Field Study's Man in E17 forages for hope

Snowdrops - Campton Plantation 18th Feb 2013

Saturday morning found Field Study's Man in E17 distracted from his preparations for a series of emanations aimed at demystifying rainfall; emanations or explanations intended for five-year-olds. The distraction was our monthly stint volunteering for the Organiclea fruit and veg' stall by the Hornbeam Centre, on Baker's Avenue, E17. On the way to the stall my alter ego reported on some of it's progress in preparing the explanations. It seems that the mystified five-year-olds are not or will not be children (or even human) as I assumed, and that the field student will explain rainfall to other things which are five years old. 

"Not Joseph Beuys and all that dead hare stuff again," I thought. 

"How did you know?" it asked, quite surprised.

"Strangely, I happen to be able to read your mind," I replied with a yawn, as it was before 8am on a Saturday morning.

"Strangely you happen, sounds about right," it quipped.

As we cycled down Hoe St' together I tried to distract the field student further from the eccentricities of the avant garde by questioning what it means to volunteer; an intervention that included asking the question, 'when is volunteering not really volunteering?' 

My ponderance was left hanging, ousted by the practical task of setting up the stall and preparing the produce for sale. The setting up was accomplished quickly as we are in, or are approaching, the 'hungry gap' - a time of the year when a predominantly local seasonally supplied stall will have less produce to prepare and sell. 

One of the local items or foodstuffs available from the stall is, 'Walthamstow Honey' (2012) produced by the bees of Eric Beaumont, I believe. My sadness persists at not having managed to harvest any honey from our bees last year and I hope that my inexperience and hopefully decreasing ineptitude as an apiarist will not be as challenged this year. While I plied Walthamstow's foodies with local produce on a warming morning full of the promise of Spring, I thought ahead to the afternoon when I would visit our apiary to check on the overwintered bees and dwell  on the hope and prospect of honey 2013. Just how local would it be?

Apiary 16th February 2013

 all 3 hives appear active and well populated

we have been feeding the bees over winter with fondant 

I'd gone to the apiary with 'Neopoll' to feed to the bees.

The bees had started foraging and could be seen returning to the hives with pollen sacs. I noticed 2 colours to the pollen sacs - a pale creamy one (above), and a brighter mustard (below). I wondered what the provenance might be for this pollen - a foodstuff which is very important at this time of year to honeybee well being.

How far do bees fly to forage for pollen and nectar? The maximum range might be 6 miles however bee colonies foraging that far will get little benefit from the forage as they will be expending more energy than they are actually getting. The less distance the bees have to fly for forage the better provided the immediate environment supplies their nutritional needs. Foraging range is also very important when it comes to considering the presence of pesticides and genetically modified crops in the environment - an issue that is perplexing many beekeepers. 

I had a quick scout around the allotment for early flowering plants that may be providing bees with forage. I found a patch of Lungwort, Pulmonaria officinalis which honeybees might forage. As well as that, there were catkins which bees can use as a source of pollen although their role is not entomophilic as far as that plant is concerned.

Lungwort

The apiary and allotment is just about 3 miles from Walthamstow as the crow flies, but the latter is out of range for productive forage as far as our bees might fly.

Further to the north, some 40 odd miles away and later in a long weekend, I came across a great show of snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis, well out of range of our bees but all being well not out of range of those of other beekeepers. I hoped the bees 'back home' would be discovering similar swathes of plenty and I thought it would be a good thing to  plant an area with snowdrop bulbs for next year.  

Mean while, in the darker reaches of a field student's imagination, another colony of bees is settling into a new hive all a hum to the note of E.

 Dead bees in the compost

a field study of a purple spouting potty plot plotter

Purple Sprouting Broccoli - Feb' 2013.

