technology performance teenagers and angles

The name is Bare conductive. The product looks like ink and can be safely applied to the body to create both a line and potentially a way to interface with technology directly. Paint it on touch a bulb and it lights up.

a day with the illusion of sunshine and I am pondering five years in Japan. Why five years? Multiple answers are possible. I like green tea and cherry blossoms. I was in love. I found God. I had steady work and the chance of inspiration, the time to act on it. Its safe here. All of which are true but it seems like its all about the angle.

Working on brain chemistry poems. I was never enamoured with biology, too much winking about the take apart body and pervy science teacher, shame he was probably a nice man. teenagers can be so predictable... again maybe it depends on the angle. Motivate them and perhaps they become the next Melvyn Bragg. Here is a great charity encouraging writers in schools.First Story

Ira Glass on storytelling

Poems from 2006 revamped and online

New poems , kind of, re-worked them and have been put online in the new Youth section and one will be in the October issue of the magazine.

Although I feel too old to be counted in the youth section I have it on good authority from editor Munayem Mayenim that I can still be youthful. He told me to read Rabindranath Tagore`s The Last Poem as an example of a youthful piece of writing, written when he was in his mid seventies.

See this overview, it is about marriage


Scroll down and my poem is here 

YARN BOMBING

As I finish one piece about craft I find this in my facebook. Less tree hugging more crochet urban guerillas

yarn bombing

and in London lives

Knit the city

The zeitgeist it seems comes in multicolours and textures

And this exhibition inspired some poems
Stich by Stich is a contemporary art show focusing on artists using the medium of needlework in some form. Situated in the beautiful grounds of the Teien Museum. The Museum, completed in 1933 for Prince Asaka (whose father was married to the Emporers` daughter) retains many of its Art Deco features which are a particularly lovely setting for this show.



AIKO TEZUKA

neon pink threads hand, sculpted from the back of a large white sheet.
Images of hands,
needle and thread, ladies with their crafts.
chatting
maybe

Behind
looming
dangling and rising
to form an efficient knot
from the straggle
of what was
left behind
pooling
like water

RURIKO MURAYAMA
your lady black velvet dress
holds secrets
like a theatre curtain
lights are on
performance dazzles

black hands
beaded braided buttoned
covering
like cancer
or a beautiful
strain of love.

ZON ITO

placed against boards
your natural fibres
spell out
a language
I cannot understand
like
the movements
of a spirit
only you can see
skull and face
white and brown
green too


searching

TSUNAO OKUMURA
your patient stiches
humble me
a pollock field
more carefully
formed
not of abandon
but precision
night watching
the stiching

SAYAKA AKIYAMA

where?
paths laced
location
delineated
with touches between you
and
the surface of the fabric
What happened then?
the fruitful slash of colors
I cannot know
but I have my own buttons too.


KEI TAKEMURA

you speak to me
dear Takemura san
of broken moments
put back together again
softly
with much care
and I want to thank you
for showing me this.

ASAMI KIYOKAWA

And your room is a dark centre fold of gloriousness and insanity
passed from one generation of women
now morphed and stretched
multiple
through magazine
as we wed ourselves
increasingly complex
love/not love/love/not love
you seem to say
sewing over
hard surfaces of shots.



 

slow and boooooom

What is the connection between process.product.slow movement.neo craft.dying traditions. 

I am not quite sure yet but am fascinated by the timing of this. With a trembling economy the shift is away from ultra consumerism to make do and mend. 

Great website making a slow revolution that is connected to a show my friend Amy is participating in. Interesting audio tracks. Helen Carnac id doing some interesting curating her blog here

COLLABORATIONS agogo. Just discovered BOOOOOm the Vancouver designers site which connects creatives with projects, and related sites Arthouse

Hoarding, family, art and robots

I am fascinated by the notion of hoarding having connections with OCD. I wonder if creatives tend to hoard more given that we look at things imaginatively;

I can almost hear myself saying - No no its not JUST a piece of plastic its a whole new language. That said I did burn about 5 black bags of "stuff" this summer including

• My toilet painting - representing my phobia of toilets with high cisterns (is it about them falling on me, who knows?!) 
•  a particularly gothic looking wax hand mould which melted red until it looked like the stage of a theatre depicting the apocalypse.
  
• All my negatives
• old work manuals
• drawings

Is it genetic? The desire to create safety through not letting things go?
I think it is interesting that in my family, our ancestors on both sides - CARVOSSO and LEECH were writers and archivers. My great grandfather (or great great? I forget) was the Mayor of Manchester and there is actually an archive online of the Leech family diaries which represent some useful insights for historians on Victorian England. 

Other writers include William Carvosso who was part of the Methodist revival. His son`s nephew Robert Rundle went to Canada, hung out with some Native Americans and got a mountain named after him - MOUNT RUNDLE. But only God can make a mountain melt like wax.

ANYWAY back to hoarding. artist Song Dong is currently exhibiting at MOMA (New York). The work is a display of his mothers` belongings and is particularly poignant as she recently passed away. A good piece of work always moves me.

On yet another tangent, I read this article about robots in Japan. Makes me think about people and objects, what are we looking for in our interactions? convenience, efficiency? The desire to hold onto things is not so different from the desire for things not to change, but this itself creates an external disorder. At the other extreme Japan is a land of order externally but an internal disorder as people struggle to fit in, work hard and be good. Perhaps the inside stuff is so challenging that outside has to compensate, but then maybe that`s the same for all of us.

Juana Molina

Just beautiful, comedy actress turned songstress but really lovely ;)