Scharoun model of Berlin Philharmonie
18.2.10
16.2.10
chronometers. Played on Resonance FM 15.02.10
Every so often
on an Abbey Road
which kicks across a different street
to resume like an arm either side
of an elbow displaced by a fracture
cast rigid in the pebble-dashed box-hedged suburbs
men’s legs arrest anyway
precisely in the walking position
found on the cover of the Beatles record.
The thing deciphered from physics
is that if all these moments are onion-skinned
bent backwards upon themselves
fastened
fused
worked upon
laid as layers
they will form a broad sausage
ghosting at the edges
and firm in the middle
the slim missives of landing birds will thread through the morass
dogs will form a thickening of average heights
the gaps will all be used up.
However
Trapped out beyond the sausage
in the collecting area for the singular instance
slices must be made,
and therefore
There will be the
waiting
only for the forking
bounded by
hamstring twitches
butting against the
bit below the apex of the inverse V
of split legs
about to form
about to collapse
about to form
It is the gaps
that pool and accumulate
rotating into neat discs
that form a cylinder
that rises between stepped lines
Above this regularly spaced and fronded F-shapes
are picked clean by shallow bowls
or copper-wound lines snaking subterranean
listen in the wind for signals that may still be bouncing
between the earth’s crust and the cloud layer
too weak to form an image
It is the time elapsed in nanoseconds since
weakening against the rimmed crackle
an actual image was encountered
Elsewhere a sandbag is supine
curled to face green chipboard
Its back is wrinkled like a piglet
limbless
headless
but seeding
thick sand blooms and clots on the surface
through far too many tiny holes at once
to form a balanced cone
from a line of softly skittling grain
The blooms and clots are finely divided rock and mineral particles
the rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the reservoir
and the instrument will not freeze.
It is the seepage that can be measured
if not neatly by a gathering in a crucible, ready to invert
with a simple one two three four
nor by the degree of shrivel marked out in gulches in the epidermis
then by the pace in which
the tiny holes are occluded and cleared
appear and disappear
as binary switches
The geology is sprinked loosely against the gravel
and the greyed discs of chewing gum
that have learned to disguise themselves
as well as possible
with the colour of the street
The green chipboard hoarding has eroded from the street surface
to reveal an audience of off-cuts
bottle-tops
and burlap coloured leaves
When the things stay in one place for long enough it is their intention to begin to share colours with each other through the diffusive shift of particles
As the reservoir approaches full drainage
the tiny holes in the sack are also dispersed sequentially
as the strands around them unwind gently
and slough of fibres from the outside in
which pack the seam and bind the other dirt
to become a tracing
Once the holes have been released
it is also the collection of these remaining fibres
in the bottom of a seam in the surrounding concrete
A second measurement of effusion
- the control -
can be taken from the daily observation of the circumference of the size 5 ivory moon
kicked beyond reach into the long grass
behind the fence and
in front of the portacabin
Nitrogen mix is exhaled steadily from the reservoir
which to begin with should be calibrated to 1.1 times the earth's pressure at sea level
The exhale is designed to be regulated by the molecular weight
of the molecules
proceeding in an orderly drip
through the smooth crust marked with
stitched incisions between the 32 regular hexagons and pentagons
of the truncated icosohedron
It is half-lifes of a tidy lung until equilibrium between the air pressures is achieved
From the path the steady green of Astro Turf forms a balanced horizontal line
above the darker soil-patched actual turf
Above the line of Astro Turf sits a painted brick wall
extended by the concomitant
spatial ticking of the slim-lined metal fence
which reveals beyond it
the smallest line of the flat roof
of the sporting facility
the top three lines are merely ornamentation
but special attention is directed
towards the indefinite line
of wars waged between the
turf and astro turf
The turf attempts to move upwards
in a phototropic push
which accidentally colonises the space of imitation
The astro turf retaliates
by dispatching rotating blades
that sever the heads of the vanguard
into a uniform precision
It is the fuzzy tussle of the border
marked in territory gained and lost
between softness and clean lines
There is an ice cream van
backed tightly against the
flat-roofed
brown-bricked
terrace
so that the red tip of the inch-thick bumper
slopes barely beyond the narrow metal strands
of the
loop-topped
white iron fence
There is a bastion of wheelie bins
that rock inward and outward
of the holding spaces created by the fences
in a bi-weekly lapping tide:
disposables and recyclables
It is the line this action makes
breaking against the wide sweeps and returns of the van
to the exact position
broken into subsections:
seasons and weekends
It is also the parallel oscillation
of narrow-coned wafer
diamond-etched
in boxes against the window
and the bouncing of the levels
of bright white whip
A cleanly laid grid of light square paving slabs
forms a smooth plane
barricaded on one side with low slung railings.
