Lost and Found in E17

Field Study's Man in E17 is on the trail of the flesh eating ghosts of Wood Street

2012-02-24T21:12:00.003Z

I hadn't expected it to take me so long to recover from that tall tale spin although it would not be wholly unreasonable to say it was a truly dire plummet into the shallows of my psycho-terrain; so much so it was a near dearth experience. Boom boom bump bump.

Recently I have been grounded behind the Turnaround internet scenes slavishly applying my two typing fingers to the service of art and communality. A walk is a fine antidote to the sometimes stupor inducing effects of this seemingly unrelenting digital tap dance upon my laptop keyboard. It was consternation I felt (perhaps a contradiction in terms) when I realised the consequences of losing a dot and the letter l from an important email address; a mistake I had replicated far too many times. I overcame the paralysis and took my dismay for a walk along and around Wood Street in the hope my spirits would revive. Something was afoot and if it was not my spirits being revived then may be other spirits were.

At least this is what I think happened. I have just started reading John Wyndham, The Seeds of Time and so I may have been in a chronoclasmic state. Incidentally, I found 'The Seeds of Time' in one of the second hand book stalls in Wood Street Indoor Market; my purchase of the book being another personal contribution to the Wood St effort.

While various other websites and blogs (I am involved in) are for serious and sensible contributions to the community, Lost and Found in E17 errs more towards the spurious, fatuous and ridiculous. This is not to say LaFiE17 cannot accommodate some sensibleness e.g. the question, what has Wood St got to offer? A sensible question is unlikely to find an equally sensible answer in Lost and Found in E17.

I found myself at the plaza on Wood Street. In my chronoclasmic state I wondered if this is, in fact and/or fiction, a burial ground. Are those seats sarcophagi, there in a weirdly blank, grey and vacant vista overlooked by trees paradoxically amputated by the partial adornment of lights? Who or what is buried in the sheer cut and polished dolmen? Digging up the roots of the word, 'sarcophagus', does not bring much in the way of reassurance and comfort; from the Greek, sarkophagus 'flesh consuming', sark- flesh, -phagos '-eating'. Cold comfort!

I broke into a cold sweat when I realised my brash artyological psycho-exhumations had stirred the consciousness of a dark chthonic entity; a chilling subterranean glow at my feet gave me cause to whimper pathetically. What is this place? Traces of other visitors were all around in the form of excretions and secretions of various bodily fluids. It was then I lost myself (I think) to a moment of sheer terror as it occurred to me what I had assumed to be paint splats defacing some of the surrounding shop fronts were, in my mind, the splats of liquefied flesh.

I have some reason and much more unreason to believe the image below represents all that is left of a visitor to Wood Street Plaza. You may rationalise and say this is all that a visitor left but that is just the splitting of a semantic hair.

Below, is that all that is left of another visitor to one of Wood Street's sites of renewal? Were - are - flesh eating ghosts afoot in Wood Street?

As I hurriedly left the plaza I passed close to one of the illuminated trees. I could not believe it. If you think you are looking at a photograph of a tree partially dressed with light bulbs then you are mistaken. Those spots of light are genetically modified glow in the dark fungal spores devouring the tree. It may look pretty but it really isn't.

This place wants to eat me!

What a disaster. My walks are supposed to be reviving constitutionals and yet by the time I got home I was in a state of absolute raggedy nervousness - hardly one in which to return to the exactitude's of online curatorial responsibility. I resorted to another consolation, reading, in the hope of more success. I picked up my copy of Electric Eden (Rob Young) and dived straight into Chapter 15, Paradise Enclosed.

Strangely, the chapter begins with the analysis of the word, 'weird'. Mr Young writes, 'for all its current over-use as a signifier of oddity, the word 'weird' derives its power from ancient Germanic roots. 'Wurthis' meant 'to turn' or 'wind'; the words inherent sense of movement led to the modern German 'werden', 'to become' (literally, 'to turn into'). From 'werden', Old English derived the word 'wyrd', meaning 'destiny' or 'fate': in other words, the condition to which your becoming brings you'.

Was it my fate to be tree food and in turn to become a source of light? Is Wood Street plaza a new site for devotion to the myth of Yggdrasil ? Rob Young's enclosed Paradise recalls Utopia's various remakes in English fields, starting in the 'concentration of the latter day 'weird Albion' that is Glastonbury and more specifically, Worthy Farm's fields at Pilton - home to Glastonbury Festival.

Could Wood Street be a newly discovered site of Avalonian energies - a place, to quote Andrew Kerr ( a co founder of Glastonbury Festival), to 'stimulate the Earth's nervous system with joy, appreciation and happiness'?

It is a shame the tree of Wood Street plaza before is no longer with us - for it would have been the ideal tree around which to dance a merry dance of cosmic invigoration and celebration of the inevitable.

Lucas Cranach the Elder - The Golden Age, 1530

source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cranach_il_vecchio,_l%27et%C3%A0_dell%27oro,_1530_ca._01.JPG

Field Study's Man in E17 turns around

2012-02-16T07:46:00.001Z

TURNAROUND

Field Study's Man in E17 finds himself in a right old tale spin on Wood Street

2012-02-13T00:12:00.002Z

Waltham Forest Arts Club Pop Up Gallery

Wood St Indoor Market (photo: Julie Caves)

Waltham Forest Arts Club

Turnaround Programme (design: Julie Caves)

TURNAROUND

A while I go I saw a very old man with enormous wings. I did. I did. Ok so he wasn't a real very old man with enormous wings but rather he or it was a puppet in a play courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kneehigh Theatre and the magical Little Angel Theatre. I know the difference between suspended disbelief and reality; how sad is that? Get lost and maintain your grip on fantasy is my current dictum for the purposes of psycho well being. However I am not sure I am managing to get my five full wholesome fantasies a day and perhaps the recent infrequency of posts on Lost and Found in E17 is a symptom of this. Psycho geographer's constipation (PGC) is, some might say, a condition that is of some benefit to the well being of others - if not the host. I hope you will excuse me for letting a little go. What, for nowhere's sake, brought about this miraculous shift?

In the play, the very old winged man descends on a run down fishing village and brings, initially, the benefits of certain healing powers. All in the village are briefly well and better until various entrepreneurial opportunities are seized upon and the poor old man is incarcerated, fed on a meagre diet of potato peelings and his healing powers exploited.

So was it a winged man who cured me of PGC? No. Wood St, as one of the islands in the Archipelago, has instead been visited by a very pink bear, with ever so slightly enormous bunches of flowers, who kisses unsuspecting ladies. It is a creature with similar healing powers to that of the very old man with enormous wings. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, turned around a full 360 degrees and feasted my psycho gaze on the big pink one. With a tell tale rumble and the inklings of a tall tale I just knew I had been magically cured of my PGC.

If Marquez gave us a cautionary tale rendered in magical realist style then we must not repeat the mistakes of the villagers in feeding our magical friend potato peelings nor confine it to the whimsy above. Yes, if this bear doesn't get a balanced diet of wholesome fantasies, it's magic can create some peculiar side effects. I have not dared look at myself in the mirror since feasting my eyes upon the considerable pinkness. Look at this photographic evidence of pink bear malnutrition.

The lady there appears totally transfixed by the pink. Little does she realise some joker has just offered the pink a bowl of potato peelings. Just a few minutes later I discovered the pretty gruesome effects of malnourished pink bear magic

Is this another person afflicted by potato peeling fed pink bear magic? These faces may look pretty however closer inspection reveals some disturbing features you might wish to confine to an odd bad dream time on a cold winter's night.

Masks - Marie Louise Plum (photos: J Beere)

As a co-curator of Waltham Forest Arts Club pop up gallery I have a shared duty of care to our artists and gallery visitors. I have had cause to advise, in no uncertain terms, participating arts club members not to feed vegetable peelings to the pink bear. No scraps. We are talking about a spirit of fellowship and neighbourliness in here you know.

Oh dear. An email has just arrived in my inbox that sheds a different sort of fluorescence on the pink beary fluffiness. Field Study Art archaeologists or field artaeologists have been scraping away at the layers of Julian Beere's everyday ignorance, indifference and familiarity to expose this modernist extra mural apparition

Surely not? The email states there is studied field intelligence to indicate the pink bear is a scout for a Mayan inspired alien invasion of planet Walthamstow - and the uplit trees and cool Dan Flavinesque lights recently installed by Creatmosphere have unwittingly (?) created a guided and lit landing strip of Wood St for an alien spacecraft. Heck.

Confused? You won't be after the next post.

Field Study's Man in E17 loses himself in an upside down and back to front world only to find a snowy unicorn

2012-02-06T18:15:00.003Z

Well I had an inkling something was not quite right when I ventured out into the snow-time of E17 this afternoon. The soft, moist and slippery terrain slowed walking (and falling) time sufficiently to make it susceptible to the tricks of the season or rather, calender. Was every slip and step a groundhog moment?

An inkling became a discon-certainty when I found myself completely lost in front of an upside down and back to front clear channel advertisement at the truly very Crooked Billet roundabout. Damn that was was weird! I shook my head vigorously, several times, to dispel the foggery of this ad no man's land. Completely lost? I like to think I am not so easily duped by such attention seeking techniques. A whistle via a sharp intake of breath through the gaps of me teeth was enough to disempower the discombobulating spells of wanton seduction.

I had to reconnect with down upside front to back reality and decided a retreat to Aveling Park might suit this need; the promise of a park of sculpted snowmen - sorry, snowpeople - adding to the appeal.

Alas, twilight was setting in and innocence had departed. A maurauding hoard of lads had set about the field smashing the snow-folk to pieces. It was a gruesome spectacle to witness. One by one, our snowbally friends were mercilessly erased by means of flurries of flying kicks, punches, dives and beatings with sticks. The hoots of unbridled pleasure in the slushy carnage echoed chillingly about the field.

I set about summoning my snow thing, ever watchful of the vandals going about their grisly business. Was this a responsible thing to do, to bring a snow thing into the world and abandon it to a mob? I drew on my powers of hippy dippy fantasy and found this unicorn in the snow - distinctly knobbled and replete with 4 legs, a tail and most importantly, a horn. Would this creature charm the wickedness out of the lads or freak them out and chase them around and out of the field?

Good luck snowy Unicorn, I said as I began walking away. Two spotty specimens of laddish adolescence trotted by me towards the mythical snow creature. I turned around and expected to see a flurry of snowy unicorn pieces however to my amazement the lads had halted, circling my snowflaky friend in what might have been charmed appreciation. Alas they were but wolves circling their prey for soon they were joined by the rest of the rapacious pack.

A slobbering dog stepped in and broke the horn from the head and whooped with joy and gamboled about the field, pursued by the rest of the pack. A brief respite from the ravages of this adolescent attention was to be had - for the pack set about devouring a once fine upstanding snow figure close by. Three maidens tended to the dehorned snowy 'corn, soothing the wound, but the prowl of wolfish growls set them on their way. The last I saw of this unicorn was as a burst and whirl of snowflakes returning to the night sky.

Field Study's Man in E17 frottages reflexively

2012-02-02T09:18:00.002Z

Photographic detail from Work Book 1994

Frottage

While on a pilgrimage of sorts in 1994, I witnessed a car strike a bird. The unfortunate creature had no chance and tumbled dead to the ground close to where I walked. The bird was still warm when I picked it up, wrapped it in a tissue, put it my pocket and continued my journey.

Later I set about making a visual diary of the journey in the form of a collage to a fellow mail artist. One element of the collage is a 'frottage' - after a technique explored by the surrealist, Max Ernst. I made a photocopy of the hat I wore while making that walk and placed it on the outstretched corpse of the bird, the joints of which had all ready, just a few hours later, begun to set to rigor mortis.

Taking a scouring pad I gently rubbed at the photocopied paper to gradually reveal the skeletal remains and perhaps spirit of the little creature. I then treated the frottage with vegetable oil rubbing it firmly and sparingly into the paper. The bird brain image formed part of an attempt at a darkly comic homage.

Field Study's Man in E17 is afraid of the dark paths

2012-02-02T00:23:00.000Z

Detail of heraldic family tree - Walthamstow Central Library

Yes I may be afraid of the dark paths of Walthamstow however I have certainly been missing them while attempting to muster interest and participation in Waltham Forest Arts Club's contribution to the regeneration of Wood St Indoor Market. This task, in collaboration with several others, has seen me in the de facto confinement of online communication - sending, and responding to, numerous emails concerning the hows and whens of our Arts Club pop up gallery space that will host a series of exhibitions under the banner title, 'Turnaround'.

Here I am though making a diversion into Lost and Found in E17, to indulge myself in the literal sculpting of a pretty impressive set of piles - which, not wishing to confuse art and real life, could be cast and exhibited in that programme of shows. Well, perhaps not; there are technical challenges involved which are beyond me and there might be curatorial issues.

Recently I have been losing myself in 'Electric Eden - Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music' (Rob Young). This is a wonderfully rambling account of the folk revival of the mid to late 20th Century, revealling the myriad connections and contexts that brought the revival into being. I was fascinated by Rob Young's account of the connection between John Ireland (composer) and Arthur Machen (writer). I have not yet read anything by Arthur Machen. I became aware of him and his importance in the formation of 'psychogeography' via Merlin Coverley's introduction to the practice.

According to Rob Young, Ireland, having discovered by chance a novel by Machen, went on to be highly influenced by Machen's occult literary concoctions - replete with fairy lore, spell workings, witchcraft, the supernatural, sex magic (or magick) and, very importantly, a vivid sense of place. Machen's place is London. Ireland retreated to more pastoral locales, 'biologically' tuning into the spirit of place(s). Machen and Ireland corresponded, sharing accounts of sightings of sprites. In the quest for field studious relevance in E17 I have searched for recordings of John Ireland made at Walthamstow Assembly Hall - to unite the ghosts of the two; Machen wending his way to Freezywater, via Walthamstow Marshes (?) and Ireland providing a decorative 'Moon Glade'. Perhaps Archipelago of Truth knows of a Walthamstow/Ireland recording?

I have not yet found a recording. Perhaps tomorrow night I will venture fearfully into the E17 darkness and catch a glimpse of Machen's fairy-like ghost dancing to a long lost drifting melody by Ireland.

Gareth Rees 'Psychogeography' has a link to a review of a reissue of Arthur Machen's, The White People and other Weird Stories. Tim Cummings review takes issue with Stephen Hawkin's perception of god and faith as "fairy tales for people afraid of the dark" suggesting the tales teach us to fear the dark but not escape it. Cummings sees followers of Machen, 'walking the streets of the capital, turning the loam of their imagination over to happenstance, coincidence, illumination, inevitability - the supernatural forces of the everyday that Machen saw more clearly than most, poised to spring open like a razor at any moment'.

Rob Young's appraisal of Machen's London populated by 'beings from extreme antiquity' combined with Cummings' poised supernatural razors sets a disturbing or disturbed psychogeographic scene into which I shall walk. I'll need a musical spell to ward off the wicked fairies.

Field Study's Man in E17 loses himself in Google Maps

2012-01-23T23:17:00.001Z

I have stated I want to use various public mapping facilities to record and map public art works in Walthamstow, and further afield around Waltham Forest. I am having a go at learning how to use a few mapping tools including OpenStreet Map and Google Maps.

This post is about the technicalities of getting lost and finding out.

