Al-Mutanabbi Street book Artists Project

This project has played on my mind constantly and I was relieved last week to be able to post the booklet . But I am now in the process of re-editing the zine once again before my deadline on the 27th of October, a long side looking at the possibility of developing one project from this past 12 months work to show in a gallery setting.

I found it hard when trying to address the kind of issues brought up by this project to find a place of solid understandings and then create a clear way to communicate those understandings.

Response (Al-Mutanabbi Street Book Artists Project)

Today I completed printing and binding copies of ‘Response’

(Al-Mutanabbi Street Book Artists Project).

The booklet is b/w printed on cream paper, hand stitched and contains images taken from several book and art projects I undertook over the past 12 months in response to the projects brief.

Swamp

Thinking about links between perception and experince again. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt’s video Swamp is an explorartion of this subject:

SWAMP, 1969, a film by Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, (6 minutes) colorThis film is concerned with issues related to site/sight as well as process.Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson made a collaborative film titled Swamp in 1969. Holt has said of Swamp that ……”it deals with limitations of perception through the camera eye as Bob and I struggled through a muddy New Jersey swamp. Verbal direction cannot easily be followed as the reeds crash against the camera lens blocking vision and forming continuously shifting patterns, confusion ensues.” And Smithson said of the film…”it’s about deliberate obstructions or calculated aimlessness”. (1) This was attained by having Holt walk through the swamp while simultaneously filming, only seeing where she was walking by looking through the lens of her Bolex camera as Smithson gave her verbal instructions which he recorded as he spoke them. (1) Robert Smithson, “The Earth, Subject to Cataclysms, is a Cruel Master, interview with Gregoire Muller, The Writings of Robert Smithson, p. 179 (first appeared in Arts Magazine, 1971)

Justin Cockburn and Edgar Ameti at Empty Shop

There has been a show at Empty Shop of work in progress by artists Edgar Ameti and Justin Cockburn.