Every so often four of the slabs are planned absent in crisp lines
and from the centre of each small square of earth there is a burst of spiky foliage
that is desperate to believe in a tropic
Some are tall and cast parallel shadows that move through the same points once a day
It is the number of times cloud cover is sufficient
to obscure this task
14.2.10
The Diagram @ FormContent
13th and 14th February 2010 - FormContent: 51-63 Ridley Road, London E8 2NP
12.2.10
antepress @ FormContent
http://www.formcontent.org/projects/diagram/
I will be screening three short films alongside a brief consideration of modelling the formless.
7.2.10
It is secreted by trees, used by bees, and also etymologically refers to the suburb which binds or seals cities.
propolis |ˈprɒp(ə)lɪs|
noun
a red or brown resinous substance collected by honeybees from tree buds, used by them to fill crevices and to seal and varnish honeycombs.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: via Latin from Greek propolis ‘suburb,’ also ‘bee glue,’ from pro ‘before’ + polis ‘city.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propolis
25.1.10
17.1.10
15.1.10
antepress @ David Roberts Art Foundation, Wednesday 20th January 2010
For his first solo exhibition in London since 2007, Damien Roach presents Shiiin, Jet Stream, White earphones. This multi-layered project sees Roach continuing his research into modes of perception and understanding, analytical thought, creativity and mental freedom. Beginning by looking at the object of an exhibition in its most simple terms - as space and time - Roach has set about creating an environment in which these two fundamentals can be used to their fullest potential.
Roach employs an ambitious and constantly shifting exhibition design, transforming the gallery into a liminal space between lounge and garden - sites that find counterparts in the most open and public communal spaces (airport lounges, parks) and the most enclosed and private situations (living room, home, garden). Borrowing expertise and problem-solving approaches from disciplines as seemingly diverse as architecture, improvised music, garden design, psychoanalysis, stand-up comedy, Quantum Physics and philosophy, the exhibition space becomes a dynamic site of potentially constructive frictions and a bridge between, or rather a conflation of, both inside and outside, public and private.
A series of wide-ranging discussions, lectures, screenings and events will take place during the course of the exhibition, offering the audience the opportunity to engage with the space more as users than viewers.
PROGRAMME OF EVENTS:
Saturday 16th January, 2.45 pm: Zurich-based curator and critic Burkhard Meltzer will present and discuss his research project Prototype - furniture in and art design.
Wednesday 20th January, 7 pm: Experimental lecture on 'ekphrasis' by imprint and project platform antepress, followed by organ music from the Organ Octet.
Wednesday 27th January, 7pm: Screening of excerpts from Fun to Image (1983) a documentary about Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, followed by live music and projections by band Hype Williams.
Saturday 30th January, 1 pm: Charlie Woolley will transmit his radio station RADIO SHOW live from the gallery, joined by curator Paul Pieroni.
Wednesday 3rd February, 7 pm: Sebastian Boyle introduces an evening of live projections and films related to the seminal event Son et Lumiere for Earth, Fire and Water by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills from 1966.
Saturday 6th February, 2.45 pm: Philosopher Sue Golding/Johnny De Philo will plunge the gallery into total pitch-darkness to envelop the space with her live, spoken 'fractal philosophy installation' The Assassination of Time.
Wednesday 17th of February, 7 pm: Laura Mulvey will introduce the screening of her and Peter Wollen's groundbreaking film Riddles of the Sphinx (1977).
Saturday 20th February, 2.45 pm: Psychoanalyst Noga Wine will present the lecture The Drive and the Unconscious: two psychoanalytic concepts, which sustain the dimensions of time and space.
Wednesday 24th February, 7 pm: Live music performances by bands Temperatures and Sculpture close the events programme.
For further information, please check:
www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com/events
9.1.10
e-flux: Sherif El-Azma
http://e-flux.com/journal/view/90
Sherif El-Azma
The Psychogeography of Loose Associations
I look down. I feel awkward, although I act otherwise.
I hear him speak. He is talking to me.
“We have a new type of ruling,” he says. “A rule of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions. They are representatives of abstract forces and have assumed power through a surrendering of the self. They are rulers by accident — inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, so they bring in experts to tell them which buttons to press.”
