Night Soil

Hello Mr John Smith – I was the one next to the Schizoid Redhead

At 5.45pm at HMV Curzon in Wimbledon not even a small crowd had gathered to see a selection of works by CCW students and John Smith, so we got a drink. Not very good with acronyms Annabel and I had only recently worked out that she was a CCW student. Jordan Basemen had announced he was selecting work for showing so in a rush of excitement we had sent him Annabel’s Wonders of the World (version 3 or 4) and he clearly thought it was magnificent. As we usually do we arrived half an hour early for the screening and after browsing suspiciously around HMV soon found ourselves alone in the bar waiting for the Londonites to turn up. I personally was amazed at how laissé faire everyone was about the time. I had had time to buy a ticket, spill my drink on it (and my trousers), mostly dry it out and still no one had arrived. Finally just after six (the appointed starting time) people started to turn up but even then showed no sign of wanting to get on with it. I cracked, clutching my damp ticket in one hand, and Annabel in the other, we headed for the cinema. Eventually juggling glasses of wine, half full bottles and information sheets (we had no information sheet!) the black clad metropolitans joined us.

There were speeches. Then we were told off by Jordan. At least it felt as if he were berating us personally when he said that next time we should bring our friends along. I nearly answered that we have no friends but held myself in check. Maybe Jordan was not targeting Annabel & I in person, maybe, like Clinton, he has a way of making everyone think he is talking directly to them. The room darkened, the students’ films came first; six in all (I think) from BA to Phd, some less interesting than others. Some we very funny, strangely though, even when presented with a frankfurter being pushed squeakily in and out of a hole, nobody laughed. Nobody except Annabel and myself of course. In fact we were laughing so much that when the next film (of an unmoving tented figure sitting in a landscape) came up we continued laughing. Next came John Smith’s films, I am going to name them because he has a google alert set up so that if any are mentioned on line he is instantly informed. This is a great idea, I fancy doing the same.
Girl Chewing Gum
The Black Tower
Worst Case Scenario
An Unusual Red Cardigan
I like his work and have seen some before. There were a couple of new things I noticed.
1. Worst Case Scenario seems to be named after a shop that is often in shot called Würst Kaas (sausage, cheese?).
2. He, in terms of direction, seems to have a sort of god complex.
3. Unusual for a film maker?, he loves the still image.
After the films came the questions Jordan asked some good ones and then opened it to the audience.

panicked silence…

then, next to me, a voice. “My family has a history of insanity…”

Annabel had saved the day.

We didn’t get home until midnight, it was cold in the house and Mr Pig, who has again cheated death, was hungry. We were so tired we slept til’ 12

One of my cress circles died in the night (lack of water), I blame synthetic fabrics, the cashmere one is doing brilliantly and Mr Pig, despite serious provocation has not peed on it yet either.

Dreaming Spires

Another visit to the Cloakroom today. The cress had rotted, to a sort of brown primeval soup and was beginning to smell. Annabel (on constant watch on my mental state) and I spent a little time scraping out the gunge and washing the glassware. Then, in another attempt to wrest some success from the sucker covered tentacles of hopelessness, I built a small crystal tower. It reminded Annabel of Cornell’s girl Berenice who made experiments in a crystal tower. It reminded me of Calvino’s city of glass, a poor imitation of grand proto-crystals that should have ruled the earth.
I am trying to come up with ideas for a phd application it must deal with some sort of investigation of art and technology, an area which seems to have a sickening optimism about it. Like some comic book villain, however, I find my pleasures in moments of degradation and collapse and I am not sure how this might be received, or even phrased as a research question. But the 3 year phd does come fully funded with a yearly wage which, as the world crumbles into economic dust, seems a good bet for survival. In ‘Greybeard’ Aldiss uses a bit of prescient satire in his description of the colleges of post apocalyptic Oxford. They have only survived through their embracing of a sort of economic ruthlessness where everything is seen in terms of cost and investment. I must harness their ideals and continue.

After writing the above in an international coffee chain, the only things that seem to be expanding in this recession, I returned to the Cloakroom with some more glass garnered from the nearest charity shop. While I was sitting cross legged, stacking these blunt cast offs, a security came piling into the room. She looked ready to wrestle me to the ground until I shouted: “its ok I have a crime number”.

