process

		process

		“I am not here, I am not here, and I never will be” Antonin Artaud

		an idea where does an idea come from? an accumulation of experiences or a simple singular notion that appears one day and takes shape putting something to paper allowing thoughts to flow out of fingertips an intuitive collecting of objects, ideas and knowledge research, talking up and about, a particular sort of concentration time “The mind is more powerful than any particle accelerator, more sensitive than any radio receiver or the largest optic. The human body, its voice, its power of locomotion, and its imagination is a more than sufficient means for the exploration of any place, time, or energy level in the universe." Terence Mckenna

		a summoning of energy struggles with doubts intense looking, writing, planning, activated filofax interviewing people making contact project funding received from the arts council going to the Society of Psychical Research Conference lots of computing and emailing time passing

		An American newspaper ad: ---- WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before. ---- i think of applying, but i don’t have weapons best stay here the search for venues and locations postcard design website design reading, conversing, making, planning, phoning time a pause two days devising, researching, venues, venues lots of meetings meetings cancelled no meetings because everyone’s too busy a meeting to attempt to understand the field of psi with Serena Roney Dougal a precognition experiment no hits

		“Parapsychologists have searched in vain for an energy that might transmit telepathy, psychokinesis, healing etc. If these events emerge from frequencies transcending time and space, they don’t have to be transmitted. They are potentially simultaneous and everywhere..... Individual brains are bits of the greater hologram. They have access under certain circumstances to all the information in the total system.” Ken Wilber

		Books found, given, borrowed, bought Reading about Eileen Garrett, Harry Price, The Fox Sisters, Doris Stokes, Matthew Manning. Daniel Pinchbeck taking DMT. Madame Blavatsky’s travels. Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, Guy Lyon Playfair. Magic shows, clairvoyant evenings, card reading. Intense looking at photographs of poltergeist activity, theories of pendulum movements, analysing the Christos Experiment. Precognition experiments, ganzfeld sessions. Watching TV programmes on mediums, on string theory and Derrin Brown. Watching Uri Geller massing the energy to heal David Beckham’s metatarsal for the World Cup. Reading about deer, and bees. gap time thoughts disappear and surface

		i dream i take a rectangular sky blue pill that makes me psychic lisa dreams a fairy man appears to her in a tweed jacket 18 inches high vic dreams of garguna flats in patagonia gap money, budgets, figures visiting venues, negotiating feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing I know what I’m doing looking at other people’s work Susan Hilller, Graham Gussin, Ann Hamilton, Eve Dent, Simon Whitehead, Gillian Wylde, Bill Drummond, The Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment, Joseph Cornell, Ansuman Biswas, Reckless Sleepers, Tapies, John Berger, Susan Sontag, Robert Pirsig, Bill Viola, Janet Cardiff, Richard Wentworth and films many films and reading Philip Pullman

		four days devising a ganzfeld experiment computer crashes all the time no hits but we are changed by it unexpectedly we danz the ganz to Dream Baby Dream it’s the first time we hit hynagogic and we’re altered by it initial ideas manifest then fall by the wayside we find a fantastic things, but after a few weeks break, they don’t seem relevant anymore but the base layer is there, the invisible paths made for other walkings gap pause christmas second postcard design too many calls to the printers so many days spent on computing and endless emails to and fro, ping pong some of the emails are corrupt i work all the time i think about the project all the time “The reader, the thinker, the flaneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic...not to mention that most terrible drug - ourselves - which we take in solitude”. Walter Benjamin

		i film the starlings flocking over the moors near glastonbury on christmas day fascinated by their extraordinary sense of one-ness their super organism communication watching the footage back, we realise that it is a phenomena it is a crucial and beautiful component to the piece inspiring wonder, and a sense of otherness

		sitting talking about duration about doing something for six hours an idea to use 1000 ping pong balls they’re ordered and bought and two bats and a net we play table tennis for hours imported text the audio interviews reading aloud from books autobiographical experiences other people’s stories we talk for hours with tea we deliberately irritate each other we surprise each other figures, budgets telephoning, sorting, negotiating negotiating the times of performances in six months time when we don’t know anything really press release, website links, licence application the key form arrives - the structure and timing of the ganzfeld experiment a kitchen timer running the improvisations: 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes = 45 minutes then 45 minutes of rest or sleep you can be sender, receiver or experimentor so 45 minutes of improvising and 45 minutes of rest so each cycle lasts an hour and a half we do two cycles in a row then we do three cycles then phone the mind body spirit festival to finalise a gig the main line is formed, like a rigging exploration, interrogation we are curious now a form has emerged and we lean on it further in and further in and the content folds into it here and there by studying just one brick, the inside of the singular expands to the whole wall and back again

		“In contemporary life we do whatever we can to deny intuition of the invisisble realms.....Then we take pride in our cynicism and detachment. Perhaps we are terrified to discover that our “rationality” is itself a kind of faith, an artifice, that beneath it lies the vast territory of the unknown.” Daniel Pinchbeck we have synchronicities everywhere phones ringing i was just thinking about you numbers coming through for the psychic lottery project that we’re playing (in order to get more funding for the project) i get four numbers twice in two months - well above chance we’re looking intensely and we affect what we look at the mere act of looking at a particle is enough to disturb it wave particle wave particle wave particle ping pong ping pong ping matter or energy or both before or after we can never be certain only probable we change what we observe we will be changed when we are observed i have a continual head cold we cough and wheeze a lot

		then 8 of our cycles over 12 hours on a wednesday night in february 8pm to 8am 45 minutes of work 45 minutes of rest with ping pong balls on our eyes 8 cycles, 12 hours hynagogic and hypnopompic - the points of falling asleep and waking up we’re in the ganzfeld the white noise the red light in the libran sidereal time window electric guitar, bad feedback shortwave radio Jimi Hendrix, Brian Eno, Jah Wobble a crazy experimentor ectoplasm ghost a swinging plumbline stephen arrives at 2am and observes we think he’s a ghost constructing and deconstructing ping pong balls everywhere atom smashing the bell rings 40 times falling and waking get out now now you know we’re sleeping side by side while the dawn breaks we sleep through the last cycle

		“The world doesn’t yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between.” Carlos Castaneda a five day residency at the gallery, dartington college of arts in devon. work in progress, open process people can come in and watch us work improvising it’s disarming we put together a 45 minute progression of material and run it twice carolyn comes to draw while we work the rough crayon sounds against the wall another way of marking we run it four times placing different conditions on it each time we run 45 minutes action, 45 minutes rest 1st cycle @ 6pm: all spoken text removed - the piece becomes a silent choreography 2nd cycle @ 7.30pm: we have to start without re-setting any objects or re-winding any tapes - we running forwards and backwards 3rd cycle @ 9pm: we are too exhausted to try anything new - the piano music goes on for 8 minutes 4th cycle @ 10.30pm: a new ending: we fire ping pong balls at the electric guitar and trip off on string theory

		the ping pong balls behave strangely and beautifully they clump together like friends in a playground in threes, fours or sevens. perhaps it’s the static they have between them. we will mark them to see if they always have the same friends.

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