This is a slightly overdue report from the allotment as it has progressed into February. My excuse is that I have been buried in various seed catalogues and gardening books in order to devise and contribute a planting plan to the communal effort that is the or our allotment; an effort that aims to provide nourishment for some of the hearts, minds, bellies and souls of E17. The perennial wit of Field Study's Man in E17  perched on one of my studiously hunched shoulders and amused itself with 'plot plotting' comments. "You are a potty plot plotter for the pot, you are", he squawked, in ever increasing tongue tied up-iness. Fortunately he very nearly throttled himself with his tongue before I could throttle him with my hands. He fell off my shoulder and lay on the floor barely conscious and I was able to enjoy some respite from his tongue twisted twittery and get on with a plan. Just as the last raised bed presented itself for the delights of this year's seeds the revived and very irksome alter ego butted in with some distracting blather about something he had just finished reading. "For the sake of fecundity, will you please shut up and let me finish this plan!" I implored. I tried to explain the importance of what I was doing and resorted to a burst of fancy, even outright pretentiousness, when I told the field student that I regarded each raised bed as a form of musical notation; each bed a 5 line staff, every seed, plug and plant a note expressing harmonic progressions of exalting purity and plenty. Call me J S Beere or what!? "I can't hear myself plot!" I cried. "Who do you think you are, Beethoven?" was the field student's tasteless quip. I must have flushed red with embarrassment at this (self) expression of yet another ego. The field student obviously found the sibling ego hilarious and rolled around on the floor in fits of laughter. It is very difficult to finish any task such is the 'distractive' power of Field Study's Man in E17. 

I stuck to my deadline and posted the interrupted plans to my fellow 'allotmenteers' in the hope of something of practical use in them. The first response was much more earthed or grounded than my elevated pretensions.

The 'blather' of the field student related to a letter he had read. The letter was written by Wendell Berry* and concerned rainfall, randomness and mystery in relation to soil. The field student banged my head against the wall in frustration at my inability to comprehend his account or understanding of the letter. I suggested he go away and come up with an explanation fit for a five year old. How can the mystery be explained? 

While the field student is 'working' on his explanation I invite you to look at some pictures of the allotment as it was on the 3rd February.

Wesley is adding 'rockdust' to a raised bed planted with garlic.

Joe is making a new raised bed for rhubarb, with nifty use of some recently cut branches.

How the leaf mold basket has progressed since December.

A raised bed just treated with rockdust - a kilo' per sq metre.

The vestiges of the Great Forest of Kale.

Dead hedging.

Inside the polytunnel and our reestablished reconditioned raised beds.

The pond by the polytunnel continues to fill and has just been relieved of some overgrowth.

We washed the inside and outside of the polytunnel

and

Field Study's Man in E17, true to form, missed a bit because, he says, 

it's a map of the inbetween where the earth meets the sky.

*Home Economics, Wendell Berry - Letter to Wes Jackson, 1982 (Counterpoint, USA: 1987)

Field Study's Man in E17 on a tale of two Cazenoves

Madame Lillie - Cazenove Rd, N16. 4th February 2013.

About 8 years ago I was tasked with a job of going to Cazenove Road to pick and collect some (unwanted) apples from a tree in someones garden. I duly drove to Cazenove Road N16 and knocked on the door of the house whose number I was given. A very confused conversation ensued with the occupant of no. ?, Cazenove Rd, N16. It took a surprisingly long time for me to twig (for an apple to drop) that I had mistaken Cazenove Rd, N16 for Cazenove Rd, E17. My embarrassing ineptitude swelled up in me as bright red as an apple. I apologized to the disturbed and mystified resident of Stoke Newington and left tout de suite and finally arrived at Cazenove Rd, E17 quite a lot later than arranged.

I have discovered some other confused Cazenoves though I think it would be unwise for me to provide any links to the misaligned maps and addresses because I am reserving 'embarrassing ineptitude' for myself. However I felt some redemption for the error of my way to Cazenove Rd, N16.

Two days ago I was back in Cazenove Rd, N16 and it was most definitely where I was supposed to be. It was then (in February 2013) that I remembered something not at all embarrassing about Cazenove Rd - that something being the occasion of a Field Study performance as part of the project, Splendid Lights. held at Madame Lillie's in 1996 - a venue which seemed to be closed down on 4th February 2013.

