'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]

Ex_ist 2 [re_configure/trans_late]

All Photo-Manipulations: February 2025

Reconfigured Appropriated Texts [Translated]:

This sense of adventure certainly doesn't come from events. A new plan will have to be presented to move the project forward. I've proven that it's more about how moments flow into each other. A fire destroyed the surrounding area (I think that's what has happened). Suddenly, it feels as if time is passing, that each moment leads to another, this one to another, and so on; that each moment is destroying itself and there's no point in stopping it, etc. It will deteriorate, be vandalised, and then we attribute this property to the events happening to us at the moment. Leaving things as they are clearly doesn't work. What's formal extends to substance. It's unusable, consisting of thin brick pillars topped with a dilapidated wooden-clad building. For three months of the year, there are no clear signs of progress or imminent construction. In fact, this famous era is much talked about, but barely seen. I think if nothing is done immediately, the situation will get worse.

All Original Images: Old Basford, Nottingham, February 2025

If I remember correctly, this is called the irremediability of time. At this point, it seems impossible to save anything - the feeling of adventure would just be the irremediability of time. I have to face it; every day - a complete waste of time. But why don't we always have it? Is it because time isn't always irremediable? (I would prefer if nothing happened.) There are times when you feel like you can do whatever you want, move forward or backward, it doesn't matter. And then, at other times, it feels like the network has become strained, and you can't accept that when people come here by tram. That’s the first thing to do in those cases. It’s not a failure because you can't start over (no tangible progress has been made). The applicant appealed the decision, but the Inspector upheld it. They hadn't noticed much activity on the site, except for the presence of a man who appeared to be moving rubble and debris.

I'm afraid of cities. But we mustn't abandon them. Someone has to live somewhere. Previous comments have spoken of 'nationalities' in an unfinished housing development on a citywide and national scale. If you go too far, you reach the Vegetation Belt (the greenery stretches for miles toward the cities). It's waiting, but the first thing you see is the dirty desert. When the city dies, vegetation will invade it. It will climb the stones, grab them, dig them out, tear them apart with its long black claws and accelerate its growth. It will fill the holes and plant its green paws everywhere. We must live in cities while they are alive. One should never enter alone into such a mass of hair waiting at their door. It's dangerous for the residents (neither safe nor proper).

Permission has not been implemented. You should be allowed to lift and puncture the old cross-filters, as the approved project isn't considered financially viable in the city. If you know how to do it, choose times when the animals are digesting or sleeping in their burrows (while conveniently ignoring the old, long-abandoned local eyesores hidden behind piles of organic detritus). It's a shame, you rarely find anything there but minerals - the least frightening existents of all.

Pre-Mobile [The Booths]

 

All Images: West Leicester & Clifton, Bristol, August 2024

I have always experienced a certain trepidation about using telephones. Like other kinds of social awkwardness, this was a distinct impediment in my youth, but something I have learned to manage far more effectively in adulthood. Nevertheless, even now, I will still sometimes avoid a phone conversation if there is a viable alternative, or unless a practical imperative pleasurable or pleasurable social interaction are indicated. 

I doubt I am the only one to have experienced such alienation. Our culture is full of references to troubling or confusing telephonic interactions (although they are certainly reported far less often anecdotally). A pretty extreme cinematic example is Joel Schumacher’s 2002 psychological thriller, ‘Phonebooth’ [1.], in which Colin Farrell’s lead character answers a random, unexpected call to a public phone - only to become pinned-down in the kiosk by an unseen sniper. For most of the film, it becomes the highly constricted arena in which he must make potentially life-changing/ending decisions and face-up to his own moral shortcomings. 

Idea for a possible survey:

Which form of phone-call would you least welcome - 

1. One in which a stranger imparts unexpected/disturbing information?
2. One in which no one speaks (possibly enhanced by static, breathing, etc.)?
3. One in in which a public phone begins to ring inexplicably and you are immediately posed the dilemma - to pick-up or ignore?

N.B: Any of these examples might constitute pivotal points in a narrative, or portals to alternative realities (looked-for or otherwise).

