Coming up…

Due to what I can only put down to being a momentary lapse in concentration, I seem to have inadvertently got myself into the position of having tangible objects on show in exhibitions over the coming weeks …not only once, but on three separate occasions!

GOODS In

Saturday 28th June, 4-8pm
332 - 346 Moseley Road [map and directions]

First is GOODS In: a one-day exhibition curated by Charlie Levine and Harminder Singh Judge

warehouse space

This is a group show with the works chosen for the theme of “mechanics, engineering, the factory and multiples” in response to the location: a disused bed warehouse.

This is a must see - of course for the work, but also for the building itself (of which, unfortunately, you will see only a tiny fraction). There’s a lot of potential here and the owner, Sham, is working hard to turn what is a HUGE amount of space into a viable venue. Help get the momentum going.

I’ll be exhibiting a series of simple cardboard mechanisms that interact with the space.

Contents May Vary

Thursday 3rd July, 6-8pm
Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester. M15 4GB.

Ages and ages ago I submitted some work for the second Contents May Vary publication.

The gap between what we can assume lies beneath the visual world and the potential possibilities of what it conceals has given our imagination the opportunity to wander. Our minds reason that the inside of a rock is simply more of the outside. But we can never quite come to terms with the possibilities of what is hidden. To split the rock in a quest for this knowledge is futile when you discover that instead of revealing the internal, all you have achieved is even more known external. As artists we are faced with a decision on the format with which to start a discussion. With accepting what we see is real, a book as object involves seen and unseen material. This inanimate object can engage us on many levels when we begin a relationship with it as both creator and viewer.

My work is a map relating to the Sites of Potentiality Guidebooks series.

The publication is a 16 page, black and white limited edition with contributions from myself and artists: Andrew Bracey, Alice Bradshaw, Chris Clarke, John Dellar, Stuart Edmondson, Michael Farquhar, David Martin, Liz Murphy, John Sauve and Richard Shields.

You can pick up your copy at the free launch event at Castlefield Galley or, after the launch, by sending an A5 SAE to: CMV issue 2, Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester M15 4GB, UK.

theweatherproject

July 11, 2008 – April 19, 2009
Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Lingnerplatz 1, 01069 Dresden, Germany

Part of the 2°. Weather, Climate, Man exhibition at what looks to be a really interesting institution. I’ll be flying out for the opening, not for the networking - which I’m terminally hopeless at, even in my native language - but to see if the exhibitions live up to my high expectations based almost entirely on this image from their website.

For those who don’t know, the weatherproject began in late 2000 when I started asking volunteers to collect samples of weather for me. Each person gets an identical weather-collecting kit and can then choose when and where to collect their weather. Some of the results are documented online, but, despite difficulties in asking people to take mysterious containers abroad with them nowadays, actual numbers are now something like 300-400 jars (I can never keep track) and still increasing…

the weatherproject

Here are the names of the people whose jars will go into the show:

Sophie Maughan, Lucie Slámová, Nigel Prince. Graham Dix, Suping Tian, Gill Lawson, Sandy Hewat, Afaq Qureshi, Petra Nieth, Kate Lang, Elizabeth Batters, David Taylor, Astrid Bergmann, Emma Hunter & Charles West, Cathleen Jackson, Martin Weaver, Rachel Jack, Judith Evans, Scott Smith, Clark Crawford, Xenia Snetkov, Jane Tapley, Simon Tapley, Tomoko Okada and Sylvia Gardiner.

Only 30 collections have been selected for exhibition, but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to the project over the last 7 years or so.

Um, also, if anyone has any suggestions for a cunning storage solution for several hundred small glass jars…

digbeth tweets

After a year of abstinence, I have finally succumbed to twitter.

Why?

SMS updating, time-stamping (sort of) and tomorrow’s invigilation. Here.

After the invigilation, once we’ve gathered back at VIVID, we’ll also be collating visual and aural traces here: www.flickr.com/groups/invigilator_digbeth/.

Let the quest for how best to document Invigilator continue!

Invigilator: Digbeth

paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm
meet at VIVID at 2pm

As Digbeth continues its metamorphosis and assimilation into Eastside (Birmingham’s transforming, revitalising and regenerating regeneration project[1]) art institutions and project spaces present there are slowly increasing in number and yet, for the most part, they are safely kept behind locked gates, barred windows and access-controlled doors.

For Invigilator: Digbeth, a team of volunteers will take the role of gallery invigilator/visitor assistant outside where, rather than sitting in gallery spaces, they will be watchful over the streets and the day-to-day life unfolding there.

This is the fifth in the Invigilator series[2] where a single set of directions has been transposed onto different locations to determine the exact place for watching over; we can choose our significant starting points, but then a pre-determined sequence of lefts, rights and straight-ons takes us on a not-quite-random walk to an unplanned invigilation site.

