DIY is most suitable

I started my current creative adventure a year ago with the intention of promoting 'cooperation' amongst communities (with the aim of inciting some attitude of involvement, effort and care about society and the planet), i have realised that maybe I was forcing myself to favour a group behaviour that can't always come naturally to everyone, or every group.

I realised this today at the Whitechapel Gallery when looking at the work in progress being made there by the Youth Group.
My initial reaction was that I would not feel comfortable being forced to discuss artistic ideas with people I don't really know.
This is because -
a) I enjoy working alone in the initial stages of a project, because I only make art about things I am really obsessive and can get emotional about - so if anyone criticises these personal ideas in the early stages (even though they are usually actually ideas with a community-interest intention!!) I get despondent. I need to have got a fair amount out of my head and onto a page, or through a camera, or whatever, before I show people and discuss it. Sometimes/often I just don't even want anyone's input; I just wanna make stuff and if people don't like it; then tough shit.
b) Forced cooperation is a bit false and cringey - you may not get on creatively (or at all!) with everyone you are forced into contact with. This is obviously a common issue in real-life and is a particular reason why I started this cooperation project - but I suppose I was being too idealistic in assuming that all sorts of strangers and randomers can work together productively. Not agreeing with everyone is something we all have to overcome, but perhaps to force a productive outcome from such a situation is asking too much.

BUT - people need to be accepting and open-minded, even if they are not willing to actively cooperate. They need to consider the needs and wants of everyone else, and let them get on with it. (This includes the needs of the planet by the way!)

SO - this is why I now think the following media are actually better for inciting everyday cooperation/ productive discussion/curiosity/creativity/effort to participate in society:
- zines/pamphlets
- film stills (as an extraction and provocation of activity/dreaming)
- paintings/prints
- cafes (as a site)
- DIY low-fi exhibiting
- songs and live music shows
- DIY or pirate radio/podcasts

all of these things are (have the potential to be) honest and accessible extractions from peoples' lives. People make up your social and living environment.
You can consider, at any pace and any time, these things that those people have made or shown you.
Then you can react/respond/discuss. Often with your own created thing.
Sometimes people who surround you will be similar to you in the way they think and live, and through the creation and appreciation of all those media that I listed, communities can be formed. These like-minded coherent communities will have chosen themselves because they made stuff before they spoke about it; from seeing/hearing the art/music people had time to consider, rather than argue and then disperse or abandon ideas as may happen in discussion groups who talk before they act/make.
I suppose I'm saying that sometimes talking gets in the way of doing >> maybe the doing (a visual or musical culture) unleashes the ideas, ready for response: from which people build a community.

So basically i'm bigging up DIY culture, and not always talking before you make!!
Especially because I find that renowned art institutions sometimes hinder creativity; clearly they do because we can't all exhibit in them! Also, their reputation means people expect things from them, which invites a fair amount of destructive criticism about the art and music that is put on. DIY is the real context of real-life; large commercial (and even non-commercial) galleries and venues are not real-life, because they are not an accessible presentation platform for us all.
Perhaps egos and reputation can even become more a concern than the actually creative content, when the prestige and reputation (and subsequent funding) of a mainstream cultural institution is at stake.
BUT - this is not to say that mainstream platforms have not made the world a better and more democratic space - Columbia Records brought us Bruce Springsteen! - it's just that there are increasingly less mainstream platform in proportion to people creating work!

I haven't put tumblr (or any other blog sites) on my list, because these encourage an easily diverted/confused stream of information. I find the visual internet too fast paced for a platform with which to get people to really get interested and care about particular things. It's great to see so much info and everyone doing their thing on the internet, but.....
...... there is a lot to be said for reading a book or zine, staring at a rad drawing, or watching a great gig; for getting really into with one or two things, and responding to that.
I suppose this is how tribes form; but as long as there's no poaching, elitism or battling then the basis of tribes is cool!

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And miscellaneous sketches... and some classic Home and Away scenes

lovers in the outback, nearly just died from a petrol bomb, heat exhaustion and starvation, and potential gunshot wounds.

queen of the quasi-tribal wrap dresses talks to her new boyfriend

Marilyn enjoys some late-night Feng Shui agonising

The Braxtons are ok after after yet another shoot-out/robbery/attempted murder

Kyle is so soppy

Bianca tries to seduce Liam, but he's just nervous about his gig at Angelo's

SHERYL BRAXTON'S HOUSE!! FINALLY!

rediscovered my Promarkers on my lunch break!

