0-5: Themed Weekend with Ian and Tracey

Top: Ian
Bottom: Simon

Crosby Beach, Saturday 28th June, mid-evening.
Photographs by Tracey McGarrigan

0-5: A Themed Weekend with Ian & Tracey

If you follow this blog or sundaywithme.blogspot.com, you may remember an Artist named Ian Abbot. After two Sundays with Me, Ian Abbot has raised the bar once again and invited me to spend three days in the company of himself and his partner Tracey, at their new(ish) home in Southport. Ian and tracey stipulated that I could choose any them to structure how we spend our time together. Since my first five years were spent in Southport, I chose the theme "0-5". I could try to guess how Ian and tracey might interpret this sparse directive but there is no point. In my experience, Ian is a very surprising man and I am sure that anything suppositions I might form between now and Saturday morning will be utterly confounded. I imagine that I will have some choices to make, but I think the idea is to give myself over to the theme.

When I mentioned this themed weekend to Mother Bowes, she dug out a load of old scrapbooks made "by Simon and Sandy" in my early childhood, one of which was pertinent to our move from Lancashire to Derbyshire in the Summer of 1985.

Emailing Ian and Tracey earlier this week I wrote:

After a conversation with my parents, our 0-5 of my un-remembrances or half-remembrances are:

0-1: Swan's Fish & Chips, on the road behind Bold St (Lord St?)

1-2: Birkdale School, Farnborough Road

2-3: The park where they have the birds in cages - on Cambridge Rd, end of Lord St.

3-4: The site of the old Matti & Tisso, Lord St (coming up from Liverpool Rd, before Scarisbrick)

4-5: Ainsdale united Reform Church, where I was Christened:

Bonus Ball: Wayfarer's Gallery.

Feel free to investigate and take me to any or all of these places."

I am very much looking forward to my weekend. I will be documenting it here and at sundaywithme.blogspot.com.

'Recent Falls' at Volume.

Last night (Friday, 20th June), performed 'Recent Falls' a 12-minute lecture, followed by a five-minute performance, before an audience of, perhaps, forty people at 'Volume' the quarterly night run by Sometimes... and friends. Also on the bill was Rachel Nelson & A Middle Sex, Joanna Brown, and Claire Blundell Jones.

'Recent Falls' was a continuation of the work I am making concerning a stranger, my father, before he was my father.

Extracts from 'Recent Falls':

Article 4


In the picture he’s about 23, five years my junior. He has jumped from a cliff into the sea, and I tend to suppose that the picture documents the precise moment when a jump turns into a fall. Little is known, since little is remembered. From the picture we cannot know that this was in France, somewhere near St. Tropez, that the year is 1958 or that the photographer was named either Wilf, or Joe (probably Joe). And we cannot know how steep the drop would be, nor can we know he survived it.
He is not yet my father. He has not yet married my mother. (This is even earlier – if we still abide by earlies and lates), he has not yet married a first time and has not yet begotten an eldest son or an only daughter.
Not yet my father, and in this respect, a stranger to me.
I remember asking: Who is the man in the photograph?

Article 5
Sometime in late infancy or early childhood he asked his Father: “what time is it”? He had already learnt something of time, but did not yet know how to tell it.

At length the Father replied –

“Sometimes, I’d like to write a book,
A book all about time
About how it doesn’t exist,
How the past and the future
Are one continuous present.
I think that all people – those living
Those who have lived
And those who are still to live – are alive now.
I should like to take that subject to pieces
Like a soldier dismantling his rifle” (Yevgeny Vinukurov, Cited in John Berger's 'and our faces, my heart, brief as photos', 1984, p21).

“Time is a timeless concept and has led mankind badly astray, especially as we record age, which we do from the time of birth, and yet (...) it is not elapsed time that really concerns us, but time remaining – and that is something we cannot know. A youth of fifteen who will die tomorrow is older by far than an elder of seventy-three who has ten years remaining to him. So we should not concern ourselves with time, except as we must arrange meetings or journeys by public convenience”.
And then he looked at his watch, and gave his son the time" (adapted from Garrison Keillor, Wobegone Boy, 1996, p253).

Article 9 (Coda):
Before he jumped the man turned to his friend and said: “There is not one atom in this body that has not been forged in the furnace of the sun. Here I stand – I cannot do differently. God help me. Amen!”
On the way down, he was heard to yell: "So far, so good, so far, so good, so far, so good…” the litany stopping short on its thirteenth repeat, with the announcement of a loud splashing sound, which itself stopped abruptly, with the announcement of a deep silence that seemed to be matched only by the stillness of the air.




top-to-bottom:
Just before the lights went down
Projection of Yves Klein, "Saut Dans le Vide"
Me in my father's vintage swimwear,just before I jumped
(Note: these are not the actual trunks in the 1958 photo,
by all accounts they perished in 1962).

* * *

Further to this - some lovely surprises. Joanna Brown and I have been writing back and forth to each other - sporadically - since we met at the Goat Island Symposium at the end of February, beginning of March. She incorporated one of my texts into her show and, if truth be told, my Rules and Regs show, 'First Classic of the Season' and 'Recent Falls', were both responses to an work I had not yet seen, her 'We Will Mend on the Highways'.
In response to this experience of not-knowing Jo or her work generally, or her show specifically, I wrote a text, which she adapted slightly:

"1. Photograph

I learnt the name of the show, and found one photograph, in which I observe the following details: your hand pressed flat to floor; elbow pointing upwards; head up (eyes looking slightly to the left), and I notice the reflection of your hand in the floor.

It is 10.09 on the 27th March, and for me, for now, the performance is a short distance, enfolded, between the fingertips and the nape of the neck. If I look again at the photograph I cannot be sure what movement led into this stillness, or what movement led out of it.

When I tried this stillness for myself I held it a while, long enough to notice how I was moving, trembling under my own weight, tense at the top of my spine. When I got up I felt sure that the performance began and ended in the humming feeling that joined up my wrist and the top of my spine. I held this position for 23 minutes. 23 to think this thought through.

Look at me I'm dancing".

London Dogsitting Residency at my friend Christine's (this Weekend)

Good News!
I am off to The Big Smoke on Friday. My friend Christine Entwistle (who also did Rules and Regs) has asked me to look after her dog, Spanner, and I have accepted, since Spanner is a dog I greatly admire. We will have the full run of Hampstead Heath, and I will be furnished with a per diem for tube fares and ale. I am thoroughly looking forward to it.
I shall be treating it as a residency, and have set myself the brief to compile a two-page piece of writing for use in future lectures.

