I wonder what I expect to get from writing?  Like art I'm not that bad at getting going when I have a clarity of purpose.  Art could be about sense-making, it could be elevated to near spiritual levels, the Shaman or Mystic who becomes the embodied figure around which the people of a community cluster.  The great signifier regardless of what is signified or not signified.  This is one role of the artist in generating social cohesion, the Joseph Beuys role where a life becomes art and the relationship is mutual.

Talking to Andrew McMillan yesterday and we were thinking about art forms.  How important is it for a poet to present as a poet? What does having a poet in the room do to help people who do not see themselves as poets write poetry?  We thought about this in relation to the idea of a workshop and I think we decided that having a poet in the room can legitimise peoples' writing.  It is hard to say this without sounding full of ourselves but if it is true, at least for some people, then it needs to be said.

So in taking this seriously and not reducing things to a list of ingredients then culture plays a role in social cohesion.  A breakdown of the culture we have in common can present problems as we rub closer and closer up against each other.  Artists' role in developing social cohesion is then the interplay between a number of individual facets that resonate in a complex field of actions and reactions.  Firstly artists can be critical and question givens, they can break down existing structures and come between people by presenting singular or binary world views.  I often say we do not sign the Hippocratic Oath, we can do harm.  Secondly they can introduce robust forms such as poetry that can allow for people to be heard over other more accepted forms such as "consultation meetings".  These forms are only robust if they are constructed with integrity within a framework that allows them to be aware of themselves and the edges of their forms.

For me on my project at the adventure playground I am isolating myself from the 'form of sculpture' and thinking of it more as making.  I am making something useful that is seen as having value and ambition.  I am trying to re-kindle my own ambition and this is an ambition for art to be of use.  This is not instrumental it is a search for relevance in a chaotic world where making play equipment has an authentic and relevance use value.

I have just listened to Ivor Cutlers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKnnAK7E-U  I think this is the art I really like.  It's about whimsy which is a good word.

When I make things with my hands a difference kind of sense gets made.  It is not 'better than' just 'different to'. People who do not make things don't really understand how difficult it can be, making things is sometimes taken for granted.  At other times when people really need something making it gets valued. Yet we in the first, developed, global South, would rather pay children to sweat and assemble our throw away ephemera. Unless of course if it's artisan cheese carving, crafted by bearded-bald-hipsters and sold from a 1970's caravan.

There is a craft to writing and a craft to making, words and wood are cut and hewn to shapes that fit together and support structures, pirate ships and texts.  My brain works in modes, the space between my ears that cannot remember where I fitted the support beam, so every time  I walk to my car I bang my head, has to switch between modes or both writing and making feel clumsy.  That's why I haven't written here for a while, because the craft of writing requires an attention and a spirit.  It's probably more important that I concentrate on making for a while as if this writing has holes in it nobody except me will care, the pirate ship however will need to be water tight and ship shape.

This is my favorite quote from Heidegger.  I say balls to all your New Materialism and Carnal Knowledge.  Heidegger is described by Hanna Ardent (his former partner) as a child when it comes to totalitarian regimes but he captures making and thinking well here;

Building and thinking are, each in its own way, inescapable for dwelling.  The two, however, are also insufficient for dwelling so long as each busies its self with its own affairs in separation, instead of listening to the other.  They are able to listen if both...belong to dwelling, if they remain within their limits and realise that the one as much as the other comes from the long workshop of long experience and incessant practice.

(Heidegger 1962: p. 362; see also Latimer and Munro 2009).

 

International speak Like a pirate day

Making is important, making together is important.  I have always thought that the ability to transform your environment, your close-space brings with it a strange type of power.  Perhaps this is an explanation of home decoration becoming so popular,  the first space outside our body is our home, to decorate is emancipatory, a small revolution within our own front room. 

To imagine making a pirate ship from card is not difficult, this is probably the tenth I've made over the years, I am an experienced pirate ship maker from card.  It took me a while to switch on a maker brain, it was rusty and slow. I had collected the card from the large card bin at a cardboard box factory down the road, it's a place of transformation the flat- to- the- thing the laying-down to the standing-up.  (note use of hypens for-affect) The joy of building with a bunch of kids and parents is that what you end up with just is what it is - in the words of Mike Vronsky from the film the Deer Hunter:-

"This is this, this ain't something else."