Invigilator: Digbeth will consist of several invigilations taking place simultaneously throughout the Digbeth area. The significant starting points will be the galleries, studios and project spaces that would normally host the invigilators. The same galleries, studios and project spaces responsible for Digbeth’s renaissance…

Digbeth is also significant as the starting point for the Invigilator series as a whole since the directions used to arrive at the invigilation sites were derived from those used to get from home to a part-time job invigilating at VIVID.

All are welcome to join us for Invigilator: Digbeth. We will meet at VIVID at 2pm, borrow some of their red t-shirts and then walk to our respective invigilation sites (about 4 people per team) where we will be watchful for about 30 minutes before returning to VIVID for refreshments and feedback. No special equipment required: just bring yourselves, suitably warm clothing and a willingness to interact with the city.

Queries on the day phone: 0121 766 7876 (VIVID office)
Further information on the Invigilator series: www.npugh.co.uk/projects/invigilator

invigilations

references:
[1] http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/eastside.bcc
[2]New Forest,Derby,Tokyo and Nuneaton

Invigilator:Digbeth has been supported by Access West Midlands

invigilator invites

Invigilator : Digbeth

We’re currently getting excited about the re-appropriated business cards we’re using for the Invigilator: Digbeth invitations. Hope you do too!

[link to vimeo page]

INVIGILATOR: DIGBETH
paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm

meet at VIVID at 2pm

bring a red top if you haven’t already arranged to use either one of ours or one from a different venue

npugh.co.uk/blog/invigilating_digbeth
 enquiries@npugh.co.uk

invigilating Digbeth

Since May last year, Paul Conneally and I have been invigilating.

First I invigilated some of the New Forest. Then Paul replied by hopping on the train with the morning commuters and invigilating a building site in Derby.

Shortly after that I wanted to explore what would happen if you had more than one invigilator. I wanted to see how the presence of multiple invigilators affected the dynamics of an area that has to be walked through (rather than just a point location that people can walk past).

invigilating Tokyo

I was in Japan at the time so this gave rise to Invigilator: Tokyo and - inevitably - a whole barrage of further questions!

More recently, Paul and I met up in Nuneaton for the first of the invigilations that we have done together. More questions!

We now feel it is time for us to turn the process around on itself and use the next invigilation to examine its origin: my old part-time job invigilating the gallery space at VIVID.

We want to dissect what we have learned so far.

We want you.

We’re currently gathering people who would like to don red t-shirts and join us on Saturday the 29th of March for Invigilator: Digbeth. We want to scale up the Tokyo action and send small teams of invigilators percolating out through Digbeth: turning the whole cultural quarter thing inside-out to extract people from their barricaded, security-protected warehouses and onto the street for an hour or so.

As a nod to how this series of works came about, we’ll be using VIVID as a base, liberating their red t-shirts, and also returning there for the debrief session and refreshments afterwards.

The invigilations themselves involve following a set of left/right/straight-on directions and then probably about 30 minutes standing around that location being watchful. What we’re after, in order to give Invigilator: Digbeth some clout is a) as many invigilators as possible so we can properly cover a large area and b) some suggestions for relevant starting points for the random walks.

So, for now, we’d like you to do three things for us:

  • Put that date in your diary: 29th of March, 2-5pm.
  • Suggest some cultural venue/art institution-esque starting points that the random walks to the invigilation locations can start from. We know about the obvious ones near to VIVID such as Ikon Eastside, the Custard Factory and the soon to be opened Eastside Projects, but we’d like more. Are there any? Bung something in the comments and let us know about it!
  • Let us know if you’d like to take part. All welcome, but we’d be particularly keen to hear from anyone who would normally work as one of the aforementioned venues.

More details to follow a bit closer to the day, and further invites are being circulated in the real world too.

Artgos

Starting today and running until the 15th of December, Artgos will be at the Merrion Market in Leeds.

artgos

This Christmas artsparkle presents Artgos, a new catalogue store in the heart of Leeds’ shopping district! A collaboration between Artsparkle and theartmarket, Artgos will be selling work by big name artists alongside fresh talent working with multiples, those fabulous, affordable artworks that make such great stocking fillers. Come along to the catalogue shop for a unique shopping experience, see performance artists in full flow, and kick-start your contemporary art collection for as little as £1!
Artgos website

Counsel for the Artist will be there in the form of some packs of postcards made especially for the event.

Each pack contains one postcard for each of the following statements:

  • Make exchanges with spaces
  • Strive to achieve modest connections
  • Set your own agenda
  • Add to a culture of learning and experimentation
  • Get the message across
  • Meet a new network
  • Resist the ascribed role of witness
  • Circumnavigate predictability

When I’ve shown them before I’ve been struck by how much these have resonated with other people - not just artists - so with any luck this will be a good opportunity to get the statements circulating into some interesting places.