I think of who “they” might be. Perhaps “they” are a non-governmental institute that deals with architecture, art development, or geography.
The stalker is a guide, and the job of the guide is to summarize information that might exist in a certain space and time. Guides also centralize and filter history, not only in an attempt to make the traveler a continuation of it, but to comfort the traveler in some way by making him feel that the center of this megacity is actually a village.
3.1.10
26.12.09
Take the simple sentence "It is almost perfect."
The subject is ‘It’. The predicate is ‘is almost perfect’. The complement is ‘almost perfect’. The copula is ‘is’. ‘Almost’ is the adjunct (part of the sentence that modifies the verb) and ‘perfect’ is the predicative adjective modifying the expletive ‘it’. ‘Almost’ modifies ‘perfect’ and is the predicative adjunct. ‘Perfect’ modifies the subject ‘it’ and hence ‘almost’ is a predicative adjunct to the subject.
Aurélien Le Roux - Demolition Studies
Inside Out from Aurélien Le Roux on Vimeo.
Dust Utopia from Aurélien Le Roux on Vimeo.
Bullring from Aurélien Le Roux on Vimeo.
25.12.09
time and the grey line
http://timeandthegreyline.blogspot.com/
I am working on an antepress residency with Art on the Underground here. We are working with the Jubilee line.
22.12.09
About facing.
audio works:
Attempts at formal analysis:
[Writings based on a contemporary amateur film archive of WWII pillboxes in Kent.
The structures are revealed temporally, in similar patterns of observational behaviour, and this close reading of each building is translated into the sparser, slower temporality of language. They are objects as cadavers.]
Where is it? It is not here, and yet it is not anywhere else. Nowhere? But then nowhere is here. The cadaverous presence establishes a relation between here and nowhere. - Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze of Orpheus
I
The beginning is close.
Tangled vivid green foliage with weak limbs conceals a tall wall situated apart from the main structure
mirroring the entrance wall.
The tall wall swings to the right.
Ahead are the lumpen knots of trees.
Above the tendrils stretch between the narrow corridor and mask sunlight into contoured breaks.
In the same instant a fresh gap appears on the left
vertical
the width of shoulders.
Bricks flush into view gripped by mortar
and disappear as the darkness takes shape and then removes it.
There is clicking and the sound of breathing.
And the clicks are regular
and the breathing is irregular.
Inside the darkness on the right is the first cleanly incised bright light aperture facing outwards.
Light enters
It casts a dim green bouncing off the metres and metres of chlorophyll staggering around the outside.
Through a narrow interval far to the left of a brick wall bisected by a plane of leaching white mineral residue
two more apertures appear.
Obtuse, distant, all the forms lit by them form diagonally in light purple
flexing against rotational symmetry.
Upwards to the left there is a pink alcove, brief, that vanishes.
Now veer back into the slim anterior room to face the apertures as they emerge and say
One there.
One there.
One there.
One there.
As if all frames must be counted. And each one when it is counted stutters at the centre, and disappears.
It is not look through so much as looked at, to mark the border.
The walls are transparent in this way
The walls become transparent.
Finally there is a narrow slit surrounded by darkness, and it is not counted, but it is noticed
and it hangs succinctly as punctuation.
Then okay and twist roughly into the green and purple light, of the bisected wall, and the bricks ahead, at the exit, look like chromotography measures
and their edges are too soft too soft.
There is a black grill lying diagonally against the door frame
and the skim of a baying aperture with a rust-brown plate bolted beneath it
And the outside emerges with the same mottled light on the tall wall.
The shapes trodden in the middle of the room are stepped as repeats outside
facing inwards against the rough skin
mirroring the way they would have watched the landscape.
Each superficial recess is cast by the murmur of plant matter
collapsing into soil
sealing lids shut.
II
The structure looms on a shallow tump grasped at by two trees
always, as always, in motioned hiss
snug against the flanks.
It is late Summer.
Sunlight bleaches the breeding tips of long grasses
through which a narrow path trodden upwards
siphons footprints towards the dark mass.
The light flashes briefly, once, and the entire image turns white,
and then gently returns.
…
The structure is formless and shifting on the ascent.
A small opening moves into view, followed by the dark space of the door moving in from the left.
The walls are rough shale, with light spots pixellating against the cast blocks all grey -
a solid mist hanging orthagonally.
In the dark corridor ahead and to the right there is an instant jumble of colour, massed clothing, rope, filth, huddled into a shallow recess, knee high.
Round the corner there is more
and more,
and more,
heaped with a broad meniscus against the walls
and glare of the regularly spaced high set apertures.
