things crossed out

Through The Looking Glass.

2011-03-17T16:18:00.000Z

Working with visual motifs of mirroring for the video processing for Art In Motion. The video is to be projected on the studio mirrors that the dancers use. The relationship between the self and the self - reflected. The relationship between the screen and the mirror. Light as a medium.

The Horizon

2011-03-10T21:53:00.000Z

She came here to stay and work with Avianna, one of those who grew up like her in the echo-boom of the work done by Fazal Inayat Khan in his intentional community in a Surrey country house in the 70s. Their parents were all part of that community and though shattered diaspora-like in the 80s after the community was unable to continue as it had; in the attempt to create continuity after Fazal's death in 1990 some 10 or 20 of a second generation grew up meeting periodically. Attending workcamps together in the retreat centre that the Surrey house became from the ages of 8 - 18 the two girls often worked together as part of experimental groups (experimenting with what, you ask? too many things to describe here without losing the thread, but probably just the self, in the end - or was it the group? never could she distinguish clearly between the two...) . After the retreat centre was deemed un-viable, closed up and sold the connections between all these young people persisted.

To continue this work is why she came.

This story is part of the greater one, it's hard to tell and comes in pieces.

It's cold windy and rainy in JC today but she has been meaning to write about the roof of the apartment she's been staying in. It has views of Manhattan through downtown Jersey City from the Empire State all the way round past the Statue of Liberty, who even in the mist, and tiny is visible and visibly triumphant.

The first night she was here and most nights since she has stood and watched the lights, the columns of smoke, the planes taking off and landing. Macro gradually conceding to micro and the entire scale visible as her attention shifts.

The Statue of Liberty speaks to her of this city as a shrine. A pilgrimage site and a node for all kinds of relationship and connection shrunk onto an epic skyline, the lit-up landscape here is a shrine to the relational. Here even has she come, to plug-in to something, to seek allies, to nurture and feed existing connections and to allow new ones to germinate. She is reminded of the last place she journeyed to; Delphi in Greece, the belly button of the universe. Was that the 'Big Apple' of what was it, the 6th century BC? Neither journey was conscious pilgrimage for the sake of pilgrimage, both were motivated by smaller, more specific connections, opportunities arose and were taken and paths followed and then...

There she finds herself.

for more information about the life and work of Fazal Inayat Khan including the recently published book Heart of A Sufi please look at the work of Arch Ventures

'The Story Of The Donkey' from 'Old Thinking, New Thinking' by Fazal Inayat Khan. (1978)

2011-03-10T21:12:00.000Z

This text is out of print but I have typed it here for you: It might be described as a modern Sufi teaching story. I first heard it from my father as he had it from Fazal. Imagine it as a spoken text if you can.

Once upon a time there was a grave in Afghanistan, and that grave had become a shrine of pilgrimage - some wonderful saint was buried there. After the saint died, his servant, his chela, his disciple built a little grave, prayed there, made a beautiful little garden and soon enough; through the saint's fame and through the loyalty of his disciple, people started coming there to seek solace, warmth, understanding and quietude - and so, over forty or fifty years it became a place of pilgrimage.

Now - and there is great symbology in this - the disciple who took care of the shrine married and had children and at a certain time his eledest son became of age and quite wisely the father, the disciple said to the son: "Now is your time to go into the world". There comes a time for every father, for every relationship in a sense, for every leader to be able to say to ever follower: "Go". That does not break the relationship. There comes a time for every dependent relationship to be ripe enough so that the dominant factor in it can guide the disciple to the point of independene, otherwise the dependence is useless. So in that same way, the father was very wise and thought that the son was ripe and the son was very wise and didn't revolt, he didn't need to, he didn't run away. And the father gave his son a donkey and some food and a bit of money and sent him out into the world.

The son went out to meet the world and, as you can imagine, it was difficult - there were many robbers and the desert and not enough food. He met many difficult and dangerous things and realised that he wasn't yet so capable and didn't know so much and was not much respected being alone. But his father had told him to travel far away, so he went on and on. After a while his money ran out and then the last thing he had, his donkey, died.

He buried his donkey and cried and felt very lonely and, since he had no money and nowhere to go, he just stayed where he had buried his donkey. After a while some people came and saw him there and helped him.

Maybe ten or fifteen years later, an eternity later, stories started coming through to his old, wise father that somewhere else was a new shrine growing up. Now fewer people came to his shrine and more went to the new one. The father decided that he would like to know what this was all about and who lived there, so he went to visit the new place of pilgrimage and there, he met his son who was now much more mature.

The son told him of his travels and how terrible it had all been and that eventually the donkey had died and he had buried it and had just been sitting there crying his eyes out and people had come and he had called the donkey by its name and the people had thought it was a holy man who was buried there. So the people helped him to build a grave, and then a hut, and he had looked after the grave - well, he knew how to do that from his father. And people came back, and left again, and said what a wonderful meditation they had had there, and the son realised what a wonderful thing his father had taught him. He asked his father not to tell anyone because no one knew that it was only a donkey buried there.

The father looked at the son and after a while he said: "The same thing happened to me, son". There is a lot of symbology in that story.

Art In Motion - In their own words

2011-03-10T16:44:00.000Z

I keep meaning to post this here. It's the promotional video Art in Motion have made for their kickstarter campaign for which they have very nearly made their target. If anyone is feeling like donating, you might be the one to put them over the top!

The video was made by Rafael Cruz who I had the pleasure of meeting the other night. A local JC video artist who sounds like he's into some really interesting stuff, we geeked out over max msp and processing.

Standpoint

2011-03-08T15:23:00.000Z

Untitled from Hestia Peppe on Vimeo.

I made a video before coming to work on Art In Motion. Like the story I posted the other day it functions as some kind of reference point to articulate where I'm coming from and what I bring with me to the work. My video practice has hitherto been consistently recognisable as an attempt to situate myself, an interplay of objects placed in relation to eachother and the movement of my attention from one to another.

A recent chance encounter with the work of Kay Turner and her book Beautiful Necessity which surveys the tradition of domestic altar making and its aesthetic power for navigating change and continuity drew attention for me to these ideas in my own work. This video is a sketch in which I consider this consciously for the first time. For me it is interesting to play with juxtaposition as a way to map relations between objects which may in turn speak of relations between people, meanings and value.

As far as this relates to Art In Motion I am considering this as a strategy of mapping connections within a collaborative process that allows for intimacy and free association and may reveal parts of the process that would otherwise be hidden from the viewer. In the rehearsal on Sunday I began to work with objects belonging to the participants and with footage from group discussions, searching for layers of the work which may not be visible in the dance and which video might amplify.

