2012-06-27

Ocimum Tenuiflorum





I just found an untitled dvd with only this pictures from summer 2010 on it.
I am reading Indian holistic literature. I have not yet dissolved. Considering the number of boxes all over the place, it would be hard pushed for me to vanished into thin air. I like the idea though.

2012-06-14

some people

For once I want to mention someone. I don't know the guy. I just know from his website that he is 20 years younger than me and certainly a whole lot less stupid. His name is Sam Laughlin.
I have just started reading Jeanette Winterson's memoir "Why be happy when you can be normal". She is just plain good. I am puzzled by a short paragraph in chapter one. I know Jeanette has written it for me; it goes: "Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margins of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world." 
Beyond the fact that she is hinting at photographers being devoid of personal vision, it seems that for someone of such talent and perspicacity, she doesn't know a thing about contemporary photography.
Shall I send for her a copy of Roland Barthes "La Chambre Claire" even if I am not so sure he wrote about photography being as much about what is left out of the frame than on the film. Should I suggest the purchase of one of A. Broomberg and O. Chanarin image of their People in trouble (Dots) serie                         What type of photographer is she referring to? packshot photographers? sport? news? wedding photographers? fashion? film set? beauty? portrait photographers?
are you suppose to frame and shoot? I thought...
Yoko Ono shows open at the Serpentine this friday. I am sure she knows. I will inform myself. Could a reconversion as a photographer who "frame the shoot" be possible after years of trying not to show what I saw.
I am puzzled. I am thinking about jigsaw puzzle; you know, you grab a piece, you put it down and then you imagine what the next piece looks like. I love jigsaw puzzle...particularly the ones with lots of grasses and trees.


                 



2012-06-08





this is the color I would like the sky to be.

2012-06-05

Encore




rain rain go away, little Johnny wants to play.

Song Dong's Waste not was even better than expected. Song and I have 2 things in common: we respect and admire our elder for their strange ways and our fathers died suddenly of heart attack. In my case my mother was left alone to get on with it as I was nursing a baby in London, 600 miles away from her. She threw herself in to caring for her own parents who were in their mid eighties at the time and it is they who did the Waste not and stored every single little piece of string, metal and leather, car windows and jam jars. I pointed out to Mies how amazing that what a chinese artist has in his mind is so very similar to what I have in my mind. Is it down to my reading the Tao Te King at the tender age of 18?
If you use too much washing-up liquid, you just waste water to rinse it off.





2012-06-04




When I walk past this improbable building-anti-collapsing structure , the smell of metal is dizzying. I have done it twice. I might do it again on Wednesday.

schrahafehrtahme





Some days, I know what is what and some days I forget to eat. Last Wednesday I spent 5 hours taking pictures of my bits and bobs, of which here are two. When I was done, I threw the lot in the rubbish bin. That was hard. Then I looked at the 250 shots; some I like, most are what they represent : rubbishes, scraps, junk...des petites merdes...des merdouilles. I felt just so utterly happy while doing those pictures. It seems madness to you, but to me, it makes sense. Tomorrow I will go to the Barbican art gallery The Curve to see Song Dong's Waste Not display of familiar objects. Right now, I am thinking about Sol Lewitt photographs of the entire content of his home that he printed into a book and called Autobiography.
When I take pictures of my bits of junk, I am trying to create a representation of my head and heart combined content; some  visual aiku. It takes me 5 hours to shoot but months and months to collect the right junk. Very few bits make it into the final draw. I am not a horder you see. In fact, I had to accept that I am a bit of a fascist when it comes to rubbish. Even when sorting out beads yesterday, I had to admit to a worrying level of insecurity that translate into rejecting pink and turquoise oval soft plastic Woolworth beads against bright orange round hard plastic ones. did you not know some beads have the right to live and some are just condemned to the bin?
Certain little insignificant things I will keep for a long long time after having done my business with, generally because they are more than 50 years old or they hold some form of emotional value to do with their place of origin, their color, or their shine factor. My oldest piece of found junk is the little rusty metal scrap that I got on a disused rail track with my boyfriend at the time Denis. Denis died in a car crash a couple of years after that and along with some photos, the little piece of rusted metal has become Denis and the memory of walking along the rail track on that very hot Sunday is linked to the memory of the railway I had to cross every day as a child on my way to school and back.
I forgot to go to sleep.