"various occurrences of 2011"

1. a white cat (lucie) sometime pet of an illustrious industrialist, roamed the streets of Marseille, enjoying an afternoon of absolute freedom

2. various forgotten audio recordings of ghosts were discovered in a shed, inside a mahogany box stuffed with torn petticoats lined with crinoline

3. hairdressers everywhere discussed the ambiguities of love

4. a 49-year-old man, sat in a threadbare brown armchair, dreamt of opening an ostrich farm on the Isle of Man

5. the discipline of anthropology declined

6. after spending some time pretending to be a donkey, a boy, in a room, in Ghana, dizzy with fatigue, fainted

7. the walls of a leisure centre, which had been denied the funds required for a full renovation programme, were painted a shade of eggshell blue

8. on thursday the 19th of may, a security guard, working in an abandoned cinema, successfully completed a crossword puzzle

9. an ant emerged, from underneath a wardrobe, during the late summer, in Khatlon province, Tajikistan

10. guava-flavoured jelly was consumed

11. a woman found her left armpit to be itchy

12. various people living in and around Hull took up new hobbies with some success

Onwards!

The most exciting contemporary art show which I have ever seen was by the artist Stephen Wright and held at the Last Tuesday Society in Hackney, London in 2010. This venue, is in itself one of the most extraordinary places in the city, with a bizarre and extensive collection of neglected objects for sale- most of them in some way occult or obscene, including shrunken human heads, animals pickled in glass jars, instruments of torture and the erect penis of a hanged man from the 18th century (unless that's been sold by now). There are more or less continuous contemporary art shows on display there, as well as many different kinds of talks and workshops.

Entering the shop that evening was perhaps the most intense bodily experience I have ever had in direct relation to any artwork of any medium. Having been invited to the show without having any idea of quite what the art might consist of, I walked through the door (my first trip to the shop even!) to encounter such a dizzying, seemingly endless array of colours and forms, that my mind unspooled, fragmented, dissolved. I was both frightened and grateful.

This work is traditionally known as Outsider Art, a phenomenon which fascinates me, which I feel a profound affinity with. I really don't care about the orthodoxies of any artistic establishment, am far more concerned with creation undertaken purely for impassioned purposes, that is not overly worried about impressing anyone, that emblazons itself jubilantly on its sleeves, rather than languishing in the comfortable obscurity of textbook theories, of official accolades.

Since 1999 Mr. Wright has been transforming his own house, in Dulwich, into a living artwork. These photographs are all of this abode. He is apparently open to members of the public arranging visits, but I have yet to do this myself.

His work, with its myriad of forms, of dolls, bottle caps, seashells, garlands, its long looping handpainted texts of autobiography, is very natural & warm & human, with a delightfully pitched sense of the ridiculous, expressing essentially universal desires for play, for colour, for joy. I find it immensely inspiring and defiant.

dream i will never have #1:

kidnapped. benevolently. blindfolded, but otherwise unburdened by my captors, led towards the insides of a mysterious vehicle.

eventually, inevitably, the countryside. led into a building with a vast echoing chamber. after encountering various delights to the senses (mild dronings, aniseed placed on tongue etc.) veil is lifted to reveal a large room, entirely empty and white, in its centre a spiral staircase leading downwards. i am compelled to investigate.

at the bottom of the steps an enormous network of teeming underground passageways, a series of secret cities, their thoroughfares and byways thronging with pedestrians and stray cats.

i wander for some time. linger in a cathedral built from antique clocks. pay for a shave in a barber´s shop replete with tropical fishtank. come across intriguing unknown publications for sale at a street kiosk. discover a boutique selling only single sentences written on scraps of cardboard.

In full growth an artichoke plant can spread 9 feet in diameter and stand 5 feet tall. Typically a plant will produce about 20 artichokes in a year.

Artichoke seeds, probably cultivated, were discovered when excavating Mons Claudianus, a Roman quarry in eastern Egypt where Black Quartz Diorite was once mined.

The Romans considered artichokes to be an aphrodisiac, and this belief continued up to the 16th Century. During this time women were prohibited from eating them.