There’s a veritable flotilla of links relating to the Artgos event, including the main Artgos website here.

If the Flickr stream is anything to go by, a lot of work has gone into preparing the space:

I’m digging the order forms! Hopefully some images of the opening party will also be added later.

If you can’t get along to The Art Market in person, I have limited numbers of map-wrapped Counsel for the Artist postcards available through the invisible hand shop.

map-wrapped counsel for the artist

link and ShiftSpace

A ShiftSpace remix of a blog YouTube remix of the junicho renga ‘A Circle of Fire’ by Paul Conneally.

link and shiftspace

invigilator 4

Like the memorial in the park, all I really feel confident about saying regarding each of the pieces in the Invigilator series at the moment is simply that they happened.

george eliot was here

Nuneaton: George Eliot and Invigilator were here.

invigilator: nuneaton

invigilator: nuneaton

caterpillar was here

my new camel

This morning I went along for an introductory visit to the local primary school where I will be doing a project with some of the students.

I found myself in the staffroom with some teachers fresh from an assembly where they’d had two dancers performing. One thing led to another and suddenly the conversation had evolved into the one about Not Getting Modern Art. You know the one - it always starts with The Bricks and The Bed.

I let it go. I didn’t have the heart to introduce myself as the artist who’d just been asked to do something with the reception class’ bricks.

bricks

Observation became participation after stepping in to perform banana-opening duties at break time and the food-related theme continued with invisible chocolate soup and an invisible glass of wine with cream on top.

You gotta love it.

camel (mine, new)

4649ing

Well, I’m feeling like a proper 4649 veteran now, but it’s actually only 3 weeks today that I was first invited to join Kissa Hanare’s project!

Taking part has raised all sorts of interesting questions: not least about my own lack of political awareness of what’s going on in my own country. I haven’t got anywhere close to answering those, but in the meantime I wanted to note down a few thoughts about my photographic contribution.

going for the chat jugular

In the introductory post I challenged you, dear reader, to take some images of the 4649 stickers that would stimulate a chat. Having already challenged myself to do likewise I had previously gone into Birmingham’s city centre and headed straight for two obviously very charged locations: the Hall of Memory and the Peace Gardens.

Yikes! Red poppies everywhere! Giant red poppies. hmmmm, not sure what I feel about that, think it’s possibly crossed a line somewhere…. (Oh, and by the way, Happy Christmas Birmingham)

Happy Christmas Birmingham

Heading off somewhere equally disturbing in the opposite direction, I also suddenly became aware of how noble and, well, perfect the statues around the Hall of Memory are.

sculpted

What exactly are we saying here?

… and how do I want to use the stickers to respond to it?

After a fairly predictable set of images involving statues and red telephone boxes I headed off down past the Mailbox towards the Peace Gardens - a distant memory from first-uni days and the number 44 bus up from the Vale.

public notice

This is when I started getting a bit more creative and started incorporating parts of existing signage into my images. Sod possible language barriers, this was much more interesting. I also loved the ambiguity that came from me not actually knowing what the text on the stickers says, or in what tone it says it.

What happens to 九条死守夜露四苦 when you put it next to a sign that says “For how long?”?

Anyway, I felt using the stickers to react to more subtle details in the city landscape was a lot more interesting.

Article 9999-999

round-up

I probably spent about an hour and a half taking photos and have whittled the results down to 39 which I’ve uploaded to a Flicker set.

Which ones are most successful and why? (How do you judge success for something like this?)

meanranch, while at the back…

down the pub

I just want to say a big thankyou to everyone who responded to the mailout and have requested stickers either from myself or directly from Hanare.

There’s not much time left before the Monday-night event, but you can still print off a few if you’d like to contribute.

Of the original batch of stickers Hanare gave me I’ve given away 11 to people who wanted to join in and I’m now left with just one. Where should I put it? Should I go for a good photo, should I stick it somewhere it’ll get left up for a while, or should I seek out somewhere where it’s likely to be seen by people who can read the text?

Kissa Hanare and the 4649 project

Every Monday (but not holidays, they don’t like to work on holidays!) Naho, Yufuko and Sakiko transform a Kyōto living-room into Kissa Hanare - something I like to think of as Café Independence (…but I’m now told the detached-ness I was inferring from dictionary searches is just an architectural reference). Not only does Hanare provide a menu of, where possible, locally-sourced, organic food, but they also work hard to create an atmosphere in which they and their guests can freely address a range of pertinent social and political issues.

In my limited experience, I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of Japanese culture, but I have a small sense of how difficult it must be to create this type of space. (Hell, I can’t even really imagine it happening here!) What’s more, judging by the blog, I believe they’ve managed to make it sustainable to the extent that the project’s been running for at least 18 months now. Impressive!

Regular café nights are interspersed with lectures, workshops and larger projects.