Passing Things Down

I asked my Dad about erecting telegraph poles, he spent his working life as an electrical engineer and erected a countless number of poles, bringing electricity to many houses for the first time.  He brought me the book above and, strange for him, he asked for it back.  This from a man who has spent the last twenty years getting rid of things; my school books, my Grandad's random collection of objects from his 'tippy bit', Dad is creating empty space, and making sure there is not much to be gone through in the event of anyone having to go through anything.

As he handed me the book he told me that the author had given it to him and then, two weeks later had killed himself.  Dad said he 'committed suicide', guilty of self murder.  Perhaps this event and its impact meant the book could not be given up, the event meant that a space could not be cleared. The book had to remain on the shelf next to Desmond Bagley and Wilbur Smith, it seems simpler than having to go through a process of getting rid of it.

I'm reading a dead man's notes about how to make poles stand up in the ground and it strikes me that he must have been a very practical and straightforward person.  The diagrams and writing are aimed at a narrow and specific group of practical people with jobs to do. Like my Dad giving his early life to bringing electric light to farms and villages across Yorkshire. The books tells us about the ground, the depth of hole, transportation and graft, I see it as the practical side of modernity, symbolised in the vast galvanised steel pylons that divide our countryside.  If my Dad were reading this he would say, "Steve, that's the National Grid - Pylons are distributing high voltage, the poles are part of the 12  KV system - after the substations - it's completely different..........IDIOT."

I think when we build our pirate ship I will spread the poles out a little to create a larger footprint and triangulate.  Standing a pole up on its own with nothing to fasten it to seems to unnecessarily complicate things.  The book is now on my shelf next to Colin Ward's 'Art and the built environment' and Edensor's  "Industrial ruins".  It still speaks of death though, I will be glad to return it.

Worldizing- outline of a theory of a practice

 

 

Good news this week, our application to a south Yorkshire fund was successful, we have £3500 to buy materials to build our pirate ship.  I can't claim the credit for this as the funding bid was a team effort but it's interesting how you need a little bit of a push, a central idea to move things forward.  Funders like to see outcomes, in-fact I like to see outcomes.  The pirate ship above is about what I'm thinking we can make, with some adaptations to fit our needs.  We want a covered place for kids to shelter in the rain and we want some shade in summer.  My mind now is taken up with a circular set of compromises, as the ship becomes a reality it's reality has to compromise to become what is possible, working the constraints of time and energy what is practical.  There is a question that gets asked a lot at art school, 'Where is the work ?'  it's a question that replaces the more easily answered 'What is the work' .  To ask 'where' something is is to position it in a context, it asks for more than a description of a thing it also asks what contingent, on the outside.  

 

The problem is that any physical manifestation that exists within a single point of time and space is liable to become the simulacra of the work, the golden calf, that can be tied down unpicked and assessed against the criteria of other things that are tied down and assessed.  When people ask me what I'm doing at the adventure playground I will tell them I'm making a pirate ship for children to play on.  If they ask me if this is art I will say, I'm an artist, I'm funded through the arts and humanities research council and the building of the pirate ship is part of this project. It's not a real pirate ship though and it's not real art, it's first priority is as a piece of play equipment. On one level to demonstrate that the kids who play here are worth investing in, that play and the imagination are worth investing in.  When I get to work on cutting and bolting and planning, the old bits of my brain will get to work and my nights will be filled with dreams of hammers and screws and work arounds and mistakes and some of the other things that fill my brain  will slip sideways. I will miss appointments in my dairy, I will appear slightly distracted, my brain will be building solutions to problems I encounter and imagine.

Taking stock on where I am in this project is difficult.  I have two strong ideas emerging.  The first concerns the idea of been 'in residence'  and what this can mean and the second is the role of theory in practice. Both these ideas are complex and interconnected. Much of my recent practice has involved bringing a theory lens of some description to my work.  I am now both an artist and a writer and I am jobbing in both.  The point here is to expand on both the idea of been in residence and how it relates the subjective spatially  to the place of residence.  I can describe my practice as a series of adhoc self created residencies across a series of change programs.  I have become by default  a project manager, a writer, and academic an odd job man, a fixer and a worrier.  I worry in both a good way and a bad way,  I think Heidegger on occasion may have mistaken angst for worry.  I am still working on  my idea of the informal residency in your own life as a concept, calling it residency as method worked for a while but I'm not sure this has the legs it needs to carry me very far.  I need to sit and think about this more, I have reconsidered the last 10 years of my work as an artist through the lens of residency as method I can pull from it a lot of moments that sit on a way marker between been 'in residence' and doing a specific job.  The waymarkers across the terrain are not clear.  When you ski into a storm the visibility can get so bad that you have to work from one piste marker to the next.  When it is really bad you have to work to the person in front of you who works to the person in front of them who works towards the piste-marker.  This is how you find your way, up, down, in front ,behind is white everything in all directions is white, yet your ski's take you downhill, you follow other peoples tracks.. 

