..still folding boats and drawing them..
But the main focus now is on finding at least a little bit of funding for the installations / projects that I will do in India in August.
There will be 3 installation pieces and one temporary gallery, in which I will show previous work of mine. Brilliant. So much to do.
I had planned to be there for 4-5 weeks. I may stay 6 to get everything done. Upon arrival the first job will be to secure my premises, but I already have connections and I should be able to move in within a week.
Then the setting up and manning of the exhibition space as well as preparing my 3 installations.. I love that in India i can work like here only a very well established Artist can. And I love the response of the audience there.
Complete absence of cynicism. Instead an open mind to the work and questions people here rarely ask.
Looking forward to the process and experience!
It would help to find at least £2000, the actual cost could be £3000 or actually if I brought this to conclusion and imported my work to the UK then of course we are looking at more like £9000/£10.000
Would you not like to contribute?I would post you a paying in-slip for my bank account…
At the moment I am tearing up books and making paperboats and setting some alight… I am enjoying the thoughts that come and the disturbing parallels with book burnings and making a game of knowledge… So I am making disposable toys out of encyclopedias that once cost a lot of money, reflecting their once respected importance, necessity and status..
But they are old books now. Old, but not old enough to be valued again.. Never again valued for their content. Who cares about the Baltic Sea and the strange Australian mouse-animals whose names start with a B… and I am only at the section B.. who knows what kind of knowledge I will come accross and make us of…
…Perhaps I will make a tower of Babel after all.. I have been so stuck on this image for so long… But for now I am making boats for journeys that will never take place..Journeys with no purpose and no destination.
.. a journey still remains a thing that may throw up surprises and kinks in it’s design…
..where are the philosophers when we need them?
I took a whole day off. Completely off…
And my god, I am a workaholic it seems.. Because by the end of yesterday I was almost twitching with the need to do something…
Today I am back to being relaxed, the rain stopped. And I am quite excited and refreshed after my 24 hour break with complete rest (except the wheelclamping experience which rendered me broke..),
I want to make a few short films this week and ‘up’ my speed and output ability.. It’s not about finished projects and quality but just about seeing how many film sketches I could make..
So I will start with the ‘limited-journey’ project.. Another one of the claustrophobic resolutions to a movement intended but not quite allowed, restricted by externeal factors… weight, space, logistics.
I am quite drawn to these kind of visual metaphor non-journeys, it relates to some personal matters. And some matters I see around myself in social/political/economic sphere.
So off I go.. there is work to do..
Plato is sitting next to my bed, reading out loud "Theaetetus".. A quest for knowledge and thruth..
And my neighbours are sanding their floor..which is my ceiling.. It’s time to move…
It seems that I will be crazy busy until the end of next year. 2-3 installations in India in August. One project that I want to try and bring back for the Liverpool Biennale. Another project that seems to crystallize with these exquisite musicians. Then I also need to return to my drawing practice because it is becoming exceptionally rusty. And I don't know. Ah, yes. A show in a ruin, a bombed out church in Liverpool. This should happen in september. (3 small wooden huts with work inside… it's an open air venue, secured by the church walls, but there is no roof..)
And and and and and and and…
I am calculating wether I need to try and get a place at the Royal College of Art or possibly Goldsmiths (postgraduate courses)in order to save myself a few years worth of struggle.. And also to safeguard myself for my future. An RCA / RA next to one's name appears to be a good insurance against carreer lows… well..
But it's all just thinking, thinking and planning… In the meantime I am so busy and enjoy it a lot.
The 52nd Venice Biennale panicked me slightly. So many artists.. So much competition. So many whose work is just more polished. But then also a fair few whose work is pretty flat and obvious.. But still the rat race part of it all made me a bit uncomfortable.. And the concern over what the value of my work can possibly be… I saw too many pieces that were akin to my own, by content or choice of symbolism. But then perhaps it is ok to be part of a Zeitgeist… hmmmm… Still it makes me squirm. Until I saw all these related pieces, I thought that I was deeply unfashionable.. Which I am obviously not.
For the most part I just want to remain in a position in which I can simply make my work, have an audience and find myself in some publications.
art art bloddy art.
I best get back to some work and look into the Tower of Babel… It interests me as an image.. The gathering and distribution of knowledge throughout the ages.. The loss of a common language as alleged by this story about the destruction of the Babylonian tower and the fragmentation of the people by taking their common language from them..
What a strange god that would be.. Complete absence of benevolence, and if this story were true then it would be the root cause of all conflict and war… What a horrible god this would be..I think.
Although give me enough time and I will find ways to also completely agree with such a god. But that another time.
…it is not all doom… actually……I just remembered where my project took it’s roots and actually it is more than it appeared in it’s latest re-incarnation.
It all started when I looked at Plato’s cave 4 years ago… (The origin of drawing being the incentive back then..) Then I searched for the origin of knowledge which is obviously a stupid thing to do, but very interesting to arrive in Babylonia and Alexandria and in southern Spain with the Muslims who saved knowledge that would have been eaten by the rats otherwise… (..none of this in this order..)
Remember they transformed southern Spain into the hub of education when most of Northern Europe lay in the dark ages…
This all was where it started.
Thank heaven’s my work is not as flat as I suddenly thought it is…
Now give me funding.
