If the physicality of the now is where I am, sitting at a table in a university library writing proposals, blogs, admin. stuff whilst listening to snuffles and wheezes of others, then it would be hard to sustain at any great length. What makes the now for me is where my mind is. It is wandering over the landscape of the place of the submission I have just completed, it is thinking about playing ‘with my toys’ in the studio and it is planning future art acts. The development of an artist is a cornucopia of multiple ideas that simultaneously meld together hopefully becoming fully coherent.
What is happening now is exhibitions, proposals and writing. Currently exhibiting at Thresholds: an adjacent possible until Feb. 18th at The Tapestry, Liverpool whilst Five Years On opens this Thursday at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and continues until May. Writing up research, called Urban Flows and Non-flows, for an Italian sound book. The unwieldy mass of recordings done in four different cities is waiting to be deeply analysed with regard to its philosophical interpretation of social space.
But being in the studio is what actually holds it together I think. When I was a child, my father would plonk me next to the stove in his joiner’s workshop redolent with the smell of rabbit glue bubbling away. Providing me with hammer and nails and often string or rubber bands, I eventually learnt how to stretch bands over the nails to make a sound. I decided I would try a grown up version this week. However, there is nothing grown up about it except I didn’t hit my thumb with the hammer. The sound, the first unadulterated twanging and the second an edited piece, can be heard at:
https://soundcloud.com/chris-a-wright-917928995/band-track-a?in=chris-a-wright-917928995/sets/band-tracks
https://soundcloud.com/chris-a-wright-917928995/band-track-b?in=chris-a-wright-917928995/sets/band-tracks
What is the value of this, well, currently have no idea but you never know. ‘Now’ carries its traces forward.