Here is an image of a 'Lost and Found in E17' My Map - 'Public Art in Waltham Forest'.

As I understand this facility, this map will show up if 'Public Art in Waltham Forest' is used as a search term in the Google Search Engine.

There is a useful Youtube/Google video tutorial here about the basics of creating a 'My Map'. I have followed this and I managed to accomplish most of the tasks, except adding an image to the place marker or map pin.

At about 2min15sec, the tutor begins to demonstrate how to add an image to the place marker by pasting a URL of that image into the editing facility. This means the image has to come from an on line source. You cannot, e.g. download an image from folders on or in your computer.

So I went to Lost and Found in E17's Picasa web album to select an image for one of the public art works (Shying Horse) that I have mapped. I copied the web address - seen in the top left hand corner of the (edited) screen image below.

I hoped to apply this address (below) to get that image to appear in the place mark for Shying Horse, on the Public Art in Waltham Forest map.

https://picasaweb.google.com/hiveof/LostAndFoundInE17#5695910675985029234

What happened?

You might be able to see, rather than the image of a horse appearing in the place mark box, a square with a red cross did instead. I thought I had applied the URL for the on line image of the sculpture and mosaic. I hadn't. Notice the address above does not end with 'jpg', or some other abbreviation denoting an image file. The address above is for the location of the image but not the image itself.

Where on, or in, the Picasa album can you find the actual URL (address) for the image?

Go to the required image in the Picasa album and, if you are using a PC, right click on the image.

Click on 'Properties' and the properties box should appear. Detailed in this box is the URL address of the image. In this case, the address is about half way down. Copy the whole address.....

....... in this case:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qGjYjScnPcM/TwvwlOJxWHI/AAAAAAAAEx4/FNJcHFmh9Y4/s640/PICT2937.JPG

Notice this address has a .jpg at the end. Following the video tutorial, I applied this address and managed to insert the image of Shying Horse into the place mark.

Alternatively, come here and get lost and you'll more than likely find something less pedestrian than my mapping of this here 'oss'.

Field Study's Man in E17 is on the trail of a missing unicorn horn

2012-01-22T01:01:00.003Z

Fellow field students (you noble lot you) I hoped to report on how I have been away with the Tomato Faery, and its familiars. After a bathe in the Canal of Fire, I have to admit my proven record in maintaining a firm grasp on fantasy was sorely tested. Stop pressing matters of an indoor market kind distracted me from my quest for total immersion in the realm of spurious E17 adventure. But I am back now and I am convinced I have (indeed) been away with the Tomato Faery; a sordid tale of which more will be revealed later. Thankfully the effects of the waters of the Canal of Fire are only temporary and are quite easily expunged by an ale or two or more in rapid succession.

Before divulging the details of my exploits within the mythic bounds of the great E17 faery ring, I need to take you back to a time and place much further afield but still within the annals of Field Study's Man in E17's 'adventures'.

Way back then, before my synapses were deviously manipulated by the illuminating designs of Wood St regeneration, I reported on matters of an ornamentally prurient nature. Let me transport you back there, and to my piffling concerns. Firstly, I was concerned about the photographic taking of others property, and secondly, the transgression of my 'U' - suitable for all ages - rating. Well I returned to the host venue for the magically* endowed beasts and asked if I could publish photographs of the beasts on a blog. As I understood the proprietors response, there was no problem; I could publish.

So here are some pictures of a fabulous royal coat of arms for the United Kingdom .....

Coat of Arms, The Kings Arms, Newcomen St, Borough

It is so fantastically muscular! I was informed this coat of arms was removed from a London bridge (and or thee London Bridge?) prior to the bridge's removal or destruction. Let us move swiftly on from this site of hard horn (and corn) so as to return to the more innocent, less smut hardened territory of the E17 faery ring. Of course, the smut is all in and of my mind.

Such prowess is all well and good for the worldly centre of town but out here in the third and fourth zones of 'burbia' there are matters of modesty to be maintained; a certain decorum. We don't like show offs here. You can take that cocksure dandy-ism back to the sordidly southern shores of the Thames.

Coat of Arms - Vestry Road, Walthamstow

This is a royal coat of arms that has not lapsed into degenerate spectacle. But wait a minute; while some features are dutifully missing - or rather, appropriately (fittingly even) retracted, there is one feature I was disturbed to see missing - lost. Where is the Unicorn's horn or 'alicorn'?

What has become of the magical and medicinal properties of Vestry Road's emblem of Great British unity?

A Unicorn missing a horn?

One of our alicorns is missing, perhaps lost. Has one of our local representatives pledged unwavering allegiance to the MiliCam-paign against total Scottish devolution and gone about de-horning the magical beasties of their powers?

Here's Marc Bolan to provide a gambolling ditty of a comment on the matter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcOmQzW6tQE

Read his take on the situation here - 'ridden by the born of horn/ jigged like a muse on life's lawn'.

Now here was I?

* - or 'mythically' as I preferred to say.

Field Study's Man contemplates crossing the Canal of Fire

2012-01-17T00:44:00.003Z

This morning pedalling my way to work amidst the inner voices of routine complaint I was stunned and caused to pause by the love of the morning rising over the south eastern edge of the marshes. By me, the Lea became a canal of fire, it's water such that as in dreams it might cheat the throats of men in hell. Nearby, the ghosts of chivalrous Morris and rakehellish Rosetti pranced about each other in poetically heraldic fisticuffery while Janey creaked to and fro between the trees.

Over in the Archipelago of Truth there is a discussion of Morris's love, his political credibility and the psychological and sexual implications of the ornate thickets he adorned domestic interiors with. Join me and Oliver Reed in the river (here) for a bit of Victotian (great typo - Victorian) frisson.

A less lustful and more studious interpretation of Morris's life can be found here . It is not as iconoclastic an assessment of William Morris - the man, than that made by Monty the Visitor.

(There is also a reference to Belfort Bax - uncle of Arnold Bax)

Having crossed the 'canal of fire' I discovered by that strange mercurial feat the act imbued me with the ability to converse with statues. Over lunch, I was able to discuss with Hogarth's pug, Rosetti's derivative application of Hogarth's (his master) use of symbolism and moral purpose. What a day!

(Hogarth, by Jim Mathieson. Photos: Julian Beere)

Field Study's Man in E17 was here

Field Study's Man in E17 wallows in rotten tomatoes

2012-01-15T12:59:00.001Z

I apologize to Technomist for splodging on the sidewalks of his (and the) magnificent opus that is, The Archipelago of Truth. My crass and offending poop of a comment can be found here. In future I shall refrain from attention seeking field trips into his eminently more worthy territory, and keep my thoughts to myself, strictly within the bounds of Lost and Found in E17 for the delectation of my dedicated following of Russian spam sites.

It was amiss of me to make light of suicide and to do so on another's site - supposedly hurling myself in despair (at the failure of Tesco Leyton to provide the lowest priced value chopped tomatoes) from a bridge over the A406 North Circular Road. Not funny. Haven't I got anything better to do?

Of course the misdemeanour is not my fault. I am a victim of the indoctrinating forces of Hollywood and in particular I blame the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi, for planting the seed of a rotten tomato of a joke in me. What I consider to be the offending seed is the opening scene of, The Hudsucker Proxy - a youtube clip of which can be found here - although I strongly recommend you do not click on that link; I might be deported.

It was Waring Hudsucker's board meeting and fall which inveigled its way into my mind as I read Technomist's 'Tinned Tomatoes of Doom' and listened to radio reports of Tesco's difficulties over the Christmas period. The "....... in short, we're loaded - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha " vignette sets the tone of how I have imagined the board meetings of major supermarkets. I am one, in the great throng of 'plebs', who patronizes Tesco and make it the loaded force it is - a personal choice at odds with some of my other local affiliations. Allegations of duplicity and hypocriticism are justly made. In my defence I do grow and source and sauce tomatoes locally although this year a particularly nasty bout of blight set in to test what are obviously flimsily held beliefs.

Quite how the mood was in the Tesco boardroom as its share price dropped is a matter of speculation and one can only speculate further about the possible boardroom guffaw turning to the splutter of entirely disgusting (in my mouth) value instant coffee (even executives are making sacrifices in these straightened times) as news was released of the unfortunately timed sale of shares. Technomist has updated his post with Daily Mail flavoured reports on this matter.

How is it I have returned from the North Circular? As it didn't happen I plunged into a truck loaded with stocks of untinned tomatoes - all of which were rotten - throwing myself at the stocks! How ironic? How corny, except that's a different foodstuff and a very different loaded food issue. I narrowly escaped being tinned and was so eager to share my stuff of shameless tomato triviality I took no notice of which brand saved me. Thanks to Technomist for his ardent tomato which-finding work.

Haven't I got anything better to do? I have been visiting and documenting public art works about town. Here are some details from the Book of Manors on the staircase of Walthamstow Central Library. Always willing to confuse art and real life I will adopt the guise of this peasant and make my way to the allotment while there is still daylight.

Field Study's Man in E17 loses himself in open street mappery

2012-01-11T23:22:00.003Z

I have attempted to add the location of one of Walthamstow's public art works to Open Street Map; the art work being, Shying Horse, at Blackhorse Road Station. As yet the little green dot I can see on the map in my user OSM dashboard is not yet visible on the map in the public domain. The video guide for beginners says it can take quite a while for new information to appear if there is a lot of use of this facility. The dot may well be lost; though I don't imagine a lost dot poster (similar to those for lost pets) would help in it's being found.

Open Street Map can be found here

I last saw the green dot, with a yellow highlight, there (below)

For an existing map of public art in East London, there is Lawrence Rigal's web site, here and a direct link to his information about the artwork, here.

Field Study's Man in E17, boldly losing himself where others have lost themselves before.

Field Study's Man Rides Out

2012-01-10T08:04:00.001Z

I have wonder why the black horse at Blackhorse Rd station is shying. I found myself at it last night, guided there along and by the full moonlit paths of Walthamstow. On the way home my nerves were teased by the sound of clattering hooves on tarmac, and were the darknesses, the shadows of the street lights, really summoning themselves in the form of horses?

The artists responsible for this sculpture are, David McFall RA, and Trata Dreschna. There is a very informative web site dedicated to David McFall on which there is a page specifically about, Shying Horse.

Field Studys Man in E17 languishes in a slough of despond

2012-01-09T00:36:00.003Z

I have, oh yes I have been languishing in a slough of despondenc-E17. Come on man, get over it - move on! Each night of late as I have begun the descent into the bucolic of Beere's' electric Eden ( to Vashti Bunyan's twittering of another diamond day) I have looked over my shoulder and seen the flimsily cardboard repaired door - the still apparent infestation of intruder(s); mice the size of rats the size of cats the size of dogs and all that savage 'jaw' of 2012 (my new 1984). A psycho-drama out of a crisis indeed. A door, a door, my king-, or rather, serf-, dom for a door. Please me land lord, restore me door for the sake of me sweet dreams and all.

Grumpily I have rolled off my bed in the mornings cursing and demonising the perpetrators of my sleepless and unsettled selfdom. A crisis of liberal guilt is what I am enduring; scratching at my chest, tearing at my flesh, in penance and recompense for my politically incorrect lapse - the demonization of the burglars (the person or persons who burgled) rather than burglary. Dear burglar (or burglars), I referred to you as parasitic scum. I am so sorry. Of course you are not a scum bag. Your burgling behaviour, no doubt born of some conspiring societal constructs against you, was parasitic and 'scumly' or 'scumlish' or 'scumful' but you are not, definitely not, a scum-bag and a parasite. I forgot my aspiring liberal self and demonised you rather than the behaviour. Forgive my lapse into daily mail invective. See - read me here, flagellating. You are not 'a burglar' but a person who burgled and burglary is a behaviour into which you have been coerced by social construction - a mire.

'This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.'^[1]

It is I who hath sinned, being complicit in your duping, the corruption of your tabula rasa.

Field Studys Man is burgled.

2012-01-02T13:39:00.002Z

"Burgle" is a wonderful word but only in the etymological sense for the experience of being burgled is anything but wonderful. So it is I have had much occasion recently to practise the paradoxical pleasures of that Middle English combination of consonants and vowels.

So it was that some time on 23rd December crack-head commandos dedicated to the relief of mediocre or modest affluence raided and plundered my and fellow tenants home. The effluence (or 'effluents'), trained in the school of hard knock knock jokes reeled from their rejection from the crappest of crappest crackers and sought relief in the pleasures of other people's things and not least, security.

Just briefly I marvelled at the artistry of the trompe l'oiel broken doors of perception before it dawned on me that the jokers possessed no such talent. In a paranoid moment I suspected I was the victim of a valiant operation aimed at sabotaging an equally talentless blog - or rather, blogging on my part that has wrongly assumed the mantle of E17. Grim. Sorry E17, I promise I'll try to do better justice to you.

Well this is an appropriate and very close to home subject for a blog entitled 'lost and found in e17' with 'psychogeographic' pretensions. I doubt the assailants will be found although I am unhappily happy to report there appeared to be a slight loss of blood at the scene of the incursion. Perhaps it will provide more telling evidence as to the identity of the parasitic scum, who, going by the two hour wait for the (apologetic) police to arrive, have been very busy during the festive season.

My commiserations to the fellowship of the burgled in E17 and further afield.

Field Study's Man is blinded by the lights of E17

2012-01-02T12:20:00.001Z

I tripped the light fantastic along Wood Street, bathing in the Fantasia of its apparent regeneration by means of up lit trees, disco pavements and flourescently adorned lamp posts. In the midst of all the dendro-illumination I half expected the paving stones to light up beneath every step and with this thrilling experience, reformed zombies to emerge from the dark recesses to dance in an imaculate formation worthy of a Nowhere's Got Talent competition winner. I could hear the grunts, moans and scowls of the darknesses seeking refuge in their stygian niches, nooks and crannies; the ominously close and less prettified zones of this neurophysiological experiment. Might there be new shadows formed by the apparatus of psycho-retinal stimulation? I was just a small presence on the street and I wondered, despite or as a result of the superficial fizz and crackle of my excited dendrites, what the decoration will do to revive the area commercially and culturally. I decided to participate in the festivities, taking out my camera to flash the trees, berries and high flying shredded detritus, and so contribute a little to the immersive spectacle, before retreating to the decidedly more dull and pedestrian ways of Lost and Found in E17's dashboard.

a field student of little and great emples

2011-12-20T00:04:00.001Z

What can account for the lost 't's of the Lee Valley marshlands of old? Might they be found underneath the Walthamstow reservoirs, perfectly preserved in the alluvium?

Laura Wright and Robert Elms talked about some of Walthamstow's linguistic heritage today - 19/12/11. Their discussion is available to listen to again at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00m5qyt/Robert_Elms_With_Listed_Londoner_Eddie_Marsan_Matteo_Percoli_Laura_Wright_and_John_Power./

starting at about 1hr 37min.

a field student of Ballardian epiphanies

2011-12-15T18:31:00.004Z

Field Study's Man in E17 loves a good edge; in fact and fiction he and I virtually live on them. We're particularly fond of fried edge on toast - or toasht to indulge ourselves a little more. 'Edgelands' is a term we are becoming more familiar with having listened to Gareth Rees guided talk about the Hackney Marsh edgelands. We have found out we may be a character in the Marshman's chronicles of this liminal place - as one of the ritual riders making their way to work (or elsewhere) - on the good edge of the marshes. Gareth's talk can be found via 'Gareth Rees Scoop' on the

psychogeograph
y

menu. Look for 'Mapping Your Manor'. Gareth shares his enjoyment of the rise of the Olympic Park at the edge of the marshes. This new city, capital of the Olympic ideal, is enriching Gareth's edge. The development is causing us some concern, the salient points of which we shall drift to rather than getting straight to.

