In one side, out the other

A new view to departure

On the Road from Selfoss to Reykjavik

Walking through

Walking through Sycamore park in Davis, with a camera in hand, I watched youthful residents negotiate the lumi-coloured playground equipment and short, puffer-jacketed mothers walking and walked by their relatively oversized, preened and fluffy grey-white dogs. Suburban tennis dreams and maximized stroll path circumference punctuated the parkland, whilst minor adjustments to the trees aligned them with its purpose.

Park squares and graveyards are not so dissimilar. Punctuation marks above the ground frame endless known dramas in which we occasionally, but always ritualistically, participate by walking through.



Hofn, Iceland
(2006)

Sycamore Park, Davis, CA

Convoluted lines

Convoluted audial lines transcribed in the Main Reading Room, Shields library, UC Davis

The launcher and the launched

In my film 'To the Sea', a trombone player stands, suited, playing towards the sea. His uniform is important because it marks his distance from the brass band out of which he has strayed and because it gives the trombone performance a greater sense of direction, contrast and purpose.

In the film I am planning to shoot, of an origami boat raced off the Berkeley coast, I don't know yet whether the launcher of the paper boat should be of equal focus to the origami boat he or she launches. I will most certainly shoot stills of the performance that I can edit to document it, but it will be important to capture the time based nature of the performance too - the time it takes for the vessel to dissolve into a sheet and sink. My inclination at the moment is to let the origami boat off the coast as readily as one might put a mug down on the kitchen table after sipping a cup of tea. Perhaps it may just be appropriate to have the launcher's hand enter and exit the film in a second.

Origami boats raced off the coast

Subsidy (YouTube's sinking ships)

Temporary Housing

Reformulation/melodrama/intrepid/construction/navigation

Temporary Welcome

In February 2006 I travelled to an apartment complex on 35 Church Street in Toronto to deliver a package to a lady called Ann Savege, as part of my postal project I mentioned yesterday. I started looking back at the photos I have of this trip, and am still very much drawn to this image of the lounge entrance area in the apartment complex - one I took whilst anticipating the possible outcomes from the delivery of this first package.

I like how generically late 70s the setting is, and I doubt any refurbishments have taken place since it was first designed. This image encapsulates much of my travels across North America too; the hotels I've stayed in and the reception lounges of office blocks. I dislike how falsely safe the musty feeling of this temporary welcome feels, and I think my distance definitely translates itself into this image.

Responsibility

To sit and watch vertical, albeit rippled, reflections of the noble masts places one around midday, and without responsibility.

Sail Mast Bones

Tightened and loosened
(Wind constructions)

Sail mast bones
Against the spine

Multiplied cheaply
Some tin-can clocks

Unexplained Pollen on the Lady~O

Silly Arms

A naïve angel from her cave
Learning to cross her mother’s tomb
Suffers of umbilical pose
As if she lacks autonomy

Her uncles and the Icicle
Mammals out force to protect her,
Silly arms that cannot reach some
Dismembered prosections floating

Whole minded plastic negligence
Of separations, the small one,
Beholding elegance by self
With sleep-full arcane water flight



Jokulsarlon, Vatnajokull, Iceland
(2006)

Rethinking postal project

In 2006, I started a project where I invited friends to each send me a package to anywhere in the world, that I would deliver at some point over my lifetime. I have made two of these deliveries already - one to a lady in an apartment complex in Toronto, Canada, and another to a boathouse in Iceland.

This project started off with an interest in the temporal nature of the package, but has now become much more about travelling because of the package. Travelling through and re-writing ideas of place matter to me in all my work. The idea of negotiating or having been negotiated by a locality deeply interests me, and has brought me to writing as an act of rethinking these sites in words.

Kala

I'm on an artist residency for two months here at Kala in Berkeley, California. I'm hoping to use this blog as a kind-of-barely-edited-sketchbook - here goes!