I will post extracts up here of whatever text I write, on my arrival back on Tuesday.

x

'Recent Falls' at Volume, 20th June 2008

I will be performing a new performance lecture, called 'Recent Falls', as part of 'Volume', a platform organized by my old mates Sometimes.... 'Volume' will be an evening of performances, lectures, music, installation and audio-visual Art, featuring:

MEZZANINE / BAR:
Beach Fuzz (Warm, Ever-loving Psychedelics)
Karl Sveinsson & Matt Ashworth (Men's Doubles: Fingerstyle Guitar)
Anna Wilson & Swen Steinhauser (Mixed Doubles: Careworn Songs)
Paul Dilworth (Audio/Visual Installation)

THEATRE:
Claire Blundell Jones: 'Tumbleweed' (Lecture)
Joanna Brown 'Mending' (Performance)
Simon Bowes 'Recent Falls' (Performance Lecture)
Rachel Nelson & A Middle Sex MeMe (Choreographed Movement and Improvised Sound)

WORKSPACE:
Paul Stapleton: 88 High-Fives (Video)
Sometimes... Co Videos
Plus Special Guest Discjockeys
£4 / 3 Concessions & Emergency Artists' Rates

* We will also be releasing our field recordings anthology 'Happened Upon with Microphones, a Volume II', and 'A First Anthology of Short Recordings' priced £2.50 each or both for £4.00

Performance Lecture, Theater Freiburg, 10.5.08, and Return

Mariella and I delivered our bilingual lecture in a small white space, the Kammerbuhne (Chamber Stage) at 20.30 uhr Samstag, 10.5.08, to a small audience (9 people). On the stage we had white cushions for the audience to sit in and we weaved about amongst them whilst we gave the talk.
The lecture was open to the public and ticketed (3 euros), but we expected most of our audience to be colleagues of Tommy's from Theater Freiburg (the German StadtTheater [City Theater] system is crazy, Theater Freiburg employs 500 people - do any art institutions in the UK support that many employees?) The director currently kept the whole cast of the current production in rehearsal effectively guaranteeing us no audience.
It was a big challenge to translate the texts we wrote into a form of German that would be nuanced and subtle enough to do justice to the sources we were working from - Emmanuel Levinas, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Berger, Florian Schneider, Nancy Roth, Goat Island.
It has been good for Mariella and I to develop the lecture but neither of us knows where it will go next. I will put up the full text of the lecture as a .pdf on www.archive.org when I get back to Hayfield.

Flight back was fine, got into Stansted about 5.15, at Livererpool Street for 7, and in Hampstead for about 8ish. And who should sat drinking rose at my old friend Christine (from Rules and Regs)'s house but the legendary Alice Booth, down to the Big Smoke for a preview of Kellerman with Imitating the Dog.
Christine took me for a tour of Hampstead pubs, but it seems that on Sundays most places round here observe the half-ten Sunday closing - punctually. Went back to Christine's for Grappa and a chinwag, to the strains of mostly listening to Roy Orbison and the Killers.
Woken up by a bumblebee stuck in the windowsill - watching Frasier, drinking my first proper cup of tea in a week (all the Schwartztee in Freiburg couldn't get close to a Yorkshire Gold), wondering when Ms. Entwistle might surface. Spanner the dog is waiting for her breakfast, but quietly.

Wanderungen: Walk to Schwabentor and back.

Today Mariella and I delivered a series of short lectures and led a set of exercises during a walk from Theater Freiburg to Schwabentor, a hill at the edge of the Schwarzewald (Black Forest), with participants.

The walk was structured with the following Forschungsregeln (Research Rules):

1. Talk to every person here. Push past the first uncomfortable silence.
2. Stop to listen. When you want to stop to listen, ask the group to ‘Halt’ ('stop'). We will ‘halten’ 'stop', and listen in ‘Stille’ until you direct us to ‘wiederbeginnen’ 'begin').
3. Look through the telescope*. We will provide you with a fifty –cent piece for your viewing pleasure.
4. Consider yourself a researcher. During the walk, write down four things that you observed about yourself, others, or the places around you. These will remain private and you will take these home with you as a memento.



We delivered the following texts, adapted from the November version of our Hillwalking lecture:

I.
Our way is mapped. But the map is just sheet music. We might learn to decipher and translate the gradients, the inclines and declines that imply a sense of harmony in visual dynamics, and a foreseen past, a foreseen present and a foreseen future. But the eye cannot see precisely how the body will feel in the unforeseeable future, the unforeseeable present and the unforeseeable past.

The mathematician will tell us that there are 1,760 yards to a mile, and that there are 5,280 feet to a mile, but that is incorrect, there are two feet, if I am walking on my own; four if there two of us. The maths is very simple: Multiply the number of feet by the number of beating hearts (this varies for bipeds, quadrupeds, and so on).
There is no such thing as a mile, and there is no such thing as a kilometer. We will not be measuring the walk at all, but if we did, we would measure it in the comfortable distances of our purposeful strides walked into many distances.

We will locate the walk in the space between the heel of one foot and the toe of the other. But this will also prove to be inadequate to an idea – or a love – of walking. The verb ‘to walk’ will, eventually, exercise itself beyond restraint and surpass the nouns and adjectives, which move slowlier and more deliberately.

II.
Acconci: Following Piece –

In 1969, the artist Vito Acconci decided to follow strangers (covertly) around the streets of New York: ‘until he or she disappeared into a private place where Acconci could not enter…following could last a few minutes…or four or five hours’ He did this throughout the month of October. His record from the 14th October’s reads:

5.00PM: 6th Ave & 4th St, SW corner: Man with black attaché case - he walks S on 6th Ave.
5:01PM: He goes down into IND subway station, 6th Ave & 3rd St, and stands on uptown side, upper platform.
5:08PM: He boards F train uptown.
5:50PM: He gets off at 169th St, Jamaica; he stands on line at bus stop, Hillside Ave & Homelawn St.
5:59PM: He boards 17A bus; line is too long and I’m too far behind him – I can’t get on.

Acconci began to consider the act of following as a kind of participation or complicity with others. He said: ‘I made my art by using other people’ / Acconci, who until then had been active as a poet, started as of 1969- to himself perform what he would otherwise have written : He said:

I used to know what my ground was—this piece of paper in front of me. Now I didn’t have that ground anymore; now I was in real space (…) I started by taking a system that already existed in the world and tried to tie myself into it: if there was a person walking on the street, I would follow that person. Decisions of time and space were out of my hands […]
Writers tend to consider Following Piece as a text, but we might prefer to consider it as a structured improvisation, a non-contact improvisation, with element of chance, that allowed Acconci bind his time to their time.

III.

Research:
The writer and philosopher Maurice Blanchot offers us a definition of research that includes ‘fascination’, ‘waywardness’, ‘distraction’ - ‘to research’ is to renounce ‘the desire for certainty’ (Peters, 2003, ijea.asu.edu/v4n2), that:

Searching and error would be akin. To err is to turn and return, to give oneself up to the magic of the detour (Blanchot, 1993, p26 and 1982, p238), turning [is] the very movement of research (Blanchot, 1993, p3, 8, 25),

That research reverts or proceeds:

always [to] the point of beginning, at the point where the search must begin again in the face of, and from within, the unknown (Peters, 2003, ijea.asu.edu/v4n2).

