The News Of The Foz
A Caffeine & Candy Junkie Writes 23/11/02 01:58
Well it's two months on from my last entry and I'm still call-centre scum! Things were looking patchy for a while as I thought I was starting to lose the plot completely. Almost everything I stayed in Swansea had gone to shit and I was beginning to wonder about absconding. I managed to miss Bill Drummond's week-long stay in Swansea where he conducted a series of seminars, lectures, performances and all sorts based at Swansea Institute. Also we had to pull the plug on Cruel Samoan's monthly slot a few weeks ago, which was a particularly bitter pill to swallow. The plan is to keep Cruel Samoan as a special thing that crops up every so often as we were having real problems keeping it vibrant and original and it was stopping us (The Cult) from doing any other work! I still assist in the running and promoting of 'Lush', South Wales' finest student night every Thursday and that's coming on in leaps and bounds but it's not quite the same really. I am currently developing ideas for one-off club-based ventures so I'll keep visitors of this site posted on those as they come to fruition.
The main project at the moment is one such club event. Currently going under the working title of 'Pre-Life Crisis' I'm producing my largest series of work to date - eighty one images on 35mm slide. The project is based around various themes that may or may not interest people - Love, Ambition, Insomnia (surprise!), Lust, Booze and... er... cracking up in the workplace. Usual kind of thing really. My main reason for working on slide, other than the fact I intend to show it in a club somewhere, is that I was getting frankly a bit narked with my paintings because whilst they're really good I've been feeling they lack the spontaneity and raw edge that I aspire to in my work. In a sense it's almost as if in the last year I'd forgotten how to be an artist! My starting points are the concept behind Tom Yorke's lyrics in 'Kid A' and also my skethcbooks. When it came to 'Kid A' Yorke found himself incapable of writing songs in the traditional sense and so instead focused on jotting down the random thoughts that pop into your head as you go throughout the day and then putting them together into songs. As my sketchbooks rarely ever have sketches in them and instead serve as convenient safety deposit boxes for my random ideas and gibberish these seemed the logical place to start.
Inspiration credits for these images have to go to Milkkitten who were easily one of the best art websites around until the site was taken down for redevelopment. I love the idea of using crudely scanned doodles and altering them digitally. I've also always loved the idea of using computer technology to make stuff look as crude as if I had done it by hand. As far as the project goes I've got the beginnings of about twenty slides, with the rest soon to follow. Need to get hold of Photoshop again though first...