Mouth loop
26/10/2009 14:20
Artist’s residency at Plymouth Arts Centre
Inside/outside
Dream: in a small waiting room, with a glass wall and door, on the border between nature and culture. I stand in the corner next to the door and display my ‘pieces’ - small creative objects, personal records - on the wall. I reach up and pin them to the wall, above shoulder height. Behind me a group of First Nations Canadians file in and sit around a low circular table: elders, with their tribal collections of knowledge coded into artefacts made of wood, berries, stones. I am in some way being judged, behind my back, but am accepted. I look through the glass to where I will be going: the wild land, trees and scrub ahead.
Last night on telly Ray Mears was in the boreal forest in central Canada. Sally at home in the forest, peeling apart squares of birch bark to make thin sheets which she folded in four equal quarters and then bit a pattern of holes with a flower at the centre: she said she was taught this by her Cree grandmother, that they were used as covers for baskets, and you could push the roots of plants through the holes.
On a lake in a kayak gathering wild rice with two sticks (like home-made whittled drum sticks). One stick bent the rice stems over the boat, the other stick was used to beat a percussion on the first stick so the ripe grains fell into a cloth: this way the rice could be harvested several times as the grains ripened down the stem.
The different cycles of the forest: pitch pine, elk, hare, lynx.
page 107 Psychoanalysis and language: the limits of the transference
“how can one or the other of the women analytic partners re-mark the limits of their bodies, their desire? ... there is no transactional or transitional object unless they create one which they can exchange and share between them.”
___
Sarah gives me the keys: ask to book Studio One on Friday 30 10am > 7pm to do projection, filming and photos.
10.53 BATTER STREET drizzly quiet, lightbox and laptop hum [SEAGULLS LAUGHING; WOMAN’S VOICE WALKING PAST; CAR SLIPS DOWN HILL ACROSS THE WET COBBLES].
10.55 EMPTY DRAWING
The keys to the door/s - where they fell
TOOLKIT
Same as yesterday
In coming here I connect with my past: a film made in March 1989 [ANOTHER CAR]. Lighter Hands: random process fixed onto my dead granddad’s cigarette lighter - I made rubbings of the old floorboards and basement corridor leading to the toilets. The floor is now covered in chipboard. I feel ‘at home’ here, in the empty space of time [GULLS YELP], within the stone walls. In what used to be called the L-shaped Studio upstairs I made As Yet Unseen in 1994, the film originated from the combined dreams of my mother and my dead grandmother; and I did 11 months of observations and teststrips for Sunset Strip between September 1994 and the end of July 1995.
THE MEASURE: take the end of the film in my lips and pass the spool down between my legs, up my back, over the top of my head to meet between my teeth: cut here.
11.23 at the window a small sleepy fly takes a few steps up the glass, then wanders off [GULLS CRYING, SUSTAINED FOR 12 SECONDS] An old man carrying a grey and black cloth shopping bag in his left hand and using a cane in his right hand crosses the street, walking up towards Looe Street; the top of his head is pink and freckly.
11.32 EAT BANANA
frame 19 bird / edge / sycamore / teeth / marks; miniature curls of black emulsion, less than a millimetre long blown across the warm plain. A map of time and place; topology of memory and who-am-I. Deep blue deserted, more aware of cars sliding by. Snapshots sliced through the brain.
11.51 twelve steps to the window [SMALL HELICOPTER FLYING NORTHE EAST]. Gulls squat on chimney pots: the ones making noise are further down towards the Barbican.
11.58 sound recording 4 minutes 15 seconds - me working on lightbox [A BURST OF QUIET MUSIC BEHIND THE DEEP BLUE DOOR]
frame 60 ghost wings {KEYS, DOOR SHUT, FOOTSTEPS DOWNSTAIRS, DOOR SQUEAK, SLAM] This lightbox connects me to Lefkos’ studio above the diving shop in Pier Street where I made Nuclear Family: the pool of light in the indoor twilight of a wet day in autumn
12.15 a triangle of pigeons sways to and fro, heads bobbing, searching the fallen leaves with their beaks [DOOR SQUEAKS OPEN, SHUTS ... FOOTSTEPS, KEYS, FOOTSTEPS, SLAM! PEEP OF DEEP BLUE ALARM]
12.39 frame 112 [PEEP, GULLS, TICKING RADIATOR, PEEP] [PEEP]
___
LUNCH in Isaac’s: mixed vegetables with steamed broccoli
An afternoon off as I hit my head on the edge of the car boot.
14.20 EMPTY DRAWING
The keys to the door/s - where they fell. Lock up Batter Street and put the keys through the arts centre letterbox.