IV.
Drifting:
In 2006, researchers Lawrence Bradby and Carl Lavery made a walk through Norwich, later responding to the walk through a series of letters published as Moving through place: itinerant performance and the search for a community of reverie .
In the foreword to the letters, they made a point of calling Norwich ‘a City they both knew well,’ but their letters suggest that our increasing familiarity with place necessarily involves a receptiveness to the strangeness of its changeability, that is, to the lives lived there.
As Lavery suggested: ‘the body is a tool which both registers what is there and rewrites it’ (Lavery, 2007, p45), that is: our transient movements through place provoke an intellectual and physical response, our response leaves its trace (even if it is only the prints left by our footsteps). Bradby and Lavery’s written correspondence affirms walking as a form of attentiveness to an environment.
For Lavery, Walking…‘permits us to experience place as something ephemeral and poetic, that is to say, as something lived’ (Lavery, 2007, p45). He wrote:

When I drift, I’m not interested in gazing at things; I pay attention to noises, to feelings, to smells, to intuitions. I want to pick things up. This sensitivity to atmospherics and materials is what allows the drifter to take the (…) temperature of a given place or site (Lavery, 2007, p45).

Lavery describes our attentiveness to place as something active. He offers an alternative to the distanced spectatorship that is often taken be synonymous with ‘critical engagement’.
What Lavery underscores, is that walking puts us into a direct and often-indeterminate relationship with our surroundings, where each movement we make and its corresponding sensation allows us not only to see, but to smell, touch, taste and hear place. After walking with Bradby, Lavery wrote:

This experiment in itinerant performance is not scientific
Walking is doing, a practice, a performance, a way of witnessing (Lavery, 2007, p46).

Our walk took two hours and was a lot of fun. In the shade from the trees at the foot of the hill we did an exercise that I devised with an old friend, Kate Rowles, in 2004, called 'Look Me in the Eye'. Participants look each other in the eye one-by-one.
The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote:

I don’t know if one can speak of a phenomenology of the face, since phenomenology describes what appears. So, too I wonder if one can speak of a look turned toward the face, for the look is knowledge, perception. I think rather that access to the face is straightaway ethical. You turn towards the other as an object when you see a nose, a forehead, a chin, and you can describe them. The best way of encountering the other is not even to notice the colour of his eyes! When one observes the colour of the eyes one is not in a social relationship with the other. The relation to the face can surely be dominated by [visual / analytic / thematic] perception, but what is specifically the face is what cannot be reduced to that…The face is signification, and signification without context’ (Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 1985, p85-6, my emphasis).

I have felt familiar with this text for a long time and always disagreed with Levinas on that issue - that we may turn towards the object as we notice details. The notion of 'face' as 'visage' is discounted by Levinas. In my PhD thesis I attempted to clarify Levinas' position on 'access to the face' by suggesting that the experience of the face of the other person can be twinned with the experience of heaing their voice.
I could thematize the responses as smiles, frowns, tear in the corner of someone's eye, quiet laughter, trembling nerves and, very often, a feeling of peace. But many things still escape me, so that they cannot even be thought of as questions.
I hope that the memories that I have of your faces will comfort me as your faces comforted me as I looked and really saw them.
Some moments, then, heartwarming and vital. Today I felt that I have a lot to be thankful for.



Notes:
*There are two coin-operated telescopes at an old artillery battery from World War I.

Chester to Freiburg:

A day late in posting: Tuesday 6th: Got up about 05.00, having watched the whole third episode of 'Peep Show' on google-vid, two hours patchy sleep, so a kind of dullache in the head all day. Started the day off by coughing up something disgusting - think I'm getting a bad throat. Set off for 6.30, in Crewe for 6.55, 7.10 Birmingham 8.10, Stansted for 11.50. The plane ride (my first in ten years! Ten years!) was a bit rough going up and a bit rough going down. It sort of simulated the feelings of a classic bout of frights, but, paradoxically, this kept me quite balanced. Bought myself Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity' in paperback yesterday (WHSmth in Picadilly is a bit empty), so spent the flight mostly hiding in that, wondering if I could hear properly or not.
Mariella keeps taking pictures of me on trains, so might post the best of them up here. It just occurred to me that we have a lot of work to do, two days now before we do our walk / workshop. And I am acquiring a cold, so my English will be that much more impenetrable to our Audience.
15.27 (DeutchTime): Arrived in Freidrichshafen Airport 15.50 (approximately). The first things I notice - a clearer sky, better air.Got the train to Basle (2hrs approx), where we ate a nice, small, expensive meal (about £20 for two starters! - Switzerland is not part of the European Union, hence their terrific prices!). We got into Freiburg about 10.00 and waited for Tommy outside a bar, balmy evening, couple of nice lagers, then back to Tommy's. 00.30-01.00: Watched Episode 1, Series 4 of Peep Show, slept fitfully.

x X x

Wanderungen: Performance Lecture in Freiburg, Germany 10.5.08

Good News -

I am off to Freiburg in Germany to deliver a performance lecture next week, with my friend and collaborator Mariella Greil. Wanderungen will reflect on various aspects of our artistic practice, walking, dancing, listening, intertwining text and movement, and Mariella will have the difficult job of translating me into German. We are flying out on Tuesday the 6th and will be back on Sunday the 11th. The Lecture has been organized by dance artist Tommy Noonan, as part of a series.

Our Peformance schedule looks like this:

Friday 9th May: 10AM-12: Wanderungen (Workshop): Guided walk in the hills around Freiburg for 5-to-15 participants.

Saturday 10th May: 8.3PM: Wanderungen (Lecture), Kammerbühne / Freiburg.

For Deutsch-detailz go to: http://www.pvc-tanz.de/~programm/projekte/72 .

I am currently in Chester (until Friday 2nd) devising material for the lecture with Mariella. We had a good day yesterday coming up with movement stuff. Our best moment came from working with the following text, cut from the first of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past / If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable / What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present / Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened (…) My words echo thus, in your mind / *** / At the still point of the turning world / Neither flesh nor fleshless / Neither from nor towards; at the still point / there the dance is / But neither arrest nor movement / And do not call it fixity / Where past and future are gathered / (...) / Except for the point, the still point / There would be no dance, and there is only the dance / I can only say: there we have been, but I cannot say where:

With my Rules & Regs money I wanted to buy a swanky new North Face Jacket, but I judged myself too poor. I settled for a swanky new North Face bag, a big black one, with enough room for my computer and traveling gear:

AND - a new pair of knickers for my MacBook:

The next morning, unsated, I downloaded Glenn Jones' album 'This is the Wind that Blows it Out' (2004, Strange Attractors Audio House), which is becoming a family favourite. You can hear some of the stuff that Strange Attractors put out here, and you can hear / download probably the catchiest track on the album, 'Fahey's Car' here, a thrilling three and a half minutes of rattling good slide guitar, and further grist for my John Fahey obsession. I have been trying for a quiet weekend but there have been a few outstanding little jobs to do before I submit my thesis amendments. In between I also downloaded the first series of Peep Show and am impatiently willing on series 2. There is 69 minutes to go for episode 1. Waiting.

