taxonomy of mince pies and inivisiblity

Following on from your lobster pot image taken on a phone, this is a taxonomy of mince pies taken on a phone. It made me think of the irons in artemis. From the left is a brandy, brandy butter, normal, iced and then puff. Yes i know its not an archive but a shop, but it is a site and i was interested in a site that was affected by time - in that its contents were shaped by the time of the year - a bit like the jobs on the farm - so a site that was affected by the calendar / seasons rather than a persons decisions to do something that relates to a concept, rather it relates to a time or a ritual. Never before had i seen so many choices in a small bakers. I suppose it goes back to an interest in the everyday but i like the fact you dont get mince pies all year and then when you do there are too many to pick from! In the end i had normal - not sure what that says other than theres no need to mess with perfection.
It wasnt quite off the beaten track the mince pies but just a sandwich shop lunch stop while in huddersfield, so today i went for a walk off the beaten track and saw this....




which relates to the mince pies in that its a winter thing, well perhaps an xmas thing, and that made me think about how we dont normally get snow at xmas but as with mince pies it means xmas........cultural contructs...and related to a concept.. but they make me think about the farm none the less.
But what i really wanted to show was the footprints to the post and how the post is a site - a site for the fox...you can see how it walked there, scented and then walked round and then on..and again later for a second visit.
The marker is in the middle of a field marking for us where the seed wheat is planted. I suppose what i really liked was the foxes movement made visible, it must pass everyday but we wouldnt know it. Never before has it been a place i considered beyond its purpose as a marker so in a sense its an invisible site


well a winter themed blog from me with festive thoughts

Filey digression

Went to Filey and my Nephew Danial showed us around he lives there. I saw the sign for the museum and the one way sign. He had never been to the museum but said it was probably crap and the side street which led there was certainly off the beaten track and suggested it may be crap - but could be a gem. Anyway like all museums on this website so far it was closed so we will never know. The lobster pots are stacked all over in front of peoples council houses. Which is probably normal but looks funny as you expect them to be on a romantised sea front. Regeneration bods have probably made all the fishermen take them home every night to improve the sea view. Like your comments and think that things are evolving - the blog may be the be all and end all of this train of joint thought with spin offs - it feels like work and it has thought spin off it's a bit like a conceptional experience based immaculate corpse process - perhaps we could think about this - a thread through like linkages - my lobster pots trigger your next digression - this sounds rude and I notice from past post that your just sort of doing it naturally so for you it has evolved and for me I have contrived it - although I did do it with the skiing on the first blog. Maybe the dogma link is it has to be visual and personal and binary fluffing is ok.

Speaking of which the pictures off the phone could be this but as I've already told you I could not get them off my phone it's a function to meaning thing.

second hand bargains

well, sorry for delay.
i saw this the other day as I digressed from route to find a cash point.
it made me think of your golden butts, graves and skull. Are you making charms?
I thought as i wasn't doing golden things id found one instead. which in one sense true, someone had collected and saved and been gifted these precious items at times that we can only guess at and now it sits in the pawn shop, waiting like your items, to be found and its story made new sense of - second hand bargain indeed.
So what of steve and his golden fleece - i like it and yes the first 2 photos are the ones and i agree that to wait for jon to photo seems too much. I also wonder at your struggle with the photo issue of good quality photos, what is your intention for the pieces. I like the blog as the end point for some of this work - where the process of thinking and making is revealed meaning sometimes you only have your phone and so that is what is used which may mean shit quality but it is about capturing the thought at that moment. But I can see your thinking in that some of the work is like a satelite or moon and is self contained and finished in its own right, but just because its shot by jon doesnt make it mean more - its an addition unneccesary in the work, that is unless your interventions are part of a documentary revealing your process and you in the work. the skull piece is a nice piece it does lots and i think works, because i know all the thinking and making. Im interested in how if you were to show these photos if there would be a text accompaniment to reveal the process, because i wonder if they are presented without they are just nice photos of a golden skull and then it does other things. I like the idea perhaps of the conversation of you and tim walking to place it, or you and kim about not wanting to let it go. nothing too obvious or didactic
I agree that perhaps you dont have to golden something from every find, it seems that the skull and fag end works and the grave stone doesnt - perhaps its to out there, because i like the idea of the arbeograph being done, i think its the conecttion to people. the skull, fag and tree graffiti will only be found by a small number, i can imagine the person who scratched the tree returning to the site and rediscovering the gold addition and wondering why, its the same with the fags and skull. Whereas the x on the grave is to public and tricksy - x marks the spot? i like the quietness of the other pieces. It like talking to someone at every site - it cant always be done, but then its not always nessascery.
I like it when our collaborations grow in an unforced way, a new way reveals itself and we grab it and add it and it makes the whole thing better. I think this is a good dogma to follow.
I like that we cant see the end and at the momnet it feels good and winding, and its not right to force it to be something. Lets keeping going and looking and see what reveals itself.