Inside/outside
Dream: in a small waiting room, with a glass wall and door, on the border between nature and culture. I stand in the corner next to the door and display my ‘pieces’ - small creative objects, personal records - on the wall. I reach up and pin them to the wall, above shoulder height. Behind me a group of First Nations Canadians file in and sit around a low circular table: elders, with their tribal collections of knowledge coded into artefacts made of wood, berries, stones. I am in some way being judged, behind my back, but am accepted. I look through the glass to where I will be going: the wild land, trees and scrub ahead.
Last night on telly Ray Mears was in the boreal forest in central Canada. Sally at home in the forest, peeling apart squares of birch bark to make thin sheets which she folded in four equal quarters and then bit a pattern of holes with a flower at the centre: she said she was taught this by her Cree grandmother, that they were used as covers for baskets, and you could push the roots of plants through the holes.
On a lake in a kayak gathering wild rice with two sticks (like home-made whittled drum sticks). One stick bent the rice stems over the boat, the other stick was used to beat a percussion on the first stick so the ripe grains fell into a cloth: this way the rice could be harvested several times as the grains ripened down the stem.
The different cycles of the forest: pitch pine, elk, hare, lynx.
page 107 Psychoanalysis and language: the limits of the transference
“how can one or the other of the women analytic partners re-mark the limits of their bodies, their desire? ... there is no transactional or transitional object unless they create one which they can exchange and share between them.”
___
Sarah gives me the keys: ask to book Studio One on Friday 30 10am > 7pm to do projection, filming and photos.
10.53 BATTER STREET drizzly quiet, lightbox and laptop hum [SEAGULLS LAUGHING; WOMAN’S VOICE WALKING PAST; CAR SLIPS DOWN HILL ACROSS THE WET COBBLES].
10.55 EMPTY DRAWING
The keys to the door/s - where they fell
TOOLKIT
Same as yesterday
In coming here I connect with my past: a film made in March 1989 [ANOTHER CAR]. Lighter Hands: random process fixed onto my dead granddad’s cigarette lighter - I made rubbings of the old floorboards and basement corridor leading to the toilets. The floor is now covered in chipboard. I feel ‘at home’ here, in the empty space of time [GULLS YELP], within the stone walls. In what used to be called the L-shaped Studio upstairs I made As Yet Unseen in 1994, the film originated from the combined dreams of my mother and my dead grandmother; and I did 11 months of observations and teststrips for Sunset Strip between September 1994 and the end of July 1995.
THE MEASURE: take the end of the film in my lips and pass the spool down between my legs, up my back, over the top of my head to meet between my teeth: cut here.
11.23 at the window a small sleepy fly takes a few steps up the glass, then wanders off [GULLS CRYING, SUSTAINED FOR 12 SECONDS] An old man carrying a grey and black cloth shopping bag in his left hand and using a cane in his right hand crosses the street, walking up towards Looe Street; the top of his head is pink and freckly.
11.32 EAT BANANA
frame 19 bird / edge / sycamore / teeth / marks; miniature curls of black emulsion, less than a millimetre long blown across the warm plain. A map of time and place; topology of memory and who-am-I. Deep blue deserted, more aware of cars sliding by. Snapshots sliced through the brain.
11.51 twelve steps to the window [SMALL HELICOPTER FLYING NORTHE EAST]. Gulls squat on chimney pots: the ones making noise are further down towards the Barbican.
11.58 sound recording 4 minutes 15 seconds - me working on lightbox [A BURST OF QUIET MUSIC BEHIND THE DEEP BLUE DOOR]
frame 60 ghost wings {KEYS, DOOR SHUT, FOOTSTEPS DOWNSTAIRS, DOOR SQUEAK, SLAM] This lightbox connects me to Lefkos’ studio above the diving shop in Pier Street where I made Nuclear Family: the pool of light in the indoor twilight of a wet day in autumn
12.15 a triangle of pigeons sways to and fro, heads bobbing, searching the fallen leaves with their beaks [DOOR SQUEAKS OPEN, SHUTS ... FOOTSTEPS, KEYS, FOOTSTEPS, SLAM! PEEP OF DEEP BLUE ALARM]
12.39 frame 112 [PEEP, GULLS, TICKING RADIATOR, PEEP] [PEEP]
___
LUNCH in Isaac’s: mixed vegetables with steamed broccoli
An afternoon off as I hit my head on the edge of the car boot.
14.20 EMPTY DRAWING
The keys to the door/s - where they fell. Lock up Batter Street and put the keys through the arts centre letterbox.