Swim Circle

Recently returned from Berlin and now able to properly think about the Swim Circle. This last trip was like a stopper in a bottle that is now released. New energy flows. Richard and I plan a first swim for tomorrow, the first day of June.

Urban Berlin strangely showed elements of the coming summer's rural project. Core elements were experienced: the cold clear water of open air swimming in Sommerbad Neukoelln; the ancient stone from the Pergamon Altar friezes and the Beuys' stones at the Hamburger Bahnhof; and the clear, hot, blue sky that brewed into a thunderstorm on our last day.

Paul

12.05.2009 Tuesday

As we walk up to a pre-project swim at Potter Tarn Paul and I rehearse the list of tarns/lakes we plan to swim in the ‘Swimcircle’ project. I begin to learn them by heart and together with the image ‘Swimcirclemap’, create a place in my mind to which all the disparate talks, ideas, and images can begin to move. They start to assemble there and jockey for position.

The pieces of performance art – ‘Swim Home’ and ‘Full circle2’ from last year are still finding their place in my mental landscape. The hope is that somehow this new project will integrate them and become a fresh creation. The future is always unknown but somehow lodged in this coming project the ‘unknownness’ of the future now feels paradoxically tangible.

Richard

Richard made this simple, yet beautiful, map, which I think is a really exciting representation of our swim route. The map defines the conceptual circular route rather than the actual geographical line following an OS map. We talked this through at length and likened it to the London underground map.

Paul

10 May 2009

Richard and I are preparing for the new swim circle project. We intend to start after we are back from Berlin in June. We continue to discuss elements of the work we will do at each tarn without being too prescriptive thereby damping spontaneity. I find this aspect of planning similar to when I was making series of paintings. The important question was always – how to approach each new piece of work without trying to replicate the last? Repetition is to be avoided; otherwise one becomes a copier, even of oneself.

Such an approach, in order to be truly innovative within the constraints of one’s own practice, itself set within its own strands of art history and practice involving all previous and contemporary relevant artists, demands a clarity of personal thought and communication with one’s co-worker.

So, in practice, Richard and I need to share our ideas and plan what we can, but remain prepared to respond to the moment and break from our plan if necessary. This demands a sustained focus on the task and the concepts that inform it. It also demands physical preparation for the climbing and swimming and technical preparation in terms of the equipment we take with us.

Psychologically, it means that we establish a framework for the project, and then hold focus on the shared here-and-now responses and creativity of each event. It’s where the Apollonian meets the Dionysian.

Apollo: the dream state or the wish to create order, principle of individuation, plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation.

Dionysus: chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction.

Paul