I'm not Really an Artist

The Sicilian

2010-08-29T15:44:00.004+01:00

I've been doing some photography for Cote a Cote for their scratch performance of The Sicilian, tonight at the Dulwich Constituational Club. This is very short notice but I'd recommend the trip to the other side of the river as its a really charming piece with a nice mix of acting and dancing.

Contents May Vary

2010-08-29T15:39:00.002+01:00

Today I finally finished my submission for Contents May Vary, its a reworking of an old idea:

Click for full view.

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

2010-07-22T15:44:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I made a print from a slide via a paper negative. This was abnormally exciting.

Photo taken in Dungeness.

Posthumous Cartography

2010-07-13T16:25:00.005+01:00

I have finally finished my zine. You can download a copy here. Alternatively, leave me a message if you'd like a hard copy, they're £1.50 each.

If you'd like to see it in the flesh along with many other lovely zines then pop down to Paper Exchange at TOandFOR Rooms.

Inevitabilities

2010-06-19T16:39:00.002+01:00

Akathisia

2010-06-01T18:41:00.001+01:00

Election Special

2010-05-07T09:58:00.003+01:00

Jack via facebook:

"Clegg took my virginity, but it's probably gonna be Cameron raping me for years to come."

Comfort in a Familiar Peculiarity

2010-05-01T22:58:00.012+01:00

Dungeness is a funny old place, housing a selection of shack-like residences, a smattering of lighhouses and two nuclear powerstations. The skyline is littered with pylons and wires criss-crossing over one another, the beach with decaying fishing boats and shipping containers as the power stations loom over everything. Not in a threatening or monolithic way, the peculiarity of the landscape nullifies their ability to do so. Union Jacks and St George's Crosses flutter in the breeze. It has the feel of a non-place and indeed it could be uprooted and transplanted in America without drawing a raised eyebrow. However Dungeness is most definitely a place, with its clashing yet strangely harmonious visual languages and lack of pretence, it refuses to be and instead just is, waiting for the inevitable stories to weave their way in.

Film stills, 30/04/2010

From Postmodern to Posthumous

2010-04-18T16:11:00.004+01:00

To talk of life today is like talking of rope in the house of a hanged man.

-Raoul Vaneigem

All the Enjoyment of Disappointment

2010-04-06T22:11:00.007+01:00

I've been playing around with my slide projector and black and white slide film.

The shot was taken down at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. There's something about the place that's strangely cheerful in a sort of sad way. On reflection I think the above scene is a fairly succinct way to sum that up. I used to always be lured in by those things as a kid and I never won a single thing. I'd be interested to hear if anyone ever did.

Trouble Afoot

2010-03-27T13:56:00.003Z

Like many a young armchair troublemaker, I have ishoos with The Fuzz. Not because I think that they're all power hungry bastards but because I think that they're just doing their job. Michael Parenti said that:

"...there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime, and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of property."

So there we were last night, sat outside the V&A when a meat van pulled over to speak to these two genlemen who were wheeling their bicycles along the pavement. They didn't run away, they courteosly obliged when the officers questioned them, they laughed to themselves as they were patted down and their bike locks were inspected, they sat in the van as the police wrote important things on their notepads. A lady stopped and sat down next to us, asked us what was going on; they were friends of hers. We all watched on in dazed amusement, trying to fathom what the purpose of the exercise was.

They didn't look like criminals but them again, what is a criminal? Somebody whose eyebrows are too close together, the oik with no concept of discipline, the cold-hearted killer or just a social construct, a moment of opportunism in a sea of knockbacks, an illustration of all of our failings?

My favourite way to illustrate models of social control is Panopticism. Also favoured by Foucault, it centres around Jeremy Bentham's 18th Century prison design, the Panopticon.

It comprised of a circular building with cells around the exterior and a central inspection tower. A careful placement of blinds, walls, mirrors and windows meant that prisoners could not see other prisoners or if anyone was in the inspection tower. Bentham hypothesised that because the prisoners could never tell if they were being watched, they would presume that they were always being watched. Thus policing took place not as an exchange between prisoner and prison guard but as an exchange within the prisoner's own head. Essentially, they policed themselves.

