I am in the process of sorting through 7 or 8 years worth of project detritus – things that ‘may be useful again some day’. Metres and metres of audio cable and extension leads, audio and video connectors of every possible description, silicone, sewing thread, spray paint, acetone, an aquarium heater, twenty-five stubby holders, a bag of dry cow bones, two 30 metre rolls of clear vinyl tubing, just about every kind of domestic glue you can buy, hose connectors, a bottle of pH meter solution, a collection of assorted electronics components the function of which I can no longer recall, a box of old mobile phones, a bag of theatre gels, eight toilet seats upholstered in red velvet, four wireless video transmitters, costumes, fabric, test tubes, pipettes, bubble wrap, fishing line…. and so it goes on. A list of decisions to be made, the sum of all that I have produced in the world, and a testament to the many ideas that died before they were even assembled. It’s a torturous process and yes I am procrastinating…

I hate to own stuff, but I hate to waste it too. So in each decision – should I keep that venetian blind cord, or not? – an existential crisis unfolds. On the one hand a reflex to purge, to pare down. Who needs this shell of objects to drag heavy through time? Locking me into an endless succession of packings and unpackings. On the other hand, an acknowledgement of all the time spent in the accumulation. Time earning money, time writing grants, time sourcing equipment. To throw things away now is not only to waste materials and useful objects but, potentially, to waste future time… So here I am chipping away at the contours of my crisis instead of sorting through the pile. Stuck squarely between past and future time I am dawdling suspended in the present.

As I went to put the kettle on this morning, I noticed a strange pattern in last nights sausage fat now hard in the frying pan on the stove top. On closer inspection it seems that the markings are hundreds of little mouse teeth scrapings. So to add to the abject kitchen archive, along with the weevil colony and the bottle of boiled pee, some photos. I really like the texture.

I found this quote about ‘art’ on the Empyre list archive the other day.

“Make no mistake; art is not social work or psychoanalysis. Most of all it is not a diversion (divertissement) or entertainment. It is not about teaching (didacticism) or the marketing of high priced objects for the idle rich. True art does not make one comfortable. What it does is reorder our sense of the world and our internal narrative.” G.H. Hovagimyan.

I’m not sure if I like the idea of ‘true art’ , but on the other hand it is true that I am often grappling with the question of ‘art’. Am I searching for its truth? Perhaps it might be possible to assert that art is present in the striving to answer. And that this act of striving necessarily involves a reordering, a reorienting of sense to world. Whose sense? Your sense, or my sense? How does this act move between us? This is the question.

I had a strange and vivid dream last night. I had been time transported back to 1985 to the opening of Toyo Ito’s ‘Tokyo Nomad Women’ architectural installation. I was the nomad woman and I had to climb a very tall staircase wearing ridiculously heavy platform shoes. The staircase wobbled precariously and had to be supported by a number of people from the bottom to stop it from toppling over. I thought how much more professional everything always appears in documented hindsight. Then once I had performed the nomad woman there was a general opening party at which I met a mishmash of historical figures from various time periods including a teenage Princess Diana (too many trashy magazines), who manifested as an ugly, gangly redhead with a firm handshake. Meanwhile, off in the distance appeared a strange wedding band playing very old-fashioned looking instruments - an over-sized bassoon, a bass clarinet and some other unrecognisable woodwinds. (Bands with strange instruments are somewhat of a recurring figure in my dreams). I chased the band as they started moving away, down a steep hill, braking myself in the mud with my platforms to stop myself from sliding into a lake, then into a long limestone tunnel, to end up in the band practice room. Out of which I had to climb through a very narrow, disused mine shaft. Back to the party. Where I had to think fast in conversation to prevent my time travelled status from being revealed. Finally the party began to wind down and I wanted to return home. Toyo Ito took us to a secret room at the top of a tower block, through which I assumed we would be able to time travel back again. He thanked us for coming but went on to explain that unfortunately we would not be able to get back to the future - time travel apparently only works in one direction. So the best he could do for us was provide a life simulation machine. “The three bit version is pretty good. After a while you won’t even be able to tell the difference”.

I finally got a chance to return to my urea distillation project this morning. I have had the halfway product, a crystalline mass of evaporated urine, sitting in my fridge for over a month now… The next step:

“Pour at different times upon this mass four times its weight of alcohol, and apply a gentle heat; a great part of the mass will be dissolved and there will remain only a number of saline substances.”

“Pour the alcohol solution into a retort and distil by the heat of a sandbath, till the liquid, after boiling some time, is reduced to the consistence of thick syrup. The whole of the alcohol is now separated and what remains in the retort crystallizes as it cools. These crystals consist of the substance known by the name of urea.”

Backyard chemistry - an electric frying pan, converted claypot still and part of my neighbor’s sandpit. Now waiting for it to cool. It still really stinks though. I thought pure urea wasn’t supposed to smell of anything much. But I suppose this isn’t exactly the cleanest of methods…

Yesterday while I was cleaning the bomb site of my house - and when its that messy it has to be a deep cleanse - I revisited the weevil colony at the back of my cupboard. Its about two years old now and its a completely self contained little life world. The lid on the container must be loose enough to let in air but tight enough to keep the weevils from getting out (otherwise I’d know about it). I’ve been keeping it because I’m curious to see how long it will last. Its getting quite dense with webbing but they don’t seem to have made much of a dent in their food supply.

On well kept suburban lawns, behind the fence, while you’re at work… the rubbish is breeding. Its true! I saw it today on my way to the shops.

And no I did not set them up - they got together of their own accord.

While I was working on Hand to Mouth I did a fair few cycle dashes into town for ingredients. On one such occasion I was taking a shortcut through the back of the Queen Vic markets and came upon this garbage truck full of end-of-the-week meat scraps. Seeing how excited I was, the man loading the truck was good enough to wait five minutes while I scooted back for my camera and on my return we had a nice chat about rendering, soap and chicken feed…

I have been flat out these last few weeks working on a big collaborative performance installation project that took place on Sunday. (More details soon). Coming down on the other side both my house and my office look like they have been hit by a bomb and I feel like I have just participated in an art decathalon. Iron on six hundred pair of gloves, upholster eight toilet seats, hang fifty metres of black plastic, run two hundred metres of power cable, rig lights, set up PA, co-ordinate fifty volunteers, a live band and three camera people, while producing edible, sculpted food in large quantities. But I think after all that it was worth it…. I laughed so hard.

Some tasters:

Of course it has long been argued that war is now fought as much on the media battle front as in physical territory. This is an obvious corollary of developments discussed in my last post. A particularly striking example of this ‘war of images’ is described in a recent article on the West Bank. But where war is a constant what is the material impact of the image? Battles fought in physical territory jostle for space in the war of images but how do these battles, how does the power of the image, translate back into physical territory? Is this potentially where the architecture of conflict comes into play? The wall re-imagines space, draws over lives. And so often on the wall there are faces.