JC Fridays

2011-03-07T14:57:00.002Z

On Friday she is taken out to JC Fridays. It takes her a while to work out that JC stands for Jersey City. JC Fridays is like London's First Thursdays, in that it is a once a month crawl of art openings fuelled by alcohol. Unlike First Thursdays everyone out for JC Fridays behaves as if they are at an actual party instead of a networking event. A lot of art gets made here, and music and it seems like stylistically this is all notably unselfconscious. Everyone knows eachother with the distinction that they act like friends as opposed to colleagues and this seems to breed a kind of specifically localised confidence. Chris Kraus' essay on Tiny Creatures from her new book discusses the art/music/community dynamic in LA and there is a sense of that here. Manhattan's gallery scene seems further away here than it does in London. Everywhere has live music tonight.

She visits two spaces, Art House (The exhibition is called Freeze and is a group show of Jersey City artists, she can't help contrasting it with the infamous London exhibition of the same name in the nineties, not much in common, Art House is a community space in the 'socially conscious' sense.) and 58 (solo show called Pulp by Ken Bastard, paintings in the tradition of pulp movie posters of which the preliminary drawings really shine. with a party in the cavernous back room where the DJ plays The Only Ones the minute she walks in so she has to text Tom and he replies the next day to ask if she was at the hippest party in the nineties-which keep coming up don't they? and it kind of felt like she was) and then what seems like a house party but is something to do with Railroad Studios up a ridiculous number of stairs and then a birthday party for a local hero at a studio space where she watches a band cover reggae from the vantage point of a swing hanging from the roof. There is a picture of two rhinoceros on the wall that she likes and another one in a kitsch gilt frame of robed figures in the desert firing guns of some kind at the sun. She hangs out on the roof discussing cultural difference and Skins until the wee small hours.

If she had a camera with a flash, there would be photos here. All these things seem to be documented on the official JC Fridays site which is run by Art House

IN THE FUTURE

2011-03-06T23:34:00.000Z

I think I will always blog in the third person.

Art In Motion

2011-03-04T21:15:00.000Z

I went to my first rehearsal for Art In Motion last night. They have been at it for a while already so I arrive in the full flow of what they have going on. Before this I have received fragments of documentation, some video, notes on discussions, themes, methods, names and faces are not yet connected and I was nervous going in. Choreography is a fascinating but foreign process to me, I have come from far away to do this work and I am struck with what might be suddenly at stake. Beginning with a risk. This is the lack of proximity at work, I'm transitioning into the locus of the work, becoming close, the contact implicit in working with others is a shock.

From the proposal I wrote toward my part in the project.

For three weeks Hestia Peppe will be present in the role of Artist In Residence with Insurgo Stage Project during development of their group improvised work Art In Motion. During the part of the development when she is not present she will continue to create work as part of the ongoing collaboration. This offers the opportunity to consider collaborative methodologies utilising both presence and telepresence and the role of the technologies of telepresence (video calling, email, social media, digital filesharing) in a creative process of this type.

The first piece they worked with yesterday is called 'Pressure', enough said it was spookily appropriate to my mental state. Seated quietly taking notes I began to gain context, to situate myself. Later, debriefing the rehearsal into the night I am seized with exhilaration as connections solidify and adrenalin kicks in. I'm excited now.

The group were incredibly welcoming, names firmly transform into specific faces and later Avianna's insistence that the performers, onstage are specifically themselves, not characters somehow completes my sense that I am in the right place. This thing is collectively autobiographical. Individual's stories colliding with eachother. This is what I wanted and needed. Avi and I worked on performances together as teenagers in what seems like another world but the old alliance is strong and there is richness in it.

There is so much more to tell! Since I got here I've been orientating myself and as always the rush of over stimulation needs to be ridden out. The place and the people are starting to make sense of themselves and I'm so glad I'm doing this.

street art in Jersey City, photo by yours truly.

prologue, a story.

2011-03-04T20:31:00.001Z

I was asked to write a story about myself in the third person as part of the rehearsal/writing/development for Art In Motion by Insurgo Stage Project the group I'm working with here in the states, about which much much more to come. This was written before I came over so perhaps is more about where I'm coming from, prior to immersion in their intensive process.

She wanted a cat. It wasn't too much to ask. She thought about it a lot, which meant she talked about it a lot. She really wanted one. Some people didn't seem so sure it was a good idea, "after all you spend half your nights with your boyfriend." True, it would have to be a grown cat, and her housemates would have to be ok with it. Her housemates were ok with it, even the one who is allergic to cats, even the one who claims he doesn't like cats. She has five housemates. They were all ok with it. She wondered if she could train the cat to go back and forth up the road to her boyfriend's house with her. A cat she had had years ago at home with her parents had been hit on the road and died and she had stayed home from school and cried for a week and the cat they got after that (after an appropriate mourning period had elapsed) had been with them fourteen years before he died of old age last winter. He used to meet her at the top of her parents lane where her Dad parked the car whenever she came home to visit them.

The people at the cat rescue place sounded like they thought it was a bad idea too. "We take prospective cat owners lifestyle into account when considering possible cats." "How many people live in your house?" They come round and inspect the home to see if it is suitable for cats.

She was scared of the home inspection, maybe it wasn't a good idea, maybe her lifestyle wasn't appropriate. What if she finally was given an opportunity? her art career might materialise. What if the cat was hurt or lost and her heart broke?

Weeks before she got up the guts to let the cat rescue volunteer come and inspect the house she wrote in her sketchbook: GET A CAT AND CALL IT RISK.

After the inspection she lost patience after two days and called them, "Can I have a cat, have you decided?". They said they had two that might suit her. Not the pretty kittens or the dainty mama cat, two ex-strays, tough gangster boy cats from the streets of Peckham. The first one they showed her had lost half his tail in an accident, the rescue vets had amputated it. It didn't bother him they told her, not Disco, they said, they smiled when they talked about him. She took him home. Risky Disco, only half a tail.

Risko went missing a month after she brought him home, in the snow just before Christmas. Every night for a week in the dark cold she walked the local streets calling. She told herself the cat didn't belong to her anyway. If he wanted to be a stray again it was up to him. She went out again, just to see.

After Christmas, the snow melted and that day Risko came back of his own accord.

post hiatus difficult post

2011-03-04T20:22:00.000Z

So last night i was looking at the horizon and decided; I'm just gonna do this like I do when i haven't seen a real beloved old friend for a long time and we meet and it all comes out haphazard to start but we get there and the stories gradually gain coherence they didn't have before.

I'm in New Jersey, just over the river from Manhattan in the house of a dear old friend, I got here three nights ago and it's time to start talking about what I'm doing. Bear with me as the fragments find their narrative.

Live Drawings

2010-11-27T16:52:00.000Z

8.11.10
During 'Future Plan' a conference at Southampton City gallery concerning curation and the National Collection.

10.11.10
While considering work for an exhibition in Dublin at Rua Red Gallery in April. Ideas around bonfires, beacons and telepresence. Listening to news of the student occupation of Tory HQ millbank (Daniel Trilling).