The text in the 'Splendid Lights' blog post link states that 'Madame Lillie' was on Stoke Newington Church St which, unless Madame Lillie moved between 1996 and 2013, is probably mistaken. This is further evidence of the E17 field student's dubious sense of place and psycho-navigational skill.

Field Study's Man in E17 needs to get out of the house more but he can't escape the home in his head.

Church Hill, E17 2nd February 2013

Field Study's Man in E17 found me in rather a glum mood yesterday. I explained to the field student how an incident at 'home' involving a door damper had escalated into a full scale psychic conflict of a sort only veterans of housing of multiple occupation would understand or be familiar with. I think you need to get out of this singular preoccupation, he said, and thus insisted we go out for a walk. He might have had a point; was I actually enjoying the psycho-dramas playing out in my thoughts? I followed him grudgingly and after a few moments we stood at the top of Church Hill and were awe struck by the John Martin-esque setting of the sun at the lower end of Walthamstow High Street.

Field Study's Man in E17 started singing 'Walthamstow Sunset' which is/was a rendition of 'Waterloo Sunset' with 'Waterloo' substituted for 'Walthamstow'. While there was no verse in Ray Davies' great London song that could not take Walthamstow instead of Waterloo, I found the well intended effort to cheer me up just a horrid cack-mouthed ear worm of a gesture and so plugged myself in to my electronic gizmo, at which point Field Study's Man in E17 vanished from my sight and/or site. The first song to bore its way into my toxic cranial cavity was Laurie Anderson's, 'Over the River'. What an odd coincidence that was.

I went to the library to see if there was a 'dvd' of Stanley Kubrick's, Paths of Glory. I was told the library did not have the director's (personal) copy of that film, nor, for that matter, any other copy of the aforementioned film. I broke out in a cold sweat at the imminence of an apostrophic nightmare in the retelling of this story and so sought out 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation !', Lynne Truss. Damn! Every copy in the borough was on loan!

I walked back up Church Hill still pestered by the worminess of the field student's sunset song. While walking I also felt I was dragging the domestic difficulties as if they were rendered or materialised as big lumps of plaster of paris or even concrete. Once back in the house and home I reached for my copy of, 'The Art of Rachel Whiteread', published by Thames and Hudson. I had an idea this learned collection of analyses and interpretations would help me better understand the nature and complexities of domestic atmospheres you can cut with a knife or, depending on the possible variety of materials and their densities, other, more appropriate cutting tools.

I turned to Chapter Two, and began reading, 'Matters Immaterial, On the Meaning of Houses and the Things Inside Them', (Shelley Hornstein). I did my best to comprehend the analyses of RW's works but I struggled to get to grips with the elaborate intricacies Hornstein made between sites, substances and sensibilities.

I attempted to explore the essay by using something personally relevant as a sort of critical 'scope'. In this case it was the door damper. A door damper makes the act of pushing a door open heavier, harder, more resistant; it requires more force. What if you didn't know the damper was there? What could explain the unusual or additional force/effort required to open the door? One cause or explanation I thought of was an increase in the 'materiality' of the air/atmosphere within a space/room behind the door. Rachel Whiteread goes the whole way and makes the spaces of the rooms solid and impenetrable or 'repellant'. Of course there could be other explanations or causes; e.g. the door could be very heavy, you/I could be very weak. What if you/I thought of 20 different reasons (fictitious or factual) why a door requires more effort to open? Would this be an example of 'forcing a trajectory of thought' concerning rooms you cannot get into? I thought doors and trajectories was a pertinent connection to make.  Field Study's Man in E17 just walked through the door as if it were nothing. Of course, he is not as hard core as Rachel Whiteread and thus does not achieve such monumental, weighty and uncanny results. The field student's 20 different reasons got progressively paranormal and disturbing so I left him alone while I took another look at the damper and reckoned that creating a caste of a room which has a 'dampered-door' would be a very exacting technical feat, so much so that the damper would probably be better removed and all the bodged screw holes realized in uncanny relief instead for posterity.