J G Ballard is credited as being one of the seminal authors of the urban edge, and Will Self and John Gray can be found in virtual conversation about J G Ballard at the Watershed. Mr Self and Mr Gray share accounts of some of their Ballardian epiphanies while, we suspect, also subconsciously exchanging mineral water sipping techniques - essential to any sophisticated discussion of edgelands and emptiness.

At this time of the year Field Study's Man in E17's morning ride across the marsh edge sometimes takes in the spectacular sight of the winter sun hanging low on the south eastern horizon as an intense silvery and golden aura veiling the emerging city. Could he and I be on the verge of a Damascene moment; an epiphanic conversion to Pierre de Coubertin's vision? One day I may find my selves in the midst of a landscape as envisioned by Victorian painter of apocalypses, John Martin. Will we be flung into the abyss of Olympic doubters?

Will Self' makes a comment about the future starting to seem dated; 'a recasting of the past through an increasingly atomised landscape'. Will Self also mentions H G Wells in his appreciation of J G Ballard, concerning prescience. Wells called for the establishment of "Departments and Professors of Foresight". According to Wikipedia his call presaged the development of modern academic futures studies by approximately 40 years - study now more commonly coined as 'futurology'. 'Futurology' is a term frequently used by Iain Sinclair in his attempts to debunk the mythology of the modern Olympics. Is there prescience in Ballard's, Kingdom Come, given recent consumer riots and the second coming of the Westfields?

While the government and various other authorities are fretting about the possibility of explosions, calling on a huge military force to safeguard the games but also add to the likelihood of Olympic bankruptcy, what we may also want to fret about, according to Self and Gray's discussion, is community implosion. Would the Olympic site, as a gated world, be an exemplar of such virtuality becoming real again by breakdown?

Field Study's Man in E17 is deeply suspicious of Anish Kapoor's Olympic Tower. To us it is potentially a site of a sinister scientific experiment. During the Olympic Games the air will be so ideologically charged - 'electric', 'buzzing' - that there will be an opportunity to harness those forces and use them to power a Utopia fusion project. Not Utopian but Utopia. In this project all Utopias, past, present and future, will be sucked into the vacuous structure and fused - creating The Final Utopia. Key to the harnessing of the forces of Utopia fusion is the Higgs Boson particle. Why? Because one said so.

In a moment of foresight (dare we say Ballardian epiphany and cosmic identification with thee Higgs Boson?) we saw an imploded future in which rightful denizens of The Final Utopia are carnivorous Buddleia davidii. The mutation to carnivorousness (carnivory?) is caused by a leak from the tower of the element, 'Implodium', carried to the shrub by butterflies. In a horrific nightmare of John Wyndham-ian (a term which came out of the Self & Gray discussion) character we witnessed goring by Buddleia on an Olympic stadium scale - every aspect of it reproduced in ultra high definition and 4D surround sound. The more Ballardian dimension of this epiphany is that no-one is actually gored by Buddleia - it's all a dream or nightmare that you, once you have been exposed to Implodium, cannot stop having. The most tangible emanation of the highly infectious nightmare is extreme mass insomnia and a terrible phobia about closing one's eyes - even for a blink. Reality becomes hazardously soporific for those people contaminated.

In the blink of an artificial eye Field Study's Man in E17 made our way to the Large Haddron Collider to warn the scientists of the consequences of Higgs Boson detection and harnessing. He and I banged and banged at the perimeter - the edge - of the site but our bangs were not big enough (boom! boom!) to be heard. We returned to the Olympic Park and pleaded with a security guard to call the games off - there's still time, it's not too late. They did not listen.
Sometime later, you might picture Field Study's Man in E17, in Charlton Heston-ian guise, floundering on the banks of the globally warmed tidal waters of the Lee - substitute horse for coconut shells and er, well one is not so deranged as to imagine eternity with that Girl Friday. Apes would not be one's nemesis but ferocious Buddleia. So here is that bit of futurology from Charlton Heston.

a field student of prudence and prurience

2011-12-13T00:01:00.249Z

Dick Turpin featured in the ramblings of Lost and Found in E17 a while ago and has just galloped through the thoughts of Field Study's Man in E17 again. Delusions of criminal grandeur are rare in the mind of this here field reporter and what elicited the highwayman this time is a dilemma concerning the taking, photographically, of other person's property in public spaces. It is not only the taking of photographs but also the reproduction and dissemination of the images which is at issue. There are criminal aspects to this aspect of the law, as well as civil. It may be illegal to photograph strategic locations e.g. military bases. It would be a civil issue in law to photograph another person's property and reproduce and disseminate the images without their consent. Of course, the legal details are not straight forward and I wouldn't pretend to be familiar with them nor competent in their use.

So photographs I took on Newcomen St (a public highway) of building façades have not been reproduced or published here.

Also, it seems there may be some grey in the area of hyper-linking to other web sites without the consent of their owners, so I have opted for straight forward references which I believe do not require permission.

This can be understood as taking myself too seriously although the reaction to the law and my understanding of it serves as an illustration pertinent in many respects to some of the content or themes of the post.

As a further illustration of the restrictions on reproduction of images, try going to Newcomen St, London via Google Maps - and use the 'street view' facility to view some of the building façades. One of the buildings, featured in this post, has been adjusted so as not to show the faces or identities of the building's ornamental busts.

As Field Study's Man in E17 I drifted on London's streams of tarmac consciousness looking for situations with which to nourish my psyche. Utopia bobbed about tantalizingly in the distance and I wondered if prurience and self interest have any currency there. Alas Utopia submerged into the course of one of the capital's lost rivers and I was left wondering what to do about my self-interest and prurience. Could I discover sites of deeply topographic and mythogeographic delectation; ambrosial delights (if you will) to cleanse my soul and inflame less prurient passions? How might nectarous situations encountered further afield in London (if the place exists) be compared and contrasted with others closer to home in Walthamstow, E17 (if the place exists)? Where in E17 might I enjoy such spectacles as the façades featured in the absent 'photographs' below?

1. façade of 9, Mollison House, Newcomen St, London - with ornamental busts and flag pole.

2. doorway to 9, Mollison House.

3. detail of one of the busts. Each bust portrays a different person.

4. detail of another bust and a plaque commemorating John Marshall.

5. close up view of another bust, also showing staining by grime/air pollution.

Who the stony figures are, when they were created and what they represent are questions which are each likely to have rational answers however this is not necessarily the place to find those answers. They can be characters waiting to be invented by whoever takes the time, space and energy to notice them. Add spuriousness to self interest and prurience. Were they gagging, wheezing and coughing in the grime laden air of the ravine that is Newcomen Street? Is that what made me look up and notice them for the first time after years of opting for this bottleneck into Borough High Street, rather than the others (similarly bottlenecked) to the north and south of the junction? Do 'functional' and 'junction' come close in the working vocabulary of Transport for London, or whoever it is that creates and manages what I think are despicable locations - 'dysjunctions'. Just how horrific and macabre are their fume stained faces leaching, exuding, expiating some foul superunnatural particulate matter? Is this purgatory? As if the air were not smut ridden enough Field Study's Man in E17 started thinking about flag pole jokes. As you can't see by their expressions, the worthy and most philanthropic and charitable figures of yore were not amused by my attempts at light relief.

Oh no, you don't think I actually stood on the pavement beneath them telling them flag pole jokes out loud do you? That would be mad or a little eccentric to say the least. No no no, I just had to think the jokes through because, you see (or rather you don't), they can read my mind. Yes, amiss it is of me to make light of mental illness if, that is, imagining stone ornaments (distressingly) reading my mind is a symptom of mental illness - a paranoid delusion.

6. detail of doorbell at entrance to Mollison House.

Perhaps I should have rung the bell and asked for help. The building is, or has been, a part of Kings College/Guys Hospital - a department or office of sociology and psychology. Please ask your colleagues to stop reading my mind, I might have pleaded. It is distressingly ironic the area is so congested by motor traffic, and thus the air as polluted, given one of the area's principal residents is a hospital. I have driven a van (for work) a lot in that area although recently I have, thankfully, been able to do most of the work by bicycle and on foot. By those means I can see a lot more.

Too much, may be, for someone prone to prurience, for as I reeled from the psychic trespass I turned my gaze from the north to south and found a fine example of a lion and unicorn coat of arms - the heraldic coat of arms for the United Kingdom. I was impressed by their 'endowment' prominently displayed upon the façade of The Kings Arms public house. I don't know of any other 'lion and unicorn' in which the beasts' retracted phalli are still so prominent; fantastically, comically and luridly even.

7. the façade of The Kings Arms, with heraldic coat of arms.

8. Lion and Unicorn coat of arms

9. detail of coat of arms showing the Unicorn's retracted phallus.

What this interest says of the near nobody I am is likely to be of little consequence. Indeed, the subtleties and complexities of that coat of arms are above my head in many ways.

There are though more notable figures strutting their stuff in the euro-political bestiary over the crisis of confidence in the Eurozone. David Camerom's lion-hearted (depending on your ideological stance) veto of 'the new accord'* has got Alex Salmond's horn in a twist over the lack of a risk assessment for the Scottish economy and those of the other devolved governments or nations. 'Risk assessment' sounds very lame and very easily conjures analogies with 'Europe' as an interfering control** freak. True to Tory bravado on issues of British nationhood, David Mundell, the only Scottish Conservative MP, is reported in the Financial Times*** as commenting on Alex Salmond's need for any fig leaf to ‘save his embarrassment’. Not quite!

David Cameron might regard himself as needing to be less modest especially when accompanied by his yapping pack of protective bulldogs. He seems intent, even hell-bent, on protecting 'the City' which could be regarded as an island state according to its own laws and fiscal customs. Cameron's Utopian Kingdom will not kowtow to the delusions of mainland Europe; 'genuine fiscal stability unions' threaten to smother the golden glow emanating from the rainbows end where is 'the City' and the promise of Mammon.

This cynicism is obvious and clichéd; I don't deny. When I returned home this evening from work in another field of London dreams at large - a day of traipsing up, down and around the swanky affluence of Wimbledon - I planted myself in front of the evening news to watch the spectacle of Conservative MPs congratulating and supporting their leader on his steadfastness. Was it really David Cameron PM who single-handedly vetoed the accord? What seemed perverse to me was their barracking of their Liberal Democrat colleagues, revelling in the trashing of whatever political credibility the 'Lib Dems' had left. The political vaudeville may be very amusing evening viewing however the spittle infused glee in the mockery convinced me this was stupid, irritating, ridiculous and contemptible. There are derisive and vulgar slang words beginning with 'd' or 'p' which less polite people could use to refer to people (mainly men) behaving so crassly. Not me; well not that you could hear or read off the page. I think those characters on, 9 Mollison House might have read my thoughts though. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Watch out for lions and unicorns in Walthamstow.

----------------

* - The STATEMENT BY THE EURO AREA HEADS OF STATE OR GOVERNMENT can be found at

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/126658.pdf

------------

** - Jon Swaine, 'Bent banana and curved cucumber rules dropped', The Telegraph, 24/7/08.

------------

*** - Andrew Bolger, 'Salmond seeks explanation from Cameron', Financial Times, 12/12/11.

a field student of Busby dreams

2011-11-29T08:04:00.005Z

Of what does a lowly aphid dream? This is what, as Field Study's Man in E17, I have been asking (and trying to remember?) while going about my humble and bumbling business in the mists and fogs of a season which otherwise feels so unseasonal and discombobulating. I have been worrying about the persistence of the leaves on the trees. Shouldn't more of them have fallen by now or rather, at the time these photographs were taken several days ago? So much withered green and dessicated yellow hanging overhead - a marcescent nightmare or sweet dream for a roaming aphid; the most recent guise of Field Study's Man in E17. I could be in heaven amidst all this yellowish autumnal senescence to which I am so strangely attracted. In the canopies which know no abscission I have sought comfort in the floriferous vision of Busby Berkeley choreographed to the strains of Artie Shaw. In this lack of a windfall it is by a waterfall I have dreamed of flowers past and to come.

Here are the remnants of another Berkeleyesque vision pasted on the dereliction of Newington Causeway not far from Elephant and Castle. It is a reminder of my recent dalliances with other visions of scantily clad rites of spring and summer. How fruitful and sweet will the honeydew of this far flown forage be?

a field student of haunted mists

2011-11-20T22:28:00.001Z

yesterday at the allotment

a field student of spurious origins dines on a parasol mushroom

2011-11-20T12:59:00.000Z

FRP Hornbeam's Insect Hotel

It is a long way to travel, from Bunhill Fields to Walthamstow, when being a creature much more small than great. Field Study's Man in E17, in the guise of a tick, failed miserably to latch on to any sanguineous psycho-geographers in the course of his journey. Add to this problem of scale the evolutionary problem of having acquired six more legs with which I scurried in a ridiculous fashion. 8 is just too many. With the blood of ancestral poets long gone I faced a crisis which required seizing a shape shifting opportunity. In the supernatural twilight hanging over Walthamstow Marshes I became with the barely audible (to human ears) proclamation, "I am become Fungus Gnat!" In this form I drifted on the haunted breezes of the marshes and so made my progress a little more effortlessly towards home.

Having stayed in the grand habitation which was 'InnVertebrate' I found myself at another insect hotel in the borderlands of E17. This hospitality was of a much more thrifty character although I confess to having some doubts about the place. There was a curious and disturbing resonance which I struggled to put one of my six legs on until the screeching brakes of a bus propelled me into the shower scene of Psycho and Bates Motel where Janet Leigh as Marion Crane met a grisly end. Bernard Hermann's stabbing sound effects were created by stabbing a melon (you know).

Vacancies

It being Saturday morning, all this paranoia, psycho association and macabre musing was swept away by the conviviality of Organiclea's wholesome, local and organic produce stall.

Organiclea Stall, Bakers Avenue E17 - Saturdays, 10am - 3.30pm.

Is this serendipity? How was it I chose the form of a fungus gnat in my journey of tiny significance? Field Study's Man in E17 is reading, The Stream, by Brian Clarke. In this story, it is the law of continuing that decrees provenance. And so by the law of continuing Field Study's Man in E17, intrepid fungus gnat extraordinaire, was greeted by a sight of humongous sustenance - thanks to Ru K, parasol mushrooms foraged in the Broxbourne area. Oh great law of continuing, you gave me food and shelter from the blazing November sun.

Field Study's Man in E17 being enticed by a parasol mushroom.

As I hovered about Roger, preparing to plunge into his parasol, I was distracted by the noise of heated debate - the cladistical ructions of a Springtail or Collembola conference taking place in the Bakers Avenue Bug Motel. The parsimonious debate concerned the classification of their species. Some of the springtails asserted they are insects while others something else, more ambiguous, more 'inter-cultural'. Cladistical purists were having none of this identity politics. Central to the ruction is the issue of mouth parts. Insects have external mouth parts while Collembola have internal mouth parts. Quips about insects never being able to keep their mouths shut murmured in and out of the assorted shafts of bics and biros. Sensing this dispute might escalate I adopted the role of mediator - peace maker. We are all mycophyles and here is a stall of earthy mycogastronomic delight. Let us engage our mouth parts in the noble art of eating.

