New Years, Old times

There is no such thing as a New Year, can I say that? Better is perhaps to define the new year as 'the Next Year'. The term new suggests a break, a seperate being, something which stands distictly divided from other beings or in this case years. But the blood cells which drive the life around my body the morning of the 1st January are those made in the days leading up to a change in numbers from 11 to 12. Projects which  formed in the months of 2011 straddle the numerical divide and in doing so carry with them reflections of the time involved. Each are coloured is some way by yesterday, today and the idea of tomorrow.


The images below are pictures of an ongoing project which in one way directly references these influences. They are but simple moments in time, a reference point. The value of this point is of little worth but the additional interest placed on it with the elapse of time and my purposeful presentation of this moment can perhaps change the mundane into the significant.


ForgetMeNot nr.01 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.02 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.03 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.04 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

the width of time

There is no point in debating the length of time it has been since I last posted something on this site for it was but a moment and in this moment I see but another moment. Perhaps it is a game, like when you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you struggle to contain the infinit replay before you. Around the time of my last post I had begun to send out prints of images of the Bleigießen which that new years eve had created. For those who do not know the German tradition, on the eve of a new year you heat up lead in a spoon, throw it into water when it reaches a liquid state and the resulting form suggests what is instore for the coming year. A sort of industrial version of reading tea leaves. I love the fact that as humans we can't help ourselves a be fasinated by the possiblity of knowing the future regardless of how far-fetched the method and perhaps that is the most fasinating aspect. Everybody should, when at an event or situation where a large crowd follows a singular thing, stop watching what one is supposed to watch, turn around and watch the watchers.


The Bleigießen pictures have been sent to various people across the globe who have been asked to keep the picture on their person for the next year. I have done the same with a corresponding image, the question is, is my future as wide in the hand of others? 


Here a phrase of the future, but not the whole story.

There is something slightly unhealthy about great expectations and in particular those surrounding new year. If you manage to get over the dissappointment of the new years eve party then the reality of the next morning will surely put check to the most romantic imagination. First there's the hangover and if not, the enquiry, why not. Then of course the weather is most unlikely to embrace a positive radiance, let's face it, it's another day in winter, grey, wet, cold and in the case of Berlin at this moment, snow again. Don't get me wrong, I love the snow but heavy dark skies don't speak to me of promising future times. But maybe I have to learn to look a little further or nearer. Yesterday for a very short period of time the clouds opened a wee window through which my first sunshine of 2011 broke through and darted across the tiring branches of the christmas tree. Fantastic pools of light papered the walls and drew my attention to what was, and has for a long time, surrounding me. I spend so much time trying to create things consciously that I over look some of the wonderful installations that have come about over time and chance. Dust on pictures, reflections in glass, cobwebs and temporary homes found in  ...........  time and chance. 

All change

'a new me', image taken during a commission for the Böll stiftung.

The hour has come and gone, in with the new and out with the old. Only the next is always to come and the present is always the past. So what of new year. I am still walking and falling at the same time, catching myself whilst looking to the next step each time. I want to know who jumps side ways or maybe even more interesting, who steps backwards, for when you follow this logic this would be a true step into the unknown.