The Cultural Tourist

These words as I write encompass possibilities. Yes, if I wanted I could choose to defy the linear nature of the structure and conventions of the written paragraph. I could explode the visual layout and present in an alternative format but I think this would be too easy. Instead I’d rather utilise what we think we know, specifically to play with it; re-framing those coded understandings that allow us to exchange language to communicate a premise. Slants of light and shade can mask the reading in front of us.

The borders that make up a sentence; the capital letter, the comma, the full-stop, give us a beginning, a pause and an ending. But it is not as simple as that. What else comes into play in our compositions? What particular words are enclosed and what do they suggest to us? We can so easily assume certain words and phrases can mean the same thing to everyone, particularly when it is spoken or written in the same language. Yet the constant impossibility of language translation to articulate everything as it is meant to be understood surely is evidence enough that language is malleable and fluid. Everything is in a state of constant flux and that certainty of what I see and understand is as stable and unmoving as a shadow on the ground.

Magician, psychologist, anthropologist, film director – when we communicate each of us throws into the ring an array of possible readings and transformations. The paint upon the canvas, the movement of the gesture and mark making, the tone of the composition, the fetishes we reveal and display. Words and sentences are not solitary entities. They are alive and potent, carved and sculptured, an orchestra of history, culture, interconnections and displacements cast out into the air and falling differently every time. Even a copy or reproduction is not the same as the one before. It sits in a different place of time and reading.

I pass by some windows and what I see reflects so much more than the physical environment outside. The images and shapes shimmer, dance and entrance me. What I see today will differ tomorrow as the surrounding world changes and my imagination is stirred.

The broken down spaces could be called triangular, rectangular, prism-like but borderless. There is a crossing over, an infiltration, one piece encroaches upon another but as quickly as each aspect appears, it can disappear, out of view and out of sight as if it was never there.

She didn’t know this neighbourhood. A visitor, she wandered down the streets, noticing insignificant details and managing to miss well-known local landmarks. Her footsteps and eyes set the journey and she attempts to capture her visual experience with the camera on her phone. She feel watched. Looking up she sees Telecom Tower hovering above her.

You are all within MY neighbourhood. I stand as a giant among you overseeing urban landscapes you could not possibly imagine. I observe as the activity below ebbs and wanes depending upon the season, the time of day, the severity of global crises. I do not care. Structures and buildings come and go, many have been here, long before I, their crumbling surfaces turning to dust.

It is tired. How many times must it endure the changes inflicted upon it? Every year a little more of its brickwork gives way and needs to be patched up or replaced. It has served many purposes, a home for the gentry, an inn, and a nail bar with a couple of pokey flats at the top. It loses track but feels the indignity of losing its original high standing. It sighs. The windows rattle, the stairways creak and the walls give a slight shudder, disturbing an insect nesting in its crevices.

The masonry bee decides to move house. This hole has been its home for as long as it can remember, but it no longer feels stable or comfortable. It will seek a new cavity, in a sunny south facing wall in an old property in a different neighbourhood. Yes, it is time to upscale. It gives a small buzz of pleasure as the purr of a yellow van idles away below.

It is not here for long, a couple of minutes at most as its occupant delivers its contents. It is a nomad of sorts, belonging to no particular territory, although looking forward to its resting place at night, where its arthritic parts can attempt to recuperate. It is so very tired. There are bits of it that will not last much longer. Yet they are a family, working together; each is dependent on the other. Its unknown destinations and future is called into question. It trundles on its way, crossing spaces and neighbourhoods, in and out of view.

It passes her briefly but all that she registers is a slither of yellow as it sidles past.

Annoyingly the van is not always in my field of view, weaving its way around the streets, obscured by the landscape, the continual building works and equipment. Although I can see that it momentarily pauses by a nail bar, a converted old drinking establishment, where a bee quickly darts past on-route to a new neighbourhood.

It has been a while since I have blogged, mainly because I have been focusing on finishing my final dissertation for my Masters followed by a certain amount of flummoxing about with family commitments mixed with needing to not do very much at all.

I am very happy to say I was awarded a distinction for my Masters. As I have said before, I very much enjoyed the course and found out quite a lot about myself in the process, particularly in respect to how much I enjoyed researching and writing. My final piece was a diarised performative piece of writing about a day in my life on a journey to my studio woven together with philosophical and theoretical context discussing the thinking and imagining that takes place during this journey. I brought in different voices such as a French character, a pigeon, an antique bowl, my grandmothers plait and a blue plastic bag.

What is next I wonder? I am very keen to keep the momentum going. I am looking into residencies and other projects. I have been doing some gentle perusing of undertaking a PHD but this requires a lot more detailed and thorough thought and investigation. It is probably more important for me at this point to explore the wider genre of performative writing, particularly in relation to art practice.

I am starting to get back to my studio although will use the space for more than producing visual art. I definitely see my art practice as having stretched out, fingering and entwining art-writing in combination and synthesis with my practical mixed media work.

I include within my blog today a few extracts from my Masters of Research Art: Theory and Philosophy dissertation. I hope you enjoy them.

As my ongoing exploration of ‘the fragment’ in my MRes Art: Theory and Philosophy course at Central Saint Martins, I have been working on some collages and montages in my studio. These are specifically related to the idea of the collection of dreams, imaginings, transformation and the search for unity. For the artwork I have included here I have written a short performative piece of writing that both grew out of the resulting image but also inspired it in the first instance – the linearity of time becoming subverted and elusive.

I imagine a vista. Green lush ferns and native New Zealand bush stretch out before me high up on a hill, overlooking the sea and the sky beyond. The blues shimmer and merge and it’s hard to tell where the vastness of the sea ends and the expanse of the sky begins. The more I look, the more the scene transforms in front of me, shifting from sea and sky to small islands and waterways and back again to the glistening of the sea and never-ending sky.

I lie on the ground, imagining a bed beneath me in the warmth of the afternoon sun. There is a gentle breeze lapping at the edges of my body and I am lulled off to sleep dreaming of old buildings and ancient cities. I am floating within memories of European hotel rooms and comfortable beds with freshly cleaned sheets, resting my legs after exploring the little streets and famous landmarks which blur in my recollections of culture and history.

I walk a familiar path to the local shops and railway station. For many years I have made this journey to and fro, passing by houses and flats where occupants move out and new ones move in; excited to explore their new environment. Parents with pushchairs, kids on scooters, runners, commuters, dogs and their owners all meander along, staring ahead to their journey’s destination or like me exploring the surroundings with their eyes (or in case of a dog, snuffling every possible surface and crevice).

Red camellias have dropped onto the footpath from an overhanging bush, looking melancholy and poetic. Moved about by the wind and altered by the tread of feet, sun and rain they will decompose over time and fade into nothingness, although leaving a trace in my memory that I try to capture in an art work. Every year they bloom and fall and every year I notice them, touched by their presence and not sure why they should affect me so much.