4649 and Article 9

4649 (representing “yoroshiku” - a Japanese term I’m not even going to begin to try and translate, let alone the significance here) is Hanare’s latest project and they’d like to ask you for your support.

Since 1947, Japan has had a pacifist constitution arising from Article 9.

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. wikipedia

Its exact origin is disputed, as has been its interpretation by successive governments. As you can imagine, there has recently been increasing talk from various Japanese politicians of revising this article.

I’m not going to start passing judgement here based on a few articles I found on the internet, however what I do feel strongly about is that there should be a space for Article 9 and the potential consequences of amending it to be highlighted and discussed freely amongst people who are not politicians.

I’ve exchanged emails a few times with Sakiko recently. Here’s how she introduced me to the 4649 project (slightly edited, my emphasis):

…we are planning to have a t-shirt silk-screening party on November 12th, in which we will print images of a Japanese gangster with the statement written also in the gangster style font that opposes amendment of the Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which prohibits Japan from possessing any military force and use it to solve international conflicts.

Additional Information about Article 9

Article 9 is, in a way, an apology for neighbouring countries for what Japan did before and during WWII, as well as a promise that we will never become a militaristic country. The Japanese government has been attempting to transform the beautiful part of this constitution for a long time, yet have met huge opposition from Japanese people. Since Koizumi, though, the danger of the article being amended has been greater than ever, and we want to do something about it.

Here is what we are planning to do for the party. Prior to the party, we will print tons of stickers with the same image and send to those of you living abroad and outside of Kyoto. And I want you to put the stickers out on the street and take pictures of them and send to us, which we will project as a slideshow at the party and upload to a Flicker site. People attending the event are able to see the image in other parts of the world, and hopefully feel that we are not alone. Showing the photos is really critical because based on my experiences in Japan, we are so isolated from the rest of the world, physically, and mentally.

By showing the pictures, I want people to have a sense that what we are fighting matters, and is supported by people abroad, NY, SF, BCN, Pula, London, etc. plus, Japanese people living abroad might see the image too!

Here is an idea behind the image. In contrast to the States and Europe where there is a very sophisticated visual resistance culture, Japan lacks it so badly that young people here have a hard time getting involved with political activity. By taking the aesthetic of Japan’s gangster culture and twisting its violent and rather nationalistic representation, and saying goodbye to the conventional peace movement images like the dove, we are hoping to encourage Japanese young people that there are many creative ways to express their opinions.

Sakiko

Here is the image she’s talking about:

4649

A challenge to you

There’s a nice quote I came across whilst Googling stuff earlier:

To reach consensus in democracy, it is necessary to guarantee a free space where even the oppressed can express their opinion without concern for logical consistency and truth. The fact that chats have been neglected as the fundamental element of democracy shows that past democracy has been only for the few who could speak logically and consistently.Polylog

It doesn’t bear close scrutiny, but there’s a few nuggets in there that resonate strongly with how I perceive Hanare. My challenge to you is to use that graphic above to make an image that stimulates a chat at Hanare (or beyond).

Remember the aims are a) to have the sticker on the street and preferably somewhere that is obviously not Japan and/or b) to demonstrate the potential of creative techniques to express an opinion.

You could be provocative:

click for provocation

You could be subtle:

click for subtlety

You could be surreal:

click for surrealism

You could be terribly, terribly British (or whatever):

click for red phoneboxes

Useful bits of information

  • The event at Hanare is on Monday the 12th of November, so that’s the deadline to aim for.
  • To get some stickers you can contact Hanare at kissahanare[AT]yahoo.co.jp, they’ll take about a week to arrive.
  • To get some stickers you can contact me, I’ve got a handful spare.
  • To bypass the stickers and get started right away you can print the image from this file.
  • Email your photos to Hanare to add to their Flickr page. (Don’t forget to tell them where the photos were taken.)
  • Follow what’s going on on the Kissa Hanare blog

Can’t be bothered?

Here are some suggestions for some low-energy ways of showing some support for Hanare:

  • Forward this post’s link to people you know and spread the word.
  • If you have a Flickr account, add 4649 Project as a contact.
  • Subscribe to the Kissa Hanare blog feed: http://cafekyoto.exblog.jp/atom.xml

I’m sure you can think of others - be creative!

update: I wrote a little about the photos I took in this later post.

the pictures are better on radio

Still working my way through the backlog - this time another attempt at documentation that doesn’t involve sticking a video camera or a telephoto lens in anyone’s face. Including mine. urgh.

Here I walked with a voice recorder in the side pocket of my rucksack and a camera on interval timer just held in my hand as I walked. The result is some fairly snap, crackle and pop audio and some blurry photos…

…I think it works quite well!

