ARTISTS TALKING

# 142 [13 May 2010]

Black thoughts

I am still abed. My neck aches and I cannot be fussed with getting dressed. But I must. There are rockets awaiting assembly at my studio for a launch this afternoon and the following two days. I need the mental emetic coffee to exorcise this lethargic mood but I cannot bear it without milk and I am without milk.

# 141 [13 May 2010]

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Vampires!

Received Today at 1305

"Hellish morning trying to find dog cemetery horrible man grabbing me by the waist and holding onto me got my knitting needle out and said allez vous en loudly then another man came to the rescue and then persistantly asked me to go with him for a drink i am on the shitty outskirts going to get back to the centre now and never return
lots and lots of love A xxxxx"

My companion sends me messages typed on French keyboards which have no punctuation marks. This lack of grammar makes them more worrying as if blurted out in a hurry while some dark force scratches at the window. As darkness falls I am yet again reading A dear friend has given me a book which claims to be based upon Abraham Lincoln's lost diaries. It wildly suggests that whilst he was a politician he was also hiding a secret life as a vampire hunter. Really this is too much to believe.

However, am I alone when looking at our current politcal leaders in feeling a compulsion to reach for the garlic?

# 140 [12 May 2010]

Launch 1

AN almost exclusive!

For future broadcasts download your viewer here

http://www.projeckt.org.uk/fieldbroadcast/download.html

# 139 [12 May 2010]

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Peril in Paris

Another message from my companion I now truly fear for her safety! Her hotel is perilously close to the Quartier Pigalle a district of Paris with little to recommend it except that Picasso and Lautrec had studios there. This is in itself perhaps not a recommendation. Since her arrival she has been beset by men and their lascivious intentions. At the hotel she was told by a helpful concierge that no woman in Paris has breasts because all they eat is black coffee and cigarette smoke and she should take such attention as a compliment. Running from rather than following this excellent advice she went to a pawnbrokers near the hotel and bought a wedding band which she wears like a talisman.
Earlier I stumbled upon this engraving from "Varney the Vampire"

# 138 [11 May 2010]

Monday, 10 May 2010

Launch. Day 2

Oh misery piled upon misery. My companion has sent a long distressed message from Paris. She has run away even before she could meet the notable artist for reasons I cannot repeat here. Apparently she may see him tomorrow for a short time. I am sick with worry and short of getting on a horse tonight I have little recourse but to wait and hope for happier tidings. Her cat seems settled in my company which is somewhat of a blessing although I have to admit to leaving a window open and having to make a desperate dive to pull her back in (my lodgings are on the second storey and I fear even for a cat the fall would have been fatal). Even as I write, however, she mewls relentessly into my face and the 'naughty cupboard' awaits her.
Earlier today, at five to be precise, I made my second rocket launch. This time the gantry was placed on the fire escape to the rear of my flat. The broadcast went well although I felt that Mr Smith seemed a bit disappointed at the location's lack of "fieldness". I will make a third launch tomorrow, hopefully the rocket will go upwards instead of down.

Should anyone wish to see tomorrows broadcast they will find the means here

http://www.projeckt.org.uk/fieldbroadcast/download...

# 137 [10 May 2010]

Sunday, 9 May 2010

Launch. day one

Last night I dreamt of my companion but as she might have been years ago. It was a time before I knew her, she was living in the sort of bedsit squalor that many of us experienced as students. Several of us were squeezed into her basement room sitting upon a deep litter of paper, books and small dead animals. A large grey (alive) badger was reclining on her bed snuffling at some dark matter. At some stage my glasses became separated from me and were broken, trampled into the ground. Once recovered I discovered that the right hand lens had been cracked. I was aware that they were new and expensive but was not overly perturbed.

I have been looking at the Whitstable Biennale website (delighted with my own page) and was daydreaming that with all the tap dancing and invisible fireworks that perhaps artists must all be mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait waistcoats.

Dreams and reverie aside, today with my companion's assistance I made my first rocket launch for 'Field Broadcast' http://www.projeckt.org.uk/fieldbroadcast.html
Here follow some rather farcical images of my makeshift field broadcast tent and rocket gantry.

The rockets sputtered and flamed reaching a maximum height of a third of an inch. Unfortunately the broadcast itself did not work quite as well as expected producing only a short image of a stationary rocket.