As we sat down to gobble on our dish of fried parasol mushroom seasoned with coarse ground pepper the parsimony abated and we began to tell the tales of our ancestry in a quest for a universal origin. I scratched out a cladogram in the mud. Here is a diligent student's diagram of my 'tree'.

As I waxed lyrical on the ancestry of Field Study's Mandibles in E17 there was a decidedly irritated and objecting voice calling out, "Spurious, totally spurious psycho-cladogrammatics!"

a field student of Blake, Bunyan and Defoe stays at a bug hotel

2011-11-18T08:38:00.239Z

As Field Study's Man in E17, I made for home via the ravines and gullies of Bunhill Fields; some of the time being the size of a blood sucking tick tucked away in the tunic of the pilgrim, Christian. I waited to latch on to any unsuspecting psycho-geographers who had come to pay their respects to the fore-fathers of their discipline. Would they rub up to me? Many years ago, while at college, I attended a slide show and talk by a visiting lecturer. He was influenced by tombstones and memorials and had been to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where Oscar Wilde is buried. The slides included an image showing how pilgrims to Wilde's tombstone had rubbed at the genitalia of the statuesque angel; the gesture rendering them distinctly polished. Along with the lipsticky kisses and graffiti the devotion overall has caused some distress to the family of Oscar Wilde. Back in Bunhill Fields there was, thankfully, no evidence of such attention at the tomb of John Bunyan and I was there in a strictly platonic vampiric nonsense. I continued my journey, a blood thirsty creepy crawl, across the way to where William Blake and Daniel Defoe are remembered.

Tomb of John Bunyan at Bunhill Fields.

Merlin Coverley sees Daniel Defoe as the provider of 'the prototype psychogeographical report' - this being, A Journal of the Plague Year. I considered paying imaginary gothic homage to Defoe in the form of a flea in order to make a thematic connection with the source of the plague of 1665; fleas (on rats) carrying Yersinia pestis - the bacterium causing bubonic plague. I opted instead for an arachnid - the tick, another purveyor of horrible pestilence. Having made a link to The Guardian, in the interests of non-bias here is a link to a report from The Daily Mail. An invasion of blood sucking ticks able to induce (hypothetically) a mass outbreak of hallucinations seems to be a rather prosaic psychogeographical scenario here in the shadow of Defoe's grimy memorial. The grime, perhaps from traffic pollution, has rendered the inscriptions all most unreadable. I was tempted to rub them clean but thought better of it.

Tomb of Daniel Defoe at Bunhill Fields

Attention to the grave of William Blake was less gaudy than that for the tomb of Oscar Wilde although a person or persons had left an assortment of items on the stone (17/11/2011) perhaps as a part of a ritual gathering around the stone to remember and celebrate his life. The things appeared innocent enough.

Gravestone of William Blake at Bunhill Fields

(the actual grave is a short distance away)

As Field Study's Man in E17 I've had cause to think about dance recently, in particular, the painting, La Danse II, by Henri Matisse. When applying for a job as an art teacher I was required to give a lesson on the theme of movement. La Danse II was one of the images I presented in a slide show. I was asked by some of the students why the figures had to be (or were) naked. I began to answer also thinking of how I might creatively turn the question on the students so they might give their insights. I faltered as I realized my interpretations were potentially contrary to the edicts of the Islamic faith of the students asking the question - a situation for which I was not prepared. Having attended the DV8 performance, Can We Talk About This?, recently I have been reflecting on relevant situations in which I have censored myself. I was interested to read recently Matisse may have been influenced by Blake's, 'Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing' . Blake's figures are less raw and more diaphanous. William Blake produced a body of works based on Dante's, Divine Comedy, for which there seems to be a complex relationship with early Islamic philosophy. I do wonder how his depiction, (along with many others) of Muhammad in the 'Sowers of Discord' could be appropriate in a setting where I feel compelled not to offend. A picture I think more closely related to La Danse is Lucas Cranach the Elder's, The Golden Age - click on this link to view some painstakingly protected modesty.

Scuttling quickly on, as darkness began to close in. Where can such a creep and crawly such as I find safe haven in this neighbourhood?

Field Study's Man heading for E17 can recommend the 'bee boutique' having spent a night there snuggled up with all sorts of fellow spineless creepy crawlies.

a field student of facts, fatsias and falsities

2011-11-13T12:40:00.003Z

"Size of a honey bee!"; the incantation from Arabian Nights by which, as Field Study's Man in E17, I began another evening ramble or forage. Here from my black box of digital tricks is an image of a mysterious forest encountered not far from Base Camp Beere. The lack of focus is an indication of the density of the forest and the difficulty I had navigating my way through and out of it. The experience was fraught with mortal danger however, as is obvious by this testimony, I lived to tell, or rather, spin the tale. Below is an image of the forest from a more distant hovering vantage. What misidentifications lurked in the darkness of that fig leafed canopy? Ominous vibrations; the buzz, rub and scuttle of mini beasts waiting patiently for the likes of foolhardy lily livered liberal psycho-geographers such as me. Not for Julian Beere, intrepid trespass into the out of bounds bowels, tunnels and tubes of London's underground. Too risque. Would you find Field Study's Man in E17 blagging his way into the viscera of Westfields, east and west, savagely chatting up security guards for the sake of a cutting edge psycho-geographic class critique? No way! I shall commune with the bees and the birds in the parochial paradise garden of E17. In this, the Great Aralian Forest of Walthamstow, (the E17 Aralia) there is the sanctuary of palmately lobed false consciousness - the sense of security to be gleaned from nice plants in nice front gardens in nice neighbourhoods with lots and lots of nice people. Oasis? Mirage? Even estate agents windows here have been sites for poetry to sooth the prospecting brows of weary house and flat hunters.

By what misidentification might this Garden of Eden 17 become a Poison Garden of E17? Yesterday evening I observed wasps and honeybees clambering about the flowers of this plant. I was surprised to see the wasps. Shouldn't they all, but the queens normally, be dead by the 12th November? The weather has been so mild of late. Being the budding apiarist I decided to check on my identification - the facts and fatsias of this plant. Is it a fig leafed palm, a flowering aralia, Japanese Aralia - Fatsia japonica? What nourishment is to be had for the pollen foragers at this fly through take away? Will they be getting the right balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates (with trace minerals) to maintain a healthy ...... lifestyle? A little further up the road, flies were opting for the junk food choice of discarded but still fleshy fried chicken bones with dog excrement sauce. Yum.

I have yet to find the nutritional information label for Fatsia japonica or the fig leaved palm - if that it what it is. In my flits and flights between various internet 'flowerings' of information I came across a link to a plant by the name of, 'false castor oil plant'; another name for the fig leaved palm. This is where the garden of plant names takes on something of a toxic character. The (true) castor oil plant is Ricinus communis - a source of the toxin, ricin - allegedly the stuff of sinister and alarming terrorist plots originating in north and east London. I recommend this web site, 'the poison garden' for a wealth of information and links about the truth and falsities of castor oil plants amongst many others.

Last weekend I went to see, 'Can We Talk About This?' - a play by DV8 Physical Theatre. While I was in thrall to the spectacular invention of the dance and acro-balance I squirmed about in my liberal seat as the same dancers orated on the subject or contemporary history of multiculturalism and extremism, in particular Islamic extremism. In my nice world of flowers, birds and bees it was a challenging polemic to endure though one I recommend going to. Was the latter comment one I feel liberally bound to say? 'Can We Talk About This?' deals with the persecution, intimidation and censorship of individual artists, writers, educators and other public figures as a succession of theatrical inquests. The show does not address acts of mass terrorism although they lurked in my mind as part of the culture of fear about what is free speech for some and unacceptable heinous blasphemy for others. I am heading for the allotment in flight from the urban graffiti hornets whose nest I disturbed earlier in the week.

a field student of transitional movements

2011-11-10T08:37:00.001Z

9th November.

a field student of paint splatters

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000Z

8th November. As Field Study's Man in E17, I took a break this evening from studying the complexities of honey bee nutrition; in particular the purpose of proteins in pollen. Vitellogenin (Vg) seems to be one of the most important proteins for the well being of a bee colony because it is used to produce brood food that is a substance akin to an elixir of bee life. Some more insights about vitellogenin can be accessed here. In 'a field student of October forages' there are some images of bees returning to their hive well laden with pollen. This is encouraging as it suggests they may well be building up stores of pollen and thus the reserves of Vg which will help them re-establish the colony early next year.

But what about the paint splatted images above? Is the ghost of Jackson Pollock at large in Walthamstow? Unlikely. As Field Study's Man in E17 taking my evening constitutional I reflected on my efforts to summon the spirit of Joseph Beuys' dead hare so that it might explain the plethora of pictures to be enjoyed via the E17 Art Trail 2011. Beuys was also a great artistic proponent of fat. Did my circuitous ramble in the form and outline of a hare, the character of which was determined by the shapes of E17's highways and byways, actually succeed in evoking the ghost of Beuys' hare? I have scoured the Guardian looking for reports of sightings of ghostly white hares. It is possible a larval white hare - in fact a liquid lipid body of ethereal white paint - appeared briefly on Wadham Road before, alas, being splatted into abstract expressionist post existence by a driver distracted by the task of texting a message to say he would be home in less than a minute.

a field student of noise in E17 dubs

2011-11-08T07:36:00.003Z

7th November 2011 - 4 sound samples from the nocturnal field of E17 dubbed together in imperfect harmony for Lost and Found in E17's, Music for Dead Hares series.

As Field Study's Man in E17, I recently discovered The Dead Hare Radio Hour .

a field student of random generation

2011-11-04T00:18:00.000Z

a field student of fading memories

2011-11-03T07:38:00.000Z

a field student of temperature checks

2011-11-01T00:07:00.005Z

St Paul's Cathedral - Protest Site, 31/10/11.

St Pauls Cathedral has an 'offer of the moment' of over 600 posters, each for sale at £2. The poster view is of a scene decidedly less busy than it was this afternoon as protesters and tourists flocked about the west end of the cathedral. Perhaps there will be a souvenir protest issue.

http://www.stpaulsshop.org.uk/product/398/West_End_Poster

http://www.stpaulsshop.org.uk/images/prod_398.jpg

The video features one of the protesters involving all and sundry in the art of protest camp management and media relations. There were several speakers who delivered briefings on various aspects of the protest. Some of the national newspapers are reporting on the situation as a fiasco, farcical, a laughing stock and a national joke.

I imagined for a moment one of the speakers calling out, 'Afternoon campers. Hi de hi'. Of course they didn't. The protest is motivated for some by serious issues. Some people have lost/resigned their jobs because of the handling of the protest, and the protest is addressing much more serious issues further afield. So it should be no laughing matter. 'Sit-in-com' it is not or so I thought. I chuckled a little as the speaker asked 'anyone here from supplies, can you put your hands up, anyone here from shelter...?' as some characters in Halloween garb emerged from a tent, and a man posed with some saucily satirical paintings featuring David Cameron et al. The police were in attendance around the protest camp site; many of them, it seemed, judging by their yawns, were thoroughly bored with the site admin' briefings. I left thinking the situation has the makings of a very British carry on.

a field student of killing times in Primrose Hill

2011-10-28T21:11:00.001+01:00

Killing Time in Primrose Hill

Recently, while working around London’s very affluent Primrose Hill, I heard a voice I recognized as Will Self’s. I may have been mistaken. Whoever the voice belonged to declared, ‘we’ve still got half an hour to kill’. I turned around and saw a man I recognized as Will Self. I may have been mistaken. I started to approach the stranger to speculatively congratulate him on his broadcasts for the ‘A Point of View’ series on BBC Radio 4. I hesitated. Fawning genuflecting attention (idolatry even) would not be welcome, I reckoned, to a man of his class of intellect and creativity.

I imagined this encounter.

“Begging your pardon, Mr Self, sir. If it is indeed you, Mr Self, sir? (He appears not to deny it). I may have presumed, Mr Self, sir. Presumed sir, to congratulate you, sir, for your most recent wireless disquisition, sir. ‘Gawd’ bless you, Mr Self, sir”.

“Why?”

“Ah, er, yes, quite, er, good point, Mr Self, sir”.

I carried on with the very repetitive work, checking the time frequently, willing it and the work to pass quickly. It seemed as if the gentleman I heard had thought better of the malice aforethought and decided not to kill any time. I looked around for an exquisite corpse of time, the cadaver of half an hour outlined in chalk on the pavement at the loose end of Regent’s Park Road. My watch stayed reassuringly solid; it did not, as I feared, melt and drip from my wrist. Time, that sunny Friday afternoon along Regent’s Park Road continued uninterrupted and paradoxically at a leisurely or leisured pace for some. The air of Primrose Hill alfresco was replete with 24 claret laced chat, some of it possibly about Mr Self’s points of view.

How does Will Self’s recent point of view, (21st Oct') about race, class and social mobility take in the cultural vista of that well heeled locale? Who lives and works in Primrose Hill and what are its identity politics? The BBC had yet to broadcast Self’s race/class reflection when I was traipsing around the hill in my nearly new white £29.99 Nike trainers with bright red trim and laces; yes, bright red laces, which set off alarms and winces as I stepped over the thresholds of the assorted boutiques and posh eateries to beg a favour of the proprietors. Heck! St George’s trainers. What was I thinking when I bought them after nearly two years of saving 40p a week? Ra Quel faux pax Rodders! I thought it was the malodor of my rotting gums and crumbling teeth or the miasma of my plebeian underarms that elicited polite grimaces accompanied by terse dismissals including the occasional waft of the hand; the latter meaning, I think, please leave quickly you ‘oik’. To be fair to the more egalitarian contingent of Primrose Hill, not all the responses were as dismissive. I considered going into every outlet to make the polite request; including outlets I know from experience would say no. Why? I could, if I were not in such a hurry to get out of there, to get the job over and done with, enjoy the proprietorial expressions of violation and trespass. Ha ha! Did you seriously think I thought you would say yes, you stuck up ******? Sometimes, following a “no”, I have retorted, politely and with good humour, “oh, why not?” “Because we don’t”, has been the usual perfunctory and dead-end response. Their honesty would be refreshing.

I have to make it clear, I am not at liberty to disclose the full details and nature of my work because it is regarded as commercially sensitive. There may be a fantastic 'psychogeographical' trace of my placing around and about Primrose Hill and St John's Wood about which I can say little more. Like many, I do find my work something of a drudge at times, although I certainly value having a job and don’t wish to compromise this good fortune. I think it is fair and safe to say the work is low paid and does not require a great deal of technical skill. Returning to Will Self’s provocation, I’m wondering about the complexities of that Primrose Hill afternoon. What was I, in relation to others, as I went about my work? How baffling is the societal maze of Primrose Hill or any other district? May be this is just a very middle class, chatty question and dilemma except that working people tend to live where their pay affords. I doubt I could afford how and where I live in Walthamstow transposed to Primrose Hill.