All cleaned up

Cig packs had all been cleaned up today - gold butt kicked to the side. Wonder what she thought-

not a proper posting

This is not a proper posting just some ideas I want to put out for discussion. I'm in a real try things out frame of mind and the skull pictures made me think about photography and the quality of image we use. If I use my "Just good enough" Approach I suppose the images from my phone for this posting before were problematic for me so I've gone back and re shot it. I took 60 or so pictures and did an edit. I gold leafed an X on a headstone to mark the spot - felt guilty and cleaned it off I don't think I'm a very good graffiti artist although I suppose there is a history to desecrating graves which I don't want to be part of. I also gold leafed a cigarette butt and then a packet of gold players as this was just a bit to obscure and after Jonathan's comments about the somebody finding the skull I thought of the secret chain smoker finding the gold leafed packet and it made me smile. I also include image of "Ceramic spade shaped Ridge tiles for your information (The ones my dad shot off with his 4/10. So I think the pictures are better but maybe the don't need to be- I sort of like the intervention but then again I don't think we need to do this every time we go off the beaten track - Maybe the rules stay as they were but we develop work from it - like a conversation with somebody or the skull which becomes something in it's own right. Talking of which I think it needs to be a diptych piece a close up and a context shot taken simultaneously with two camera's - what do you think am I getting dogma obsessed OCD or just becoming an artist again.

Golden Skull

Well I set off at half seven this morning. I had been toying with the idea of getting Carl or Jonathan to come with me to take the picture and then I thought this was just a silly way of trying to raise the idea - Like we talked about putting words into neon making them mean more. So I thought I needed to take the picture and I'd thought about what I wanted. I suppose the idea is the work but I needed a picture which would look good in a portfolio when I was talking about the idea - to hook people into it- which meant I needed a stand alone image - this could be part of a body of work. There is a certain crapness to this idea which I like and dislike - the gold objects are just really desirable you just really want them and walking away from it where I found it in the woods I felt a bit like Gollum leaving his precious.

I've just got in and I'm sort of half happy with my pictures - didn't quite get exactly what I wanted but got some interesting pictures. The sheep must of been weary of the mushroomed up hippies trying to eat them as they kept running away from me. Tim came out and I was talking to him about imaging the skull inside the head of a sheep which he seemed to like but I was finding it really hard.

This is not a off the beaten track posting it's me trying to work something out about the relationship between a product (Photograph) and the idea of foundsight and Dogma. I don't think I need to do this kind of thing every time but perhaps we do need to raise the product and I'm beginning to like the idea of suggesting that "It must be art as it cannot be anything else" as a proposition. I've decided art practise is good at raising propositions for new ways of thinking - maybe not so good at exploring them.

