numbers and reflections

I have finally sorted some of my photos from mini project of photographs during the taught part of the MA - vacant space and a reading room
Link to the first batch of photographs

and a link to some collected words

they also

they also serve who only stand and wait Bristol & Falmouth.

The problem of numbers

Picking up on Maura's point about the number of people attending the Articulating Practice conference...

When you're engaged in new work, new modes of thinking and doing things, there's always the question of dissemination. Are there so few people here because nobody knows about what we're doing, or because they know and aren't interested? In the increasingly commercialised context of the Arts and Higher Ed, numbers have become important. But it's not necessarily a helpful indicator of anything. When Chris Burden shot himself, there was a tiny audience, but it's a piece very widely referred to. Lucan and Gray have performed to a thousand at the Barbican, but it's not going to be considered a seminal work of performance and written about for years to come.

The flipside of the problem is the avant-gardiste notion that unless there's a tiny audience, it can't be a significant event. It conveys a special aura to those few who were there for such-and-such a performance.

articulating practice

Nobody else seemed to be from Falmouth.... if only I had a dictaphone...
When Robin Nelson was talking kept having thoughts of how the writing part of the research is affected by the practice being writing. But not brave enough to put forward any musings or questions.
His talk:
"Material thinking, conceptual thinking and the role of writing: reflections on creative process and the articulation of a research inquiry.
I do not see writing as the enemy of creativity, the binary other of arts practice. My project in championing Practice as Research [he doesn't use practice led research - a few discussions about that between him and Brad] has been to establish material arts and media practices as 'knowledge-producing' where traditionally oly written publications have been accepted - but not at the expense of writing"
he quoted from Vygotsky. He also said much practice presentation needed wriiten clues to show the research enquiry, even only 500 words. he felt that too many paopel thought it was explicit. He used Pina Bausch as someone whose work is explicit and doesn't need a clue.

Actually I was surprised that there were not more people there. I sometimes wonder about events such as this, along with some performance art, the actual happening being documented and listed as having happened, with some peice of paper to say it happened is more important than it's presence, it actual happening, its having a big audience. This was all videoed, which meant more lighting than was necessary in a black box on a hot day. Many people get to tick boxes - the organisers, the presenters, even those attending. Maybe I'm cynical. But as performance and its ephermeral nature but also dissemination of information were two big themes I think it's worth airing my views....

writing "the fold"

DIY

make a new body, this time be a bird and learn to fly

This is my essay so far...
weaving words and silence together. Not sure there are 4,500 mind......

manifesto

thought it worked even better now all dog eared and frayed at the edges

25 second overheard sound piece

some decadence for jeremy

spotted by jess phtographed by Maura

click picture for larger view - should link to flickr....

Widgeon by Seamus Heaney

(for Paul Muldoon)

It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box -

like a flute stop
in the broken windpipe -

and blew upon it
unexpectedly
his own small widgeon cries.

add a caption?

this was the best of the bunch - expression wise.

and Luce irigaray - reflections and layers...nothing is clear...the feminine murk....

MAPW tea time

link to brownie recipe

eating Wednesday's cake

I have to go outside, put my goddy goody coat on and be a low life listening devise all for the benefit of a murderous Bristolian called Whimerring Bing.

does anyone much look at the blog, except Joe & I?

write: Cixous & Stein. eat something sweet. feel sick. drink tea. feel less sick. write. 163 words. hmm. MAPW activity. Am I performing in private?

the words so far:
Someone I know who is doing a PhD recently discovered Hélène Cixous and Gertrude Stein and likes them very much. In discovering them and thinking of my work she thought that I might like to know about them. I already did know about them although I had only had the tiniest peek at Gertrude Stein; Gertrude now seems to be coming at me from all directions!

Somehow Stein and Cixous overlap yet are far far from each other. I feel that there is immediacy in how they both write; in the now. Cixous does some remembering but the writing still seems of the now not past. Cixous of course writes from the body. I could say “who doesn’t?” but of course there are levels of writing from the body, there are different attentions. Gertrude writes the immediate thinking and attends to feeling.

Writing thinking feeling all at the same time.

Writing as inquiry, writing as research. The act the doing is the inquiry.