Stating/Showing

Recommendations to house in garden

I wandered in to the botanical gardens the other day and felt strangely west-end-Glasgow-esque, for the ones built on the east of the central belt of Scotland are definitely of the same architectural era, yet they are not free. In Glasgow they are free, and an ice-cream hut lives outside next to the vegetable patch where Shakespearian recitals play out amongst growth and glow worms.

In this particular garden in Edinburgh, a house plants itself on top of the hill – more halls and rooms for more work to be viewed and the outside to be accounted for. Upon leaving the said house-cum-gallery to collect my coat I noticed a scanned copy of an article published by the Independent: a recommendation for people to visit the gallery. More for its placing and curatorial stance against the backdrop of views and foliage than anything else. But there is more perspective than four walls, for each room also has a window…

I do remember a time when hours were passed in great halls of sculpture, my friend hailed from Wrexham or thereabouts, she now resides in Korea. But for a time we inhabited the same imaginary open plan living space – the place where Sunday afternoons were regardless of visitors. We maintained our shared head space and dreamt of further projects. The white cube, in hindsight, was more of a catalyst for an in-transit or transformative lifestyle.

There we read everything backwards, each word was taken, read, and then the word before was to follow instead of lead. A strange performed language exuded from a need to translate your speech for others to understand: hand movements and head nods were needed to emphasise certain bits and certain bobs. Its as if we wanted to reach the end before we accepted the beginning. A literary style perhaps for the stories we would prefer to tell.

Now we have more of a voice to tell them 

You shall get used to it whether you like it or not

This weekend gone (February 17-19th), Tramway in Glasgow hosted a symposium on emerging artists in Scotland, including commissioned and integrated contributions from Collective Gallery’s New Work Scotland 2011 programme.

For this, I was approached by the Glasgow based artist Olver Braid to produce a film, using a monologue written by Hugh Dichmont, who lives and works in Nottingham. I worked with two actors, Gary Reid and Iain Morrison (both of which live near me in Edinburgh), who interpreted the monologue to camera.

Below is the result of this project.

Other videos including the one below are viewable for a brief time on this website: http://www.youllgetusedtoit.com

These are two texts that were written several posts (months ago), they are now planned art works for a project entitle ‘Mobile Library’, for which I am developing a publication. Art works from blog posts – not a first for me but hopefully here and now will explain this particular process.

text one:

Flash dance in scaffold open door firework run

“Shit, I truly think we might have destroyed her performance”

We had escaped from the party out the back door. Further we climbed up the road to meet a wire fence taller than twice our height. A small gap at the bottom allowed us access to the wasteland beyond: a place for crack den escapades. The night was full of the moon though, so no drug takers and beer can rusters got in our way. The broken wall at the other end of the field overlooked yet more ruin bathed in nothing but city light reflected off distant clouds – and the moon joined in to affect the landscape with such a haze to fit our drunken state. The wall was anything but safe but we climbed it anyway:

“Yes but, it was quite funny – I thought it had finished and I did apologise immediately. And you, you hid behind the door out of sight and it was your dare”

“I enjoyed our own private dance inside the sculpture though: the builders light really set the mood. We must have looked like a couple of flash dancers having a rave from the outside. Arms in the air with nothing but a wide birth of scaffolding around us, our very own catacomb aside from the rest…”

“Sit up straight or you’ll fall”

text two:

Gut throat and rhyme

“I recite the written description directly in to the camera. Little do I know that it focuses on my mouth alone. Whilst brandishing my characterisation in to the lens Len’s laughter escapes. A willowing dip in sensibility, a slight whine and then a realisation that gobbles up the sound and swallows only to let go again: to exasperate or to exult. Such an incantation this is! I release, knowing it’s exacting affect, its altitude in decibels, a measured intensity of two sources: a logarithm of gut throat and rhyme.”

(source one) Len had my laughter

“There’s a hill so steep that your bike would have to be pushed, not ridden, on the return home.”

Len laughed at the revelation of his creation, as we sat in the front room of his hill top semi-detached in Crookes, on the northern shoulder of Sheffield. This was 1989 and I remember match sticks making a composition of a house on a lane with a tree in the background: a snowy scene with fading orange light.

Len held the can of my laughter. Len’s brother was Jack. I wear Jack’s jumper and laugh. And talk in to the camera with the effect of conversation.

(source two) Talking in to camera

Sat in this place we face one another with teacups and sauces and crumpets in the middle, and a shiny Mongolian teapot reflecting our convex torsos noses knees and shoulders. We begin to write down every detail of the character in front of us, drawing out physicality on the surface using words that describe our knowledge of one another. At first a tip of the head, then the brow, the cheekbone and mouth and ears, connected by the odd smile. Then eyes come with a flash of further description. Then comes laughter; how do you describe laughter in words without alluding to the person’s history?

To edit text you first have to edit film. So – edit the film, re-play the film and decipher the words spoken.

When speaking to camera I will be aware of myself. I will laugh.

Certain bits and certain bobs

I do remember a time when hours were passed in great halls of sculpture, my friend hailed from Wrexham or thereabouts, she now resides in Korea – but for a time we inhabited the same imaginary open plan living space.

There we read everything backwards, each word was taken, read, and then the word before was to follow instead of lead. A strange performed language exuded from a need to translate your speech for others to understand: hand movements and head nods were needed to emphasise certain bits and certain bobs.

To Align or to Derail

Below is a film, which is being developed through modes of translation for an upcoming exhibition in Glasgow (mentioned in last post).

[Computer.m4v “A film developed from original ‘snap shot’ footage documenting travels made and repeated, underlaid with sound from buskers and singers in a tunnel in Belem (a suburb of Lisbon, Portugal). This film aims to translate the idea of communicating with other artists and groups by presenting a layering of image and text to configure or dis-configure – to align or derail.”]

Sound from tunnel and back

I am finding some time to blog

not touched this for a while and not even so sure why… truth be told, I am currently rendering a film for a project that is to be screened during an emerging artist symposium at Tramway this weekend – so I decided to whip out TextEdit and get typing…

The film aforementioned is about male pattern balding and has gone through several phases using different creative practitioners at different points. First point of call – the artist Oliver Braid, who is leading the project, spied me out on Facebook, stalked my pictures and decided I was “physiologically apt” – i.e. going bald! He then contacted me to ask if I would be interested in producing a film using a writer’s monologue, which crafts a certain nervous character, who has dealt with the balding process. I said yes. I received the monologue via email and enlisted two actors to play out the script to camera – I got some interesting results and hopefully the film will end up having my mark on it as well as the actor’s and the writer’s.

… truth be told, I am currently rendering this film. I have not made a film like this before and feel oddly under script and within brief. Not sure I like briefs. Hopefully the result will be something aesthetically interesting as well as narratively engaging.

I will get used to it Oliver and so will you…

Another project that is well underway is a collaboration with The Mutual Charter for GI 2012 and artist Jennifer Picken: we have made it to manifesto three and then four five and (six) will result in a show for the festival in April/May and a residency in Amsterdam that develops the project in to a considered exhibition Netherlands style. See here for more information – http://cargocollective.com/audessusde

I was reading through an old guide to Amsterdam round at my partner’s flat the other day. The way they described the gay scene was something of archaic – perhaps it remains the same…

I have heard that if you pick the correct time before noon (approximately 30 seconds prior to the chimes) and wait at one end of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – and then ride your bicycle with constant speed underneath the museum, you will hear each clock hit ’12’ as you enter in to one side of the tunnel, cruise through the underside, and then reach the other end.

Reach the other end, tunnel and back again with sound

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