Agnostic Mystery Cabaret

Back in 2009 I completed a visual studies course as part of my degree. Essentially an art foundation, the course culminated with a final project called Worlds in a Book. Inspired by Book Art the brief was to create a book (either afresh or by modifying an existing text) that could be considered a beautiful artefact.

I think that was the gist of it, anyway... as you can see, I did not quite manage to create something beautiful.

The concept of La Gabia (Catalan for The Cage) was the impenetrability of art, especially when other languages are thrown into the mix. The text of PRePOSICIONS INDECENTS i LOCoCIONS PERVERTIDES by Laia Martinez i Lopez was cut up into its component parts (i.e. the individual poems) and transcribed by hand onto small pieces of paper by non-Catalan speakers before their imprisonment within tiny index cards held inside a cage.

Get it?

Laia and I have been friends for nine years or so, having met in the Old Dairy in 2003 back when I was the licensee. I considered that the content of what was then her most recent work ideal for this project. Of course, since it was all in Catalan no-one would understand it anyway but...well, its as much about what cannot be seen as what can be seen, I think.

Laia had put a great deal of work into  PRePOSICIONS INDECENTS i LOCoCIONS PERVERTIDES;  I felt a little uncomfortable taking it from her and using it in a mere undergraduate project. So we agreed a poetry exchange, and I hastily threw together a selection of the (what I considered to be) best poems I'd written between up until then.

It was called Agnostic Mystery Cabaret, and today i found a copy. A bit of personal archaeology, some of which I'd like to share.

Jobsearch

Give me a list of names

And a simple process

Combining different procedures,

Starting and ending at the screen

In between

Some walking, some thinking…

Occasionally I would like to go into a basement

And fetch something antiquarian from a high shelf.

I will use a set of steps on casters.

Can it be a wooden box?

Might I blow away the dust and smell camphor?

If there were some things in need of cataloguing

That too I would enjoy.

Would it be okay if I worked alone?

My department of one

A mystery to all:

Yet, respected and valued. A few people my acknowledge me

In the cafeteria

But only the security guard knows my name.,

Bidding me goodnight as I leave my place of work.

I would prefer it if he were of African extraction.

Every now and then I will receive messages from the past

Via the vacuum tube…

It would be an interesting hobby

To collect them,

A rare break from the drudgery of my appointment.

Not long before my retirement

A local news crew may wish to make

A feature out of me and my hobby.

In my dotage I will find this quite baffling,

But will endear myself to them and the viewers at home.

God once gave me walls to paint, but not any more.

If you have anything similar to what I have just described,

I am ready for an immediate start.   

I'm keen to post some more but only if I can find/ produce suitable images to go with them. Until then, cheerio.

SMOKE

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. 

-Mark Twain, apparently

Below is a picture of some chimney on the Isle of Grain in Kent. It's clearly visible from the other side of the estuary, where I grew up. I used to think it looked like a giant cigarette; indeed, as dusk fell it spewed its poison into the air, granting spectacularly romantic chemical sunsets over Canvey Island and distant London.

Courtesy http://www.mikecurryphotography.com

I posted some nonsense yesterday which I have since deleted. Giving up smoking is difficult.

simulacrum - a collaboration- Le cadavre exquis

A lot of our studio exercises involve collaborative group work. Sometimes, work from one table is passed to another and augmented, as with the previous session's mind-mapping exercises.

All of which put me in mind of the surrealist game, Le cadavre exquis [exquisite corpse], an exercise in creativity similar to consequences. I embarked on a similar exercise this summer whilst a member of a short story group, write club

Each week members were given titles and were tasked with the production of 1000 new words corrresponding to said title. I have posted quite a few of mine on this site (you'll have to go back to July, or have a look at the write club website). As the weeks progressed, some of the members began to experiment with other formats, with a friend of mine (who- until she decides to make her public entrance- shall remain anonymous) producing a collage, pictured below, for the title "simulacrum".

(hopefully my friend won't be annoyed about me putting it here because it is already published on the write club page)

I produced a fairly standard sub sci-fi romance which you can read here

She played with the idea of the copy of a copy (simulacrum, simulacra...) equisitely, so decided to spontaneously produce my own simulacrum...

I then scanned- lo res , grayscale [sic]- and returned to my collaborator to deconstruct and reassemble, only to be rescanned and sent back to me...

copy

of a copy

...

... a copy

*

Without permission from my anonymous collaborator I cannot yet publish the full extent of the project, but hopefully that will soon be forthcoming and I'll be able to share them here.

bernard tschumi - sex/violence/advertisements for architecture/

My dissertation topic is on Bernard Tschumi and deconstruction/ deconstructivism... coincidentally, this is also one of my presentation topics for Garden Design History...

Don't want to publish too much concerning dissertation here but I am planning on employing some of his ideas in the masterplan... furthermore, I found these postcards that I think are very interesting!



There part of a series Tschumi did in the seventies called Advertisements for Architecture. I like this next one A LOT...




What do you think- is murder in the street different from murder in a cathedral? is architecture defined by the actions it witnesses or its form and materiality? Can the same be said for space... is space landscape?
There are one or two more in this great book I found in the library called Tschumi- lots of connections between bondage, rules, architecture and erotica.
Reminds me a great deal of Guy Debord's remark I came in the cobblestones, which is what landscape is all about, right?

Right?

Right....

I'll scan and upload next Friday!

Anselm Kiefer- Lilith

Anselm Kiefer- Lilith was hanging in Tate Modern, not sure if still there but part of Tate collection. A brooding, apocalyptic presence looks down on contemporary Babylon through strange eyes. Or something.