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I finished painting the designs on the wall, and started to attach black or grey cable in straight lines on the ordered wall. Some of them go round the door reveals and then start to behave in a less ordered fashion. I spent a coffee break wondering a) whether to paint more designs to the left of the door, which is blank at the moment, or on the right of the door to fill in spaces, so the designs might seem to go through the floor or ceiling, and b) whether to let the lines of cables relate in any way to the designs or not. Then I worked out a timeline, and with 4 working days left, more painting is not realistic, though I would like to do it. As far as the cables go, a halfway position seems best; if they relate too strongly to the painted designs, that will imply that the designs are more realistic than they are, on the other hand, because this is ‘ordered’ world, they cannot completely ignore the designs. In one of the photos you can see that the door leads into a darkened space; this is my creative chaos room. It is quite hard to work here as the windows are boarded up, and the only light comes through the door.


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My partner, Chris, found a photo of some metal objects which I assume represents some of the products which used to be made in the factory. I took acrylic paint (white and Paynes grey) with me, and painted larger, simplified versions on to a wall in the ‘ordered’ room. I made use of the raised overlap in the metal wall to form part of the central line of one of the objects, in the hope that it would give a subtle 3D effect.

I worked in the creative chaos room some more. There are a few rawl plugs in the wall. I have pushed the ends of short pieces of cable into them, working in a very opportunistic way.

Although I find it exhilarating, in some ways it is also quite disturbing for me to see electric cable covering the wall in this free-flowing way – since I used to work as a joiner on building sites, and am accustomed to seeing such cables pinned to the wall in a more rational way, before the plasterers cover them up. I have started to glue fragments of cable to the wall in radiating shapes.

The door is the place of transition from one set of rules to another, so I am trying to reflect that in the way the door surround is treated.


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I assessed my experimental work on the wall. I am reminded of something Andy Goldsworthy said in his video. He was making a new stone dome on the beach everyday, as it kept collapsing. He said that for each project he had to learn the qualities of the material. I am having to do that with the plastic wire coating. I took off all the longest and thickest pieces and sliced them in half lengthways, and replaced them. This makes for thinned pieces which will glue to the metal wall more successfully. It also gives me more lengths which is useful.

I have started to glue smaller pieces of plastic to the wall, and tucked the two ends of other pieces into the same cable clip to make loops and circles. The design is developing in an incremental fashion, responding to work already done and the shape of the remaining space. My artist’s books are very considered, with lots of planning, research and revision. It feels very liberating to work in an unplanned way. In this process and in the found nature of the materials it is more like a piece of Outsider Art eg the Watts Towers, Facteur Cheval’s Le Palais Idéal or more recently, Nek Chand’s Rock Garden of Chandigarh.

It is very exhausting gluing plastic cable above my head. I am tying it in rough place with string or fixing with blu tac, and after stepping back to judge the design, and rearranging if I am not satisfied, I draw a pencil line. I put glue along the line leaving gaps every 15 cm or so, which is for blutac, to hold it in place while the glue sets. The next day I can remove the blutac and there is a useful little gap left, which I can slip other pieces of plastic under. I have started to make the installation 3 dimensional, with loops of plastic curving away from the wall.


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I put up some of the notices found in other parts of the mill. Very laudable warnings and injunctions! I am impressed, but for the purposes of this installation, I am going to take the piss. On the ordered side, mistakes will be labelled and deviations from the drawing will be okayed by C Stamp mgr. and perhaps other errors in the current world system will be flagged up. Maybe there will be a surveillance room this side, (in a little niche which I have placed test pieces in) using the notice about irreplaceable eyes. I think I have one doll’s eye to use. Maybe the other eye will not be functional any more. There is a little bag I found on site which looks as if it will hold glass eyes, for workers who did not heed the warning.

On the other side I will have to think up some comparable new injunctions eg ‘No circuit may be closed’, and I will probably disobey them.

I started on a non metal wall, so I can hammer cable clips into it. I rearranged some of the test designs, which were made from long coils of wire. The design is loosely inspired by a picture I saw long ago in a newspaper of the tracks of particles when an atom explodes – I think. Creative chaos.


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I brought out everything I could think of for wallpapering the metal walls. I brought the paste ready-mixed in a bucket as the only water available is from a turbulent River Lune.

I have decided to have one room for the creative chaos and another for the logical ordered systems – so that is even more metal wall to paper.

The perfectly imagined project is already unravelling. I imagined using some cables which are 3 cm thick, mostly on the floor, but briefly going up the wall and round the door. I cannot fix to the floor, because of agreement with owners, and the cables are no longer straight, due to previous use in situ and then being pulled off and stanley-knifed open, so getting them to lie where I want, will not work. They are also too heavy to glue to the metal wall. So I have left that out of my imaginings.

I am the only person on site today, so I locked myself in the mill, rather than leaving a distant door flapping in the wind, and open to intruders. There are usually scary noises from time to time, but I was scared to death when I heard a drill start up on the outside of the wall next to me. I thought someone was trying to take down a boarded up window and steal more stuff from inside the mill. Attack is the best method of defence, I thought, so I screamed at the intruder, ‘What do you think you are doing? Go away.’ He came up with a good excuse that he was from the security firm, hired by the previous owners and was taking his advert away. I had to eat lunch early to boost my sugar levels after the shock.


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