In the days when I worked at Hampton Court I got to go to quite a few of their special events. They had a roster of actors who could portray the various monarchs who had lived at the palace (and two Henry VIIIs) and would do special days with re-enactments based on various time periods or themes. On one of the days they had a day based on science in the time of Charles II. I found some photos when I was tidying up the computer the other day.
Auto-suggested pathways
Long time, no see. I’ve been without a computer recently. Now it’s been fixed, I’ve got a bit of a backlog of posts. This is a spotify playlist I made a little while back. I was going for a introspective and slightly witchy mood.
Books, books and more books
At one point I was writing brief reviews on here with my thoughts about various books I’d been reading. I’ve got out of the habit of doing that, and meant to get back in to it. I’ve been keeping track of my reading on Goodreads for years, but a listing and a star rating doesn’t feel like enough. I thought it would be too much to do the whole of this year’s reading, so here’s the last few months of books.
Picking Blackberries
A little while ago I went to visit my pál Erika (sorry, can’t resist the terrible pun) in Surrey for blackberry picking. Her friends Stephanie and Katja came down too, and we went out on a sunny day into the woods and picked some berries and had a picnic and drinks (for N. American readers, British woods aren’t very wild). Blackberries grow everywhere here at the end of August and most of September. They don’t belong to anyone, and it’s safe and legal to pick and eat them. I used to pick huge amounts of them when I was growing up. They’re also good for jam, pies, crumbles, coulis and wine-making. We made jam this time. Foxes also like them as much as humans.
Toy Cameras in Brighton
My flickr account has 370 albums on it, dating back to 2007, before I started this blog. A little while ago I dug out some pictures of Bracknell from the archives, and I thought I’d find some more things from the oldest albums.
International Pop Hits
My all-time top Finn Tukru, sent me some weird Finnish music videos from the past. (Don’t introduce me to any other Finns, Tukru, you might get demoted).
How to design and make a skirt in any size
I wanted to learn how to make things for ipads, so I’ve rejigged an old zine of mine with improved instructions and colour diagrams. It has step by step instructions and diagrams for drafting a skirt pattern to your own personal size, whatever that may be, and then making the skirt. For anyone really who would like to have skirts, but struggles to find any they like or that fit, and who would like some help with sewing.
Ponder this to get nearer to nothing
Long time, no see. In the last week I started a new design job, had some major dental work done, and also moved. Busy. I now have a bit more money, and a lot more space though, which is always a good thing. I’ve got a fair few things to catch up with here. I’ve got films I took at Homespun Festival to develop and scan, and some illustration and sewing things to finish.
Kerguelen Islands Prints
I’ve done some prints of this picture I drew of the Kerguëlen Islands off the coast of Antarctica. Nothing there but penguins, cabbages and the odd french scientist. What could be more delightful? They are available in two sizes- A4 for £7 + postage and A3 for £20 + postage (the small ones will be sent flat, the large rolled into a tube), and are printed on 250 gsm semi-gloss paper with a white border. Available now from the shop.
Frozy, Dog Legs and Los Cripis
Last night I went to see my friends Frozy play with Dog Legs and Los Cripis. Los Cripis are from Argentina, but play over in the UK quite frequently. I don’t know any other bands from Argentina, so they can be my favourite one. I tried to take some photos, but the lighting in the bar was appalling, and I don’t like to disturb people with flash, so here’s a music video instead. Don’t watch it if you don’t like blood. Los Cripis have an album out now, and Frozy have one coming soon. Why not give them some money?
Space Scrapbook
I have kept scrapbooks like this since about 2002, sticking in things like ticket stubs, catalogues from art exhibitions, food packaging, passport photos etc. Future historians will probably not be that grateful to me. Once a year or so I also make a general list of things I like, to compare with previous years. The lists have been pretty consistent though, my tastes don’t change a lot. This scrapbook spans late 2011 to the end of 2013. I photographed all the pages and made this gif. I took photos of some other old ones too, but I haven’t finished editing the pages yet.
Fanzine Ynfytyn 20
I made this zine last year, but it hasn’t been in print since Christmas, because I sold all the copies, and couldn’t find the masters. I found them again today though, so it’s back in print!
Bacchae prints for sale
I still have a couple of these 22×25 cm / 8.5×9.5″ risograph prints based on the Bacchae by Euripedes left.
The text says “ἔμαρψα τόνδ᾽ ἄνευ βρόχων λέοντος ἀγροτέρου νέον ἶνιν ὡς ὁρᾶν πάρα.” which means “I caught this young lion by myself, without a trap”. Pentheus’ mother, having run off into the woods with Dionysus to be a maenad, kills her son in a frenzy because she thinks he’s a lion, and then parades his head around the stage boasting about the lion she’s killed. That old plot cliché.
Wake and walk and talk and take
More like wake and talk and work and talk and work lately. I’ve been working teaching on a residential course in an ex nunnery near St Albans this week. I’ve worked for the company for a few years on and off, teaching the odd course here and there. Most of their work is residential, so I just do it occasionally. They hire out beautiful historical buildings and teenagers from abroad come for 2 week holidays. You take them out on field trips, give them lessons about cultural topics, and to improve their practical use of English, and do a creative project with them. This time we have been doing film-making. Last week they did a detective story, this week horror stories. No, you can’t see them, because of child protection rules at the job.