My favourite sentence in the essay is,

'We could say that virtuality has shaped city life in novel ways that alter the dimensional comprehension of propinquity'. (p.61)

I really enjoyed the way my mouth and lips were stretched and otherwise exercised by the latter part of the statement, and that 'propinquity' found me reaching for a dictionary. The sentence, in my mind, cries out for a 'discuss' - which of course the author goes some way towards doing, before concluding this trajectory of thought with a notion that House 'seems to harness virtual energy'. Well, House was and perhaps the memory of it still is something close to what it was but what is virtual energy?

I very much wanted to visit House during what turned out to be, sadly, a relatively brief residency on Grove Road near Mile End, back in 1993/94. I recall some of the media hoo-ha and one of my first responses (to the art work) was, I wish I'd thought of that.  I didn't make it to the much decried installation. House has continued to haunt me over the nearly 20 years since it's weighty manifestation and hysterical removal from that part of the East End. According to the essay cited above, the artist looked for houses in several north and east London neighbourhoods and sometimes I have wondered if Walthamstow/Waltham Forest was among them and if such a work had been created 'here' would the reaction have been any different?

Field Study's Man in E17 found me lost to the peculiarity of a little ornamental intervention featured in the image below. He whispered softly, 'ah, innwendig' to which I replied snarkily, 'unnwendig'.

a piece of barbed wire emanating from the wall

Reference - The Art of Rachel Whiteread, edited by Chris Townsend, published by Thames & Hudson 2004.

- Chapter Two, 'Matters Immaterial, On the Meaning of Houses and the Things Inside Them', - Shelley Hornstein.

Field Study’s Man is just another hole in the wall

I dragged ‘Field Study’s Man in E17’ down Walthamstow High Street. I was very keen to find out what they would make of a curious local cultural trace alerted to me by a photograph in the Walthamstow High Street exhibition at Vestry House Museum. I asked the field student if they had ever looked closely at the walls of our local cinemas, or rather, the walls of buildings that were cinemas, then (most likely) bingo halls, and now buildings that are quite likely to be closed down, boarded up and semi-derelict; such is the contemporary dissolution of high street culture and commerce. Well, have you? What did you notice? What could you have overlooked? Our destination was the Dominion Cinema (1930-1961), Buxton Rd, E17.

The field student told me they got a B+ in ‘George Perec Street Studies’ and qualified this (psycho school) report by adding confidently they are ‘pretty good at noticing things’ and if they have overlooked anything they have done so for the benefit of artists who need people to overlook things as a basis for their artistic practices. They whispered something in my ear about a Susan Hiller however the comment was obliterated by a “pound a bowl” yell entering my thoughts via the other ear.

I grew tired of dragging and carrying the field student. They seemed unusually heavy and so I asked if they would walk with me instead. They agreed and as we walked I noticed their pockets were bulging and tunefully jangling with small change.

“What’s with all the shrapnel, ‘Field Study’s Man’?” I asked with growing concern at his descending trousers.

“I’ve been saving up to buy each tin of tomatoes listed in the Archipelago of Truth’s 2013 tinned tomato price comparison,” they replied, showing no concern about their trousers.

“What! Why?”

“Price is all well and good but I think we will have to undertake an intensive Technomist tinned tomato taste comparison.”

Gross, I thought. The prospect of an exclusive diet of tinned tomatoes filled me with dyspeptic gloom and I warned the field student, “If you buy all those tins of tomatoes I’m going to have a lobotomy, mate!” The field student grumbled, uttering something about health benefits. I tried to make a mental note, to write to Archipelago of Truth, to ask for a Czeck/Polish/Euro beer price comparison, in the hope of inspiring a less salubrious (more nihilistic) fetish in the field student. I struggled to complete the note, so manic was the field student’s Perec inspired documenting of the banalities of the street.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘shrapnel’ is a word used informally to denote small change, while the formal meaning is of small metal fragments thrown out by the explosion of a bomb. ‘Shrapnel’ is derived from the name of British soldier, General Henry Shrapnel, on account of his invention of ‘Shrapnel Shells’. The shattering power of highly explosive ordnance has a grim resonance with the high street, in particular the tragic occasion of a flying bomb that hit the high street (the Hoe St end) in 1944, killing many and destroying a lot of property. There is a detailed map of the extent of the bomb damage (1939-1945) presented in, ‘The War Over Walthamstow’ (Ross Wyld) The map presents an array of horrific black dots and square framed triangles imposed on a town street plan. I thought about many of the buildings featured in the VHM exhibition that were erased and absent from the area as a consequence of World War II and how some buildings (not in E17) retain the pock marks of WWII shrapnel/blast damage to this day; an example being the exterior wall of Tate Britain along Atterbury Street.