So my favourite picture is the close up in the spot I found it which is where I left it. Which is honest quick and documentary - so it can be a poor picture but still do it's job. Maybe I don't need the other pictures but I like them as standalone images in their own rite so I'm glad I bothered to take them. I'm also glad I did the work - fist real art thing since Artemis last year which is shocking as I've only just realised. Be interesting to know what you think. Ps I like your Blackpool postings and will do a proper of the beaten track this weekend.

two things

here is the first - blackpool , as ever the dogma of site of digression and then the digression.
I like how the bins in blackpool have the word blackpool on as if you would forget where you are!
Also i like the bent sign, a metaphor for the whole place i think.
I took the building site as its one of thise demolitions that then show the insode of someones house, the wall paper and paint choices. Once a place - a home and now a site. The perfect example of the definitions, if we need clarity. I like the traces of peoples activity, and wonder if those who lived there walk past and still consider their wallpaper and remember the furniture - like kates lost objects.
I suppose i thought about your fag end finds and wondered at the people and the things that happened there, the secrets the hidey holes etc, i like in your last entry the idea that our finds dont need to be grand, but small discreet and quite. - which relates to the next lot of photos.
I found the house after seeing the shell shop and the carved coal, we had gone off the main street to find a off the beaten track. Andrew and I tried to talk to the man in the shop about whether he had coal carved in the shape of a piece of coal, but he didnt want to talk and perhaps thought we were idiots! Andrew though now privvy to the off the beaten track thing, also now ponders interesting places and finds. So the word is spreading and so it grows.
After the walk round i bought the peter liversage book and a man in there talks about a shop in blackpool called STEALS, its strap line being "theres no place like this place, anywhere near this place, so this must be the place" a perfect title for this body of work i think, but also just a great sentence. I am going to find the shop next time im there, and take a good photo of it.

So to the next thing. These 3 photos are from an ongoing collection i am keeping - found balloons.
I wanted to put them up because of their link to the cigarettes but to the whole blog. I find them often, some with messages and some that are just escapeys. I love the poetic ness of a let go and then found balloon. i always reply to the notes, sending a postcard of the farm and where it is on the map. - they come from all over. I started photoing them and recording their resting place about a year ago. it seems that even though the person who launched them will never know, there are taken notice of and i think of who the person might be. Its interesting that at the wirksworth talk i did someone asked whether me being and artist making work about the farm had affected how my family look at the farm? i said i thought it did because they now bring things or tell me things that they think i might like - and this is one of those examples - found balloons, we all look for them, to the point that someone picked one up and left it in the cab of the tractor, so spoiling the find in one way but adding to it in another.

Bit of a rubbish one

Well I tried to go off the beaten track I didn't get out much last week so it's another dog walking one. I like the red berries as they are a winter colour but really rich. I like winter light it feels somehow more important and the dawns and dusks stretch your shadow long. I then explored a bit and found the remnants of some sort of binge smoking which I couldn't really work out - if it was one person chain smoking or a gang of kids. I've seen a woman crouching down having a fag a few times. I think she is hiding her habit but if she had smoked 3 packets of Bensons surely even with chewing gum the smell would give her away. So that's it very much not contrived but then the whole thing is very contrived which is a good thing. Perhaps a conversation and then something which connects the blog or website to the real world like a sort of marker - you know how you tag files so you can recognise it on a computer. I've just got some gold leaf for a project I've been thinking of doing for a while and I thought of badges then I thought of the marks workmen leave on roads or the crosses on trees that are going to the chopped down - this is a bit like the Geo site website we talked about but it could a lot more personal.

