ARTISTS TALKING

# 110 [17 March 2010]

Correspondences


My Companion emailed Mr Bown this morning to confirm our intended filming appointment on Saturday. She was nervous as she explained that it is often at this last minute when the event is upon them that her victims scream and run. Happily Mr Bown seemed delighted and even offered us a Scampi supper, a special at the bingo hall this week. I have only to clean my tape heads and collect an extra camera and I will be all set. I am writing from a cafe in Felixstowe where five other correspondents are taking my attention this morning. Andrew Bracey & Dave Griffiths, Anneka French, Rob Smith, and Dr Daniel Hinchcliffe. I enclose my replies below.

"Hi you two
Indeed I am emailing from sunny felixstowe today. I think the first two weeks in august would be perfect for me. I don't think i am back at work until around the 26th but it's all quite flexible at that time of year anyway. The show looks exciting and I'm really happy about showing on both sites. I'm currently in discussion with a friend about arranging a live online broadcast during the residency which may or may not work. We shall see. The longer run is fine too though I have a solo down this end which I think will overlap so I will have to make sure I have enough tvs etc to go round. But as you say I think we will be able to pick loads up for next to nothing from charity shops etc. I'm ready for Lincoln I think though I discovered yesterday half my images don't show up on a pc. Good job I checked. AJ's tatooing equipment sounds terrifying. Has he read Kafka's 'the penal colony'???? I hope not.
See you soon

Alex "

"Hi Anneka

I will certainly write something, when is the deadline?

I've attached the highest res image I have, hope it's ok, I haven't got the original back yet so I can't re photograph it in time. Please use it if you want.

I'll be perfectly happy to post it to you, the most it will need is a bit of re-bending when it arrives. I will write instructions for this eventuality.

All the best

Alex"

"Hi Rob
I shall get out on my bike and find a field with 3g. In that sense Manchester might be easier depending how far you are willing to stretch the definition of 'a field'. But that is another thing. What I have been thinking about recently (entirely in the back of my mind and without any concrete planning) is making some work in the vein of the early rocket tests for space exploration. I thought about documenting my efforts to fire a camera into the air and get some short lived live footage from the rocket itself. It's all going to be entirely homemade so it probably won't work. Do think this would fit in? Is it a problem if your dongle explodes?
I'm busy this Thursday but after that I think I'm pretty free.

All the best

Alex"

"Hi Dan
How are you and everyone? Time has flown by, I only realised last week that the show must be over. How did it go? Did the rowing team destroy it with a drunken conga? I was wondering what your thoughts were about me getting the work back? I have been asked to show one of the works (which I left in the packaging) in Lincoln in April. Do you think you could parcel it up and post it to me. I'm not at all worried about the sculptures getting broken. Or would you rather I came up on the train?
All the best
Alex"

# 109 [15 March 2010]

Did Alexander the Great find it a difficult combination, discussing philosophy with Aristotle and charging at the head of the Hetairoi into a phalanx of spearmen? I certainly have found it problematic trying to edit a phd while watching the rugby. Although I do believe there are some connections between Lacanian structures and the makeup of the rugby team. While I consider this I am developing new methods for preventing the ingress of cigarette smoke. Soon my lodgings may resemble Andy Warhol's factory or Mel Gibson's house in a film the title of which I forget.

# 108 [15 March 2010]

Poison!

"St George's Day is on the 24th April ('our May 6th'), and the night before is, by tradition, a Witches' Sabbat." (Quoted from Bram Stoker's working papers for 'Dracula')

Contentment is a fugacious state in Saint George's street. New lodgers have moved in to the ground floor apartments. This has proved a rude awakening for my companion and I. We have become acustomed to noise (as any regular reader on these journals will know) but these new neighbours are vociferous exponents of the art of smoking and we find ourselves in a fug.

# 107 [15 March 2010]

The process of making images of the diminishing spaceman has thrown up an interesting distraction. Before I blow and brush the surplus gold dust away, the disapointing man is hidden behind a sort of cosmic cloud, a precious spillage far more beautiful than he. Once revealed he seems lost. The spaceman, removed from the context of his tumbling fall, is merely a dumb arrangement of golden motes.

# 106 [15 March 2010]

To say that I was saddened to hear of the death of Actor Corey Haim would be a slight exaggeration. To be brutally honest I cannot recall which one of the "Lost Boys" he played. Discovering however that he died at an age which is irrefutably less than mine.

In the studio I am currently working on a series of drawings of an ever diminishing spaceman. By "studio" I mean on the floor of my flat. I am again preparing boards with black paint, a process which involves painting, smoothing, swearing and defending the pristine paintwork from a cat that instinctively knows that black surfaces are the warmest. The next stage will involve the delicate application of gold powder to a varnish painted drawing. I have no illusions that this will be in any way successful. A rather more likely result is that I will be left with a finely gilded feline ornament much like Des Esseintes' tortoise.

