and the ghosts so silver

The City - reading on radio this Friday

2012-01-24T16:53:00.003Z

Me and the wonderful Ana Seferovic will be reading from our poetry book The City, as well as other bits and pieces, with lovely musicians this Friday 27th January. The show starts at 9pm Belgrade time (8pm GMT)and will be broadcast in front of a live audience. You can listen in for free at http://nofm.rs

Here is a little blurb about the project (and a silly picture of me and Ana...)

The City.

The city seeks to poetically excavate the concept of urban space from a priori concrete ideas to personal memory - the hidden rather than the monumentally enforced stories of a place. The foundations are laid by two poets, Alice Maddicott (UK) and Ana Seferovic (Serbia), working in close collaboration to deconstruct cities of personal memory to form one constantly evolving city; seeking out atmosphere and the intangible as much as streets and buildings, to create an intrinsic sense of place that can communicate universally.

Created in three movements from architectural facts, through intimate and post-apocalyptic visions, to an ultimate losing of oneself to space and the absence of recognisable place, the project is a distillation of the essence of a city rather than its physical building blocks. These foundations will be built upon by other artists, in the first instance by musicians Manja Ristic (Serbia) and Ryan Norris (USA), who are creating a score in three parts in response to the atmosphere of different areas within the poem.

The first stage of the project sees the publication of a book, CD and archaeological poetry map by the organisation Auropolis. The intention is to follow this with an exhibition, recreating the poem in physical space with the collaboration of visual artists, as well as a series of performances. The project brings together writers, musicians and artists from across the world, all of who will bring their own sense of place to the work as it continues to be built.

I would also direct you to the Supernova Poetry website for more on me and Ana and the poetry work Auropolis does.

I'm off to Belgrade...

2012-01-21T11:08:00.001Z

So in honour of the trip and the work me and Ana are going to do there, here's a short story/poem about one of our more bizarre days out in that city...

Ada lake, Gypsy Island.

We walked through torrents
Lapped deeper water
As drums struck
Promises of fire

Round the corner
Past stubborn swans
The fishing champions laughed and
Gave us cigarettes for beer

I don’t think they heard
The reflections dripping hints
Of what was really going on

We followed rhythms
Across the coming night
Stumbled through a lost village
With houses too small and covered
With flowers
For real people

I held her hand and tried
To catch the whispered
Laughter dark
On the softened wind

It would lead us there if we were careful
Listened out and followed
Puffs of potential parties
Blown in waves of frothy
Promises of misadventure

We sought them out
Giggled and clapped our hands
Sped up through sinking mud
Past floating houses
Treading water to reach the
Safety of overhung trees and
Tied up plastic bags

We snatched them so
They flew out behind us
Like sodden flags of rubbish
Torn from where it should

Go

Grow now

The pedalos waited in silence
Past an abandoned sports court
Blaring music that
Confused us
With burnt out expectations
Glowing neon in the too bright light

We kept going till we heard a different tune
A song so old it broke its heart
All over the lake
Bled minor chords in trickles
That floated, shining -
A slick of tortured treacle
Calling hidden rainbows
To the moonlight

The old man in the bar
Sitting behind a bleared clear curtain
Of fattened clingfilm
Beckoned wistfully with wafts of smoke
From falling ash
His other hand curved round a beer
He wanted us to join him for

We did not stop
As the songs crept backwards in time.
Tripped past the concrete bunker
That looked out
Just as a mystery
Watched us as our
Shoes filled up with puddles
And confessions till the other side

Unwoken we walked through
Folds of places
Hiding in a different layer
Sweating secrets
Of this city.

My Tree, My Community at Eden 2011.

2011-12-24T13:14:00.001Z

I was really thrilled to be working with Darite school on the edge of Bodmin Moor for The Eden Project's wonderful My Tree, My Community project this year. Here's a snapshot from start to finish. And yes I own magic dust so I can put children to sleep to dream about Christmas past. It's a useful teaching aid... Thanks to the lovely teachers, helpers, kids and Dan at Eden.

Tree house of the day 2

2011-11-19T09:43:00.000Z

This was built by a man named Horace Burgess as an anniversary present for his wife. It took him 15 years. A very good way to a woman's heart in my opinion. And it is a particular favourite of mine due to Tbilisi style balconies! Sigh...

Treehouse of the day

2011-11-19T09:36:00.002Z

Castles of rock and sand - today I want to live here...

2011-11-19T09:33:00.000Z

And then after lunch I would swim over to the beach and build this:

Ukrainian Floating Barn

2011-11-19T09:27:00.002Z

I've always been a fan of barns in general, but really I wish more people would think about how buildings are improved if they have the floating in an invisible tree vibe...

Spider web tree clouds

2011-11-03T07:50:00.000Z

Some of the most amazing photos I've seen for a while (courtesy of Russell Watkins - more can be seen on the National Geographic website). In Sindh, Pakistan in 2010 after terrible monsoon rains the spiders ascended to the trees to avoid the floodwater - quite beautiful (though depending on the spider type I imagine quite scary to be standing under...). I guess this is my dreamy post-Halloween contribution...

Shoe box world (in memory of lost games)

2011-10-30T11:17:00.000Z

Site-specific diorama and oral history inspired story, London, secret pathway.

Miniature book in situ, Notting Hill

2011-10-30T11:13:00.000Z

This is one for the library of the lost not found... I sometimes wonder where the ones I don't get back go - whether they have a new home or have drifted away to biodegrade back to the earth with their secrets...

Imaginary farm of London past

2011-10-30T11:11:00.001Z

Handmade secret history book (to be completed by viewer) and animal sound modules, Ladbroke Grove, 2007. There was actually a farm here once so I like the idea that the ghosts of geese and cows and sheep and pigs are talking back through my recordings - the sound pads like spiritualist portals...

Bridge mobile for ghosts

2011-10-30T11:07:00.001Z

Embroidery, Ladbroke Grove, 2007.

Grimwith Reservoir Workshop Carvings

2011-09-26T09:39:00.001+01:00

I just got sent some photos of the stones that were carved with words created in the workshops I ran for children and adults at Grimwith Reservoir for the 60th anniversary of the Yorkshire Dales being founded as a national park. It's so lovely to see them in situ!

Mary's Birthday (1951)

2011-09-20T15:10:00.000+01:00

Lotte Reiniger does flower fairies and flies plotting in the pub and multicoloured germ massacres. My Mum's called Mary and would have been 3 when this came out - she also had an Aunt Peggy, so I like to pretend this was made for her...

Anonymous Bench Memorial

2011-09-19T12:01:00.000+01:00

Ukichiro Nakaya grows snow on rabbit hair

2011-08-23T10:14:00.002+01:00

straight from the den: archive: photostory

2011-08-19T17:07:00.003+01:00

straight from the den: archive: photostory

Astrid just posted this from our trip to Iceland (where we were writing a travel journal for university about land art AND vikings) what is alarmingly something like 11 years ago now!

Owls and bluebells

2011-07-19T17:14:00.001+01:00

Two of my favourite things from the best wildlife documentary of last year "The Wild Places of Essex". If you can find it in full do watch it - strange poetry of the everyday... And I love Robert Macfarlane (read his book The Wild Places - I was recently given it as a present and fell in love instantly - it has the atmosphere of a Samuel Palmer painting and reads like Ted Hughes).