# 136 [8 May 2010]

Home and Away

I am waiting for a sofa. It is to be delivered by pantechnicon between two and six this afternoon. I have started early. My companion is in a state of excitement, a condition which has manifest in lighthearted cleaning of kitchen and bathroom. It may be that the prospect of something to sit on has driven her to these extremes or it may be her recent invitation to Paris. An eminent painter has offered an all expenses paid trip with accomodation at a hotel in Montmartre. He seems gentlemanly in demeanor but I have natural fears that her virtue may be under threat. The trip has been organised to celebrate a retrospective of this gentleman's work at The Pompidou Centre. This morning, as is our habit now, we completed the Guardian quick crossword over coffee at a local café. We were surprised to find that this gentleman and his family provided answers to several of the clues.

Thursday, 6 May 2010

"She has a lovely neck"

I have just had a discussion with my companion. It seems her invitation to Paris came about because the esteemed artist mentioned in my previous post had seen a photograph exclaiming "you must bring her, she will be perfect". While she is dreaming of Paris I have been booking tickets and rooms for my own journeying. Firstly rooms at the Continental in Whitstable and secondly train tickets for a lecture I have been asked to deliver in Newcastle (under lyme). Thankfully my expenses are to be covered for this journey.

Friday, 7 May 2010

A delightful young lady, Miss Emma Leach telephoned today. I was hanging upside down modelling for some drawing students at the time so I may have sounded strained. It soon transpired that Miss Leach is working for the Whitstable Biennale and was trying to arrange a tap dancing show at the bingo hall where I made my film. My contact there, Mr Bown has moved on so I fear I was of little use. This evening seated on my new sofa I have been perusing the biennale website which has suddenly sprung to life. Events are listed, much excitement promised. The sofa was constructed in a largely good humoured team effort by my companion and I. Putting together an Ikea sofa is much like discovering the workings of a magic trick, all cardboard, staples and string.
http://www.whitstablebiennale.com

# 135 [8 May 2010]

At work, avoiding work, I am staring out of an upper storey window at the small decorative spire of St Henrietta's which lies opposite the college. The sky is cinereal, there is a light drizzle and the coffee is sour. I am glancing boredly at stories of new ash clouds which could threaten the return of my colleagues from New York. But it is unlikely. To my left is a copy of Paul Becker's False Testimony. I have read, or at least scanned (my concentration level allows no more at present), the first two pieces. The second purports to be a witness statement against an immolated witch who shares a name with my companion. Still disquieted by the power of 'Verbal', I find it uncannily affecting and worry about the pain of a death by burning.

Are witches, I wonder, usually dispatched similarly to vampires?

# 134 [5 May 2010]

Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Keyser Söze

My companion and I are on a train bound for London. We are heading to the book launch of our dear friend Paul Becker. My companion describes him as a "black bear" and has warned me that much of his output is rather pornographic. The launch tonight is for a collection called "False Testimony". In reference to last night's viewing I came across this note in an august online journal:

'In his 1999 review of Fight Club, film critic Roger Ebert commented, "A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Söze syndrome." '

My companion has a similar syndrome in her name. She always spots the final twist within the first few minutes' viewing, tells me and then loses confidence. It is a little like watching a film in reverse.

# 133 [5 May 2010]

Darkness surrounds me. I am beset on all sides by demons. Apart from this, work is going well. "Meleager's Garland" opens soon in Lincoln, though I feel due largely to a feeling of lethargic ennui I may not make the opening. Today's business has been the testing of the live broadcast software for http://www.fieldbroadcast.org/
Hopefully next week will see my attempts to launch rockets broadcast live onto desktops around the world. I am sincerely hoping I won't blow my fingers off whilst craving a bit of innocent drama. My test broadcast was much more pedestrian as I chose to film a surveillance camera that swivels menacingly in the street outside my new lodgings. So far settling into the flat is progressing at a languid pace. The purchase of a lurid rug has allowed my companion and I to 'picnic' in the living room. We still do most of our 'living' in the bedroom which is in itself larger than my old appartments at St George's street. Last night, huddled in bed, we watched a film in which a character called Verbal constructed it's entire narrative from the words on papers pinned to the wall behind his interrogator.