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20220916

I’m vulnerable to chaos magic. This is why I work with computers. I need spellcheckers, calendars and emails which organize my social life onto neat little lists which I can sort and search. All magic triggers chaos in me. I felt a spell passing as I turned a cabinet over in search of ibuprofen. I had to confirm there were white pills in hard plastic and soft foils, as a part of preparations for this weekends workshops. Pre-emptive ibuprofen prayer, as a preparation for chaosmagicallychargedlabour efforts is most adult thing I’ve done to date.

Form and function. I loved my M8 but it had too much form. I was struggling because it could conform to anything and I never felt satisfied by it. It constantly revealed my particular inadequateness as a listener and musician (human even). I swapped it to a Leploop 3v which has a lot of function, that I can only access partially due to its clunky form. This represents my inadequacies as efforts to form relationships with the instrument. I now know I don’t want to work with samplers, because samplers are heading from form towards abstraction. I want to work the opposite, from analogue circuitry towards sound. From this angle I’m better as an artist in failing with my technoish representation of nature (beauty), which is what electronic components and circuts are.

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Experimental Clay Workshop 2 (16.-17th Sep.)

You are warmly welcome to join the Experimental Clay Workshop at the Vartiosaari Artist House. This workshop, the second in the series of clay-related gatherings, will be organised on the 17th of September from 10 until 22:00. On the first day we will restore the kiln which we built during the spring workshop, discuss ceramics and, as the night darkens, fire the kiln. The fired items can be collected the next day from 12 until 15:00.

The workshops will start at the Vartiosaari Artist House with an informal seminar where we will explore ceramics, kilns and the island habitat. Participants are invited to craft small objects and to form lecture notes using clay, which we can fire later on the same day. There will be outdoor excursions, tea and coffee. A pop-up food kiosk will open around lunch time selling Thai soup and refreshments, prepared by Jakub Bobrowski.

If you have made clay things during the summer please bring them with you for the firing. If you have done something fun with clay or built a kiln yourself, please let us know and we will reserve time for you to present your findings to the group! Please sign up by the 11th of September.

Due to a high volume of interest we kindly ask participants to provide a short introduction text, which would offer insight to your approach on clay and other earthly matters. You can also suggest songs, games and performances for the nightly firing ritual.

The long nightly firing ritual will celebrate energy sourced from our surroundings.

Participation in the workshop costs 25€ and we can host 15 attendees. The fee will be used to cover the fuel and material costs. Any surplus gained from the donations will be shared equally with participants who have prepared presentations for the group. Event organisers are motivated to support the Vartiosaari Artist House.

  • Sign-up by the 11th of September (midnight)
  • 17th of September 10-22:00. Talking clay, firing the kiln and celebrating energy.
  • 18th starting at 12:00. Picking up ceramic objects.
  • Location: Vartiosaari Artist House across the shore from Reposalmentie 1
  • See https://www.aurinkolautta.fi/ for ferry schedules and fares. Transportation by night will be organised with a row boat.

Sign up by email to nomadickilngroup //äät gmail.com with a short introduction on why you would want to take part in the workshop. If you have questions regarding the Vartiosaari Artist House refer to Monika Czyżyk. If you want to reserve a spot for sharing your clay or kiln discoveries contact me at eero //äät storijapan.net or 0505729743

About the Nomadic Kiln Group: We started playing with clay last year and early this spring we organised the first Experimental Clay Workshop. During the two day session we collected clay from the forest, learned how to clean it, built a wood fuelled kiln from upcycled bricks and fired ceramics together. Now as the autumn arrives, we invite the old and new participants around the kiln for a second burning and for the sharing of any knowledge on clay.

Photos from the first workshop and a kiln building guide: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10fJQoHA0MzMqTojnaF_FcyIbI0G5Ddvq

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20220829

A fleet of artists is reading and studying the same thinkers, the same Haraways’, Barad’s, Neimanis’ who all paint the same picture: Please, make up narratives which do not demand dualistic divisions between human and non-human experience, emphasize relations to the extent that possibilities to establish categories is hindered and build a body of work which supports and enables life (instead of representing facets of it). Please, don’t make works which dwell on an individual bodies relationship with the environment at the expense of the other.

Still it seems impossible to built critical mass which would have an impact through parlamentary vote and political organization, which is by definition a process of coming to terms with others (to support others who are not of your peer-group) is considered tacky. An endless stream of artworks which comment on global events is being authored by an endless pool of university trained minds. Thousands of minds are wasted (are made into pollution) in producing artefacts from climate change.

I should investigate what is the difference between hydrofeminism and communism or more clearly, what is blocking people from applying the body-of-water approaches which Neimanis advocates, to their political actions? Why do artists organize to produce artworks at great personal expense but avoid organizing politically (all the while calling for re-organization of power)? Is there an opening to develop hydrocommunism and what would it be like? A global effort to socialize all natural water resources?

I confessed to a friend that I joined SKP. They were surprised and stated that they believed I was “smarter then that”. I’m not sure if they were commenting my actions from a strategic stance or expressing their view on what the party is.

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20220813

Arche-scripture: a speculative archeological experiment (2022) Alberto Harres. An inspiring but very techy and grandiose artwork. Harres built an archive of human voices discussing the COVID pandemic in different mother tongues, then transcribet them into code which was drawn on clay and programmed a machine to read the code to piece together the fragile narratives. They provide a media-analysis of the human voice on their github page, defining it ”as an archive of itself” possessing the power to (sur)passthrough individual bodies: ”[voice as a message] manifests itselves in a multitude and sequence of bodies, connecting to one another”. He refers to the Archivist Manifesto (2013) Yuk Hui and summarizes it with bullet points.

– Our lives are mediated through Archives.
– We have become, in fact, interfaces of archives.
– These archives are on the hands of very specific corporations
– Opaque unnavigable archives in which we have no agency towards
– This lack of agency brings the question, to what discourse are the traces from our gestures been serve to?
– What will be the future history, future lives, of these digital objects of our memory? How long will they live for?

ANCESTROFUTURISM; Ancestralities and Technoshamanism (2017?) Fabiane M Borges & Maria Luiza (Malu) Fragoso. Also referred to by Harres. The article looks for intelligent but non-rational ways to confront the future. In my read the text is an attempt to produce inclusive spaces for collaboration by emphasizing intuition and spirituality as collaborative techniques. The authors also provide a critical analysis of postmodern capitalism, best exemplified in silicon valley moguls. They investigate: ”Hyperstition” a term combining hyper with superstition. I think this term is great for understanding why tech-business people are worshipped: They provide speculative narratives for our future (such as colonies in Mars and miraculous transpants) only to sell people products of the past (such as cars). The investments people make in companies operating hypersitiously, aid in bringing about the social and cultural change their directors desire.

Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth – The Gothic Anthropocene (2022) Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund, and Johan Höglund (editors) is a great collection of articles for combating the ideological rationale of the anthropocene and discovering shared non-rationalities to lean to. The Anthropocene by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock and De-extinction […] by Michael Fuchs are great reads for forging tools to combat the pacifying and overwhelming impact of climate anxiety. Through them I could imagine anthropocene and climate change as literature genres which only represent a facet of the issues . This distance offered a glimpse to the ideological roots of the phenomenon and a path to read them in a more engaging manner. Horrors of the Horticultural […] by Lisa M. Vetere provides a recap on the prevailing techno-cultural landscape and the ideologies that birthed it and Overpopulation: The Human as Inhuman by Timothy Clark offers an anti-necropolitical(?) read of the overpopulation narrative by exposing a concerning hierarchical apparatus embedded in it. Goth is great and I now want to make horror-stories!

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20220731

Take a pound of whight wex, and throwe therinne a quartroun of terbentyne […] Thanne loke thou have redy oz. 1 of vermyloun, smal grounde, al so smal as ony poudre

– BL Sloane 73, f. 173v

To produce sealing wax: 16 parts beeswax, 4 parts rosin [Jousihartsi] and 1 part colouring. Melt wax, add rosin, don’t boil. I plan to seal 12 flasks of springwaters I’ve collected over the years. Recipe via On Making Wax Seals (2016). An other source with more modern Sealing wax (1998).