a— apples, ass, alone
b—butts, big butts, big ole bottoms to squeeze, my body bottom
c— collecting, chrysanthemum, cystic fibrosis, cells, cardiac arrest, clay
d— for dog, the man that drools when he watches, and the woman dancing
e—embryonic
f—fidgety fumbling fingers fighting for freedom
g— good
h— home
i— for indigestion and idiots
j—jacking off, jerking, junk-spunk, jitters and joy
k— king kong my saviour, the hairy man to hold me up and eat me
l— lick, leprosy, liquid, language
m—for my mother
n—no
o—ohh, oooh, ooooh
p—paint, pumpkin, plane, princess
q—quiet
r—ravage my rump with riddles
s—slippery, shiny, squidgy, salivation
t—tedious, trembling flesh
u—under something or other
v— for my vessel, voyeurism
w—for waiting in the shadows
x— cross, wrong, not allowed
y—yes, yessir, yummy, yes please, yes Yes
z—zap zoom zzz
Two pieces of plastic clip onto glass squares that encase the delicate and flimsy celluloid within. They are boxed up images, concentrated into microscopic frames of 35mm. These slides need the light to live, like fragile ferns, to grow into full form.
The slides are slipped into the Kodak Ektagraphic III. The bulb from behind hums an orange haze. Waves of light filter through layers of glass lenses and printed plastic. With a click, the bare wall becomes laden with revitalised memory. Bright and crisp.
With each of these parcels we would make stories of fact. Both then and now our understanding lies in the physical, and we create, to mark what was and is. To conquer whilst our bodies mottle away. The plastic remains.
I have hundreds of these boxed up visions of another time. Scattered amongst other belongings, these are my dispersed time capsules.
Restoration and reclamation.
My appropriation is of lost objects that have been annexed into the realm of uselessness. Now residing in attics, basements and garages, the faces of the dead have been left, filed away in boxes.
Obsolete holidays, beach trips and family gatherings. Mass marketed memory junk.
I tear apart the hard encasement and steal the celluloid innards. Placed against my light box I examine and dissect. Sometimes there are flowers, children or dancing ladies. Stills that I have grabbed at markets, old homes, or from eBay.
Perhaps I have a feverish desire to own the past. To control what was and make history into what I wish.
Working from my table, I scratch and cut into the scraps.
Erase Erase Erase.
In amongst the confusion of what was and wasn’t I slip inside what I want to see.
An illuminated vision.
I play God with semiosis. Pieces of Lettraset— rub on letters— replace the faces and landscapes. Instead, the a’s and z’s gather, collaged and puzzled into expression, flickering in and out of the projector.
These English codes communicate meaning separate from themselves. The lines, dashes and loops embed into the brain and play to the senses: tactile, visual, auditory.
Print into Motion.
I have been fixated with peep shows: spectacles of the past that morphed into pornographic flashes and movie theatres laden around Times Square. But I think of the times before, when peep boxes presented visions of other worlds. The towns that waited for vagabonds with their boxes of trinkets. The wandering showman. Village to village. A viewing box with the views into sights beyond the barriers of the home.
Who wants to see the new world?
The charming man, a hawker, entreats the curious to surround him. He calls out to the desire of rarity with his Zograscope. They shall see his flora, earthquakes, architectures, peoples, disasters, all confined neatly within a single box. Lit up fantastic planets. Peeping through a dangerously entrancing hole, darkness is replaced by colourful, fine engravings that sparkle in the light and captivate the eye. Shining by candlelight, such is an imperfect, optical wonder created for allure.
I seek to become a peep-man, and to present the deep and darkest visions of an internal mind; in the a’s to z’s you can peek into a brain of sexual fervour, with an obsessive layering of dogs, apples and ass.
My voice becomes yours, and you absorb those naughty, lettered obsessions. King-kong sweats against your flesh, breasts rub against yours; a home is a home for us both.
Small children line up in their schools.
Small faces peer out to be told what is and isn’t, in yeses and noes.
The alphabet shines knowledge that permeates into their docile bodies. Categories are created for one to follow, to think, and do. To read is reward; the p’s for pumpkin and princess lead us along a path of propriety, archetypes to control the limits of the imagination. Asses, body bottoms and hard, erect ejaculation is not made for learning, only deviation. But tender deviation remains embedded, it lies amongst our wandering shadows.
My world is a web and it shimmers, at its centre is me, the hairy spider.
Peeping within the box of another, comfort is found once more. Liquid jitters and joy, boxed up, flash open again. My vessel is fed with the grandeur of taboo, pick-pocketed ideas.
Trickling back into the self I close my eyes, to look. I am breathing my shadows.
Delicious fascination of the wrong, nursed in the darkness; an erotic play of lettering festers in my mind. In slides and snapshots, these visions are sequestered and I become softly satisfied in making what is wrong beautiful.
A rotten kaleidoscope.
This is a film made in the confines of home and body— an elegant prison. It is merely littered with scraps assembled in isolation, documented alone. A voice recorded in a cupboard. Clippings arranged on the floor.
Each clip is an object of fetishisation and the kernel of every object nourishes a vessel full of holes. I refer to the holes in our memory, suppressed dreams, and the curved hole of a perfectly formed O rolling off the mouth, ready to be stuffed.
Finally, old delicious burdens betray. With a pervasive manipulation of snipped lettering I mean to tickle out images of our public secrets, the known yet hidden, what has been dismembered from the organs of mass culture. I am not interested in model assimilation that has been neatly documented in perfectly matt, very dry, flat photographs as relics for the home.
Having faith in the dirty, I master the mundane. This is a soft Videodrome for your liking, an Alphabeto, rendered with slippery spunk, trembling flesh and the unviolated memories of childhood.