, i'm not a technology lover and don't enjoy gadget heavy exhibits. a little dissapointed to hear that the arnolfini likes programming that sort of thing. I liked the concept of the digital dance peice but frankly it was dull to watch and that matters. it just looked like a screen saver. The maps were interesting, i could have spent longer in there. there was such a lot of info collated! amazing/disgusting. I returned to the reading room after the group had left. I looked through a history of performance art, good to have done so. Still not sure what the reading rooms function is, maybe it's just to distract the research assisstants...
Also today we tried to tie my slack rope between two bikes but that didn't work as it required to much strength to hold the bikes apart. So then we got a scaffold tower bar and hooked that between two bikes and that was great! Not entirely successful but you wouldn't expect it to be, first time. It seemed more successful cycling in circles, we all were differently successful with the bar - i stood still, sylvie walked forwards, Lois walked sideways. Cycling straight ahead didnt work so well as if you fell you had to try'n catch up and you run out of room. silly silly. what a nice contrast to thinking about what makes 'art'. I wish i didn't drift into 'serious' territory, being a popular entertainer sounds much easyer or at least less pretentious but it's just how my mind works.
I painted the town as part of my specialist path way this week. orange paint all over the roads. comes off as soon as a car goes over it. need it to be much stronger for it to be effective. but not so strong that it causes trouble. Next time I'm in i'll have to do it stronger still.I wonder how it'll be when it's dry outside. I'm glad my mum got to see the silly stuff i get up to. Loved the drawing to film as well, especially the dance. I might take that idea out into the world. I like the strength of my non-representational (is that an accurate description?) drawings, it's hard to break away from 'seeing' but i do love it when i do.
I am getting really, really hacked off with the library being shut everytime I try to use it - like at lunch time. surely they could have their lunch at a different time to the students so we can actually use it as a resource instead of just seeing a locked door time and time again. So i saw some Lousie Bourgeois obituaries, one in selvedge or some other fabric based journal and one in art news or something. I might compare them. they at least are of the same event... i find i want to read many of the articles but that they don't relate to the others.
looked at 'drawing now - between the lines of contemporary..' a lot of good stuff, some stuff that's beyond me.
ReplyDeletei like the concept of drawing conceptually rather than limiting it by science. i'm also glad to have thought about the end-notes and how i can use them.
with bergers text, i've barely looked at it but was captivated by the idea of taboo drawing. It doesn't seem like much of a taboo anymore to depict sexual acts but drawing your dead parent shocked me and then i thought, what a great idea.