Friday 25th November

Spent the day working on a mould ready to try some fibre glassing. Will have to wait until Monday when John is in however, as he is our resident sculptural genius.

Got some work done but got more value out of the conversations with Hammam, Mat the Sanfransiscan and later with Dave (the technician) and Kate from my year. The mornings lecture was cancelled so I found Mat in my space rolling cigarettes and asking about my work. Mat was carrying a book on Phenomenology with him and we began discussing how man interprets history and how we see our place within the Universe. Hammam could not help but over hear and saw this as a chance to flex his intellectual muscles. I was busy talking about my work and how I was trying to explore some of mans failings. How history repeats itself and the cyclical nature of man (the human condition).

Hammam interjected and said History does not repeat itself but rather through human constructs we interpret it as doing so, I disagreed. I put forward the idea that history repeats because at the core of all history is man and we are unchanging in our failures. Hammam accused me of being too Marxist in my views and that History is too complicated to boil down in this manner and that the many layers and influences that go into creating any one situation can not be repeated. I agreed in part but resolutely argued that when all these layers of actions, events and circumstances were filtered through, at the heart and in every corner there would be the human failures as represented by the seven sins, mans timeless qualities. To my surprise Mat jumped in and said he agreed with me. Hammam did not look so convinced. Mark Twain would have put it slightly more eloquently.

“It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” (25)

Or, as Hammam some time later informed me, “Mark Twain said something about History not repeating itself but spoke of “History Rhyming”.
In the afternoon I got talking with Kate about the TT which I was trying to organise a visit too for my father. We soon started talking about our practice and the subject soon got on to the environment and what the future held for mankind. Her father has always worked in the oil industry and so this was a subject that informed her practice. Again as in the morning our conclusion was that because of our inability to stop wanting and consuming man was destined for an enforced change, total. Everything would have to change to ensure mans existence and this would also incorporate a cull, natural disease, super bugs, war or environmental melt down.

“Many too many are born: the state was created for the superfluous.” (26)

If this view of the world seems a little pessimistic then please refer yourself to Foucault who reminds us about the fragility of human history and of man as a recent construct when he concludes “The Order of Things” by telling us,

“If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises – were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth centaury, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.” (27)

Dave overheard our discussion and explained that he had not understood that this was a driving force in my work. We discussed different ways of representing this idea/ question. Dave suggested some kind of machine programmed to destroy itself with an option not to. The machine would never choose not to. Nice idea but a little complicated as I know nothing about programming machines. I had just finished reading Simon's work and this sounded similar to one of his works which never the less was interesting but not where I was trying to go.

When writing about his “ArtistMachine” Simon informs us that:

“Like all artists it is infinitely needy and pathetically dependent upon others for its continued existence.” (28)

And Simon also reminds us everything we do eventually ends up as “Landfill”.

I explained to Dave that I wanted the bullets in the church as a reference to the worship of destruction and monuments to man, and therefore my failings. I suppose what I am looking for is Absolution through Absolutism. If I could destroy everything I owned to achieve this then I would. Michael Landy has already done this with “Breakdown” An inspirational piece of work. Surely I need to destroy the casts in order for there to be a “Vita Nouva”?

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(25) Mark Twain in Eruption (26) Fredrich Nietzsche “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” pp 76. (27) Michael Foucault "the Order of Things" pp 422 (28) Simon Lewandowski “The ArtistMachine” pp3