Some of my earliest memories involve entering a traditional, red GPO phone box with my mother, at the age of three or four. For somewhat anomalous reasons, the city we lived in also had cream-painted, privately-run boxes, but we were generally GPO customers. It’s possible there were calls to various people, but the ones I remember are those to my Grandmother, who lived on the opposite bank of the adjacent estuary (private line into our own home didn’t come until we ourselves relocated to the southern shore, a couple of years later). There are relatively few intervening miles involved, but in memory, the special journey to the kiosk, and the electronic distancing effect of the apparatus - with its associated infrastructure of cables and exchanges, gave the impression of contacting a foreign country. A trip to visit in person (pre-bridge) involved two train rides and a short paddle-steamer voyage, which only magnified that effect.

The Proustian potential of smell is well documented, and those old multi-windowed cast-iron booths had a particular aroma which remains vivid in the memory. Reason suggests it was essentially a blend of painted cast iron, residual cigarette smoke, and a hint of urine, perhaps - but even now I would simply identify it as that old telephone box smell. Almost as strong are the lasting impressions of filmed and scratched glass - distorting the street outside as I pressed my nose to each individual pane, or the heavily enamelled texture of the iron glazing bars beneath my fingers. Roughly level with the top of my head was a brushed-steel shelf (amazingly, now) - complete with an extensively-thumbed phonebook. My mother would lift me up there, with a coin or two pressed into my hand. Their insertion into the specified slot was a critically-timed procedure - performed exactly as she heard my Grandmother pick-up at the other end, but for me the real satisfaction lay in the sudden release and satisfying metallic clink as each coin dropped into the coin chamber. I might then leaf through the directory pages (futilely searching for some break in the dense and interminable list) as I waited for the handset to be handed over and my Grandmother’s strangely altered voice greeting me from the other side of the world.

Some years later, having left home, I moved between a succession of shared student houses. In very few cases were we prepared to split a phone bill (even if our irregular  comings and goings would have made it feasible). Once more, I found myself in public call boxes whenever it was necessary to make a call. If possible, I would often choose pen and paper instead. For a period, I became a prolific, and typically prolix letter-writer. 

On one occasion I visited the call box at the other end of our street, to make a fairly lengthy call. It was the end of the day, I was weary, and only when I got home did I realise I had foolishly left the kit bag I’d been carrying on the shelf where I once sat as a child (the accompanying directories being long-lost by then). Having only recently relocated to that address, I had stored all my personal documents in the same bag for safekeeping (passport, birth certificate, medical documents, etc., etc.) - but neglected to remove them before going out for the day. Its perceived value instantly multiplied way beyond the meagre cost of simply replacing a cheap canvas bag. It took no more than 5 minutes to run back to the phone booth, but in the interim the bag had been filched. Back then, restoring key official documents could involve an extended bureaucratic ordeal (involving a series of further phone-calls and letters, ironically). For several weeks, it felt like the monster had effectively swallowed my life.

Of course, technological ‘progress’ has long-since rendered the boxes all-but obsolete. Whilst I may be an habitual late-adopter, I’m not a total Luddite, and so I too carry a mobile device - just like (nearly) everyone else. If I’m honest, the range of typed/deferred  alternatives to spoken calls, and obvious flexibility it offers, actually suit me fine. However, any vestigial anxiety about phone calls is now replaced with the periodic stress of negotiating a new deal, and  the life-sapping chores of managing emails, social-media posts, updates etc. Communication over distance never really gets simpler, it seems. It may have become less of a deliberate or pre-planned operation, but the potential filters between us still morph and multiply, nonetheless.

The old cast-iron kiosks slowly retreated into that quaint dimension of British ‘heritage’ that  also encompasses Morris Minors (my family also drove those), welcoming pubs, and properly-funded public services. Most were gradually replaced by a more minimalist, glass-sided variant, adorned by an ever-changing succession of privatised company logos. Somehow, those always felt pretty shonky, despite their somewhat belated nod to functional Modernism. Sleek aesthetics and an ever-contracting societal regard for shared facilities are rarely a great fit, and so it became increasingly rare to find one in a pristine, un-vandalised or otherwise unadorned state. Their bland, flat sides proved impossible for corporate interests to overlook as potential advertising space, and fly-posters-by-night and graffiti enthusiasts clearly felt the same way.

