Hawkesley Square renga

Anthony asked us if we could get the kids a park to play in, instead of his wall (I don’t mind the hanging/but it’s the rubbish I can’t stand).

Liam started off by telling us about how he was often chased by the police. But stayed with us all day and wrote several nice verses (I fell out with my girlfriend/Norma/and got her back).

Joan came back again and was on as good form as last time (the bees in my bushes/are much too big/they’re black).

One of last month’s verses really hit home for a man whose son had returned home from Iraq that day (love goes home/to battlezone sighs/and Basra baggies).

renga snippets

Nice things from being sat in the middle of a council estate shopping precinct on a Saturday in June whilst writing poetry and inviting passers by to join us:

Joan – not sure what she had originally planned to do with her day, but she spent about 6 hours of it with us.

Joan – not sure if she really understood what we were doing, but she didn’t ‘alf come out with some corkers.

Gloria – initially intensely suspicious of what we were doing and our motives for doing so. She went away to think about it, but re-appeared 10 minutes later and contributed a verse.

Gloria – likes botany.

Diesel – local mc from the estate. Presumably spends a lot of time working with words and performing in front of crowds.

Diesel – Didn’t half look nervous when he was sat down talking with us.

Gang of youths – hanging around looking dismissive of what we were doing, but making sure they could hear what we were saying. “They’re writing poetry man, and then they just all go quiet.”

Maxine – Works in the cafe, but managed to join us for a while at the beginning of the session.

Maxine – Would join us on one of the Saturdays she’s not working, but she’ll be akido training instead.

Paul – for gently (but persistantly!) pointing out that, as of lunchtime, none of my verses had yet been selected!

strategic question #26

What is animate?

Link minds to write an artwork for Kings Norton 3 Estates using the form of a Japanese shared writing schema. Over a period of 4 seasons produce 100 verses in 6 different sites and provide a new tool for considering the future of the estates, its inhabitants, its identity, its visions.

http://strategicquestions.org/

Now you know about as much as I do.

large smoked vessel

Previous posts for your information

day off

Go to someone else’s city, and look at someone else’s art, wearing someone else’s shoes.

Adam Chodzko, M-path | British Art Show 6

You’re going to smash your pots?! But why?!

OK, so when I did this test and posted this post I was thinking that I would build on the FMG‘s existing practice of using ceramic powders as a base for screen-printing inks.

Rather than alter the process, I was interested in using different raw materials: rather that using bought-in standardised powder of controlled composition, particle size and everything else, I wanted to use something with more of a human element about it. Something with a history.

The day science/night science text that was to be printed is discssed in more detail in this post.

Bearing in mind my recent crises centering around (amongst other things) what characterised my best/more interesting work and the gradual admission that it wasn’t my more craft-oriented stuff, I chose to use some of my old ceramic works as the source material.

During the course of researching the screen-printing process and investigating different binding materials, it looked like the other materials in the ink would obscure the presence of the crushed ceramics.

I’m no longer planning to use screen-printing, but will instead use the ceramic powder in a more sculptural way…

day science/night science

One of the buildings where I’m based as part of the ISP thing is the NetShape Centre. Basically where a load of industry-focused research is done into trying to make components as close to their final shape first-time ’round without having to do any further finishing or processing. The thing is though, its front wall is almost entirely windows and it looks absolutley stunning at night:

At night the building is illuminated… and deserted. But there’s still a sense that things are happening. This is probably partly because it’s stuffed full of all sorts of recognisably scientific and technological equipment, however, I think that the main contributing factors are all the pipes and wires around the place. Maybe this gives a sense of movement and of processes churning away.

You can feel it.

Right from the start I’d harboured a desire to use this space somehow, but it wasn’t until about 5 months into my time here that the perfect project materialised.

Actually, it’s a project that’s been incubating for 4 years…

Francois Jacob

When I first started the BA course I read a book on creativity by Margaret Boden.

Within this was a quote from the autobiography of a Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist:

Day science employs reasoning that meshes like gears… One admires its majestic arrangement as that of a da Vinci painting or a Bach fugue. One walks about it as in a French formal garden… Night science, on the other hand, wanders blindly. It hesitates, stumbles, falls back, sweats, wakes with a start. Doubting everything… It is a workshop of the possible…where thought proceeds along sensuous paths, tortuous streets, most often blind alleys.
François Jacob
The statue within: An Autobiography, New York, 1988, p296

I have carried these words around with me for a long time and they resonate on all sorts of levels.

The NetShape Centre provides the perfect setting to use these words beyond the obvious link to the day and night thing.

If I remember correctly, Boden’s book was looking at the similarities and contrasts between creativity as seen from an artistic viewpoint and creativity as seen from a scientific viewpoint. I can very much see both aspects of the quoted passage within my own work. Firstly within the context of a (percieved!) art/science dichotmy and later as different stages I regularly go through within my art practice.

Do the people within the building experience the same thing?

I like the way the use of these words here hint at the infallible(?) scientists just blundering along like the rest of us.

In addition to this, I now learn that Jacob conducted work on feedback witin enzymes. This links in nicely with the idea of responding to your environment and, by extension, the whole notion of residencies.

So…
The words of Day Science and Night Science will be integrated with the architecture of the NetShape Centre.

Pauline’s mug

One day, at a time when various other projects had stalled somewhat, I found myself over in the other side of the building. Thinking I’d grab something to eat, I wandered into Pauline’s.

For want of a better term, Pauline was the Department’s resident tea-lady. Tea, coffeee, sandwiches and the usual assortment of crisps and chocolate bars.

When I walked in though, she told me she was retiring at the end of the week.

I felt I needed to use the next few days to document the end of an era: having worked there for over 20 years, Pauline was an institution.

She told me the story of her time in the Department and we reminisced about “sunset tuna” sandwiches and Children in Need collections. She often talked about the students as being “her kids”. She’d even remembered me after 6 years!

However, in the the time since I had been there, the urn and the table bearing rows of food had all been stripped out and replaced with a couple of vending machines. Even the cash box had been replaced with an electronic till…

This was the result of catering being centralised and the ensuing rulings over Health and Safety. No more hand-made sandwiches. No more fresh(ish) tea. Apparently things had been pretty dire over the last couple of years, but Pauline stuck it out ’till she could retire.

I made some sound recordings and took a few photos, but it seemed the most appropriate way of marking the event was to make a commemorative mug.

The design takes several references from the sort of thing you see to mark royal weddings and jubilees, but being hand-drawn in biro, it is kept fairly low key.

The final presentation of Pauline, includes the mug and a short text (written on a Catering Services feedback form).

virtual mug

Remember this?

I finally managed to make a start on getting a virtual mug to manipulate.

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