Elephant Swimming Cup - Thailand

2011-07-04T09:22:00.002+01:00

Norwegian Stave Churches

2011-06-24T13:45:00.001+01:00

My new architectural love...

I believe in the dark churches,
the ones that still stand like tarred pyres in the woods
and like deep red roses carry a fragrance
from times that perhaps had more love.
Those jet-black towers I believe in: the ones that smell of
the sun's heat
and old incense burnt in by the centuries.
Laudate pueri Dominum, laudate nomen Domini.

Axes shaped them and silver bells rang in them.
Someone carved dreams in and gave them wings so they'd wander
out across ages and mountains - which surge up around them
like breakers.
Now they are ships, with crow's nests turned toward East India...

(extract from Stave Churches by Rolf Jacobsen, translation Roger Greenwald.)

Supernova Poetry is online!

2011-06-20T09:05:00.002+01:00

The website for the Supernova Poetry project I was lucky to be involved with in Belgrade is now online. You can read poems from the anthology and there's a live recording of me reading with the wonderful Manja Ristic and co playing music. Go to www.supernovapoetry.net - to reach my stuff click on English UK (the anthology included poets from an amazing array of languages all translated in Serbian too), then click on my name - you can turn the pages like a book, so flick on one page from my profile to reach the audio stuff (or you can reach it straight from the homepage). I would recommend reading and listening to the whole website though!

St Nicholas of Bari Rebuking the Storm

2011-06-10T08:03:00.001+01:00

I found a post card of this in the depths of my somewhat overcrowded room and remembered how excited I was when I first saw this painting when I was little and noticed the mermaid had legs. This was painted by Bacci di Lorenzo in the days when mermaids were very much involved in the causing of storms. It's in the Ashmolean in Oxford which is a truly fabulous museum (if memory serves me they also have a beautiful Samuel Palmer landscape). I also like how it sheds some light on St Nicholas's posthumous activities before he became Father Christmas. And how he arrives in a wake of stars (I think you can buy rather lovely Christmas cards of this moment)...

Rail pod regeneration

2011-06-01T16:52:00.000+01:00

I always get frustrated with city regeneration projects in the UK - when will town planners realise that shopping centres are not the only way to revitalise a town, and actually don't really regenerate them at all? And don't even start me on the Olympics and how that money could be better spent for East London... However on a more cheerful note here is a fantastic idea that recently won third prize in a competition to regenerate the Norwegian (gotta love that country) town of Andalsnes. It was proposed by the Swedish architects Jagnafalt Milton (who these images are courtesy of). Andalsnes is a city with a lot of disused rail infrastructure and the proposal utilised these rails to make portable modules that could be moved around as was convenient.

I love the idea of having a miniature pod house that you can move to a better location depending on season etc. They remind me of the sort of places you would imagine living in as a child when playing survival games of where you would build if all the adults disappeared. I would hide in my greenhouse at the bottom of the garden in storms and imagine that this was my home from now on. There's something about this design that reminds me of that childhood magic of the aftermath of a gentle apocalypse. They also remind me of the tradition of making houses out of railway carriages - something that was definitely common in the past down here in Cornwall. When doing research for a community project recently I was thrilled to find out about this way of life where the carriage homes were seen as the step between homelessness and a 'normal' house. They were really beautiful and I desperately want one as a study... I would like a Norwegian railway pod house too, though sadly the design did not win so they will not for now be built. At least they'll be in the great company of all the utopian housing schemes that nearly were, and thanks to modern technology, these days we have photos so in some kind of dimension they do exist...

North of the World

2011-05-30T14:24:00.000+01:00

I've become weirdly obsessed with Norway. Bergen, fjords, wooden stave churches (more on them later) and for today the poetry of Rolf Jacobsen, here translated by Roger Greenwald.

Antenna-forest

Up on the city’s roofs there are large fields.
That’s where silence crept up to
when there was no room for it on the streets.
Now the forest comes in its turn.
It needs to be where silence lives.
Tree upon tree in strange groves.
They don’t do very well, because the floor is too hard.
So they make a sparse forest, one branch toward the east,
and one toward the west. Until it looks like crosses. A forest
of crosses. And the wind asks
—Who’s resting here
in these deep graves?

Chechen border toys

2011-05-28T16:37:00.000+01:00

Shatili, Georgia, August 2009

Shadows run for mountains
Disintegrating light confetti

Gonio Sunset

2011-05-28T16:32:00.000+01:00

The sun melted into the sea
40 seconds of honeyed sky
and water without tides
waiting for the moon and
slivers of silver shadows
holding onto evening

The owls of Belgrade (and imaginary Stoke on Trent)....

2011-05-28T13:37:00.003+01:00

I love owls - they're magical and strange and obviously know what's going on, so I was obviously thrilled when one child, Ebonie, created an owl land as her imaginary version of Stoke-on-Trent for our Mapping Dreams project (at Abbey Hulton Primary School). The photos are of some particularly knowing owls from Belgrade zoo - a somewhat depressing place, but the owls were wonderfully haughty and I liked to imagine that they escaped at night to have their own Depeche Mode discos and sesame pizza on boats on the Danube...

Maybe they also have the power to turn into teapots and spy on the gossip of a civilised sunny afternoon... (genuine Serbian hands courtesy of Jelena).

Ruined themepark of the day - Dinosaur World, Arkansas

2011-05-25T15:24:00.000+01:00

Now as my good friends know I do like a good selection of random life-size dinosaurs dotted around a landscape (i.e. Crystal Palace Park obsession, see one of my earliest posts))- in fact I like dinosaurs in general. I also like ruined themeparks, so imagine my delight when I discovered that in Arkansas there's a place that encompasses both - Dinosaur World! Closed in 2005 after a somewhat bizarrely right wing political history often involving its giant statue of King Kong it has been left to grow over, but is hard to get into to explore I think. I am not fussed about King Kong - but dinosaurs on the other hand...

These photos are from agility nut, which is worth exploring in general for its whole website dedicated to roadside dinosaurs - a deeply worthwhile exploration!

This from secretfunspot which has some good photos of general decay.

Fun, fun, fun... I like the idea that the dinosaurs come to life at night and so the be careful not to be eaten sign still applies...

Cornelius's genius - The Human Body, what it is and how it works...

2011-05-25T12:13:00.000+01:00

I am slightly obsessed with this early children's illustrated guide to the human body, published in 1959 and illustrated by the wonderful Cornelius De Witt. The images are startlingly strange and beautiful whilst informative, but what I really love is how he has somehow managed to bring science facts to life by illustrating the dreamy inner life of the body - his illustrations represent and interpret what happens rather than show as a grizzly medical photograph would, or rather in many cases he shows through his drawing what a photo never could - the invisible processes that make a body human - what it thinks, feels, sees and smells. He shows the wonder of what it is to be human, making a learning biological facts a thing of optimism rather than a dehumanising falling back down to earth - yes we are made of cells and governed by functions, but we have the ability to dream, communicate and discover the world around us. This can only be a good way to learn about life.

Another truly wonderful example of the power of good illustration... Oh and this last photo shows scientists that discovered interesting things about the body - v cool...

