Look

pelican ii

MA talking about found things

We was asked to show some things we’d found but artistically. & I’d bought a job lot of old pelican books from a charity shop so I dutifully arranged them artfully with pages open on photographs and diagrams as a loose collage of out of context illustrations to scientific texts, sociological texts, guides to engineering….

The Pelican imprint was produced by Penguin in the fifties. The aim was to bring out non fiction literature that could be accessed by people outside of the field it was representing. Cheap, beautifully designed and written to be comprehensible – without talking down to the audience, or ‘dumbing’ down. Some of the top people in their fields contributed. Pop science with a strong motivation to give access rather relying on tropes or drama…. would seem political these days – maybe radical in its politics. These days being perspective as represented by our media

They are a wonderful source of images and diagrams and lingo for the discerning collagist…

Dust hidden vim / dust choked voice

W.i.p.

There’s a solid drive in uh history – museums maybe – to find lost voices, or there was maybe it was just a fashion…. It occurs to me that twinning art – trad painting and the like – with artefact – objects and arts more ancient, maybe showing how empires grew and fell, observed each other and went to war; these were the societies that damned all else to oblivion.

pelican edit

I wrote a fairly long blog post yesterday – some days ago now – due to internet problems none of it saved.

uhm — frustrating

at the MA we had visitors – members of the course when it first began. we talked about things found. since then there’s been another session – we discussed what professionalism means for an artist.

Messing

I’m playing with some new tech – difficult to see how good it is

earning freedoms

there’s a phrase bothering me – I’ve tracked it to an Elvis Costello lyric & can’t find any further sources for it: ‘unearned freedom from dread’. For a time it appealed to me maybe it described a refusal of a fulsome experience, experience that held all elements active – the things in life that are hard as well as the more convenient truths – maybe it described unacknowledged privilege. Maybe Costello took a notion of dread off the Rastas, but he brought with it his own arrogant glibness…

Pull the phrase apart and it disintegrates.

Earned or unearned have dubious inflexibility, and freedom….

Freedom holds so many possibilities with so many barriers – once you start trying to define it – context has a pressing importance

normal service

then and again all these people putting out art asking no ones permission just inflicting it out on to the great british public with no thought as to whether it’s wanted or whether it’s even something people could recognise as something anyone wanted – where to put it? what was needed – and what was provided – was a legion of taste makers, desk jockeys and financial wizards ready to make sense of it all and give the people what we need – carving out little crevasses in consumerism and grand schemes amongst the battling glass towers of high capitalism so artists become rock n roll stars, artists can afford homes and families, and artists can contribute to the vision of the greatest britain amongst the supermarkets and the tele programmes and kinky sex food and plastic and the suburbs and the shiny spires; just like ballard pointed at

I have the technology – normal service is restored…..

which freedoms were not earnt

continuing difficulties

yknow not right now anyway – not many opportunities about you know? not like when we could squat places or the local council would support artists by giving a lend of space – I knew a group who could count on a good useful space plus the occasional forty quid to spend on vino for their openings off the council, not much chance of that happening – even if you are proficient with the requisite jargon for sweet talking money for art; the romance language of bureaucracy, that group you know – that group did amazing things in that space truly a privilege to have been an audience to them shame there isn’t more about of their like – as much because – & perhaps I’ve a pretty basic misunderstanding of the world of art by finding this quite so appealing; they used to like to have fun – liked their audiences to have fun, felt it was an intrinsic element to the whole uh shebang like I say this is rarely a consideration, it’s hard to sell with jargon and twists up hierarchies which y’know is a common or garden no-no – you might get away with some heavily posed hedonism maybe a smattering of bon viveur, a grand statement praps, but that comes with the heavy hand of meaningful curation or maybe people making speeches – giving meaning to stuff – and meaning is great relief to the abnormal swelling of the

some technical difficulties

my technology melted down

normal service will return this week. I dislike how much I’m dependent on these things. There are better ways to see this work after all – in the flesh is best – getting exhibiting space would be a fine thing, not going to happen though, not in c