Picasso painted his "Woman with an Artichoke" in 1941, in Paris. His work depicts a woman whose features have been distorted and fragmented, perhaps by the terrors of war. Here the artichoke resembles a spiky weapon, like a club, and is held on to defiantly.

 Osias Beert, a Flemish painter of Still Lifes who lived from 1580 until 1624, entitled this painting "Still Life with an Artichoke".

Castroville, California (pop. 6481) proclaims itself to be "The Artichoke Center of the World". Almost the entirety of the U.S. artichoke supply is produced in and around Castroville.

"The World's Largest Artificial Artichoke" is on display here in a parking lot. It was crafted from steel and plaster in 1963.

Every year an Artichoke Festival is held in Castroville. At the first, in 1948, Marilyn Monroe was declared Artichoke Queen.

Cynar is a dark brown bittersweet liquer, still manufactured in Italy by Campari, whose most significant ingredient is an artichoke (Cynara scolymus). It was first launched in 1952 and is apparently especially popular in Switzerland.

YOU SHOULD ON OCCASION EXERCISE CAUTION HERE

WITHIN THIS PLACE THERE BE CURIOSITIES

DECLARATIONS OF BELIEF MASQUERADING AS INNOCENT ASIDES

RIGOROUSLY UNDISCIPLINED DISPLAYS OF LOPSIDED AND NEGLECTED ITEMS OF PARAPHENALIA

LARGE NUMBERS OF OVERLOOKED SPONTANEOUS GESTURES CATALOGUED IN AD HOC FASHION

A STRONG LIKING FOR THE JOYS TO BE DISCOVERED IN ECHOLALIA

DANGERS WHICH ARISE WHEN ONE NO LONGER CARES IF ONE IS PERCEIVED AS RIDICULOUS

WHY NOT EXERCISE ALL OF YOUR FUTURE ARTWORKS IN THE MEDIUM OF CONVERSATION?

FUTURE ATTAINABLE GOAL: A REGULAR PUBLICATION DEDICATED TO METAPHORS DERIVED FROM GAZING AT FLAKES OF SOAP FROTH

MAY THERE BE NO MORE GROTESQUERIES OF ABERRANT CONQUESTS!

Ladies & Gentlemen

you are invited to attend an event named THE DISMANTLED CABARET

an evening of performance, poetry & music


Starring:

Ryan Styles (Performance Art)
John Chantler (Electronica)
Keston Sutherland (Poetry)
Wooden Spoon (Tape Loops)
Mai Nguyen Tri (Performance Art)
Emily Critchley (Poetry)
Filipa Guimarães (Performance Art)
Edmund Hardy (Poetry)
Remlap (Performance Art)
Jennifer Allum (Violin)

Chats Palace, 8pm, Thursday 28th of July

42-44 Brooksby's Walk, Homerton, E9 6DF


it will be an evening of grandiose entertainment!

delectations & incitements will be spreadeagled across the stage!

fun for all the family!

this sunday morning just past:


woke up to discover Alex S. was naked, entangled in a red velvet curtain for comfort and warmth, slumbering upon my sofa.


the boys had all ended up naked again. and as usual the girls weren't interested in taking their clothes off.


draped over my armchair, the full set of clothes which I had shed the night before, arranged to create a bodiless double of myself, like a ghostly scarecrow, including my leather briefcase, my white scarf, my Bexley Dog Training Club rosette (awarding me 4th place) & an empty whisky bottle- clutched by an invisible left hand.

placed in the centre of my clothes the following note:

"Alex Kovacks, we love your fury octopusy. It feels like 1025 volts of fruit juice gushing threw our viens. It is impossible to describe they way we feel about your cockies. We wish we could live in your sock drawer. Love, All of Us!"

Jellyfish have been floating about in the seas for about 500 million years. Let's put this in perspective: the Jurassic period began about 200 million years ago and you all know what was going on then.

This is an Aurelia Aurita- known as a moon jellyfish because from a distance it takes on lunar qualities. It changes colour depending on the creature it has just ingested. The one above was 4 foot long and washed up on a beach in Devon, England two years ago.