Rules & Regs Process

Wow -
Rules and Regs O.V.E.R. (for myself, Christine, Neil, Simone, Eleni and Bethanie at least) so: Big Thanks to Seth at R&R and Matt, the legendary Alice Booth, Julia, Simon, Dom, Steph and Dave at the Nuffield Theatre for their help, support and general good spiritedness.
Rather than do lots of little blogs (t-h-r-o-w-i-n-g... got a bit neglected in the month of April). I thought I'd try and re-create the structure of the final showings 25th-26th April, together with a few images, where appropriate.

Here is a picture from Friday's Rehearsal. The cones-in-the-ears bit didn't make it into the show, but anyway:


Photos: Kristian Wilding.

FULL TEXT FINAL DRAFT:

Bowes (&Son): First Classic of the Season –

/ The Audience walk in - I am playing a small accordion.

I found this Accordion at my Landlady Jean’s house. She said I could borrow it.
The story went that when she was growing up her oldest brother Peter worked at the Docks in Liverpool, and he had a friend, Franz, from Germany, a sailor, who stayed with the family whenever his ship came in.
Once when Franz was staying he brought out his little Accordion for Jean to play. Her curiosity about the instrument sparked something in him and he decided to make her a present of it.
Now when I play it, I think about the unfamiliarity of the instrument, how it hurts hand to hold it and, despite how light it is, how heavy it feels.
I think about Franz sailing wherever he sailed, and I wondered what he did without the Accordion, and then I think about him listening to all the music that Jean was playing, hearing the notes, the melodies, not even imagining them, but actually hearing them, far beyond the Northern Sea.

/ Introduction:

And now: Good evening / afternoon, and welcome to today’s lecture; which concerns, for the most part, the passing of time. We were rabbits and dogs, the passing time; we were kestrels and starlings, the passing of time, let’s drink to that, the passing of time.

/ Motherhood, Boyhood, and the book of the birds -

In the year of my birth my mother kept a book detailing the following weights: March the 25th: 2 lbs 6 ounces / April the 25th/26th: 2 lbs, 14 ounces / May the 15th: 3lbs 5 1/2 ounces, along with the details of her encounters with bird life, plant life and other phenomena of the Natural World. After twenty blank pages, the book recommences on the 7th August 1990. Now we are ten:

“Out walking. Today we spotted a kestrel circling below us, but steadily gaining height. We followed the path towards the river and a little while later were stopped in our tracks by a bird suddenly falling, like a stone from the sky. Was this the same bird that had flown below us just half an hour before? Speechless – yes – amazing, it was so stunned that I was able to walk right up to it, and slowly fold my jumper over its back, and wrap it up. It was so scared that its beak was wide open, but no sound came. We decided to take her home. Something or someone might find it, and…goodness knows what would happen then.
When we arrived at the Owl Centre they told us that kestrel had a sprained wing; that had we of left her, she would surely have died. They let us take the kestrel home to nurse her. And we have decided to call her Princess.”

Sunday August the 23rd:

“A lovely sunny morning quite calm and still with a little mist lingering around the hills. We carried the box across the bridge at the foot of the mountain and Simon pulled the string to open the door of the hutch. She stayed in the cage a few minutes, and then, suddenly, suddenly, flew straight out of the box. As we walked back across the bridge and down the road, she crossed over ahead of us and wheeled back towards the hills. As she flew, Simon started singing a little song

Little Birdie, Little Birdie / Give to me your song / I'm a short time for to stay here / And a long time when I'm gone / I’d rather be in some dark hollow / where the sun refuse to shine / than to see some other man love you / when I want to call you mine / Little Birdie, Little Birdie / What makes you fly so high / It's because I've a true heart / That I don't care when I’ll die"

/ Promenade –

In the picture he is about eighteen, ten years my junior, looking smart, handsome, walking down the promenade with his father, who looks at the camera, with some kind of annoyance, discomfort, or sadness. That was Bridlington, though / Brid / and that was my father, not me.

He said “The Sea Hugs and will not let go” [FN1], but that was Carl Sandburg, not me. He had three questions, and he kept on asking them: “Who am I / Where am I going / Where have I been”. He had to keep on asking because the answers kept changing. Carl Sandburg is sometimes a book, sometimes a song, sometimes a train ride and sometimes a thought of the sea.

/ Dawn’s Early –

We stayed the night in a hotel, drinking ourselves to a troubled sleep. The following morning we were out at first light. I looked out for you, between an early sunrise and a last morning star. Far away were the twinkling night-lights of Vreedenburg and sleepy villages on the coast below.
There were five white dice, and I couldn't even throw a six. Looking down, I saw that each of the dots was a full stop that comes at the end of a name. Peter Bos. Ronnie Krepel. Hayo den Boest. Frank van den Bos. Car Gout.
They are standing by a memorial to the fisherman of Scheveningen, 1914-1919, which bears the legend: "There they are, where there is neither night nor mist")

Heart-Heart-Binoculars-Heart-Heart-Binoculars-Heart-Heart-Binoculars.

/ Interview –

He said: "A man and his son are stood on places and spots which don’t exist anymore". That was Drederich Diedrichsen, in a review of a record called Roots and Locations by Car Gout’s band, Trespassers W [FN2]. I found the record in Oxfam whilst making this show. When I decided to buy the record I also decided not to listen to it until afterwards, but reading the liner notes I learned that it was a concept album about a man and his son spending time together a city, The Hague. Immediately, I presumed the father to be my father’s father, William, Bill, and the son to be my father, Our Sam, Peter, Dad.

/ I Was at School -

My first performance was twenty two years ago, hiding under bird-hat made from red baseball cap with the letters B-M-X, yellow beak from an old Weetabix box, brown cloth for feathers. I had to ask them, each of them:

Where was is that we were together? / Who were you that I lived with, walked with? / The brother, the sister, the friend? / If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack / One glance from your eyes / and my life would be yours [FN3]

/ Lecture on Carl Sandburg –

Part 1. Minutes, Seconds, and the Times of our Lives: Carl Sandburg considered himself a fine orator and like all fine orators, had opinions on everything and could not be made to shut up.

