ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [20 January 2010]

at last !  we get to achieve something we wanted to do.  five paintings into an empty shop.  a simple objective on paper.  in reality a lot harder than i would have imagined.  chris has worked really hard and it's a credit to her that this first realisation of an intention to display work in an empty shop has happened.

and i have to say that i feel alice keel's work is spot on for our first realisation.

the documentation of the work in situ is challenging because of the nature of the behind glass ness of the process.  for me the documentation allows for playful intervention with the surrounding environment.

i'm also getting to play with maintaining a website.  i foresee the site evolving as a piece of work in itself.  we've gone it alone in terms of web creation, using a host package to make and upload the pages.

we have a facebook page also.  if you have a facebook account please add us as a friend so you can keep up to date with our event intentions.  both the website and facebook now have the first pictures of alice kell's work in the cornmarket in derby.

# 2 [23 January 2010]

i've been into the city centre again today to look at the shop and take some pictures of viewers of the work.  i noticed the faster walking pace and less looking, even though there were considerably more people in the city centre today compared with last tuesday.

working within this collaborative partnership is starting to have personal benefits.  playing with designing the website has got me considering a site for my own practice.

through being involved in the collaboration, i'm beginning to realise that my documentation practice has a place again too.

# 3 [5 February 2010]

i've responded to an invitation to express interest in a documentation commision.  it's making sense to me to run a documentation practice parrallel to my studio practice. 

balance being all important to me.

# 4 [5 March 2010]

didn't get the documenatation post.  good feedback as to why. 

web 2.0=something i don't get.  time to challenge myself to make it work for me.

# 5 [7 May 2010]

session two, abandoned projects project.  ten people present.

at the end...lots of smiles and feedback of enjoyment and inspiration.

i think you're onto something chris.xx

# 6 [15 June 2010]

at 14:44 on the fifteenth of june i sat down to write something.  as i began to compose what i wrote, i realised i'd not composed what i was going to write, other than to know that i wanted to communicate something about the on going work with corridor hyphen arts dot org dot uk.

it was in my intention to write something purtaining to the imminent development of the work that was so far corridor hyphen arts dot org dot uk.

as my lap became warm, while i thought about what i intended to write, into my consciuos mind came the notion that i needed to do more work on the idea that was to develop corridor hyphen arts dot org dot uk.

at 14:49 an ill feeling of ill prepared ness ness came to me.  go! think! what is it that you will do with corridor hyphen arts dot org dot uk ?

# 7 [9 July 2010]

the website has had a redesign.  it's larey and individual and some say has an attitutude of it's own.

on the doing front, we continue to explore and develop chris' abandoned projects ideal.  the ideal being the project forms a time and space to pick up projects that have been started and left for whatever reason.  mailout magazine have shown interest in chris publishing an article about the project.  we're starting to plan a summer camp.  at this stage it's small and experimental while we consider what it can be.

this project is something we're driving ourselves and starting to extend our thinking to possible funding streams.

there is of course a stream near to where the summer camp will take place.  any comments, suggestions & please please tell me when it is please type questions can be sent to us via our facebook page or the website contact page.

# 8 [13 July 2010]

i read somewhere that green is an agressive colour.  i like it.  i like it because i have been exposed to way to much blue.  way too much blue in my past work.  blue was the colour that always got used to light events where groups of people were gathered together to be communicated too.  the design aspect of lighting became almost redundant as there was a formula that was stuck to.  i never really understood why.  i always longed to see other colours.  the only time i did get excited about blue was when i lit an event for a refrigerator manufacturer.  every single fixture in the room had a piece of blue gel in it.  it's amazing how many shades of blue there are when you really need to find them.  my favourite blue was rosco 661.  it had a presence that no other blue had.