Of secret codes and Warja Honegger-Lavater

2011-05-06T13:54:00.002+01:00

My fixation of the week is definitely the work of Swiss artist's book fairy tale encoding illustrator extraordinaire Warja Honegger-Lavater. I have always been obsessed with secret codes, especially those created by us when we're young or writing codes for diaries - they are a fascinating look into the personal - a way of distilling meaning for only a few and shutting out a public view. Codes by definition keep most people out. This has always fascinated me in terms of their use in writing projects - I love making up alphabets too and writing stories in them that somehow are in keeping with the visual impact of the letters created (I think there's an old post of one of these on here somewhere). This balance of drawing in the reader/viewer with intrigue, but still keeping them guessing to the meaning of the code whilst maybe understanding its essence is an incredibly interesting challenge to me. One of the things I love about Lavater's work is that she is not trying to hide meaning by using code, but to bring a story's meaning out further, or to distill the essence of the story. She gives us code translators (see William Tell example below) at the beginning of her books so we know what each symbol means - she lets us into her private world so that we may understand the world of a story better. And the fact that she illustrates folk tales (the example I've uploaded here is Little Red Riding Hood) means that she is illustrating a story we probably already know and have our own image of, probably an image that has become quite archetypal, but she takes the idea of archetypal away from the danger of cliche to an abstract essence. The words are erased as unnecessary as her pictograms speak to the viewer - she is illustrating the function of the words as well as what is happening. It is an incredibly brave and interesting way of interpreting illustration. And lest I forget, of course her work also looks lovely. And Maeght Editions

in France have published reproductions of her original accordian fold out artist books. Birthday list!

P.S. If anyone would like to send me any childhood or teen codes they made up that would be amazing for a project I'm working on...

Drifting over Lake Sevan

2011-04-15T13:04:00.002+01:00

Raiding my old photos I'd forgotten about whilst obsessing over strange Soviet Architecture - there's old and new here from a beautiful day out I had to Lake Sevan, Armenia, many years ago now...

I removed the poem that was up before too as I decided it wasn't very good!

Krestovsky Pereval Belvedere

2011-04-15T12:05:00.002+01:00

I've finally found out what this strange viewing platform I stumbled upon when getting a marshrutka up the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi is. It was built in 1983 to celebrate Russo-Georgian friendship. The view was rather spectacular too...

On the same roadtrip I was also fascinated by this building that I liked to imagine was a church for lost horses - turns out it is an abandoned holiday camp that is now used by monks...

The Secret Sounds of Spores

2011-03-18T15:01:00.000Z

Wonderful art project recently installed in an Edinburgh gallery. Thanks to Astrid for this one! I always like a good invisible part of mushroom and xylophone combo...

Secret Sounds of Spores, Inspace from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

The root bridges of Cherrapunji

2011-03-06T08:57:00.001Z

Every now and again I come across something that appeals to me so directly that my eyes widen and a huge smile spreads across my face. The people of Cherrapunji in India have nurtured these bridges for hundreds of years. They are not woven branches but actual tree roots that are still alive and growing, adding further strength with each year. In a region trouble by floods these bridges are stronger that if they were made of other materials and not growing directly from the ground. The skill of nurturing them is handed down through generations as it takes over a decade to grow a new bridge. It is thought some of them are up to 500 years old! There's amazing footage of them on the recent BBC Human Planet series in the rivers episode if you can track it down. Beautiful, beautiful...

Rambling notes - story left in mud 2004

2011-03-05T09:29:00.000Z

Post-It of the day - Cawsand 2003

2011-03-05T09:22:00.003Z

Eden Project Cafe Exhibition

2011-03-04T11:01:00.001Z

My job really is cool... Created over the last week by me and the lovely population of St Austell...

The oldest sweetshop in England and Grimwith Reservoir

2011-03-03T14:17:00.001Z

I took this photo late 2009 when I was writer for the 60th anniversary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and was staying in the really lovely Pateley Bridge running workshops up at Scarhouse Reservoir (we went story hunting in the ruined dam builders' village - super fun). One of the best shop windows ever (rivalled by the next door vintage jewellery shop full of black pearls and opals with diamonds)...

I also ran workshops at Grimwith Reservoir for this project, where there was a particularly good sci-fi water level measuring structure...

Here's the poem I was commissioned to write as part of the project - I'm dying to tweak it now over a year on, but I'm still really pleased with the atmosphere...

Grimwith Reservoir.

The day started with small noises.

Birds later
But first it was whispers -
Echoes bubbling through still water
Breaking pools of distant shine
Like rings of misplaced mirror

Where the hills paddled
In bruised paintings smeared
A reflected landscape of
Shadows calling out from under water,
Floating round discarded buildings
They used to know.
They asked in gentle darkness
Remember me…

I stared as birds flew against the wind
Like waves going backwards
To where the dam curved in a horseshoe
Daring them to break through.

It held so much in darkened stone -
Bled strength into the water.

Inky waves of peat
The colour of brown bottles
Broke against the edge
Of torn rocks that were a subtle flood
Spilling like fallen crows
To stare back at mourning ferns
Whose greenery
Had been stolen by frost -
Turned toffee and burnt sugar
Before anyone could notice
The change

The landscape took
And gave back
A lot around here -

Fed the shore
To splatter then reveal
A rocky junkyard of nostalgia
Through low water -
A refuge for discarded memories of
The flooded world below.

Maybe the barn would protect them?
Its heather-netted roof lay
As if a blanket gift from
Echoed material
Which sat in patchy swarms
On distant hills
It burnt in invisible fire -
Spindles of smoke drifting to the sky
In forgotten clouds
Left to darken as
The rain drew near.

Other clouds just hovered
A second sea of mist
Above the coolly steaming water.
They would lift later –
Reveal another world of
Secret inlets melting into
Lost hills…
It was strange to think how long ago
They had been full of people.
Changing colours show imprints
Of settlements as well as different plants:
A staggered chain of sheep
Like misplaced dirty pearls
Of wool
Could each have been a child.

(Hidden bird song now)

I tripped through puddles
Lying as if carved out by giant raindrops
To smile open mouthed at the moving sky.
Its light could change this place in seconds -
Send the water from darkest purple
To swimming pool
Jeweled turquoise
Flecked gold with sparkled sunshine
And imagined boats
Skimming the surface
Like flat stones gently thrown.

They warmed up shivering folds
Of water.

Held my gaze -
Took it out across the reservoir
Here shining like torn clingfilm
Sliced with silver.
The dam was straight now.
Stared back at me
Before dissolving through the landscape.
It just left its sci-fi tower
Ignoring me and quietly measuring

Every
Single
Drop.

Ruined rollercoaster of the day - Six Flags Louisiana

2011-03-03T08:58:00.002Z

Another abandoned theme park in Louisiana - it seems to be a hotbed of them really. I need to take a trip... Six Flags was dramatically flooded during Katrina - the photos are quite powerful in terms of the post storm apocalyptic landscape... I like how the rollercoasters look like sea monsters - like they've come to life in their destruction and are now free to swim around and guard their domain...

Next week at the new Eden Project Cafe, St Austell

2011-02-17T14:44:00.004Z

If anyone happens to be in St Austell (Cornwall) next week pop on in to the fabulous new cafe, run by the Eden Project, where I will be running 7 days of drop in workshops (from Monday 10-4)for adults and children alike. You will be creating a 3d self-portrait to populate the strange secret history/old photo/cabinet of curiosities/embroidered diorama world I am making for their display cabinets. It should be fun and the food is v good and v reasonable! Click here to read more about this great new community space!