Social status or class is a very gendered and complicated matter especially when various identity factors, such as race, are considered in relation. Will Self discussed the issue of status in relation to race (especially dual heritage) and class. He forthrightly cited the identification of youths, on his home-turf of Stockwell, with President Barack Obama. Plummeting from such stratospheric realms of power, what sort of reception would they get if given (or when getting) the work I did that afternoon? In response to Self’s critique I thought about George Bernard Shaw’s, Pygmalion, and the central character, Eliza Doolittle, who is supposedly transformed from a lowly Cockney flower girl to a high society lady by elocution lessons. Then there is the comic and tragic appropriation of a racial stereotype by Gene Wilder, with Richard Pryor’s ironic tuition, in StirCrazy. Closer to home, in the way of Sue Townsend’s, The Queen and I, ‘Her Majesty’, along with many others from over-priced public subsidy is, in the craziest of my dreams, upping sticks to move into a council house in E17 and is very generously insisting on the London Living Wage for her right royal services.

Will Self opined ‘the reasons for being at the bottom of the heap are manifold’. He listed class, family, education, money and race. What about adding sex, age, and free will? If two people are each earning the same low wage (below or at e.g. the 2011 London Living Wage of £8.30 per hour) can one of them make a claim for living in poverty (more than the other) e.g. on the basis of having a different (more difficult) family background? Might a good education and positive family relations alleviate the effects of a subsistence income? This may have been the point of the emphasis on the mediating 'and' rather than 'or' when presenting his point of view.

What was that? I have just finished reading, timequake, (Kurt Vonnegut) or so I thought for I seem to be back at the beginning. Holy Kilgore Trout! Has there been a timequake? Is this a rerun? Was I writing this before? I blame the free will of Mr Self for tinkering with time. Only kidding! The BBC will be broadcasting repeats (reruns!) a lot more in the foreseeable and ‘forehearable’ future. Get this; I’m imagining Will Self’s hand rolled smoky tones beaming out from the rerunning parallel universe of the BBC while in fact (fiction) he is down at the job centre.

“Ah, Mr Self, I see you have put ‘psychogeographer’ in your work experience. We’ve got just the job for you”.

a field student of October forages

2011-10-24T07:56:00.000+01:00

October 23rd 2011 - Chingford, London

a field student of cinesthetics

2011-10-23T12:09:00.009+01:00

As Field Study's Man in E17 I present another blurred and fuzzy highlight in the gripping (I wish) nostalgia of my E17 Art Trail 2011- a visit to the open house of Sarah Nicolls for a Sunday afternoon of 'cinesthetics'; a fantastic multi media meld of contemporary, classical and jazz music in the packed to capacity venue which was Sarah Nicolls' Ritchings Avenue sitting room. Sarah Nicolls played piano to a film projection, as well as another performance on her inside out piano. There were also performances by Lucy Russell on violin, and jazz duo, Tribunal on drums and saxophone. If I heard correctly, Sarah Nicolls and her partner were about to move out of the area so alas there may not be another musical intervention with a remade piano on any future E17 art trail. This post is, in part, another comment on or observation of how artists adapted places, physically and otherwise, in order to participate in the E17 Art Trail and in a sense the state of being 'inside-out' is a fitting metaphor.

Sarah Nicolls' E17 Art Trail listing is here, with a picture of the inside out piano and a link to her web site.

A ceiling eye view of Sarah on the 'inside out', courtesy of Mark Burton, can be viewed here

Sarah Nicolls

Lucy Russell

Tribunal

Lucy Russell played the Chaconne (or Ciaconna) from J S Bach's, Partita No.2 for Solo Violin in D minor. Here are some quick links to just a few of You Tube's library of Ciaconnas; Isaac Stern, Sigiswald Kuijken and Arthur Grumiaux. The latter is my favourite. I think Lucy played the piece at quite a fast tempo, though it might sound very different as a recording given the acoustic nature of the venue and event - the space, all the bodies, furnishings, pianos and drums and so on, let alone the particular qualities of the instrument she played. There was some mention of a recording being made. The performance was very visceral and the same can be said of Sarah Nicolls' performance at her inside out piano. Playing the piano keys with her left hand, she plucked, rubbed and tapped at the exposed strings of the eviscerated upright to create an eerie and plaintive ambience. Jazz dudes, Tribunal stomped in with a few up beat numbers to lighten the mood adding a bit of tonic to the gin very hospitably and generously plied at the start.

a field student of controlled disappointment

2011-10-20T23:49:00.012+01:00

A highlight of my E17 Art Trail was a visit to The Makers Yard. The recently reclaimed site is hidden from view from nearby Shernhall Street and access is via a narrow passageway from which I, along with an art trail expedition, emerged into the earthly delight of the yard with its open studio sheds, raised vegetable beds, greenhouse, garden benches and other communal spaces. Despite the bustle of the occasion there was still a sense of tranquillity and peaceful purpose about the place - a self contained retreat. I wondered if The Makers Yard is an artist run space and how it fits into the patchwork of other artist’s spaces in the area. Sometimes the living/working spaces artists create can be as creative as the art produced in them. As quaint as it may be I am in favour of a more whole approach to art - e.g. making things and growing food in close proximity.

One of the creative relationships the art trail explores is that of the production and consumption of art; who makes art, where, how and why, with who consumes it and so on. Seeing art works in progress in studio spaces and communicating directly with the artist(s) may demystify creative processes and also be counter to the modern industrial phenomenon of deskilling and alienation from making. While the distinction between the producer and consumer remains, the latter can be better informed about, and aware of, the values of the work in the product. The open studio conflation of art and artist with ‘art-lover’ is, however, performative and participatory; all most a performance art form or practice in its own right. The performances can detract from and diminish the allure and mystique of an art work. Explanation akin to a well rehearsed script can imbue an art work with a disappointing personal sense of artlessness. This was not my experience of the artful surrounds of The Makers Yard partly because I limited how I participated in the visit.

I am not quite as sure about a recent virtual visit to the studio of Grayson Perry somewhere in Walthamstow. Grayson Perry spoke, via podcast, about his experience of making art as ‘an exercise in controlled disappointment’. Perhaps on the day of filming this very busy and eminent artist was very anxious that his potentially most beautiful pot might explode in the kiln. He paused poetically from a weary and slightly dismissive exposition and interpretation of his art as a kiln clicked ominously in the background.

He said, ‘I think there is a desperation for people with art, they look at art and they find it very hard to just enjoy it. They have to kind of interpret it and understand it. They don’t just sort of ask themselves, you know, do I think it’s beautiful? I think there should be more of that’. He didn’t have to utter or mutter this critique; he could have just got on with his pottery for the duration of the podcast.

Fair enough; a balance of just enjoyment (sans spiel), and interpretation and understanding is likely to be more sustaining. Is there, however, no measure or scale of beauty? I wonder about the sublime enjoyment at the beauty of e.g. a pot decorated with photographic transfers of images of rancid butter yellow crime/accident scene signs, some of the paraphernalia of the seamy side of urban life? I thought I might find such a sign on or near Cedars Avenue, E17 where someone was stabbed while walking to work one morning last week. If there is a sign I missed it. The comments following online local newspaper reports declare there is a lot of violent crime in Walthamstow - something which may or not be backed up by statistical evidence. What sort of correlation might there be between crime and the progress of economic development in an area? Perry’s colourfully glazed pots, artfully inscribed with brutish images of the malaise he perceives while walking about town, culminate in an attempt at a beautiful contemporary polemic but a polemic against who or what precisely? Of what consequence to Walthamstow is Grayson Perry’s pantomimic progress to the hallowed galleries of the British Museum? Is there or might there be a ‘Grayson Perry School of ‘Tranny’ Pottery’ to cultivate locally misused cutting edge arts and crafts skills. Might we have local artistry in the service of the worship of Alan Measles?

There is a connection between artists and less developed and less gentrified areas in that the latter are more affordable to a contingent that tends to be lower paid. Rents (including studio rents) can be much lower and housing/mortgages more affordable. Grayson Perry, with all due credit to his hard work, creativity and success, probably does not need to worry as much about the cost of studios in Walthamstow. What is the story of his studio? Perry’s slightly wry comment about retaining artistic authenticity due to having his studio here may be disingenuous. I think it is suspect when an artist uses the deprivation of the area in which their studio is as some sort of credibility for their art. On the trail there were many instances of people being creative with space and other limited resources in order to create studios, workshops and exhibition spaces, perhaps as a way pursuing a more amateur passion. Some of the people I met on the trail, particularly on the guided walk, were using the trail as a way of looking into the area with a view to moving in. The very desirability garnered by the E17 Art Trail, and other community events, may contribute to pressure on the cost of living here. Of course there are other circumstances which can affect the cost (and quality) of living and/or working in Walthamstow but how do you judge the authenticity of the needs and motivations for being somewhere? I’m happy for Grayson Perry to continue reacting to the area surrounding his outpost of artistic authenticity; it may help keep my rent down. The Makers Yard shared some of what can be made of a place rather than superficially what can be made about it.

a field student of ambulations, amputations and negotiations

2011-10-20T09:14:00.000+01:00

Photographing these subjects at night with auto flash has not been sympathetic to some of the subtleties of their forms and for this insensitivity I, as Field Study's Man in E17, apologize. A recent evening jaunt took me to several places around Walthamstow where the capacity of plants to adapt to difficult environments can be viewed. I have reported on this phenomenon before - here - where trees are growing in er, harmony?, with the increasingly derelict dog stadium. I may be contributing a trivial point of view to or on the fiasco of the dogs, which the Archipelago of Truth has reported on more pertinently. Of course my perambulations have a purpose in that they serve as reconnaissance (field studies) and warnings for extra terrestrial trees; those that might be visiting from other planets. This my friends is what might happen should you get stuck in a fence.

Piffle indeed. A recent contretemps concerning a laurel hedge and fencing (of the wooden sort) might give the images some more edgy suburban context. A neighbour to an allotment I share complained very angrily about the cutting back of his hedge which had grown over into the allotment and over some adjacent raised beds. What ****** planet do you think you are on? was one of the 'questions' he bellowed. I think it was an unusual instance of good sense and diplomacy which prevented me from answering, quite matter of factly, Earth.

a field student of the makers yard

2011-10-19T07:52:00.000+01:00

Saturday 10th September

E17 Art Trail Guided Walk

Visit to The Makers Yard, Shernhall St.

a field student of f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & f & ...........

2011-10-13T22:51:00.001+01:00

field studies in progress

installation at The Hornbeam Centre

as part of

Here Local Further Afield

E17 Art Trail 2011

Why did I include a paperback copy of Ariel amidst the beekeeping paraphernalia making up the installation ‘field studies in progress’. This volume of poetry by Sylvia Plath was first published by faber & faber in 1965 and I’ve had a 1983 edition for nearly 28 years. In all that time, still just one of the tulips on the cover has wilted; bent double and drooping over the rim of the vase. A mass of faber & faber trademarks (‘Redcoats, everyone’?) surrounds the image of the flowers, SYLVIA PLATH and Ariel in a pattern which has the regimentation or uniformity of the printed wax sheets used by some beekeepers as foundation for the requisite honeycomb; the hanging walls of hexagonal cells in which the worker bees (Plath’s ‘honey-drudgers’) must deposit their honey. Of the 40 poems within the volume there are 4 specifically from Sylvia Plath, the apiarist; ‘The Bee Meeting’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, ‘Stings’ and ‘Wintering’.
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In ‘The Bee Meeting’ the poet is a neophyte witnessing the arcane practices of village beekeepers. The poetry, from her initiation in the circle of their hives, is fraught yet lyrical; the bees are characterised as ‘outriders, on their hysterical elastics’.

In ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ the poet receives a nucleus of bees - a queen bee and her cohort of workers, ‘a box of maniacs’ which is the core of a new bee colony. As a new beekeeper, Plath shares her trepidation at her nurturing role and the barely tameable force of her newly acquired ‘mob’.

‘Stings’ sees us witness to the poet’s awkward identification with the worker bees, ‘these women who only scurry’ and, in a lost queen and ailing hive, ‘a self to recover’. The last stanza reveals a morbid and supernatural ascendance.

Plath shares her honey harvest following the whirl of her ‘midwife’s extractor’ in, ‘Wintering’. The poet’s relationship with the bees has transformed and faltered in the hiatus and hibernation of winter leaving the reader with a difficult meditation on a precarious yet hopeful incubation.
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Ariel was accompanied by another book in the installation, The BEE COMMUNITY, by F H Metcalf, published by Beecraft in 1948. The book, for laypeople and beekeepers, is intended as an account of the scientific knowledge of beekeeping and a response to the ‘mass of fantasy and mystery’ that has grown around the honeybee. Chapter VII, Unsolved Problems and Mysteries, examines the issue of collective and individual consciousness in particular the subordination of the individual or individuality. Metcalf comments on the possibility of a fault in the ‘community mind’ wherein the worker bees in winter ball around the queen to insulate her (it?); many of them die in the process. They can ‘ball’ so tightly they kill the queen. Scientific research since 1948 may have revealed or generated other interpretations of this phenomenon however the observation is pertinent to an understanding of Plath’s poem ‘Wintering’ and more fundamentally the dialectic of individual and collective expression.
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Plath’s poetry may anthropomorphize bees via verse which can be morose and fragile and in the bitter sweetness of her metaphors there is much that can be regarded as a mass of fantasy and mystery. Dismissing the fantasy and mystery may be characteristic of what John Berger, in ‘Why Look at Animals’ regards as a corporate capitalist process which ruptures ‘every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature’. Berger’s thesis begins with animals more sentient and doe-eyed (cows/livestock) however Plath’s totemism does not present so much of a digression or transgression. Bees are magical, tameable/containable and their honey intensely alimentary and in their habits, proximity and ‘invitation’ (Berger) a means to metaphoric connections with nature as a more encompassing whole; the first metaphor was animal.

There is little in the way of doe-eyed sentimentalism in Plath’s poetry - that disneyfication and cultural marginalization of animals Berger rails against. Plath's sentiments are often raw evocations of sex, birth and death.
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In ‘Wintering’,

The Bees are all women,

Maids and the long royal lady.

They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
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These primordial relations are quite exquisitely expressed in the compelling meter and sentiment of this song accompanied fittingly by a confused image of a bee - Billy Bee.
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Since I started keeping bees some of Sylvia Plath’s poetry has become less obscure and esoteric - particularly the beekeeping poems. Until then the poetry verged on being hermetic. The esoteric affinities of the poetry may be a response to a desperate sense of loneliness born of a loss of ancient values, myths and primordial ideals. What certitude did Sylvia Plath seek? The installation was a memento mori consisting as it did mostly of objects and materials which had perished in various ways e.g. a worn out smoker - the leather bellows holed, dry and cracked. It can be repaired and revived.