I had been feeling a little down about my residency in the Cloakroom. I wasn’t sure why but I was feeling less and less like going there. My avoidance tactics where beginning to seem thinner and thinner. Waiting in for the post, cleaning the bathroom, getting to the next level on Angry Birds. I couldn’t quite put my finger on my unwillingness until Annabel suggested making a list of all the things I had done.

Planted cress in the carpet – Health and Safety was alerted and a man was sent from the council offices in Endeavour House. He declared the cress unsafe and/or unhealthy and scheduled it for removal.Sat alone in the cloakroom watching Chinwe being fawned over by her acolytes.

Set up some cress growing in cars and caravans in the space. – Found I couldn’t get into the gallery because Chinwe was setting up her show, The door was locked, I could see activity through a crack but no one answered my knocking.Returned to find all the cress had dried and gone brittle, so I tidied up and decided to make a film of cress growing.

It was the day of Chinwe’s opening, I wanted to get in to tidy up my space and project a video. – Again
the door was shut while they photographed Chinwe’s show. – My room was dead and abandoned. I didn’t go to the private view.

Upstairs there was an exchange room. People could leave things on shelves where they were photographed, recorded and then exchanged for other objects by later visitors. Hayley Lock dropped off a beautiful collage and Annabel had left some porcelain sculptures. Annabel wanted to swap something with it Hayley’s collage, but I kept forgetting. When we eventually made it into the room, a school party had already been in. My girlfriend’s porcelain doll limbs had gone as had Hayley’s beautiful collage. In their place were: a rotten banana, a tissue, a bus ticket, a museum guide leaflet, a bruised apple, a paper clip and an Iraqi banknote. I took the note and my girlfriend left two cyanotypes she had made of plants from Darwin’s garden. I was left with a deeper understanding of entropy.

I had made a plastic sculpture using a magnetic building toy, it was growing out of the radiator, I had also made some fake lift controls out of cardboard and part of the Harrods magic box Annabel gave me for Christmas. They looked like a bad sci-fi control panel. I put them on the wall. – The plastic sculpture has been dismantled and piled in the centre of the room. The controls had been taken off the wall and left in a pile of cardboard rubble.
I put them all in a bin bag and took them away.
I tried growing cress in cut glass containers using a water retaining gel compound. – The heating was turned up and all the cress seed failed to germinate.
Tried again. – Got depressed and didn’t return to water it.
Decided to put this list up in the space.

What’s the Point they’ll all be dead.

I have failed to get to the gallery today. I had intended to be really organised having written a long list of to dos. Of that list I have achieved: paying a cheque in to the bank, writing two invoices, writing an email to my solicitor, burning 3 DVDs for a film festival in Holland but no more. At home, the cress circle planted in Annabel’s jumper is doing very well, at the gallery I am sure it will all be dead.

I wish I hadn’t planted the cress in the heart, it looks like I might be trying to create some horrific symbolism, but maybe that doesn’t matter.

The DVDs I have burnt, or more accurately, am burning, are for a festival in Holland. I entered it months ago and then completely forgot to send them the film. So yesterday I received a kind email from the organisers reminding me to get on with it. I like entering these sorts of events, they are run as open art events should be. They are generally free and generally good natured affairs. I suppose video still has an advantage over the plastic arts (its lighter for a start) but I wish more open calls were run on this basis. Jasper Joffe recently questioned the John Moores painting prize on Twitter. He was wondering what the £25 entrance fee was for. John Moores replied that it covered the prize and the delivery of the work. So in effect it is really a sort of art lottery (Annabel tells me they run the pools, so this is not surprising). Also as Joffe (and Annabel) have pointed out, the lottery is rigged, high profile artists nearly always win so in effect the aspiring pay for established to be blessed with more recognition and a bit of cash. I’m also starting to wonder (I know I’m a bit late, but things come slowly to me) about the Turner Prize. Who goes to see it? I wonder if it is mostly artists, arts professionals, aspiring artists and art students. Where does the entrance money go? please don’t tell me it goes towards funding the next Turner prize. And so on to fair Ipswich, where the new University has announced an open call for artists wanting a solo show at their waterfront gallery and £300. There is an entrance fee of £15, no doubt it will cover administration fees and the prize (which, lets face it, the artist will spend setting up the exhibition). It will be interesting to see who gets the show (and who applies). I’ve just remembered something else Sue Jones said at the “Too Many Artists” discussion. She noted that because of a strong Victorian influence upon the way british society views art that contemporary artists and galleries are unwilling to charge entry to exhibitions (and the public are unwilling to pay). They will pay to see Leonardo of course and the Turner prize, but this is a different thing altogether. I think for contemporary artists there is a real fear that if they were to charge, no one would go. And another thing, what the hell is going on for the Olympics? We have some seriously shit posters by the greats of british art, we have a red helter-skelter bunged up by Kapoor (I should be glad it is not another Gormley) and now Hirst is having a bloody retrospective at the Tate and selling accessible artwork to the hoipoloi. £500 for a mobile phone video of that skull thing, not that accessible is it? At least the Hirst show will be free, It will be free won’t it?