He would jump to his feet, grab his lapels, and make a speech, even if they had only asked for the time of day. He would say, ‘Time is a timeless concept and has led mankind badly astray, especially as we record age, which we do from the time of birth, and yet (...) it is not elapsed time that really concerns us, but time remaining, and that is something we cannot know. A youth of fifteen who will die tomorrow is older by far than an elder of seventy-three who has ten years remaining to him. So we should not concern ourselves with time, except as we must arrange meetings or journeys by public convenience.’ And then he would look at the watch and give them the time [FN4]

Part 2. The Landlocked Mountaintop and the Salt-Salt Sea: Carl Sandburg was “born” in Galesburg Ohio, on the 6th of January 1878, and “died” in Flat Rock, North Carolina, 22nd July 1967.
Both of these settlements were, and remain landlocked, but home, between 1945 and 1967, was a large estate named Connemara, where he lived with a wife and daughters.
At Connemara, Carl Sandburg had an entire Mountaintop to roam, and enough solitude to write. Connemara is derived from the Gaelic Con Mhac: of the sea.
Carl Sandburg fished but was never a fisherman, he sailed, but was never a sailor. So I think that his seas, like ours, were surely imagined.

Part 3. Silence

(...)

Carl Sandburg, I have something to say to you: ‘Wäschezettel’, an ordinary word in a language neither of us can speak. It is a word that was found by some children, playing in an abandoned building in the Netherlands after the Second World War. It is a word found after the danger had passed (Kerchief drop).

/ I Pictured a Story –

MY FATHER Walks Onstage Behind Me, I say:

He's coming into focus / notices his unsteady feet on foreign soil / While my father is still in Bridlington I am in Vreedenburg, I am in Scheveningen, I have been standing there for years on end, whilst his sun was set, done for going, going gone.

PHOTOGRAPHER photographs us in the pose from the Bridlington photo.

DAD peels off from me, and walks across the sea to the dance floor.

/ Last Chance for a slow dance –

I put on THE MUSIC: Memories of You, by Benny Goodman. Dances slowly.

The music cuts. He dances for thirty seconds more. Stops.
MY DAD pulls out his binoculars, looks up.

I roll my trousers up, strip off my tie, jacket and shirt.

I take the bird hat out of the suitcase, and put on the bird hat.

I put on the MUSIC: 'I Was at School' by My Two Toms.
I do my little jumping dance.



* * *
FOOTNOTES: FN1: Sandburg, C: 'The Sea Hold'; FN2: www.fictionalize.org/index.php?2006/03/01/5-trespassers-w; FN3: Monologue from closing sequence: ‘The Thin Red Line,’ 1998, Dir / Screenplay: Terence Malick, Based on the Novel by James Jones, screened 5.11.07, ITV. 11.05PM – 02.00AM, 6.11.07 (recorded on VHS), played, heard, transcribed: 6.11.07, 9.25PM approximately. FN4: Keillor, G: 'Lake Wobegone Boy', 1998, p253.

* * *

TEXTS ADAPTED FROM: Jacques Brel / Sandra Bowes / John Hammond / Roscoe Holcombe.

Rules and Regs Week 2

Hungover it's awful, but:

1.
In Oxfam the other day I happened upon a record, a fine-looking, very well packaged record, the artwork reminded me of Do Make Say Think's Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn, but it is actually called Roots and Locations, by a Dutch group, Trespassers W. It cost me £4.99

I looked in the Gatefold Sleeve and found: a / A record; b / A press release booklet; c / A Catalog of Trespassers W releases; d / A booklet the size of the sleeve with Lyrics and artwork; e / an A-5 sized photograph of the band, printed on AGFA photo paper,with the following written by hand:

///

photo: Ada Fesever

Trespassers W
at 'The Memorial'
at The Hague

left -> right:

Peter Bos
Ronnie Krepel
Hayo den Boest
Fran van den Bos
Car Gout

///

The Memorial says 1914-1919, and at the last line of it reads:
ZIJ ZIJN DAAR - WAAR NACHT NOCH NEVEL IS

The album artwork, is a score for my performance, a structure that is new to me.

The record is a concept album about "the city of The Hague set in the fifties, set around the story of a father and son". Then it says something about politics. It makes me think of that picture of my father, and his father (at Bridlington, not Blackpool. Brid). In the Roots and Locations Lyrics:

FROM 'THE MAN' "Until he turned around and found out / Until he turned around and found out" Then it says something about time. FROM 'THE PARK' "The bewildered child stormed into the waste ground (...) circled (...) three times / And then leaving" FROM 'THE ROOM' "Soundless movements (...) lines, white on paler white" FROM 'HEXIO PERFECTO DE LA LUXE' "Here come the pretty waitresses / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, La La La La La La La La La La La La / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, La La La La La La La La La La La / Sh-boom, Sh-boom, Life could be a dream, sweet".

2.
Researching Trespassers W I found an interview with a member of the band (I think it was with Cor Gout), and the interviewee put in an image of a text of a song he had been working on (click on the picture to see it big and legible):



















(the image comes from www.fictionalize.org/index.php?2006/03/01/5-trespassers-w).

The Interviewer asked him:

"Do you sometimes have what I call a feeling of "belonging" (when you feel totally well, your feet standing firmly on the ground and your head buzzing with ideas, just "in tune"?

He replied:
Once again: the sunny day in the Scheveningen Wood feeling. Also: on a stage, when everything seems to fall in its place and things seem to be going on just by themselves. Or: riding on my bike, hearing the voices from the houses and the pavements tell me all sorts of secrets. Or: late at night, when segments of imagination come together in a totality with a ‘sound’ and a ‘rhythm’.

3.
In the Carl Sandburg Poem, The Sea Hold, the one that I edited down, I cut the following line

"I am a loon about the sea,
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm".

I think the five men that Carl Sandburg had the fish fry with were, left -> right:

Peter Bos
Ronnie Krepel
Hayo den Boest
Fran van den Bos
Car Gout.

4.
In Neil's workshop (Tuesday Afternoon, 9.4.08) we were asked to write these cards to each other, things to get us out of trouble, difficulty: observations, commentaries, bits of advice, imaginings, situations. Two favourites: "You are passionate about all aspects of bird life but in particular, migration. You await the return of a favourite" and Simon: Do as you would be done by". And you have to ask: why this advice, why me? I am reminded, again, of my wrongs.

5.
In Simone's workshop, we walked outside on the grounds of an old house by a field overlooking the motorway and the railway line. We were given a directive that said: Find 3 places to inhabit and 3 ways of inhabiting them, for up to 5 minutes each. Write for 1-2 minutes in response.

1 / fit in-or-around; 2 / blur the edges or merge; 3 / the body leaves a trace

In response to 2 / I spin your stillness, pull your crookedness into my bones and your decaded growing pains ache the muscles of my right arm (...) Look at me I'm dancing. Five crows, or black birds any way, soar at me as I outshine them. Leaves of grass. Leaves of grass.

Rules and Regs Week 1.

Hey Hey -

Nearly at the end of Week 1, so what do we know? When we turned up we were interviewed on video separately, and then given little brown envelopes which contained the rules, which are:

-Spend 24 Hours awake in Blackpool
-Find/create a structure that is new to you
-The body must be contained or bound
-Bring the outside in.