I'm taken with the idea of worldizing at the moment - it seems to be what is happening with both the making and thinking about art and working with the world of theory within the world.  I don't like to say communities as this closes things down - communities are starting to feel a bit small like enclave or settlements.  The thing I like about the idea of worldizing as both a practical way to work with sound and a metaphor for both residencies and working with theory is that the process allows something to be present but to fade into the background.  It recognises that this is not as simple as it sounds, the dropping away of a soundtrack is not just mixing in something else or lowering the volume, your brain follows this down - worldizing in contrast is about rounding the sounds edges so it sits within the body of the film, becomes part of it. Perhaps this is the practice to allow the art and the ideas to be present within the field and to emerge fully formed and with clarity at the moment when they make some sort of sense of what is happening and then drop away.

 

The great sound engineer Walter Murch coined the term ‘Worldizing’ while working with George Lucas on the Film Amercan Graffiti in 1973. He was Struggling to balance the sounds of Wolf Mans Jacks radio show, playing on young peoples car radios across the city, with the films dialogue.  Eventually he took the sound track out into the street played it through a speaker then re-recorded the sound from down the street whilst randomly moving the microphone.  This process blurred the edges of the sound and allowed it to slip into the background, it mimicked the way we hear things in the world.

Does it matter that it went to sea?

“He found himself in the strange predicament all sailors share: essentially he belonged neither to the land nor to the sea. Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.”
―
 Yukio Mishima       The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea

Does it matter that it went to sea and steered a ship of considerable size from continent to continent? Does it matter that it experienced storms and the people around it feared for their lives grasping it's handles with assured skill and strength ? Does it matter that it smells of salt water and the years of use has opened it's wood-grain, soaked in the sweat and grime from dirty work-warn hands.  If we are to make a pirates ship to carry us into an imaginary sea then the past life of steering a true path may impart a degree of authenticity.

 When steering a ship, the  wheel has a delayed response and the captain must always remain vigilant and prepared.  She has an intimate and close relationship to the object, like a musician and an instrument or a photographer and a camera.  The body connects to certain objects in a more specific way, it extends the person into the world. Of all the parts of a pirate ship that need an element of authenticity, the wheel is the most important. Our ships wheel, salvaged from the world of antique maritime memorabilia will be liberated and again help us navigate  complex journeys within the sea of imaginations.

making things safe

It's been a month since I wrote anything here, partly due to the fact I could not think of what to say and partly as I have been away to celebrate my 50th birthday in Sardinia.  Before I left I continued to repair equipment.  I triangulated the Arial runway and re-decked the worst of the rot on the castle.  I also applied for some money to buy materials to build a pirate ship.  Money is on everyones minds at the moment we have a shortfall and a couple of unsuccessful applications.  There has also been trouble down the road.  Iron bars and guns and rumors and truths and turf wars and class wars and race wars - everyone is feeling unsettled.

I had a certain clarity of thought when I began this blog and I've realised that clarity is not always a good thing, I spend most of my time in a muddle jumping from pillar to post.  The good thing about working on equipment at the adventure playground is that it ties into a simpler time for me and it really is something I am able to do.  Not that the skills required are that specialised but there is a certain finess that comes from experience.  The over engineering, the bolting through and the aches and pains from drilling and sawing at difficult angles up ladders and behind your head.  People rarely recognise the importance of triangulation, the power of the wind and the way that young people read challenge - what they are capable of.  I'm no expert but the great thing about doing something so specific is there are very few experts and with my strong hands, risk adverse disposition and tendency to over engineer I am supremely suited to this type of work.  I have enjoyed getting dirty, the small splinters and cuts, the realisation that the hard skin on my hands, grown through years of building, making and working had gone a little soft.  There is something familiar about returning to something you know, it makes you feel at home in yourself.  Laying in a hot bath, drinking a glass of beer and soaking out the stiffness in the muscles is something I had missed.

This relationship to making and value is something that runs very deep in my history, the solving of the immediate problem of making something safe seems like the best way to approach any type of work, practical pragmatic and worthwhile, this is my sense making I will find more things that make sense.