On September 23rd I visited Ono Garou for the first time.
It was in the basement of this dilapidated apartment block in Ginza that we came across Junichi Saito and a masterfully executed presentation of a single piece of sculpture in an awkward corner under the stairs. Pure theatre, excellent!
And so Volume 7 has been left in the (white cotton-gloved) hands of Saito-san, ready to begin its journey…
Yesterday I completed page 2a and so today I posted Volume 2 to the next artists: Karin and Reuben at Springhill Institute.
A few pages from Volume 0 compiled at the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks launch party.
A few images from the launch of the the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.
[photos by Nikki Pugh, Makoto Shindo and Karin Kihlberg]
Working with Springhill Institute I will develop a creative strategy for investigating an artistic landscape. This will initially involve the design and hand production of a series of books of ‘blank pages’ to which artists will be invited to contribute a fragment of their current work. Each participant will then be asked to pass the book on to an artist of their choice for completion of the next page. In this way, the process of gathering these contributions will result in a sort of highly subjective cartography that maps out the current terrain of specific individuals and also the links between a progression of artists.
The journey of each book will be logged here and it is hoped that the final contributor to each volume will then return the book to me.
In the first instance I will make 26 books each with 26 blank pages. In addition to starting trails here in the UK, I will also take several books with me when I go to Japan in September. Here they will act as a means to develop existing relationships and also to initiate new ones.
To signify the start of the collation process, we hosted a one-night event at Springhill Institute in which artists were invited to leave their mark on blank pages that will then be compiled to form the first volume.
Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks is funded by Springhill Institute through the Springhill Project support, 2006.
The weather was a bit cold and rainy, but the food was plentiful and the music was loud so we soon settled into it…
A Flickr slideshow of the day can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157594234326888/show/
Liam was let loose with a camera. Here is the renga session at the 3 Estates Festival as seen through his eyes…
…and his speciality grape-in-a-doughnut™ added a certain je nais ce quois too!
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).
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!
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.
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