dogma

well my first attempt at following the dogma of photo the start of off roading and then photo the find or place, is here. i wanted to go to mr straws house but it was shut, so what i found was this faty matty graffiti. I initally having known nothing of the house and not wanting to look it up before hand was hoping to find a house of straw, or a house where everything was made of straw, but instead what it is timewarp. In an attempt to find the house i had to ask directions and asked a man in the middle of worksop, who was happy to talk of mr straw and his story. I was in worksop for a meeting and told fellow meeters of our of the beaten track mission and so they wanted to join me. It seems that this may be turning into an community engagement project. I was keen to enter a time warp, like an alice in wonderland moment of heading off the track and finding something magical, like your 7ft juggler. I like the romance of this digressing, that we hope for or perhaps expect something unusual by moving off our route. Well what we found, my band of merry digressors and I was the 'faty matty' graffiti. It such a kind poetic slur, and I like its link to mr straws name - matty is a faty and mr straw is ...well, im hoping he is made of straw.
I like also how the graffiti subverts the national trusts timewarp romance, bringing us back to the reality of now. So faty matty keeps me in the present and reminds me to not get caught up in the meaning of something, but to focus on the actuality - its a house, in worksop.



Which leads on to my second attempt to go off the beaten track, i diverted from my route back from wirksworth. I turned off to Southwell, home of the catherdral. It was the cathedral that was the start of my idea, i have seen it on antiques roadshow and have always wanted to visit. So my first pic is the cathedral, linked to seeing the sign and then thinking of antiques roadshow. My second photo is of the graffiti i saw as i drove into the town. I love how in being rightous about one thing it upsets another. The graffitti spoils the persons desired pristineness. I like how it links to the cathedrals underlying desires.
In following my new dogma of speaking to people whilst off roading, i asked a woman in the cathedral about the site where the graffiti was and what she thought about it and she said she didint know, but she would look. I like how the engagement with people makes me and perhaps them think and see differently. I like my new addition to the dogma.

My last photo is a window inthe catherdral, its made from small broken pieces of glass collected from the site when they rebuilt/refurbed the catherdral after the civil war. Its like a patch work quilt, its an improvised thing. When i asked another lady about it she said something i really liked, something like - the glass became treasure again. Which linked really well the the gordon matta clarks - fake estate work i was talking to you about - the slivers of land that he bought in new york. But also made me think differently about the pieces of broken china i find and keep and what all this says about place. So i have started reading about place again and also more of gordon matta clark. He did a piece for the centre of architecture and urban studies, where he shot all the windows out with a rifle - nice.

heidegger

last night i was reading about heidegger and his ideas about dwelling and came across of course the wikepdia entry about his nazi connections. in the entry is this picture of a path that he walked daily to think. I was reminded of it by your entry of paths and thinking. But as a picture and an entry it made me laugh how a path was elevated like charlie chaplins cane and jackson pollock paint tins, as a object that could bring you nearer to him.
Is your route determind by the view; the following of the same route so thinking about which way was removed; what you know/nomadic dwelling; OCD, or time taken, etc........Perhaps the iraqi youth will cause the breaking of the OCD. And so we return to paths or routes and wayfinding.

I wonder if the sheer fact these conversations exist and are read, like with me it, makes you see the world and things differently. and so we could encourage the audience to digress and rather than just looking to find something that they then post, they ponder their digression, their find, their path and flys free will.....
Today I have not digressed, i didnt feel like it.

Off the beaten track

Well I tried it last week. It's funny because since we had the idea I've thought about it a lot and once squeezed through a hole in a fence into someones garden but didn't have a camera or a phone so this was a conceptual of the beaten track and I found a lawn so it wasn't very good really.

My beaten track is the cemetery at the moment - twice a day I walk the dog always the same way around always around the outside path. Kim calls it my OCD route as I make her run it. I'm not sure why I do this probably because I now use my dog walking time for thinking Niezche said that he had never had a good idea when he wasn't walking and my time in the cemetery is my thinking time. Although I now have a posse of Libyan kids who follow me around throwing sticks for the dog. I have to be nice to them as everybody else tells them to bugger off but there are about nine of them now and it's getting a bit much.