Pull backwards.
The image whitens again, adjusts to daylight
and each facet is traced anticlockwise
and hovers for a moment against each stepped embrasure
counting silently one, two, three.
The angles shift, and the apertures are blacked against the inside as white as they were from within.
One of the trees creates a barrier, halts the course. There is a smooth arc,
then stumbling
back and forth
back and forth.
Swing right to face the fields watched
waited inside
a river
dilated prospects.
III
A squat black hexagon transpires out of the haze of ripe wheat beneath a flat grey sky.
There is a slow bumping spiral inwards.
Each face as it occurs seems identical
repeats.
The same stepped-in apertures rotate as the texture of the walls moves into view
dotted with the flowering of mustard lichens.
Entering from the rear, the back wall is flatter, longer, holds two apertures cut cleanly either side of the door opening. For a moment there is a view straight through the shallow space and the sky from the opposite side moves inside the socket hole of the left aperture.
Any part may be connected to any other part.
They are compound eyes, ossified.
A tall blank wall adducted here as endoskeleton
is yellow clay bricks hooking round to the left.
The smooth grey cement interior walls are ridged with vertical casting lines.
The floor is flat dark mud and levelled blank.
The apertures eye height seem wider on the inside
between each the regular crease line of the vertices marks a change in angle.
To the right the yellow bricks seem to create a dividing mass across the diameter
of uncertain geometry.
To the left in eye lines out the fields form slowly
supporting a dark island of trees.
Past the second aperture there is a letterboxed slot
low down on the third wall
bevelled into nothing.
Half its faces are black.
Shifting perspective slightly, a shallow enclave forms in the viscous shadow.
The apertures and low slots reiterate in between the vertices until only the brick wall is visible.
There are two narrow vertical holes pressed into the wall and held suspended in the darkened lost shape of a metal plate.
Above the aperture on the right is a name scratched thinly.
There is pockmarking in the ridged cement
half moons
soft pinks against the grey browns.
The bulbous abdomen of a spider hangs against the blanched field
permeable borders projected by the sun at a high angle
forcing the clean tracking lines of light inside the structure.
Arresting the movement through the interior space
the brick wall gives way to the doorframe.
Without exiting turning
moving back through the space faster
reviewing the swinging ridges
a zoetrope whir
aperture lights
around the yellow bricks and grey cement
back past the apertures to the entrance side where the same shape of sunlight repeats
pause
but for a few degrees.
The same empty landscape of blanched wheat disappears towards the grey sky with the slimmest line of trees between.
Now out, facing the yellow bricks, which skim in parallel lines. There is bright white blanching again
the lichens emerge on the breeze blocks
and there is a slow bumping spiral outwards
where the image appears as it had.
V
A diagonal swathe of hedgerows spills in from the left
hung with small leaved white flowers that thrust up towards overhanging trees.
The trees cast shadows over the loosely mown grass
and the structure is tucked in beneath
facing the fields beyond.
The motion towards it is unsteady
and as the branches slide upwards the dark line of the door fattens on the right
and grass is revealed thickly spilling over the roof.
The wall
held away from the entrance as a solid line is brown brick
crisp edged.
One squat slit watches.
The corner of the structure facing the tall wall is sprayed with silver lichened growth. A parallel line against the blank wall is traced with a visioned arc that peers between the wall and the door.
The wall is skirted, this time on the outside, and fills the entire field of vision.
A dip reveals ferns and long grasses leaning towards the far side, struggling into a sandy line between the wall and structure.
There is a slide back across the same brick surface
to move in between and towards the door frame.
Once more there is a wall directly inside mirroring the wall that faces it
angled around at the edges to snag entry
green with moss.
To the left a bevelled aperture gazing into daylight
hard edged and lit in brittle planes.
Moving backwards and skimming the same wall
moving towards the opposite side
towards the lip that protrudes against the dark space it conceals.
The objective is calmer now
to continue to cut spaces into dressed hexagons.
Patterned self-similarity.
The symmetry slips into duration and cannot be experienced as such
so the swinging round the edges attempts to fix things
and reconstruct the perfect geometry inside the memory.
and back to the left
and round the lip
towards two apertures
two calciferous sockets
with no flat walls in between
held apart by the crest of a corner where the sills meet
and the angles splay towards the rim.
Red bricks support the lintels beneath the concrete
the floor hangs underneath the rim of shadows cast by the apertures.
The apertures are skimmed
the first focussed and then upward towards a confluence of angles
and a dark stain.