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The multi sensory installation invited visitors to consider how such a sensibility contributes to the tasks and actions deemed necessary to address social and environmental dilemmas. How does writing, reading and appreciating poetry about bees deal with the dire consequences of declining bee populations? Those actions are a way to understanding some of the conditions which hinder creative and sustainable participation. Sociability is not necessarily in itself the solution to all problems - what people do (and how well) is important. Also in Here Local Further Afield was Sian Collins’ ‘The Meeting Room 2011’, a document representing a gathering which took place in The Hornbeam Centre’s meeting room. I imagine the meeting being warm, lively, and loud, buzzing (if you’ll excuse the obvious allusion) and perhaps reassuring. We could compare or allude to it in the encounters in ‘The Bee Meeting’.
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These art and craft works may be akin to social tools in a convivial space within an expansive egalitarian context that is the E17 Art Trail. The presence of outstandingly unique talent expressing and founded upon psychological disorder is awkward to say the least. The autonomy of individualism may equate with liberation from rules and restraints and from conformity but to what consequence? Suzi Gablik asserts the consequence and meaning is ‘alienation from the social dimension itself’. Counter to arch individuality bereft of social significance and social obligation (a social vacuum) is a desire for a ‘more circumspect state of mind’ perceiving ‘the need to strengthen art against the present conditions of arbitrariness and fragility’. Was Hornbeam’s meeting room a rejection of a modernist bell jar and if so to what consequence?

Has Modernism Failed (Revised Edition), Suzi Gablik.

Why Look at Animals, John Berger.

a field student of unintelligible syllables

2011-10-11T00:07:00.000+01:00

a field student of craft processes pt3

2011-10-03T19:44:00.002+01:00

Listening Loops

Susan Sontag, in ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’, wrote of art noisy with appeals for silence. While studying for a PGCE in Secondary Art and Design, I was asked to present a mock lesson introduction to fellow Institute of Education student teachers and our tutor. On reflection the content of my presentation may have been foolish. It began with an overhead projection comprising a video of a ‘teacherly’ attired bloke (me) asking, inaudibly, with various signs (including British Sign Language) for quiet and silence. The lamentable and unfunny silent movie, fraught with contradictions, ended with the fool hysterically gesticulating for the noise to stop. I was graciously thanked by a hitherto quietly appreciative class for my performance.

I have observed art and other subject teachers noisily, even violently, appealing for silence or quiet. The often flagrant disobedience towards the appeals shocked me initially. My student and supply teacher placements took me to some 'learning cultures' quite different to those of my schooling and some of my expectations as a beginning teacher had to change. Settling a class down to achieve a quiet deemed suitable for learning could, I observed, take some experienced and qualified teachers more than 5 minutes. That ten minute mock lesson intro’ back at ‘the Institute’ seemed remote and out of context.

The cacophony of some classrooms was not just due to youthful ebullience and loss/lack of control due to teachers’ poor classroom management. The very architecture and design of some schools conspires against the imperative of quietude or quiet behaviour for learning. Of course such a monastic rhetoric represents a didacticism which may not cultivate creative learning in some subjects. It was this issue, the relationship between noise and power in public institutions which I put to members of the In-Between Two Sounds discussion panel. In particular, I asked the panellists to share some of their awareness of how architects, designers, technologists and others create acoustically appropriate environments; buildings fit for their purpose. I wondered about the capacity of the meeting room for classroom like noise.

In-Between Two Sounds - Walthamstow Quaker Meeting House

installation detail.

In-Between Two Sounds - view from listening bench

In-Between Two Sounds was an installation and series of events which took place at Walthamstow Quaker Meeting House, as part of the E17 Art Trail 2011. The installation, curated by Rebecca Stapleford, immersed visitors in the serene setting of the upstairs meeting room. Sound artist, Alyssa Moxley offered visitors the experience of ‘Sounds Move Through You’, a soundscape composed for listening to via headphones, anchored to a bench within the space. An audience gathered in the same space to participate in the panel discussion. The panellists, David Toop, Salome Voeglin and Stuart Sim talked about silence, noise and listening. Their treatises (some with sound/musical effects) prompted further discussion and audience participation all characterised by a sense of sobriety. David Toop spoke softly about the speculative history and futurology of listening and why listening may need a radical rethink. Stuart Sim spoke about the divine nature of silence, specifically in the context and practices of a Quaker meeting house, and about the social problems of noise further afield. Salome Voeglin told of a distinction to be made between silence and quietude. Having set up the distinction, silence was explained as being generated in her auditory imagination from the smallest speck of sound; conjuring in me a metaphorical pearl. Around Voeglin’s “structured space of nothingness” there could be quietude enabling reflection and careful listening. The panel’s response to my request for comment on acoustic design included SV proposing listening as a learning activity; a discipline or practice to abate noise and thus enhance the creativity of ear drumming pupils and teachers alike. This response emphasized behaviour as a key to enhanced listening.

Listening is taught directly and indirectly in schools as one of the key skills implicit in competent communication and is one of the fundamental cognitive faculties in many subjects. The panel’s concern was more the overloading of our sense of hearing, the auditory canals. The overloading might be epitomised by consumerism and its unrelenting drive for novelty or newness by which listening can be impaired; the din of proverbial shopping trolleys blocking the fluid hearing ways. There is a lot of information available about many aspects of listening and how it is taught in schools.

What discipline and creativity in listening had I brought to In Between Two Sounds? Did I listen to and/or hear Alyssa Moxley’s, ‘Sounds Move Through You’? How can I, 3 weeks or more, after the experience, recall in it some expressive detail so as to convince you I did so skilfully and creatively? If not ‘I’, then who and how have they done so or will they do so? In installation art there is a ‘problem’ of the space between the creativity of the work itself and the creative responses it elicits.

I recall an intimate journey through an everyday and extraordinary ambience, domestic and urban, adrift in interior and exterior spaces, crossing enigmatic thresholds accompanied by glimpses of conversation fading and gently interplaying amidst a stream of hums, whispers, rubs, creaks, steps and breaths. It was difficult to tell what was where in the stereophonic layering of the surround experience as whole soundscape or encounter. There were sounds of my own body, pulsing for example; those of the playback and those of the meeting house and our Walthamstow situation. Were the subtleties and sophistication of the vibrations and waves lost in me; a hearing machine, an aspiring listener fettered by reason? What sensibility did the installation require ideally?

In the corner of the meeting room Jean Luc Nancy (or Venus, courtesy of Titian) reclined in bookish proxy, saying, ‘isn’t the philosopher someone who always hears (and who hears everything) but cannot listen, or who, more precisely neutralises listening within himself so that he can philosophize?’ The statement was just audible above the rest of my inner verbiage which was the din and knell of my hope of listening - diving for pearls; the specks of sound which might become silence. I could try and reassure myself (if not convince you) of my listening abilities, by recourse to Susan Sontag, who said, transcendence is without realization. What would be evidence?

Listening as a craft may have an orthopraxis which has a learned knowledge. According to Mary Carruthers, the knowledge ‘can only be learned by the painstaking practical imitation and complete familiarization of exemplary masters (sic) techniques and experiences’. Of course it would be foolish to say my lesson introduction involved painstaking practical imitation.

Can we read ‘and experiences’ as disciplined cognitive activity or “silence” - “silentium”, the term for it in monastic rhetoric. Carruthers’ “competens silentium” suggests ‘the competency of those adept in a craft or spirit or attitude of mind towards what one is doing, the fitness of the craftsman, craft or work’. In the panel discussion there was debate about the fitness of people’s ability to listen in a world so afflicted by noise. Craftspeople often cite the meditative qualities of their handiwork, and the various beneficial effects, including healing, which craft practice brings. Perhaps I needed to be knitting to genuinely appreciate In Between Two Sounds as a well listened piece and so personally demystify the religious myth of listening as a craft.

a field student of craft processes pt 2

2011-09-24T10:55:00.001+01:00

Kirsten Schmidt, Creatures Great and Small, St Barnabas Church - detail

E17 Art Trail 2011.

In 1939, at least 2 significant public art works appeared in Walthamstow; J F Kavanagh’s 5 carved stone figures on the back of Walthamstow Town Hall, and (by another artist) the stained glass East Window at St Mary’s Church. The latter was removed for the duration of World War II; a wise decision considering the substantial bombing of the area, including the church.

Motherhood as a theme features figuratively in both those works of art. Anna Alcock and Kirsten Schmidt reflected this presence (perhaps unintentionally) of motherhood in their art work, Forest Guardians, exhibited in the ‘Inspired by Morris’ exhibition at William Morris Gallery in autumn 2010. In both sets of work one woman stands protectively over or by a child, while another holds an infant. The infant in the stained glass window is the baby Jesus. In Forest Guardians the infant held by the woman is a lamb.

What, if any, fantasy or mythology surrounds and imbues the maternal figures in these art works? David Mabb, another exhibitor in ‘Inspired by Morris’, gave a talk as part of the exhibition programme. He interpreted William Morris as a fantasist. Morris’s floral designs draw on an endless summer, fecundity and fruitfulness in medieval myth and legend. His affluent Victorian interior was a mis en scene for a quest for Avalon, Eden, and the Paradise garden. Kirsten Schmidt’s image of a woman holding a lamb is derived from a medieval German sculpture and the same image appears in a printed floral milieu in Creatures Great and Small - a set of 6 banners made for the columns of St Barnabas Church; a venue I took in on ‘my’ E17 Art Trail 2011.

Creatures Great and Small was a set of 6 printed banners. The printed designs consisted of intertwining floral patterns growing about a variety of animal and human figures. There were birds, a ram and the female/woman or chimera. Accompanying these symbolic creatures were streams of fish, Piscean in their upwards flow and meander through the trellis or undergrowth of assorted stems and leaves. Looking at the curving spiralling printed patterns drew my gaze upwards. Each banner followed a similar graphic scheme though each was also different in terms of the base fabric, the colours of the inks, and the order of the characters in the patterns. Each pattern appeared to be a variation on a theme - a play with the formal graphic design. I felt the lighter brighter prints on and against darker fabric (though still with a sheen) were more appealing and absorbing.

The columns were hard, stark and severe structures on and against which to hang the slightly diminutive banners. The precision of the column edges were in contrast to the soft unevenly undulating edges of the banners. The undulation accentuated the visual qualities of the printed surfaces however I felt there was also unwelcome visual discord by this. I wondered if the waviness was due to a difference in the bias of the printed fabric and the backing fabric. The discordance might have been less so had the banners been hung away from the columns rather than right against them, the weight of the banners hanging more freely.

What is the nature of Christianity’s relationship with crafts and craftsmanship and how could Kirsten Schmidt’s evocation represent not only some of the pleasure of this relationship but also tensions and paradoxes? Richard Sennett comments, ‘early Christianity had from its origins embraced the dignity of the craftsman’ doing work which ‘could counteract the human propensity for self destruction’. The appearance of peaceable and productive work could not completely affirm this conviction as the very materiality of the work brought or brings with it fear of the earthy temptress, Pandora. Kirsten Schmidt’s re-presentation of what might be an earth Mother Goddess (of pagan origin) inspired in part by William Morris also presents questions about how textiles has been used as a means of control of the female or feminine. Sennett comments on this prejudice in relation to Eve; it ‘bred a practice: female temptation could be countered by a particular craft, that of the needle, whether in weaving or embroidery, the woman’s hands kept ever busy’. Could Schmidt’s female figure be confined to needlework, in the way of Homer’s Penelope, unpicking by night all the needlework of the day in the service of an established kingship or patriarchal lineage?

Each banner might have been a verse in a hymn - a song to creation or creativity, an alternative to the hymn to Hephaestus - ‘every silk woven by swift fingers came from a loom your (his) burly hand designed’. Quite fantastically, a 5^th century priest, Proclus, contrived a poem expressing the transmogrification of textiles materials - ‘the wool was the ancient fleece of Adam; the interlocking thread the spotless flesh of the Virgin’. The female figure on the banners may not be an origination of the Mother of God or Theotokos, however I would be surprised if her presence is not intended as some form of prompt as to questions about the complex theology of Mary, and more universally, myths of creation and origin a priori.

A specific place or host venue accentuates or alters the meaning of a creative work (visitor) - particularly the identity of that thing as a work of art and/or craft. It is pertinent to say a church is a place to contemplate origins and any object, with some gendered identity, placed in the church leads to statements about the origins and values of gender. To say something is a work of craft is to confer gender and this dialectic may lead to discussions about difficult transitions in gendered roles in the church establishment.

It is probably as well to return to the bannered space as one for personal fantasy. There I probably made a misidentification of one of the birds perched in the design of the banners however there is a genus of birds, Halcyon - kingfishers. Halcyon also has a mythical reference, that of a bird which makes a floating nest at sea. Their song is said to charm and calm the seas - a state of tranquillity for a journey to a place seemingly ‘way over yonder’; a gospel song in which Carole King (surely blessed by St. Blaise) sings, recalling Mabb’s and Morris’s Victorian Halcyon,

‘Way over yonder is the place I have seen,

In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream,

And maybe tomorrow, I’ll find my way,

To the land where the honey runs in rivers each day,

And the sweet tasting good life is so easily found,

Yes it is’.

(Way Over Yonder, Tapestry. 1971)

Forest Guardians can be viewed here along with a statement by the artists.

Creatures Great and Small (detail), St Branabas Church. E17 Art Trail 2011.

a field student of craft processes pt 1

2011-09-20T00:07:00.008+01:00

What did I make of the use of religious and sacred spaces on the E17 Art Trail?

My art trail included several venues which are ordinarily considered sacred; churches and religious meeting rooms for example. Of course Walthamstow is a multi faith community and many other sacred spaces exist locally, including temples, mosques and a synagogue. I haven’t been through the art trail guide seeking out which of them participated directly, especially as host venues for the art trail.

I visited St Barnabas Church, St Marys and the Quaker Meeting House. St Barnabas and St Marys hosted group shows (including performances), while the latter hosted a solo artist installation including a performance and a discussion. Between the three venues there is a plethora of artistic endeavour to reflect on and in selecting specific works to appreciate I am not, hopefully, dismissing the others out of hand.

What do I care about the use and purpose of religious places around the town?

I am secular in a formal sense in that I do not abide by the codes of a particular religion including attendance at church or any other place of worship. In the context of liberal multiculturalism I’d like to say I abide by an ethos of tolerance and understanding and so in ‘my’ community different faiths are welcome and welcoming. I may be unwitting and my liberalism, or relativism, a form of false consciousness however I think the participation of faith communities, including places of worship, on the art trail signifies hope and that hope is a constituent of the sacred. My conscience may only amount to sentiment and so I set out to visit the exhibitions to look for works of art which would provoke and confront a stronger sense of conviction.

How did the art trail artists test my sentiment?

Places of worship are often where we see some of the most elaborate and traditional emanations of artistic creativity. How would the artists express contemporary 21^st century senses of place in places of worship often hundreds of years old? In Making is Connecting, Dave Gauntlett explores the contemporary relationship between work, making and hope via William Morris. Morris asserted any work worth doing offers hope - the hope of rest, the hope of product and the hope of pleasure in the work itself. This seems a fitting critical tool with which to continue looking at the art I visited whilst also bearing in mind the hazard of lapsing into pseudo religiosity. Which works/makings connected me a contemporary sense of hope/sacredness and what capacity for connection did I bring to the art?

Aser El Saqqa - War and Peace - St Mary’s Church. (E17 Art Trail - 105)

Aser exhibited a series of photographs of the British Cemetery in Gaza City. The images were displayed in the church via an installation of a large overhead projection screen, smaller digital screens mounted on the pillars, and a computer. I assumed the projection facilities belong to the church and are a part of the ordinary paraphernalia of worship there. The images of the cemetery, including landscapes and details, were accompanied by short texts giving some historical context about the cemetery. Gaza is in a region blighted by a long history of war fuelled by geopolitical, ideological, ethnic and religious conflicts and the British Cemetery is in part a memorial to British forces personnel who fought in this region in the early to mid 20^th century.