BARR at Power Lunches
The other night I went to see BARR aka Brendan Fowler at Power Lunches. I had pretty much forgotten about him until I saw the gig announcement on the Upset the Rhythm mailing list, but I was really happy when I saw it. I always like good spoken word. He doesn’t do so much music these days, more photography (he’d come over to the UK to give a talk at the Tate). I never got around to seeing him at the time, and somehow only a handful of people I know remembered his existence, and even fewer could make it on that particular Sunday, but luckily it turned out my friend Tobi was coming up from Brighton. I was particularly keen to go, because the next morning I was due to go off for two weeks to teach a residential course in the middle of nowhere, so it was my last outing for a few weeks, and I’ve been a skint hermit recently.
Tate Britain
I went to the Tate Britain the other day. I went there planning to go to the Folk Art exhibition, but realised I didn’t have the time or money to do it justice that day, and what I was actually in the mood for was post-war modern art. So that’s what I looked at.
DIY Space for London needs a home
DIY Space for London has now raised £13,000 but doesn’t have a building. I made these posters to help recruit people to find something suitable.
The Phantom Tollbooth
I recently watched this documentary about the Phantom Tollbooth, one of my favourite books when I was younger. (I still have the same battered, dog-eared paperback copy). Milo, the main character, is a boy who is always bored and doesn’t see the point in anything.
Fire & Hemlock risograph prints
Someone requested one of these risograph prints based on Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones (one of my all time favourite books) recently, but I thought I had run out. When I was re-organising some things thought recently it turned out I had 10 left after all. £10 + postage from the shop.
Rocks are slow life
I’ve been enjoying hermitting recently. I’ve gone out and done the odd thing and for work, but I’ve been happy to stay in the last few weeks and work on various projects, and apply for more work, and declutter junk. Sometimes these phases are nice.
No jokes about fireman’s poles here
Some people I know put on a byo gig on Friday at the old fire station in Stoke Newington. It makes a great venue. More of these, please. The band in the photo above are Tyrannosaurus Dead. I didn’t take a lot of pictures, because it’s difficult in low light situations, and I don’t like to use flash if the ambient lighting is atmospheric.
Fabric designs
I finally got the printing samples back of the fabrics I designed. They are all available on Spoonflower, a print on demand fabric site. I was very pleased with the end results. I was a little nervous about how they would come out, because I didn’t stick to the recommended colour palette from the site, but the colours came out exactly as I wanted. You can order them as fat quarters or by the meter/yard. I recommend getting them printed on the kona cotton. If you do order any fabric, make sure to wash it on a delicate cycle with a less harsh detergent like ecover.
Pinup Payback- Anti sexual harassment campaign
I recently made this poster for Pinup Payback, a feminist/anti-sexism organisation in Medway run by a friend. I was given the theme of “girls just want to have fun” without creeps, so here are some gooey, sticky creeps. My hometown has a really disproportionate rate of sexual assault for the population, and a lot of people whose attitudes are stuck far, far in the past. Growing up there, and also going back to visit, I have had men say the most appalling and disgusting things to me and my friends, far more than any other place I know. This poster (along with training for staff) will be going up in the pubs and bars in town that sign up to the campaign to show customers that if someone if harassing you, the venue promises to take it seriously, a campaign also being run in London by Hollaback.
To find out more about the campaigns, phone app and to donate, visit the website.
(and yes, girls in this instance does include anyone who feels they fall into that category)
Fishbourne Palace
A while back I went to Fishbourne Palace. In the 1960s engineers digging a new drain in a village just outside Chichester discovered some Roman mosaics. When they were excavated, they turned out to belong to the one of the largest Roman palaces outside Italy. My thing I wrote for Storyboard this month is based on it (and yes, the building really does look like a swimming pool). No one is one hundred percent sure who it belonged to, the most common guess is Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, the local chieftain / Roman ally / client king, but there are no inscriptions or historical records either backing it up or proving otherwise.
Daniel Meadows, Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr
Recently I went to two exhibitions of British social photographers’ work of the 60s and 70s. Daniel Meadows at the Library of Birmingham, and Only in England- Tony Ray Jones and Martin Parr at the Science Museum. All three photographers were contemporaries and friends, working on similar topics of noticing the arresting and unusual in ordinary people in everyday settings. All photographs in this entry are from the photographers’ own websites.
Library of Birmingham
I also went to the Library of Birmingham. Initially I went to see the Daniel Meadows exhibition, but the building was so large and impressive that I ended up spending a lot of time there, and didn’t end up going to the City Museum. It has nine floors, multiple exhibition spaces and two roof gardens.
Birmingham Pen Museum
While I was in Birmingham, I visited the Pen Museum. Because I gave a small donation, one of the kind volunteers essentially gave me a personal guided tour.
Surreal car park
While I was walking around the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, I saw the most amazing car park inside a demolished building. The roof and front wall were gone, but the side walls and floor were still there, with fire exit signs hanging off the walls, and cars parked on top of chipped floor tiles.
