backtoreality

a full on week of back to reality - NUA has been about timetables - which are now ready and waiting OCA had its first session - I am now year 1 tutor and looking forward to guiding the 2018 cohort. Camberwell is ........well............in the process of deconstructing its relationship to MA teaching and Book Arts in particular. We shall see what happens. The work for Goldlay Sq has gone from my space and is now in their space. I get to site the work next week. Next week is the first week with year 1 students at NUA - we have loads of excellent activities planned including a visit to Cromer. Finished the devastating Ozark - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5071412/?ref_=nv_sr_1 it was such a trip and towards the end just a catalogue of trauma. I am now in season 2 of Atypical https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6315640/ it really is quite beautiful between the pain and tears. In terms of podcasts its been mostly repeats and best ofs whilst they take a break over Summer. Like most I have become slightly obsessed with Trump so https://art19.com/shows/pod-save-america Pod save America has become a key feature of my listening alongside the wonderfully funny Stephen Colbert on The Late Show and the inciteful Anderson Cooper and disturbingly fair Chris Cuomo from CNN.

booksbooksbooksandsometeachingwithsteel

after 7 days swimming, breathing and reading in Carry-le- Rouet just outside Marseille it's a brutal return. I managed to read some books which  I would recommend. In descending order - The Only Story by Julian Barnes is a tale of love, loss and regret beautifully written with passages that will stay with you, haunting your soul for what is and what could of been. In A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler the stillness and heart retching experience of one man's life as he exists in time, embedded in a place will move you. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North is a glorious rambling story where Ground Hog Day meets Momento with wonderful subterfuge thrown in. Kamila Shamrie's Home Fire is a searing indictment of how we choose to live with a truly wonderful pointless ending, (in a good way). Lullaby by Leila Slimani is a stunningly head slamming awful story well written, the reality of the first pages come to a terrible conclusion on the last page. The Helium Kids by D. J. Taylor is a rollicking ride of a pastiche documenting the rise and downfall of a mythical band running parallel to recent history, weaving truth and known events; clever and witty. The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne charts a insular self important group of people where the central character was annoying. Returning to a day at NUA addressing the timetable, building spaces and creating the admin systems which will support the teaching and the initial session with OCA. I am now Year 1 Tutor and we had a wonderfully supportive session with the new cohort - really looking forward to the year ahead. I wrote a blog post about my practice for the OCA site - here is a link https://weareoca.com/education/oca-ma-fine-art-introducing-tutor-les-bicknell/ This week we are delivering the work created for Goldlay Square. The work has been 'developing' a wonderful patina in my garden over 3 months and gets to go tonight and delivered tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing it in the space over the following week.

cornucopiaofstuff

via the Action Bronson episode on Sound Exploder http://songexploder.net/action-bronson my YouTube 'research' has thrown up my latest obsession - shadow music of Thailand - a combination of western pop music of the 60s and 70s filtered through 'traditional' sensibility of the music of Thailand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiHQ5hKMJpw It has a kind of funky otherness and sounds a little like the amazing Ethiopian Funk music of the 70s but a little more generic, maybe as the audience started off as American GIs

films recently have been eclectic - Oceans 8 clever but maybe not quite sharp enough, First Reformed is a begrudgingly sparse experience which will stay with you. To all the boys I've loved before is a sweet rom-com experience. Ideal Home has some really funny moments but needs more and Steve Coogans portrayal of a gay man was difficult to watch - it tread a stereotypical line, and for me often crossed it. Rhett and Link appearance on the wonderful hot ones https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1dOZWSZzUSadfZ has led me to their playfully serious YouTube channel - check out I am a thoughtful guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6y7YOlldek and go from there...Rap Battele of Manliness is also a winner.

privilegedfolding

The folding and printing continues...with a view to thinking about editioning.

A day out in Newmarket to take part in garden of curious A'MUSE'ment - a project set up by http://www.unbosi.org/  - it was a kind of immersive interactive theatre piece - if you have young children I recommend getting to see one of their events - while there I dropped into The National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art.

https://www.palacehousenewmarket.co.uk/  which was really intriguing - alongside the really interesting objects connected to the sport of racing they have real horses which you can stroke, which was cool. The art collection does document the wealthy, privileged and questionable activity of the horse racing fraternity through the ages. Meanwhile a link to the Pattern and Chaos research page at Norwich University of the Arts  https://www.nuapatternandchaos.com/  - recently uploaded my answers to a set of questions -

Les describes his  practice and research as‘…searching for opportunities to be in a place of not knowing’ Les sees Pattern and Chaos as‘…finding the overwhelmingly extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary’ Les ‘s next big idea is‘…combining the experience of working in the crystallography department in the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, Cambridge with what was learnt in synthetic anatomy at Kings, London to create public artwork for a housing estate in Chelmsford with Essex CC and inspire a series of handheld bookworks – it’s all about folding’ There is a symposium coming up and the line-up looks interesting and worth checking out.

so now to some films - do not watch the self indulgent possibly dubious (choose your ism) Lost in London - Woody Harrelson - the technical issue of one take is not interesting enough and apart from a 7 minute segment where Woody riffs with Owen Wilson which is funny it is bad. Meanwhile Orange is the New Black is just too oppressive, maybe it always was. I quite enjoyed The Giver - although a lot of the ideas are retreads from previous sci-fi tropes and actual films but it does look good.

conditionsmayapplytoaburningbuilding

so you have The Rock and a giant building - if you want to see some extended dangle moments check out skyscraper but apart from that stay clear....I got to the private view of the latest show at Annka Kulty gallery it finishes on the 18th - it's your last chance to see Terms and conditions may apply - http://www.annkakultys.com/exhibitions/terms-and-conditions-may-apply/ the exhibition concerns the current state of surveillance and is curated by the director of is this it https://www.isthisitisthisit.com/ there's also a great book that accompanies the exhibition - I love the work of Shamus Clisset New Empire, 2017 a Computer simulation #proudparentmoment

foldingyoga

Working on some initial book/folding ideas that have their starting point within the one-sheet-of-paper rule and informed by the meditation space within the Yoga class I take (I know that one is supposed to empty the mind but it's a great space to 'explore and solve, meditate 360 degrees on' an issue). Meanwhile - the film of the beautiful book by Ian Mcewan On Chesil beach is mainly oppressive until it becomes sad - but it looks beautiful. Extinction has a great 10 minute film deeply hidden somewhere within the very long 95 minute experience. Late to the party but am deep in Atlanta at the moment - truly disturbing heart wrenching watching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_(TV_series)

radicalreflectivethinking

I've been thinking about next years teaching and the importance of reflective thinking in the learning process - I think that it's essential and without it there is no development or actual learning - so I have decided to photograph some pages of my notebooks to illustrate the process.

Deadpool 2 continues with its tongue in cheek slightly mawkish tone but is only really laugh out loud with Dice and her luck.  Swiss Army Man https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4034354/?ref_=nv_sr_1 is truly odd but/and you will be talking about it for days after. I've started to fold and use thread with a view to developing a bookwork of some kind. And finally Radicals outsiders changing the world by Jamie Bartlett is stunning a real must read...."The one constant of history is that everything changes. We should not assume that liberal democracies are the natural order of things.........if they fail, it won't be because of the existence of radical ideas, but rather their absence".