Foucault expanded on this idea to describe two models of discipline; the discipline mechanism and the discipline blockade:

The discipline mechanism operates in an ethereal manner, it is power with a light touch that can flow through society by means of architecture, conventions and suchlike. Difficult to detect and lacking in a definable source but constantly with us, as invisible but as essential as oxygen. Its workings can be seen subtly operating everywhere. Giving up a seat on the bus for a pregnant woman, not opening somebody else's post, these are the intricate and often unwritten rules that govern society, allowing things to run relatively smoothly. They are constantly changing but often accepted with little resistance.

The discipline blockade however is easy to detect, it is the system of power exemplified by prisons and suchlike - heavy handed and outside the boundaries of society where there is no need for such social niceties. The demonised work alongside the long suffering, although nobody is sure who is who anymore.

The two systems feed off each other: the failures of the discipline mechanism enforce the need for the discipline blockade and the existence of the discipline blockade serves as a portent of what happens if the conventions of the discipline mechanism are not obeyed.

So that's the theory, which of course bears little relation to reality. When you look at rates of literacy, numeracy, truancy, mental illness etc. etc. in prisoners the waters muddy and the workings of society start to rumble through the picture. There are institutions like school which gingerly bridge the gap between the disclipline mechanism and the discipline blockade, social problems, the unfortunate truth that some people just have difficult lives from day zero, the cyclical nature of invalidating environments and their resultant effects.

I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. I only came outside for a cigarette but I don't like rambling without bringing things full circle so back we go to a South Kensington pavement (and what lovely, gold-plated pavements they are). I quietly direct my smarmy distate at those officers who are merely just doing their job but maybe I'm not annoyed with them at all. More probably I'm annoyed at the way that complicated matters, be they media portrayals of prisoners or policeman are so simplisticly conveyed. I should be grateful though really because otherwise I think I'd explode in a tirade of exasperated confusion every time I opened the newspaper.

Did I tell you that I stopped reading the newspaper?

Semiotic Psychosis

2010-03-21T13:21:00.010Z

Psychosis isn't that different from Big Brother. Both involve sitting around the house, waiting for an ethereal being who nobody else has yet met to set you tasks. Why is Big Brother seen as a semi-reasonable pursuit instead of peculiar behaviour? Because there's a cash prize and a few video cameras thrown in and because it is nigh on impossible to miss its presense.

We are taught to fear psychosis but it is all around us, one cannot walk down the street without being bombarded by its codes and language. Most people see psychosis as something that happens to other people but we are all in the grips of it every day. The only difference is that it's consensual, societal psychosis.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines psychosis as, "a mental disorder in which a person's perception of reality is severely distorted." What is reality though and how do you gauge it, whose job is it to gauge it, what makes their objective reality more realistic that somebody else's?

I open up a magazine and I am bombarded with images of high-end fashion, celebrity debauchery, dieting tips. I open up the newspaper and am presented with notions of a dark ages, an economy and a society that is on its knees. Never mind that this season's fashion trends were decided three years ago and that the classification system for crimes has changed. The reality of the situation is lost in interpretation; how many people look at a weather forecast instead of looking out the window? Which would you trust more?

This constructed consensual reality is sending messages to all of us through the television and hidden within newspaper articles - if you buy things you will be happier, if you listen to this band you will be more cultured, if you do as we say then we will protect you. We are all imprisoned in a narrow vision of what is possible and what is not.

So what happens when people break out of that vision of consensual reality? They are marginalised, medicalised, even criminalised. After all, delusions tend to be defended with the utmost rigour. The pot lambasting the kettle, now that is the last bastion of madness.

Orphan Furniture

2010-03-13T15:05:00.010Z

On my walks around the urban sprawl I often spot them quietly weeping on the pavement, designs fallen on hard times. Once loved pieces that have been cast out after they sport an imperfection too far, fail to keep with the times or merely outstay their welcome. Cold, hungry, lost; it tugs at my heartstrings. Some days I can't help myself, I have to take them to my crowded yet warm abode and nurse them back to health.

Corpus Delicti: Rattus

2010-03-10T11:02:00.006Z

December 2009:

I stumbled around in the pitch black, the feeble rays of my torch illuminating a couple of feet in front of me as I tried to avoid knocking over the camera that was taking long exposure shots of a space I couldn't even see. I occassionally set off the handheld flash; the light blinding me and burning an isolated image onto my retina that lingered for a few seconds as I span round and tiptoed off in the other direction, gingerly stepping over cables and abandoned floorboards. The air was stale and there was a strange sort of damp warmth that the rest of the building lacked, I took off my jumpers and let the darkness wrap its way around me.

