some butterflies have eyes on their wings. according to marina warner, naturalists and paleontologists studied these eyes on some breeds and discovered that they correspond to no known predator in the environment of the species. the theory is that the eyes are aposematic camouflage (being a sheep dressed in wolf's clothing), and intended to scare threats away from what is in itself a very unthreatening creature. the theory was that the eye pattern  was mimicking that of a long extinct predator. if you look at wrought iron work, it contains eyes in those spirals. and the rest;  flowers, vegetation. a petrified forest; or better than that, a petrified and watchful meadow. in front of it, we are reduced to insect size. faced by an impenetrable screen of metal fronds and strange blooms, that is studded with eyes. a thicket of gazes.

and beyond that, the cameras. roosting on every pediment and moulding. fragments of a single compound eye. a doppelganger generator. being recorded in every move we make, we become our own evidence. looking directly into a camera will show you an image of yourself reflected back from the lens. looking into any creature's eyes will do this. the image is death, it shows us where we are not. the gap is emphasised by having our image pasted over it.

more than this, the fence has  spirals and curlicues that catch the eye, seduce it into following its lines. these decorative elements are also hooks. they end in points where a foothold might be found. they will catch and tear flesh, if flesh attempts to scale it, as efficiently as they catch the gaze.

i found this: http://www.randomthink.net/misc/ebay/ i've said before that someone has to look after the archives- well this woman is. there's a lot of vagrant stuff in the world, it travels by osmosis to places less dense. in the case of a domestic space, if there is no resistance this stuff will find it's way in, until space solidifies (the boxes are a very efficient way to do this- they fill a volume leaving the fewest interstices- i can't believe that the writer doesn't know what's in any of them, though). also, check out the picture of the "calender wall".....time has solidified, into this; any time, all time. different random months displayed.

"My mom decided storing this stuff is more important that having a place to sleep....No I don't know what's in any of these boxes either. Most of them are from eBay and have never been opened, just put straight on the pile."

a lot of this crap, that comes in and we can see in the pictures is just the normal crap - packaging etc. that we all have passing through our spaces; it's just that there it stays. in this way, it retains its status as crap. it does not get re-cycled. there is input, but no output - the system has broken down.  the house has half disconnected itself, become a cul-de-sac. like an appendix. time has stopped, the writer's mother has blocked most of the windows with boxes or card, ostensibly for insulation and privacy, but what this would also do is stop the alterations brought by daylight, like casinos have no natural light, and therefore no sense of time passing. no clocks either. the house is passing into another sort of time, maybe this is the function. the mineral time of the object- when stuff accumulates like this, it settles into strata, sediment. it becomes instant archeology.

i have seen this (i suppose i see an outdoor urban version in hackney wick and the heaps there every day) in a flat. a sediment of carpet,old towells, newspaper, peeled wallpaper, clothing, held together by mould, and limescale, repeated soaking and drying out, and holding fossilised within it smaller objects; shampoo bottles, pieces of jewelry. it could be peeled off the bathroom floor in one piece.

  

ohhhh, alright then, i'll ask- does no one comment around here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ornamental cartouche, with chicken (from hackney road chicken place sign i think) and surveillance cameras. i might add a few more cameras to it......seems to me that the C18 was the beginnings of the explosion of our industrially produced visual culture. the decorative tropes employed - floral bits, scrolls etc.- still turn up today, maybe in a watered down form, but there. wallpaper has not altered hugely, if one is looking at the old lady floral variety. as i was saying below, anatomical drawings have changed hugely, as has architecture; the hair is missing. looking at the cartouche above, it seems to be nothing but hair.  both architecture (maybe design in general) and anatomy has become obsessed with the bones and muscles- function. what is deemed "essential"; but maybe we do live in the scrolls and curlicues of the flesh, the baroque convolutions of scars and rashes. elaboration, for it's own sake, and the pleasure that it gives.