The field student and I discussed pre-1960s anti-war films and which one we would chose as the greatest. I opted for, All Quiet on the Western Front. He disagreed, and chose, Paths of Glory. The corner of Buxton Road and High Street saw us in a sombre mood as we arrived to begin our examination of the cultural trace. Revealed below (photographically) is a spattering of holes carved with coins into the bricks of the cinema wall, mainly alongside Mission Grove, by the long lost queues of Dominion Cinema goers – a phenomenon I have not encountered elsewhere.

The Dominion Cinema (1930-1961), Buxton Rd/Mission Grove E17

26th January 2013

Our mood was temporarily lifted by the oddness of the spectacle. We had indeed overlooked the coin inscribed expression on the many occasions we had passed by along Mission Grove. The field student immersed themself in thoughts about the films that may have drawn round-the-block queues of cinephiles to the Dominion during its years as a cinema, 1930-1961. Which films were so eagerly anticipated, and such a must see, that folk might start queuing long before the opening? In what frames of mind were the film-goers that they would scratch and bore those neat convex holes into the bricks? We wondered; boredom and impatience? Tense excitement? Reveries inspired by the idols of the dream factories – every hole made in homage to the stars? Were some of the holes expressions of suppressed desires, the promise of illicit canoodles in the back rows? Could the holes have been a quirk, a local joke, a meme of minimalist abstract complexity specific to the Dominion goers? Did the Dominion Cinema carve out a cinematic niche for itself in the area as it was then well populated by cinemas? (See Jonathan Brind) Which genres – thrillers, westerns, war, musicals, and romantic comedy... would inspire this behaviour? The shuffling of feet, laughter and chatter, calling out names, coughs amidst plumes of fag smoke, sucking on boiled sweets, a testudo of umbrellas in resilient defence against the elements, the collective chinks of metal against masonry and mortar, the un-belonging of the street eating into the belonging and property of the cinema, a multi facetted ritual constituting some eternal bedrock of ‘being together’**. Just what sort of trade (as in trodden path) in feelings and ideas was made there by the holes? The last film I recall queuing round-the-block for was ‘Batman’ at a cinema in Crewe in 1989. Did we make holes in the wall?

I noticed that ‘Field Study’s Man in E17’ had started to map the holes, plotting them precisely on brick like gridded pages in their notebook. They turned to me with a crazed expression on their face and said, “This is a code!” Oh dear, it seemed as if the field student’s imagination had gotten the better of them again and that some sneaky left brain intervention was in order to bring them to their senses. I was interested to know what they would make of the wall but ‘code’ potentially meant a long night of waiting around. I suggested we see if any contemporary coins fitted the holes. “You are such a boring fart!” the field student scowled, and continued to decipher the cosmic inscriptions. I would have to give them a chance to get the code delusion out of his system.

