'The Basin': Art Trail 4 - Calligraphic Cave Art [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2023 - April 2024

[Reconfigured Appropriated Texts]:

Our situation today is to break down a door of knowledge hidden behind society, and the accreted scrawling at this site do appear to represent a cursive recuperation and remembrance of this forgetting. The axiom that rock art is notoriously difficult to date serves only to paint a partial picture of the inconsistent and contested chronological records, now that pigments and other materials can often be precisely dated with scientific techniques [e.g. Radiocarbon Dating or Accelerator Mass Spectometry]. What is incontestable is that the stylings identify as ‘Heritage Wild’ - a form of debased mannerism in which hardcore war went down, with markers against markers and letters against letters [pictograms are largely absent here]. Those who paused long enough performed a signature encoding, possibly hiding in a bush before run-ups, and the neural networking that occurs when we find ourselves creating in real time is none other than hyperspace. The inscriptions demonstrate stylistic evolution, from early blocking/balooning strategies to more refined flourishes [often ambiguous in terms of their general form]. They prioritise linear over polychromatic effects, using paints that scar, engine enamel, or - at the very least, matt black, punctuated with accents of white, red and yellow. Spray will go on everything when formulated with egg albumen, urine, blood, saliva or water, and an understanding of nozzle control apparently emerges early, even in primitive cultures.

Entropy prevails and accurate prediction of concrete aging must factor-in an innovative method, leveraging machine learning techniques [employing seven algorithms]. It isn't too long before concrete structures begin to show signs of aging and deterioration. In this sheltered location, the dressing and crisp junctures endure, and reduced ultra-violet levels within the cavern limit the fades. Nevertheless, time is fluid. The flows are inescapable, as is the case throughout. Their flux-value denotes the fraction of variance in the response feature that can be elucidated by the regression model. Chemical agents, such as acids and alkalis can also react. Extensive seepages are clearly defined with their various origin points and courses traceable through routine inspections and thorough documentation of residual beauty [both sub-aquatic and profound]. Note that he choice was made to exclude observations with missing value [editing phase]. The stainings and leachings originate in  elevated run-off, but prefigure a greater liquid deteritorialisation through the rising of the levels [see draft mitigation proposals]. Condemnation awaits in suspension, particularly concerning chloride penetration.

The original system discouraged footfall, raising questions over the site’s actual function. It is not a matter of heritage policies only, but often involves other sectors. Some see it as a sacred location, accessed with deliberation and specifically set aside as the venue for a vast theoretical project developed over a lifetime that was mythos, cosmology and philosophical system all rolled into one. Others assert more direct territorial imperatives [the pissing of the nozzle, ancient hominid flag-planting, etc]. It is also impossible to overlook urban, educational, legislative, criminal, and other policies. These views are far from antithetical and non are precluded  by drifting approaches. When dealing with the data gathering, a special interest should be placed on the content and possible motivation [possibly no more complex than a 2 year-old child that hasn’t learnt to share yet]. Certainly, the location of identity may be a particularly sacred tenet within the cultural branching represented, but over-coding is ceaseless in either event. Maybe ‘they’ should have tried some poems or something. Interestingly, we also see some cancellation attempts, constituting an interim palimpsestic erasure stage in the overall cycle. Light colours such as white or magnolia take at least two coats to cover and some products can be very strong and cause permanent damage. You have to find your way around, and deal with strange plants, predators and prey, but any visitors prepared to linger at the site [particularly those viewing the artwork under the flickering blue light of some magical  emergency] will continue to take pictures, analyse and publicly ridicule.

Written without A.I. [For better or worse]

'The Basin': The Cells [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Cumberland Basin, Bristol, February 2023 - April 2024

Spiral ascenders lead to imprisonment [with steel balustrades as seen across the scheme]. We face time within cells of text - entangled within crimes and misdemeanours. The conflicted narratives of our journey are scribbled onto the concrete and degrading polycarbonate of each panelak enclosure within the penal colony. The layered inscriptions are rehearsals for the mechanised operation, but, other than that, there is almost no decoration on the building. Are these the walls of the skull? Our final thoughts rattle around each sounding chamber but are enfolded into the roar of the machines, whose field of validity is situated in a sense between these great functionings and the bodies themselves. What the apparatuses and institutions operate is, in a sense, a micro-physics of power. How long will we remain here, suspended over the dock? Memory waits on remand and encrusts a slate that is never wiped. The evidence accumulates [does the case even progress?] and over-coding is a process without end. We have [with difficulty] gained some clues via calligraphic apertures and interstitial transparencies. Paradoxically, their overlapping left penal justice with innumerable loopholes, and so - the eventual verdict can only be imagined.

Further investigation reveals these to be open cells [unsealed all along]. Indeed, a significant aperture remains open to the pursuing elements, placing us close to ceaseless commerce. Is then the incarceration voluntary? If indeed monastic in nature [and thus scriptural], the prison functions in this as an apparatus of knowledge. Whatever the truth - we may pass through at any point, and define new tactics in order to reach a target that is now more subtle. Many such trajectories have been attempted, although, to date, each has merely led to another cell teetering above its coiled stairway [with steel balustrades as seen across the scheme]. Whilst alternative ramps of egress do exist, our mapping reveals such routes to be far from straightforward. Repeatedly, they double-back, curl into the labyrinth, or taper away to an impasse. It is the apparatus as a whole that produces ‘power' and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field where each attempt to escape is met with derision.

