filmcapefilmgamefilm

a break but also a busy time finishing off the capes and photographing them in a number of photoshoots - am in the middle of learning new software to make a film comprised of the stills created - also managed to see some films - Star Wars - most excellent - it felt at times like a supercharged remake of the first (which isn't such a bad thing, or is it? It's at its best when the camera is observing space, following flying machines, watching stuff get blown up, shot and also looking at landscapes. Lobster - a straining tragic portrayal of the disconnective connectedness of society - a beautiful parable for this internet age- like! Big Short - a dark film about how the banks created a virtue out of greed whose style feels like something new - a hybrid - a docu-mocku-post-meta - informed by our experience of using the internet and how we engage with it including a montage found footage, infomercials and complex ideas delivered to camera by celebrities - wondrous. Anomalisa the 'puppet film' by Charlie Kaufman - just plain astoundingly odd, in a good way. Finally if you haven't already you have to get into the gut wrenching embarrassing train wreck that is Nathan for you - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2297757/ after binge watching some (every episode) I would recommend starting with smokers allowed http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5199634/?ref_=ttep_ep5 this episode twists and turns so that the 'joke' or focus eventually questions every aspect of an idea, nobody and nothing is safe, especially your own brain - all through Nathan's layered deadpan delivery. You have to see it to really get it! Played beginners guide - a great game - essentially it is a deconstruction of the very idea of gaming - exploring the relationship the gamer has with the game maker through the act of playing - existential crisis all round....

merrycashmas

holeswithintheargument

busy working on two strands of work today - first lazer cutting more fabric for the cape photo shoot next week - this time cutting with the pattern in mind - scaling up and also leaving the designs 'holey' - taking into consideration and thinking about the light and shadows I've been working with over the past weeks at the Castle Museum.  second - developing the raw filming into 'something'.  not quite sure what they are or what they are for but excited to be playing with ideas around multiple dialogues through duality - old and new, light and shadow, heavy and light, Islam and Christianity even. 
two tales from and of America - two really excellent films - but for very different reasons - Brooklyn - the emergence of something wonderful, of a burgeoning beautiful possibility http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381111/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 and Sicario - of bloated madness, a country seemingly at war with everything, even itself. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

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ayarnwithinandbetween

well another day at the castle museum in Norwich in the build your own exhibition - this time it was knit-natter-publish - a really lovely session - the conversation flowed whilst fingers moved - subjects included feminism, the position of 'women's work', education, undervalued activity, tradition, learning, The prison service, Norfolk demographics, the value of small-talk and well-being through textiles. the text is a work in progress and the session was more of a pilot testing ground as to how we could explore the connections in the future. there was talk of doing something in the Forum.

its my first time

but I have always been here

there

in the moment - a memory of the muscle

my mother

my gran my nan my grandmother

lineage

a line

a conversation between

a yarn

within and between

fingers

wound up

women's small talk

then onto Cambridge for a follow-up session as part of the Nano project including a tour of The Maxwell Building - stunning- slightly envious of its thoughtful design - spaces which are dynamic and yet leave freedom for the individual to really reflect/think - meeting casually is where the real work and creativity happens. The amount of communal space is extraordinary - its almost as if it was designed with discussion and collaboration in mind - the science world does seem to of taken the best of what we used to do - buying sofas to sit - they are on the ball with this issue - okay - the most bizarre disconnected random eclectic surreal in the real Surrealist sense of juxtaposition and did I mention bizarre film ever - The Holy Mountain - unsure how I missed this gem but it really is fantastical - the tiny hand-crocheted capes for the 'battling lizards' is the lease odd moment in the whole thing! drugs are not necessary. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071615/ finally - tickets for Star Wars booked - tick - the experience anticipated - tick - most excellent

anotherdaybehindinagoodway

another day at the castle in Norwich - I'm really enjoying being a part of the build your own exhibition. being in the space before and after the museum opens is like entering another world - like you've been given the keys to a parallel world. I presented the work I'd undertaken with Cambridge University Nano technology department which was liberating in that I had previously only shown it to a knowing audience so its presentation to the general public initiated new strands of research through wonderful conversations. I also created a number of finished segments of films that I had to started work on during the Summer. These explore the role of light, of seeing, scale, pattern and shadow. Whilst playing with the range of pre-prepared materials that I had lazer cut with Penrose tessellations and combining them with an app on the iphone I made a discovery that led to a site specific digital work that I am really pleased with.

