Pedestrian

Route: Plymouth Train Station to PCA Duration: 15 Mins Time of Day: Morning Socks: Feet in socks, socks as objects.  Shoes, looking at all the different shoes.  As transport. Different shoes influence different gaits. Weaponised cars:  Cars are brutal, always have been.  Lately cars have been weaponised.  Because it's so easy to kill someone with a car. Lines: Define spacial relationships. (Lygia Clark) It's easy to see this in a cityscape. Binary: Linear needs non-linear for definition, there is no binary in it.  Like the Foucalt liars theory, liars are just proving the existence of lies, or something like that?  And see also Lefebvre, he mixes up the binary too. Purpose: The space is that of commuters. Back in Totnes, earlier, around 8am ish, I saw a group of lads congregating at a terrace bar/cafe all hungover, laughing and recounting the night before.  They seemed incongruous to the frame work (pattern/system) the space had now bec...

Route: A circular walk around Totnes Duration: An hour and a half Time of day: Afternoon Seagulls: I tune into the cacophony of seagulls above.  I love their sound.  It brings me back to safety.  It's familiar.  It means home, whatever that is. Fishchowters'/Fishcheaters' Lane: Brilliant bit of walking related history - this green lane dates back to medieval times when fisher-people walked this way to the market as an alternative route to avoid paying taxes at the tollbooth.  I particularly like it because you don't often see other people.... Black Cat:    Another walking superstition.  The dog chases any luck away.  It's interesting that her fixation with the cat gives her such a strong purpose of direction, she deviates according to her desires or compulsions. Grass: She finds another purpose.  Eating grass growing in lines through the paving stones.  Although it's disconcerting when your dog eats grass I drift of...

Route: Home to Totnes Train Station via the riverbank Duration: 20 Mins Time of Day: Morning Paul Ricoeur?:   ~reading the signs~ Projection/translation/ Production:    From nature to me not me to nature.  (Fulton talks about not imposing things on the site/nature.)  Fulton v Long.  In gallery, product v in situ/no product (see Tufnell and Wilson 2002) Thumb/Finger: Still using my finger memory system.  What would fingerprints as maps, enlarged, be like? All the lines/scars on the body as maps..... lines of memory, journeys... Polarised:  I'm working in two methods, pulling opposite ways.  Conceptual ideas made material are not expanding the research.  They're full stops on the end of a thought train.  Not process, just working to illustrate a point.  The more dynamic, unfolding processes seem to interweave theory/thought/discovery and are more like italics, gently accenting emphasis but totally integral to th...

Route: Plymouth Train Station to PCA Duration: 15 Mins Time of Day: Morning Tarmac:  The crust of the earth made from tarmac.  I see under the skin where the roadworks have excavated.  The layers of stuff.... Strata.  Man made. Topography: This shape that hugs the surface.  The horizontality.  The way it changes as you near the spot you thought you could grasp in your vision.  How might the topography look as a drawn thing.  Topology, the mobius strip etc.... Plateau: A plateau is a safe resting place when climbing.  I'm plateauing now but it doesn't feel safe. All I can see is the next mountain face I have to navigate... Steps:  There are perfect steps (just near the station) where each one is at the right distance and height to take one step at a time, perfect.  Then there are the ones just in the university campus where I use two feet on one step meaning I have an uneven rhythm going up or down them.  It's hugely d...

Route:  Totnes to Dartington via Riverpath Duration: 1 hour 30 mins Time of Day: Midday Speeding Van: A van came speeding up the high street and I had started to cross.  Something snapped in me and I slowed right down, holding my ground and walking steadily across the road so the van had to slow down, I stared at the driver in the eyes and gestured he should slow down.  He gave me the finger and swerved round me accelerating loudly so I yelled and gave him the finger back.  I was furious.  He had come out of nowhere, speeding up a gentle road, full of pedestrians with hardly any room to walk on the pavement.  Wanker. From Ollie's sketchbook.. to the man in the van. Lucy Lippard: I try the Eskimo custom she describes in Overlay.  I'm walking the emotion out of my system along the path of the river. "The Eskimo is given a stick, the point at which the anger is conquered is marked with the stick, bearing witness to the strength or length ...

Mary Overly The Six Viewpoints. I was introduced to this practice through Deborah Black during a workshop at In Other Tongues , a creative summit held at Dartington Hall 2017.   (see:  http://artdotearth.org/  ) I've been applying it to the walks.... THE SSTEMS Shape - Perceptual ability to see and feel physical form. Space - Perceptual ability to see and feel physical relationship. Time -  Perceptual ability to experience duration and systems created to regulate duration. Emotion -Perceptual ability to experience states of being. Movement - Perceptual ability to experience and identify with kinetic sensation. Story - Perceptual ability to see and understand logic systems as an arrangement of collected information. Difficult to document, of course........

Route: Blackpool to some outer rural village... Duration: 2 Days When I was 13 my best friend and I were planning what to do for the forthcoming half term break at school. Should we go nocturnal or go camping?  We were unsupervised, wild and fairly unhinged but we had the self awareness to know being nocturnal would be a shit idea. So we went camping. We got a bus somewhere - I'm not sure we actually knew where - got off and walked until we found a dingly dell fitting the preconceived notion of what an ideal camping pitch should look like (neither of us had experienced much camping before this...).  We had with us a small Action-Man play tent, borrowed from my friend's neighbour - who we nicknamed Mark Twain for some reason - about eight jumpers each and some tinned Alphabet Spaghetti.  Maybe we had blankets, but I have a memory of being constantly cold, so I doubt it. That night we were invaded by local boys who all smelled of ale and wouldn't leave us alone....