Mist fishing in the Atacama

2011-01-30T11:28:00.004Z

In the driest place on earth people cast nets into the sky, catching water from lost sea mist like strange spiders weaving webs for dew, like sky fisherman or farmers of the unseen - harvesting and milking water though it does not rain. Okay so it's actually just a very clever and practical way of collecting water where it seems there isn't any, but I can't help but romanticise it - mist fishing! Tis too perfect...

Aunt Aggie's Boneyard

2011-01-27T10:11:00.002Z

I've been meaning to write about this long vanished place in Lake City Florida for some time, but it's my recent musings on memory and ghosts, and how these things exist around us and how we acknowledge this, that made me think again of Aunt Aggie's Boneyard.

Aunt Aggie built her garden out of animal bones, making trellises and strange structures to create a lot of the shapes familiar in a garden of plants. It was well visited in the early 20th century and people used to come and visit and write their names on the bones. Everything I have read about this place suggests that people were never scared by its macabre strangeness - yes except for one human skull hanging they were all animal bones, and Aunt Aggie was a good Christian which would have comforted some, but I still find it interesting that a garden of bones was a place of delight and rest, not fear. Maybe it was Aunt Aggie's belief and desire to create something beautiful that rubbed off on them - she made visitors bouquets, told stories and fortunes - she had created her own bit of magic and opened it up for the rest of the world.

This makes me think of how the feelings of those who create a place can somehow be absorbed by that place. That like the idea of memories floating all around us, feelings and intentions could work in the same way - inhabit the air with an emotion, good or bad, that we pick up on. I have certainly been in seemingly pretty places that have felt sad and disturbing, yet here is a garden of bones that was calm and delightful - a place for magic and fondness.

I also love how she had a small homemade natural history museum with bottled snakes and alligators amongst other things. Perhaps along with the general fascination with such things, there is an appeal in that this was a personal collection - the whole garden is an archive in a way of one woman's dreams and thoughts, and I think there is an inherent intimate appeal in being let in to such places. As my friends know I am fascinated by monumental versus personal history - in theory as well as in terms of objects and monuments themselves. With a monument we are told represents an important event, our experience of the memories of that event is always mediated by someone's idea of what we should feel about something - it is difficult to have a truly personal experience of it. With something like Aggie's boneyard visitors have access to a personal vision - a monument to real memories (why I think Wilfred Owen's war poetry is a much better monument than the generic war memorials in every English village. Their power is in their words, the names of the dead listed, not the stone structure - if they did not have those names written on them, that personal touch, their power would be diminished) - and I would argue it is these personal monuments that memory really is contained in and is more accessible to all - it can be felt.

So long live eccentric gardens, outsider architecture, personal collections and archives, diaries and all personal visions that could never be created by a mediator. There is a wonderful power in the architecture of homemade.

Ghosts deserve art too!

2011-01-26T09:26:00.004Z

Whilst planning the Car Boot Museum's American debut for this autumn I've become obsessed with the idea of who the audience can be - with a project as flexible and evolving as this who are we creating it for? The plan at the moment is for a tour starting in Nashville and somehow going through New Orleans incorporating house shows, but a huge chunk of it will also be made up of impromptu stops along the way at any place that looks interesting, whether people are present or not. In places where there is no traditional art audience, is it art for its own sake, art for me and Elle, or art for something else entirely...?

I then (obviously... ha!) began to think about memories and ghosts. Both these things always influence my work, but is there a way to make them part of the creative process - my work is often collaborative with strangers - a way I could bring the ghosts and memories into it too to work with us? As we collect and create work to add to the museum as we go could we become almost ghost curators of lost memories? Search out the hidden for the hidden - creatively bring to life things we can never see or prove?

I'm obsessed with the outer realms of physics and its theories of reality. I don't pretend to fully understand them, but I don't think that negates the creative possibilities they open up. One theory states that as information can't be lost, even into a black hole, reality could essentially function as a hologram does, made up of information projected from the edges of space. I know I am hugely simplifying this theory, but if we accept the premise that information can't be lost, and visually think about the idea of a hologram, then in theory all information could be constantly floating around us and for me this includes memories - they are things that have happened - become information in the moment the action occurs that creates them. I like the idea that this could therefore work for people too - we are our experiences to an extent and therefore a collection of information that can't be lost. Could this be a new definition for what a ghost is? I know that this theory was never meant as a justification for the possibility of the existence of ghosts, but the nice thing about interpreting things creatively is that for my purposes it can be. If these ghosts of disembodied memories cannot be lost the logical conclusion is that they are everywhere. Therefore wherever the Car Boot Museum stops, even if there are no people around, there are memory ghosts. I like the idea that they could therefore become our audience, collaborators and co-curators of the places we visit; that we can create work with them, film invisible interactions, bring to visible "life" their memories as we go on our way.

In this way we could also become archaeologists of memories. Archaeologists look for physical artifacts to explain the past through physical activity in digging etc. I ran a creative workshop last year where to discover the past of a school grounds we dug up the back of the playing field. We found many objects that could illustrate the known history of the school - i.e. we found lots of bricks and we knew it was built on an old brick works - but what fascinated me was how we then took these objects and created stories and poems around them and the world that was brought to life by the children became not the known history but their own imaginary interpretation leading to a realm of memories. I have always wanted to discover an unknown ancient creature (preferably a dinosaur due to my general fixation!) and archaeologists constantly get the opportunity to do this, whether it's a new dinosaur like the recent one-fingered veloceraptor relative discovered in China, or the full mammoth skeleton found in November in New Mexico. But could memory function in the same way - can I creatively excavate a place to bring its memories to life, therefore having a chance to discover my own lost world?

My other pet outer physics theory of reality is the sci-fi fave of parallel worlds. It sounds ridiculous, but there are physicists who believe that theoretically every action performed splits reality so that there are an infinite number of different realities functioning at any one time. It's just we can't see them. But part of what fascinates me about this is again the idea that therefore these different realities, and the memories of them that presumably again can't be lost, are existing invisibly all around us. We can never "know" them in the traditional sense of what we expect from reality, i.e. physical experience (unless we are in that other reality, but we wouldn't be conscious of that...), but that doesn't mean that creatively there isn't the opportunity to bring them to life by exploring the hidden memories and stories within a place. Again I am thinking the Car Boot Museum could try and seek them out. I also think this ties with our original thinking about the Mnemosyne Atlas and the physical gaps in the displaying of images that the mind fills in with its own interpretations, I think obviously partly fueled by memory...

So, I am waffling now... but though the parts of the project where we stop in the middle of nowhere might seem empty of collaborators and viewers, I'm pretty sure this is not the case. After all... ghosts deserve art too!

Memories are waking dreams and dreams are sleeping memories

2011-01-16T16:40:00.001Z

The ruins of Lincoln Beach - dream rollercoasters and the appeal of abandonment

2011-01-14T12:07:00.007Z

I've been meaning to post on the wonder that is the ruins of Lincoln Beach amusement park near New Orleans, ever since Elle's guidance and my own obsessions led to my spending hours researching it. And then this week, again partly due to the delight that is reading Rebecca Solnit's "A Field Guide to Getting Lost", it seemed like the time to post it.

