Cosey....

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

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...

Soundtrack to nostalgia evening with Dad.

Origami Transformers!

Desire, denial and tropical depression

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

Today! Work in Progress

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

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

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...

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

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...

Charley in New Town

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

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!

Soviet Le Petit Prince

Second New Year

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...

The bottom photo was my flat!

Cabin fever and no scrap paper...

Second Christmas...

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

My favourite Christmas song...

Cut out fairy tales

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...

Imaginary Greenhouses

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

Hausu Halloween

Beware of lampshades and kittens this evening...

Strange buildings of Tbilisi

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

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...

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.

There's trouble in Dogville

Miniature books of the world...

...African proverbs

Places I want to visit - Pamukkale water terraces, Turkey

Birdie went a courting

I'd forgotten about this well known clip from Mr Attenborough. Male birds of paradise trying to impress the ladies... The last one is possibly the best bird I have ever seen. Although bowerbirds have the best decorating habits (and build dens which is always a good thing) - they're going to be on a new series this autumn!

I also rather like lyre birds...

When Georgian folk dance came to Korea

SHOW OFFS!

The Mystery of Marriage

Best and most English sex education film EVER from 1932 - how incest is best avoided in favour of a cousinly embrace as demonstrated by mould anyone?

Love on the wing

This little gem of an animation was made for and then banned by the Post Office in 1938 - I like the idea that the letter physically changes into the stories it holds... I miss proper post!

I <3 Decorator Crabs

They dress themselves up in seaweed! I also think there is a type of beetle that does something similar, but with things that make it look more bejeweled, but I beastly can't remember what it's called...

Waltz of Circassian Beauties

William appears to have made a Paper Hats video. It's really rather lovely in a Nashville version of Oliver Postgate kind of way...

Moscow to Tashkent 1958

Okay so this has a lot of bias based on the fact that it is an American documentary from the 1950s about the Soviet Union, but in terms of the footage it's amazing to watch - Moscow, Tashkent, Samarkand, collective farms, nuclear research institutes...

Snap the Gingerbread Man

Mapping the Black Sea

Of ovens and model villages - it's Tito (baton) time!

As May 25th approaches and every harbourer of Yugoslav nostalgia dusts off their memorabilia in time for his birthday, this post is dedicated to my love of the batons of Tito's youth parades. Held every year during his rule as part of his official birthday celebrations, people from different areas across Yugoslavia made these batons to be carried to Belgrade via a mass countrywide relay (I think there was also one official baton each year). They liked to get them to him via impressive feats, including helicopters and absailing! I recently went to an exhibition at the Tito museum in Belgrade which had a load of these homemade batons on display. Being a fan of homemade presents of the slightly ridiculous variety I feel like my skills might have actually been appreciated at this time! I particularly like the random use of a plastic toy oven...




I was also quite impressed in the exhibition by some of the random presents made for Tito by various societies. Below are the society of dentists' creepy diorama, the pharmacist society's gift, which Damian Hirst obviously stole from, the orthopaedic society's somewhat creepy gift, and my personal favourite (purely for incongruity rather than the physical object), the completely random gift from the society of nuclear research - anyone who can find the link between said profession and a taxidermy spider and snake wins a prize (if you're lucky one of my classy homemade presents)!

My new imaginary friends...

Georgian ghost log ladies...

Another classic Belgrade shop display...

...this time just randomly on the street - I like the tradition of random street display cabinets - there's some good bridal ones, but this is my favourite from my recent trip!

Also to prove my point that all caravans eventually end up floating on the river in Belgrade - here is one seemingly on dry ground, but look! - there are tin barrels waiting to send it on its not quite a house or a boat random drifting way...