Birmingham
Last week I went to Birmingham for the day. I got some cheap train tickets in the sale, it was only a fiver each way. I had bought them at the same time as my tickets for my ill-fated Glasgow trip the week before (got tickets to see my friend Chloe in Glasgow for £30 return, missed the train by 1 minute due to transport holdup, and Virgin wanted £140 for a new single, so I had to forget about it). Every time I’ve been to Euston recently, I’ve thought “hmm, I haven’t been to Birmingham for over a decade, it’s not far away, I should go there”. So I did.
I’ve been using Pinterest for a couple of years now to keep track of visual research. It’s nice to be able to keep the pictures organised in categories, and automatically have the source noted. The site is also very visually appealing. If you go to the front page without having any interests or contacts set up, it looks a bit dismal, full of wedding dresses and self-help maxims. However once you have it set to what you want to see (and anything that bores you unfollowed), I find it full of interesting pictures.
How to Be a Cult Leader
Last week I went to a How To Be a Cult Leader show. My friend Mel was doing the visuals with Space is Ace. I liked the setup and atmosphere of the show a lot. There were different musicians dotted around the room in the small theatre, and they would each play one or two songs in turn, with a 10 minute bar/toilet break every so often. There were also projections and lights directed at the two side walls. It was quite tricky to take photos, because the theatre was dark, but there were also a lot of vibrant colours I wanted to do justice to without leaving the performers blurred.
Goodbye Blogspot, Hello WordPress
I moved my blog over to Wordpress from Blogspot today, importing all the old entries and comments. Blogger was getting increasingly outdated, with not much variation in design possible, and since they upgraded the editor it started to do weird things to the text, even if the html view showed that not much was going on. Some of those issues have cropped up when I’ve imported the entries here, but with over 300 old entries it’s going to take me a while to fix them by hand, so please be patient.
Fabric stash
I have a lot of fabric. Mostly remnants from charity shops or from my nan’s stash (she was a dressmaker / tailor). I haven’t done any sewing this year, because I lost a lot of weight in February due to a nasty bout of gastritis, and it seemed silly to make something that would later be too small, or to try to guess at what my normal fitting would be. I’m back to my normal weight now though, so I can go ahead.
School animation project
For the past few months, I’ve been working with a group of students and an English teacher at a school in North London to create a small animated film. The students were set the challenge of coming up with a story that reflected something about the school and the students within it. The school is very diverse, and they created a story about a girl who comes to London as a refugee, and is miserable at school because she doesn’t know any English yet, and can’t understand anything or anybody. However, she soon starts to learn the language, and becomes far happier once she can understand and make friends. The animation deliberately has no music or sound effects other than the voice-over, because the music teachers are planning to use it as a composition project in class.
Kerguelen Islands
Recently I was looking up something on a map, and my eyes were drawn to the Kerguelen Islands at the bottom. They seemed quite substantial, yet I’d never heard of them. It turns out they belong to France, are uninhabited except for a few scientists, and are full of penguins and cabbages. Sailors used to stop off there to have a grim cabbage feast to fend off scurvy. Here is a lonely penguin in the cabbage fields. I will never have another reason to draw that. The picture is available as a print and various other items on Society 6.
Tea Party
This is something I had to make in a short period of time at work recently. Invitation cards for an after school event for kids who volunteered for a specific thing earlier in the term. It was nice to have something I could actually draw. Last week I was sorting out endless posters of geometry equations. There’s not a great deal you can do with those in terms of illustration . .
The Double
I went to see the Double a little while ago. My friend Ellina has thing about Jesse Eisenberg and she wanted to see it. I haven’t been going to the cinema often enough recently. I like Dostoyevsky, enjoyed Submarine, and liked Jesse Eisenberg as an unbearable teenage boy in the Squid and the Whale so it was a good choice. The film owes a lot to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, but it’s definitely worth a watch.
A Hawk and a Hacksaw
The other night I went to see a Hawk and a Hacksaw at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. My friend Fliss had a spare ticket at the last moment. I had seen them a few times before, the picture above is one I took at ATP around 6 years ago. She had booked the tickets so long ago she had forgotten the details of the show. It turned out to be a collaboration between A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the BBC Orchestra. The orchestra played pieces by Bartok and Ligeti, a Hawk and a Hacksaw played folk songs from Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, and the two joined together for some songs at the end. It felt very civilised to sit watching an orchestra in plush padded seats. It’s not something I do that often. I had an ice cream in the interval too.
Lassay les Châteaux
Last month I went to visit my mum in France. She lives just outside a small town called Lassay les Châteaux. It does indeed have several ruined castles. It’s on the Pays de la Loire / Normandy border, and most of the houses in town are old stone cottages. She considered buying one, but it was too damp. When people are thinking of France being cosmopolitan and chic, they are not thinking of rural Normandy. It’s a lot like Derbyshire, but without the mountains. The local cuisine is heavy on tripe, bacon and sour cream, served with teacups full of cider (there are two rival triperies in another nearby town). While I was there, I mostly ate my own weight in brioche and sour cream, and sat in the sun reading a book about the post-war political history of Europe. I took quite a lot of photos on film, so I’ll wait until I have those developed before writing more.