I have always been obsessed with the magic of ruins - the inherent power of them on an intuitive emotional level that brings them into the realms of the imaginary rather than the physical reality that they are standing before you. I have often thought this could be because they speak of how we perceive our world in dreams - how here is a physical embodiment in our "real" world that actually belongs to the personal realms of how places can be in our dreams. In this way ruined theme parks are particularly powerful for me as their abandonment without demolition somehow speaks of a world of lost memories - a representation of days out we haven't had, a realm of play left for the amusement of ghosts - that these ghosts somehow represent the playing of childhood we have left behind. On a recent school project with six year olds we invented imaginary friends and took these invisible creatures on a day out to the woods. I asked the children to then create what their new friends would like to do on their day out and we immediately began to build rollercoasters of twigs and leaves. It was like these bodiless creatures began to inhabit the making corporeal of what we would rather be doing than being at school - that somehow again there was a magic to theme parks. And when the day was over we left these woodland rollercoasters and fairground rides to decay at their own rate in the woods. Days later the children still talked of what their imaginary friends were doing there - as if these places were taking on a life of their own as entropy pulled them back down to mud and leaf pulp.

In her chapter entitled Abandon, Solnit says:
"A city is built to resemble a conscious mind, a network that can calculate, administrate, manufacture. Ruins become the unconscious of a city, its memory, unknown, darkness, lost lands, and in this truly bring it to life. With ruins a city springs free of its plans into something as intricate as life, something that can be explored but perhaps not mapped. This is the same transmutation spoken of in fairy tales when statues and toys and animals become human, though they come to life and with ruin a city comes to death, but a generative death like the corpse that feeds flowers."

I think there is an inherent danger in the romanticisation of ruins that we forget the damage the decay of a city can wreck on its inhabitants, for example an arguably middle class preoccupation with urban exploring in the economic war zone that is the ruins of contemporary Detroit, but at the same time I think it is impossible to ignore that whatever they symbolise and physically represent, ever since the documentation of intuitive responses to ruins began in the 18th century with the Romantic poets, their appeal as a realm of poetry and dreams is indisputable. I was so pleased to read Solnit's comparison to fairy tales as I think it is in their ability to transmute reality into the realm of communication inherent in our historical folk psyche that their power could lie. That maybe there is something redemptive in how they communicate and that maybe rather than inconsiderate, ruins as a site of exploration and play is where they can become regenerative; where as the inspiration of art and dream-like ways of thinking they can open up a deeper communication between place and the people that create and pass through its memories. I think this can be seen in the playful scribbled interventions bringing lightness to the melancholy of the other photos posted - that the childlike defiance is the true spirit of such a place; is how it would like to be seen to exist now - I don't know... But I certainly think we should not underestimate the importance of the emotion of places - the power of how places make us feel as well as how they exist as a physical entity... I hope that with upcoming travel projects like The Car Boot Museum I will have the opportunity to discover the stories of these abandoned places of distant fun - the ghosts of days out past - for myself...

(Please note these are not my photos - I would of course credit them, but I cannot figure out their original sources!)

Hope lies in getting lost...

2011-01-12T12:53:00.002Z

I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's wonderful "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" whilst ruminating on a current project with primary school children to create an imaginary version of Stoke-on-Trent. I could talk for hours about the flood of ideas its generating and theories of how to create personal transcendental experiences within familiar seemingly limiting environments, how to create hope through imagination in the everyday, but maybe that is for another time. For now it is a passage from Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse" that spoke to me and created today's atmosphere of poignant optimism, so I thought I would write it here to speak elsewhere...:

"For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless... Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless."

Parkour was invented by Mary Poppins...

2010-12-30T13:34:00.000Z

...not cool French boys.

I rest my case.

New old Soviet fairytale 1.

2010-12-30T09:17:00.004Z

Sea of ground
Hovering towers made me realise
I did not know you could walk on water

Flicked stones - no echoes
Windows impenetrable
To acts of casual vandalism
Searching for princesses
I think you knew
That one was captured
Somewhere

Prison of grey sky reaching
Bridges with eyes
Too many to avoid
Unless blurred with aching distances

You walked
Legs like paper animation
A desert metropolis
Resting
With no foundations
For the upcoming years

Robots of concrete and glass
Are brittle
Crumble where mechanics can’t
They rely on each other
Grumble in static frustration
As you get away

Hair disguised as wires
Shoddy electricians job
It would have been dangerous
To take a guess
And climb braided ladders

Tears of flaked frustration
Glazed her eyes
In lens thin shards
If you’d only looked up
Second window, sixth floor, third building
As you walked away
On solid water

Like a fairground automaton
The vehicles weren’t ready to chase you

Somewhere in dreamland...

2010-12-23T18:57:00.001Z

All I want for Christmas is trees that grow 1930s dresses and a carousel made of cake please.

Skateistan - to live and skate Kabul

2010-12-22T09:28:00.005Z

I found this via my friend the lovely Elle

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Such an amazing project... Never underestimate the potential future importance of giving kids a chance, however small, to reclaim their streets...

Supernova anthology is printed!

2010-12-18T11:04:00.001Z

Sooooo exciting...

Aesthetica Creative Works Competition and Annual

2010-12-10T13:23:00.003Z

I was recently very excited to discover my poem "Forgotten Holiday" was specially commended in the Aesthetica Creative Works competition. Here's the press release from the lovely folk at said organisation:

'Local Artist Beats off Competition from Thousands to be commended in the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition 2010.

Local artist, Alice Maddicott has been commended by the Judges in the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition 2010.

Aesthetica is a British-based art and culture publication that engages with contemporary art and culture both in the UK and internationally, combining dynamic content while exploring the best in emerging and established contemporary arts and design. Established in 2002, Aesthetica Magazine is stocked in WH Smith, prestigious locations such as Tate Modern, Serpentine and National Portrait Gallery, and in March 2008 the company added a second publication to its fold, the Aesthetica Annual.

The Aesthetica Creative Works Annual 2011 is available in galleries and independent retailers nationwide and will showcase the very best in new artistic and writing talent. The Annual has been comprised of the winning entries of the Aesthetica Annual Creative Works Competition, which received an astounding 4000 entries.

Now in its third year, the Competition attracts entries from across the world, and engages with 4000 writers and artists, providing them with the opportunity to showcase their work to Aesthetica’s readers, and Alice Maddicott will enjoy this exposure having been commended for their artistic contribution.

Aesthetica Editor and one of the judges, Cherie Federico:

“This year’s competition was incredible. I was thrilled by the quality of entries, equally, I had to make some tough decisions, and I spent a considerable amount of time contemplating each piece of work. Being commended in the Creative Works Competition is a fantastic achievement as there were only 50 commendations for each category.”

With three categories for artwork, poetry and fiction, the Aesthetica Competition was judged by Cherie Federico, Creative Writing lecturer Dr Kate North, and writer and editor Rachel Hazelwood. Cherie Federico says: “I think I can speak for all the judges when I say that the entries were of an extremely high calibre. We actually had to extend the judging period for a week and a half because whittling the works down proved a huge deliberation, but it’s really encouraged me to continue championing new talent and encouraging creativity in everyone. There was huge potential in so many of the works which Rachel, Kate and myself saw and I would like to urge all the competition entrants to continue developing their considerable talents.”'