There is a slow movement down to the small apertures and they are held too low to expose anything other than the continuation of the flat plane of the sill on the outside
and knotted plant stems beyond.
On the triangle towards an identical gap, there is one more obscured by stems clinging to the wall.
All the edges fade down to black shapes punctuated by the rotating gaps
and up against the corner of the wall
slid around and out into the bright light bricks of the door frame and emerging.
There is a tracking round to the left and backwards into darkness.
You weren’t sure whether these things, these hybrids, watched you,
but you stepped inside them, and they spoke amongst themselves.
Cusped and axial
all duration
The land became striated into terrains that were marked under the auspices of visibility. All of the land in between these floating points, falling slowly, slowly away from use.
You poked your face into the gaps in rhythms and saw yourself approach,
in the hazy rectangles crisped against the edges
stepping tentatively
feet stamping into wet strands and furrows.
Some of them were staring out to see but most shuddered in woodlands near fields
and filled up with mud and the tang of urine, and people wrote their names and dates because.
You thought about repetition
and rot
circling and encircling
clasping each mutation in form, spill and depth of field.
There can be nothing but resemblance and its signs everywhere
details steeped in rational origins
in angles.
And there was a sadness each time you couldn’t step inside, but you would ram your face as far into the slots as the edges would allow
burnishing red lines into your aging skin
waiting for your eyes to adjust.
2.12.09
21.11.09
antepress @ Whitechapel, Saturday 21st November 2009
I will be performing a text at Volatile Dispersal:
Festival of Art Writing at Whitechapel Gallery as part of the Known Unknowns, organised by Francesco Pedraglio.
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/27/product_id/385
15.11.09
13.11.09
12.11.09
11.11.09
This Is The Lake Of Our Feeling
I was having a conversation with Landscape Architect Apasia Kouzoupi in Athens with regards to a lake she is working in Greece, with with some students:
There was a lake in the mountains, that was two metres shallow in many parts, and every time it rained the boundaries of the lake would shift in and out of the landscape. The lake teemed with freshwater fish, and many years before the fishermen from the surrounding area moved onto the lake, building small floating platforms with conical dwelling structures on them.
The shallow lake also provided an ideal habitat for mosquitos, and because illness transmitted by the mosquito bites was rife in the area, the lake was eventually drained by the authorities to remove the problem. The entire unique socio-architectural tradition of lake dwelling was eradicated, and passed into the memories of the people who lived in the area.
Recently, due to infrastructural demands, a reservoir has been created in the area, and so the lake was replaced. Fish are being reintroduced, and rivers diverted to feed the water supply. The local people think of it as their lake returned, but the lake is now a reservoir, with a civic function. It's re-emergence is estranged from the original common ownership and use, the dwellings cannot return, and the dwellings have forgotten how to return, but the people still think of it as a lake replaced, even if it has become the image of a lake that holds them at the shore.
10.11.09
27.10.09
25.10.09
24.10.09
23.10.09
22.10.09
19.10.09
14.10.09
18.9.09
antepress @ FormContent
On Saturday 19th September 2009, 12-6pm, antepress will be presenting recent works and discussing strategies for collaborating with FormContent in fostering a dialogue between various exhibition formats and what constitutes art writing. This relationship will culminate in a publication released in 2010.
FormContent is a curatorial project space, initiated in 2007 by Francesco Pedraglio, Caterina Riva and Pieternel Vermoortel in London’s East End. Its mission is to create a space in which to experiment with ideas and exhibition formats, to foster an active collaboration between artists and curators while challenging their roles.
3.9.09
On leaving
______Clear views faced forwards, wide to the horizon.
___There were bone-rimmed holes, milk-coloured, and rust-rimmed
_____________________________________________They built a shell
__Succulent eyes were pulled backwards through these burrows, and narrow architectures were popped away from limb by limb.
The crisp edges of doorways form fades.
____________________________ Now it is brittle
____________________________ brittle waiting to be ground down, or smashed into fine sand beaches amongst all the other husks coughed up on the shore
______________________________________________All movement had been lateral
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Clear views faced forwards, wide to the horizon
There were rimmed holes, the rust-red eye-stalks of cannons watch blankly against blinkers
They built a shell knocked into the rocks and waited soft in the shadows for hard things to come and split them, flame licks and the mosquito whine of engines
Succulent eyes were pulled backwards through these burrows, and narrow architectures were popped away from limb by limb.
The crisp edges of doorways form fades.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
26.8.09
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