Text On (in) Practice

This text is a result of a practice I call wall writing (although, I’d like to come up with a better name). In this practice, large rolls of paper (2 meters wide) are rolled out to just above my head, and then stuck onto the wall in my living space. On these scrolls of paper I practice a number of things:

free writing, jotting down ideas on the go, drawing images from current work/future work, writing in shapes/word art, long form essayistic writing, fears/ worries, lyrics, recurring questions, cataloging feedback, drawing shapes of narratives etc.

All of these activities come together to form a kind of map.

Map making as a way of tracking the progression of thoughts, of eliciting connections, of moving whilst making, of making non-digital work, forming images through word amongst and non-conventional narrative shapes. This act stems from a desire-cum-frustration to reveal the circuitry/wiring between ideas I’ve seen. A process-practice with means to an end (a function in other words) but also a form of simple self expression in and of itself. The dual nature of this act is important. More on this later.

I am currently only writing in black ink on white paper. I use specific pens which have a soft felt tip, with an inky feel. I stand, squat or sit on the floor (being physically dynamic is important to my personal experience and it of course has an effect on the output). I have not cut the paper yet, but I do intend for there to be an end to this wall writing. Then I will begin another. I would like to create a rolling paper machine from hand, inspired by the artist Van Neistat, he replied to an email I sent him and told me how to make it.

I am editing but showing the edits, making them visible (so far…). When if I begin chastising myself on the page I will edit (leaving the edit visible) suggesting a more open, accepting approach*. This is not just for kindness sake, although there is nothing wrong with kindness (kin-ness, Harraway), the gates and borders that come as a result of chastising, are someone else’s standards I have ingested. It is significant to resists this, as this is about making my own internal standards of excellence (Tom Sachs).

*Interestingly, my course mate Yalou, suggested that the polishing of a document perhaps feels linear (maybe a better word is final? A faux finality?).

What are ‘your own internal standards of excellence’? These are protocols to help me function as an artist, these are to be ‘fostered’ (Sachs) through the practice. What are the details you attend to? What is that, that moves you in an image? What is your aesthetic standard? What does engagement mean? And…these questions are the seedlings, or the first stitch - to act as lily pads, to leap from. Not a definitive list, it’s about movement.

A standard I have been exploring through the mapping (and more), is developing a specific approach to passage of time (sculpting of time) in my work. The struggle here has always been this. Stories, and I mean ‘once upon a time there was a dog’ kind of stories, Chekov, Saunders, Bilge-Ceylan etc, you know the ones with the beautiful simple (simplicity, simplicity, simplicity - Einstein or maybe (really probably) his wife) structure, the ones that follow a character as they trudge along a roman road of thought and action. Have acted as a great bird, with great soft wings, to lay down upon and now (see!) life is quite beautiful. In other words they have been some of my most vital aids. The struggle here, is the natural rebellion I feel against this synthetic/taxidermic relationship to the passage of time, it’s fundamentally retrospective. One brick does not have to lead to the next (remember when it was just sand? Remember it’ll become sand once again).There is a political and philosophical resistance (‘fuck linear time, it’s poison’ said the artist Tooth just last week). But, boy does it feel good to travel In The Cart* of Father Time.

With this in mind, and slightly connected is another idea. I am trying to remove how central the finished work is to my practice, these works are destinations where I may arrive at, I circle, I return to but they are contained and do not exist without the roads that led me there, and the roads that don't. And this map making - it helps to stop thinking in a 'I need to make a thing' head space. (To be continued).

I will write a list of my currently active influences:

Tom Sachs (for his processes and ways of working, specifically 10 bullets)
Grayson Perry's (the way he uses mapping and cartography in his illustration specifically thinking of one I saw in a gallery in Eastbourne, its called Map of Nowhere)
Olga Tokarczuk (her writing from above, the way she uses maps in her novels and images - non linear, and not just associative, particularly in Book of Jacobs). Her ideas around truth (“The truth is like a gnarled tree, made up of many layers that are twisted all around each other. Some layers holding others inside them, and sometimes being held. The truth is something that can be expressed in many tales, for it is like that garden The Sages entered in which each of them saw something else.”)
Pina Baush (for movement, for image)
Sayaka Murata (for their way of self expression and unapologetic personal standards of absurdity, mainly in her interviews)
Iain Mcgilchrist's (their insistence on mystery and the throuroughness/depth of thought)
Karl Diesseroth (for his weaving analogy, and he web-like perspective on his experience as a neuroscientist and psychiatrist)
Tarkovsky (it is not linear for sure, nor is it Freudian or Associative but he makes his own perspective).
There is also currently a strong influence of medieval word art, Cihad has also shown me some examples from historical Arabic word art.
George Saunders, particularly his book on writing: A Swim in The Pond In the Rain. What he has to say about narrative, and also the way he writes about it.
Kendrick Lamar's way of telling stories, specifically in a track called FEAR. It is a story which takes place across generations, with the character of Fear being the link between all the stories.
Andre 3000’s verse on Blonde (Solo (Reprise), the stream of consciousness, flipping along time).
In general storytelling in music, most present in hip-hop and folk music has always been a key influence - if I start writing musicians I will never stop, I mean it.
Mamoru Oshii the way they deal with moments in their films.
Julie Mehretu, for the way they work with lines and general visual approach, see her album cover for Pharaoh Sanders and Floating points, as well as Congress and her show title 'A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF EVERYTHING AND NOTHING’.

I am pulled along by story and "beauty" and function (one perspective on the wall writings, is perhaps I am attempting to understand ways in which they way I think functions or can function?). Function, this is an important concept in my practice - a relatively new concept. I have begun to understand and perhaps even respect the part of myself that likes to make and study systems, to be pulled into understanding how something functions - what the processes are, under the hood.

With all this said. I also deeply respect mystery (the hidden passage to the work) and to not look at the finger pointing to the moon, but the moon itself. It's a balance of creating processes and understanding how my practice functions whilst also remembering that not everything is understood or reduced down to functions, that there is always a slither of the infinite that surrounds a work which moves me. Yet, although you want to resist a binary, you have to bring a standard of logic to the practice. Working to code (Sachs).

It is important to note that my desire to create protocols and standards for myself as an artist came from a commitment to the profession of being an artist. This practice is something which is of course important to me on a personal level, 'the basement that allows the rest of my life to function' (interview from Louisiana, writer of the postcard, Anne Berest) but also this is what I will do for my work and there is something very serious about this. I have to find a way to make it stable, something that I can come to every day. I need some kind of map then.