Easter House Gig
Last weekend I went to a house gig in South London. These things seem to be few and far between in London, because people tend to be pressed for living space. Hugh, the host, played, and the other bands were all various configurations of my friend Nicol from Sussex and three of his friends from Bristol and London. One of the residents of the house is a little girl, who helped out by finding a toy drum and a stick from the garden, and joining in as a second drummer while wearing a princess dress (while jumping up and down on a trampoline too when Roxy played in the garden). All gigs need more of that. (Also, something is weird with Bandcamp – the audio controls don’t appear in the preview, and you can’t centre them
Aquariums
Louise, a friend of mine from Brighton recently set up a creative writing website. The idea is that everyone is given a monthly writing prompt, with all the submitted work posted the following month for comment. I decided to have a try following the first prompt- the theme was Aquamarine. I couldn’t really think of any idea for a story, so I just wrote what came to mind. What they call a five finger excercise. I think I’ll ramble less on the next one. Here is what I wrote
Tömeny romantika, imádlak 80s hungarian songs-ika
The other weekend I went to visit Erika and her partner at their beautiful house. I always have a nice time there. The worst thing that ever happened to me there was that I once ate too much Stilton and had to have a lengthy lie-down. If the worst thing about your day is that you ate too much blue cheese, then the day is going well.
Salzburg
On the way from Niederösterreich to Vorarlberg I stopped off alone in Salzburg along the way. I had to change trains in Vienna, and after a week of hearty, dairy-laden alpine food I was very, very thankful to eat some dhal and chapattis at the station. I really, really liked Salzburg and would gladly return there. I don’t know what it is about the city, but it just had a really nice atmosphere. I arrived at about 5pm, found the hotel really easily, and dumped my stuff and went for a wander. It’s an old university town, with a castle perched on an outcrop of the mountain looking down. There is a stereotype in Austria that people in Salzburg are snobby, but I found them friendly enough.
St Wolfgangskirche, Niederösterreich
While in Kirchberg-am-Wechsel we were given a tour of a disused church perched up on the mountainside. It has suffered a lot of misfortune over the years (if you can read German there is a wikipedia article here), it burnt down and was rebuilt twice, and is furnished with all kinds of leftovers from other churches, which makes it more interesting.
Hermannshöhle
While in Kirchberg am Wechsel I also got to go on a tour of Hermannshöhle with another teacher. It’s a series of caves inside one of the mountains, with lots of stalactites and a bat colony. Usually the tours are at set times and only in German, but we got a private tour in English, which was really nice.
Kirchberg am Wechsel
Last Summer I spent a week working at the junior school in Kirchberg am Wechsel, a tiny mountain town on the eastern end of the Alps on the border between Lower Austria and Styria. It is essentially one long street between some mountains, with “Lower Austria’s finest stalactite cave” (more on that later) and a yearly Wittgenstein festival. As mountains go, by Austrian standards they are pretty tame, mostly being below the tree-line. When I said something to the kids about the mountains they basically went “what mountains?” and when I pointed out of the window they went “oh yeah, those, there are much better mountains in other places”. Still, I like any kind of mountains, and the Wechsel is still 1,743m high, so it’s hardly a hill. Mountains/hills and water, that’s what I like. I wouldn’t do well somewhere like Kansas.
Dreams of the Alps
I spent a lot of last summer travelling up and down the Alps by train. Here are a couple of pictures I took out of the window. Taking photos from the window of a moving train can be very frustrating, you see a spectacular view, but by the time you have taken a photo something like a fence is in the way. I like long-distance solo train trips, especially ones with spectacular scenery and no stress or time pressure when it comes to connections.Both of these pictures are somewhere near the Austrian/German border. Interestingly German for nightmare is Alptraum – “Alp dream”. That alp is a night time incubus type thing, not the mountains, but it gives a strange mental image if you’re an English speaker. An Alp dream would probably involve frolicking with goats in a sunny mountain pasture. I clearly read Heidi too often when I was younger.
New website
So recently I’ve been spending a lot of frustrating time re-doing my website. I wanted it to work/look the same on computers, phones and tablets and be simple and unobtrusive and just work. It turns out making simple things that work properly is quite difficult. I was going for “so unobtrusive you barely notice it’s there” not “made on Geocities in 1998”. Anyway, I got people with various different pieces of equipment to test it and it all seems to work fine now. The artwork galleries are a little empty at the moment, but hopefully that will be remedied in the next few weeks with lots of new work.
Life Drawing
Last night I went with some friends to a life drawing class in the basement of a pub in Stoke Newington. I went to life drawing most weeks when I was in 6th form, but have been very sporadically every since. I think the last time I went was 9 months ago. Usually they’re in some sort of neon-lit municipal hall. This one was in a purple room, with music playing and with the most flattering lighting I’ve ever seen at a life drawing class. It was nice, I’m going to go back. Usually returning to life drawing after a long break makes me want to cry in frustration, because my pen just won’t do what I need it to do, but it wasn’t so bad this time. I didn’t produce anything of any value, but it was a good start, and I’ve lost the knack of foreshortening and hands. Here are my sketches. I had to resort to taping them to the door and photographing them, because the paper was too big for the scanner. I always write comments all over my sketches. Is that the drawing equivalent of talking to yourself?