meanwhile my final session with year 3 students at NUA utilised the glorious oblique strategies cards by the brain that is eno - one of the best sessions this year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies  - - they were a great filter to explore work - excellent. two film recommendations -  the wonderful and quite beautiful Carol, it's such a still film with most of the acting taking place behind the eyes and then there's the use of textiles, colour and pattern which are gorgeous and symbolically meaningful. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402927/?ref_=nv_sr_1 and then if you think you're having trouble getting stuff done with the odd few stumbling blocks as well as being very very funny The Martian is the Don of problem solving movies - everything is possible and it will be okay. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/

controldirectmapandfeel

a day at Norwich Castle - working within the build your own exhibition (alongside Turner Prize winners Assemble!)- developing an 'alternative' way of engaging with the permanent museum displays. I have 'chosen' 3 objects and am attempting to unfold from a very cluttered brain (looking forward to Christmas) a range of connections and questions between and to them. Exploring the idea of creating a range of entry points to understanding an object within a collection and then being able to navigate through a collection are key concerns of the 'mini residency'.

Sword in the Stone - this year's 'rock and roll' panto at The Wolsey in Ipswich is a truly great night out - shed your inhabitations before you enter and it will be good - very good - men dressed as women, behind you, evil combated by good, fire, smoke, illusion, oh no it isn't, dancing - rude jokes - its all there - every year I marvel at the performers ability to sing, dance, act and play a wide range of musical instruments - fantastic, who needs irony?http://www.wolseytheatre.co.uk/shows/the-sword-in-the-stone/

love and mercy - the Brian Wilson biopic is stunning in its portrayal of where songs come from - the moment it 'arrives' as the essence of a fragment, building its development, the combining of sounds and words, the weaving of layering towards a final piece. brilliant. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903657/

controlwithart

Back from a trip to London centred around seeing The Book of Mormon - uuuuuuummmh I felt that I was part of the very meta experience - meanwhile I checked out a few shows - Losing the Compass curated by Scott Cameron Weaver and Mathieu Paris at White Cube was beautifully put together - nothing new but it had some really good examples and its always interesting to find oneself wandering through the area around Bond Street at this time of the year, an artwork in itself. Jon Rafman at the Zabludowicz collection is truly the most extraordinary exhibition I have seen in a while - I haven't felt so wonderfully assaulted in a long time http://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/visit/london. The Kibbo Kift show at the Whitechapel will inform the collection of capes I am in the middle of making with their quite odd clothing/costume/uniform. If you're a fan of data, both its exploitation by artists and explanation by designers and scientists you might not learn anything new from Big Bang Data at Somerset house but it is a show full of information! The initial work by Ryoji Ikeda was a smaller but perfectly formed version of the installation I saw at Brewer st Car park - it's disturbingly wondrous. Elsewhere in the cavernous labyrinthine space there is also the beautifully contemplative One And All - an exhibition about the coast and the sea. The Calder at Tate Modern is quite beautiful and just about elevates him from maker of jaunty mobiles (just). At Tate Britain the haunting work by Susan Philipsz: War Damaged Musical Instruments is truly moving and Auerbach - well he did use an awful lot of paint painting the same subjects over and over and over again - but I guess that's the point. I also popped into the National to spend an hour with a few of my favourite paintings - Swabian's portrait of a woman of the Hofer Family being one  -  the glorious detail of the cloth gives a flavour of what and how people wore clothes, right down to the threads used to gather the cloth in a headdress or the knot in a ribbon. London - the most exciting city in the world?

just finishing off the last presentations of the year (but not the first term as we are working within a new (another) structure) for the BA Textiles course at NUA - its all about professional practice and they are delivered through workshops (so you had to be there) but you get a flavour of what goes on there. It's an important element of becoming professional, I wish somebody had of considered it professional or just appropriate to of taught me it at College, although most of it has been created in the years since.