Knowledge – Acquisition – Escapism
I will work backwards – escape to acquire knowledge
Escapism – this is perhaps a visual thing and sometimes I find reading to be so terribly visual that I find it distracting and have to draw or just sit and think instead. I am terrible at finishing books and rarely read just one at a time from cover to cover – I prefer to dip my toes in to test the water: if the text is more than tepid and excitingly hot (which it often is) then I have to take my toes back out again and leave the heat to settle. I seem to be able to escape in a lot of ways and not just through reading alone – writing is just as useful a mode of escapism. Its like taking a walk in some respects – in the rain – the typing is like the tapping of rain drops atop my huge white, black, red and green golfing umbrella. Glasgow offers a lot of wind in the rain – I get to take off from time to time – this is fortuitous if I am bored of the pavement and prefer the direction of the sky: an anti-gravitational pull towards potential energy in thought, writing, thinking, reading, observing, documenting. Next time you open you’re umbrella think of me.
Acquisition – this depends upon funds and time and resources. Acquiring ideas comes from watching the world and the passing by of people: their interaction, their concentration, and pre-occupations. Acquisition is therefore the impact of my observing others – it’s a regular but fast exchange that takes a few seconds that I can then stretch over time into a paragraph, a page or a few bits of paper with pen and pencil. With acquisition comes dialogue too. An internal or tangible dialogue that matches what you understand with the conceptual process of ideation – language is therefore an offering of acquisitioned process in this respect. Whether this is non-verbal, bodily, mentally or indeed translated through reading. Reading is perhaps the most historical of acquisitions. There is food for thought in this as text is often sustainable if stored properly – less oxygen and less outsider affect. Next time you read something read it as quickly as possible and then put it away again – do not expose it for too long.
Knowledge – the latest piece of knowledge came around about the same time I learnt that Western edges of most cities are better off than Eastern edges because of the direction of wind. Is knowledge affected by smoke? If so then people who lived in the east end of Glasgow or London during industrial revolution did not have as much of an education thanks to geographical and natural circumstances: the prevailing winds of the UK would have seen to that murky dusty fact. So the other fact came from a fire training exercise – health and safety and common sense. How much does common sense match with knowledge and does it restrict the mind’s capacity for more knowledge? Is the circulation of knowledge convectional like the movement of smoke within a room – and does it influx into empty spaces according vacuum or pressure, once it has maximised one space and is ready to fill another? Is it safe therefore to gain knowledge in a lift? Next time you want to escape (fire hazard or no fire hazard) and you’re acquiring knowledge – try thinking about the process physically as you’re walking or panting from one room to the next.
text by me – Richard Taylor
In exchange with Sophie Frost – writer and thinker and potential art doer.
http://plightofthebritishartspostgrad.blogspot.com…
THE HOUSE AND OTHER CUISINES
I was given a time and a place
I was told to arrive at the time of seven thirty. When I did turn up no one was there – I meandered for a while and past the restaurant a few times. I then followed some people or perhaps I was more aware that they might have felt they were being followed – I was just looking to pass some time by walking in a general direction. I returned around three or four times, re-tracing my tracks or avoiding paths already taken. I hid round a corner with the flashing lights of Ti cuisine in sight, poised, ready to walk at a reasonable pace and ‘arrive’ again fashionably, expectantly and enthusiastically late. They were still not there.
I took the choice of entering the restaurant. I entered in to a dialogue with the waitress. She asked which name I was under for the reservation – I realised I knew none of these people’s names I recall someone called Chris who worked for an organisation in Penzance, he was the one who bestowed upon me the ‘invitation’ and showed me the restaurant around the corner from the networking event where we had just met – he had made me coffee – and we exchanged cards/email addresses.
[ — Before returning to the restaurant for the first time I had taken a walk back to the hotel where I was staying to contemplate the invitation – I phoned my friend Jade to ask her opinion on whether my attending was a good idea or not. Whilst at the hotel I had two conversations with her, one outside next to the shore and one inside the hotel room.
Jade was distracted by the wind channelling down the acoustics of the phone so conversation no.1 was cut short – I had put her on speaker phone so she could listen to the waves on the shore. Conversation no.2 took place in the bath where I made my own waves by copying with my body the landscape outside; it’s inhabitants and the environment: “creativity here undulates and transposes across many-a-place disseminating a holistic hub athwart geographical/traversable locales: they make their own city – their own centrality.” — ]
I stank of complementary travel soap and the waitress could smell it on me for sure.
The restaurant remained empty – still I had no names for the people who were yet to arrive and they had no idea I was waiting for them. All the collected cards and email addresses were left stuffed in my bag. I was too busy having a bath and making conversation with Jade to remember them. The bath overran and I was late. But then I realised I can actually walk pretty fast and arrived ten minutes early. But the other ‘people’ were then half an hour late. So I was always set to be early anyway.