Post production notes: I fancied doing something a bit different with this print so I photogrammed in some text from a Thomas Ligotti poem and a dead mouse I found at work. The image has also been solarised and I stuck it through photoshop to try and make the text a bit clearer but most of the legwork took place in the darkroom.

Still can't read it? It's the first verse of I Have a Special Plan for this World by Current 93. Lyrics can be found here.

Something for the Weekend

2010-02-28T00:01:00.002Z

Handheld flash + long exposures, fun times.

Home Sweet Home at the Barbican

2010-02-22T14:30:00.004Z

Home Sweet Home is returning on 6th and 7th of March, this time at the Barbican. Prices start from £1 for the whole weekend.

For more information on the project see the Subject to Change website.
Photo by Clara Molden.

The Nature of Things

2010-02-19T22:06:00.003Z

I've recently been making theatre props for Curved Space: The Nature of Things. This is a little short notice but its on at The Place in King's Cross tomorrow night and should be really good.

So here are the fruits of my labour...

I didn't get a chance to document them properly but you get the idea.

I've been neglecting this blog for rather a while but expect more posting over the next few days.

Return to the Heygate

2009-12-16T13:52:00.009Z

The only real change that was visible was that of the slow-marching exodus, yet more boarded-up flats creating a pallete of steely grey and ageing concrete against sombre peach and green tones. The winter sun reflected off the windows, net curtains gone to reveal a smorgasbord of decorating schemes. I snaked my way along the walkways keeping an eye on the unmarked police car gliding up to an old couple, trying to catch snippets of their terse conversation. The England flags had left, along with their owners, probably to pastures further down the Walworth Road as opposed to the shiny new flats that never surfaced. I walked on, a constant eye on my back but comforted by the calm of spaces once inhabited but now left to just be, buildings returning to their constituent materials: glass, tiles, stairwells.

I snaked back past the elderly couple as they unlocked an untold number of locks and security screens, the gentleman eyeing me closely as I walked past, following me to the corner and staring as I kept walking. His quiet implied paranoia was the exception though, most people said hello or gave a cursory nod; exceptional for London but not so much for Elephant and Castle, my two weeks in the Duke of Clarence had taught me that. A gentle reminder of humanity amongst the coldness of the winter city: we are all still people underneath our layers.

Hellingly and the Return of the Wandering Blogger

2009-11-01T22:46:00.006Z

It's been a while due to a lack of reliable internet connection so here's a little filling in the blanks:

Rob gave me an awesome birthday present, he drove me to Hellingly Hospital in the middle of the night so that we could catch the morning light and photograph the place before they knocked it down. It was pretty trashed, if it weren't for the long corridoors crammed with tiny, identical rooms and a few remaining flipchart notes you could be forgiven for not realising it used to be a psychiatric hospital.

So there was me dressed in a smart silk blouse in case we got caught and Rob dressed in camo with a bandanna keeping his dreads out of his eyes so we didn't. I'm not sure who was taking who on day release. We spent twenty minutes tiptoeing through the woods, running away from our own footsteps and crawling commando-style through bushes before we got in; all part of the fun and what a sight met us when we finally did. The beauty of the decay and the all-encompassing silence inside was awe-inspiring, punctuated only by aching floorboards and cracked paint underfoot.

The novel touches such as the hair salon brought a little gentle humanity to what could have been a bleak experience but to me, just to see such places and document them is enough, to literally bring a little humanity into somewhere that history would rather we forget. Anyway, it is because we are meant to forget that it is imperative that we remember.

Fast Food Slowed Down

2009-08-01T04:10:00.002+01:00

"Urgh what are you photographing that for?"
"Its my job."
"You don't have a job."

King's Cross Dead Space and an Anarchist Fair

2009-07-29T16:34:00.006+01:00

Walking through the industrial estates, I dodge behind a fence to inspect an orphaned office chair. Emerging back out into the rain a man shouts at me to cheer up. I smile to myself and walk over. No skin off my nose, I've nowhere to be. He offers me some cider and I politely decline as I roll a cigarette. He presumes I'm a student but no, I'm on the dole just like him. We talk about his family, he needs to get off soon because his parents are having a domestic but he lingers for another ten minutes, asking me about my sex life. Not in a predatory way, he's just curious. I dodge his questions like a politician but it is clear that he can't figure me out for the life of him, not that there's much to get. I ask to take his photo and he says no, an air of suspicion in his voice but says that I can if I bump into him again some time. He needs to go but advises me to turn back the way I came, something about how there's nothing up there and I shouldn't go through the council estate. I stop for a minute, savouring the last few drags on my fag and meditating on the conversation before totally ignoring his advice.