It is difficult to think of any culture or civilisation in which burial grounds are not sacred, indeed sacrosanct. Aser’s images projected a sense of peacefulness, care and propriety and the gentle pace of the slide show was appropriate to the sombre subject matter and the church setting which is also a mausoleum.

The connection of hope for peace and the hope of rest in this installation is a complex relationship confronting a viewer with the enormity of collective history and one’s personal place in it. Where, how and why are you visiting the scenes? The hope of pleasure in the work itself is the motivation for peace by peaceful means while attempting to maintain a sense of connection via less rapid fire and numbing depictions of conflicts. William Morris asked, ‘what is the nature of hope which, when it is present in work, makes it worth doing?’

Asking what work is involved in the installation, ‘War and Peace’ gives many answers potentially. There is, for a start, the work of creating and maintaining the cemetery and the work of representing it. The slide show can be considered a tribute to generations of gardeners who have tended to and cared for the cemetery. In 2001, the Head Gardener was Mr Jeradeh MBE, son of Rabia who was also Head Gardener there. They arrived in Gaza in 1948 as refugees from Be’er Sheva. In 2001, Mr Jeradeh, when interviewed by The Telegraph, hoped his son Issam Ibrahim would succeed him to continue the work. There is something moving and poignant in the continuity of care revealed by the photographs. I’m unsure when Aser took the photographs and to whom we might attribute the care shown in the images however they represent a great sense of sustained humility.

The large screen dominating the projection of ‘War and Peace’ in St Mary’s was mounted in a place in close proximity to the large stained glass East Window (created in 1939). According to a ‘church art trail’ map (I picked up at St Barnabas Church) the design of the window is based on an ancient hymn, Te Deum Laudamus (Ambrosian Hymn). Translated from the Latin, this means, ‘Thee, O God, we praise’. The Wikipedia page for this hymn states the hymn is sometimes sung or given in thanksgiving for a publication of a treaty of peace and this site for the screen seems highly appropriate demanding as it does the question as to when and how peace might be achieved.

One of the themes I’m trying to explore, via reflections on the 2011 E17 Art Trail, is the art craft debate and some contemporary myths of art and craft/craftsmanship. I’m using ‘Making is Connecting’ (Dave Gauntlett) as one of the guides to this. One of DG’s hypotheses is, popular creativity especially that expressed via Web 2.0 is essentially craft, and this craftsmanship rejects and even subverts the hierarchical and elitist mores of the contemporary art world. The debate could be mere semantics - a linguistic ping pong game for theorists while others get on with the real work however I happened to catch Tony Blair talking on the news this morning in his capacity as a Middle East Peace Envoy. The statement which really caught my attention was

"Let's see if we can craft [my emphasis] something that allows the Palestinians to come to the United Nations, to advance their aspirations for statehood that also at the same time allows us to develop a framework for negotiations so that they get back to talking," Tony Blair.

Out of respect for the peace process I cannot write anything more about this statement which is not facetious except to refer to a comment made in a previous post that craft is a slippery word.

Aser El Saqqa - War and Peace - St Mary's Church

for the E17 Art Trail 2011.

a field student of local interest

2011-09-14T08:32:00.001+01:00

Man's or man's?

http://archipelago-of-truth.blog.co.uk/2011/09/10/has-stella-creasy-started-to-smell-the-coffee-and-donuts-11816960/

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/9243223.WALTHAM_FOREST__MP_says_home_invasions_are_criminal/

a field student of short walks on grass

2011-09-11T07:30:00.001+01:00

a field student of scents

2011-09-10T16:23:00.002+01:00

a field student of encircling

2011-09-10T12:01:00.003+01:00

As ‘a field student of encircling’ I performed a whirling dance atop a tree stump in Aveling Park, intoning “flux” to the moon. The invocation involved the evaporative images of a hare, dog and tortoise chasing each other’s tails in pursuit of nowhere around the base of the stump. Witness to the spectacle, were two teenagers whose attempt at a communal smoke was thwarted as their jaws dropped and their fags fell to the ground. When the images had completely spiritualised, and thus was I released from my lunacy, I mused on the health benefits of my actions. I would not be offended if you rejected the notion of the dance as a sacred rite and chose instead a judgement of tomfoolery. Elsewhere on the E17 Art Trail more serious and sincere artists visited Walthamstow’s genuine places of worship in order to explore and express meanings of place.

a field student of field measurements

2011-09-09T15:48:00.002+01:00

Field Study's Man in E17 likes to think this is an audio recording of a section of the definitive map of Walthamstow being opened and laid out for viewing; an experience of a scale of 1:5000.

a field student of art sections

2011-09-09T10:13:00.003+01:00

a field student of eclipsed paths

2011-09-09T07:40:00.005+01:00

a field student of definitive maps

2011-09-08T11:15:00.002+01:00

As Field Study's Man in E17 I resumed my search for the definitively blank map of Walthamstow; a search for which there has been a protracted hiatus. Today, yesterday, 10 years ago, I wish and I doubt (anticipating the historical relevance of my endeavours) I affixed an E17 Art Trail '148' badge to my cap and proceeded to Sycamore House, home of the London Borough of Waltham Forest's planning department, to peruse, by appointment, the conceptually artful un-spaces of Walthamstow. The badge, I assert, qualifies this action as an art action. As Field Study's Man in E17, I believe E17's footpaths - public rights of way - may be understood as 'unspaces'. I confess I am afflicted by contemporary art's infatuation with the 'un-' an obscure authority that lurks in the labyrinths of art criticism and interpretation.

On the way to Sycamore House I was pointed in the direction of Jorge Luis Borges who, the pointer claims, has mastered the craft of conceptual manipulation. Under the influence of Borges, and his pointing admirer, would I be guided to an ineffable core of a story worth telling? Ineffable indeed if I had stopped writing at the question mark; sadly this is a tale of an effable core. While in 'The Aleph', Borges' mind floundered at the prospect of translating into words the limitless, drawing on an age old mystical bird which is all birds, and 'a sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere' for help, Field Study's Man in E17 waited patiently and less mystically at the temporarily vacant Sycamore House reception.

The promise of a definitively blank map, one by which I might, to paraphrase Borges, at one and the same time move east and west, north and south brought with it some anxieties. I kid you not when I say such angst played a part in the design of the motif for these E17 Art Trail field studies. By what other pretences - false or otherwise was I there? Thankfully a receptionist arrived, confirmed my appointment and put into play the day to day procedures of municipal bureaucracy.

I imagined being escorted into a private room to view the definitive map and that the map would have about it a variety of ceremonies to confirm a sense of importance - or rather, significance. The truth was far removed from the post modern Gothic fantasies I had rendered, the likes of which might be compared to David Lynch's weird soirees. Hold on a minute, were those people speaking English, backwards and in code? Pull yourself together Field Study's Man in E17. I was handed a lever arch file and directed to a small open consultation space to one side of the reception desk.

The mundaneness and banality of bureaucracy had not yet extinguished or dulled the iridescent promise of a blank map, the map which is all maps, the right of way in which are all rights of way. Before opening the receptacle, I paused, closed my eyes, listened, sensed the fragrance of the space, shifted about in the chair to feel comfortable - poised. I envisaged the contents of the file - a collection of immaculately blank and folded sheets, a definitively blank guide to this town, the former home of Nowhere's greatest author.

a field student of directions

2011-09-08T08:20:00.002+01:00

a field student of 148 badges

2011-09-08T07:15:00.003+01:00

The installation featured above is, 1000 Cranes for Amnesty.

a field student of historical contexts

2011-09-07T22:44:00.001+01:00

a field student of dust

2011-09-07T19:16:00.002+01:00

a field student of contours

2011-09-06T19:14:00.002+01:00

This evening, as Field Study's Man in E17, I set out for the live tattooing spot on the art trail. When I arrived there did not appear to be any tattooing going on, nor art trail signs to invite art 'trailors' in. I entertained the thought of offering myself for a tattoo but hesitated as I failed to resolve a dilemma as to what I would have tattooed and where. I stood divided between the 2011 E17 Art Trail logo or my art trail spot number - no.148. I envisaged myself in wrinkly old age adorned with years of art trail spots almost as if I were ridden with a comic book pox. As I arrived pruriently at a few choicely located spots, one of my guardian numbskulls piped up and talked some sense into me. I left, en route for Chestnuts Field via Clay Path, to design a contour.

The rapidly revolving doors of Clay Path perception served their purpose of disorientating me sufficiently well enough to ensure some lack of balance in the process of creating a contour. It is important not to be able to walk in a straight line when designing a contour.

Once on and in the field I unwound it's length in a fine silk thread to create a huge loop. I wavered and meandered a traversal of a character distinctly lacking in elegance. I blame the wind and its tangling effects.

Quite what the gentleman smoking (sic) at the edge of the field made of this tangled loopy spectacle I do not know however his speeding away in a car suggests some alarm on his part.

Having untangled myself I managed to form an impression of a contour fit for a map somewhere but as yet nowhere to be found.

a field student of footpath construction

2011-09-05T22:41:00.002+01:00

a field student of lost horizons

2011-09-05T19:28:00.002+01:00

a field student of dirt

2011-09-04T17:10:00.033+01:00

As Field Study's Man in E17 I lay in bed wracked by visions of the E17 Art Trail’s conviviality gone asunder. In this delirium I envisaged all manner of strife as the great collective of E17 welcoming mats, and further (onto the carpets and rugs), lay spoiled by the niffy doggy doings of Walthamstow’s poop ridden highways and byways. I would have to do something to allay my fears borne out of some unfortunate E17 field expeditions carried out earlier in the year. And so, as Field Study’s Man in E17, I present to you a report on this scatological issue.

I have deliberated over this post for well over a week due to a variety of dilemmas concerning aetheticizing of the excremental. The dilemmas are further complicated by the diversity of motivations and 'energies' which constitute the E17 Art Trail. As Field Study's Man in E17 I have put my critical foot in it on a few occasions, however here I must critically go where other dogs have gone before in an attempt to demonstrate some learning from mistakes - a sort of art trail pedagogy or 'pedadoggy' as we dogs in the field might say.

So, to salve my dog dirt ridden conscience I decided to remove dog mess from the footpaths of E17 in between my visits to art trail venues. I contemplated conducting the altruistic acts in a radical transgressive manner, in that I could have done it bare handed - performance art in one of its base manifestations. The technical and social hygiene implications of this raw approach are rife and so I opted for a series of safer poop removal procedures. The things one does for art and the things one does as art might be a critical distinction to make to question the validity of the artfulness of this gesture. Still I found it difficult not to see my civic action as being an intervention in the sociability of the art making up the trail. When and how can an art work be defined as being separate from the event in which it was encountered? As the number of stools in the bag in the bin increased I confess to a certain sense of self congratulation - well done man, you are a bloody hero, you should be proud of yourself!

One dilemma concerns when to accept being an unsung hero or to sing one's own praises. The consequences of being unsung and not singing can be profound. I recall applying for a post of art teacher and following my unsuccessful interview I was told I had not talked myself up enough. Of course, confident inspiring teachers are a must in the classroom and so I departed (my portfolio hanging limply between my legs) cogitating on the better judgement of those more experienced and up there, so to speak. As Field Study’s Man in E17 I am down here developing my field art in relation to pedagogy by paying particular attention to byways close to schools. Sadly I can report the majority of the 20 odd dog dos I removed were found on pavements close to schools. Would I have stooped to such levels of artistic, pedagogic and social altruism had I been successful in the art teacher interview room? Of course this is not to say teachers do not do their bit by removing dog dirt from the pavements, that they are 'above' such acts. Nor do I wish to vainly denigrate the work of the street cleaners. In some areas I struggled to find dog mess for what might be a number of reasons; the responsibility of dog owners, the work of street cleaners and a sense of responsibility shared by others from across the professional spectrum. As Field Study's Man in E17 I will not make claims to any artistic originality in my cleansing acts; others more modest did the same.

Most famous in scatological art is Piero Manzoni’s tinned ‘artists shit’ flogged by Sotheby’s (no less) for a handsome sum. Chris Ofilli, with his paintings mounted on elephant dung, has been a subject in some local schools. An exhibition derived from this study was a part of last year’s art trail. With the complexity of ‘context’ in mind I have some reservations about how to add my recent works to my portfolio - a field study in progress. However my failures in art teacher interview rooms, and current lowly professional status (related to the arts), have not dampened my enthusiasm for art and services to art. Field Study's Man in E17 is not bitter; he is, or I am, on occasion, as sweet as honey. So I have determined to try and keep doing my bit for the cultural well being of the community, here, locally and further afield. How well is this achieved by relegating the value of my civic actions to the novelty of an art(istic) conceit?

a field student of invisible crossings

2011-09-04T13:31:00.002+01:00

a field student of weights on tables

2011-09-04T11:36:00.002+01:00

a field student of fragrant thresholds

2011-09-04T09:28:00.001+01:00

Vinegar Alley

a field student of water marks

2011-09-03T13:20:00.002+01:00

a field student of post garden draws

2011-09-03T11:00:00.006+01:00

Thanks to Matt Taylor for producing this radio interview here

a field student of stalls

2011-09-03T08:00:00.003+01:00

a field student of hares

2011-09-01T21:45:00.008+01:00

a field student of previews

2011-09-01T18:31:00.000+01:00

as part of

a field student of good intentions

2011-08-31T23:33:00.002+01:00

As Field Study’s Man in E17, I have selected ‘my’ spots for a spot to spot art adventure; perhaps a veritable odyssey of good intentions.

Here is the fantasy selection to be formed into an E17 art experience:

2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 19, 21, 22, 24, 30, 31, 42,

44,

47, 51, 6 2, 60, 59, 57, 67, 66, 73, 76, 80, 148,

147,

149, 137, 138, 109, 111, 105, 103, 97, 100,

151,

153, 154, 156, 81

Field Study’s Man in E17 has been in training to develop his stamina for this art endurance event - namely, the ‘fortyoneathon’.

a field student of doors

2011-08-27T10:27:00.000+01:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Florenca146.jpg

As Field Study’s Man in E17, I have been looking at (pictures of) ‘The Gates of Paradise’, while waiting with my 5 or more humble senses preparing to embark upon the E17 Art Trail 2011. How did I arrive at this phantasmagorical 16^th century Florentine threshold?

Following a discussion earlier in the week I had cause to anticipate some of the boundaries of the trail and assess the risks of straying into and beyond the blurs. Our discussion posited differences between art and craft and a dialogue exploring the relationship of art to craft ensued. We speculated many artists do not make their artworks with their own hands; they employ studio/workshop assistants. Bridget Riley was cited as a fine artist/painter who does not paint all the paintings created and exhibited in her name.

This artistic mode of production is not new. Artists have for a long time run studios and workshops which employ a variety of skilled designers, craftspeople, artisans, engineers, technicians, researchers … and so on according to the manner of the art. This creative workforce produces according to ‘thee’ artist’s direction and vision.

In this system the artist is the mind and the artisanal workforce the hands - the latter, Animal laborens, in service of the former (and for some, superior), Homo faber.