You can buy the annual here

My Tree, My Community - The Eden Project

2010-12-09T08:31:00.003Z

Photos of our tree decorating at The Eden Project. Our tree was inspired by talking to the elderly residents of Indian Queens at a tea party at the school. We were fascinated by the discovery that the majority of the guests at our tea party, instead of a traditional Christmas tree when they were younger, collected branches of holly to decorate. We wanted to recreate this idea by creating our own sparkling branches. We were also inspired by how, when asked to design their dream tree, many of the class created a tree that was dressed up as something else or looked alive. This led to the idea of dressing our tree up as a holly tree. We also wanted to incorporate Christmas memories and stories, both of the class and of our guests at the tea party as we learned so many interesting things. Therefore inside our holly tree "clothes" there are fragments of stories, ideas and descriptions to act as a written memory museum of Christmas past and present - each leaf is a little book in which to share our discoveries. There is also a secret surprise if you look closely, really bringing our tree to life! Friendly Christmas tree monster anyone?

Thanks to everyone at The Eden Project, the super creative children and the lovely Miss Fugler at Indian Queens school.

The Telling-Grandon Scrapbook

2010-12-08T09:26:00.005Z

I've been thinking a lot about scrapbooks recently. Partly to do with new projects I'm doing with friends such as the pen-pal work that will hopefully end up as part of The Car-Boot Museum, but also in terms of images and memory and how we organise these things - the invisible lines that link images together and trigger thoughts that could be completely different to the image displayed. I like the idea that everything is linked almost on an invisible washing line. Actually I really like washing lines as a display tool for words and images... But I digress!

The Telling-Grandon scrapbook is part of the Louisiana Digital Library - an amazing resource where you can browse hundreds of wonderful images. In the words of the library "The Telling-Grandon Scrapbook is a 28-page scrapbook/diary containing photographs and ephemera collected by an Evanston, Illinois group during a visit by train to the New Orleans Carnival of 1903. The New Orleans section includes brief references to Begue�s Restaurant, Fabacher's Restaurant, Christ Church, Metairie Cemetery, St. Roch Cemetery, Tulane University, the French Opera, the U.S. Mint, the Young Men's Gymnastic Club, U.S. and French battleships in port, Royal Street, the French Market, and the Rex and Proteus parades. While the scrapbook has no single author, several of the entries are signed by individuals within the group. Two of the more prominent among these were an Irving Telling and Willie Grandon; thus the title of the collection, Telling-Grandon."

I am fascinated by diaries as well as scrap books and the Telling-Grandon is a rare chance to see text as well as archive images. I also love the atmosphere of the photos - the creepy carnival outfits to the old balconied buildings that really remind me of Tbilisi! Here are a few to look at, and you can look for yourself here

Tree house of the day... The Chene-Chapelle

2010-12-04T14:43:00.005Z

... and it's also a wooden church! I am happy. The Chene-Chapelle in Allouville France is located in an oak tree over 1000 years old. Truly beautiful...

I have a new book on treehouses of the world I bought whilst working at The Eden Project yesterday. Perfect accompaniment to chilli and lime chocolate and Saturday afternon tea...
In other treehouse news I am thrilled to discover that the supreme court has saved this fabulous treehouse in Clinton, Mississippi. Read more at www.saveourtreehouse.com

Japanese ruined themepark

2010-12-04T14:25:00.006Z

I can't believe I never posted these before. I discovered these photos about 5 years ago and thought I was in dream world bliss... Japan has lots of amazing ruins - I think these ones are in the north of the main island...

I have a thing for ruined themeparks - ferris wheels seem to dot the landscapes of my ex Soviet travels a lot... The bottom one is one in Sevan, Armenia that we drove past, and the top one is in Armenia too...

Den/ treehouse (sort of) of the day!

2010-11-28T14:52:00.003Z

I came across these when thinking I would quite like a nest and also thinking of expanding my den project to incorporate nest building. The artist Patrick Dougherty makes lovely woven buildings that I would really quite like to have one of. They are somewhat less lo-fi and more impressive than my dens, though I guess mine are more about the interior decoration like the memory scrapbook / personal archive of the imagined feral inhabitant, so... Though that's no excuse and I'm now thinking I should go on some basket weaving course (it's the sort of thing in over-abundance in the hippy west-country) to get my skills up! I was worried about getting the image credits wrong so please see environmentalgraffiti.com for those.

Pictures of Nikola Tesla

2010-11-28T14:37:00.003Z

That's all. I've posted the top one before when waffling about one of my Belgrade trips (though looking back I think I failed to mention the wondrousness that was having a light saber style battle with "wireless" tube light bulbs powered by Tesla's machines with the guy that worked in the Tesla museum!) as it's one of my all time favourite photos, but here it is again along with some more. I just thought it was time that along with his other skills he was finally appreciated for his casually reading a book in extreme circumstances stance. 'Nuff said.

The Car Boot Museum

2010-11-28T14:02:00.004Z

Woo new project (that kind of fits with all my old projects)! Combining two of my favourite things, personal archives and car-boot sales, this project will also tie in with my new penpal writing and illustration collaborations. I love pop up museums - I remember being in Berlin about 8 years ago and finding what seemed like galleries open at 2am that the next day were somewhere else. Looking back it almost seems like I was imagining things, but I'm pretty sure it was real. Later that year I briefly lived in Paris and I remember this room under the post office on Rue Oberkampf where I saw handsome boys apparently randomly building miniature wooden rollercoasters - I now know that it was a gallery, but I have never forgot the delight at finding art in such an unexpected place (though I have to say in this case I kind of wished it hadn't been a gallery but more of an art guerilla affair - handsome boys building rollercoasters for random fun is like my perfect dream!).

The Car Boot Museum will stop and pop up wherever it seems is a good place, be it the side of the road (I'm hoping a couple of foreign road trips can be incorporated), a car park, an empty field (cows deserve art too) or outside a friend's house, and the inside of the car boot will contain text and images, created by me and friends collaboratively, or found things that fit as an almost memory atlas that is illustrated anew by each place it is viewed in. I was also thinking a lot about the Mnemosyne Atlas (see previous post on said marvel) and how we collate images and link things in our heads. The black voids in the display here are as important as the images in that the space represents the "ghost links" between things that can be filled in by people's imaginations. This completion by the reader/viewer has always been an important part of my work and I hope this project will explore and enable some of these ideas further. I also love the idea of drawing on that feeling at car boot sales when you peer inside a stranger's car not knowing what treasures you might find... It has a treasure hunt quality which also fits with my projects! And a travelling cabinet of curiosities one...

Soooo... Who wants to join in?

It's somewhat stormy today...

2010-11-17T08:28:00.003Z

I was debating coming to London today to see a friend's band play, but I think the weather gods have decided against it... Not that it is quite as bad as this old photo of my village! But with all the trains stopped I don't think I shall be picking wild mountain berries with Kurt and Cortney this evening...

Kudzusaurus

2010-11-13T16:26:00.003Z

When left to its own devices nature really knows the best idea for topiary. Though I would prefer a triceratops. Google kudzoo as opposed to kudzu - oh yes it exists...

Tree house of the day!

2010-11-13T16:22:00.002Z

Supernova rocks (almost)!

2010-11-13T11:48:00.003Z

Wooo the wonderful internationally collaborative Supernova poetry anthology I am in is off to the printers and the website with extra work will be live before too long! I am sooo excited that this wonderful project from the Auropolis folks in Belgrade is soon to see the light. I will post again when it is available. Here is my super posey autofictional poetess portrait for my biog - I was going for the intrepid turn of the century lady explorer returns and has to give a poetry reading at a Royal Geographical Society dinner look...? Taken by my sister.