Retreat From Peckham

“hello, police? I don’t know if you can help me, someone hasn’t stolen my bike”

“Can you tell me exactly what has occurred sir?”

“They’ve put another lock on my bike”

“They’ve put another lock on your bike?”

“They’ve put another lock on my bike.”
…
…
“Hello?”
“Sorry to keep you waiting sir I have been consulting with my colleague”

“I suggest you take the bike home sir.”

“I can’t it is chained to a bike-stand”

“just a moment sir”

( return to top and repeat)

Some person or persons (I always imagine thieves in packs having seen a government information film in the nineties) had added a large padlock to my shackle which in turn secured my 1960s RSW 16. No doubt they intended to return in the wee hours with bolt croppers. Either that or it was an hilarious practical joke. This seems to be a difficult thing to explain on the phone and the officer I spoke to couldn’t get it into her head that I was unable to take my bike home and deal with it in the morning. In the end neither police nor station security could help me beyond proffering a talismanic crime number to prove I was the one offended against.

So I marched determinedly home to fetch a hacksaw and marched determinedly back to the station equipped to free my bike. I only paid £10 for this bike and having sold bits off it for more than £30 felt I must not let Ipswich’s criminal element profit from my enterprising nature (although, I have to admit the young man I bought it off looked more than a little dodgy himself).

Hacksaws are incredibly noisy, and even noisier after midnight. However, if the police arrived, I had been instructed to shout “I have a crime number” before they pepper sprayed me. I was told this powerful juju would protect me. If only Steve Wright (Ipswich’s own serial killer) had known this, he could have shouted “It’s ok, I have a crime number” as he stuffed another body into the boot of his car. Actually people didn’t seem to mind seeing a man hack-sawing at a lock on a bike. I must have appeared such an ineffectual thief that they somehow trusted me. I was forced to tell my tale of woe more than once, but it was more out of friendly interest on the part of my interrogators than legal concern.

It was nearly 2am when I finally cut through the padlock and was able to cycle home. This was no ride of triumph, I was too tired to celebrate. Earlier, on the long march, I had had a message from John Hutnyk, he had commented on my worried post about antisemitism. Writing this has reminded me I must write back.

I think the talk at The Peckham Space went well enough although several times I forgot whether it was I or Annabel speaking. Everyone was very welcoming quickly organising my images’ appearance on large screens in the gallery via a process akin to the Golden Shot. In the office one person had to move the mouse under instruction from another in an adjacent room “Up a bit, left, left, up, right, left, click”. This seemed to be perfectly normal procedure so, being in a foreign land, I ignored it. This done I was given a small remote control unit and threatened (quite severely) lest I accidentally take it home. All this so that I could display photos of cats, bats, dirty feet (a Tarantino favourite) and sideburns.

In no time at all, The final picture of Mr Pig was up and the questions began. The audience was made up of an interesting mixture of artists and bored looking students who perhaps already knew that blogging was not for the successful. With the help of a little bunch of allies (thanks Annabel, Rosalind & Kate) Aliceson Andrew and I survived although I became more and more aware, as time went on, that (as with most images of the pig) she was posing on my groin. As we went on, in my mind, my groin grew larger and larger until it filled the screen, but I don’t think anyone else saw it.