18.11.10
During Thursday Club at Goldsmiths curated by Gabriel Menotti on VJing.

About Go and Mathematics.

2010-03-23T05:59:00.000Z

I set myself the task of integrating my intuitive drawing practice with programming via an exploration of the ancient game of Go. The results of these processes have been rich and here I hope to summarise them. For me, programming is still painstaking and slow with limited visibilty of the way ahead, I am learning my way for the first time and progress is anything but intuitive. I feel my way, testing as I go and assessing each new situation as empirically as I can with digital subject matter. The preexisting structure of the game of Go has space for intuition built into it and so out of rigid structure it produces complexity, infinite outcomes. With this in mind I force myself to understand the practicalities of its simplicity for the sake of building this instance of it, so I can play with it and thereby learn.

As I struggle with programming booleans and tidying up loops I am also presented with theoretical problems. I am concerned that i am guilty of cultural piracy, utilising another culture's
artefacts in my own way, never having been and witnessed them in action, in context. I wonder why I am drawn to these things, to Go, to Origami, to the I Ching, why do I want to work with them? As Carl Jung disarmingly states in his Foreword to Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching (a mathematical technology at least as old as Go and originating in the same culture ) "Since I am not a Sinologue, a foreword to the Book Of Changes (the I Ching) from my hand must be a testimonial of my individual experience with this great and singular book". I must make the same claim for this work. I was drawn to Go as a formal construct and as such I have explored it in my own way. Cultural context is of enormous value in helping to understand it but for that in this instance I have relied heavily on the experience of experts d such as Richard Wilhelm and Oscar Korschelt to provide me with it. I hope this is something that can be remedied in the future with firsthand experience and research in China and Japan. It is a testament to the strength of these cultures that they have created lasting, essentially mathematical structures which can in some way transcend cultural difference and be appreciated as forms outside of language.

As Alain Badiou sets out to prove, mathematics has this brilliant ability to describe things before or outside of language or philosophy; as he puts it "Ontology is Mathematics". In his collected "Theoretical Writings" edited by Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano he describes 'being' as best described by itself and that it does so using mathematics not language. Describing his ontology he says, "philosophy must enter into logic via mathematics, not into mathematics via logic". It is this function of Go as a mathematical construct and the facility of programming to explore such constructs in which I am interested in this work. I am learning to program, I am learning to play Go and from this, with space left for the intuition I know well from my drawings come patterns, come signal outcomes which I can use to facilitate further development as a programmer-artist.

home

2010-03-20T02:07:00.000Z

GO FIND EDGES

2010-03-20T02:03:00.000Z

A Brief: Intuition as Content (digital play, digital drawing)

2010-02-02T11:59:00.003Z

To integrate the formal concerns of digital media into my existing practice of drawing I intend to continue to examine geometrical structures and pattern as inhabited by subjective and intuitive awareness. This exploration should reflect the specific potential of visual programming. That is, to allow participation, change and therefore development of playful, intuitive feedback responses within defined procedures. These systems will take as their starting point different 'game' structures which will lead to visual outputs or 'drawings' in the broad sense - visual records of a feedback relationship between consciousness and the world.

The Japanese game of Go is of particular interest as total digital simulation of it is as yet unfeasible in its complexity. Programming in relation to Go has been most successful in providing a framework for human players to enable, record and analyse game play and the patterns therein. I have previously made drawings based on Go game play in non-digital media when i have found the relationship between clearly defined geometric form and intuitive content or play of great relevance to my wider drawing practice.

All images by Hestia Peppe under Creative Commons.

fangirl art haiku for @amandapalmer on twitter

2010-01-29T22:11:00.001Z

'coming'

2010-01-29T22:02:00.001Z

This is my favourite Origami to make and was inspired by Hannah Wilke's chewing gum cunts. It doesn't get enough outings! This is pencil dawings over a scan of an Origami and is by yours truly sometime in 2005 ish I think. I always thought it would be funny to sell them as limited editions although giving them away for free is more my style, any takers?

being brave and hannah wilke

2010-01-29T21:52:00.000Z

I recently discovered with some Joy that this now exists.
Way back in the day the first and second and third times I read the incomparable 'I love Dick' by Chris Kraus of semiotexte it was nearly impossible to find any information about Hannah Wilke (who she valiantly champions) on the web so it is truly wonderful to see this website which is run by her sister on behalf of Hannah's estate.

I have been thinking about Hannah recently in relation to her performance work 'Through The Large Glass' in relation to my research on Roy Ascott, a theorist of telematics and the art of connectivity. Ascott's work at its best is a profound mediation on art as the agent of change and transformation and at its worst naively gauche guru-style posturing. He interests me on several levels, both where I agree and disagree with him. Hannah Wilke's take on his beloved Duchamp and 'The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelor's, Even' seemed the perfect illustration both of his victories in describing an art operating across media and dimensions and of what he neglects most criminally, the body, mortality, specificity.

At the same time some kind of synchronicity or something gives me a real live happening now illustration of these issues in the Strange Tale Of Amanda Fucking Palmer and The Golden Globes which could also be entitled something along the lines of 'The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelor's, Even' she is stripping, getting married, transforming, performing and connecting left right and centre and in the meantime causing deliciously actual debate (commenting on this blog is of a very thoughtful nature, I am taking myself back to web-fandom debating in the form of patiencescalpel - its been a while since I got in fights with people I don't know on the web...I'm rusty) around feminism, art making, the music industry. Apparently the technical term in the web/gossip commentary axis of wierd is Fame Whoring. Wonderful I say.

We are all Fame Whore's now, baby.

I'm trying to do this whole webpresence thing properly all collaborations, altercations and interventions from others eagerly awaited.

(image still from 'Through The Large Glass' at www.hannahwilke.com copyright the artists estate)

recent origamis

2010-01-12T23:30:00.002Z

all images h peppe

Prototemari

2010-01-11T23:35:00.002Z

towards reinventing the globe....physical computing assignment at Goldsmiths

an emerald city

2009-12-28T02:40:00.000Z

Murshid

2009-12-25T23:15:00.005Z

Fazal Inayat Khan, Murshid Fazal was my parent's Sufi Teacher. When I was born I was taken home by my parents to The Khankah which they were caretaking following the break up of the community he formed there. It was also his house. I knew him from then on til we moved away when I was six years old to spend two years in The South Pacific. In 1990 when i was seven we heard of his illness, my mother was preparing to fly home to help him - she was his doctor for years- when they called to say he had passed. That was 20 years ago. and he was the first person I knew who had died. We stayed away, unable to do anything and missing the events immediately following his death and his memorial. To this day I feel more like I left him behind than like he left us, he was just no longer here when we returned, absurd as it seemed.

What can I remember of Fazal?