Call out for silver ghosts (collaborators)...

2010-11-11T10:34:00.004Z

Hello friends,

This is a call out for anyone who wants to participate in expanding my projects overseas. The miniature books project has taken place in Serbia and Georgia but if anyone would like me to send them some mini books to hide round their local city let me know. Also I am looking for illustrator creative "pen pals" for a new collaborative project whereby I send you a piece of writing, you send me a drawing based on it, I send back writing based on that etc etc... Finished illustrated letter books will be published here and possibly as an and the ghosts so silver publication if I finally launch that side of things properly! I am quite interested in people whose style is quite different to my writing - ie someone who creates crazy monster worlds that would be an interesting juxtaposition against my romantic dreamy strangeness, or someone who does quite clinical technical drawing for the same reason, but I am open to all possibilities. I was reminded yesterday of how amazing kids' art is too, when running Christmas decoration making workshops for The Eden Project (though for trees not the geodesic domes sadly), so if you have any kids or a younger sibling or nephew/niece etc who might like to draw some pictures that could be amazing and I would make sure the text was suitable for children. Also if you fancy doing a post-it trail or anything let me know! Details of all my projects can be seen on my website here.

Alice x

Ornamental hermit of the day!

2010-11-11T08:14:00.003Z

Oooh a new catagory! Ornamental hermits have long been a fixation of mine, a bizarre late 18th century phenomenon stemming from the picturesque movement and tumbling into the gothic, a person's life became essentially a fad in gardening design. In her wonderful book "English Eccentrics" Edith Sitwell explores the topic and there were a few aristocrats who found the urge of a hermit an irresistable addition to their estate. They advertised for the post and the rules for anyone were quite strict - there was no sneaking into the main house for warmth and comfort once any visitors had left - these hermits were expected to lead the austere life that the hermits of a traditionally more spiritual bent chose to live throughout history. They might not have been expected to live on top of a pillar like the Stylites, or fast for great lengths of time, but they were taking on a contract, sometimes of many years, to give up the outside world. I've been thinking about why this might have appealed to the psyche of the time - the urges of employer and employee should in theory be very different, though I can't help but think that in the age where the Romantic imagination truly captured England that some noblemen could have been living out an unobtainable fancy of their own to escape the world when they employed a hermit on their estate.

But anyway, I digress - hermit of the day!
Going against the idea of answering an advertisement to placate a whim of the aristocracy this ornamental hermit was self-pronounced and lived a more sensibly comfortable life than the others for who austerity was an essential part of their employers' vision. This unnamed hermit lived in the village of Newton Burgsland in Leicestershire and justified his self-pronounced title as "true hermits throughout the ages, have been the abettors of freedom" (note - Edith Sitwell's "English Eccentrics"). He played the part appearance-wise with a long flowing beard (slightly less extreme than the aesthetic demands of ornamental hermit employers - they often insisted that hair and nails must never be cut!), but why he is hermit of the day is his numbered suits and hats all labeled with a particularly symbolism. As a fan of esoteric conceptual dressing I had to give him today's hermit crown. Here are a few examples of his outfit system:
1. Odd Fellows - without money, without friends, without credit.
5. Bellows - Blow the flames of freedown with God's sword of truth.
7. Helmet - Will fight for the birthright of conscience, love, life, property, and national independence.
13. Patent Teapot - To draw out the flavour of the tea best - Union and goodwill.
17. Wash-basin of reform - White-washed face and collyed heart.
20. Bee-Hive - The toils of industry are sweet; a wise people live at peace.

The shapes of his hats mirrored their symbolic meaning. He also had a good forrester outfit made from soft suede. His garden was also full of his questions, including three seats of self-enquiry bearing the questions "and I vile?", "am I a Hypocrite?" and "am I a Christian?". He had a strange desk in his garden he used as a personal pulpit and a kitchen walk decorated with representations of kitchen utensils. A true English Eccentric - I wonder sometimes if they are a dying breed...

Tesla's radio of ghosts

2010-11-07T11:30:00.003Z

As my friends all know I am slightly obsessed with Nikola Tesla and I am rather fond of inexplicable ghosts sounds and homemade electronic instruments too, so this really is rather wonderful in my books...

How to make your own!Click here

Paper animation = v cool

2010-11-07T08:48:00.002Z

Eric Power makes lovely videos. I don't really like the song on this one, but I do love the little tree ghosts like colourful teardrops... All his videos are worth watching even if you don't like the bands particularly...

Imaginary friends and personal hermit kingdoms

2010-11-07T08:46:00.004Z

I've been thinking a lot about imaginary friends recently. Whether we can have just as vivid ones as adults as we do as children. It's logical somehow in my current hermit status that this would be the case I guess, but I was kind of disappointed to read cod psychology about how in adults it is simply a symptom of loneliness and these "friends" will be characters off your favourite TV show - that somehow it was impossible that an adult could have a vivid enough imagination to create a truly imaginary being that might just be who you'd want to hang out with in an ideal world - in a world where things could be truly different to how they are in "reality". I've never been a huge fan of the traditional definition of reality - I think a good dose of delusion is healthy if it leads to a happier mind. I sometimes think a happy mind is one that has just set itself free to imagine away without worrying what other people think about the "sanity" of those thoughts. When I work with children and we create characters for stories, they don't think it strange that these characters then become kind of real to them. It did not seem odd when we took these "invisible" characters on a day out to the woods and built them a theme park from twigs and leaves - it was just fun! And as a writer it is when my characters aren't real to me that my work fails to communicate with people... SO in the spirit of imaginary friends for grown ups are cool here is my new one:

M (is for Magic) was raised by owls - this makes him not sleep a lot and be able to fly. He lives in an amazing tree house he built himself that is reached by shimmying up inside a giant tree trunk. The house itself looks like a strange crooked house stolen from a fairytale witch. M spends his days inventing stuff - his current favourite invention is a woodland one man band which incorporates crickets. He has a bag of mysterious monsters and various boxes that when opened reveal strange magic that twirls through the air like a colourful night sky. He has a pet star with a fondness for sandwiches. At night he is a spy for the woodland world and his own curiosity. He flies great distances and has a particular fondness for states of the former Soviet Union. He watches people purely out of curiosity for their alternative way of life. I guess he is a hermit too in some ways. And hermit's need to build a world of their own. Kenneth Anger's below is sort of close to mine right now. Except I have a lot more sea side...

Happy Sonambuling this Halloween

2010-10-31T14:23:00.000Z

Last time I was by Ada lake, Belgrade...

2010-10-01T16:17:00.002+01:00

...it was all about the buildings not water...

Imaginary story world worshops

2010-10-01T16:05:00.005+01:00

Stuff from some of the workshops I did at Naphill Walter's Ash Primary School. These worlds incorporated bits of stories the children had made up.

Homemade rules

2010-10-01T14:49:00.002+01:00

I'm missing running workshops for kids and looking wistfully at some of the lovely things they made me... Cornish creative education community where are you?

Cosey....

2010-09-01T18:30:00.002+01:00

Spurred on by the promise of a Maine Coon kitten when I unwillingly move home to Cornwall tomorrow, this is Cosey the Maine Coon cat - she won the New York cat show in 1895. Well deserved I say.

