Applications

In the process of applying for this festival: http://www.b-side.org.uk/

looking back over past photographs.

Paris 2008

ITS ABOUT...

working on proposal...

Its about making something personal. Making something particular to a place and a time. Its about learning and documenting the shape of a city. Its about walking and map-making. Its about performance and document. Its about editing and selecting. Its about turning left or right. Its about going with the flow or making a decision. Its about small journeys or big adventures. Its about stepping out of the house to go to the shop. Its about absorbing everything. Its about bring part of the big picture. Its about allowing the city to play out before you. Its about taking part. Its about seeing and being seen. Its about leaving a trace or being invisible. Its about what you notice and what you don’t. its about keeping hold of it. Its about saving and archiving. Its about lived experience and second hand information. Its about recognizing and its about remembering. Its about story telling. Its about walking for your health, for your sanity or just to see what it’s like over there. It’s about getting home, taking your shoes off and going to sleep. Its about being lonely and lost. Its about ecstatic freedom! It’s about travel, writing, alternative tourism, individual paths and the points where it crosses. Its about planning, architecture, cities. It’s about games, tasks and boredom. It is structure and it is drift. It is about me and where I have been. It ask about you, where were you? Where have you been? And that personal maps cross right here. It about imagining a red line trailing behind your every move, its about deciding to document your moves, its about how your moves then become performance and art.

REVIVING MY WALKING PROJECT IN STOCKHOLM

IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I WENT WANDERING.

STOCKHOLM 7 WALKS IN 7 DAYS.

PHOTOS.

Lines from my notebook, ready to be drawn together, to make a map:

some extracts:

WALK 1

leaving my hostel i interrogate this historical island, typically cobbled and hilly. i walk slowly due to a sprained ankle - and so adopt the flaneur easily. a boat is floating in a deep blue sky. it is quiet, i noticed this at the train station, stockholm is quiet and still, maybe it is the watery air. the stretches of murky grey churning under the sweeping bridges, motorways over water. The old town in an unbroken egg sgell, a tiny haven of what the world was, complete with currency converter and sweden jumpers, teamed with beautiful glass cuts hanging from trees. the bells ring out in canon. after the numerical bells comes a lullaby, a dinky ding dong from the cheery church. i walk straight across the island to find the edge very sharp, standing at the edge of the sea, the difference is immense. behind me warm lit streets full of bubbles in beer and wicker chairs. in front of me hills of nordic buildings wrapped around with train tracks and wide roads, the modern metropolis slaps the city down, but also makes it exciting opposed to slow paced nostalgia.

STOCKHOLM

cranes swing gracefully like long necked dinosaurs across a blazing hot sky line.

they surround a red brick archaic building with point green tops turned green.

a constant blur of blue streaks over the bridges.

the city is moving, buses, trains, water, wind.

the stagnant islands pinned down in beautiful architecture.

i am baking in a lime green deck chair counting the planes that fly over head.

WALK 3

Mesmerized by the beacon of the national museum i sit by the water and wave at a fat man driving his fat boat. the light is fading so a gleam of warm red trickles in. crossing over tumbling kayaks and moody fisherman i reach a square. the street lights come on at 8.30pm and the exterior lights of a nearby theatre turn on at 9.45pm. greenhouse cafes with waitresses with curls and stars on their backs. men play oversized games of chess. across the water breeze chris Isaac's 'wicked game' reaches me, i imagine grabbing a stranger passionately and singing it to them in an over dramatic manner. i turn back and retrace my steps. i think about being wide eyed and over polite, accentuating my britishness as a defense mechanism. extra alert and constantly observing particular suspicious of unfamiliar territory. but i too can drink a whole bowl of fantastic hot chocolate and feel deliciously sick, wiping the sticky cream from my chin. a tourist is a strange animal, a nuisance, but finds a nook that they like, and as if a lovers shoulder, says' - this bit of you, this bit is perfect. 

WALK 5

in the north along a straight road 1950's america invades. a vintage car convention floods the road, greased hair and leather jackets, girls with fuscia curls and tattoo's on their shoulders. they lean out of the windows and throw beer cans on the cycle path. stockholm ticks, standing at the roundabout i arrive a clock shop, all tick tocks and irregular beats. in the evening the water is dark, i ask myself if today i will jump in, is it today? the day when i collapse into drift wood. Each year i feel my emotions become more erratic, it concerns me. this ticking city is getting to me, i feel dizzy but its just the boat thats swaying. a party boat lets out muffled disco beats, i imagine the sweaty drunken happiness, a disgusting conga line, all bending knees and crotches under bottoms, flailing arms and spilt bacardi. 

WALK 7

Teasing the joggers by the lake.

I sit with beer and cake, feet up on a wooden chair.