Tyres and Giffs and Monday morning

I found this stone at the adventure playground about an hour ago.  I had written Anarchy on it about two years ago at a workshop in Peterborough- I only realised I had spelt it wrong when I got home and Kim pointed it out - I don't think the missing H  adds anything but I can cope with it  on this GIF.

A back-burning recurrent theme for me seems to be how materials or objects keep getting recycled and turning up in new places. Even though we know this we somehow forget it or forget to notice it.  This forgetting is another one of those things that flows through all my work as an artist along with the obsession with objects and materials the forgetting of them.  This stone painted with glitter and miss-spelt is a mistake.  As I walked home I thought of turning it a GiF for this blog as I had forgot my phone so couldn't take any pictures of all the tyres we had just got from the garage across from my house.   I could think about all the miles and journeys they have been on on different cars - perhaps across land to Saudi Arabia carrying people on the Hajj or on a taxi driving students around Sheffield most of them seemed warn far beyond any point of  legality each or most must of belonged to criminals.

last week and this week have felt a bit messy I am more between things now as I have run out of steam on the building project and am finding reading and writing difficult.  I am working with Kate on a chapter for a book and I have read Elizebeth Groz about art and territory. I'm reading Graham Harman on object orientated ontologies.  Both of them talk a lot about art but neither really mention artists, they mention them but not in a way that gives us agency, its like art is something that just happens to us as if by magic. This is quite difficult to think with  and reminds me that art criticism and philosophy  are one stage removed from the making of art removed or perhaps abstrated.  I don't really get the conception of art in both these writers work -it isn't something that makes sense of things  in the doing - the flow.

I am wondering if residency is trundling on as that is what I am always doing keeping trundling away.  Today just before I wrote this  Patrick came to the back gates and picked me up and we went and collected some used tyres to use as infill for the front of the platform I've nearly finished.  I was reminded of David Macs Poseidon submarine from the 80's , it got set on fire by some art haters and someone died.  Jumping up and putting old cloths on and going to the playground was like a strange event - a pulling back into what felt quite distanced.

interestingly the Harman has got me thinking about aesthetics and the few moments when I make aesthetic rather than practical decisions when I'm building something.  Using the corrugated  metal for the roof was an aesthetic decision an honest decision.  Leaving the tree growing through the structure was both symbolic and aesthetic.  Using tyres to construct a wall at the front is a practical decision to save money.   They are also used a lot historically within adventure play- my worry was that using them would look a bit like decoration or trying too hard - dressing the the thing to look like it should.  However as I played with them trying to work out how to use them they started to look awful-ugly whether stacked or hung on their sides, or as circles, hoops to jump through they were offensive to the eye.   This is a simple design decision and is about causing the least offense but it also feels like a straightforward aesthetic decision based on scale and materials and feeling of what looks right and wrong .  Although I spent all last week and most of this morning reading about aesthetic theory   I have read nothing that gives any insight into how to build this Tyre wall.  Nobody but me at this stage will have any concern but everybody will feel the not working of it if I make it and it doesn't work.  I think this is part of the refrain and the minor key and the things taken for granted.  The half hour I spent shuffling tyres around felt like something an artist does I was getting as close to aesthetics as I could without actually getting your eyes burnt.