A belt he gave me, as a baby or at least before I can remember. I was told he gave it to me because I was the first person he saw after deciding to give it away. I have it still, so that is not perhaps a memory, just an object. It is snakeskin and narrow, it can't have been his to wear, it's a small size; it fits me now and I often wear it.

He took us all, kids, I must have been about four, to London without our parents. I remember it clearly as a special occasion, a great sense of importance. An adventure. We went to the cinema! Fieval Goes West, An American Tale, to my mind then I was certain that Fazal was every bit as excited as I. Next the Funfair, all of us went on The Gravity Wheel together even my little sister Brigit, held tight and safe in his arms, of course! No one was 'too young'. The Gravity Wheel is a big deal, it changes which way you think is up. I see in retrospect all kinds of meanings but at the time there was no question of why one did such things, you did them because they were tremendous and it was important to do them. An adventure.

Perhaps he was the first person I perceived as any kind of Authority in the world and it seemed to be strong, his authority, and sure, without ever to me being frightening; but he was also one of my very earliest friends. I knew that I knew him and that we trusted eachother.

I was never conscious as a young child of being treated as such or talked down to at The Khankah by anyone, least of all Murshid Fazal. When I was very young, before he died, i never considered it. I considered it all my business, whatever it was they all did, as much as it was theirs.

His voice in lectures and meetings was a familiar sound. I would fall asleep in Mama's lap while he would speak about all the things he would speak about. It was once so familiar to me that it seems ridiculous that I don't hear it in my mind, perhaps it was too familiar, never thinking it would stop I only remember that i knew it.

I remember that i always felt i understood what he said, whether listening in to meetings before sleep or when he spoke, as he often did directly to me. I don't remember what he said but that it was often as if I had known it before he told me. I always thought that this was funny; to feel like you'd known something for ages, only you'd just found out. I supposed since he could make everyone feel like that that that was because he was Murshid.

They have all told me so many stories of him since then and now he becomes a mystery, but what i most remember is that when I knew him, he seemed quite the opposite.

a chickpea

2009-12-24T18:08:00.002Z

A Cosmology of Cosmologies for 2009 (all pictures by Hestia Peppe except diagram of reflecting telescope from Wikipedia)

2009-12-23T23:19:00.004Z

Robert Kusmirowski at the Barbican

2009-12-17T19:38:00.002Z

Forgive the creekiness, this is my first writing assignment for MFA Computational Arts. I'm not entirely sure how any of this works right now...

Robert Kusmirowski
'Bunker'
The Barbican Curve Space.
23.11.09
Hestia Peppe

Animism. Things and collecting them. Nostalgia of matter. Collective memory. Relationship to the narratives of preceding generations.

Architecture of /from dreams.

My first thoughts on entering the installation are that these objects have real histories of their own which are overwritten by greater narratives of History. Both are 'true' but perhaps do not pertain equally to the physical objects and the conceptual content of the work. There is this uncomfortable relationship between a plurality of histories competing for my attention.

Small instances of glitch occur throughout the work; seemingly accidental but almost certainly intentionally allowed to remain if not deliberately concocted. One layer of constructed artistic reality catches on the constructed institutional reality; The Barbican's fire safety equipment remains visible throughout and allows the artist to draw our attention to his methodology of deliberate illusion. Our immersion in it is never quite complete.

Self conscious handprint. A trace of 'The Artist'.

Curtain at the back of the installation behind which the mechanics of the illusion are exposed, the artist's workspace. Like the reveal in The Wizard of Oz. Backstage. Pictures of Emma Watson cut out of a magazine and stuck on the wall.

A disorientating sense of absurdity will not allow the viewer to succumb to the passive manipulability encouraged in museum installations. Wires are not connected, pipes don't go anywhere. Theatre. Facade. The space is not associated with use but with spectacle. Walking experimentally up the rail tracks the sense of transgression is strong, there are things behind things but only so far, then you hit the institution and its familiar boundaries and interdits.

The promenade form of the installation lends itself immediately to narrative but ironically also reinforces an impression of a Disney Land style attraction that permeates the experience. This is noticeable in the first instance at the point of departure from the Barbican's foyer where brighter lighting gives the viewer their first view of the installation's aesthetic and under which it appears decidedly more artificial than it does in the interior of the installation. Juxtaposition with the design aesthetic of the Barbican's interior decor enhances this incongruity and certainly lends a layer of irony to the viewer's perception of the work from the outset. The sense of entering an illusory space where our usual narrative context is suspended is one that in a society dominated by Capitalist Spectacle is so familiar that we cannot help but retain these associations even in contexts where apparent seriousness of content should preclude thoughts of theme parks and funfairs.

It seems to me to be a central issue in this work that generational disparities in our relationships to media, matter and things conflict with the smooth transmission of cultural memory. Perhaps dreams and fictions are the only places where this ambiguity can be dealt with effectively and specifically. The grand fictional narrative of the post apocalypse and the connection it creates between the dual imaginary realities of past and future is a fine site on which to found work of this kind. It is said that children can inherit the dreams and nightmares of their parents. Objects from the past carry history into the future.

Comparisons with Gregor Schneider/ Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster/Mike Nelson/Thomas Hirschorn/John Bock. Also Anselm Kiefer.

The grey painted surfaces. The Hum. The Rubble.

a threshold-crossing playlist special

2009-12-17T17:42:00.003Z

for these darkest of days and dedicated to Hanny Ahern and other timely revolutions.

There's no way i can be bothered to work out how to post a playlist to the web Right Now but herewith is the tracklisting for you to do wish as you will because i love you all so very. Includes done to death and loved to pieces favourites and some topical stuff too.

Tori Amos - Emmanuel
Hefner - The Hymn for The Cigarettes
Afrirampo - Oni Pika Heart
Bjork - All Neon Like
Gang Gang Dance - Princes (feat. Tinchy Stryder)
Amanda Fucking Palmer - Runs in The Family
Amy Winehouse - Addicted
CocoRosie - Rainbowarriors
Electrelane - On Parade
Kristen Hersh - Your Ghost (feat. Michael Stipe)
Kimya Dawson - Chemistry
Fleetwoord Mac - Gypsy
The Raincoats - Void
Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song
The Dresden Dolls - Necessary Evil
Scout Niblett - Kidnapped by Neptune
Hefner - May God Protect Your Home
Gang Gang Dance - Glory in itself/Egyptian
Nina Simone - 22nd Century (from tom moore's recommendation)
Amanda Fucking Palmer - Another Year

Did I fall asleep?

