Jennifer Walshe and Grupat

Following her lecture to us earlier this year, I realize now that the inspiration I took at the time from her Grupat project has manifested itself in the Albion Accord.

The Albions

A week of thinking about this whole project and I realized why it was a bit like walking through treacle... I have no real passion for what I have discovered so far. Certainly, it is interesting and would not bore me, but where will the passion come from?
Thinking about the way in which His Video was received, and the pleasure I got from constructing it, I must get back to that situation again.
Four or five days thinking about this, and an 11 hour drive to Germany gave me new ideas and perspectives.
The project now has arrived. It is The Albions.
A documentary-based environment that I will set up at the final show. The documentary will investigate the little-known artist group called The Albions.
With access to previously unknown archive material, I will report on this group and their work, and in the show, create an environment to contextualise their work and offer an insight into their ways of working.

Environment

Further to The Bruce Lacy Experience and ideas from Happenings and in particular Alan Kaprow and his ideas and thoughts about the everyday, an idea has come to me for the presentation of the final work and its presentation.
I will create an environment in which aspects of the final work (at this stage, a documentary film) will be the progress and workings of it's construction. I will include maps, drawings, designs and ideas for it's presentation. I will complement it with a video version of myself and further add to the involvement of the audience by offering a small library and ways for them to participate and be involved in the work.

Bruce Lacey 2

The Bruce Lacey Experience at the Camden Arts Centre in Finchley was my destination yesterday, and what a productive day it turned out to be.
In the same way as I cam to get the Pilgrims' Way project sorted in a day, so too did this exhibition prove to be the catalyst for cementing many disparate ideas I have had for the past couple of months.
This exhibition, through the reasonably eclectic strands of Lacey's career, helped point me to place where my various ideas could work together rather than be the father fragmented things I hitherto saw them as.

Bruce Lacey

 A retrospective of Lacey's work was at the BFI last night.
Mostly supported, thinly, by an audience with grey hair and a couple of well informed 30 somrthings.
Bizarre, English surrealistic fun and games abounded with some wonderfully awful sound design and highly inspiring ideas of hand-held camera work and the realization that technology must not get in the way of a good idea.
Bravo Bruce.

BFI

BFI membership is proving to be a wise investment. Not just getting me off my arse and out into the real world, but more importantly, the amount of documentary/independent/artist films is proving to be quite a stimulating affair for my work.

Soiree / Public reaction

I was interested in seeing the film again last week in front of the public.
As with all things, once the piece is out of one's control, you just have to let it be and see how people react. Luckily, on the whole, positively.
I have decided that a replication of the Lo-Fi aesthetic will be wrong for the next project. It is so obvious that I would have trouble maintaining the idea without it becoming predictable or lame.
A similar attention to costumes will be important and the maintenance of the slightly opinionated character is desirable and gives the film some momentum.
I am questioning a performed version for the final show.

Involvement.

I wonder how much people like the woman above are becoming detached from their  environment.

What impact will be felt as people like here occupy one space, but exist in and communicate in another? Do the locations cease to have any meaning beyond the physical?

Non-Place.

Thinking today about this idea of the Non-Place and spaces where the human investment in the location is so diminished that it struggles to be a place or exhibit any sense of place. Can that ever happen to a location?
I am thinking about such violently unpleasant locations like supermarket self-check-out areas with their incessant multi-phonic instructions of how to do the real employees job while they, presumably look for work elsewhere.

Intervention.

Intervention is an art practice I have a natural aversion towards. Why? I suppose it's a middle class politeness thing. I was brought up not to make a fuss, get in other people's way, cause a scene, disrupt the status quo, all that sort of thing.
I have been introduced to Allan Kaprow recently and read a few of his essays. I am very much liking the idea of whatever we do as being a kind of intervention. The practice of Everyday Life is by definition one huge intervention. It is the context and the reaction of others that make it outstanding or unremarkable.