The images [portrait format, distorted horizontally to fit the video’s dimensions - apologies to the woman in the brown dress] appear at minute intervals so there’s a long gap in between them where you only have the audio. Initially I was planning to have the images on screen for longer, thinking that visual = interesting. What I actually found was the images became something of a distraction. Ideally I’d just plug myself into my headphones and settle back with my eyes closed, but here I have to stay mindful of the screen and a minute is a really long time…

Instead we have flashes of imagery to act as sort of orientation for the sounds, but not until you’ve had a while between photos to imagine up your own images to accompany the noises. In this way I think I regard the white as a blank canvas to paint your own pictures onto. Maybe not being able to understand what the people are saying is another aspect to this too?

There comes a point when you just have to back off and leave space for people to make their own meaning.

The full walk lasts for over 1 hour and is not for the faint-hearted, so here is a 10 minute extract. I really recommend headphones; whether you keep your eyes open or not is up to you.

Oh, and I was also hooked up to a galvanic skin response sensor at the same time, but that’s another story.

two kinds of tents

2 done, only another 27 left to go.

JMap

jmap

When I first went to Japan I had no concept of where I was geographically other than “somewhere to the left of Tokyo”.

When I went to Japan the second time, I had no concept of where I was geographically other than being slightly savvy with the metro map.

After going to Japan for a third time I decided to plot the places I had been on a map. See the full interactive version here: http://npugh.co.uk/jmap

the sound of watching

A week or two ago I posted an incomplete post about invigilator: Tokyo.

Well, I’m back in the UK now and sorting through all my documentation from the trip to Japan.

I’ve uploaded a few images to Flickr. There’s a slideshow here, but the pages on Flickr include captions giving more detail about each image.

but I was a bit wary about taking too many photos during the invigilation. I think it’s just a little bit too intimidating for a project that’s so much about how people react to subtleties within a space.

So, as an experiment with alternative forms of documentation, here’s a sound recording we made of the invigilation:

 
 invigilator: Tokyo [31:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

A 6 stanza themed renga form collaboratively written with Paul Conneally.

Form devised by poet Gary Gay.

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

a rengay

twenty jaffa cakes
a mistake to try and take
in her hand luggage

a slow and silent pat down
from the woman on gate one

stilettoes x-rayed
but her carbon footprint is
not for scrutiny

a hugely fat man
asks for the front port aisle seat
to rest his bad leg

smile and permanent jetlag
slept in uniform again

deep into morning
i finish my book somewhere
over africa

paul conneally and nikki pugh
July 12th 2007

My plane leaves at 8.30 tomorrow morning. I arrive at Narita on Saturday morning and from there I have to negotiate my way to Yokosuka. After a week or so in various locations around Kanagawa-ken I dive into Tokyo for about a fortnight.

the watchers

On the way back from invigilating a small section of the New Forest, we encountered Copythorne Carnival.

I was interested in the resonances with what I had just done and the presence of the stewards and the bystanders.

invigilator: new forest

Following on from this post, yesterday I transposed my usual walk to work in Birmingham to the area around my family home in the New Forest.

Rather than taking 20 minutes, we were walking for over 2 hours.

Many thanks to Lizzy and Russ for tailing me at a discreet distance with the telephoto lens.

Walk to Work - a proposal

I set Kevin the task of mapping out his normal route to work in terms of lefts and rights etc and asked him to set off one day from where he was staying in China and Walk to Work following his normal route and ‘do some work’ when he got there where ever that was. The definition of work is blurred here so do something - take photos write sweep the street - whatever.
Paul Conneally

An interesting proposition has come through to work with Paul Conneally and Kevin Ryan on the challenge of transposing people’s usual journeys to work onto different locations, and then performing some sort of work function at the new location.

Kevin's walk

Kevin’s walk in Chongqing resulted in some really nice images which you can now see on his photo gallery.

Meanwhile, I recorded my journey to work for Paul to do what he will with:

  1. Right
  2. Right
  3. Left
  4. Left
  5. Right
  6. Straight over
  7. Straight over
  8. Straight over
  9. Right
  10. Delay of 32 minutes
  11. Right
  12. Left
  13. Left
  14. Right
  15. Left
  16. Right
  17. Straight over
  18. Straight over
  19. Straight over
  20. Straight over
  21. Left
  22. Left

After some discussion, we seem to have a distilled version of my typical day’s work invigilating at a local gallery that Paul will reproduce somewhere else:

  • Arrive at your location and set up.
  • Perform a general tidy up of the area.
  • Settle into your seat and become absorbed in your book/music whilst at the same time being attentive to the needs of others around you.
  • Answer any queries in a polite and professional manner, asking any visitors if they wouldn’t mind adding their name to the visitors book.
  • At about 4 o’clock ask if anyone wants some chocolate and then go to the nearest newsagents.
  • Return to your seat as before.
  • Start packing up 5 minutes early if you think you can get away with it.

