New collaborations

I have new interesting collaborations ahead - with composer Donna McKevitt, who set Derek Jarman's writing to a song cycle and sings on Jarman's film Blue, and who is now working in collaborations with contemporary dance choreographers at the Royal Court theatre and on residencies. And with poet Jan Noble, brother of performance artist Kim Noble, who is working on epic poems performed in sequence across London and Italy.

Beginning MA Sculpture at RCA in October, I will also be a colleague of publishing collaborator Frances Morgan, previously editor of music magazine Wire, researching a PhD in electronic music. It's fantastic to be back in London with all these friends and colleagues with whom I've previously worked with as a designer or musician, now anticipating working in genuine collaboration as an artist.

Public publications / the process

Talking about the publications with my mum was the right thing to do. Collaborating with my own past and my family is part of the process. The publications are an indexed series of minimal maps giving an audience a mountaineering key to the pieces.

Albert Dock Company / burying a poem

A beautiful chance moment, road workers digging a hole opposite my boat at the end of my time in Liverpool, mirroring in time and in reality the poem buried on the opposite side of Salthouse Dock three metres down under the entrance to the Hilton hotel, outside my previous moorings at the beginning of the course.

This transaction was with the road diggers, who were happy for me to bury a poem, and collaboration with the Albert Dock Company, who arrested me in the process, after seeing me on CCTV.

Bidston Observatory / MA show

Morse code poetry filmed at 4am from Bidston Observatory, shown as part of my final MA show at St John's shopping centre. The poetry speaks across the river and across time to the poems communicated from the top floor of the Hilton and buried under the entrance.

Each piece links to another across different times to create one ongoing Liverpool piece, besides operating as separate works. The poems triangulate across the city inspired by mountain triangulation or invisible trig points. A temporal piece signalled from Bidston Observatory, a series of pieces signalled from the sixth floor of the Hilton hotel and a piece buried three metres under the hotel entrance.

I organised my own self initiated collaborations with two major Liverpool institutions, Bidston Observatory and the Hilton hotel, besides creating small transactions with the people of Liverpool, the road diggers and hotel receptionists, that made the pieces possible.

These were publically exhibited as temporal public projections, from the Hilton as a series and from Bidston Observatory. The film below showing Morse poetry communicated from Bidston Observatory at 4am compromised part of my final MA show at St John's shopping centre.

Hilton Liverpool / a poetry lighthouse

Filming Morse code poetry from the sixth floor executive suite of the Hilton Liverpool as the late afternoon storm comes in. The Morse poetry creates a huge temporary sculpture, a lighthouse of poetry, from the hotel, a light gesture using a torch creating a huge temporal environment.

The whole process, beginning with LJMU Astrophysics, leading to the process of waiting and aiming for Bidston Observatory, and a search for other lighthouses resulted in creating a lighthouse from a dockside hotel, a beautiful strange and temporal experience.

Hilton Liverpool / whistling for souls

A film still taken from the documentation of a poem communicated in Morse on a dog whistle, my previous partner's father's gun dog training whistle wrapped in copper wire from the inside of a light to earth it.  I loved this, the eerie sound reminds me of Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore, in which the evil spirit Johnnie Walker collects the souls of cats to make an instrument.

The whistle is also very small and light and handy to carry, mountaineering tools, map / whistle / torch / compass, small portable tools of rescue and communication. This is a kind of rawer subversion or modification to call souls or dogs.

Hilton Liverpool / peace poem

In the cool silence of the sixth floor of the Hilton signalling a peace poem in Morse on the day of the London terrorist attacks. Very surreal here protected by the hotel, very hot day and quiet on the dock with lots of heavily armed police presence.

Discussing with Kat the hotel spirit how we feel so protected here, yet we are in the most dangerous place. Good relationship with Kat, the reception manager who is working with me for this, now and allowed up for three hours this time, the whole period between guests checking out and the next guests checking in, which allowed for lots of different experiments. I now feel more like an official artist resident than a ghost, which is both a great achievement and takes away some of the drive and concept of the initial piece, the illicit magic of having been allowed to inhabit the place invisibly. This magic I feel also puts you in an ideal frame of mind to produce good work, to be really receptive to and listen to your instincts and be aware of your surroundings. To focus on your experience and being present within that, rather than on the production of visible work or documentation.

In Murakami's Dance Dance Dance the Dolphin Hotel is protected by a receptionist hotel spirit who is so competent and gentle.