on the table in front of me (it's a low coffe table type thing) along with my monitor is:

an eighteen inch or so pink plastic doll's arm stretching out to touch a very dusty blue tea pot.

the doll's arm rests on a white enamel bowl that contains: a pack of funny danish craft beads in different colours that can be arranged on a plastic grid and then ironed to make them stick together; the plastic binding for a four pack of beer; numerous candle ends.

a pile of small change; coppers, mostly. on top of which is: a pen which i believe came from the "innovations" catalogue, it's a ballpoint pen, the barrel of which has compartments containing various scalpel and saw blades, one end of which has an attachment to hold them, the other end has the pen.  it's very useful. it lies across the dull copper and it's silver casing gleams.

also on the table is my girlfriend's camera - one of those compact zoom/built in flash ones. silver casing. dusty.

next to that is a velour covered head from a  scooby-doo toy. it's about four inches long. i don't know what happened to the toy, i found the head in the street in hackney wick. scooby doo grimaces or grins meaninglessly up towards the ceiling.

an empty bottle of "Dry Gin". no brand, came from LIDL supermarket and was very cheap.

a box of slides, containing images of my work from the other year, and more interestingly, images of hayes middlesex where my brother used to live. there is an image of an unfinished sort of skateboard or bmx ramp that was too small. it was made of mud and pallets in the scabby copses next to the confluence of the m25 and m4. i photographed it at about six one morning.

there are a couple of cd's, containing programmes.

there is a tea spoon, green translucent plastic handle.

one of my girlfriend's hair ties. black elastic with a copper coloured clip. one of her hairs adhering. it's a funny elastic, two strands paralell, and the outside strands undulating in and out.

a tea mug, dirty.

three empty beer cans; and a fourth painted various shades of grey, with a smear of silicon sealent in gold running from the hole at the top. this is studded with small pearlescent pink roses.

two pint glasses, empty.

the insides of a rizla packet. "5 leaves left" (both left and leaving).

a sweet wrapper- chocolate truffle.

two tiny screws that came from somewhere in my computer......  

found in a bin at the studio; a cross between a candlestick and an ashtray. an approximately hemispherical lump of glazed and fired clay, some attempt made to create a sort of lip around the central concavity. glaze is muddy blue/green/black and wanders in small trickles over the surface, which bears the marks of inept attempts to smooth it down when the clay was wet, leaving smears of finger marks. approximately 45% of the surface is the bare fired clay. the colour is more puddles and drips in every direction, suggesting that the form was held in varying attitudes and the glaze was dribbled onto it.

it looks like the work of a fairly young child, or severely limited adult. i am imagining that it was made at school or at a kids' workshop as a gift for a parent, who conveniently "lost" it after a decent interval. the attempt at a lip suggests something marginally more sophisticated, though hampered by complete lack of ability.

the piece is signed on the underside, incised into the clay with some sort of pointed instrument. "ben". i am betting that the name was not put there by ben, whoever he is. a teacher or minder did that.

there are numerous things about it i like:

 it's attempt at being decorative (i think) without being entirely sure what it is, candlestick or ashtray, or both; it floats between function and ornament and fails at both.

my sense that it was a gift - and what the hell do you do with something like that?

it's ugliness and uselessness.

the glaze, which runs and puddles in a random way.

the lip which fold in on itself, and stops halfway round as if lacking commitment, or losing heart in the project.

it is something that i wish i'd have made myself....thumb pot gone wrong, or running out of steam just before it stops being a lump of clay. it hovers between the two.

i suspect that it was a very young child, losing interest in the making process after the initial indentation in the  ball. summoning a bit more enthusiasm for the glazing - but only briefly.

it's sitting here next to me, on top of my computer, which is humming in a relatively well behaved way tonight, as opposed to the crunching and grinding noises it makes sometimes. between it and the humming box (which has no outer casing, as it has no fan, so it seemed a good plan to leave it open) there is a few letters from the student loan people, who can fuck off; a defunct and disconnected CD drive, some slides (unmounted) of my own work that i haven't got it together to put away, and the envelope for a job application i'm fairly unlikely to fill out.

