Memory cloud 1

Back garden steps

The rocky bit of lawn ( where the Anderson shelter used to be so I was told)

The smell in the cellar

Coal damp a cooking range

Coats steps coal hod

Attics

Box rooms

Warm dry hidden

Identity through memory, just blow the bloody doors off!

Lose your memory and you lose who you are. This is true to us all on a daily basis, we momentarily forget things, why we have walked into a room, what we were saying (in my case often as I am saying it!) For a sharp intake of breath we are a blank, an unpainted canvass, we are only as we are now in this second.

Memories create our self image and reinforce it all the time.

This image was taken randomly on the I - pad I have no memory of it and cannot work out what it is, it seemed appropriate!

Images become our memory print but feelings, smells and touch contribute too, in fact our senses are like burglars to our memory vaults they blow open the doors and expose the contents. Memories of ourselves in certain places with certain people create our personal references, without these our brains cannot identitfy with ourself.

I read in the Guardian that memory is our past and future. To know who you are as a person, you need to have some idea of who you have been. And, for better or worse, your remembered life story is a pretty good guide to what you will do tomorrow. "Our memory is our coherence," wrote the surrealist Spanish-born film-maker, Luis Buñuel, "our reason, our feeling, even our action." Lose your memory and you lose a basic connection with who you are.

Memories can be treasured and used for learning. Exploring social history we can look to the future with wiser eyes. So the creation of a memory flag transmitter is key to the Big Flag project.

I want to preserve the jewels of what REALLY makes us who we are by capturing and polishing them till they shine. Local people from local projects will be interviewed, talked to, heard, observed and respected. Their collective identities through memory will become a flag which transmits prophetic wisdom to those who have a heart to listen.

A Visual Recording the White noise of random memories between moments of time.

Printing at the DLWP 3

Printing 3

Bring in something of personal significance, a text or mirror for portrait or a drawing relevant to yourself.

Ink up table top for a nice big print!

Concentrate on getting a fixed register so you can get colour and subsequent prints off the same one.

Well with all that in mind I just about managed to bring something in! I brought in some drawings of wilf's. He's been drawing volcanoes for a while now and some of them are lovely. In my sketch book I am exploring triangles as a way of representing myself. A triangle is strong when on it's flat base but a triangle upturned on it's point becomes vulnerable and unstable, it needs to balance very carefully. Wilf's volcanoes are essentially two triangles.

I am still at the stage of just experimenting with print its been a long time since i printed much and the ink we had was very variable in quality so I got as far as one print each time rather than building up colours.

Apologies to the others on the course I completely forgot to photograph any work this week! So it's just my own. I'll catch up on the rest of the work on the next blog!