I read part of a little book by Peter Kreeft called The Sea Within: Waves and the Meaning of All Things (2006, St. Augustine's Press). It purported to be philosophy but the more I read it the more it seemed be be theological, and I'm starting to shy away from it a bit, but I read this quote of somebody called Carl Sandburg, who said: "the sea hugs and will not let go". I looked up Carl Sandburg on wikipedia (like a true scholar), and found that Carl Sandburg was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist, and on a site for the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, it said:

Carl Sandburg's Legacy Touches Our Lives

Carl Sandburg spent a lifetime exploring what it meant to be an American and asked the eternal questions, "Who am I, where am I going and where have I been?"... He did this through poetry, song, lectures, writing and lasting friendships with kindred spirits.

I'm making it my business so explore who I am, where I am going, and where I have been. I don't know a definitive answer to either one of these, but perhaps a being-24-hours-awake-in-Blackpool-finding-or-creating-a-structure-that-is-new-to-me-being
-contained-or-bound-and-bringing the-outside-in might further complicate these persistent and worrisome questions.

Socially, not a bad little week. I am friendly with Neil and Simone and Alice already, but meeting Chris, Eleni and Bethany was a pleasure. We didn't spend much time together this week but next week we have to do workshops for each other. Went out last night (Thursday) ended up getting a bit more than tipsy with Alice and Chris, and I've been paying the price most of the day. We are blogging our doings at nuffieldtheatre.blogspot.com.

Sunday with Me: 30.3.07: with Ian Abbot.

Ian Abbott has just left, an hour or so ago. Last night (Saturday 29th, Ian seemed to enjoy the fish pie, then we went to The Sportsman, which has been refurbished, then the Royal, then to the Pack Horse talking about the state of the performance scene in the North West.
Waking early, I had a cup of tea in bed before getting up and making smoked salmon and scrambled egg. We ended up not walking Kinder, as we were advised that bad weather was due in the afternoon so, instead, we headed up past the campsite through Kinder woods and up to Mount Famine. Near the top of mount famine we met two Mountain Rescue chaps on a training exercise with a huge radio aerial, and got chatting a bit. They recommended a route to us and we found the wet boggy bit they warned us about (Ian almost lost a boot) and the had fun jumping over the waterlogged parts (Ian can jump further than me, we found), before getting very blustered until we turned off to near Jacob's ladder. We pressed on to Edale Cross (where my father left Paul and I on our Sunday 3.4.06), before dropping back own into Hayfield. Ian was (and is always) good company, kind to a fault.
A journey of 7 to 7 1/2 miles, a steady walk, before returning for pasta and sauce and a read of the papers. It didn't rain a drop, so we could have done Kinder after all.
I gave the stills camera to Ian, I will upload a select few of them sometime soon.

Forthcoming: Sunday with Ian Abbott

Good News!

Ian Abbott, with whom I spent a fantastic Sunday traveling through Devon on 22.10.06, is coming up for a second Sunday on 30.3.08. He will arrive on the Saturday evening "give or take 30 mins of 6pm" and we will be having fish pie for tea before going for a couple of pints of ale. On the Sunday morning we will walk up Kinder Scout and be brightened by the exercise. If you follow this blog you might remember that Kinder Scout is where Mariella Greil and I walked in preparation for our lecture last November, in entirely abysmal weather.

Sometimes...Presents Volume: 13th March 2008

Sometimes... Presents: Volume. First Quarter. Spring. 13th March 2008 at greenroom, Whitworth St. West. Admission will be £FREE and the festivities will last 8PM-Midnight.

I am performing as Fare-Well's, singing a few Old-Timey Songs, Hymns, and Dan Amos covers, from 9PM.

Also on the bill is lo-fi vocal & drone from Roses, with Pachuco and Maroogally, disc-jockeying with their usual panache.

From Sometimes... with Love x X x

Selected for Rules & Regs, Nuffield Theatre, 31st March - April 26th

Rules and Regs is a month-long commission, where artists devise performances in response to a set of specially designed limitations (or parameters). Anyway, I got selected for the North-West one, which is keeping a smile on my face.

More details soon. Watch this space.

Invited Contributor to thelastperformance.org

Judd Morrissey, a USA-based artist, has invited me to contribute to thelastperformance.org, a web-based meditation on lastness, in response to performance company Goat Island's final work, 'The Lastmaker'.

In Judd's words, thelastperformance.org is an online collaborative writing project responding to Goat Island's decision to make a final work...writers, artists, critics, etc. are invited monthly to contribute two short pieces of writing (or responses in other media). At the end of the month, the invited contributors may decide to contribute again for the new month or to invite a new participant to replace them (completion expected sometime in 2009).

I have also been invited, with Robert Wilsmore, Giles Brokensha, Simon Piasecki, and Sarah Jane Bailes, to 'interrupt' Judd's performance (with Lucy Cash) at the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, Friday 29th February, Prior to Goat Island's Performance of the Lastmaker and the Goat Island Symposium, Sat 1 / Sun 2nd March.

FORTHCOMING: Application for Residency at the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home Accepted!

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is funded by Lena Simic and Gary Anderson of twoaddthree on 10% of their annual wage. The remit for The Institute extends to homemade/DIY aesthetics, family matters, home, private/public). In their words:

"The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is a space for dissenting the Capitalism of Culture. We are unhappy about how the culture is produced, consumed and digested here/now – Liverpool08, European Capital of Culture. We are interested in creating an alternative to the mainstream production and consumption of art and culture" - Email to Simon Bowes 7th Feb 2008.

I submitted the following Application in early February. I want to use The Institute as a base from which to explore the vanishing traces of my family's ties to the city of Liverpool and surrounds, and to develop a model of discrete works disseminated through performance lecture.

Application to the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, for Research and Development Period and subsequent Performance Lecture (Untitled) (expected timescale, March – April 2008)

Foreword: From the outset, note that this project is neither proposed not undertaken specifically manufacture or critically reflect upon dissent, although its aims, intentions, methodologies may contribute perspectives on the home (as place, journey, or place-as-journey) as a counterpoint to commercialization of Culture as an industry. My foremost aim will be to explore “home” in terms of spatial practices, outside of architectures, as I am seeking to perform a revaluation of the concept of home in my own practice, and to offer points of reference to the practical/theoretical remit of The Institute.

