new images and a (very) short story

 

We watched an excellent film about the artist Francis Alys last night; the way he walks and walks reminded me of the start of a story i wrote many years ago:-

On the advice of my friend Flapjack, I closed my eyes opened my mouth and let the liquid slip coolly and darkly down my throat. I opened my eyes and opened my mouth and before any sound had the chance of escaping, Flapjack, who in fact has not been a friend for very long, was talking. Talking, except I couldn't hear what he was saying. Maybe he was speaking in one of the many languages that he made up whilst he was travelling alone, on foot, across the acres of loneliness that inhabits his heart. An hour ago I would never have imagined he could talk this much but now he was eased. Looking at me, his lips moving, his eyebrows bobbing up and down I couldn't help but laugh. He stopped. I stopped. And we starting walking. We were always walking that was what we did, just walk. It was Flapjack who inspired me to walk further than I normally did. He never wanted to go back along the same path in the opposite direction. Sometimes we'd leave by the front door of my house and come back through the the back door because even just one retraced footstep was a repeat, a familiarity. I could understand that. These days our walks lasted longer and longer. Days ran into months and I recall I have neither left by the back door nor arrived through the front door for I don't know how long now. We don't carry things with us for more than a couple of hours. Usually. But Flapjack had been carrying this phial of unidentifiable liquid with him for seven days. He'd hold it up to sunlight, dawn light, dusk light and moonlight. Each time the shade of black would be different but always, in the end, black. He didn't tell me where he'd found it and I didn't ask.
Dinda Fass 1996

films!

in the summer i made two short films which i have mentioned before. although they are both still in sketch format and not in their final edit i have decided to upload them now to my blog (via a youtube channel which i have created today). i want to share them, and i hope by doing so to move on with my film work - to mark the place as it were - and proceed from this point.

recent work in the studio has been a combination of close analysis of my photographic images (for content and  narrative sparks). organisational activities like getting my photo archive in order and some experimental try outs making use of the wall space in the studio to make some loose collages using objects which i collected (and used last year in installations) and found and original images. what i have discovered is, that what i really want, is to use this collage gesture in the making of a film. materiality is very important to me, the real sensory experience of things, their shape, their colour, their sounds, their texture and i think i can make this tendency i have to be closely aware of the material quality of things to come through with film media.

yesterday before going to sleep i read an excellent short essay by the English poet Ted Hughes called 'Words and Experience', in a short book he wrote in 1967 called Poetry in the Making', on the experience of life in relation to poetry.  another book called 'Don't Ask Me What I Mean' edited by Clare Brown and Don Paterson has helped me to realise that the way i create my work is very similar to the descriptions poets give of their writing process. time and again, poets say that words have their own life, their own intentions, that 'the poem allowed the poet to discover it much as a water diviner is permitted to come upon water'. this theme repeats itself in the contributions from appox 100 poets in this book. what interests me is that somehow, with poetry, this is accepted as a process, whereas in visual art when i say the same thing, that i want my images and objects to have their own voice, for the intentions to arise from them, people look at me funny and say ' but no.... but of course you are the one deciding', i dont feel like that.

what i didn't realise before now is that there is a big possibility for me to make visual poems.

this is what i want to continue with.

in the studio

i am playing in the studio with how to present the combinations of things i am working on. recently i rearranged the space so that i have two big walls to lay things out on. there are hints of narrative which develop by putting images and objects together in this way.

 

 

 

 

photography - groupings and analysis

a few weeks back i went through all my photographs ( mostly 6 x 4 prints) taken since i was given my first camera, (a Pentax K1000 when i was eighteen - been through a few different ones since then though) for the purposes of trying to reflect on the types of things that i have photographed, and what has kept my interest over the years. Here are some of the groupings i made from the collection, they are things that i thought belonged together. i realised whilst doing this that some of the most interesting images to me were ones with some kind of absence - empty washing lines, close ups of hands/feet, objects isolated from their environment.

don't look away.

background + now

just over a year ago i swapped a full time job in the construction industry which i had been doing for five years, for a two year Masters in Fine Art at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, North Netherlands.
some would see this as a strange step but for me it made perfect sense. although i enjoyed my job, which took me to Glasgow, Ipswich, Liverpool and London, i had a growing sense of not quite being in the right place. i had a couple of studios and group shows in this time where i was trying to develop my own work as an artist, at the same time as working in my job, but i realised that in order to progress my ideas i needed to be in a learning environment. although i am still working more hours in a job here in The Netherlands than is ideal, the difference between working in a building project office and delivering mail on the streets of Groningen is that i feel there is now more thinking space, and less demand made on my job related performance.