One thing – the reason why they were late is the same reason why I thought I was to be late. Conversations. Conversations in bathtubs: conversations about the sea, next to the sea, and about the southern coast of Cornwall. About journeys made and people met. They then arrived and I had already chosen from the menu what I was to be eating and the waitress had memorised this, she was determined to keep my business.
Hidden space – photographic performance/stage/abode
HIDDEN SPACE – MADE EVIRONMENT – DRAWING ARENA – STAGE SET – CONVERSATION EXCHANGE
ALLUDING TOO
KIMBAL QUIST BUMSTEAD
There’s something attainable across the airwaves.
“We have a secret hidden group on Facebook where we exchange ideas but its nothing compared to a good chat over the phone.”
Most of the time Kimbal seems to be away performing in various countries – forever simplifying his acts so he can travel lightly with a recording device (I can usually tell when he’s not in the UK – the dialling tone is different – sounds like he’s engaged most of the time or perhaps somewhere unattainable).
I got to thinking how Kimbal’s work fits in to this strange beast that is ArtEvict. The nature of the spaces that are revealed each month bends towards an ephemeral approach – an ad-hoc deliberation in what is made and performed. Today’s telephone conversation came to a conclusion: Kimbal takes away, tidies up his ideas – he packs himself up to hitch hike to another land where he straps himself to a stranger. Then I come along and make a piece of installation art where I want props and sounds and flashing lights – basically making a mess.
At some point we have to reach equilibrium and perhaps this will happen in the performance itself. Certainly my drawings seem to be acting as modes of communication – they seem to strike ideas within the nomadic man’s mind.
So I also got to thinking of how even in Kimbal’s stationary habitation – a warehouse/studio/flat/bed-living working area in north Hackney – is also a place of ever-changing racing activity. I want to install myself in this and build my ideas next to his self-made MDF bedroom. To this idea I thought of a tent made of paper to match his medium density box.
This image is that which is drawn by another the person on shift before me. It looks like a tent or a pyramid. A hidden space within a hidden space is perhaps a make shift studio constructed upon arrival in London through collaborative exercise and conversational/visual exchange. It can also be a drawing tool or a habitable or moveable studio.
Hidden space – tent as transitory studio
“This month ArtEvict has moved around the corner from Tate Modern. Be there and experience what is really happening on the contemporary front. Explore the 5 floors of an abandoned Victorian Storage Factory and stumble across various durational, live interventions throughout the evening.”
AND YOUR LIPS ARE TRUE TOO AS MY STUDIO BECOMES THE SEAT ON A TRAIN – WONDERFUL ON THE EAST COAST.
Once again I look forward to a week of travelling around the country – this travelling lark seemed to lark upon me as soon as I larked up to Glasgow last July – Glasgow is a far cry from many-a-place (13 hours train journey from Penzance for instance – that was a killer). Anyway the week after the next takes me to Bangor, Bristol, Aberystwyth, London and Brighton all in one week to deliver talks and present at events – to discuss the very genre of online platforms that Artists talking is – and their validity to a learning structure for art students and as professional tools for others.
Thursday the 29th of April lands me at Slade School of art to talk to students from the London colleges – it was on this evening that I was initially invited to perform with Kimbal at April’s ‘issue’ of ArtEvict: then the date changed to the 24th and the ever illusiveness elongated itself.
I got a mail out today from Kimbal – advertising this month’s event – this time you need a password to get access – something of a backstage pass to a building that is ‘just around the corner from the Tate Modern’. No more instructions I think you have to land a well-placed email in their inbox to find out more.
Kiki is another of the ArtEvict gang – I got a separate email from her asking for a short description as to the performance ‘I’ am planning. Well – er – I’m not the performer, I am the facilitator and therefore I prefer to remain hidden and let my actions do the performing. This is a difficult one. But then I remember how I used to dress myself in multiples of A0 paper back at university – something of making my own drawing space that no one could see until I had finished and cut myself out at the end. I might tell her there is to be a lot of cutting and a lot of pasting – Kimbal can go off and perform somewhere ‘wow the crouds’ and I’ll just make a drawing act.
Another thought I have had is to use the audience as drawing tools – enforcing them to pair up – be tied to the back of one another: one blind folded with charcoal, paper and easel to hand – the other to see the subject (but not the drawing) and to enact the movement of drawing. The contraption will suffice in transferring one’s vision to another’s movement on the page. A conference in process. Kimbal will be the subject as I take photographs by way of remote.
Hidden space – travelling, thoughts and communication-ist