Some more thinking about memory interpretation and preservation. Some days you live in your memory, some days you just don't feel like anything else ever happened!

Also, I wish I lived in the Swagstation. Maybe when I've finished my dresses I will make the Swagstation, and open in to musicians and artists who are doing some positive, curious stuff. - then The E Street Band and The Gaslight Anthem can come and stay when they're on tour.

Origins and remembering of memories

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I recently read a book called 'Shotgun Lovesongs' by Nickolas Butler. 

It's a new release, set in a small American farming town called Little Wing. It's about memories and reunions, how things change, or don't for some people. And running parallel and subtly to the main story is a story about how music plays a part in all of that.

Anyway I just can't stop thinking about the book. I finished it about 3 weeks ago but I can't stand to start another book yet because it was so good. It's given me so much material for artwork but it's just such a good book I don't want to do it a dis-service. So i've been pondering music and 'remembering' (and researching art residencies in Wisconsin, where the book is set!) to try and extract something perfect to make some art about, but I think i'd better just go for it at some point. 

Above are a few sketches and scans based on (of course) Home and Away (relevance to Shotgun Lovesongs = smalltown life/closeknit community/towns steeped in personal histories), but also just song lyrics that seemed to fit my mind when I was thinking about Shotgun Lovesongs and the mood of nostalgia (horrible but appropriate word meaning retrospectively happy and sad simultaneously!) and vicarious wishing that the book inspires! I actually got a bit upset after I finished it, because it wasn't real and i wasn't really there!

I've got lots of imagery on the back-burner, but here are some words first that i've gathered about memories/music etc.

'A slow song came over the jukebox, and there was a moment then when time congealed, when the fabric of things was as it had always been and continued to be for those others in attendance, but between us, a kind of fault separated itself noiselessly like a small mass of land breaking away and going into the ocean.'  - Shotgun Lovesongs

'Examples of some imagined (b) ones would be: sweaty teens in shiny pastels dancing in unison at a wood-paneled, tinsel-covered community-center room to "Snowqueen of Texas" by the Mamas and the Papas; a view from the side of a guy walking down a school hallway to Frank Ocean's "Forrest Gump," passing lockers painted in the 1970s and a ton of muted, rowdy students; a girl submerging her head into a tub of red hair dye to the chorus of St. Vincent's "Cheerleader."' - Tavi Gevinson on her blog Style Rookie

 'I felt like I wanted you to rewind and run home and sit under the bleachers at your real school dance so much. I didn’t want you to have to sit next to the people who have the serious faces.' - Leith Clark of Lula Magazine

'See I was playing a show down the road when your spirit left your body... But I still know the songs and the words and the name and the reasons.' - The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

"And the future hangs over our heads, and it moves with each current event, until it falls all around like a cold steady rain, if you love something give it away" - Bright Eyes - Land Locked Blues

You can never quite grasp your memories whole and perfectly and originally.

It’s like standing on the edge of a field in twilight or sunset and wondering what medium would be best to capture this scene. But then you realise you just can’t ever capture it, and that even if you came out here every night and stared and stared and tried and tried to remember it perfectly, you never would. You’d have to keep coming back to try and experience it again like you did the first time. Every now and again you feel you’ve grasped it and secured it maybe just long enough to think with it, but then it is swept softly/ripped violently away from you again, harder and harder to retrieve each time. This just increases your yearning for it, but you know you have to be patient; forcing a memory might warp it, or bring about other thoughts (relevant but not original) to fill the void; and they’re not what you want because they weren’t what you thought originally; they weren’t the origin of your memory.

I first recognised that remembering was actually a task, and one that should be taken seriously, on a bus ride from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik while listening to Land Locked Blues by Bright Eyes; sometimes songs crystalise your thoughts perfectly, or help you remember things you've been trying to remember, or avoiding remembering. So that's why I use song lyrics, get obsessed with certain TV shows set in certain places, and also get stuck with actually turning thoughts into artwork in case I can't make it as good as the cerebral version!

And here are just some relevant songs to ponder on...

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my favourites! This song (No Surrender) obviously is about being friends for forever, but something I also thought about was something Stevie Nicks said when I saw Fleetwood Mac, about how audiences and musicians have a reciprocal cooperative relationship.

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