OFF SCREEN (‘Got to get you into my life’) LOCATION 1 – KING’S ARMS POLAND ST. 2001

(Video – 20 mins)

The filmed reflections on a pub (gay bar) TV screen. The reflections of place and people (in shadow) on the screen of a switched off TV. Metaphors of place/displacement and display.

One of six or seven to be made into a multiple site work, or a TV tower, each TV being displayed at the correct height. This first one is the top – Christmas decorations in gay bar.

Or

The particular and constant evanescence of the piece. In effect it is the pov from the TV screen. The pure surface – no resolution of depth (being inside the space of the TV or actually outside in the space of the reflection). The resolution between theory and practice which occurs, even in a film which only uses an unmoving pov and no editing. Even though it is only a straight recording, the same development occurs, whereby the shooting resolves itself, relaxes after a few minutes, (around fifteen), and the film is qualitatively transformed, more purely realised. How can this be – nothing is rehearsed. But truly after all the camera becomes more and more invisible, like a strange dog becomes slowly integrated to the pack and a truly objective vision is revealed. (How truth is the only justification for artifice)

PROJECT FOR ITALY 2001

The words VATAN, (HEIMAT?), PATRIA and Greek for same (HELLAS – the name for the football team Verona also), on adjacent hillsides (photo digitised) spelt out on wooded slopes. Hollywood extension, re-locating empires in same ’logos’ and ‘locus’.

PAN-ROMANA 2001

(Photos (panoramic) abutted at random.)

*IN ABSENTIA (a parable of painting, after van der Weyden’s St Luke) 2001

(Paint, canvas, light fittings)

On a carefully painted/primed/sanded white canvas a shadow of an ornate frame (of the sort Chardin etc would be framed with) is painted equally carefully in grey at the top edge. Above the painting is fixed a bronze/brass museum light shining down onto the actually frameless canvas.

Alternatively, or perhaps instead, the shadow will be made out of gold leaf applied to the canvas, reflecting light, like the frame itself would.

Baroque (mirror) cornice

Mirror ceiling/corner/tilted ribbon-like outline of cornice/frame suspended at angle from corner.

After Tiepolo – the reflections being the fresco/narrative characters and the line the architectural context.

Nobody’s Perfect (rocking the boat) after Giotto

Repeated arcs, (or rather, unevenly realised parabolae) reversing repeatedly all from one line until page is filled. At certain points the chain of reversal is itself reversed – in a mathematically exact programme it would be when the curve hit another at exactly 90 degrees – but in my scheme, roughly every fifth stroke (like waves).

Leading to Ductus Series

DUCTUS – (instructions for drawing) 2001

With one line draw a curve (not an arc) which narrowing slightly turns in on itself. Before it bisects the original line, change direction, drawing another curve, equally deliberately following its own trajectory – trying at all times to keep the curve even, or rather true to its varying temper i.e. if you feel it widening let it do so evenly if the reverse likewise. Be continually conscious of where you are and where you are going. Again, before this new curve bisects any previous line, reverse the direction once more. Continue in this wise until the curve approaches a previous line at right angles in which case the next curve is in the opposite direction. Repeat this procedure. This being a drawing the aim is to fill the page. Thus you will find the curves narrowing or widening according to a vague awareness of the suitability of a certain direction above another. This way there will be a fluctuation between your leading the pen and the pen leading you. Carry on until you are tired or frustrated or bored, and then maybe carry on some more.

This is an action that is effected only by continuous adjustment, continuous awareness of controlling or following the line and/or the page itself.

Explore possibility of Ductus Series being computer generated (random responses programmed within limited parameters)

BLIND MOUSE DRAWINGS (K. MARTIN SUITE)

Repeated furious hatching on mouse, the line drawing facility used. Each line clicked upon to register it equally furiously. So fast that the lines cannot be assimilated by the computer quick enough and so the return strokes of the hatching and the between movements are sometimes recorded instead. In a running (?) fugue. Thus the underlying pattern/signature of the computer is established as in a brass rubbing when the image appears out of nothing.

(DUCTUS)

Via Kenneth Martin, these lines are organised to fill, or removed from a given area, defining it from within or without.

VIDEO REAL (REELING)

A video recording of video tape caught in a cherry tree (e.g. prunus avium) close up, unmoving frame, the wind rippling the tape, catching the light.

‘AND WHO HATH BELIEVED OUR REPORT’ prose sculpture 2001

A reminiscence of a journey from Prague to Dresden in Winter, mapping in a small way any journey through any Inferno toward Purgatory and Paradise.

‘FRAGMENT – NO SUGGESTIONS’

Continuing computer/brain mapping of ‘understanding’. Fingerprint/signature. A given text subjected to a spellchecker, the queried (academic) words replaced by their suggested alternatives, including of course ‘Fragment – no suggestions’.

Also, replacement identities, delineating parochial unfamiliarity – subjecting ‘foreign’ names to spellcheck – specifically a Braziers piece for Applicants.

ENGAGEMENT – (AFTER RODIN’S BALZAC)

Disposable cameras with film (exposed).

Disposable cameras, each containing un-developed pictures of, for instance unknown people, piled or stacked or whatever. The pictures to be developed after my death. A projected Boltanski.

THREE BLIND MOUSE DRAWINGS 2001

(Inkjet print on paper)

A set of drawings (of mice) made by blindly using the computer mouse

Part of an on-going enquiry into ‘blindness’

ASS DRAWINGS (for Heimito von Doderer) 2001

Pencil on paper

A suite (potentially unlimited) of drawings made by writhing around on the floor with a pencil stuck up my ass (no, really – well not exactly, but in effect). Blindness again.

*ACT ONE SCENE TWO 2001

Mirrors and steps

Circular stone steps with the risers replaced by mirrors. The steps float and bi-location is achieved.

*ELIAZER AT THE WELL (FRAGMENT) 2001

Video monitor, surveillance camera, broken pots, gold leaf

LE CORPS EXQUIS 2001

Four monitors stacked vertically, four surveillance cameras attached recording disparate locations at identical respective heights to the monitors.