my room seems full of smashed ceramics that i'm gluing back together again in the wrong order, and empty beer cans that i am painting and sticking fake roses (made of pearlescent play-dough) onto. but the best thing in here at the moment is the discarded nearlycandlestick/ashtray/thumpot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a badly drawn chicken on hackney road. this one also holds some sort of container. a strange red cross on it. it's either medicine, or chicken. there often seems to be a difficulty with the hands/wings. they aren't certain what they are, but i suppose it's understandable. flightless, vending their own flesh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the heraldic bird of the city; it's not the pigeon. it's flightless. it must be the bird most represented here. every street has one, or more, pictured in perspex, fried, breadcrumbed, just beneath. sold in polystyrene or card boxes. it's the smell of every night-bus. it's bones litter the pavements, shreds of greybrown flesh still adhering, giving the rats a treat. this city was built on chicken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it's usually the foghorn leghorn type. the other day, i saw what must be called a "gangsta" version, i suppose, for want of a better word, with a bandanna. or the very stylised one. i'm looking for examples of chip shop signs that feature a fish with chef's hat and frying pan, too, or any animal that seems to be cooking itself. the only example of that i've found so far (though the image seems to be stuck in my head since early childhood) is on leather lane, off high holborn.

thinking about it, the chicken above seems to be holding a container. that's likely to be of chicken, i'll bet. cooking implements would be even better. self cannibalism, and the heraldic bird of london.

i knew a hippy twat in college, who made "recycled" art. that is, art made from stuff salvaged from skips and (sometimes) charity shops, or picked up from the beach. these were horribly kitsch objects, not in a good way either. it was all friendly and accesible, with a strong bunny hugger message. -personally i prefer art that confront it's audience with a blank stare -

anyway, the point about him was i found his project both flawed and patronising. patronising, because he was engaged in preaching, firstly; secondly because he wanted to show people "the beauty in junk" because they'd obviously be too thick to see it without his help. it was flawed because though it had a mildly critical agenda directed at wastefulness, it undermined it by making decorative objects from waste. this re-absorbed them into the system that created the waste in the first place, making it useful in the sense of being decorative, and something that shouted (craft) art. to me, this diminished it's critical edge to the extent that it became quite comforting, if you like that sort of thing.

my interest in using waste, the broken, the cheap and tacky, is certainly not to elevate it, or make it into something useful. i think that if it is done right, putting waste into the space of art might be the best way of saving it from becoming something else or something useful. it might be the best way for it to retain it's character as waste.

waste must be, by it's nature, unassimilateable. otherwise it would not be waste. it provides a border to life, in the same way that there is a ring of  landfills and scrapyards encircling every city.

i couldn't find it on the net just now, but i remember a news story from earlier this year. the border areas between north and south ireland are filling up with illegal waste dumps. some of the owners of hauliage firms that are  involved have paramilitary associations. the border area was a popular place for the dumping of bodies during the troubles. it is an unassimilatable place, for as long as ireland is divided, therefore it becomes a home to the indigestible surplus that society creates. the vague connection with paramilitaries (if true) with the business, i'm not sure what that might mean. but i feel it's appropriate. the borders are unpoliced and unpolice-able. they are a liminal area. hence the stuff that marks our limits, our unintended consequences, will find it's way there.

been making a couple of objects- i smashed two cups and then re assembled them, but in the wrong order.

i want to make things that are like a kid that is fuck ugly, even mis-shapen; but no one has the heart to beat it to death with a shovel. so it hangs around, becoming a focus for the feelings that no one even admits they feel, let alone speak or act on

most art that i see these days is too pleased with itself, because it's made by kids who are used to having to pass exams. they had to, to get into art school in the first place, too clever. few people want to make something that is dumb, in both senses of the word. dumb in the sense that the ramones managed.

whilst smoking, i can do very little else. i certainly can't type.