Bewitched Onions

2010-08-07T23:21:00.004+01:00

I am in general obsessed with the wondrousness of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford so I might well end up posting a whole series of its greatest arterfacts (though sadly I am having difficulty finding a photo of the rather splendid Peruvian necklace of white beads and a taxidermy toucan). However to start here is one of my favourites and it's a gem - a bewitched onion! Voodoo west-country stylee... It's worth reading the full description on their great website http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-tylors-onion.html - wizard landlords! Only in Somerset... Kind of makes me homesick...

Crazy people...

2010-08-07T23:04:00.000+01:00

Soundtrack to nostalgia evening with Dad.

Origami Transformers!

2010-08-05T18:41:00.000+01:00

Desire, denial and tropical depression

2010-05-21T11:50:00.002+01:00

The wonderful Ana Seferovic with whom I am writing a book...

Today! Work in Progress

2010-05-16T12:34:00.004+01:00

Come to Work in Progress at The Lexington 12 -6 - I will be hiding my miniature books for all to find and complete and send back for my super special Library of the Lost and Found... Also lots of salon style chatting and underground small presses, book swap etc...

Belgrade poetry festival

2010-05-10T13:47:00.003+01:00

I have spent a busy morning making miniature books for the Belgrade poetry festival which starts this weekend. So any Serbian readers keep your eyes peeled for them hidden around events at the festival. And write in them and send them back. Details of this project can be seen here

Bucharest Metroarts update

2010-05-10T13:42:00.003+01:00

The Bucharest Metroarts project is an amazing artistic intervention, improving the quality of the public space of the metro in Bucharest and leading people to the city's great museums. Artists worked closely with the museums and proposed different projects which were then voted for by the museums and the public. I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen artists, but the recession has led to funding difficulty and the project has been delayed. Here's an update... click

I am reading tonight on the radio...

2010-04-09T12:00:00.004+01:00

Me and the lovely Serbian poet Ana Seferovic will be reading from our collaborative poetry book with musicians improvising along on Novi Radio Beograd tonight. Programme is called Soundbridging and starts at 9pm English time...
www.nrbg.rs

The grave roots of St Pancras

2010-03-20T17:15:00.002Z

Saw this on a wander round North London today. It cheered up (yes I know secret goth tendencies) a somewhat grey explore. It was built by Thomas Hardy in his London days! Did anyone else know about his tree root creating from misplaced graves youth? Jude the Obscure suddenly makes more sense...

Planes go to die in Arizona...

2010-02-27T09:44:00.002Z

Charley in New Town

2010-02-25T21:22:00.003Z

Fabulous 1940s town planning propaganda - I like the animated greenbelt trying to contain the oozing sparkling city, and how the people escaping London burst through their roofs like Stanley Spencer's Resurrection!

The first Alice in Wonderland

2010-02-25T20:01:00.003Z

In anticipation of the upcoming Alice in Wonderland I though I'd pay tribute to the first ever film made only 37 years after the original book was published. In 1903 it was so expensive that it was only shown in short snippets! Watch out for the wonderful Cheshire Cat - I always pictured him more like a real cat than has traditionally been portrayed and here it's as if he were in a Francesca Woodman photo! Perfect...

French cat space suits!

2010-02-07T15:51:00.000Z

Soviet Le Petit Prince

2010-02-05T15:05:00.002Z

Second New Year

2010-01-16T19:28:00.003Z

Second New Year fell around us
mixing mist and swarms of crows
whilst the sky ate half the communications tower
putting out its disco light flames
in a hovering puddle of fog
my heels sunk in mud
from misplaced cobbles
and we ate sweets and swirled
sparklers through the empty streets

Thank you Makaka and Super-Teo for a lovely girly gothic evening...

Sinking Sololaki...

2010-01-16T19:19:00.004Z

The bottom photo was my flat!

Cabin fever and no scrap paper...

2010-01-16T19:13:00.003Z

Second Christmas...

2010-01-08T13:44:00.003Z

These photos led to my favourite quote of this trip so far: "Aliiisa - what are you doing? You cannot enter church waving such Gandalf stick!" Ha ha ha...

The Cherry Tree Carol

2009-12-23T11:36:00.000Z

My favourite Christmas song...

Cut out fairy tales

2009-12-17T23:09:00.003Z

I've become obsessed with Lotte Reiniger - it was bound to happen sooner or later...

And here's a little documentary

And dinosaur clouds

Church of nature past...

2009-12-01T17:48:00.002Z

Imaginary Greenhouses

2009-11-15T17:21:00.005Z

I recently got back from a week running poetry workshops on the Yorkshire Dales by the beautiful Grimwith reservoir. Possibly more to come from that... but my favourite discovery of the week was the remains of the gardens of Oakworth House. The house belonged to Sir Isaac Holden and no longer stands (see drawing for how it once was) - it even had its own Turkish bath house - but the gardens still stand in some way. But what really amazed me was the tale of how these gardens once stood under a giant glass dome. I love old greenhouses - there's something extraordinary about old glass - how it seems so thin and battered yet strong - how each mark seems to hold a piece of the history of what was seen through it... In this case the dome seems to have been purely for show - in a way to contain this mythical world he wanted to create - to protect his extravagant dreams from the prying eyes of reality. Today you can still wander around a maze of forgotten interconnected grottos and high stone walkways going back to nature and thankfully left unscathed by beastly health and safety. Local kids apparently climb in at night and live their secret disapproved of lives hanging around the slippery mossy rocks. I like the idea that it comes alive then - that this place is somehow still secret - that you need to know an unspoken code to unlock its stories. I would love to do a project there and hopefully I will one day... I will try and get hold of some photos of this modern forgotten dreamscape... But till then, here's to English eccentrics and dreaming of your own world...

Hamlet Gonashvili

2009-11-15T14:20:00.003Z

Hausu Halloween

2009-10-31T19:28:00.000Z

Beware of lampshades and kittens this evening...

Strange buildings of Tbilisi

2009-09-25T10:02:00.004+01:00

I've never quite figured out what the second building was built for, though it's one of my favourite examples of buildings that look like they could be from a 60s sci-fi film. The first building was where everyone got married during Soviet times - Christian culture was so imbedded in Georgia that they built somewhere that looked like a modern cathedral for the civil ceremonies.

Camping near Chechnya

2009-09-22T16:10:00.004+01:00

Shatili in Khevsureti near the Chechen border is really one of the most strangely beautiful places I have ever been... And it really was on the border - I fell asleep and woke with a very comic stripy tan and a confused border guard staring down at me!

Tbilisi, party...

2009-09-17T14:14:00.001+01:00

Green eyes flicker
like forests too
deep beneath black
hair confuses me.

House swaying and
City (so bright!) in
shudders of light - a
patchwork of disco-floors
and bright beetles
Too still! (he stared)
through youth
music too old to not be
loaded with implications
(wrong!) for now.

A small dog
scattered across the floor.

Green eyes
I wanted (wrong!)
This city I wanted too… Collect
balconies crumbled in
my pocket, a body
to smash them
to pieces where I lay
(Green eyes) I wanted…
(Breathe) through
falling stars the
grape vines dropped
shadows over echoes
I stood in

Vodka bottles
(half empty) leaving
guitars half strung for
green eyes (wrong!)
An empty home.