2009-12-17T16:17:00.004Z

2009 the year of TWITTER, MIMI GETTING WHAT SHE DESERVES(THE BEST), TAVI, FINALLY BECOMING COMPUTATIONAL, DOLLHOUSE, AMANDA FUCKING PALMER, NOT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD FESTIVALS AND NOT HAVING ENOUGH TIME TO GO TO PARTIES. DID I MENTION DOLLHOUSE? IS IT ME OR DO I ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING? BEING AN AUNT (AND A GOVERNESS) BEING FULLY AWARE OF THE WONDER OF TIME SPACE AND GEOMETRY AND THE INTERNET. MICHAEL JACKSON DIES. FLEETWOOD MAC AT ALL TIMES IN ALL PLACES. FRENCH RETREATS. SHARING BOOKS. PARTYING IN ESPONDEILHAN, DARREN HAYMAN GIVES THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT AT EOTR FESTIVAL. GIVE THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT. GIRLS WHO FIGHT. MONSTER EMPORIUM PRESS. BLANCH AND SHOCK. EAT YOUR HEART OUT. NINA POWER(INFINITE THOUGHT). LIGHT A CANDLE AND LISTEN TO NINA SIMONE'S 22ND CENTURY. PLAYING IN MAYFAIR. GOING LEGIT. DOING A MASTERS YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD. MISS HANNY AHERNE( JUST IN TIME). SENDING THEM OFF TO COPENHAGEN. NOT GIVING UP YET. CAROLINE HERSCHEL KEEPING THE HOMEFIRES BURNING.

MERRY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN THE DARK

here i go

2006-07-14T15:23:00.000+01:00

somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly

mike emily tom i am the jealousest hestia...take me me meeee with you

2005-11-14T18:32:00.000Z

and thanks to the wonderful ms hedditch
also

this

this and

this

boy oh boy do i love the south london gallery. bring on the weekend baby. i'm so there. those who haven't yet noticed the wonderland that is south london, get on with it!i might be maybe applying for my first real not a monkey job. fingers toes and eyes all firmly crossed.

my to do list is hella crazy right now. it includes writing an erotic short story (it might have to be very short because i'm a bit scared...). diagramming an origami cunt. two different types of proposals. booking driving lessons (will it ever be over?)applying for several jobs. creating myself a convincing portfolio using a leather suitcase and lots of cardboard folders. pursuading my computer to burn videos which i will have showreeled to dvd. setting up a stall in spitalfields. designing a witty xmas card involving homeopathy for my mother's business. finding E L wire and buying it. writing two letters. visiting ju l; i a and b e c k y if an yone can hel p me i n a n y way at a l l wi th an y of th es e things i wi ll l o v e you forever/.and .z.ever. amen

and actually yet again i can't quite belive it but the festivals just like me and i AM going to the ball afterall a ha ha ha haaa haaa.yes.

how can things keep feeling like coming home every time i think they never can again?

2005-11-13T23:13:00.000Z

i don't think a website has ever made me cry with happiness before. i want to have this woman's babies. i have turned into a rabid take-that-fan-esque ecstatic on exposure to her html. this is the fucking best shit ever ever. ever ever ever. ever.

aaaaagh.

i think she might have fixed me. just for ten minutes maybe. yes. fucking yes. girls win.

go go go go go GO o O O

2005-09-08T10:23:00.000+01:00

ok hestia, wake the fuck up, 00000000000000you're nearly dead, this is bad...wake up damnit. wake up. its september, they're drilling holes in walls near 000your 00000head why are you still sleeping?

to do:

get the scooter ride the scooter get job (the temp agency will want you to look normal hestia so start thinking cos your gonna need a plan)get the money get place on MA have very good exhibition go to sister's WEDDING 0000000000travel make sure THEY don't notice that this is all much too difficult for hestia's and that you should have started in the beginners section and not tried to be clever and skip straight to advanced way back in year six.

to echo a dear friend in a recent sms000000000000

000000000000000where is everybody?????? and especially where is amy?00000 amy help, reality bites was real, it was real and it was a sign and we didn't take it we just thought it was a really cheesy film and its actually happening my life is dissolving into torrid piles of used up american cliche's from the last decade and i don't like it. i'm trying to look on the bright sides but there's a kamakazi in my head somewhere trying to fuck shit up. somewhere we'll plant daffodils and they'll come up in the spring.0000000000000

2005-09-08T10:19:00.000+01:00

* . ; +}=="^

jump off edges.

2005-05-31T01:34:00.000+01:00

m a k e a w i s h q u i c k g e t it a l i g h t b u r n b u r n b u r n

there is more now please go see thank you so everyone always always always this isn't stopping its just breathing love love love begin again tomorrow. ,.x x' x _ - x xx..;"x%^x^= x x+ xxx x

the neighbours think.

2005-05-28T18:01:00.000+01:00

i told you coldharbour lane was avant garde.

bet our house is better...

jasmine toddy

2005-05-22T22:29:00.000+01:00

ladies and gentlemen may this small hesita peep herewith present to you her humble attempt at curing the pernicious and irritating common cold for your home remedying pleasure take one chinese jasmine tea bag preferably purchased at your local oriental grocery establishment (of which said peep most heartily recommends messrs wing tai of camberwell) replete with golden yellow packaging in the quaintest of styles and individually wrapped in paper, spoons of a superior brand of honey to your own taste (this step must not be avoided and, the peep must stress, is not optional, honey here provides an essential medicinal purpose and is not to be mistaken for a mere sweetener) and steep in freshly boiled water for several minutes having added a healthy slug of the best damned scotch you can lay your hands on.

i suspect dorothy of starting all this

2005-05-20T17:48:00.000+01:00

so you see this map demands more. specifically, now, a video of the bonfire at four winds i forgot i made, and my orange dress, which somehow has escaped me wearing it in my videos, unless you count ed wearing it dressed up as me. but emily wore it and i wore it in amy's film, which she's calling sadie and emily was sadie and i was alice and i wore the dress and we smoked a cigarette and then she wore the dress and wound up that bright bright orange ribbon i bought to be mine and then today i watched the bonfire i'd forgotten about and thought about making a video finally where i wore my orange dress (the one that means this is really happening) and i thought between the orange sparks of the dots they'll make in the map and the joinings there'll be from the places where there are already small embers trying to burn and i'll say burn burn burn and there'll be this flaring orange fire we built and then there'll be my dress and it will really be happening and i remembered the post before where i wrote that i wore my orange dress, the one that means this is really happening and that a fire was burning in the grate and i thought the house would turn in against him in anger and burn him up and so i wrote with the soft scented pencils she sadie emily gave me for my birthday, used the orange pencil for the first time, that i wore my orange dress, t h e one that means this i s r e a l l y h a p p e n i n g .

