Saturday 28 March 2009

My interest in this internal narrative, these interwoven, interdependent stories, stems from one of my early memories as a child. I was in a shopping centre with my mother, sitting on a bench, and this woman walked past me. She was almost middle-aged (or at least she seemed old to me, being so young), wearing a red coat and trying to do a thousand things at once. It was probably one of the first time I'd really thought about there being anything outside of the little bubble that was my family and the people I knew at school. Certainly the first time I'd ever really considered that someone else, in their own world, was at the centre of it, conducting their own life, which would probably never have a direct effect on my own. Obviously my thoughts weren't quite as clear and concise as they are now, but that was the general jist of the situation. I suppose I was interested in how she'd moved across my path, and was unlikely to cross it again.



I was thinking about this when I decided to see how far I could get from my house, in the space of time it takes to make a cup of tea. I got out a map to see where I could go, only to realise that North Finchley looks more complicated from an aerial perspective than it seems to me at ground level. I then remembered the experience I'd had when I was young, and thought it would be interesting/fun, to create routes I could try using the roll of a dice. An odd number meant left, an even number meant right. I marked out my routes on photocopied maps, and set out, having decided to film my feet as I walked. This was more of an experiment than anything else, I needed to see how far I could get in a fairly short space of time (not as far as I'd hoped). I started to think about how much further I could get if I ran, or cycled. I'm going to try more walking and cycling tomorrow, and running when I get my trainers back.

I filmed my feet as I walked, and have tried playing the film along with the sound of making a cup of tea. It's strange how as the sound and the film don't match up, it was almost as if I had to concentrate on one or the other, as if they were totally separate fundamentally, as well as in the sense of a piece of work. I also noticed all the different types of pavement there are around where I live. I have decided to go and photograph the different pavements on one of the walks I did today, and then see what I can do with them when I have them developed. At the moment I think it could be quite interesting to categorise them in terms of distance and time.

I think the idea of the narrative, or my idea of the narrative, is something that is current and present in all of the work I produce, as it is a strong interest of mine, a subject to which I repeatedly return. However, as I continue with this project, the idea of time seems to be my overriding interest, although of course that interest could indeed morph into something else over the weeks.

1 comment:

hazel said...

glad to see you are keeping this updated.
Have a lovely Easter.