decoy pigeons

I thought that you might like to blog again- it's been about two years since we finished the last blog which we did for five years.  The blogs are like comments in a zoom meeting, they run alongside threads of thoughts , sometimes they require comment and at other times like robotic seals they just float.

it feels good to have the book to think about ; its like a shadow at the moment, a shadow on the x ray of the lungs of a smoker or the shadow of a figure when you are not sure where the light is coming from.  All this started with pigeons but also I think for both of us a desire to be other than what we are or were. 

When we talk about our work together it is strange as it is only really the talking and the thinking that could be seen as a form.  Unlike my work with polytechnic the work we do together does not really fit the form of critically engaged contemporary arts practice.  Below I sketch out my journey through form that ended up in building a pirate ship and fixing toilets.  I have moved to a point where the form of a work is unimportant but there is a critical attachment to what it does.  I bring this criticality to my academic work with you but not through art or objects or discourse. I bring what is required in the moment to collectively and gently ease a loose form into a practice.

Although this could be read as if the work on our projects is lesser than the other work, secondary, coming after, drawing on, or following I do not think this is true, the work is just different.  The times my forms of critically engaged contemporary arts practice emerges are moments of complication.  There are not that many  so I will list them at some point but not today.

Within the Rotherham residency I was becoming artist again after 10 years off - I was making practise and you were doing ethnography, there was no real collaboration.  You liked the stuff I made because you thought it was cleverer than it should be. I was tackling the ethnographic collection head on and journeying to the heart of darkness the work was playful but also challenging, the work challenged everybody.

Then we did Artemis and you worked with me and Kate. We went to Boston and Kate impersonated you - we wrote a messy paper that got doctored so it could be published but it was shit.

Then I got you to come and work at Gooseachre and we secretly started to collaborate - do you remember me picking you up and driving you there and giving you the full run down of creative partnerships.   I wasn't the artist on this project I was the organiser - I did not bring an art form but I did more than admin.  I think we were like researchers but not in the academy- my role was conflicted but our writing became artful.

SPARKS was chaos a proper cross disciplinary dogs dinner but I think this is what most of these projects end up being - there were flashes of sparks in the imagine project. steep learning curves and disciplinary expertise

Writing in the home and the street was different as I was commissioned as an artist again and brought the form of my art which was messy.  Working with Richard was different more open and fewer expectations.  The work in East Herringthorpe school  making films with the children was like my creative partnerships work as a practitioner - I was doing a lot of this at the time as artist in residence for weeks and years, probably in 6 schools.

We then did dividing the draws, I think this was where I ruffled the form - challenged the writing  and really tried to think of outcomes as rhizomes - nothing was produced in its own right.

Portals to the past was extra  and it recycled another project I was working on for a gallery in Nottingham.  It never felt very comfortable but in retrospect it was good - our week in a catholic school making films - film making with young people is always on the edge I never see it as my practice unless its for projection.  The project used things I had made that I saw as my practice but they were repurposed - I had made the portals as a response to schools in Nottingham that were built by aircraft companies that used to make spitfires in the post war years. They were my secret practise of finding connections that were felt and aesthetic and linked to form in the way of how artists try to indirectly flow with a refrain of form.  I did this quite a lot and do it without any intention.  I thought everybody did but I wonder now how many of us do. Its not an artist thing but it is a thing.  I was concerned that this was lost when they got reused - not that anyone noticed it in the first place- perhaps the kids in the school felt it.

Language as Talisman  was like going backwards I was written in as a filmmaker to get funding and although this seemed like the only way to write me in it did impact on things.  There were other artists on this project like Cassie who worked in a familiar and sedimented way and everyone seemed happy with this. There is a laziness to cross disciplinary work and as it gets conflated with widening participation it becomes sloppy art and sloppy research. You like this project and you like working with poets you like having a resistant form to push against.  In the end though as an ethnographer you like to have anything to watch.  I respect this and learn from it.

Artists studio legacy project- I became a Co-eye then it seems to all fall away as the world of artistic research proper descends on us - we are not sure what we are doing but we are certainly doing it badly.

Then making representation differently and more falling from grace. Some gradual descent where I can't remember why it was so hard - men not listening is probably the problem though - an old one.

The DCLG housing one was nice - I felt respected and felt like I was liked - this was most like a residency in some ways I was the incidental person- nobody cared about the films - I leanrt a lot about localism and planning and we had trips and snacks.

Taking yourself seriously I think I went walkabout and built a pirate ship- it was the right thing to do.  We were trying to build something like we had had on earlier projects but somehow couldn't manage it.  I think you did build new reltionships in your school work and it was good I stepped out of that truama.

I think fishing was the best of it Johan is the kind of mind you need on these projects thoughts that are like glue that holds us together. Keri is a bit like this yet she doesn't suffer fools so sometimes she sinks the ships that are full of them.

I can't really talk about Imagine but it is running through all of this in the background- A five year residency that is underpinning my PhD. I cannot talk in detail about it as someone may take legal action against me in the libel courts.   But I think I managed to be the incidental person and looking back I am proud of my contribution.

Odd is still fresh and feels different - Have I forgotten any ?