They have clusters of eyes which they use to filter light.

                      They don't swim but are propelled by the currents of the sea.

I'm quite interested in the cultural status of the jellyfish. What would Roland Barthes have said of them? What do they signify? Childhood? Frivolity? Absurdity?

THE GREAT LAMENT OF MY OBSCURITY THREE

where we are the flowers in our clocks flare up their feathers ring the light
on a distant sulphur morning cows are licking the salt lilies
o my son
my son
we are always brought down by the colour of the world
it's blue more blue than subways than astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouths
our legs are stiff & knock together
faces shapeless like the stars
dull crystal points a fire charred basilica
insane: the zigzags crackle
telephone
to gnaw the wires liquefy
the arc
to clamber
astral
memory
northward by its double fruit
like raw flesh
hunger fire blood





TRISTAN TZARA


(Translated by Jerome Rothenberg)

                                                         (1896-1963)

distant extremities

                              blur upon landscape
      
           final ebb tide

                  last romance of asphalt vestiges
                                                                                   aerial survey of black particles

               
                                    arid myriads
                                                                    dark astral sonorities

                  broken statues & twisted steel faces

                                   sunlight searing glass visage

           desert of gestures

                                                 wind slashing ribs & jaws

                    interior desiccate

                                                                    razed to bare outer shells

insensate precision of concrete verticals

some words we might never fully comprehend:


road

number

restriction

disquiet

jamboree

concatenation

avarice

society

gloves

symbol

burden

contact

traffic

snail

liberty

immodest

shambling

intuit

images

evasion

nonchalant

liminal

water

the two people above are the members of a musical duo called Lucky Dragons. i saw them play sometime early in 2010 at Auto Italia in Peckham, in South-East London, an art gallery housed in an old car show room. they played in the spacious, dingy back room, the band hunched over equipment on the floor & surrounded by about one hundred youthful bodies who were encircling them with shadows, eager to get in on the action.

after a while i noticed that wires were being passed out from the centre of the room & were stretching into the dark huddle of bodies. the people near the centre were writhing & pressing the wires against themselves, shaking a little in joyful waves & shudders. it was close to evangelism. eventually it dawned on me that everyone holding the wires was actually helping to create the sounds by moving in certain directions.

in fact afterwards i learnt that Lucky Dragons use a computer system which causes sounds to be generated when one person touches the skin of another. so a large part of the ecstasy i observed was the joy to be found in the communion of bodies.

Lucky Dragons don't really sound like any band born before 2005- although their website states that they have been recording and performing for more than ten years now. splicing together many varied sounds, they create weird concoctions which are generally utopian in character, childlike in their gleefulness, clearly urban & computer-generated, yet also intimimately related to folk-art and the natural world.

they use jaggedy electronic noises, slowing & looping & moulding sounds into strange new shapes. often woven into this are acoustic folk elements- banjos & whistles & breathy warm vocal harmonies. they employ tinkly bright melodies which sound as if they have emerged from fragments of remembered 1980s childhoods of cartoons & television programmes.

at the show which i attended last year they first spent a saturday afternoon hosting an edition of their side project Sumi Ink Club- which involves collaborative group drawing sessions. when i arrived at five o'clock the enormous windows at the front of the gallery were entirely covered with black ink drawings which their hipster audience with thick spectacles & exagerrated fringes had been working on for hours. every last inch of glass was host to different tributaries, with long thick drippings & trickles of ink melting from hundreds of strange creatures, odd patterns & lost scenarios.

perhaps they sound like the tropical landscapes of tiny fictional countries. luminous psychedelic food colourings & late night cable TV transmissions may also be apposite points of reference here. it could be argued that they merge together postmodern irony with a certain sensibility of hope & health food shop friendliness.

see what you think:

      
        multi-purpose residential quarters. elegantly furnished. containing new ideas for modern living.

                   have friends over regularly to draw & write messages across the walls!
 

                          hold annual general meetings of a local polygamy club!

         
        encourage a local troupe of delinquents to devise a prolonged series of disruptions!