That’s the starting point anyway - I’m really interested to see what conversations Paul’s presence might catalyse. We’ve been strict withourselves and dismissed the temptation of too many bells and whistles: Paul’s mission is essentially to sit, to be, and to watch.

invigilate

invigilate

Yamanote Stories

 
 Yamanote Stories (draft) [6:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Checking the feasibility of telling the SoPG: Yamanote stories whilst travelling inbetween stations on the Yamanote line.

SoPG: Yamanote, revisited

With one thing and another I’ve been spending a lot of time recently working on different aspects of the Sites of Potentiality Guidebooks series.

As well as developing projects to keep pushing the format in new directions, I’ve been looking at how best to present last year’s Yamanote Line project.

Although most of my documentation at the time was done via photography (and a couple of dozen of rather nice tickets - man! I love that silky black finish on the back!) I really don’t want it to turn into some sort of photography project.

So far I have 2 possible solutions…

The first is a website style format where selected photos are presented alongside bilingual word-pictures of each walk. It’s good in that it goes some way to convey the sense of journey and experience, but I feel it’s still quite a passive mode of consumption.

I’m carefully describing them as website style because I’d choose to display them under very particular conditions where I can control the appearance. Normally I’d be a lot more inclusive with my web design, but this is me in prima donna control freak mode. So there.

To aid the feedback process though, I’ve uploaded the pages for the first day’s walks so you can have a look here. A change-log can be found at the bottom of this page.

The pages were designed to be viewed in Firefox (available here) with all navigation bars removed, in full screen mode and at a screen resolution of 1024 x 768px.

[Internet Explorer does its own thing and adds in a load of visual elements I don’t want ranging from vertical scrollbars through to blue borders around images. I’m PC-based, but a quick test in Firefox for Mac suggests there may be slight issues with variations in the positioning of the text. YMMV]

Here’s a screenshot of what I see. (Click for larger version)

Okachimachi

Solution 2 is performance based:

The time taken to do a complete circuit of the Yamanote line by train is about an hour. With 29 stations that’s a couple of minutes per station. Or, alternatively, a couple of minutes per walk.

During off-peak times, I think a carriage on a Yamanote line train would make the perfect venue for a presentation of the project: in sync with the different locations as myself and my audience (a mixture of pre-arranged and incidental) travel from station to station.

Here’s a draft version of how it might sound…

 
 Yamanote Stories (draft) [6:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Change-log:

We shall not cease from exploration…

  • The found translation for the T.S. Eliot quote:

    We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time.

    has been changed from:

    私達は調査から終わり、
    すべての私達の探検の終わりは私達が着くこと始まった、
     所をところにはじめて知っている。

    [source]

    to:

    人は探求を止めない。
    そして探求の果てに元の 所に戻り、
     初めてその地を理解する。

    Thankyou Yumi.

    Navigation

    Navigational elements have been moved to a more prominent position after noticing people tended not to move between pages. Also a change of colour on hover/active page has been added to the list of stations on the right hand side of the page to highlight these can also be used for navigation.

    Past or Present?

    After a nudge from Paul, the word pictures have been changed so that they are consistently in the present tense.

    Thankyou Paul.

    Linear

    An experiment with video to see how the linear format affects narrative:

    • queue-jumping

    In preparing various proposals etc over the last few weeks, I looked again at some of my photos from SoPG: Yamanote Line.

    In particular, these ones of queues outside a restaurant in Ōsaki:

    Oosaki queue

    Oosaki queue

    I’ve resolved that next time I get a chance to work in Japan, I’m going to develop a project that relates to the time spent in these queues. I’m sure it could be a good forum for some exchanges. Being in the queue could be the the raison d’être for being in the queue. Perhaps others in the queue could recommend other good queues to be in…

    Ansdell mirror sequence

    Can you apply the old sculpting trick of looking at things in a mirror (to get a more accurate view of what they look like) to an entire street?

    Woodlands Road reflected:

    renga roundup

    Wow. Has it really been 7 months since I first agreed to go and sit under a tent in a housing estate and write poetry with strangers?

    Yesterday we gathered in Keith’s house and penned the final batch of the 100 Verses for 3 Estates (Alec Finlay, Gavin Wade and Paul Connolly Paul Conneally Little Onion).

    You already *know* there was a good bunch of people there and the atmosphere was great, but the food was delicious and deserves a special mention - thanks guys!

    Does it sound like we didn’t work very hard?
    There was some serious thinking going on too…

    the fight for free space…

    The fight for free space-for wilderness and public space-must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space…Wanderlust-A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit, Verso, 2001 in Occasional Sights-a London guidebook of missed opportunities and things that aren’t always there, Anna Best

    Volume 13

    Volume 13 started off with sculptor Atsuo Okamoto: he agreed to fill in a page of the sketchbook and pass it on to another artist; I agreed to keep a small section of the artwork “Volume of Lives” with me until I die. Anything’s fair game in the world of artistic collaborations!