Proposal: 1. Born here, I don’t know the city. And we are disappearing, slowly. So: why “here” (why “home”)? The phrase recurs: “A family of absences”, and very little to trace them out. My granddad died recently, reminding us how little we will know, now, of our lineages and histories. Goodnight. God Bless. 2. To come here, now, is to arrive in a changing city. It is also, we might argue, to become the recipient, (perhaps not the beneficiary) of privately funded culture (you get of at Lime St., someone hands you a flyer for an event. You rush past, on your way to wherever, say “no thanks”). 3. I feel drawn-in, I need to come (back) here (but how?). There are lots and lots of things to see, lots and lots of things to do. I could go and visit Ben Johnson’s 170,000 hectare painting The Liverpool City Scape. Or I could embark, with other tourists, on the Magical History Tour (each of these implies a particular model of spatial practice relying, in the first instance, on an artist’s visual re-interpretation of the city or, I the second, interpretations of its history. Of course, neither experience is likely to bring me any closer to what I am seeking – home). 4. In respectful opposition, I propose for myself an different model of tourism, a personal and largely anonymous performance in response to the vanishing of our histories. 5. Acknowledging the wisdom of the saying Svakog gosta tri dana dosta! (Each guest is enough after three days), I propose to visit Liverpool for three days, using the residency as a base. From there I will plot a series of routes according to the barest of biographical about my family: street names, addresses of the back of photographs, places featured in the old stories, before I tour the City and surrounds. 6. Navigating according to an inherited, but rather outdated, social geography, the journeys will permit often tenuous or even fictional and misremembered correlations to dictate my course, in the full hope and anticipation of getting lost. The journeys will research (i.e., turn, re-turn, search-again) the impossibility of belonging to homes that were never mine. My aim will be to translate a sense of loss and lost-ness into a sense of reverie, hope, and optimism, as I record my journey, not only as a record of people and things past, but as a testimony to homes still occupied, journeys still made, lives still lived. 7. (Because All at Once Am I Several Stories) I will keep a notebook of events in relation to site, place, location and journey. 8. This research period will inform the development of a lecture, delivered one week later at The Institute, to an invited audience (Liverpool-based practitioners, Liverpool Hope Staff, Students?), before opening up the themes of home, familiar relations to general dialogue. 9. Budget: TRAVEL 2 x10.50 New Mills Central to Liverpool Lime St = £21.00, Buses round Liverpool: £7.50 / R&D (Liverpool) £5.22 x 8 = 41.60 x 3= £125 / WRITING / RESEARCH / LECTURE £5.22 x 8 = £41.60 TOTAL: £195.10.

Forthcoming: Pamphleteers!

Pamphleteers! is on-going research into: The Writing and Distribution of Tracts, Pamphlets, Broadsides, Printed Ephemera (and Other Zealousnesses).

The Activities of the Pamphleteers! will be Governed by The Following Rules:

1. Pamphlets (etc) will relate to particular geographies, of path, street, road, junction, station, etc, and will document events occurring within (or through!) particular sites, places, locations, or journeys, relating the events observed, heard (or otherwise witnessed or participated-in), based on durational observations of a few hours, days, weeks, or months.

2. Pamphlets (etc) will be distributed, for free, by hand, in the sites they document or reflect upon. They will not be made widely available digitally (but we reserve the right to archive these digitally, on-line at a later date).

3. Pamphlets (etc) will court "old world charm", and "new world optimism", and will look lovely (despite being cheaply produced).

29th-31st January: Making Space Follow-Up Residency at the Nuffield Theatre.

The Nuffield are very kindly supporting a short follow-up residency, in order to collate & categorize the Nuffield Theatre Photographic Archive. The photographs, found shoved in a box during last summer's Making Space project, are believed to have been taken by Ivor Dikes during the his time as Chief Technician.

The residency at the Nuffield will be prior to an interview with Ivor, scheduled for the 7th February, through which Ivor will remember and forget the histories of people and performances shown in the photographs.

November 2007: On Hillwalking (and Falling Over).

Mariella Greil (who had a Sunday with Me in August '06) invited me to do a guest Lecture for Chester University's Dance in Discourse Module. Since I am now surrounded by hills, I am learning to love my feet by walking short walks. In July of '07 I attended 'Unknown Terra-tories', run by Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon as part of ArtsAdmin's DIY4 series, artists running events for the benefit of other artists. A research into performance and landscape, 'Unknown Terra-tories' involved a 10-mile hike over Borrowdale in the Lake District.

Mariella and I walked up Kinder Scout in terrible weather. On the top there was very little visibility. Without exaggeration, we feared for our safety. I led us down from the Mountain.When we'd had a cup of tea and a sit down, we put together a lecture. Here are some of the extracts I wrote. Email me at simon_bowes@hotmail.co.uk and I'll send you a copy of the most recent version.

On Hillwalking (and falling over) (extracts):

6.
The weather is not mild and the temperature is not moderate.
You take my hand as we are pushed about by the wind.
The weather is not poor, or even bad.
It is shitty, shitty weather – crap weather – the worst weather
I have been in for
years.
Were it not for you I would be alone in this.
I know that the weather is happening to somebody else.

11.
Earlier –
We saw the jawbone and pelvis of a dead sheep.
Where are the other bones? (a mis-remembrance)
You photographed it. I don’t think you should photograph it.
I don’t tell you.
I wonder who will see the photograph and what they will think.
We saw an oblong box with a pipe of black, ridged plastic coming out of it,
cut into the hillside. There is a curved wire on the top of the box.
I put the fingers of my left hand round the wire and lift the lid.
I go ‘o’ and jump back, inside is a dead weasel, or a dead stoat.
I drop the lid down and
I can’t look at the body of the animal.
I am fighting against the thought of the dead animals
for the rest of the day (a response to a hope for the future).

12.
Earlier –
We see a swathe of burnt ground,
black against dark reds,
oranges and greens.
I explain to you that
the foliage on the ground is called ‘heather’.
The line goes:
In spring, the heather says ‘wish’,
In summer, the heather says ‘swish’,
In autumn, the heather says ‘die,’
In wintertime she dies.
Domino Pop.
I am still here (Charles Bukowski - Song for Sadists Without a Place to Sit Down)
I explain that in late summer they burn patches of the heather,
leaving large tracts of scorched ground. The ash on the
ground ensures renewed growth, keeps the land fertile.

28.
The edges do not blur.
We never become each other.
We do not flow.
But we flood.

29.
Simon Bowes, Mariella Greil...
and One Other Person
Wearing a yellow waterproof jacket
And shorts (if I remember)
Shorts!
Man
of 55, 60?
Carrying a stick
A mile and half from the end
Going the opposite direction.
“Is it windy up top”
“Unbelievable”
He does not stop long
And I do not think to ask
His Name.





top-to-bottom: Mariella video-ing a sign (for Snake Pass, Just after Twenty Trees),
Shooting Cabin (the white splotch In The Distance)
Burnt Heather (photo glitched on import)
Crossing the Stream, Kinder Scout.

Notes: Photo & Video documentation sparse due to poor conditions. Mariella's "to follow".