The more you use it, the more it works.
Februrary has been a deeply weird and confusing month, for various reasons. I had to go to hospital with gastritis and a kidney infection. I didn’t have to stay in or anything, but I had to take loads of different medications and was pretty ill for about a week and a half. I had to also follow the most boring diet possible until my stomach healed up (like, literally nothing was allowed). I was basically eating the diet of a fussy toddler. I never want to see another quorn nugget as long as I live. My stomach is fine now, and I’m reintroducing various foods and drinks, but it’s weird to have to try to remind myself to eat proper meals again. I also lost weight. Society wants to tell you that you should always be happy about that for whatever reason, because women aren’t supposed to take up space in the world or something, but actually my weight was fine before (they definitely don’t want you thinking that). Now my clothes are a bit sad and loose looking. Hopefully now I’m back on proper food that will be sorted out quickly.
The wonder of cardboard: making animation with school children
Since just before Christmas, I have been doing a weekly animation workshop with kids at a school in North London, working with one of the English teachers. The brief was to create a short film which told a story that represented the school and the experiences of the students in some way. The students range from 12-18, with the younger ones being the art assistants, and the sixth-formers being the producers. They came up with a story themselves about a refugee girl from an unnamed country who flees from a war to London, but is then unhappy at the school because she doesn’t speak English (quite a common real story at this particular school). Gradually however she starts to learn and understand, and feel happier and make friends. In the initial sessions, some of the inspiration clips I showed them included Persepolis, The Science of Sleep, and my own Erika Pal’s the House.
DIY Space for London
On Sunday I went to a meeting for DIY Space for London. My friend Natalie is one of the initial organisers (and I also already knew a fair few of the other organisers), and she told me about it last year, but I was either working very long hours in London, or was abroad for most of the year, so I didn’t really have a chance to get involved. I’m in London for the foreseeable future and actually have some spare time now, so I volunteered.
Where you’ll find me now
Long time no see. I moved house a few weeks ago, and the internet connection has been a long-running (and very boring) bureaucratic saga. Hopefully from next week we’ll finally have proper internet. I’ve been keeping up with stuff like email either on my phone or work computer, but that isn’t really ideal for things like updating a blog. At least I have unlimited data on my phone, which has been very helpful, although I never want to have to use my internet banking site on a phone again as long as I live.
Kostel Sv. Mikuláše
We also went to the baroque St Nicholas’ church in Prague. I’m not at all religious (and it seems neither are the Czechs), but I like visiting churches for the art and architecture. I really liked the faces of the statues inside, especially this bishop type who seems to be going “who? me?”.
Pavements of Prague
The pavements in the Old Town in Prague are all decorated with mosaics. Perhaps they’re not so great for the feet, or people with wheelchairs or buggies, but they do look good.
Prague Puppet Shop
Puppetry is a big thing in the Czech Republic. As well as being the home of Jan Švankmajer and Jiří Trnka, there are a few puppet shops in the Old Town in Prague selling the work of local puppet artists. I’m afraid I didn’t get the names of the artists who made these ones I photographed. I really wanted to buy a small puppet, they weren’t hugely expensive, but I didn’t have much chance of getting it home in one piece, so I reluctantly gave it a miss.
Literary Eating and Drinking in Prague
We didn’t have a long time in Prague, so we didn’t get to sample that many places, but the ones we did go to all seemed to be based on books. Fun, and a little strange. (And the beer in the Czech Republic is both very cheap and very good).
Prague
After a week in Dresden at the end of August, I went to Prague for the weekend with my work colleague Hazel. We both had to go to Vienna en route to our next assignment, so it made sense to fit in a quick trip to Prague on the way.
Shop re-opened
I’ve reopened the shop now I’ve returned from my travels. There are some back issues of zines on there now- once they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ll continue to print from issue 12 onwards, but the older issues are now out of print. There are some colour Space is Ace posters for £4 each, and each order over £5 will come with a free black and white version of the poster while stocks last. I’ll have some interesting new things soon, keep your eyes peeled.
Dresden
I spent a week in Dresden. When I wasn’t working, I was exploring, either alone, or with my co-worker Hazel. The city was completely flattened in the Second World War (pointlessly in my opinion- it happened right at the end of the war, and Dresden wasn’t an industrial target). The DDR regime didn’t do much to restore the old town centre, but after reunification it was all put back together as much as possible as it was before (they kept a lot of the stones in a warehouse). The the city is a strange mix of restored Baroque, super-spruced up restored buildings, dilapidated buildings waiting to be restored, and randomly spaced gaps of bomb sites that haven’t been built on yet. The setting of the city is along the River Elbe- you can see the wide banks left empty here- it’s prone to flooding. The local accent also sounds very much like a Brummie speaking German.