Luckily, all that patina, entropy, entangled messaging, and creeping neglect remain visual meat and drink for my own lens (for the time being, at least). Indeed, even complete absence itself can often supply viable subject-matter, I find. Certainly, the pit-falls of nostalgia are far more usefully swapped-out for an appreciation of the inevitable processes of urban/social change. Either way, the ever-accelerating decline of/demand for the booths, and apparent reluctance of BT to maintain those that do linger, suggest they will probably become just another ghost of the Everyday before long - perhaps revealed in the form of a occasional wrecked carcass, or vacant concrete pad.

[1.]:  Joel Shumacher (Dir.), 'Phone Booth', Fox 2000 Pictures & Zucker/Netter Productions, 2002

Derelict Mirror (Happy-ish New Year)

 

All Images: Central Leicester, New Year's Day, 2024

The festivities are behind us, and it's time to peer trepidatiously into the future. I can't claim this was the most uplifting of Christmas/New Year periods, being largely characterised by yet more school-borne illness and a seemingly endless procession of Atlantic storms. Thankfully, the virus has departed, but each subsequent extreme weather event served to both lower the mood and raise the water levels - to the point where my own neighbourhood here in Leicester was subject to a full-on flood alert for a couple of days. I can only hope the immediate emergency is abated, and that we dodged a bullet here (others have not been so lucky) - not least as moving valuables upstairs and taking midnight walks to gauge nearby river levels is hardly a relaxing or creative way to spend one's precious leisure time.

Nevertheless, the creative life is about adapting to events as they present themselves, not as we would idealise them. Even between seemingly interminable downpours, there have been brief windows of photographic opportunity, and the chance to grab a bit of much-needed two-wheeled exercise. If life gives you economic/political gloom, environmental collapse, climatic catastrophe, illness and despondency - then find an attractively waterlogged bit of waste ground to symbolise the mood - that's my motto. I've passed by this portion of nondescript, derelict vacancy many times, but this time the standing water and briefly atmospheric illumination transformed it into something actually worth documenting.

To be sure, it's the kind of bleak subject-matter to which I'm often drawn, and perhaps captures the exhausted and demoralised mood of this particular nation, in several ways. Nevertheless, there's no denying its obscure beauty and wealth of visual texture. To simply observe and document is at least to engage, and creative endeavour is ultimately its own reward. To extract stimulation from the least promising circumstances is a generator of hope - and thus a political act in its own right.

Who knows? 2024 might even see a (marginally) less dysfunctional government replace the current criminal regime. That's if we can avoid a slide into full-on populist fascism, of course, but for now - let's look on the bright side...

Colour / Not Colour 10 (Found Entropic Mondrian)

 

Photo-Manipulations: April 2023

“De Stijl sought to establish a new unity in all the arts. They were all to work together to shape the modern world, and were indeed already doing so. In accordance with Mondrian’s ideas, van Doesberg propounded the theory that henceforth in art ‘nature and intellect, or the feminine and masculine principle, the negative and the positive, the static and the dynamic, the horizontal and the vertical’ should be brought into equilibrium.” [1.]

All Original Images: Central Leicester, February 2023

“The search for meaning and form was now transferred in the imagination to society as a whole. The concept underlying Mondrian’s paintings – namely to appear as never completed works – was the same as that of the cathedral.” [2.]

"...Mondrian and van Doesberg both agreed that avant-garde painting had to be allied to an equally radical modern architecture. Clear colours in combination with simple white structural elements were to take the place of the sad and stuffy world of the 19th century, which they liked to refer to as 'brown'. Once this new architecture was established, all the problems of justifying avant-garde painting would be solved at a stroke. How would anyone be able to reproach them for painting pictures that no one could understand or need, when examples of the new architecture were springing up everywhere, proclaiming their ideas of colour." [3.]

"In a book completed in manuscript form in 1931 under the title of 'The New Art - The New Life' ('Le Nouvel Art - La Nouvelle Vie: La Culture De Rapports Purs'), Mondrian proclaimed the end of art was imminent. This end would include the end of the Old World, and thereafter the 'new life' and the dawning utopian era could profit from the energies formally used to produce works of art during the dark ages of the human race." [4.]

[1.] - [4.]:  Susan Deicher, 'Mondrian 1872 - 1944: Structures in Space', Cologne, Midpoint/Taschen, 1994/2001