Why is Homo faber considered superior? According to Richard Sennett, one of his teachers, Hannah Arendt, believed the mass productivity of the 20^th century resulted in mass destruction and annihilation as a consequence of Animal laborens lacking the guidance of Homo faber. Sennett sets out in ‘The Craftsman’ to promote the misunderstood Animal laborens as Homo fabers compassionate and benevolent multi-intelligent guide. A well practised cultural materialism will qualify Animal laborens for this new role.

What of the trail of E17’s cultural materialism when the gates of paradise swing open? Will we be jostling for the definitive creative pole positions? I assume most of the contributors to the trail enjoy making via the myriad processes contemporary culture offers. On show will be a culmination of diverse handiwork, a collective intelligence inviting similar and different intelligences to appreciate it. On what terms will the offers, invitations and appreciations be made? Of course I am not saying the materiality of culture is predominantly reliant on handicraft unless I were to make a tenuous link or lineage between the pleasures of hand held smart devices of recent and not so recent times.

Photographs in their diverse material forms may represent a (slightly tongue in cheek) celebration of the capabilities of the index finger (at the moment of capture/exposure). Which leading photographers e.g. develop/print their photographs? How are (or can) photographers be involved in the production process? A photograph may signify social skills and experience necessary to set up the photographic moment; the photograph being a memento of many skilful interactions. Could we say the darkroom technicians are craftspeople who provide the artist photographer with a choice of images; the artistic role being to choose the best vision of a particular moment - a matter of heightened sensibility and connoisseurship?

I might accept someone presenting themselves as an artist not having made/manipulated the artwork - or, even, not having made an artwork at all - as far as e.g. a proposal or design constitutes an art work not made. Artists have adopted such epithets as ‘celebration consultants’ (Pierre Huyghe) in an attempt to subvert the constraints of materiality.

I am less likely to accept someone identifying themselves as a craftsperson - even artist-craftsperson - if they show things in their name they have not made, at least even once. There might be ways around this suspiciously deep puddle of categories and definitions. Tanya Harrod comments on craft, saying:

‘it’s changeable, slippery identity is, as usual a good barometer of current anxieties, hopes and confusions about modernity and our place in a world over which we apparently have little control’

If I slip on a piece of craft while out and about on the trail, who could I blame? Who would be responsible? Harking back to the bedtime reading of my art and craft student days, it was Ernst Gombrich and his ‘The Story of Art’, which offered some insights into relationships between art and craft. Gombrich’s rationale and historical perspective on their distinctiveness was based, in part, on the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti (& co) created two sets of doors for the Florence Baptistery which took more than half a century (15^th/16^th) to complete.

The first set of doors was, according to Gombrich, a craft work. The artisanal work imitated the processes and products of a tradition which in turn they sought to perfect.

The second set, (The Gates of Paradise) 27 years in the making, was an art work in that it broke with tradition, no longer imitational, but experimental, expressing progressive and original ideas and forms.

Gombrich has been criticised for his peculiar 20^th century bias and perpetuation of a myth of art and craft that projected the dilemmas of that time onto the past. What else could he do? The construct of mind and matter, and the ideological implications, persists. What Field Study’s Man in E17 wants to know is, if the definition or resolution of the gates on the other side of paradise are blurry/blurred, will it be an immateriality through which he can exit without opening - in the event of an emergency?

a field student of a husk of hares

2011-08-24T22:11:00.000+01:00

you have seen this hare

Plodding and plotting the ways of the foot, Julian Beere as Field Study's Man in E17 will contribute a series of actions, or 'field studies', carried out inbetween visits to fellow exhibitors and their exhibitions during the E17 Art Trail 2011. The field studies are intended to be part of a mapping process by which Field Study's Man in E17 will lose himself in Walthamstow, E17, E10 and elsewhere.

The purpose of this errancy is a search or prospect for fiction and it's underlying patterns here, locally and further afield.

The programme of actions will be announced via Lost and Found in E17 (http://julianbeere2011.blogspot.com) and via the community noticeboard, Here Local Further Afield, at the Hornbeam Cafe, Hoe Street.

The field studies will encompass a variety of practices, including beekeeping (for honey), fruit and vegetable growing and foraging, involvement in local community organisations, walking and cycling, mark making, digital arts and blogging.

Some of the outcomes of the actions/interactions will be collected, documented and contributed to the journals and reports of artist collective, Field Study International, curated by David Dellafiora.

a field student of tongue in cheek communiques

2011-08-24T07:57:00.000+01:00

For the E17 Art Trail Blog - here

Field Studies in Progress - Spot 148 (Events and Performances)

1. Please tell us about the work you will be showing in the 2011 E17 Art Trail. Did you respond to this year’s theme “On Your Marks”? What impact do you think the Olympics will have on E17?

Last and quite possibly least in the art trail guide is, Field Study’s Man in E17, aka Julian Beere, of Lost and Found in E17 obscurity. He is in the process of preparing a series of actions or ‘field studies’ as part of his plotting and plodding the ways of the foot in E17.

The field studies involve a variety of mark making processes constituting what might be spurious research into the psycho geography of the area - a 1:1 mapping or survey in readiness for the 2012 Olympic gold rush and after.

It is likely there will be more visitors to Walthamstow some of whom will be lost or close to being lost. The prospect of getting really lost in Walthamstow via certain counter cultural Situationist art strategies appeared promising until, distressingly, news arrived of ‘neighbourhoodists’ who will greet and guide visitors. What has happened to the joys of not knowing where you are or where you are going, Field Study’s Man in E17 implores?

2. What challenges (if any) did you face in realising this work?

There is the constant challenge of maintaining a sufficient and appropriate sense of fantasy, pretence, delusion and lack of direction in the field studies in the build up to the games.

3. What do you like about E17 and why? Is there anything you would change about the area?

Some places in Walthamstow smell fantastically; they have really hummed. Field Study’s Man in E17 has been working on an olfactory training programme that will enable him to guide (for those who insist on being guided) visitors to the enhanced fragrances of and about the town. He looks forward to the day when a complete stranger approaches him and says, take me to the best smell in town. Julian Beere has just quipped the only visitors are in your head. There may be some truth in that.

Fewer cars and better driving would improve the area a great deal. More people walking at night looking up at the stars and the aeroplane lights.

4. Who and/or what inspires you?

People with ideas, energy, creativity and determination to make them happen - Cris, Laura and Morag of Artillery and the E17 Art Trail are among them. There is also the motley crew of Organiclea and Hornbeam - heroes of the ultra local vegetable scene. Can Field Study’s Man in E17 say he is inspired by them? To say yes to ‘inspired’ may be undue flattery on his part - admiration and respect absolutely.

5. What advice would you give to aspiring artists?

Field Study’s Man in E17 advises all aspiring artists to keep aspiring.

a field student of flicks and flyers

2011-08-22T20:55:00.000+01:00

a field student of paths to 2012

2011-08-21T15:33:00.001+01:00

As Field Study’s Man in E17 I am, like it or not, on the road, canal, footpath, cycle-path (and other byways) to 2012, a year increasingly synonymous with the Olympic Games especially so as I live in East London where the greater part of this sporting and cultural gold rush will be played out. The interesting times of late have not made making sense of this prospect any easier. Getting the right answers to reach an oasis of solipsistic calm may be an accomplishment akin to winning a fool’s gold medal. For the most part I am looking forward to the 2012 Olympic Games with a sense of dread mainly founded on doubts about London’s transport system to cope with the influx of games goers - officials, participants and spectators. I have, perhaps foolishly, entertained suspicions that Transport for London, the Olympic Delivery Authority and other agencies have a nefarious (as in wicked) interest in cultivating such a sense of misgiving in order to deter use and so achieve a desired reduction in the normal use of the transport system during the games. My job, one of the principle ‘things’ which keep me socially enfranchised, involves working out and about on the streets. I am not permitted to divulge much detail as to the work I do as this is commercially sensitive and there is also a possibility of my biting a hand which feeds me if I assert a current and distinctly iconoclastic position on the Olympics.

Back in 2005 I did however join in several demonstrations against London’s bid for the 2012 Games. One was a convergence; a flotilla of canal boats on the Lee Navigation near the Bow Back River. The photograph (above) was taken from a bridge forming part of the Bow Interchange. This location is on one of my cycling routes to work and has recently undergone a substantial transformation with the installation of a new bridge which enables cyclists and pedestrians to bypass the Bow Interchange overhead.

If the Olympic bid had been unsuccessful, what would have become of the ongoing Bow Backs redevelopment? I believe some of the objections to the redevelopment of the rivers in that area were that there would be exclusion from them and the Olympics would impose some redevelopment which would undermine or prevent potentially more beneficial developments particularly in relation to the area as a haven of environmental and social diversity. I have lost track of the precise details and findings of Freewheelers investigation into the impending restrictions on cycle routes during the Olympics; based on them I think the current ease of passage may not be so next year. As I understand the spin of Lord Coe and other Olympic figureheads, the inconveniences during the games are the necessary and justifiable price to be paid for the longer term benefits or ‘legacy’. If I find myself incarcerated (ha ha) in traffic grid lock or diverted away from cycle paths onto busy roads I am supposed to look ahead gratefully and any qualms will have been only petty and personal.

The E17 Art Trail this year, with the title, ‘On Your Marks’ is anticipating next year’s Olympic Games perhaps more creatively. It includes some artists who are directly involved in the cultural lead up to the Olympic Games. Katherine Green, along with Mark Burton, will be presenting photographs celebrating the work of local community groups. The details are here. Katherine Green also has an exhibition at View Tube - ‘Road to 2012, A Local Story’, also linked to an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). The photographs may creatively contribute to current debates about society and community and how various constituents are represented. Katherine Green has done a lot to document the marginal and the passing - Wood Street, Walthamstow Dog Stadium e.g. The choice of a local credit union premises for the E17 Art Trail show seems apt in terms of a celebration of localism and the means by which people can participate in more genuinely local social enterprises (e.g. elsewhere in these parts, Organiclea - a workers cooperative I think). It is unlikely there could ever be a definitive view as to how genuinely philanthropic the Olympics are, with all the global corporatism, in relation to the local. Katherine Green’s portraits of young people participating in sport, some in preparation for the Olympics are (going by the promotional postcard/flyer) in stark contrast to the plethora of cctv mug shots following the recent civil disturbances. Perhaps that is a stereotyping juxtaposition to make? What I wonder is what responsibilities an artist has for the ways in which their images are used or appropriated - as well as the responsibilities the sponsors have in this representation.

If local culture is increasingly directed towards celebrating the Olympics will this constitute a journey to a mirage - ultimately an El Dorado?

Julian Beere is a bronze sponsor of the E17 Art Trail 2011

a field student of explanations

2011-08-19T07:52:00.002+01:00

As Field Study’s Man in E17 I am reporting, with some disappointment, my honey harvest this year is relatively meagre. I and fellow beekeepers managed to harvest c. 65Ib from the two hives/colonies in our apiary. We will have to compare yields from other apiaries to see if there is something peculiar to our beekeeping to explain our poor yield. Last year we harvested nearly 120Ib from one hive in the same allotment apiary; a quite spectacular yield. I can happily report the flavour of this year’s honey is much richer.

This year’s yield split 3 ways gives Field Study’s Man this supply of honey for the coming year.

Some of the jars will be given away as gifts, some kept for my own sweet tooth and the surplus (abiding by allotment rules) sold via Organiclea’s local produce stall at the Hornbeam on Hoe Street. Ru Litherland, sage and wise elder berry of Hawkwood, has recently espoused the conviviality of Organiclea’s genuinely local food stalls. The honey will go on sale on the first Saturday of the E17 Art Trail. If previous years are anything to go by the honey will sell quickly. I have been told other beekeepers may sell honey from that stall.

The jars of honey will be part of, ‘Field Studies in Progress’, my contribution to ‘Here Local Further Afield’; Hornbeam’s group exhibition for this year’s E17 Art Trail. There might be a beeswax/honeycomb sculpture to see, made by the bees from all the wax capping removed from the honeycomb during the honey extraction. While beekeeping is or has an art in its own right I have been thinking about how and why (other) artists have created art with and about honey and other bee materials.

Chief among these honey artists is Joseph Beuys. Honey was a principle material in his art works - often expressed in the form of shamanic like performances or rituals. Beuys’ use of honey was informed in part by the anthroposophical ideas of Rudolf Steiner relating to learning, healing and community.

The appearance of the hare in this year’s art trail trope prompted me to think of a particular performance by Joseph Beuys.

In November 1965 (a month before I was born) Joseph Beuys performed, ‘How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare’ at the Schmela Gallery in Dusseldorf. He anointed his head with honey, onto which he stuck gold leaf. Having strapped a piece of iron to one of his booted feet, he cradled a dead hare in his arms and whispered into its ears - ‘explanations’ about a variety of pictures displayed around the gallery. At times he may have walked ‘clunkily’ around the gallery to develop his explanations of the pictures and so develop the dead hares understanding. Twenty years or so later I became aware of this performance and I was (rightly?) baffled, intrigued and perplexed by it. What sort of lunacy could this be? What specious explanations or analysis could be given for the artist’s ‘action’ let alone those given to the hare? Of course I was only there in gestational spirit and never got to witness in the flesh, (honey and gold leaf) any of Joseph Beuys’ live performances. I wish I had.

Some serious international artists of repute have re-enacted Joseph Beuys performances - Marina Abramovic amongst them. It takes a serious and accomplished artist to tackle the ontological and epistemological challenges of dead hare education - certainly a calibre of artistic ability Field Study’s Man in E17 could only pretend to profess. I can however indulge in some artistic pretence at least for the duration of the E17 Art Trail and take on the slightly less daunting task of explaining pictures to a much less dead hare.

As to how Field Study’s Man in E17 will explain the art trail’s forest of media to the hare is a mystery as yet to be unfolded. You are invited.

a field student of inbetweens

2011-08-17T00:35:00.003+01:00

As Field Study's Man in E17, I took to the squares of Walthamstow Central on Sunday to contribute an art book making workshop, under the auspices of Waltham Forest Arts Club, to the E17 Art Trail, 'On Your Marks', launch and warm up event. Above are some snaps from the event featuring the book making workshop 'station' (manned by Julie Caves, Helen Porter and myself), the drop in book making workshop in progress, one of the 'djs' who provided musical accompaniment to the art games and demonstrations (including a bmx painting display) and the art trail information hub to which a great many flyers and posters were pasted - as well as postcards and leaflets deposited. Among the pasted posters is this one (below), designed by Devanyi Parmar, for, Here Local Further Afield, a group show in which I have some involvement. The objectives of this involvement have changed in the last month as I have decided not to exhibit the sculptural maps/field studies in progress until next year. Field Study's Man in E17 will use the venue in a different way for the purposes of his E17 field studies.

Of the many art trail leaflets, posters and cards I was happy to find, this one (below - both sides shown) particularly caught my attention:

www.in-betweentwosounds.co.uk

As Field Study's Man in E17, I have attempted to practise an art of walking and listening with walking as a way of clearing my mind of the clutter of thought in preparation for a place to stop, stand still (sometimes with my eyes closed) and listen. I have found it easier to listen in places where I can sit as standing still with closed eyes incurs some unwelcome self consciousness and a sense of vulnerability. I may present a field report on this aspect of my exploration of Walthamstow for the art trail.