Wandering Through the City

2009-07-27T20:15:00.003+01:00

Dead Flag Blues

2009-07-23T21:20:00.005+01:00

Some photos from Rob's sculpture and performance.

I love hiding behind a camera.

Urban Exploration and the Politics of Urban Spaces

2009-07-01T21:15:00.005+01:00

We are surrounded by empty buildings, the result of time moving by while bricks and mortar stand still, slowly decaying and returning to the ground. The memories of past social policy and architectural ventures left to rot without attention being paid to what we can learn from their histories or derive from their current state.

Every pavement, every brick, every hedgerow is owned by somebody: symptomatic of a society so heavily governed by economics. It is strange to think that everywhere we tread is in some sense private property. Everywhere we go, there is somebody who will have an excuse for moving us on.

The urban exploration movement grew out of many things: a desire to look into the past, to see what nobody else wishes to see, the love of adrenaline. Popular explores include cranes, Victorian asylums, cinemas and old industrial sites. It is a pursuit that is open to everyone yet quite secretive and closed in certain quarters. Little is needed in order to partake in it: a camera, a disregard for the exact letter of the law and a little common sense. When taken to another level then suddenly the expertise needed to traverse razor wire or the climbing equipment needed to scramble up cooling towers comes into play.

Despite how it may seem, there are rules governing this outwardly lawless-seeming activity, as the motto, "take only photographs, leave only footprints" suggests. Urban Explorers have been known to call the fire brigade upon discovering that the arsonists have recently been at work.

It can be easy to pigeonhole such an activity with things like graffiti but this is to do it a disservice. There is the same adrenaline rush and loose use of the term, "art for art's sake" but it addresses the question of ownership from a different angle. Whereas graffiti artists claim back shared urban space with the use of their tag, urban exploration serves to question the purpose of public space that has fallen out of use as well as the weight we place on history. It shares similarities with squatting but carries none of the connotations of direct action and approaches the question of re-use with a much lighter touch.

Urban Exploration joins its place amongst the many activities that have sprung up as urban past-times. Skateboarding, parkour; easily seen merely as sport, subversive activites or merely ways to kill time. When examined as a whole, what springs up instead is a discourse about how people interact with urban space: an environment which is evolutionarily alien, at times oppressive, at times a playground. Cities are built around the idea that one can engineer movement, and in course the very act of living. Circuits of resistence and circumvention are only to be expected, urgently necessary some might say.

A counterbalance is required in order to keep things in check. A fast-paced and pre-mapped route through life is provided as a blueprint for all: childhood, school, adolescense, further education, work, retirement, old age, death. Outside of holidays and weekends, where is the space for just being alive? There is always an undercurrent of thought suggesting that there must be more to life than this. For some this grows into charity work, graffiti, anarchistic direct action, terrorism. Something to throw an echo back at the enforced ethos of life. Subversion, through gentle examination or direct action is what keeps some people sane in an insane world while driving others to distraction. Something to inject a little colour into the proceedings.

Prime Minister's Question Time

2009-06-03T22:31:00.004+01:00

It is the same story every week: the two main parties talk at cross-purposes and Nick Clegg is heckled whenever he stands up. Cameron asks only about resignations and elections, Brown talks only about numbers and Government policy. Each accuse the other of being an unfit leader on the grounds that they will not respond to each other's comments. Brown has no control over his party, Cameron has no policy direction. Labour MPs stand up and wax lyrical about the great government initiatives in their constituency as if they are throwing scraps of meat in a show of solidarity, Conservative MPs stand up and ask about elections, parroting the words of their leader.

Nobody on either side of the house mentioned the expenses scandal until it was clear that everyone was embroiled. Nobody dared to take the moral high ground.

The only serious question that has been raised in the last month was William Hague on the Ghurkas.

British politics is currently uninspiring at best. It is not the expenses scandal that has particularly shaken my trust in the political system though, it is instead the realisation that even the House of Commons is treated as a forum for a shallow PR exercise.