so when i came to redesign the colour for the corridor site, i wanted to use green, lots of green. i did use it. and to begin with i was happy with it.  there was something that i felt uneasy about, didn't know what it was.  i started a blogger blog for corridor.  i picked a theme for it.  over the weekend i looked at that theme again.  it had an open feeling.  i looked at what i'd done for the main corridor site.  it felt closed in, not good really.

as chris and i negotiate what corridor arts is, the website has become an opportunity to work out a concept, a visual concept.  it's become for me a space in which i can express something visually as well as the expected words and pictures.  my thinking is shifting.  the foundations of the thinking is progressing. 

the website has a 2d quality about it.  a 3d quality about it as i think of it as a space and there's also a 4d quality to it as what it is is viewable in real time and is being developed in real time.  there is intention that is it self being intentionally considered.

corridor arts gives me the space to explore for myself in my own time.  i'm sure i've said that before.

so today i've been working on a new visual theme for the corridor site.  conceptually it has more space to roam, to explore, away from languages that i'm continually translating, much more fundamental.  conceptually it's leading somewhere that is intended to be sustainable, yet at the moment we've steered away from setting what that is.

i'm excited about finnishing it and making it live.

# 9 [14 July 2010]

hi richard, i'm delighted to read that you've put an image of mine on the a-n- students homepage.  i read the comment on this blog at a point when a piece of good news/recognition for effort was really needed.  you mentioned something about commenting on graduating from degrees uneditted to artists talking.

it was actually quite easy, i just started a blog on artists talking, just after graduating from university.  leaving university came at a bad time for me.  i'd just finished a piece of work and i was faced with the upheavel of not having any regular funding and structure that went with that.  apparently i was a night mare to be around for several months.  i wasn't actually told this until recently, and frankly i was glad to hear it now as at least it means i'm not quite so much of a pain to be around.  i do remember describing the end of the degree as very cliff like, and i don't mean mitchelmore.

the big difference for me in starting an artists talking blog was the lack of common interest.  on degrees uneditted, the common interest was the student experience.  to some extext that was bigger and more imporant than the work being made.  without 'student'  being a describing word in my life, it was at first difficult to find a describing word, as describing words appear to be really important to those people outside of where students work.

i had some success as a result of my degree peice and from countless rejections i am aware of not being succesful.

space is a vital comodity. 

i write that and then struggle to follow it up.  i'm thinking that i have spent hours in discussions with people about putting things on, in spaces, as we know lots of people who make and we make oursleves.

and there lies the rub.  to get premium space to present anything made, countless words are first required.  very few people seem to take me seriously when i point out that for a sphere of people creating things to be looked at, there aren't half loads of words involved. 

blogging has been problematic for me.  the wonderful thing about a-n- is i've been able to use the blogging department for research into a line of investigation, my without intention blog has been a joy to me to see how it develops, and in the public domain.  why do i then think of the wizard from the wizard of oz?  oh because he's a little man behind a curtain and it's difficult to see what he's doing.

"graduating to Artists talking from Degrees unedited" it wasn't so much graduation as directly. this space is mine to do with it as i want to. this blog is an record of an investigation in real time, with no deadline and no group crits. this space is way bigger than 'degrees' so much so that it needs to be played with, to learn about, to annoy all the old farts, not that there are any here.

today i'm feeling pleased with myself as i have had a very good meeting this morning and this afternoon got the corridor hyphen arts dot org dot uk site to a point of development that i can see how far i've come with it.  i see artists talking as a legacy device. 

at the beginning of a practice session, no one really takes much attention to what's happening.  there's settings to get right, course familarisation and last year's data to consider. the early pracice sessions are free. the can be fun, tryng out things because you want to. a fan of motogp will get that.

at the beginning of practice of using artists talking, i would draw on the language of motogp, get out there, try stuff with no fear of falling or not getting to the end of the lap. if you want make something you will do.  artists talking is a space to create in.  find a set up that works and give it a few laps to see how well it works.

# 10 [13 August 2010]

good work today.

can't talk right now, curry and beer.

more soon.xxxx