Balloons, balloons, balloons
Following on from my previous post about balloons I've begun a collection of them. I'm particularly interested in their symbolic rather than practical use. How they seem to be a new (or perhaps ancient) form of aspirational object. If you have any links to the dirigible darlings being used to sell a product or service then hook me up.
Also in relavantly bleak news, North Korea has promised to shoot down any balloons it sees. The dictatorship feels that the propaganda they gently waft over the border poses a threat to regime stability. Nasty, subversive balloons.
James Bridle also shared some words about a more practical interpretation of balloons and his work with them at Fabrica recently. Check it out.
Stacktivism
The other weekend was punctuated with both an extremely painful game of rounders and a day in Hackney for the Stacktivism unconference. There's still a lot to be digested here. A wide range of people were assembled looking at different layers of things generally circulating the idea of the stack/Stack/stacks but what ultimately perhaps came out of it was an interesting dialectic between optimists and pessimists/realists. Ultimately it was a great gathering of folk and there were some great talks from Paul Graham Raven, The Department of No and Georgina Voss for instance, but what they mean together and whether we're any closer to understanding what it's all about/for remains to be seen.
I refer you to Metahaven's interview The Cloud, The State and The Stack.
88.7
The 'boat project' is going back on exhibition in September at a show in Dortmund called Requiem for A Bank. I'm not sure on a lot of the other artists but the Department of No will be there also. Hopefully there'll be some stuff out there soon. I've also decided to go back to render school with a lot of it. Amazing to think how much my abilities with 3D have accelerated since then.
Into Your Hands They Are Delivered
Done, shipped, packed off. The website's built and will probably go live in the next week or so. I'm heading out on Friday to start set up and then there'll be some exciting and dramatic photographs on this very website. Woot.
SKIP Summer School
The beginning of last week was spent giving a lecture and taking part in a panel as part of the SKIP summer school between Kingston, the Royal College of Art and University of the Arts London. I wasn't there for it's entirety but there were a lot of great conversations including stuff around situating critical design in the design world as an agonist element which I found to be quite provocative. So much so that I'm considering removing 'artist and' form 'artist and designer' in my title. Reflections on this welcome.
Improving Reality - Sept 5th
I'm genuinely excited to be talking at Improving Reality on the 5th of September in Brighton. Some of the other folk are people I look up to a huge amount and it's a genuine privilege. It's also a really dazzling lineup of people. Check it out.
More soon hopefully...