Looking About – Auto-Bio-Stratigraphy – conceptual geologcal mapping

‘Heaven and hell’

Portsmouth December 20th

The last two months have been a blur – working mostly on the logging but 2 weeks ago I started on the final run towards the map.

Reviewing the info collected over the last three years is a mammoth task – 700 odd bags of materials collected and 1100 day logs – it will be impossible to review the ‘collection’ in its entirety but there is the basis for a geology/stratigraphy PhD – I gave one up for my arts career…..

maybe

just maybe…….

process:

The bags are being emptied and counted – then photographed – the books of scribbled notes and diagrams being translated – – she is almost there – not enough time in the day to write about it as well though

hence

my absence from here

Also there will be a documentary too – we have just filmed two days this week in my studio 21 at ArtSpace Portsmouth and in the exhibition space as well.

Over Christmas I will make some more sound for this film which will premier at R-Space Lisburn at the end of January – with a joint ‘Konfirm/Look About show’

http://www.rspacelisburn.com/future-exhibitions-2/

Process:

I have started to improve in myself too although I can’t remember when I have been so exhausted before – it’s been a tough year – heaven and hell in many respects to private to go into here – exciting from a commissioning point of view and fearful in other respects. I can’t say I would like to relive some but that’s gone and it’s ‘now’ to concentrate on.

All my decline and recovery has been mapped within the project – it may not appear in this map as I will concentrate mainly on events in 2011 and 2012 – but its all logged – written in stone – every damn day of it and will appear again somehow somewhere when I can face up to some of it not just experience it.

To look forward to in 2014

Show in Northern Ireland

Commissioned project with Houses of Parliament

Peter Brook play

Research

Music development and touring

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‘Raining cats and logs’

October 31st

Portsmouth

Catching up post – no 1 sat with cat as the raincreates aural distracting patterns on the plastic roof above me….

Mapping exhibition: A Work in progress

Friday 11th October

A ‘two weeks start in earnest’ with a day showing with talk at the end.

I had booked the space in GASP a while ago (ArtSpace Portsmouth – the studios where I have space) in order to show the pre-printed finished map – unfortunately after being beset with quite a few months delays due to my imposed health issues it turns out to be the ‘reveling’ of the start of the finalizing of the map (last stage of project) not the ending. This is complex as i think in chronology and Churchill said something better during the war about the end of the phony war/battle of Britain.

The work starts a while before – each of the many hundred’s of day logs in book form and loose needs translation into numbers and condensing to make the map – As I have severe difficulty with reading I engaged another artist as access – We both sat together for this time and started the process working and modifying a system and process as we tumble through – we were able to show some of these sheets which will then be correlated with fossils (souvenirs) and make the map later in November – December – ready to show in Northern Ireland first in February 2014.

We also showed maps – I LOVE maps – any map but geological maps are works of art in their own right – they in 2D translate the 3D for those of us who can read form -The first geological maps in the UK were made by the army (Ordinance survey) but soon taken over by the British Geological Survey – you can find detail here

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/about/ourPast.html

http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.htm…

and a mobile app is available too

I took great joy in pining various maps on the wall – no guilt at marking – they always attract attention

We also showed fossils and the Wichester series of manipulated images – they can be microscope slides or maps – free of scale i prefer people make their own mind up – what I didn’t show was ‘The map’ roughs – there are two and as I cant choose there may be two maps!

in short:

People came to view – I gave a talk – we left the sad lamp on – we drank wine and I had the eureka map moment I had been waiting for walking in to the showing – for that I am ‘externally’ grateful

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‘I should have done art – I liked art more’

October 30th

Portsmouth

I tempted fate with the last post and have ‘missed a couple of months’ before adding with this post – as with the Konfirm blog – I now play ‘catch up’ – there is a certain duality between these two blogs – the unexpected has happened and Konfirm is continuing out of the blue as it tracks the legacy and the renewal for part 2 to come.

This blog though, has been uneasy – uneasy with respect to choice – being busy making or writing about things – also the more I am stressed to more as a person with aspergers ‘I close up’ – the last 2 months have been not good – personally a few imposed issues of support have affected me – we aspies often find the ‘social world’ imposing without a map – I need a map – well I need an interactive guide – this has been silent in its absence’ leaving me stranded in an alien landscape.

Why write? the blog for Konfirm is part of the artwork – this blog is still young or too late whichever angle you look at it as it was impossible to start from the beginning unlike Konfirm as most of the logging was pen on paper.

Time spent has been taken by the work and not writting about it – my energy has been spent on product not documentation – this is a ‘disconformity’ – an allowed ‘disconformity’ – I has not been writers block but a lifers block – yes I am free of the PTSD but I have retained fragility, vulnerability as a person and artist – some times this is unlivable with sometimes not – it finds its way leeching – invaiding – the work – artistic diagenesis if given time.

we often

do not

have time

to sink or swim

The posts to catch up will be out of place – be that faulted or folded eroded and examined – they are part of the landscape – my issues are part of the landscape all be it imposed stress – unnecessary in taste – I do not make to ‘make myself better’ a therapy for periods of anxiety or depression – I make because I am compelled to make – not to make is hell – death – so anything that stops you is to be feared – reviled – avoided unless foisted upon you

so here we go

‘sometimes we run out of words to say?’

Portsmouth 28th August

So how do I explain my absence for 4 weeks from both blogs on here?

lazy?

No

I guess I have buffeted by weather patterns beyond my control – natural conflagrations that stopped me becoming external never mind the aspergers.

The storm breaks at the beginning of the month and winds calm as we leave August – a storm that has brewed for many months

I just needed a break and had an imposed period of silence to regain myself – a cloak to wrap about me – I had to delay the completion of the project – the storm annoyingly interfering with the projects conclusion.

I have found support though and although the winds are not calm yet the project will continue from the 1st September as we wade through all 770 day logs looking for patterns and connection.

Also – there is a more poetic response to August in all its terrifying glory on the Konfirm blog – now being updated.

Betrayal Fish in a clear trout stream

Sit still! Don’t, catch his eye!

Stay invisible in the clear trout stream

Even if you think, he will see you

Stare intently reading the patterns on the dull wooden desk

as the lines flow and form

constantly morphing

Absorbing?

taking all your concentration away from the departing words

that run, scared all over your pages of handrawn neural camouflage

Wear your bulletproof jacket with the heart shaped whole!

Snared?

cornered escapegoat

Released into your dessert playground

with each child’s burdens on your back.

Sit still, he will catch you!

See his tall thin voice

blood red stare, cut through the darkness

like a searchlight!

Transfixing you in its pungent beam

Night frighter on your tail!

my fault, normal fault

ready to separate me with a final movement

Waiting to bring you down

Blue cold icelight, running in flight through my veins

Inevitable

his flak shaped anger subtly

sharpened by passive words

arc Baghdad style towards me

Tantalus sacrificed, by books

flung in front of favorite fancies?

Turning

Laughing

issuing forth from a bronze nebuccanesser that tells me to eat grass

Look down!

Eat grass!

Eat grass, as I watch

the 5 fingered words form across the comforting wall

Unseen pictures telling me to rest, wait, be still

Only another thirty years of hushed stupidity

as you are the silenced lamb

who dies each week on grounddown day

poem about sitting at my desk at school aged 11 written in 2000