now.

You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.

Rupert Murdoch woopidoo.com

been watching too much tele, and i’ve noted a tendency in the output peddled by rupert murdoch – particularly in his ‘sci-fi’ channels – towards panicky apocalyptic scenarios. obviously this has been a trend with sci-fi from the moment it began (with the bible?) but coming from murdoch there seems to be a horrible symmetry across his investments, profiteering and manipulations.

fiction – science – fiction. actuality.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/01/rupert_murdoch_-_a_portrait_of.html for more on him.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/has-rupert-murdoch-turned-into-a-climate-change-sceptic-8448688.html for a shallow look at his complex attitudes to climate change. it’s the approach he has to currency & politics & information that makes me think in terms of apocalypse…

watercolour on paper, a2, 2013

 

one i dug out of a pile in the corner of my studio

work!

pencil on paper, a5, 2013

this is a drawing of a sculpture by peter geebelen: http://petergeebelen.be/. great sculpture, i feel privileged to have visited.

a couple more images here

i got to see the work of stefaan vermuyten: .http://stefaanvermuyten.wordpress.com/ – great painting. available to see here: http://users.skynet.be/galerieEL/ come may 2013. and here: http://www.deziener.be/ very lovely galleries both.

it was necessary to see these things for real – digital versions are insufficient. though still: look – there is some amazing photography, and film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esd-MCqNW8s  a film by natalie leenders, more: http://petergeebelen.be/films/index.html.

inspiring. i am still taking it all in.

see also http://www.jodesmedt74.be/ s’cool.

ditch

Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil. The muscles of the horse are as taut as fiddle-strings, and suddenly a horse-fly alights on its croup, buzzing and stinging. The horse’s skin quivers, it waves its tail. What is the fly buzzing about? It probably doesn’t know itself. It simply has a restless nature and wants to make itself felt — “I’m alive, too, you know!” it seems to say. “Look, I know how to buzz, there’s nothing I can’t buzz about!” I’ve been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can’t remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

Anton Chekhov Quoted by Maxim Gorky in “Anton Chekhov,” On Literature.

 

charcoal on paper, a3, 2013

 

been

pencil in sketchbook, a5, 2013

i have just returned from belgium where i have spent time with wonderful people & great art. incredibly inspiring.

nude

move

oil pastel & pencil on paper, a4, 2013

a half shaved fox trotted past my window as i sat to write.

 

a tetrahedral pose from rudolf laban – taken from one of his drawings. my copy.

 

i’ve been copying laban’s drawings to understand them a little better. they are beautifully to the point, simple, and excellently fit for purpose. the portrayal of his theories in movement.

 

for workshops in movement using some of labans methods see http://www.alexandrabaybutt.co.uk/ (if in the london area).

 

putrification

Nothing has changed so little in the course of the last 5,000 years of history as the balance. At the time of the Cyclopes, in Greece and Carthage, in mighty Persia that was felled by the blows of Alexander of Macedon – – everywhere , at all times and in all spaces, the most universal and indispensable machine has been the balance. Balances are as old as weapons, and it may be that they are one and the same – – what is a balance but a sword from a battle , laid across the crest of a rock, so the victors can divide up the booty with justice?

Andrei Platonov, Happy Moscow

pencil on paper, a5, 2013

‘In alchemy, putrefaction is the same as fermentation – a substance is allowed to rot or decompose undisturbed. In some cases, the commencement of the process is facilitated with a small sample of the desired material to act as a “seed” (rather lazily taken off wikipedia)

 

and so balance can be an attempt to prevent transformation, the moving of one state to another

IAE

Maybe it’s avant-garde.

Alix Rule & David Levine on International Art English in Canopy Canopy Canopy.

 

i was contemplating addressing the sticky world of International Art English, i didn’t really want to because it’s not a world i like to enter. but i fancied being rude about it.

i have no need to say owt it’s all in this beautifully written article: http://canopycanopycanopy.com/16/international_art_english

know thine enemy.

watercolour on paper, a3, 2013

 

on a personal note, my first reaction to reading the gibberish foisted on ‘art lovers’ was out and out horror, and now i simply loath it. i’m sure there are persons gathering grand collections of this nonsense but i just can’t find it funny. it’s an elitist vernacular designed to remove active purpose from language (or is that art, or life in general…). ho hum.

manuscripts

pencil in sketchbook, a5, 2013

 

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/book-of-curiosities.html

 

see the full thing here: http://cosmos.bodley.ox.ac.uk/content.php/boc?expand=732,

 

these manuscripts fascinate. the christian ones for the directness of the drawing – there is purpose to it – the islamic for their beauty (and the drawing). i love these maps.

salt

All skin wounds are occasioned  by salt: as it rusts iron, so it rusts the tissue of the body.

Paracelsus.