DDR Museum
I’m fascinated by the history of the Cold War. Both the political side, and the social history of people’s everyday lives. I’ve always been extra fascinated by the former DDR, both because I can speak the language and because they tried so hard to be a “model” Iron Curtain society. You read about people being “internal emigrés”. Being a good comrade and worker on the surface, but internally escaping to their own world via drink or just plain daydreaming. I suppose that’s what I’d do in the situation. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I’m currently writing a zine about the trip this summer, so I’ll save them for there.
Starkes Viertel- photos of Dresden Neustadt in the 70s and 80s
When I was in Dresden, I bought a photography book by a local photographer. Günter Starke lived in Dresden Neustadt, the area just across the river from the historical centre, in the 70s and 80s, and took a lot of photos. Despite the name, Neustadt is full of old buildings that escaped bombing during the war (it’s only new compared to the baroque city centre), and in the communist days, the local council concentrated on building blocks of flats and housing estates to house families.
Travels Without My Aunt
I’ve spent most of the past month travelling around Germany and Austria teaching. It’s for an extra-curricular school programme. You do activities to boost the children’s speaking confidence in English, work on creative projects, and put on a show for the parents with presentations of the projects, and drama written by the students. You don’t need to speak German to do the job, and you never speak German in the classroom, but of course it comes in useful to understand if the kids are being naughty, and in your time outside the classroom.
The hills are alive with torrential rain.
I’m currently in Kirchberg am Wechsel, at the eastern end of the Austrian Alps for work. I didn’t really have much access to the internet last week in Dresden, so I haven’t updated properly. I saw most of the sights, also went to the DDR Museum in Radebeul and ate a lot of pastry and spätzle.
Golden Hands Book of Crafts
While I was at my grandparent’s place, I scanned some books. Here’s the Golden Hands Book of Crafts from the 70s. I have some of the magazine of the same name, which I scanned before. You can see that here. Most of the tutorials in the book weren’t very exciting, but there were some nice 70s stock pictures.
Haberdashery
I’m currently at my grandparent’s place in West Sussex. I picked up some teaching work in Germany over the summer (and some as yet unknown other destinations too), so I gave up my sublet room, put my stuff in storage for the summer, left London for a while, and am spending the next 10 days wandering around Kent and Sussex until I fly off. My grandparents’ place is in a small village called Aldwick near Bognor. There’s a shingle beach, lots of bungalows and old people, and hydrangeas everywhere. It’s about 3 minutes from a very quiet beach (apparently Robert Smith lives here too, but I haven’t seen him). My nan died last year, and my grandad is now in a home, with dementia, so the house belongs to my mum and aunt. They are currently refurbishing it and clearing out decades of things. The heavy lifting had already been done, but the other day I went through my nan’s fabric stash for anything I wanted.
Space is Ace II
My friend Mel put on a space-themed night at Power Lunches with some other students from her MA course. I helped out by designing the flyer, helping with decorating, and djing in the bar. I had a really good time, but I really don’t have anything nice to say about the behaviour of the three other St Martin’s students.
The night was really popular though, the place was packed, and everyone seemed to have a good time, which was the important thing.
Space is Ace
Tomorrow at Power Lunches in Dalston, my friend Melanie is putting on an event with her compadres from the Art & Science MA at St Martins. There’s going to be bands, sound art, projections, edible sugar glass planets, and a very large amount of tinfoil. I did the artwork for the flyer. If you like it, and are coming to the event, you will be able to buy A3 posters of it (a few people asked already). I don’t know the exact prices yet, because I haven’t got them printed yet, but the b&w edition will be roughly £1.50 and the colour version more.
There’s More to Life Than Books You Know Pt I
So, long time, no see. I’ve been working very long hours at the day job, and I have also been without a computer. That should hopefully be sorted by next week though. Today I’m visiting my family, so I can add text-based things here, but no photos. There’s quite a backlog of photos running. I managed to break my phone, do something very painful to my shoulder and have my laptop spontaneously die in the space of 3 days. I’m a disaster zone for hire. If you want anything spoilt or broken in the near future, let me know, my rates are reasonable
Stef Kamil Carlens at Neu Gallery
I wrote before about going to a gig at Neu Gallery run by Greek artist Stefanos Rokos. I returned the following week, to see Stef Kamil Carlens, ex of dEUS. Like Matt Friedberger’s performance, it was quite different stuff to the bands both of them are known for- more singer-songerwritery in this case. I particularly liked the songs which were in French. I think I’ll leave this picture to do the talking.
Field Day 2013
I also went to Field Day this year. It was the first Saturday I had off work in about 3 months, so it was good to make the most of it (I also had to go to work the next day- somehow I looked and felt fine, I must be a wonder of biology). I managed to see most of the bands I wanted to, bar Toy and Mount Kimbie. I was there with my housemate, but we managed to keep missing each other. When I left I suddenly had a flood of texts onto my phone saying things like “I’m at the bar by X, we’re going to watch Y in a min, where are you?” which might explain it. Stupid technology. He saw Mount Kimbie and found it disappointing anyway. I managed to find my Medway friends anyway, and spent some time with people from Reading too, which was nice.
Concrete wonderlands
Flickr have massively changed their website recently, and I took the chance to go through all my old photos and re-organise them a bit, so I’ll be digging up various things from the archives over the next few weeks. Here’s some of Bracknell from 2005.