I made a mental retreat to a book, Barry Norman’s ‘100 Best Films of the Century’ (Orion, 1998), while the field student graphed the cinema wall. I supposed that most of the films watched in the Dominion Cinema were made in Hollywood, along with a lesser proportion made in Pinewood, Elstree and Ealing, and fewer still perhaps from continental studios? Norman’s introduction recounts some of the history of Hollywood film production. Hollywood was ravaged by television in the 1950s and towards the end of the 50s and into the 1960s it shifted its focus to financing European, including British, film. The influence of television on film in the 1950s also led ‘Hollywood’ to produce hugely expensive Technicolor epics. The films were so expensive and sometimes all most ruinous to the studios that it became cheaper, more viable and profitable to finance/dominate film making and consumption in Britain and elsewhere. The Dominion, closing down in 1961, did not see the full flowering of the ‘fool’s paradise’ of 1960s ‘British’ cinema – a challenging assertion to make as it could have been a period during which more compelling visions of British class identities and stories might have been projected by that cinema. The wall of the Dominion Cinema is an intriguing part of a complex story of transitions in the power of Hollywood as an influence on the collective psyche; a psyche that continues to change as radically or drastically with the influence of the internet on home enetertainment.

Barry Norman makes an interesting comment, in terms of ‘Lost and Found in E17’ being a blog about ‘psychogeography’. He writes, ‘Hollywood is not so much a place as a state of mind.’  There is a link to be made here to another blog (The Psychogeographic Review) where I questioned an interpretation of Daniel Defoe’s, Journal of the Plague Year, as ‘plagueography’ rather than ‘psychogeography'. In some respects Barry Norman’s concise statement about Hollywood supports the ‘plagueography’ idea – the plague separating people from the physical environment perhaps akin (though less pathologically) to people being fully immersed or lost in a film. I struggle to get my head around (sic) such a schism or concept. The Dominion Cinema wall is a site that can be interpreted ‘psychogeographically’ rather than it being a ‘psychogeographic’ site. Cinemas, working or not, express a sort of charged relationship and that wall is for me a potent manifestation of a relationship between mind and place but they, as places, can be overlooked as just bricks and mortar. May be it was the bingo goers who made the holes?

Field Study’s Man in E17 yawned loudly at my middle brow ruminations and handed me ‘something much more exciting’, a map of the Dominion’s semi-spheres.

“Where are we going with this?”

“Nowhere off course.”

** - Michel Maffesoli - Walking in the Margins//2002 - from, The Everyday, Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Stephen Johnstone. (Whitechapel/MIT Press)

Field Study's Man in E17 Loses Himself in a Phantasmagoria of Music Hall Variety

Palace Mews, E17 26th January 2013

Field Study's Man in E17 loses himself in a phantasmagoria of music hall variety

It is just over 110 years since the grand opening of The Palace Theatre on Walthamstow High Street. I forget if the high street was still called Marsh Street at the time of the opening, on Monday 28th December 1903. When though, precisely, for the purposes of hauntological rigour (mortis), did I 'forget'? I found out (or was reminded) about the theatre opening, and its location, by visiting the free exhibition, 'Walthamstow High Street' at Vestry House Museum. The exhibition runs to 24th February. I enjoyed the collection of artefacts on display; mainly photographs along with old music hall leaflets and posters, oral histories - all well presented and supplemented by informative texts. It was the Palace Theatre posters I enjoyed most, including the poster for the grand opening, which featured the announcement:

'expensive engagement of Fred Karno's company of speechless comedians in, Jailbirds - the funniest absurdity ever seen. 30 minutes continual roars of laughter. Scene 1 The Banquet Card Burglary, Scene 2 Corridor of Prison, Scene 3 The Quarry at Portland'.

The theatre, up until it's demolition in 1960, has an intriguing 'sub-history' that involves a veiled Italian countess who may have been a Mussolini show girl. I was so absorbed in the exhibition that I assumed the creaking floorboards of the exhibition space signalled the presence of just another fellow exhibition going punter coming to immerse themselves in the elegiac history of a high street. I felt a little uncomfortable as he or she stood right behind me, breathing heavily over my shoulder. Just as I started to turn to move away, I heard an exclamation, "Mamma Mia!", exclaimed in a terrible Italian accent, and there and then I caught a glimpse of 'Field Study's Man in E17' making his way to 'High Street, Walthamstow', no doubt, to look for traces of the funniest absurdities ever seen. 

Palace Mews E17, 26th January 2013. 

Site of the Palace Theatre?