So here is the first picture - the camera on my new phone is shit compared to my

old one and like I said before I think I may start using my SLR and really thinking about the quality of the pictures rather than just taking a snap - I think this may be important and part of a ritual - not going out to take a picture but going out to record a moment, a thought , in the best way I can rather than on my shitty phone. So here is the fork I've never been down this bit before as it's a dead end so I wondered down actively looking for something to photograph and found a grave which was recently dressed but the weather hard aged everything down. It felt funny as you notice the graves which are kept well on the main drag - like it's a outward sign that people still care but it felt different to see these things on a grave which was on it's own like the stuff was more personal connecting the living to the dead or like the tree in the forest which nobody sees or hears fall. It almost feels like it may be wrong to post the picture - perhaps I have no right to make the private public - perhaps . Then I felt quite smug with myself and started to walk home really pleased in the idea and excited and reminded of years of thinking about setting up Dogmas in my arts practise and I thought about you saying if I set up rules you would break them. I thought about this and that you could do this idea and just pretend you had come across something and if it was more interesting than what you actually came across maybe this would be better art . Then on the way back I came across a 7 foot tall fire juggler which made me think about big fish so I photographed him to prove I had not made him up and then wondered if I could get him to juggle his things at the end of my transgression from the OCD cemetery route. So I suppose we need a comment on the integrity of a dogma and how important it is and how we convey this idea or concept in whatever we produce. For me the idea is to get the "Audience" to start to make the digression and change the way they look at things - the product which would perhaps be a website or book is the vehicle to engage people in doing this but most importantly to alter the lens they look at the world - or at least their journey to work through. I think if we could make this work it would be a good piece of art - we are not their yet maybe we have to do fifty digressions and edit them before it becomes a workable idea I'm not sure but I do like it. I'm thinking more and more about the idea of mapping a point in time when a decision was made and it makes me think about the scientific proof that even flies have freewill which I read about in new scientist last year.

sorry its taken so long

its probably a bit small but you might see the line of lights acting as a false horizon line- a high tide mark of waters past [just this is a nice idea - function to meaning again]. Its charles' piece from wirksworth [[nightstations.com - is his site worth a look] also i wonder as an aside if he is one of our 7 sights artists?]]. I picked it as a link to the turrel for many reasons - it makes you look differently at a site/the world, its a gentle land art piece , but i like it more that that because its perfectly atunned to the place/site. Especially on the last day after end of festival the locals after waiting for weekend to be over rearranged the piece into a giant penis how more perfect, light graffitti. I know its not offically off the beaten track but it is invisible for most of the day, unseen by many.
I wanted to post up something that reinforced your point about looking at the world differently - "which is what good art does" , but that also reinforced our thinking about making work in sites. It made me think that perhaps these sites are not inside or organinsations but could be anywhere, but that engaged with people, as charles did due to the relationship made to create the piece.
And this made me think about something that i read that said someones work engaged with the social rather the was socially engaged and they didint mean relational.
And then i thought maybe we make lots of works over a long time and dont worry about finding one place like an artemis place.
Which made me think about alec finlays work that seems to rienforce the romantic notion of poetic observations that perpetuate the myth of the countryside, in that for me its really superficial, but interesting perhaps
And then i thought what you said about dwelling people and habitus and needing to dwell which made me think of nomadic dwelling like delueze and guatarri spoke about.
And then i wondered if we journeyed
and then i wondered what that might mean.
And the i worried about not really wanting to abandon the archive because what i see it as now is a large body of work that represents landscape and so it can include anything and no it doesnt mean i am going to draw ink drawings all the time, but it does feel like something i want to be engaged with as a focus or area of research. So yes i want to make new work but that will always be at the core.
And then i think this is a good place to consider these points and that by sharing them we learn more about each others practice, yet at the same time we need to explore the idea of - off the beaten track in the search of a site - as a concept, a visual document and theoretical idea and let it come as it comes and not to try and pre think or work out what we are going to do.. But reflect on it as we do to it - isnt the act or doesnt the following our set task become the habitus.
By doing as the quest states i find just by having a focus that isnt perhaps part of my normal thinking about work means i think differently about it and consider new ways of looking. Also since doing this i now look at the landscape more or perhaps in a different way.
And then finally i worried that this was a thinking through making senario and i held my head in my hands.