On Hillwalking (and falling over) was, partly, a response to Neil and Simon's weekend.Information about Neil Callaghan, Simone Kenyon and Tamara Ashley's work (which involves a lot of walking) can be found here: propeller, The Legs That Make Us and here: Thinking on Your Feet

September 2007: Making Space, Nuffield Theatre

Commissioned by the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, to do one-week's residency, resulting in a work-in-progress called performance / installation, "White Crosses", in which I explored vacated spaces and echoed them, saying:

White Crosses (extracts):

For Broken Chords
Six strings for John – Famed Classical Guitarist, who, according to Robert, was the first person to play here (and according to someone else) one of the first, perhaps in 1969, and for all those for whom the music has stopped.
And Red Wool for Juliet who said: “Perhaps the most interesting thing about our lives are that they are continuous, unbroken threads” (Pulls wool down).

For Making Spit
Because Nikki told us – If you spit in Vienna you stay in Vienna, that the trace you leave is more than a trace, that we are present and alive in every place we’ve ever been, and every fractional time we’ve ever lived out, so there are no goodbyes after all.

For Injuries and for Fainting
Nobody has died here. But Simon fell of his chair. And Alice and Sam both fainted. Alice also punched someone in the nose, but that was next door. Someone in the Audience was stabbed. And Keith blew himself up. And Gabby literally broke a leg and was carried from the stage.

For Future
… about the way you use your legs to stumble, or the time when we saw you twirl, and your footsteps all the way from the coast, or the hours you spent building this city and the seconds it took to destroy, or the thought of your body, sick, choking me (in the cold house), the sounds of the pennies raining, about when you couldn’t think of anything, couldn’t speak, and we watched you, for a long time, and cared, or the water you splashed on your foot for your landlady’s mother, or the walk out to the wild world, and the ragged verse you sang, and the water she poured on her hair, much like the water she poured on her hair, or the ice that came, or your drunken dance in glitter slash, or the two days of aching because you didn’t warm up, about the: you’re playing that sad song again… or: when you leave absolutely disconsolate you look your friend in the eye and do not speak until the next day because the show you just seen has taken away all your hope, or the way you played dead, or the time you flew like birds.

Of the Devising







Photos (by Me, Simon Bowes and Steph Sims) (top-to-bottom):
Poor Archive (selected photographs randomly scattered)
White Gaffer tape (25mm width, a scarcity!)
Red Wool (6 strings for John)
(and for Juliet)
Whistling into Flour for Station House Opera, Black Works, 1991)
Drums for Joy: (She's Lost Control: Curtis, Hook, Sumner, Morris)
Square (with line leading) for Spit in Vienna

Of the Performance:






Photos by Jristos Boukalas (top-to-bottom) -
The Diving Into The Swimming Pool
The Clearing Out Of The Costume Cupboard
Unidentified Body in Light
Sifting Through the Archive
Audience Members Clearing the Space (1)
Audience Members Clearing the Space (2)


/ / / / / / /

Thanks to:
Matt, Alice, Julia, Sarah, Graham, Bill, Viv, Chas, Bill, Robert, Andrew, Gerry, Shamshad, Sam, Lena, Michael, Mike, Kate, Jristos

June 2007: Wouldn't it be nice...

Sometimes... is an arts collective formed in 2000 in Preston, Lancashire, we fled to Manchester in 2005, and began running quarterly performance event Volume at greenroom.

In February of '07 we triumphed at greenroom's Instant Win Competition, where you get 60 seconds to pitch an idea for an art project, grand prize £500. Phil and Nathan said they wanted to buy 500 items of 500 people for £500 and exhibit the items for one month, so we spend two weeks bounding, lunging, trudging andtraipsing round the streets of Manchester meeting many kind, helpful and enthusiastic people.
We bought: a broken guitar, a jar of soil from Lanzarote (or: a jar of lanzarote), lots of smoking paraphernalia, lots of keyrings, a bra, clothes for a premature baby, train tickets, someone's bail release form ("I never went down for this"), a bicycle clip from a girl playing the mouth organ, a bicycle maintenance tool, a book to be proof-read, all sorts.



Other Documentation of the opening night of the exhibition, and of some radio interviews can be found here at our virb.com account.

Many thanks to everyone who sold us an item.

March 2007: Sunday with Me Performance Lecture

On 4.3.07 I gave a performance lecture to nine people in Hayfield Derbyshire, North West England.

Here are some extracts describing things that happened on the original 12 Sundays:

Lecture on Bridges:
30.4.06 I’m walking briskly in the very general direction of Castlefields, Manchester, after a year in the city I’m not sure where I’m going. At the Newsagents near Spar on Oxford Road I buy a birthday card for Robin (it has pictures of bears on), and I turn off at the Temple of Convenience, Towards Peveril of the Peak, past Briton’s Protection, remembering (…) I’m following scribbled directions, despite myself, despite my inherent mistrust in academic trends, because I want to say that walking is not a textual practice but here, come over here, my way feels quite legible.
I turn down the steps the narrow way by the old canal. As I walk by, not through, not on, the water I see a boy of about sixteen hanging off a wall, a sheer drop of ten or fifteen feet. There is a football floating below him, which he is trying to rescue. I shout at him to climb back up, because I can see back the way I came a point where the ball could be rescued. The boy ignores me, so I wait ten minutes or so whilst he eventually climbs back, feeling that I could not have left him. By the lock I see the Newsreader Jon Snow, who is out for the day with, presumably, his family. I imagined they were going somewhere very nice for lunch, and afterwards, with full bellies, maybe to the theatre (to sleep it off). I am very early. I write in the card Happy 46th Birthday, Robin, and wonder where we will go, what we will see, what we will hear, what we will say.

Lecture on Music:
15.10.06: You will take one of her loose hairs and wrap it around her finger. You will take the other end and wrap it around yours and you will both pluck it, exploring the sounds, making attempts toward rhythm and melody. You will while a few minutes before the hair breaks too short to be played. And she will say, that she is going to get ready. You will shower and wait on the landing standing at the window watching a flag snap in the wind. A few minutes will pass you will ask where she wants to go.

Lecture on Forgetting:
Yosuke shares his sandwich with me and we talk about our work, and after an hour we go for a walk. We are at a loss for what do, until we arrive at a set of stone steps leading up to the city walls. And our tourism is (inevitably) accomplished quite by accident as we walk around in a circle sharing the narrow walkways with families. We take each other’s picture on his camera phone by a turret. And by fortune we arrive at a little bookshop where he inquires about the English Poet Wordsworth, whom he read as a schoolboy in Japan. He tells me that he loves nature and that when he read Wordsworth he was very moved. He recites the poem by heart.
Weeks later we meet up at the Emergency platform in Manchester, where Mariella is performing. I ask him about the poem again, he recites it. I have an idea (which I keep to myself) to find the poem and recite it, making a recording to send to him when he is back in Japan. I ask him what the title is, but he cannot recall.

4.3.07top-to-bottom:
Wading through the River Sett,
Sign for Public Safety, Nr. Bowden Bridge Campsite, foot of Kinder
Sign for Public footpath to Twenty Trees
Up Twenty Trees (5 of 9 attendees pictured)

Photographs by writings and accompanying photographs by Paul Stapleton over at www.livearchives.org/sunday-with-me/