inthewindowrunning

the work is hung for Art Language Location (ALL) in the window of the Land Economy building in Silver Street in Cambridge.

whatisinpetmince?

a great day of structural thinking on the MA Book Arts on tuesday - some excellent folding and conceptual bookness went on. http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/001-a-what-is-book-bookness-2016 as part of Southbank Centre Young Adult Literature Weekender some students from Camberwell MA Book Arts - Muqiu, Lena and Charlotte are running a workshop at the South Bank Centre - it will be good - go get involved.

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/book-binding-workshop-1001990

I'm working for Open College of the Arts on a really interesting project - supporting final year MA Fine Art students in creating an online exhibition - thinking of using www.isthisitisthisit.com  as an example of good practice.

thursday saw the induction workshop and day at NUA - the whole week exists as an instagram feed #gotextiles check it out.

meanwhile the film The Brothers Grimsby manages to envisage and then enact scenarios that I could not even conceive of - this is not necessarily a good thing but it is a series of open mouth is-that-really-happening-moments

thisisathing

this is a thing!!! this is a thing to make a plaque for!!!

it's week one of textile design students at NUA - the whole week will be documented by the first years on instagram at #gotextiles

the poster for the NCCS upcoming talk looks good so if you are in the area....meanwhile  a journey of discovery and understanding Hunt for the Wilderpeople - just a lovely film.

managed to see 2 bad plays in a poor uncomfortable space as part of High Tide Festival on Sunday - just bad.

bookwordsfuture

A great day at Camberwell - the first symposium on the MA Book Arts course always presents the opportunity to project onto the students possible futures and to consider one's role in getting them to where they want/need to be. As ever the experience reminds me as to why I love teaching so much - my notes include the phrases - preserving something that is not - brand installation - putting content into paper - density of thought - invisible visible - manual collages - where does book take place? - memory of the evidence of a thing - Buddhist frustration - invisible violence - building lines for people to construct space in their minds - unfolding minds - real v perceived space - abstract landscape - doubling invisibility - the destruction of destruction - the public book - rock library - the space of the book - testing to negotiate your own space - books, I smelt all of them - process as metaphor. how wondrous is that. meanwhile a run of films - Mechanic: Resurrection - solid Stath action with shooting weaponry material but wooden beyond belief. Free State of Jones - solid life affirming Southern racist narrative with good work by good guy McConaughey. Blood Father - solid drug violent wayward daughter biker story with Mel sporting marvellous face hair. Spill festival program is out and am already looking forward to it - highlights have to be of leonardo da vinci quills a black giant deluge with Elaine Mitchener, David Toop, Barry Lewis and Dam Van Huynh, Mem Morrison in the Wills building, the wonderful Jade Montserrat  who I actually taught many moons ago, well she was in the room when I was talking!! and Entertainment Island who I saw at the Barbican in a previous Spill festival - it will be excellent. https://spillfestival.com/

decidingwhattowatch

The Art Language Location website is up and running - the whole project is extensive and bright with lots of individual work going on in lots of different places around Cambridge. https://artlanguagelocation.org/

my page

https://artlanguagelocation.org/les-bicknell/

at the end of the break last week I had a couple of days in Marseille - I love this slightly dysfunctional city, it feels so quintessentially French with a huge range of fantastic 'outside' influences - sited on the sea with great food it always appears to be sort of writhing. Went to see the collection at Musée d'Art Contemporain - some good but eclectic pieces hung without any practical care or seemingly curatorial skill or interest. They did have a disturbing yet excellent Annette Messager piece which was a dark joy squishing nature and its cartoon image together. The Cathedral had huge flags which looked like a form of medieval clip art and the redeveloped area around the port is extra-ordinary - especially the Museum of Old Marseille which is one of the oddest-brutally-beautiful clever spaces ever - a must see.  Got back to see Jason Bourne - a rollicking rush of a JB experience, set pieces were a blast. I Am Not a Serial Killer is a 'not-bad' twisted dark 'indi-thriller'. 

booksbooksbooksandsun

so a week away on a mountain outside Groux-les-Bains in S France has been about books books books, water colour landscape painting (yes!) good food and calmness - so Satin Island - Tom McCarthy I loved this conspiracy of ideas oozing from the pages. Great James Street - Don Delillo a glorious excessive verbal tide of drug fuelled rambling. Red Shirts - John Scalzi clever premise where nonfiction meets the future in fiction - maybe. Clothes Music Boys - Viv Albertine a window into a brutally honest version of events. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami a tale of beautiful loss told beautifully - if you can't be bothered to read the book the film is a winner. The Illusion of Stillness - Simon Van Booy sweet, stilted but fractured attempt to be overtly clever. Purity - Jonathan Franzen an intelligent wide sweeping intergenerational novel which sucks you in with some extraordinary dialogue.