# 105 [10 March 2010]

Tuesday, 9 March 2010

My efforts today have centred on preparations for a trip to Lincoln where I will be delivering a talk to students of the university. I have one ready but can never leave it alone. I add and remove images constantly mainly in the hope of finding a good way to end it. In "Swimming to Cambodia" Spalding Gray describes a time when he could not leave home without hearing a positive word on the radio. Often these signals would be ridiculously out of context. He would hear something like: "the death rate is 'up'" and he could go out.

Here follows another list of searches that have washed up on my blog. Often it is easy to see what people seem to be looking for. Other searches however appear to be the vague pilgrimages of the bored. I myself (like many others I am sure) am guilty of typing in my own name hoping, I think, to find something new or unexpected.

San Antonio Texas, "slow shrink man"

New South Wales, Australia, "God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the"

Waterloo, Ontario, " recurring image have we seen at least 3 times in the pearl"

London, "Malcolm Quinn"

Windsor Board of Education, Ontario "Monte Cristo pearls"

Ever behind the times, I was sad to discover that Spalding Gray committed suicide in 2004.

# 104 [10 March 2010]

Monday, 8 March 2010

More or less

My sideburns have been trimmed, the grey and brown cuttings held, like a Victorian keepsake, in an inlaid wooden box. I had not made a decision to cut them nor was I wholeheartedly set on the path of continuing to grow them until I reached Whitstable. I was, I admit, beginning to appear much like a Dickensian character, a look that was beginning to attract curious looks in the street. Not that this was worrying me overmuch in a town where many people are positively mediaeval in their demeanor. Nevertheless in an act of characteristic certainty my companion took matters into her own hands and I have been shorn. Now I am myself certain of my path. I intend to sculpt my sideburns into near perfect replicas of Mr Cushing's. I have only to decide which incarnation of Van Helsing to emulate.

# 103 [8 March 2010]

Saturday, 6 March 2010

Christopher Frayling suggests that the key to Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' may be the scene where Harker is beset by three vampire ladies. He thinks a similar traumatic event may have happened at the story's genesis when Stoker whiled away time with Byron, Pollidori and the Shelleys in Switzerland. I too was wasting time in London yesterday, waiting for my companion while she underwent a gruelling phd tutorial with Mark Fairnington, Nichola Foster and Malcolm Quinn, a fearsome threesome. I decided to visit Mark Aerial Waller's video installation at Cell Project Space. As I entered I saw the crouching Mr Waller being beset himself. This time the aggressors were three topless furies. Well, I assumed they were furies, so awful was their acting that there was not one jot of fury about them. Still, this seemed to be the point. I did enjoy Mr Waller's low crotched fencing suit and a simple trick with the mirror filter.

I am presently engaged in looking for new lodgings that will accept one neurotic, but well behaved cat. I have offered to shave her as illustrated.

# 102 [8 March 2010]

Thursday, 4 March 2010

Yearnings

My neighbour seems to be in pain. Intermittent and weakening wails can be heard through the wall. I hope he will become quiet soon. While I wait I have begun making a list of people who visit my blog by accident. Information is inconsistent but I have been able to ascertain the location and search criteria of visitors using search engines. The following is a selected list from the last month of those that were not looking for me. They are listed by place, server name if available, and the search made in inverted commas

Little Rock, Arkansas, dept of veteran affairs. "flashing in public"

Royal Tunbridge Wells, "bingo hall whitstable"

Slough, "Monika Bobinska"

Jakarta, Pearl Gardens Apartments, "My Vision of the future"

The Art Institute International, Pittsburgh, "blender blogspot"

Vienna, "shrinking man drawn to toilette"

Pearlfisher, London, "pearlfisher moving card"

Hamilton, Ontario, "devils coat"

Hammondsport, NewYork, "vampire whore"

Sydney, Australia, "Rachel Goodyear biography"

Kompachy, Slovakia, "interview with a vampire"

Brooklyn, NewYork, "mummified girl looks like she is sleeping"

Apo, Armed Forces Europ, United States
(No record of google search)

Gravesend, Kent, "Monika Bobinska"

Wolverhampton City Council, "Anneka French"

Ho Chi Min City, "college new students"

# 101 [1 March 2010]

Saturday, 27 February 2010The Caul Harry Caul spies on people, making a living from listening in. He is the best bugger on the west coast. He is paranoid, secretive and wears a dirty translucent rain mac. He hears but he can't always see and that leads to confusion. While we were watching Harry overhearing a murder in the adjacent hotel room my felonius neighbour was banging on his front door yelling "I kill you, I kill you". It soon went quiet. A 'caul' is a bit of amniotic sac that is sometimes present on a newborn baby. It is rare though, roughly one in a thousand people are born wearing a caul. Amongst the superstitious it is seen as lucky, as a protective charm against drowning and as a sign of greatness and clairvoyance. But in eastern Europe, backward peoples believe that a caul bearing child will become a vampire. I was born with a caul.