some mclusky stuff; i know i've written about them on here before- but the more i listen, the better they sound. it's at least partially the lyrics - my personal favourite for today is "when we gonna torch the restaraunt - sing it - when we gonna pay the guide dog?".....in a song called "to hell with good intentions". crunchy bass, abrasive atonal guitar, solid drums, and a voice that borders on hysteria at times, but stays articulate and clear. you can hear every word of these surreal manifestos. the new single can be heard and seen (not a wildly exciting video) on the first link below. the largest influence i can hear in this is the fall in their early to mid period. this is not surprising at all. they have something of that sneering intelligence. any band who can do an album called "my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours" have got to be worthwhile. such an obvious pisstake of the suffering artist selling their trauma as product.

http://www.toopure.com/mclusky/discography.html

http://www.rathergood.com/lightsabre/

this last is a fairly recent session for xfm. typically idiosyncratic. the second track "dave, stop killing prostitutes" shows the fall influence clearly. and the third track is great. it makes a lot of noise, and pretty much refuses to resolve itself into anything song-like.    http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=23654

recycling is the attempted re-absorbtion of energy back into the system that created it.

"waste" as it is called, is inevitable. to believe that waste can be eliminated is the equivalent of belief in perpetual motion. the inventors of perfect systems are motivated by this belief, that every part can serve the end of the whole, all the time, unswervingly. that all energy produced, all energy utilised, will serve that end. the perpetual motion machine is the picture of obsession.

nothing divides neatly; there will always be some residue which has its own life. every reaction produces a by-product. the by-product is the part that we do not need. it may be in greater proportion to the desired effect, but it retains that label. there is no such thing as a clean reaction, the term "by-product" describes the unconscious product of a process.

substitution cannot be a perfect match. the crucial element of substitution is that what is replaced does not vanish. the identity between the two cannot be perfect, otherwise it would not be substitution. this is the idea of money, coins or notes of the same denomination are interchangeable, any of them having the same value (meaning) as any other.

"change " is given with a purchase – there is always a surplus – that bit left over from the transaction, the coins returned to us are paradoxically the part that has not changed; as they remain money. the part that has changed is the part that was exchanged for the goods, at least as far as we are concerned. it could be that every transformation – as in this case of money into goods – is a substitution, and is never perfect, it always leaves a residue.

".......We wish in our country that morality may be substituted for egotism, probity for false honour, principles for usages, duties for good manners, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, a contempt of vice for a contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for tinsel show, the attractions of happiness for the ennui of sensuality, the grandeur of man for the littleness of the great, a people magnanimous, powerful, happy, for a people amiable, frivolous and miserable...."

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1794robespierre.html yes, that was my new friend robespierre again. a man with no experience of, or patience with, procrastination or boredom. the bit in italics was what i wanted to draw attention to.(i also wanted to find an excuse to use that passage somewhere since i read it; it combines unintentional hilarity with being rhetorically impressive).

"..the ennui of sensuality...." i love it. i can imagine the incorruptible having no patience with anything so fragile, transient -and, most damning- specific; as the physical. the future, the virtuous future, exists outside the messy contingency and specificity of the present. we are not talking of the person, we are talking of the (capitalised) People.

but there is some truth in this, sensuality is so mixed up in the texture of boredom, that is to say time, that it would be impossible to tease the two apart, or tell which caused which. in boredom, time becomes a physical sensation; or boredom can become a physical sensation, over time.

take smoking. smoking is a pleasure, it is also lethal. it seems to be increasingly looked at in the west as a practice akin to satanism or child molestation. smoking is, amongst other things, a physical index of boredom. smoking is what you do more when bored. the cylinder between the fingers is burning up time, like a medaeval monastic candle clock. it also burns up time at the other end of our lives, so we are told. each cigarette is burning however many minutes off our total lifespan, on top of how long it takes to smoke it. it's a profligate waste, it is pleasant- but part of that pleasure is, for me, feeling that time become physical, get set light to, drawn into me and then exhaled, where it dissipates- becoming an odour. a bored room will be seasoned and thickened with cigarette smoke.

i think that all drugs, all addictions are like this - they are a way of dealing with, of thinking about time-