2005-05-19T21:14:00.000+01:00

cold harbour

2005-05-19T16:15:00.000+01:00

i am looking up houses to let in hastings, and short courses i could do if i lived there, ones about community development and pattern cutting. i could run away now, fuck all this and go be a provincial liberal kook with no qualifications... i could look at the sea every day. i could. i could.

i have only eaten sweets today but some of them were cantonese macaroons pink lychee and raspberry, yellow lemon and cashew, green lime and green tea and white (like a cloud sublimating [idiot]in your mouth) pistachio and coconut they came in a box that looked like it should have jewellery in it, i love it when sharif visits, my toes could taste those babies.

i have at least managed to wean myself off soul-dulling, tooth itchingly m.o.r glastonbury message boards. they are an absolute insult to the festival and i am ashamed of myself.

my hair won't seem to be red.

it is raining. from my window you can smell wet car fumes which seems somehow wholesome and comforting. london is getting into parts of my brain i never told it it could.

i am absolutely, utterly freaking out.

in a seminar last week tina reminded me about that dot matrix paper that my dad (and possibly all dads) used to bring home in the eighties for small me to draw on. and it had bits of codey dads job wierdness on one side and i used to just draw over the top of it and it made me so happy when she said it cos i'd forgotten all about it but that is e x a c t l y what i mean by this work. ..

. ..somehow. among other things...

what he could do, he did

2005-05-09T01:52:00.000+01:00

read this. love this. so.

the best girl in texas

2005-04-29T22:10:00.000+01:00

i am still bleeding from watching 'bonnie and clyde' the other day. i want to run away with them. i loved it.

♣

the dolce utopia

2005-04-28T19:18:00.000+01:00

" ...art was intended to prepare and announce a future wold: today it is modelling possible universes.
the ambition ofartists who include their work in the slipstream of historical modernity is to repeat neither its forms, nor its claims, and even less to assign to art the same functions as it. their task is akin to the one Jean Francois Lyotard allocated to postmodern architecture which is, "condemned to create a series of minor modifications in a space whose modernity it inherits, and abandon an overall reconstruction of the space inhabited by humankind"~~. what is more, Lyotard seems to half-bemoan" this state of affairs: he defines it negatively, by using the term 'condemned'. and~~ what, on the other hand, if this 'condemnation' represented the historical chance whereby most of the art worlds known to us managed to spread their wings..? this ~~'chance' can be summed up in just a few words:~~ learning to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying to construct it based on a preconcieved idea of historical evolution. otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, ~~whatever the scale chosen by the artist~~."

'relational aesthetics' - nicolas bourriaud

emma has lent me a very exciting book

love me

2005-04-22T11:57:00.000+01:00

...tender

it wants attention. from you.

(thank you) ♥ morelinkspleasejointhedotswithmeiwantbridgesforspidersandtheirlightlightworkingses

yes

2005-04-22T09:27:00.000+01:00

s l o w l y d i s i n t e g r a t i n g a s i t b e c o m e s p a r t o f t h e l a n d s c a p e. . . ....

for dorothy

2005-04-21T20:53:00.000+01:00

ok hestia you're gonna write til you stop pretending this isn't happening. til what comes out of your brain vaguely resembles whats happening inside it and begins to take on a life of its own.

here is what's happening.

I am eating oat cakes and shropshire blue with too much butter (everything has too much butter on it recently.) listening to regina spektor's 'us' for the third time in a row its the song for this attempt to escape the trough thats lasted for the last two months . it's contagious it's contagious it's contagio u u u uhU S. it makes me think about us as in all these people staring at blank walls and computer cursors, the one's i found for myself, the ones she told me about in my tutorial that can see invisible things there isn't any way of talking about but try anyway. who try. us as in community. as in people that take responsibility for themselves instead of contracting their lives out to some big corporate institution that will live it for them. groups of people thinking independently. like amy said, like a multiplicity instead of many people alone. like amy's film. i've got really bad at dot joinging recently, all the multiplicities in my work are unravelling into lonely little pieces. thoughts lost in the time passing wind blowing. i need to phone my mum. i need to email my sister. i owe becky a letter from the one she wrote me in february. i owe live journal posts, i owe myself the clothes i've been wearing since i got ill, kisses not given, plans not made, notes not organised, documentation to present, more phone calls, more emails. i did manage to hoover my floor.

i need to take up a lot more space. i got a table in the studio on monday and already somebody asked me if they could use a bit of the wall over it i nearly said ok but realised what was happening just in time to resist. i need to inhabit the physical as much as the...what is the opposite of physical when you believe thoughts to be real, material things? is that my problem? the virtual has always been actual to me but the point is to actualise it for other people so its actually there for them instead of expecting them to know the code my bit of timespaceconsciousness is written in. fuck that sounded pretentious. fuck. good word. very tangible. actually there. somewhere.

becky said to find a key, like a map of it. wait a minute didn't i already try and do that? why is it that in a fog you go round and round in circles. one goes round and round in circles. alone. not realising one is surrounded by many other ones. like amy said. maybe a key is different, a system for understanding, not a representative image (oh, cleverness). i think this spiderworking i've been doing has got keys in it. lots. i just gotta pick one. (again a strange feeling of deja vu. fuck.)

i liked acting in amy's film. lines were very blurry. everything was very actual. but tricksy and good difficult to explain. her and mike are my heroes.

i like dan's t-shirt.

"everything i touch turns to gold", she says, "then to silver, then to tears."

(someone somewhere should be called 'verde'.)

on small burning embers

2005-03-10T01:46:00.000Z

"Lined hearths are easily identified by the presence of fire-cracked rock, often created when the heat from the fires inside the hearths chemically altered and cracked the stone. Often present are fragmented fish and animal bones, carbonized shell, charcoal, ash, and other waste products, all imbedded in a matrix of soil that has been deposited atop the hearth. Unlined hearths, which are less easily identified, may also include these materials. Because of the organic nature of most of these items, they can be used to pinpoint the date the hearth was last used via the process of radiocarbon dating. Although carbon dates can be negatively affected if the prehistoric users of the hearth burned old wood or coal, the process is typically quite reliable."

(burn burn burn...)

its ok its still there i'm pretty sure don't worry

2005-03-08T01:33:00.000Z

black black black black eyeliner girls always forever.

it was soft. and. warm and. hazy from fairy lights and street lights. i put down three mismatched sofa pillows without waking the others up, curled up under my duvet, closed my sore eyes and went to sleep.

my house would sound like something made up if i tried to write it which i guess we did but before writing it down not during which is definitely the best way.

(kiss kiss bliss blissesplease please please((([ i feel like flies are flying round my eyes and the walls keep shrinking at me]))

tenses

2005-03-04T15:27:00.000Z

ai ai agh ah ahhh a sudden loneliness, hunger and a longing to speak like i used to we say who are you like you are plural i remember work is to be love made visible something i read a very ever such a long time ago much further down than this where i don't go very often any more everywhere people are making long distance phonecalls back to their sixteen-year-old-ness the gap seems so wide between this and everything else i want to go back to the countryside to go back to find the beginnings of this grieving to places you have to drive to and footbridges over dual carriageways and holding a torch so the bus can see you and sleeping all in one room because we burnt til we fell asleep because we hadn't done this before these were the first times.

we love your glo-in-the-dark oak trees and bloody circuitry

2005-02-16T21:51:00.000Z

go go go GO: : : : : : : : : : ' *

* + +
* * > *. . ,

: : : : my sister is in india
: : : : : : : these ladies know
: : : can'tcan't wait to climb in these coderidden branches

*
^

(i heart 0's and 1's)

lift to...