Is this good?

I kind of understand why you are cross but I don't really agree with you. When we talked about the Jackson Pollocks and I said how disapointed I was about seeing them "In the flesh" in Moma you put me straight by saying I had to think about what they meant - how they fitted into history rather than what they were. I think you were rite to say this and it made me think about the context of history. Kettles yard is all the things you say about it but I think you have to view it in it's historical context as a museum rather than something that relates to your work or your thinking then it's ok and a nice place to spend a few hours. For me it connected me to the art of that time in a very different way to visiting a gallery and I was pleased that it existed as a place and it was unlike anywhere I had been I also thought the way it opened up was really interesting. Much of the art from that period is very british and very middle class but it was a fresh way to see it.

I think we are both in a similar situation in terms of work because we feel like we are coming to the end of something - a sort of Phase of work and we both want to do or make stuff which feels original or challenging but we are not sure what it will luck like. I keep thinking about places and people and objects and Habitus and change and challenge but it doesn't ever get further than that - perhaps it's because this approach to work is like we said all about learning to dwell and most people make work "About" something rather than "of" something if that makes sense. Anyway I post a picture of the Turrel as I like it because the best works function I think is to get us to look at the world differently and thats what he did for me and maybe it's this idea of the effect on the audience we should explore rather than something inherent in the work itself.

sickening

i pondered your post and liked the visual, conceptual link, which made me think of some more of tim ingold texts about wayfinding...Which after our weekend visit to cambridge made me think of maps, we didnt use one, but there is one on the web. We didn't use one because we know from experience which way to go. Which then made me think of andy talking about using the tom tom and that it sends him the back way and that he always finds good places he wouldnt find by taking the wrong turn and it correcting itself to get you to the destination. I liked that the tom tom becomes a collaborator.
I know its not off the beaten track but it is somewhere i havent been so am posting up the kettles yard photo next to its pinpoint map. I went with excitement, felt overwhelmed by good taste and came away feeling slightly claustrophobic due to it being too wierd and all a bit too nice too kept too sickening too middle class too beautiful too many times looked at too full of meaning. Perhaps made worse by the fact one of the assistants had an outfit on that coordinated with the natural colours and the bright pink of the micheal craig-martin piece thats part of the current show. I loved it but hated it more and it made me worry that i had somehow without ever seeing the place had made work that is very derivative of it - have i made work thats too nice, too considered, too tastefull!!! god i hope not.
But my point was is this the kind of place i am interested in working? In some sense yes as a way to subvert it, but mostly no as its done.. so considered so laden with an artist residency history, so i wanted to show an off the beaten track that i was happy to never visit again, and kinda wish i had never been to.

Can't think of what to say

Yes good to meet good to start this just made me think my head is really out of gear and I need to start thinking again. I thought a bit about ideas and how I'd always avoided objects as a theme even though I loved them and how I always felt "I needed to make something new" bring something into the world - a physical thing. The museum residencies sort of gave me license to play with objects as a theme and now they have finished and we are talking about trying to find something new it all feels a bit daunting. Anyway need to get the kids back to school and start to shape this site. For me the conversation was interesting - I'm liking the idea of pairs of photographs one the point of digression from the path one what is found at the end of it - we could start it on this discursive blog and the develop it into a clean website that we could maybe share and get others to contribute to if it works - first bit of pure web art? what does tha think lass? I had no pictures but your film made me think of skiing so I blog me skiing with camera stuck on my head.

Off the beaten track

hey, here we go - i made this video a few weeks back and this seems the perfect place to put it. I called it 'A line made by Walking, for Richard Long'. I thought about all we spoke about and was pondering off the beaten tracks and the finding of sites on the way home and thought about this film. I am excited about doing something new and collaborative and pleased we can move forward exploring ideas waiting for the right place to appear.