Thinking allowed

Hello all,

Ele- thanks for your thorough answering of practical qs :)

It’s been really good to revisit this blog after a few days absence; I’ve been thinking about this whole process of how the four of us are collaborating in terms of space and place. This sifting transfer of knowledge over the net, how I am navigating my thoughts to see what you are experiencing/your ideas through blind sight: only snippets of your directional clues and images, quotes and descriptions; unravelling like a Wim Wendes narrative.
Ele, I can almost hear you swooping down into moments of clarity with your interconnection especially with Hamish- like how you speak of assessing space and editing, then finding your place through the 3d purchase of a Crow.

In the same way, it was good to see physically see Hamish’s work, I interpreted his drawings into the sense of flurry and movement of city scapes without verbal clarification. It was exciting to see how he was dealing with the same questions as I may through my doodles, but his way of seeing ‘four marks’ on paper can mean something else entirely. This is prompting me to think of cultural disparity, in particular, it’s making me think of geographical location in terms of being lost; right and wrong place- arrival and departure. I am thinking about the contrast between outside, movement, constant flux, nomadism, and clarity, inertia, home, belonging- how we function in another culture.

I think this is because of where I am right now. I am drawing directly on my current experience. I am feeling unsettled right now, in terms of; age, personal loss, living at ‘home’ with my folks, somewhere I haven’t considered home for sixteen years, not having a studio at present …I am thinking a lot about where my abode is, where I should move to, why I chose a location, and why I wish to return to a place and also the making process in transition itself (from makeshift studio to making something in this presence/absence collaboration- currently intangible for all of us). It’s been hard concentrating, I am feeling slightly uneasy and unable to gain that inner stillness that has a commanding presence in all those silent snow scenes. There’s a tension, for some reason, David Hockney’s Mr and Mrs Ossie Clark and Percy springs to mind- but I never really liked this piece. I think it’s their direct gaze and our yearning to avert this through looking through the window for reprieve. I have been battling against my sense of unease, but in fact, I think my personal experience can feed quite productively into this project. Personal stories are becoming important to me in terms of trying to find that clear space amongst all the dissonance.

I’ve just read Chinese Liverpudlans by Maria Lin Wong and she talks about many facets that led to the growth and decline of a group of people who came from outside to a different place. For instance; themes of alienation, (ostracization- language barriers, cheaper labour, different customs- food/leisure), attempt to integrate- to establish and make a place home (setting up businesses, community relations, education, interracial marriage, adapting…)
On a general scale, this boils down to the formations of boundaries, territorialisation and arborescent ideology in direct opposition to the nomad in flux - threatening disorder against ‘home’.

“The population of any area in this country has always meant the population actually present within its boundaries…”

In parallel, I am also reading about Munich:

“at the end of the 8th century, the Bavarian tribes..[are] in conflict with the Saxons, who took the Bavarian throne… after the death of Ludwig iV… the youngest Wittelsbachs were given the West and North empire….Karl VII, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was unable to repel troops… Bavaria tried to remain neutral but was unable to protect its possessions in the Plantinate from French occupation.” and so on…

I am questioning why are we still dealing with the same age old problems today (at the very base all the ‘racism’ outcry taken with the delightful Jade)
I am thinking about the exhausting domino rally to protect national identity, itself nomadism into other lands, ironically, this blurs boundaries further. The flight and plight of the individual to another location results in a multicultural melting pot that results in a never ending? search for home. Or perhaps we arrive at not having “a home to which one must return”.

I am not sure how this will translate into art work we’ll see. I would really like to collaborate somehow Edgar’s partying and Tomas’s plasticine and Olivia’s language,

Ok, must stop ranting, wow, it’s late. Wrap up warm, take care,
jx