My partner, Chris, found a photo of some metal objects which I assume represents some of the products which used to be made in the factory. I took acrylic paint (white and Paynes grey) with me, and painted larger, simplified versions on to a wall in the ‘ordered’ room. I made use of the raised overlap in the metal wall to form part of the central line of one of the objects, in the hope that it would give a subtle 3D effect.
I worked in the creative chaos room some more. There are a few rawl plugs in the wall. I have pushed the ends of short pieces of cable into them, working in a very opportunistic way.
Although I find it exhilarating, in some ways it is also quite disturbing for me to see electric cable covering the wall in this free-flowing way – since I used to work as a joiner on building sites, and am accustomed to seeing such cables pinned to the wall in a more rational way, before the plasterers cover them up. I have started to glue fragments of cable to the wall in radiating shapes.
The door is the place of transition from one set of rules to another, so I am trying to reflect that in the way the door surround is treated.
I assessed my experimental work on the wall. I am reminded of something Andy Goldsworthy said in his video. He was making a new stone dome on the beach everyday, as it kept collapsing. He said that for each project he had to learn the qualities of the material. I am having to do that with the plastic wire coating. I took off all the longest and thickest pieces and sliced them in half lengthways, and replaced them. This makes for thinned pieces which will glue to the metal wall more successfully. It also gives me more lengths which is useful.
I have started to glue smaller pieces of plastic to the wall, and tucked the two ends of other pieces into the same cable clip to make loops and circles. The design is developing in an incremental fashion, responding to work already done and the shape of the remaining space. My artist’s books are very considered, with lots of planning, research and revision. It feels very liberating to work in an unplanned way. In this process and in the found nature of the materials it is more like a piece of Outsider Art eg the Watts Towers, Facteur Cheval’s Le Palais Idéal or more recently, Nek Chand’s Rock Garden of Chandigarh.
It is very exhausting gluing plastic cable above my head. I am tying it in rough place with string or fixing with blu tac, and after stepping back to judge the design, and rearranging if I am not satisfied, I draw a pencil line. I put glue along the line leaving gaps every 15 cm or so, which is for blutac, to hold it in place while the glue sets. The next day I can remove the blutac and there is a useful little gap left, which I can slip other pieces of plastic under. I have started to make the installation 3 dimensional, with loops of plastic curving away from the wall.
I put up some of the notices found in other parts of the mill. Very laudable warnings and injunctions! I am impressed, but for the purposes of this installation, I am going to take the piss. On the ordered side, mistakes will be labelled and deviations from the drawing will be okayed by C Stamp mgr. and perhaps other errors in the current world system will be flagged up. Maybe there will be a surveillance room this side, (in a little niche which I have placed test pieces in) using the notice about irreplaceable eyes. I think I have one doll’s eye to use. Maybe the other eye will not be functional any more. There is a little bag I found on site which looks as if it will hold glass eyes, for workers who did not heed the warning.
On the other side I will have to think up some comparable new injunctions eg ‘No circuit may be closed’, and I will probably disobey them.
I started on a non metal wall, so I can hammer cable clips into it. I rearranged some of the test designs, which were made from long coils of wire. The design is loosely inspired by a picture I saw long ago in a newspaper of the tracks of particles when an atom explodes – I think. Creative chaos.
I brought out everything I could think of for wallpapering the metal walls. I brought the paste ready-mixed in a bucket as the only water available is from a turbulent River Lune.
I have decided to have one room for the creative chaos and another for the logical ordered systems – so that is even more metal wall to paper.
The perfectly imagined project is already unravelling. I imagined using some cables which are 3 cm thick, mostly on the floor, but briefly going up the wall and round the door. I cannot fix to the floor, because of agreement with owners, and the cables are no longer straight, due to previous use in situ and then being pulled off and stanley-knifed open, so getting them to lie where I want, will not work. They are also too heavy to glue to the metal wall. So I have left that out of my imaginings.
I am the only person on site today, so I locked myself in the mill, rather than leaving a distant door flapping in the wind, and open to intruders. There are usually scary noises from time to time, but I was scared to death when I heard a drill start up on the outside of the wall next to me. I thought someone was trying to take down a boarded up window and steal more stuff from inside the mill. Attack is the best method of defence, I thought, so I screamed at the intruder, ‘What do you think you are doing? Go away.’ He came up with a good excuse that he was from the security firm, hired by the previous owners and was taking his advert away. I had to eat lunch early to boost my sugar levels after the shock.
The mill is derelict and full of dangers. I had to promise to read risk assessments and safety notices and take proper precautions. I have chosen one of the less derelict rooms, though the windows are boarded up. Co-housing members have helped me gather up the plastic pieces and lay them out in the room next to the one I plan to transform. I wondered whether to research the history of Lune Engineering Works for ideas or imagery to include, but time is limited, so I think not. I have found quite a number of scrapped posters or abandoned items which I think will generate ideas.
While lying awake at night, I visualised the whole installation, but experience tells me that this perfection will not be achieved, and I will in any case change my mind. But I am excited to be working on a piece which – however loosely – is based in my mind on the current world situation – the unravelling of capitalism.
I started trying to attach the plastic to the walls with clips, as an experiment to see how things looked and worked. Oh dear. Some of the walls are normal partition, as I thought, but others are made of metal. I was fooled by the presence of wire clip fixings nailed into the metal. Time for me to rethink.
So I tried using Grabslikenails, but it works best if one surface is absorbent. The plastic stuck to the wallpaper, but not very well to the metal. OK. I will paper the metal and use the glue on that. (My proposal included my commitment to use removable fixings, so that renovation will not be made more difficult or more costly, and I am mindful of that.)
I spent the rest of the time sorting the plastic by colour and length, so it is like a palette, ready for me to use.