2005-02-10T19:20:00.000Z

go see, gently

i wore my orange dress, the one that means this is really happening

2005-02-10T01:30:00.000Z

and i had my typewriter and my video camera and my pencil case and i was ready for battle with important things to say and my ground to stand and my self to respect.

i knew what we were playing at. i knew what i was being played as.

and now i am sick

of the "at your age"s and the "what you have to understand here is...".

i am so sick. and so tired of this game we lost so fucking long ago. and i know what i am being played as.

there was a fire burning in the grate while we were talking and i thought the house would turn in against him in anger and burn him up and that he was just some horrible part of the nightmare voices that told me i hadn't done my homework, that tell me to grow up and be sensible; the voices that tell me that despite the orange dress and the tears in my eyes and the hard won honesty and bravery that got me through that door that i am invisible, that when i open my mouth there isn't a sound and that reality won't wake me, any minute, in a world where nothing is that horrible; because as he made clear he is it.

he is real and solid and concrete and powerful and it's me thats the invisible impossible dream.

T H R O U G H T H E L O O K I N G G L A S S : : : : :

alice is sick, maybe dying.
"alice! most precious alice. we have kept her this long and we shall not lose her yet."

+zadie smiths introduction to the new edition+

stars on walls and in glasses

2005-02-10T01:08:00.000Z

it was my birthday and everything was better and better and better and better right up to the moment i stumbled to bed. and so much was so very and my friends are the most and beyond anything any tiny struggling bedraggled aspiring art girl could dream of. such decadent wonderfulnesses and deep and complicated kindnesses, i'm as lucky as the luckiest waving golden cat, the one that survived all our excesses much as i mourned his wounding and was scared he'd never wave again, as lucky as the snow drops

that
made it all

the way from leamington unwilted

T H A N K Y O U

coming back around

2005-02-01T13:09:00.000Z

waking up through the sound of stonesaws everyday makes it still pretty cold hard but ever such small tendrils beginning to creep out, not like its really anywhere near spring yet but like, you know, just a couple of snowdrops.

by the time its my birthday there are always one or two snow drops.

i filled up the book I've had for six months and the end was exactly the same as the beginning but this time I can feel it kicking, see it gaining flesh and blood and teeth for fighting. it pinched me really fucking hard for every apology i made for it.

there is weight to all of this as well as that tricksy lightness. these lists are drawings not maybes. this work has a history and a structure in me and i know them well enough to scream for them now and if i don't no one will so what.what.what. am i waiting for?

'tic', go to sleep, 'toc', get up, 'tic'...

2005-01-25T22:45:00.000Z

'...to have to give up all hope of ever being a famous writer! the sorrow i felt over this, as i daydreamed alone, a little apart from the others, made me suffer so much that in order not to feel it any more, my mind of its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the face of pain, would stop thinking altogether about poems, novels, a poetic future on which my lack of talent forbade me to depend. then, quite apart from all these literary preoccupations and not connected to them in any way, suddenly a roof, a glimmer of sun on stone, the smell of the road would stop me because of a particular pleasure they gave me, and also because they seemed to be concealing, beyond what i could see, something which they were inviting me to come and take and which despite my best efforts i could not manage to discover.'

remembrance of things past

maybe its all coming soon.

ignorable as

2005-01-23T14:02:00.000Z

i feel like matilda with the burning behind the eyes. staring at pencils trying to make them move.

move D A M M I T . . .. ... . .. ........ .

this is the start, again. lets catch it by surprise when its not looking, begin without meaning to, by accident.

oh for FUCKS sake

picking up and picking up and picking up

2004-12-30T01:13:00.000Z

...all these pieces

too many people are dead this week.

...some footsteps to follow in.

the only thing left in box was hope

2004-12-10T01:17:00.000Z

i tried to do magic and failed.

(walked too far and can't get home)

don't go back to sleep

2004-12-06T01:28:00.000Z

and the word ruin into my right. because i owe these things to drawings made months ago. stories read years ago. to conversations everyday with these others who i won't let give up.

a plan to get wings (more hermes than icarus) which might be just a beginning, just a way of getting this girl somewhere.somewhere. somewhere where you cans see better and make more. a promise to myself. that my words are audible and that i bleed under a knife.

i wrote a message: 'i just tattooed my left heel...'

reply: '!!!how come? with what? revolutions, fire- the patient work for our impatiencefor freedom. x' something to do with foucault, you said

this is the beginning.

someone a while away wrote to me today:

Are you coming





If so bring the masses





Do a performance



GO ON





ya will

Bring the masses and the more dressed up the better, maybe that old ball gown

Love

and the band played.....

H A N G O N T O E A C H O T H E R

blood and ink

2004-12-05T02:18:00.000Z

(plan to get wings)

i just tattooed the word hope into my left heel

on wednesday it all fell away. i fell. away from it all because she finally didn't tell me it was all ok and the pieces broke apart and my eyes ate up my heart with their thirst and their years and years and for a while there was nothing. at. all as i tried to go back to sleep. don't you fucking dare go back to sleep.

mouth lit up

2004-11-28T02:02:00.000Z

iris murdoch is burnt into my head and is it possible she looks like my mother who gave me her books to read burnt burnt burnt so its grafted into me and hurts. it joins up everywhere in alice in wonderland and the colour green and getting called joan of arc and talking talking talking til you think its never going to be something you can stop.

++ ++wanting to follow in gudrun's coloured stockings in women in love. stealing a little bit of power from under dh lawrence's nose. ha. i bought eleven pairs of stockings and tights today for pennys, all kinds and colours, christian dior for fifty p rescued from flooded shop basements is my kind of + real world where if you treat liberty's like a museum its the best place ever.

clothes are important. +

(i'm that girl who's put up pictures in her studio of knickers and tattooed freaks and stuff so none of this is important)

sleepyheaded wishings to go (home)

2004-11-23T01:53:00.000Z

wishing. to make things. better.wishing to hide.wishing to be able. to get soft like a cat again.because i miss you.all.wishing.to run very fast.wishing for familiar old faces.to just go home and sleep and tell them my adventures.

