Performance: "ENGLANDS"
Old Trafford, Manchester, England UK
April 9, 2007

Well here we are all caught up to the present now. I've been in Manchester now for about a week, staying at Dwanelle's and having a smashing time. Yesterday just for the sheer bloody joy of it I did a three-hour performance about gender issues in sport. I almost called it "Spectacle/Receptacle" but - fuck that - I'm in a good mood these days so ENGLANDS it is for me mate in all their - er - its glory.

Performance: "Tyneside Tease"
Proctoscape Projects, Newcastle, England UK
March 29, 2007

After all the Sturm und Drang I pulled off in Rochdale, I was glad to get a last-minute invite to do something in Newcastle immediately after my residency at CO3 finished up. This was a fun one, just me wearing some teen slag wear, riding the buses all day coming on to men who were with their wives & girlfriends. Just some good clean fun really.

By the end of March I'd gotten into the swing of things & my work was getting more ambitious again. I was still thinking Nordic thoughts, thinking about the north as I'd starting doing in Namibia. I started working with fire again in a big way. At first I was trying to recreate some fires associated with counter-terror activities, ie burning windows of Baader-Meinhoff seige, bombing of MOVE in Philadelphia, the massacre of Branch Davidians in Waco, but eventually I realized I was aiming for the Ur-counter-terror-drama: the massive conflagration at the end of Lang's Ring Of The Nibelung. I messed up the memory card of my camera and lost most of the photos of these actions. Here's a photo of one of the later ones though - gives you an idea anyway.

Performance: "Trouble At Valhalla Bed-sit"
Chaos Out Of Order, Rochdale, Lancashire, England UK
March 20, 2007
Cardboard, pressboard, illustration board, chalkboards, foxgloves, rosemary branches, legs of mutton, Herb Alberich & The Tannenbaum Brass lps, fire, smoke & petrol.

By early March I'd settled into a routine at CO3, making paintings in the morning, walking down to the veg shop in Ealees to buy some grub for lunch, then a nap & at night I work on some writing or do a simple performance or two. Most of these I didn't bother to document, I think I'm just not so keen on putting every single thing I do under the microscope so to speak. Anyway Dwanelle took one of this perf, one of a series. Love that Patrick McGoohan, eh?

Performance: "The Scarecrone of Romney Marsh"
Chaos Out Of Order, Rochdale, Lancashire, England UK
March 2, 2007
Horses & guns, oh my!

Performance: "A Taste Of Honey" - collaboration with Jake Husko
Chaos Out Of Order, Rochdale, Lancashire, England UK
March 8, 2007
Honeybees, lawn furniture, junk mail, bear scat, silk thread, sterno, rusted iron & Herb Albert & The Tejano Brass lps.

I don't know what got into me, but right after finishing "Safe Harbour" I immediately started painting, which is not something that I generally do. It must have been Bruxi's influence. Anyway I ended up with just a handful of finished ones. Here they are.


All untitled.

Here's the first thing I did at CO3. It's a sequel to the "Distant Shore" observatory I made in Namibia in January (see several posts below) and it's also a tribute to the roots of the English working class, especially The North West Group.

Installation: "Observatory #4: Safe Harbor"
near Chaos Out Of Order art center, Rochdale, Lancashire UK
February 12, 2007
Raw cotton, cotton fabric, wood glue, spar varnish, iodine.

A lot of people have left comments asking to see a photo of what I look like when I'm not making performance art. Well okay I don't know why I'm in the mood to let you see me like this - & I'll probably change my mind later & take this post down - but anyway - here's what I look like - or anyway it was how I looked yesterday. Dwanelle took this shot of me at the park on an uncommonly beautiful day for Manchester this time of year.

I'm just going through my photo files trying to sort them out in order. Here's some casual shots from CO3 - here's a little impromptu barbeque / picnic that was going on when I arrived at the main residence complex. Here's (L-R) Victor Bruxi who's a painter, Jake the groundskeeper, & Dima, the son of the photographer Pic Ho who was also a resident but was leaving the same day I got there.


And here's a photo from late February when some of us headed for the Cotswolds. That's local installation artist Paul Haywood up front, French painter Marie Bisque & Josefina Glum, the performance artist from Leipzig.

Back at the caf, realizing how behind I am with all this, trying to get back into the swing. This might be a little disorganized as I try to catch up as quick as I can. A little random.

Here's a couple poems I wrote - in February I think.

ARGEMONEA

small membraneous scales or bracts
on the receptacle, composite, glume
&c of grasses furnished with chaff,
that part or texture of the ovule
where all the parts grow
together hollowed out like a gutter,
a phrase expressing the essential
marks of species
genus &c
of the texture
of parchment
which distinguish it
from all others

DICENTRA

texture of green grains
in the leaf-cell, exposed
to light, giving color its due,
coloring matter
in plants, especially
when not green,
or when liquid like
eyelashes, fringing, beset
on the margin by bristles
rolled inwards from the top
like crosiers, as the shoots of ferns,
the flower-clusters of heliotrope,
ash-grayish
whence the name and general outline
of a thing divided by a circular line
around the sides and furnished
with a tendril coiling like virgin’s-bower
or like the scar left
by the fall of a leaf

Wow. Sorry for not posting for so long. It was kind of a whirlwind two months in Lancs. at the art center where I was in residence: COOO (or CO3) which stands for Chaos Out Of Order, near Rochdale. I'm just now finished up with my residency & staying in Manchester with my friend Dwanelle and her roomate Antoinette. I met Dwanelle at CO3 during one of the artist talks (not mine) & she invited me. CO3's a billiant place & I did some fabulous work there & everything seemed to make sense for once, but the center itself is a heritage site & there's no internet there, so I couldn't keep up with this blog while I was there. So here I am at Dwanelle's or actually at the local caf where there's wifi. Wifi mofo. Anyway I'm just getting back in the swing of things so I'll start off simple here with a photo of the building I stayed in at CO3: