I will be adding more writing to explain some of the artworks.
Flunstellas
Flunstellas in the Royal Liverpool Hospital
Flunstellas are flocks, clusters and constellations of ideas, emotions and memories that move through social spaces.
Multitudes of thoughts and feelings move within and between and all around us, reproducing in shop doorways, on the sofas we argue and make up on, the checkouts we queue at and the desks we work at. The fabric of places soak up things we try not to see. Emotions leak from our bodies, hanging mid-air or growing on the surface of things. The ways of thinking we feed with attention follow us around, showing us what we want to see, telling us what we want to hear and telling us off. Those we neglect grow wild, looking for safer habitats, attaching to other people, places and things instead of us. They arrive as ways snippets of being from other people, social media or TV shows from different times and places in my live, bringing needs of their own.
A lot of the time I get overwhelmed by the presence of other peoples thoughts and feelings, all these distortions in the space-time of the room emanating at me. Sometimes I get a sense of my thinking and feeling happening outside my body, moving around the room, communicating with other people's ideas, emotions and memories in ways I don’t understand. I used to think that was my super power, maybe it’s just anxiety. I think it’s double edged.
I try to stay in control, choosing which to hide or show, containing them or keeping them well away, but I can’t stop what I can’t feel. I keep a lot of my thinking trained, but I have this feeling that most pass between the layers of our skin, clothes, bones and walls.
I've been researching this through my art practice. As I don't have access to other peoples thoughts and feelings, I've always felt that this has to be a collaborative process.
I collected witness report forms, asking people to draw flunstellas as they imagine them.
Flunstellas seen in social spaces around Liverpool.
I created an exhibition at FACT with a group of young people from Weatherhead High School in Wallasey. The exhibition was called Flunstellas and the future of education, it featured a set of 3D flunstellas designed by the girls, a set of playable simulations they coded and a large sculpture hung in the FACT atrium. The sculpture was a giant paper craft constellation of ideas, emotions and memories floating around a character they invented called Charlie. Charlie was a girl in their class who was having a hard time at home, but couldn't talk about it in class. Through an eight week course, they designed a set of 3D digital forms representing different kinds of indeas, emotions and memories they imagined seeing in their clasroom. They explored movement based activites to compose a constellation of thoughts and feelings around Charlie and used StarLogo TNG to programme decentralised simulations of flunstellas moving, growing, following, avoiding and breeding in the classroom.
Video documentation of Charlies Thought Constellation
Blimpcam documentation of Charlies Thought Constellation
Here's the Flunstellas the young people from Weatherhead High created.
On Saturday June the 12th 1999, I spent 12 hours standing meditating in front of a bollard at the junction of church st, bold street and hanover street in Liverpool.
I focused my awareness on the movements of traffic and people.
My experience was the artwork. Anyone who meditates in this way experiences the artwork.
Find a place where lots of people cross paths, the busier the better.
Within that place find somewhere you can stand or sit safely without blocking the movement of people or traffic.
Breath in and out through your nose.
Pay attention to the movement of your breath, where does it go? How does it feel?
Imagine a golden thread from the base of your spine to the top of your head, pulling you upwards.
Look towards a point in the middle distance.
Pay attention to the muscles around your eyes, if they are holding tension, let them soften.
Unfocus your eyes and push your awareness out to your peripheral vision.
Don't focus on or follow the movement of any particular person or thing.
Keep your eyes wide and unfocused - try to see all these movements equally all at once.
Let your vision hold different people moving in different directions at the same time.
If you find your eyes focusing on or following someone, recognise it. Then unfocus your eyes, let them blur and go back to your peripheral vision.