Field Study's Man in E17 seemed most concerned that the water mains replacement/market displacement work in progress on the high street might have disturbed some of the spirits of Walthamstow's music hall past. In his mind, 57 years of variety, courtesy of the Palace Theatre, was about to reemerge - in a huge but silent promenading phantasmagoria. Marie Lloyd, The Dream Nudes, The Mighty Atom, Gertie Gitana, Maria Di Calci, Al Perry, Edward Petrof, the Del Rosa Dancers and Billie Roche were just a small part of the ghostly bill playing on his mind. Would high street shoppers be so spooked and annoyed by the wonderful but nuisance making bicycling acts of the great Lavender Troupe, that they would desert the high street in favour of online and mall shopping? Unlikely. Would the ghosts of the Palace Theatre gatecrash Ye Olde Rose & Crown Theatre Pub? Unlikely. I just managed to intervene when someone asked the haunted field student why he was taking photographs of the alley way that is Palace Mews; to pull him away before he could talk about mass music hall high street 'hauntings'. Look there, no up there, I called as I pointed to some signs I/we had only just noticed despite our many trips up and down the high street.

I dragged him in the direction of the Dominion Cinema to investigate an odd trace of Walthamstow's long lost cinema goers. 

Here are some links to Fred Karno:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Karno



http://fredkarnocompany.com/

http://www.khaotic.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Fred+Karno%22&page=1



Khaotic - The Fred Karno Story - Poverty Corner

http://www.themusichallguild.com/

Field Study's Man in E17 rambles in the nether regions of Walthamstow

When not wandering around Walthamstow/E17 studying, if not getting completely lost up his nether orifice, 'Field Study's Man in E17' has been known to take an interest in less insular matters and to look to the experiences and accomplishments of others to broaden his Walthamstow view. So in the last 8 (at the time of writing) days I have looked for the field student, with the guarded hope he has resumed such outward looking activities as attending talks and meetings, with particular relevance to Walthamstow.

 

Before I list the events attended I feel compelled to say this diligent 'activated spectatorship' (to use contemporary art jargon) is not without considerable risk when it comes to 'Field Study's Man in E17'; his propensity for asking damn awful questions when it comes to the Q&A part of an artist talk is remarkable. 'Remarkable'? That conceit is what he tried to convince me of. 'Nobody asked such a bad question as I did', he told me as we left a discussion between Iain Sinclair and Rachel Whiteread, that was a part of the 'Psycho Buildings' exhibition programme at the Hayward Gallery in 2008.

 

I recorded the discussion (for personal study/use) and when I played the recording back I had to agree with the field student that the question was indeed diabolical. 'Listen to that', he cried with laughter. 'I am easily the worst 'questioneer' in the world. Call me, 'Thee Crap Questioneer'', he bragged. I was mortified to think that 'Field Study's Man in E17' was sabotaging arts events with deliberately bad questions and decided to refrain from further similar participatory actions in the field. That decision was made before the schism that finds 'Lost and Found in E17' and 'Field Study's Man in E17' in search of each other, or at least the former in search of the latter, and not least because the latter can really be an 'arse'.

 

Before I list the events attended I feel compelled to say something about the question the field student put to Rachel Whiteread way back in 2008. That encounter has weighed heavily on my mind ever since. Unfortunately, 'Field Study's Man in E17' had been reading, 'Playing and Reality' (D. W. Winnicott) and was particularly taken by Chapter 4, 'Creative Activity and the Search for the Self'. DWW asserts,

 

'(i)f the artist (in whatever medium) is searching for the self, then it can be said in all probability there is some failure for that artist in the field of general creative living. The finished creation never heals the underlying lack of sense of self.'

 

The field student waited patiently, with mounting trepidation, well into the audience/panel Q&A session before he grasped the microphone and lobbed a very poorly formed question, (based on Winnicott's assertion) at the eminent artist. The question was edged with a sense of assertion, even an accusation that, in his mind, Rachel Whiteread may have demonstrated failure in the field of general creative living. What did he mean? The question was crass and (some might say euphemistically?) ‘excremental’. There was no genuine reason to suppose and/or assert Rachel Whiteread’s creativity in her public art work did not extend into her field of general living and really, if it did or didn’t it was (and is) none of my business. Playing the question back caused me hot flushes of embarrassment. How could you, Field Study’s Man in E17, how could you? I should really rub your nose in it. 