(towards a far better post which may one day be entitled B L E S S O U R H O U S E A N D I T S H E A R T S O S A V A G E)

red skirt, red hockey socks, red shoes, red jumper with holes

2004-11-15T22:56:00.000Z

I O U:

joanna newsom is a fightingfuckingsinging in torrents of cleverness clutching the harp like a mast and resting her head eyes closed against it for safety in storms of it all. fireworks night for bright sparklings and explosions over and over and over the whole city so for once you can't forget how big it is how small you are underneath this sky. sleep in front of a fire hissing. letter over breakfast full of goblins and books about magic realism real magic post colonial literature and the who, are, we, who am i writing too?(of course i want to hear about your marrow babies and roller skates and drying lilies). warm in bed bed bed all day, was it days? ani difranco and a sadness and another ,jolting, bit, more grown up at least there are those two remembering words and chords crying along with me. words. more words, getting faster,creeping up in me like days without me noticing. walking. new shoes. no phone. no numbers no old messages never again what fucking time is it? black shoes , black and cream dotted skirt, black sweater, black coat with red buttons, hair tied back and lipstick interview. ladies wear blazers and their hair loose. sore feet stumble home home. talk. eat. talk. sleep. letter about orchids and wasps and what you said gertrude stein said and how nice it is to recognise you. train. sleep. tutorial. sleep. virginia woolf would have loved to read that letter. train. kiss. talk. fight. sleep. cry. shower.kiss.orange jelly fish. kiss kiss laugh . eat eat eat. laugh. ride the bus. held tight. it came from outer space with 3d glasses and music from someone elses planet. talk talk talk. the oldest and best and sleeping at the beach. scrabble. walk. sleeping. wake. cry. if fists against cold walls won't fix it we'll fix it. cry. holding tight. drink tea. walk. eat. kiss. walk. kiss.and the and and and open your eyes. abre los oros is not as good as yellow wallpaper or through a glass darkly and. and. and. warm.and the oh oh oh oh. just one more kiss, the red wine i'm so glad sleep. and wake and sleep and wake and eat porridge you made with sultanas in it and honey for me and jam for you. train. sleep. bus. walk into the getting dark early cold. sleep in front of fires hissing.

(it gets so hard to keep up)

spiders and disappearing into yellow wallpaper

2004-11-03T14:02:00.000Z

things

need to catch up with themselves. throw ingmar bergman (through a glass darkly) against arbitrary sleep against the naggingly unwritten aginst really curly hair against belted hippy dress (mama's), jeans tucked into big socks and converse and a pink cardigan and a really long blue-ish scarf and two tiny scary houses with doors i had to be braver than myself to open and couldn't shut behind me and the oh oh oh can't wait at all to get home and be held. throw it all (like a girl)against the naggingly in circles...against the making it ok and the dressing up up up up to the top of all the stairs and falling down the longest night for a long long time through rooms and streets and more rooms, lost myself and the converse, had them both found for me. throw all of it against this week and its fucking wednesday already and avi voted for the first time ever yesterday and i really miss her and what i should really be doing is throwing cy twombly at deleuze and guattari and catching six thousand five hundred of the sparks given off in microsoft word before completing an extensive bibliography.

(i was scared of the really big sparklers how stupid. this is all so disappointing)

i had honey in my tea for the first time last night. no more sugar for hestia i want the real wierd sticky dirty sweet. always.

the back of alice's petals are wierdly bleached to pink with some bruises i don't know why and i've not been very well.

...

2004-10-26T20:36:00.000+01:00

remembered

(what if we can't spare you?)
x

x

how to catch fire; or if only i could ('you're so good to me honey...

2004-10-25T18:06:00.000+01:00

...at night at night
at night' )

i tried to tell you that alice was going to have flowers but in my head all i could say was that she was about to catch fire.

they've started letting off fireworks. and the leaves were the same colour as i want to be (the slow burn and the sudden blaze )
'' ' ''' '
' ' ''' '

' '
she was difficult and weird and brave and funny and brilliant and on stage and on fire by herself like girls still aren't supposed to be

makeafuckingwishquick lets get it alight ('i can't wait for the morning i gotta go NOW'))))))))

begin or die (and tomorrow and tomorrow...)

2004-10-20T17:17:00.000+01:00

all this not starting has got to .stop.

'(when your head's exploding with ideas you have to find a reason. therefore scholarship and research are forms of schizophrenia. if reality's unbearable and you don't want to give up you have to understand the patterns...' ck

its my dissertation vs. chris kraus (i love dick)

+++++ + + this

.............. scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of her innermost self. at last she espied a shining straw with cherries so red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, "Bite me!" that was the hat she bought. the magic of the cherries on her hat brought her back to the green fields and orchards of her native russia. yes a green dress was what she craved. and she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie .

. . .. ..from anya yezierska: hungry hearts and other stories . .

through the yellow haze of a dying monitor

2004-07-21T13:39:00.000+01:00

(things re-written + + + +)

d   r   a   w         i                       ng.          dot......................................joining.          we make marks on it all like memory which we don't understand but with which we are so very intimate. the more marks the closer we get to. knowing. what marks are made on us. who or what names us. calls us. points to us, saying we want you to see this thing. and then to name it in return

get the feedback looping-mutating (thinking)- looping right and we can be. carried by lines drawn in pencil away away away away ask ask ask for what you really want.                 +

H AY LE Y N E WMA N   kissed a stranger against a gallery wall, her right hand leaning on the wall writing a description of the event...

my mother says that studying drawing sounds like something out of alice in wonderland. which suits me fine.

lets go

again

2004-07-20T15:43:00.000+01:00

so this is again. just quiet little fumblings it is to start with while no one's watching. soon it'll be time for the whoarewes and the whatarewedoingheres. why, how far and howmuch, who and who-for and in-what-shape? forms and their shiftings and rules made and broken and rebuilt out of their own rubble. then the screams and giddy yells and promises and asking for what we really want. ( since each of us was several there was already quite a crowd ) all in good, good time. for now lets play with these new toymaking machines. see what we find.

heroine

paradigm

xx (it's all your fault )

andthefuckingrest... is on it's way. x

x x

begin again

2004-07-20T02:13:00.000+01:00

on saturday i lost my pencil case and my notebook. somewhere between oxford circus tube and berwick street. green. my old zip up one. it had a lot of loose gold glitter in it that had been kind of annoying me for a while. also a lot of my favourite pens (stabilo fine liners, worn out felt tips and a big black permanent marker) and coloured pencils. it had a sticker with george bush's face crossed out that mimi made and i bought it in woolworth's when i was at sixth form college four years ago. i made the notebook myself out of scrap paper left over from pictures because i like the ones tom makes so much. it had a polaroid of me stuck face down on it and an envelope on the back. i felt sort of pretentious carrying it around but i also really fucking liked it. i'd written good stuff in it since i made it which was on the 13th of june. i didn't write enough. i never do. but it was supposed to be a beginning. like this is.

: : : : : : : first page was: : : : ::

i found my secrets again.

they used to be lying around for anyone to pick up off the ground; now they are secrets.

on my arm close to my favourite scar here where it's (safe)

it's always coming back. and it's always THIS GOOD

can't remember any more. it was important. begin. again.

and the next page :: :

i leave traces.

to remind myself of it being this ok

(exhibition. another study for a life worth living)