                 
                     disguise the room as a maze of tunnels & secret compartments!
                                

                 parade around in a pair of maroon-coloured dungarees & play the marimba!

go to sleep with the intention of having a labyrinthine series of dreams about being a bric-a-brac saleswoman!

INSECTS

Going off more towards the west, I saw insects in nine segments with enormous eyes like flies and a body trellised like miners' lamps, others with murmuring antennae; over here some with a score of pairs of paws that were more like clasps; and over there some made of black lacquerwork and mother-of pearl, which were crunching away under their feet like shellfish; others like daddylonglegs high above their paws, with little pin-like eyes as red as those of albino mice, virtually live coals mounted on stems, wearing an expression of unutterable frenzy; others with ivory heads, surprising baldnesses, towards whom one felt suddenly very brotherly and close, whose paws went on ahead of them like connecting rods zigzagging in the air.

Finally there were the transparent ones-- pitchers which were hairy in places; they went forward by the thousands, making a great glassworks, such a show window of light and of sun that after it everything seemed the ashes and end-products of dark night.

HENRI MICHAUX

(1930)


(Translated by Richard Ellmann)







Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was a poet and painter. As a boy he refused to eat for long stretches of time. At the age of 20 he worked as a sailor on a collier bound for South America. He often used icebergs as symbols in his poems. From 1956 onwards he began to experiment with mescalin. Many of his poems are set within imaginary countries where beings called Hacs, Emanglons and Meidosems are resident.
    

                                         (Alice in the Cities, 1974)

Wim Wenders is one of my favourites. I've learnt a lot from him. We share a number of preoccupations, such as the urge to drift in silence across empty spaces for days on end. His films helped me learn how to traverse landscapes.

His characters are permitted delightful liberties. They are allowed to stretch and yawn, to walk slowly down the street, to stare out of windows for long periods. Hurry is unusual.


    (Kings of the Road, 1976)

His people are prone to commence relationships unexpectedly, intuitively. Strangers enjoy each others company and often travel together on important journeys.

I share his love of Cinema and Rock & Roll, of long road trips where very little happens, of the U.S.A being a land of exquisite disappearances.

                                          (The State of Things, 1982)

I'm only interested in one sort of Wenders film and those are the early ones, those made between 1970 and 1987. Preferably they should be shot in black-and-white. His colour films are usually far less compelling. His black-and-white films have a timelessness, a classic quality.

This persistence in continuing to shoot films in monochrome into the 1970s and 80s involves a quiet nostalgia. It is also a major statement of individuality and of sensitivity. These are profound exceptions to the usual fare of the market-place. Today there are very few directors who resemble him at all.

                                         (Wings of Desire, 1987)

In his black-and-white images there is an extraordinary softness. Somehow he suffuses these images with a palpable tenderness. There is a notable absence of aggression. A languorous sensibility prevails, and it feels to me as if the spirit of his characters manages to absorb the textures of the images themselves, so that every last element within each frame is touched with softness, lightness.

this is a photogragh of the person who is writing these words. i'm older than this now- 29 years old in fact. this was taken for some official identificatory purpose about five years ago. at the current time this is one of the very few "recent" photographs of me which is available to anyone.

very few images of me from the previous decade exist. i abandoned photography altogether as a part of my life. in fact i didn't take a single photograph of anyone or anything between 2001 and 2008. i broke that tendency with a photograph of a street in Montmartre, Paris. but since then i've lapsed back into a life without image-making and have barely taken another photograph in the last three years.

                                                               (Montmartre, Paris)

i regret this state of affairs. i wish now that i possessed some kind of photographic record of those vast swathes of time and experience. there is undoubtedly a certain form of solace to be found in the fact that some species of record has been kept of your existence, preserving your life for the sake of the filing cabinets at least.

in fact being caught within the net of photography is potentially one way to become immortal, although photographs are not very adept at breathing or bleeding.

originally i stopped taking photographs because i was wary of the manner in which people so frequently record without thinking, pointing their apparatus at any available surface without ever stopping, even for a moment, to consider what sort of behaviour they are engaged in, and whether it is or is not a worthwhile pursuit.

i now think of my attitude as a somewhat foolish one even if reasonably well-intentioned. the notion that i would exist, within the bounds of Western Civilisation, above and beyond photography, strikes me now as a little lofty and arrogant. photographs are important- that's why most family households in this culture fill extensive collections of albums and hoard them in their living rooms.

initially i embarked upon this as a temporary experiment. i was never sure how long it was going to last for, but wished to discover quite how it would feel to rid myself entirely of images. i was interested in observing the consquences upon me. but i was to discover that you cannot really be a voyeur with regard to your own existence. the sort of detachment which genuine voyeurism requires is not possible when the gaze is turned upon oneself.