cities generally communicate visually. somewhere like london, where god knows how many languages are spoken, relies on the visual. your retinas are yelled at, metaphorically speaking, on every street: invitations to eat, drink, buy, cross, don't cross, beware, wear hard hats, change lanes. babel. a form of seduction by overload. there is another layer now, in the form of CCTV. the cameras are everywhere, both state sponsored and private. as well as being an eye, the pedestrian is walking through a gigantic compound eye. images reflect and refract. sight lines splinter in all directions. the push pull of seduction and control. i associate this with wrought iron railings and gates. the convoluted patterns that act as a barrier, and a frame. (well, frames are both). the eye gets caught by the curves and spirals, stopped short. but looking through, the building or garden is encircled by these mock organic spiralling and entwining lines of metal. t.v. screens and monitors should have this border too.

it's like sleeping beauty's thorny hedge round her castle, a glamour, in the proper sense of the word. vegetation has always frozen in the mind. the theories that the classical orders came from trees(and the stylised acanthus that twined around their tops)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_orders; the columns and vaulting of gothic cathedrals, and their patterns of vines. as i mentioned, wrought iron railings, and the flowing lines of art noveaux and the jugendstil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugendstil).  

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/imperialmessage.htm  this, by kafka pretty much sums up the feeling

saturday........its not as if i haven't got loads to do- but i'm engaging in my most usual pastime, procrastination. idly looking round the internet (i can feel this ruining my eyes) eating cake, smoking (a lot), and considering all that i have to do, how complicated it might be and how long it'll take. i have a whole load of half finished sculptures to complete. just sketches of ideas really; and stuff to do for work. but all of this would involve getting out of my chair and MAKING IT HAPPEN.......sometimes i feel as if i don't have any hands, or any particular shape. it takes a huge leap of faith to believe that i could actually affect anything, sometimes i find it nearly impossible to believe that i can even touch anything. the procrastination thing is probably about not being 100% convinced of my own reality.

it's lovely to wake up and feel this time stretching out in front of you, that you could fill as you wanted- the feeling of possibility is infinitely more seductive than anything concrete. so it gets to 3.00pm, and you are still luxuriating in plans for the day........this must in itself fulfil some function.

this made me laugh quite a lot...........http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-RTO-PLS&idq=/ff/story/0002/20040827/1116494825.htm, would this count as one of the most extreme manifestations of denial possible?   

from my notebook.......

Imagine this- the world was once a featureless ball of clay, rolled between the palms of the eternal architect, who afterwards went away and  forgot it. (it show the lines of the hand that formed it.) The occupants move across it's surface.  so many feet, human and animal, leave their traces along their habitual paths. These declivities, worn into the blank surface by creatures’ migrations in search of sustenance or kinship, deepen. The edges become hollowed into dwellings. Habit, one of the strongest forces in the universe, guides all life along these gulleys. They deepen still. As the levels of what we will now call thoroughfares drop down towards the centre of the ball, the ground- level amenities of each succeeding generation move upwards, beyond contemporary reach. The posts for tying animals, the wayside shrines, drinking troughs- they all move upwards as the roads sink away from them. Signs and inscriptions, ceremonial decoration, all divorced from the urgency of use, they become part of the facades that provide a backdrop to this ceaseless movement- they become style.

the stuff posted below: i wasn't trying to illustrate a particular point with it. the anthropomorphism of architecture is blindingly obvious anyway, how could the shelters we build not evoke the body? it's really just one of my meditations on ruins, and piranesi of course. there are also picturesque frames of reference that even war photographers use.

the hiroshima building was a part of my mental furniture for years, as i imagine it was for anyone growing up during the cold war. really, what all the images here have in common, apart from the anthropomorphic, is that they are concerned with stripping away surfaces, exposing interiors. the fact that the interior is only another surface is besides the point. seeing deeply, or seeing into things becomes a trope for knowledge. in the case of ruins and mausoleums, the empty interior becomes something redolent of the sense of mortality, in a very conventionalised reading; in the anatomical drawings, this depth, the exposure of the interior, becomes the knowledge of how to combat mortality. after a certain point, medical illustrations lost their mannerist flourishes, and concentrated on what was deemed essential. the cadavers no longer had hair.