    Atsuo Okamoto

    Volume 5

    Orie Inoue: Is she a fashion designer? Is she an animator? Is she an illustrator?

    You decide... (but probably it's all of the above and more!)

    Orie Inoue

    Volume 1

    Ami Ko

    Battling a department that produces endless human figures, Ami now also has to work out how best to deal with an almost empty sketchbook…

    Volume 11

    Currently sending postcards to herself and contemplating a project involving invisible things, Eri was last seen planning how to use a smell as her contribution to the sketchbook.

    Eri Sasaki

    Volume 15

    On a sunny but cold Sunday, we travelled to Moriya to find out more about the Arcus project.

    Arcus building

    We had a look around the buildings and then a chat with the programme director. After that we met artist in residence Goh Ideta who was kind enough to spend time showing us his portfolio and talking about his works.

    Goh Ideta

    His profile on the Arcus website sums his work up pretty succinctly

    Works with experimental devices that utilizes light, shadow, and space to understand “perception,”“sensation,” and “existence.”

    or you can check out his website here, but I get the feeling these are works you have to spend time inside to really do them any justice.

    volume 15

    Volume 19

    Googling for “artist led projects, tokyo” eventually led me to Kandada. Their website is in Japanese (of course!), but armed with their English language map and this blog entry giving an interesting snippet of background information, I went to have a look.

    First up, I really liked the show they had on (Hong-Goo Kang ‘s Road to Eouido), but then I’m probably a bit partial to journey projects at the moment…

    Secondly, completely getting into the spirit of passing the sketchbooks on to other artists (!), the director volunteered staff member Ueno Masao to participate on Kandada’s behalf.

    Ueno Masao

    Welcome aboard Masao!

    kandada

    Volume 21

    Volume 21 gets posted to Kyushu where the first page might have something to do with clay, something to do with computers or something to do with something completely different…

    the Nakagawa parcel

    Volume 9

    Surrounded by artists’ books of all shapes, sizes and types, Pepper’s Project not only agreed to take part in the project, but also completed their page there and then!

    Pepper's collage team

    details

    ready for the next person!

    Yamanote days

    I have now embarked on a tour of Tokyo.

    My guide is a map from the back of a gallery postcard, with all the labels surgically removed.

    map debris

    My starting point is every station on the Yamanote railway line.

    map book

    I’ve been doing it for 2 days now, and I’m halfway round. I don’t know where the map will take me, but there’s always something interesting to be found at the other end…

    Update: this became the Sites of Potentiality: Yamanote Line project.

    City Canal Tour

    Having excused myself early from the last segment of Johnny Hillwalker’s walking tour of Kyoto, I made a (not so) quick dash over to the Shimogamo Shrine to meet artist Markuz Wernli Saitô.

    The last time we’d met was on the Kamo Obashi bridge when, having randomly followed a link from this article, and discovering the momentarium website I thought it would be great to invite Markuz to be a starting point for the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.

    This time, however, was to be much more involved…

    Wednesdays in Markuz’s programme are city canal tour days where “surprises and wet feet are guaranteed”. Well, I certainly got both, starting with performing the opening ceremony!

    A condensed version of the tour can be viewed here http://momentarium.org/service/popup/1025.html (Quicktime format), but the actual event lasted about 2 hours.

    canalside futon clips

    It was fascinating to peer into people’s gardens from what was effectively ground level, and there were some nice little discoveries within the limbo territory of the canal itself: sights, sounds and smells.

    Mostly the people we saw did a double-take but recovered enough to give us a friendly “konnichiwa” or “kombanwa”. There were a few quality encounters though, such as the woman throwing food across the canal and two fences to a dog in a garden on the other side, and The Guy in the Red T-Shirt.

    The Guy in the Red T-Shirt

    I didn’t catch his name, but he just sort of appeared alongside the canal on his bike. After a brief introductory chat with Markuz, he left his bike propped up at the side and came down to join us. …but only for a few seconds before he started sprinting down the canal path!

    He reappeared some time later completely out of breath and stopped to chat some more. We saw him a few more times after that as he cycled over various bridges and gave us a friendly wave. I wonder if he ever got back in touch with Markuz later by email?

    camera

    I’m very much intrigued by how encounters like this can be documented. I was repeatedly amazed by the fact that, in Japan, Markuz has been able to leave his video camera set up on a tripod on the other side of busy bridges and in railway stations etc unattended and without fear that it would get stolen. How would you manage this in the UK or elsewhere? Some sort of hidden camera? An entourage of beefy cameramen?

    Is there some other way of documenting the process besides video? Does the record need to be visual and time-based?