Regent’s Canal
The other week I went for a walk along the eastern end of the Regent’s Canal with my dad. I used to live down the other end of it, and I’ve pretty much walked the entire length a lot of times. It’s one of the few short canals around here, most of the others are long intercity ones.
New zines, after a bit of a break
I’ve got two, count ’em, two (it’s not very difficult counting) new zines for you, that took a while to get finished. One with the usual fluff, the other about Vienna. Each is 24 pages, 1/4 sized, and costs £1 + postage from my website shop. I also have quite a lot of back issues on there for 80p + postage at the moment, when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Procrastinating in my limited spare time . .
I should be doing more of this, but instead I’m working very long hours at the dayjob. I’m either being a hermit, or trying to squeeze in some sort of social life. I hate rigidly scheduling things in my personal life, let’s leave that to work.
Revert to Disarray
The gallery has some kind of connection with a hotel, and they held another event there the following night, with Jim Sclavunos from the Bad Seeds djing ( a strange mix of Iggy Pop and novelty jazz records), and a repeat of the music. It was quite a surreal experience. I don’t really drink in fancy hotels anyway, it not being in the budget. Also, on the way there, we stopped off to get some food, and eat it in a little park, the sort where office workers go to eat sandwiches. There was a crown green bowls contest going on in the middle of the financial district. We felt very civilised, watching bowls before going to socialise in a hotel.
Making Tracks- live cinema
A little while ago my friend Erika Pál had the animation she made for our MA show in Whirligig Cinema’s Making Tracks festival. She made recordings of the students describing dreams they’d had, and painstakingly created the animation with oil paints on glass and time-lapse photography. Here she describes how she made it. She doesn’t have it available to view online at the moment, so here are some stills from her website.
Diana Wynne Jones Interview
A couple of years ago I interviewed the children’s writer Diana Wynne Jones, my favourite writer growing up. I was compiling a zine of articles about her work. Unfortunately I didn’t finish the zine before she died of cancer, because I’m a terrible procrastinator, and she never got to see it. When I get a chance, I have another entry to add about attending her funeral.
Petrie Museum
Earlier today I met up with my friend Chloe on her way up to Glasgow, and we went to the Souzou exhibition with her old flatmates. When she went to catch the train, I decided to fit in a visit to the Petrie Museum round the corner in UCL too, which I hadn’t been to for a long time. (I tried to say hi to Jeremy too, but his box was closed).
Listening to my grandad’s stereo (but not his record collection)
I recently received my grandad’s stereo. He’s 89 and has moved into an old people’s home, and said he didn’t need it any more. He was an electrical engineer for Philips, so his choice of appliances can usually be relied on. I was expecting something from the 70s, but then it turned out he’d actually bought this one 3-4 years ago. I don’t know why he felt the need to buy a whole new stereo to listen to his 10 Shirley Bassey records. He once gave me a tape with Italian lessons on one side, and Shirley Bassey songs on the other. I guess he felt it was about time I took up both of those things.
Answering for myself
David Hogan, a media student in Ireland, interviewed me about zines for his dissertation. I’ve answered quite a lot of people’s questions for media dissertations over the years, but I’ve never really kept track of it very well. I was in some Dutch documentary about zines too, but again I didn’t bother to find out exactly what it was, so I have never seen it (although I really hate seeing or hearing any recordings of myself). Here’s my attempt to keep better track of this stuff.
The things I did and didn’t do (mostly things I actually did)
I went to a fair few small gigs recently. I’ve been moving house, but trying not to be a hermit who spends all their time making bookshelves.
Souzou (missing images from Wellcome Collection)
At the moment at the Wellcome Collection they have a free exhibition of outsider art from Japan. All of the artists live in assisted living facilities, and most of them create their artwork as part of art therapy classes.
москва в брайтон
I have been busy recently, and the ever-present backlog of photos and so on I mean to post gets ever longer. Here’s some photos I took of Brighton Pier at some point. I have no idea when I took them, probably when I lived in Brighton, but I scanned them the other week.
The Embarkation at Dover (1520s)
Here’s some photos of a painting I like. It shows Henry VIII setting sail for the Field of the Cloth of Gold for his swank-off with Francis I. The pictures aren’t the greatest, a tripod and polariser would improve them greatly, but you can still see all the details.
Laine, Wolle
On Sunday I went to an exhibition about wool at Somerset House with Natalie. As well as the expected demonstrations of things like Fair Isle and weaving, they had interiors and artworks made out of wool.
Sheffield Zine Fest (redux)
I went up to Sheffield for the weekend with Tukru in tow (albeit on separate cheap coaches), to visit Chella and Sarah and run a stall/workshop at the Sheffield Zine Fest. I had a good time with my friends and meeting new people, but I think I’m allergic to Sheffield. My face and sinuses swelled up as soon as I got there, and by Sat afternoon my tongue felt so big I could hardly speak (not so great when you’re supposed to be giving a public talk), and I got no sleep Friday because there was so much pressure on my sinuses. In a photo of me I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I took some anti-histamines and decongestants, but it made no difference. My sinuses and face suddenly deflated on the way back around Derby. I’m obviously allergic to the North. Or possibly steel. I’ll have to use plastic cutlery forever.