                     (Montmartre in "Bob le Flambeur" directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)

the paradox here is that i have long been fascinated and obsessed with the domain of images, particularly those of the moving variety. in my late teens and early twenties i watched thousands of films in a great frenzy of viewing. i understood exactly what Susan Sontag was saying in her 1996 essay "The Decay of Cinema":

"Each art breeds its fanatics. The love that cinema inspired, however, was special. It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral -- all at the same time. Cinema had apostles. (It was like religion.) Cinema was a crusade. For cinephiles, the movies encapsulated everything. Cinema was both the book of art and the book of life."

unfortunately my own devotion ultimately led me into a place of great isolation- perhaps as a direct consequence of the decay of cinema culture which Sontag was lamenting. it took me some years to realise that the experience of watching a film alters greatly depending on the number of people watching in unison. almost every film i watched for years was seen in solitude. and my choice to become an absentee from the realm of still photography was really a part of the outsider stance which i adopted as a consequence of my attitude towards cinema.

what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the paintings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust


what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness


SAMUEL BECKETT

aluminium constitutes 8% of the earth's solid surface

aluminium has an atomic weight of 26.9615386

in the mid-19th century, prior to the discovery of the Hall–Héroult process (that happened in 1886) pure aluminium was more valuable than gold because it was so difficult to extract from its various ores.

the staute of Eros in Picadilly Circus, London was the first statue in the world to be cast in aluminium. it was erected in 1893.

powdered aluminium is used in the manufacturing of paint

aluminium can resist corrosion

these men are collecting pots in order to build aeroplanes during World War Two. (U.K., 1940)

these are aluminium igloos, part of The Arctic Hotel in Disko Bay, Greenland. they can accomodate either one person or two people. 

an afternoon thumbing through photographs can resemble a journey around the world.

circumnavigation within a few stretched minutes.

all sights seen.

                 a church in Grytviken, South Georgia. built by Norweigans as a whaling post amidst the South Atlantic seas in 1904, it was a stopover point for Antarctic explorers. Ernest Shackleton is buried here. it remains to this day part of Great Britain- somewhat like The Falkland Islands- although those lie 1,390 miles to the east. no one lives here.

                                         The Day of the Dead, Mexico

                 Hong Kong.                                                                                                                                      

the awful seduction of the order & cleanliness of modernity.

absolute vertical precision. formulae transformed into materials.  

there is perhaps a meditative calmness inherent in the structure of these buildings. a quality which you could claim causes hypnosis, or at the very least passvity of a higher order. the subliminal closing of the mind, the ears, the nose. these buildings barely possess any odour at all.

Oriental Beach, New Zealand (1932)                                                            

                  This man is busy attending a conference in Taiwan (1985). He is from The Netherlands.

Varanasi, India

the oldest city in the world. every Hindu is supposed to be buried here. they are burnt & scattered in the Ganges, a few metres away from people washing themselves & their clothes & cows & motorcycles in the waters of the river. young men are always playing cricket along the riverbanks during the daytime. 

i stayed here 10 years ago. that was in a guesthouse run by a tall skeletal man with no teeth who spent each day lying down in a tiny darkened room continuously breaking into violent fits of coughing. he attempted to appropriate as many of my possessions as he could when i was trying to leave his domain. when the water gushed out from the taps in the rooms it would present itself in a dark brown colour & then perhaps stop altogether for a while.

there were power cuts every night and when this happened all of the shops in the narrow alleyways were lit by oil lamps & candles. 

Seikan Railway Tunnel, Japan