Out & About: Lousiana

Seen here with an Alexander Calder mobile while wandering around the sculpture garden at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark.

I am a rock, I am an island

Part of a sculpture - knitted fishing line gathered into a type of bindle, in which lies collected rocks and stones from various Swedish Islands - Gotland, Fårö, Venn; limestone from the quarry on the outskirts of Malmö; coloured pieces of glass that have washed ashore at Matakatia Bay in New Zealand.

This is the first 'bindle' I have made, knitted with the finest fishing line I could find - perhaps it was too fine, I was forced to knit it using wooden kebab skewers instead of knitting needles. The line shimmers and flickers in the early morning sunlight, while it hangs in my bedroom window due to a lack of studio space.

More are being made, and using the thickest fishing line I could find, I will encase a large limestone rock and use it with a pulley system, which reminds me of sailing and boats, to be a counter weight to the smaller, more delicate bindles of stones and pebbles, which will hang in the air and slowly rotate, as hanging things are wont to do.

I vaguely rambled to my friend Claire about it:

                       Florence:

but now i think i might suspend them with pulleysreminds me of boats                        Claire:I'm not sure they gave me an associationI was just struck by the mesh...and strange silkiness of the rock  Florence: to me they relate to islands

  like the islands that were thoght to exist but were actually mirages

hence the shimmery fishing line

  and the rocks within and i wanted them to be like baskets or specimen collections

  and they deal with loneliness too

like how i think of islands and boats being self contained entities

  alone in the sea

  and i like the idea of suspension

  how it relates to balance

  and also the word

  suspence

  tension

  waiting

  Claire:Its poetic

  I saw something more akin to strange fisherman like practices

 Which May seem unnecessary but which one doesn't question since

Fishermen and the practice of fishing as generally free of the unnecessary and all about purpose...

There are always more things to think about. And one does start to feel like a fisherman repairing his nets in the winter, and it gives you time to think about how the work will look, and how it will function, and what it means. The ideas about it and around grow as the work does.

Senast Inkommet

A collection of recent acquisitions I have amassed recently: one a birthday gift, one found on ebay, another at a second hand shop, and the rest picked up today in Lund at a record fair and in Repeat Records, where I also came across a copy of Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, which I quickly snaffled up.

Scott Walker - Jackie b/w The Plague / Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman b/w Back in the Race / The Hollies - I'm Alive b/w You Know He Did / Jane Birkin - Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus (with Serge Gainsbourg) b/w Jane B / Nina Lizell & Lee Hazlewood - Hey Cowboy b/w Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind / Chuck Jackson - Somebody New b/w Stand By Me / Ketty Lester - Love Letters b/w I'm A Fool To Want You /  The Rokes - Piangi Con Me b/w Che Colpa Abbiamo  Noi / The Poor - She's Got The Time (She's Got The Changes) b/w Love Is Real / Simon & Garfunkel - The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) b/w I Am A Rock / Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Did You Ever b/w Back On The Road /

I have always considered myself to be more of an LP than a single sort of music listener, but this is apparently changing, as I have 2 Love 45's hopefully winging their way towards me having bought them on Tradera. Long Players are not forgotten though, with The Moody Blues' debut 'The Magnificent Moodies', and Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' and Paul Butterfield Blues Band's 'East/West' taking their rightful places on my shelves.

At this rate, I may be able to do a dj hour of new records of my collection to accompany the playlist I am creating of songs about crying, which hopefully I will play 'live' in it's entirety somewhere in Malmö. For some reason I can't find enough sad songs to cover more than 1 ½ hours.

Kinder's Matakatia is just the same as mine

Kotanui, Monsieur Direy's House, Whangaparaoa, 1868 / Cliffs, Whangaparaoa, near Auckland, 1868 / Kotanui Rock, Frenchman's cap, Whangaparaoa, 1868 /
via The University of Otago Library's Digital Collections

Photographs by the Reverend Dr John Kinder of Matakatia Bay and Kotanui Rock in 1868. It never ceases to amaze me that these cliffs and rocks are nearly exactly the same today as they were then. In fact I was sitting at the base of that cliff just a few months ago. My only observation is that Kotanui's hairline is receding a bit these days.

And that there appears to be a pair of disembodied legs posing at the island's base.

Just the usual, thanks

Manly Takeaways is our local fish n' chip shop whenever we are up at the family beach house on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, just north of Auckland. The beach house was built in 1959 I believe, and almost all flat surfaces are covered in Formica, my grandfather was a Formica salesman. (I am not entirely sure about these facts, family members may correct me).
I have been going to the beach house ever since I was a baby, and I therefore assume eating fish n' chips from Manly Takeaways since then too. At the beach house I do the same things I have always done - swim for hours, go boating, eat large amounts of plums from the trees in the garden, do puzzles, read low-brow detective stories and do numerous sketches of Kotanui, the island that lies in the centre of Matakatia Bay, where our house is, always from the same angle. It has a misleading appearance: from the front, it is like a witch's hat settled on the water, but from the side is more like a rather prominent nose protruding from the sea.
Beach house holidays are a time for doing the same things I have always done. The menu boards at Manly Takeaways do nothing but add to the dingy 70's charm of the place, as I always always order the same thing - a fish, a hot dog (in the NZ fashion - a battered sausage on a stick doused in sauce) and a helping of chips. Actually, I think my entire family still all order the same things they did ten, fifteen years ago.

The map is one of two aerial photos which hang in the fish n' chip shop. Here it shows Matakatia Bay around the early 1960's, with the beginnings of the reef which stretches out to the island. Every time we get fisn n' chips, I make a point of spotting the beach house in the photo. Ritualistic, almost, just like everything else about my weeks spent up there.

På Cinemateket

Mannen på Taket (The Man on the Roof) dir. BoWiderberg (1976) / Elvira Madigan dir. Bo Widerberg (1967) /  The Trial dir. Orson Welles (1962) / Kärlek 65 (Love 65) dir. Bo Widerberg (1965) / Tabu, a Story of the South Seas dir. F.W Murnau (1931) / Los Olvidados dir. Luis Buñuel (1950) / C'era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in The West) dir. Sergio Leone (1968) / Death in Venice dir. Luchino Visconti (1971) /

Every Tuesday and Saturday at Spegeln cinema, runs the Malmö branch of Cinemateket - a sort of film society organized by the Swedish Film Institute, showcasing films from throughout the history of cinema - spotlighting the oeuvre of directors, actresses, or focusing on a specific theme. It has allowed me to not only watch examples of classic cinema on the large screen, but discover new favourite directors, such as Malmö's own Bo Widerberg; see films from Argentina to Scotland, from the early silent days to present offerings.
There should really be something like this in every city - it's regularity and variety means there is always something too look forward to, with the opportunity to see films you may never otherwise have had the chance to see.

Above are some posters of my favourite films seen at Cinemateket, many have become some of my all time favourites - I love leaving the cinema feeling 'so deeply moved'. I would recommend seeing any, and all of them.