Signal to Noise
On Sunday night I went to my friend John Newman’s sound installation at the Deaf Cat in Rochester, put on by the TEA people. There was a Damo Suzuki improv gig the previous night when I was away. I’m sure they organise these things when I can’t come specifically to spite me. I also went to watch at their band dating event they put on on Thurs. They got musicians to fill out a profile, then assigned them to a band, gave them 2 free rehearsal sessions, then they played whatever they came up with on the night. It all worked out very well. There were soundscapes and something that sounded like a Talking Heads rehearsal.
Sheffield Zine Fest
On Saturday I’m going up to Sheffield to visit my friends Chella and Sarah and also do a table/talk at the Sheffield Zine Fest. It’s from 12-5 at the Electric Works S1 2BJ. There will be around 30 different stalls, and a full schedule of free workshops, including one from my friend Cath on feminism in zines.
I saw mushroom head, I saw skies are red
Here’s a dress I recently made. I’m not very practiced at taking photos of myself, I’m usually on the other side of the camera, and it felt very awkward (and that’s probably why I look so bad tempered). The remote control only cost £3, and has to be pointed directly at the camera, which doesn’t help. It also didn’t help that I don’t have any space to use the 50mm lens, so I had to use the 28mm, which is really not a good idea around faces, especially if you’ve recently been having sinus trouble like I have, with the resulting puffy hamster face. None of the photos facing front were at all to my liking, and the ones from the back just emphasised my scoliosis, so you’re not seeing those either. I still need to finish off the hem and the sleeve edging, I prefer to slip-stitch those by hand.
Werebitches and devils
On Friday, my friends Tukru and Louise had their first gig (for Tukru in 10 years) appropriately on International Women’s Day. The band only formed a couple of weeks ago, so it was a bit nerve-wracking for them, but everything went fine. I tried to take some photos, but it was in the cellar of an old restaurant/bar, where you could touch the ceiling and there were no stage lights, so I didn’t get anything much usable
Hundertwasser
Every so often I like to write on here about things I like, and why I like them. I’ve (finally) been finishing my zine about Vienna, and there’s a section about Hundertwasser in there, but I didn’t really have enough space to say everything that I wanted to say, and in a b&w zine obviously you totally miss out on the colours, which are a major part of his work, so here is a longer thing about him and his work. I’ve visited the Kunsthaus/Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna quite a few times, and I wrote about one of my visits here. I first came across his work in 2001, when I was 16/17, and bought a £3 book from a discount shop because it looked interesting from a quick flick through. I’m glad I did! All the pictures in this entry are either taken by me, or come from hundertwasser.at. I don’t feel like I’ve really caught my exact favourites here, but collecting images from lots of different sources and making sure they were all credited properly would have taken a long, long time. Here’s an overview of some things.
What is not but could be if
Here’s another mix, no theme this time, just songs I’ve been listening to a lot lately. When I moved the blog over to wordpress, I had to put the playlist on Spotify, so a couple of the songs aren’t available.
Serious colouring in
For professional colouring in only. It says it on the label, see. Don’t worry, I’ve got a licence now.
Mystery film
I found this film at the bottom of a plastic sleeve full of collage stuff. I’d carefully cut round each picture on the negative, so it was individually cut out with a neat border, and I have absolutely no idea why I did it. The orange mask on c41 film makes it impossible to see the picture unless you hold it up to the light, and cutting the pictures out individually from 120 film is a stupid idea, and I would have known better since I was about 16. I first started using medium format film in 2004, when I was about 20, so I really don’t know.
Through the pinhole
Last night I scanned about 20 rolls of film. Here’s the first one, some pinhole photos I took in Cornwall a few years ago, using the Diana + (you can remove the lens and use it as a pinhole camera). I think they’re of St Ives and Mousehole. They’re pretty soft looking, because I just rested the camera on a wall rather than use the tripod. Here are some I took using the tripod and with colour film with the same camera, they’re much sharper. I like these monochrome ones though, they’re quite eerie looking.
Storming an onion
Something from my sketchbook- the text in the picture says it all really. (If you can’t read it/my handwriting, it says: “Recently I was reading an article which described getting through psychological defenses as storming a castle or like peeling an onion. Here is how you storm an onion”). I debated adding some kind of siege engine, but didn’t have space really.
Once it’s on you’ll never want to turn it off any more
Spending Friday night scanning as much film as I can bear, sorting through unscanned film photos / un-prepped digital photos and listening to Grandaddy. I’d rather be out, but I’m not, so I might as well do this. Three weeks feels like three years, and I’ll be glad to have a job again. I bought the film scanner in 2007, and it has probably paid for itself 10 times over by now. Usually the tea goes on the left, but it gets in the way of the scanner. I have a whole set of the penguin mugs, they are the best mugs.
February books and films
Not a great deal to report here, I haven’t read that much or seen many films because I’ve been busy doing unfun things. Less of that, please.
Books:
1) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong- James W Loewen