    Maybe a more comforting way to regard my dozens of mosquito bites is as some form of alternative documentary record…

    a week in Kumamoto

    click on images for lager versions…

    Exodus of obasan from the jinja:

    obasan exodus

    A stroll around the park:

    suizenji kooen

    The biggest koi carp you have ever seen:

    koi

    A 400 year old castle complete with concrete stairs and air conditioning throughout:

    kumamoto castle

    Collecting fresh spring water:

    spring

    …and fresh fruit:

    orchard

    Weather forecasting courtesy of 4-stick mountain:

    4 stick mountain

    Relaxing walks around the village (mosquitoes not withstanding):

    sampo

    Random foodstuffs:

    daikon

    An early morning drive to see Aso-san:

    mountain mist

    sunrise

    And the volcano up close:

    aso san

    A Noh performance in front of the floodlit castle:

    noh

    Former residence of Hosokawa Gyobu (and when the current owners are finished with it, I’ll have it!)

    residence

    Many thanks to everyone in the zoo for their hospitality:

    welcome to the mad house

    Volume 17

    This week I was due to meet up with a friend in Kyoto on Saturday, but I altered my plans so I could meet up with momentarium Markuz Wernli Saitô.

    hostel baggage

    This involved arriving a day early and spending the night in a youth hostel… and then oversleeping the next morning, trekking back to the station, faffing around trying to find a locker big enough for my bags, trekking to a different station and then arriving at Kamo Obashi Bridge 10 minutes after the scheduled bridge-sit was supposed to end.

    Fortunately there was something of a crowd there and so I was still able to meet Markuz to invite him to take part in the project.

    Markuz Wernli Saitô

    Hopefully I will make it back to Kyoto next week to properly take part in one of the activities.

    Volume 23

    Last week I entered the strange, strange world of Megumi Ishibashi.

    This is a world where large, contorted, fibre-glass figures leave flight trails that arch across the sky or
    struggle to escape from the arse-holes of technicoloured fish.

    megumi ishibashi, flying seven, amabiki 2006

    We built a new language and then we talked about studio spaces, art outside the gallery and residencies.

    It was fun; I gave her a sketchbook.

    megumi ishibashi

    I hope she likes it…

    light snack

    Volume 7

    On September 23rd I visited Ono Garou for the first time.

    ono garou stairs

    It was in the basement of this dilapidated apartment block in Ginza that we came across Junichi Saito and a masterfully executed presentation of a single piece of sculpture in an awkward corner under the stairs. Pure theatre, excellent!

    saito junichi

    And so Volume 7 has been left in the (white cotton-gloved) hands of Saito-san, ready to begin its journey…

    volume 7

    izakaya and…

    Last night a friend took me to an izakaya.

    The amazingly delicious food,

    counter

    subdued lighting,

    table

    and restrained atmosphere,

    washing up

    were followed by a quick game of pachinko:

    pachinko

    Welcome to Japan.

    orientation

    I’m in a different part of Sagamiono compared to where I was last year so this morning I went for a short walk to see what’s what.

    I can now confirm that I live above a shop called Dog Style [ed:it’s a pet shop]; next to a fire station (calm down Cath!); and just around the corner from the Co-op (you still get carved up by trolleys in the aisles, but people will bow and apologise profusely whilst they’re doing it!)

    Oh, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but somewhere close by plays the Westminster chimes over a loud speaker at noon each day. If I remember correctly, this is also what they use at Joshibi University to signal the start and finish of lunch, so I wonder if I’m going to start developing some sort of Pavlovian response to it…

    Volume 2

    Yesterday I completed page 2a and so today I posted Volume 2 to the next artists: Karin and Reuben at Springhill Institute.

    posting vol2

    Volume 0

    A few pages from Volume 0 compiled at the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks launch party.

    Peer-to-Peer Project Launch

    A few images from the launch of the the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.

    [photos by Nikki Pugh, Makoto Shindo and Karin Kihlberg]

    introduction to the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks Project

    sketchbook pages

    Working with Springhill Institute I will develop a creative strategy for investigating an artistic landscape. This will initially involve the design and hand production of a series of books of ‘blank pages’ to which artists will be invited to contribute a fragment of their current work. Each participant will then be asked to pass the book on to an artist of their choice for completion of the next page. In this way, the process of gathering these contributions will result in a sort of highly subjective cartography that maps out the current terrain of specific individuals and also the links between a progression of artists.

    The journey of each book will be logged here and it is hoped that the final contributor to each volume will then return the book to me.

    In the first instance I will make 26 books each with 26 blank pages. In addition to starting trails here in the UK, I will also take several books with me when I go to Japan in September. Here they will act as a means to develop existing relationships and also to initiate new ones.

    To signify the start of the collation process, we hosted a one-night event at Springhill Institute in which artists were invited to leave their mark on blank pages that will then be compiled to form the first volume.

    work in progress

    Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks is funded by Springhill Institute through the Springhill Project support, 2006.

    renga boogie

    The weather was a bit cold and rainy, but the food was plentiful and the music was loud so we soon settled into it…