I tried to excuse the crassness of the question by recalling an interview with John Tusa in which Rachel Whiteread spoke of personal/family experiences and how she expressed them through her sculpture – or understood something of the experiences through the sculptures. The division of public and private was blurred though not sufficiently to make that disparaging assertion about a prominent artist’s creative life as a whole.

 

Rachel Whiteread’s work has often embodied (paradoxically) relationships between private and public, interior and exterior, material and immaterial; those binary divisions assumed in order to make everyday life less perplexing. Asserting that artists are persons who search; what is/was it that RW searched for in the process of solidifying the nether spaces of household furnishings? During the Psycho Building conversation, Field Study’s Man in E17 thought the lost subject of Whiteread’s search was the reverie she experienced as a child while sitting in cupboards/wardrobes and similar poetic spaces. Why would that search be indicative of a failure of general creative living?

 

What particular relevance could RW have to Walthamstow? Field Study’s Man in E17 has reported on intrepid archaeological adventures partaken beneath his bed and this leads to 2 examples of RW’s work, Untitled (Amber Double Bed) and Untitled (Amber Bed), which see the nether spaces of 2 beds solidified in rubber and high density foam, and the resulting objects slumped against walls just like abandoned mattresses. Of course, Walthamstow is a prime destination for connoisseurs of sublimely dumped mattresses (once very private and intimate places) thanks to the work of the Walthamstow Tourist Board. The field student is fascinated by the map-like stains – topographies of his sublime perhaps? It may be a cheap reference to make to the high art of RW, however the artist has acknowledged the importance of the phenomenon of urban discard and detritus in her work.

 

Back in January 2013 and it has become a matter of urgency that I try to reconnect with ‘Field Study’s Man in E17’ not least as a way of trying to contain his potentially rank interrogations. Yesterday I attempted to look for the field student under my bed and quite alarmingly I found myself repelled and projected away by a rubbery mass. It seems the field student has resorted to artistic means to avoid ‘reconnection’.

 

So after that circuitous ramble the list of the events attended:

 

On 15^th January I picked up a trail, pointed to by the Archipelago of Truth, that lead to Walthamstow Central Library and there I found Clive Bloom (‘an historian of disturbance’) in the company of some Waltham Forest Young Advisors for a panel talk and audience discussion about the 2011 Riots and related issues. The field student asked CB how strained relations between central government, the media and the police might have affected the policing of the riots. I’m trying to locate the report from the errant field student. On Sunday 20^th January he left a message he had buried the report in the middle of Walthamstow Marsh. I believed him and went looking for it!

 

On 21^st January I pursued Field Study’s Man in E17 towards Tottenham Marsh and found myself/the field student at the Ferry Boat Inn, in the company of East London Beekeepers. It was a very convivial and informative evening; an occasion when the field student could ask stupid questions about the limits of his beekeeping knowledge, and be advised most sympathetically and expertly. A discussion about dowsing and ley lines in relation to beekeeping certainly animated the field student’s eyebrows and before I knew it he was off with his rods and quickly found one of the reservoirs. How many times have I told you, Field Study’s Man in E17, you must use waterproof ink for your reports?

 

On 23^rd January I squeezed into the Hornbeam Cafe where close on 40 people had gathered to listen to a couple, Naomi and Pip, give an account of their ‘WWOOF-ing’ journey around the southwest country and Wales last year. Their rural bicycle rides took them to a diversity of organic farms, gardens and communities. At each they were provided with food, shelter and a growing awareness of alternatives to large scale industrial horticulture and agriculture – partly in return for their labour, energy, enthusiasm and experience – all of which are worthy of a field report although Field Study’s Man in E17 may not be the reporter for the job for reasons that may be all too apparent.