It has been a while since I last posted on here. This is because I have moved to a larger and grander living arrangement where one half of a open plan space exists alongside another, one side being my studio, the other my living space:
Bounce and haul-ass
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Sitting on the bright orange plush sofa in my open plan loft apartment I relax, having just listened to a rendition of some other song or other on Jazz FM. I turn my head to the corner of the room looking passed the spiral staircase in front of me. There, in this corner, I see my desk. I stand up from the sofa and step back on to its cushioned surface – giving my vision more panoramic height I survey the rest of my apartment and its contents. To the left of the desk and heading back in to the centre of the space there are several pieces of cut wood ordained with oil paint and beeswax varnish. At the foot of these ‘props’ sit several counted objects of similar colours, shapes and sizes.
Two movements come to mind as I stand on my sofa in place of sitting still. One is to bounce, just once, as if a trampoline exists beneath my feet. The other is to haul-ass to the other side of the room passed the staircase to join in with the objects.
I make the first move and bounce once on the sofa. The sofa implodes beneath me and I end up on the floor of the living area behind staring at the underside of the coffee table. I then stand and begin to move awkwardly towards the stair in the centre of the room. I turn and look back at the orange sofa – it’s more like a deliberated sculpture now. Bright and ornamenting it reminds me of an office-cum-staff room I used to take breaks in, which housed a similar couch for lounging on next to the curator’s personal assistant. With her insistent typing she declined every hot cup of tea you offered her, instead you laid back and watched her send email after email and answer the phone with a flash of an arm movement – her face was painted with the colour of the monitor screen she stared at whilst speaking.
I make the second move now. I haul the sofa and my ass from one side of the apartment to the other – there it is to become a colour-way for a new set of paintings or props in the ‘studio’ area of my open plan habitation. To do this I have to take a half moon trajectory around the central staircase – reaching a quarter of the way I stop pulling, take a peek down the steel steps, half moon around the orange mess itself, and push for the rest of the journey. One half moon tipped with a tangent of another, slightly smaller half moon. After hauling my ass, the sofa transforms and reaches another possibility in its existence.
I bounce, and then I haul ass. I break and then I drag the breakage from one context in to another, as if moving from one continent to next with the flick of a switch.
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