We must analyse rather the 'concrete systems of punishment', study them as social phenomena that cannot be accounted for by the juridical structure of society alone, nor by its fundamental ethical choices. We have formed the belief that the cells represent a duality - offering both welcome refuge [or at least - necessary respite] and the restriction of movement [chosen or otherwise]. The accommodation afforded is certainly squalid, and during crisis-events we have observed waves of fetid water being driven through a particular aperture with frightening force. Furthermore, their elevated position means the cells function as little more than blasting chambers when gales blow in. Nonetheless, at such times we remain content to squat there, pressed into the howling walls. Discipline makes possible the operation of a relational power that sustains itself by its own mechanism. So people actually see them - and they go inside and they look and they see how strong or safe they actually feel inside. To brave the conditions outside could be far more terrifying.

Subsequent observations have suggested one more possibility: namely, that the cells might  serve as checkpoints or way-stations on the journey. By their operation, the crowd [a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect] is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. Stationed as they are upon ramped dual carriageways, each 7m wide, the cells offer an ideal matrix of strategic points from which to capture flow variations on either plane. The prison became a sort of permanent observatory that made it possible to distribute the varieties of vice or weakness, and we have ourselves exploited their potential as framing devices of a parallel and accelerating reality. Furthermore, it is well known that this entire sector may pivot at any time. In such circumstances, the cells afford a position in which the punishment of crime is not the sole element, and we must situate them in their field of operation. Certainly, we must not to overlook the partition of the fourth cell - with its glimpsed switchgear. Regardless of topographical convulsions, it is certain that the disciplinary space is always basically cellular.

The watchtower supervises from above. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. Elevated upon a single stilt, the panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognise immediately. The roof slab is slightly Y-shaped which is reflected in the north and south elevations below, which are slightly canted inwards and have mullions between each vertical glazing bay. Exactly who lurks beyond those obscure windows? The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. Access is from below the northern viaducts, where the forbidden gate remains ajar - but we have not yet dared to climb the dogleg stair. An entrance door is located at the head of the staircase on the north side [it is aluminium and glazed with a central horizontal transom]. Were we to gain access there, might we encounter ourselves already gazing down from within?

Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 16'

All Images: 'Untitled (From The New School) 16', Card, Texture Paste, Sand, Concrete Effect Paint,
Acrylics, Ink Spray Enamel & Digital Print on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm x 106 mm, 2023

It's quite a while since I made one of these 'From The New School' paintings, but I still regard the series, and indeed - the overall project to which they relate, as being active. It's certainly one of my more extended endeavours at this stage. However, I remain dependant on employment in the education sector for my daily bread, and so still find myself ruminating on different aspects of that world on a regular basis. The overall rational behind the series can be found elsewhere, so I'll simply direct anyone requiring the back-story here.

Fairly obviously, this particular iteration of an oft-repeated (and originally appropriated) motif relates to the crisis over defective/hazardous concrete construction techniques in British schools, which gained news traction over this summer. Appropriately enough, the media used in this one are the most substantial and textural of the whole series. Collage and mixed-media techniques do  feature in many of it's predecessors - to be sure, but this one is essentially a painted relief as much as it is anything else. 

Having reached No.16 in the run, I'm starting to wonder about the possibility of drawing a line under things at 20. It ought to be possible to come up with four more versions without becoming totally repetitious - I'd have thought. At that point, maybe I could even make some attempt to go properly public with them. It could be genuinely instructive to see the entire series together in one place, after all this time - I suspect. 

An achievable aspiration for 2024, perhaps?

X_mas [happy]

 

All Images: North East Leicester, November 2022

Season's Greetings, one and all.

Archi-Techno Excursion 001.2 (Central Coventry, April 2021)

 

All Images: Central Coventry, April 2001

Another selection of images from my recent Archi-Techno-inspired drift around central Coventry (note the intrusion of a few dynamic diagonals - and even some curves).

The City Clears Its Lungs

All Images: Imperial Tobacco Horizon Site, West Nottingham, May 2019

As I discussed in my recent printmaking-related post, one of the biggest current influences on my local environment is the impact of significant redevelopment and construction work, here in West Leicester.  As I write, the clang of girders, and clatter of pneumatic wrenches drifts through my open window, as another section of the local skyline is filled in with a complex cage of steelwork.

But, before such transformative physical statements can be imposed on a city, it's normally necessary to clear space for them to occupy.  Indeed, this continual process of upheaval - of drawing, erasure and redrawing - of rising, falling, and rising again, is a big part of what lends any major conurbation its characteristic dynamism.  That churning dynamism, and the drive to invent, and reinvent themselves on a grand scale, is of course, what all cities have been about - ever since they first appeared as a mode of habitation, in the ancient Middle East.

Thus, before this blog, as seems likely, becomes an arena for my already expanding library of construction-related images - it seems only fitting to include a few relating to what goes on (or comes down) before.  In this case, the site under scrutiny is actually on the outskirts of Nottingham, rather in my own back yard - being the rapidly vanishing Imperial Tobacco 'Horizon' plant.  This edifice has long constituted an imposing behemoth on the western fringes of the city - an effect that was only magnified by its stark, Brutalist design.  It's perhaps only fitting then, that its removal from the landscape should play out with such post-apocalyptic grandeur.  My camera was certainly never going to resist a spectacle of such thrilling devastation.  

To read a little further into the events depicted, one could naturally find significance in the erasure of yet another large-scale concrete monument to the modernism of my childhood, or even draw some conclusions about the rapidity of our culture's turn away from recreational smoke inhalation.  And, depending on what replaces the plant - they may also represent  more evidence of our turn from manufacturing, towards a service and knowledge-based economy.

That's all perfectly valid.  But, to be honest, when I stood on a pile of rubble to take these shots, I was mostly just captivated by the raw, visual excitement of those pulverised ramparts and mountains of shattered concrete - and with the muscular steel monsters rumbling around amongst them.  As ever, experience first - theorising later.