having spent my first year of study here experimenting with sculpture, installation and film (some results of which can be seen in earlier posts on this blog) i have reached a point now at the start of my second year where i am trying to focus my work into three specific but related disciplines: photography, film and writing.
at the moment i am in the production stage where i am taking photographs, writing daily, editing film material and arranging my thoughts on what type of films i want to make. and all this in the conceptual frame of the 'poetic image'.

during this process i am reading about the general nature of the poetic from the viewpoint of literary poetic works (Octavio Paz, Samuel Beckett, John Berger, Henry Thoreau and some literary theory), the poetic principle in photography (Jean Baudrillard, Gabriel Orozco), by attending regular film screenings at Shadows Film Club and by trying to analyse my output in terms of where i feel i am closest to my intentions.
which is all very well but the hard part is working out how to combine these activities in the studio into a finished piece(s) of work.

below some more images from my local area (the project i started a couple of months ago).
the next post will be some of the written work i have been working on.

don't look away.

 

blackboard writing

writing is becoming more and more important, and i am trying to write everyday. the way i write is by allowing words to form on the page without trying too hard to create meaning or order. the first draft is my original material which i then refine in the second and third drafts. by cutting and pasting sections together, i make connections between phrases and words.  

at the moment i am looking for ways to combine writing, film and photography. these three blackboard panels from my studio are an immediate way to see exactly how a piece of text can function outside of a notebook or off the written page. 

the more i write, the more i want to write. in part, it is about re-discovering the qualities of words themselves, and in part about accessing experiences in the present, and experiences in the past.

the first one is dedicated to Mo Jupp.

don't look away.

 

experiments with text and image

renewed

it doesn't go away, the desire to take photographs, this time it came back with a new strength.
i started a new project - to go out every morning before I start work delivering the mail and take a roll of film within walking distance from my house. i have realised that i need to take my camera with me to work too, so I have to find some secure way of taking my camera with me on my rounds. today i missed taking a picture of a pair of blue work overalls lying over a hedge. every day that i don't have my camera with me i miss something.

don't look away.

hands

Space is what I occupy. Space is what objects and people occupy. Never-ending space, strange spaces, spaces of oppression, spaces of freedom, breath and space. What is intimate space? Is it inside me?  Something I have around me? Or something I ask from the world? What are the most intimate spaces? - Bed, bath, home, kitchen. Can intimacy happen anywhere? Hospital, funeral, tent, bedroom…..

Intimate relationship with the street, nature, the weather, with friends, with objects  - cups, glasses, cutlery, surfaces, materials, garments. Hands are the ingredient. Hands give us the intimate contact with the multiple surfaces that we encounter. Hands express the person. How does the person treat the material world? Is it a creative act, this constant contact? How do I measure the intimacy of an action?

Combing your hair – an intimate moment, perhaps more intimate than any of the ones that passed in the previous 12 hours. In that moment I witness what seems like a private act.

A meal shared from a common table. Wine poured from one bottle. I create a space which I invite you to enter. What do I want to happen? How do I make it happen? Or does it happen without intention, the sharing of intimate life? Boundaries broken, boundaries crossed, boundaries shattered.

What do your hands tell me as I watch you do the simplest things? Hands in play; purposeful play, purposeless play. I remember you looking all the time at your palms, looking for the answer to a question which you didn’t know yet. Were you looking for blame there? Magic hands, hands that make, hands that hide, hands that hurt.

Hand hold. Climb, break, rip; drama in the hands. What would I do without them? What would you do without them? The palm of the hand, it doesn’t touch when you shake with someone, the gap remains. To hold in the palm of the hand is to elevate, to consider; to balance. Pass from hand to hand, play catch, bounce.   

today in the studio and recent nikkormat photographs

in the studio i am currently working on the relations between written text and the objects used in my work. surrounded by some of my collected objects today i started to write short texts. a recent film work (i will post a clip next) which incorporated some text i have written with an object, motivated and brought up the potential to explore how i can make more of my writing in combinations with objects, photographs, films and installations.

i am using a nikkormat analog camera a lot these days. and astrid www.as88.wordpress.com recently showed me how to scan my negatives using a professional scanner. i want to take my camera everywhere with me, but it's not always possible.

for those of you who have tried to leave a comment, I changed the settings to make it much easier, you don't have to log in or have a special account, you can now just leave your comment at the bottom of each post.

don't look away.