Tag Archives: Tokens

23.07.19 > The Tokyo Diaries

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Time for smart phone images to have their say. With a little help from my diary, some poetic license on the order of curation, and plenty of rain

# just_images

#no_critical_theory

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Arrival, Skyliner to Ueno Station. Sunday 30 June 2019, Tokyo.

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Arrival, First Impression. Sunday 30 June 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

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Detail from the Surfaces & Strategies Workbook, Ueno, Tokyo.

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Transparent Plastic Umbrella on a Typical Day. Sunday 7 July 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

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Another Umbrella on a Typical Day. Sunday 21 July 2019, Ueno/Asakusa, Tokyo.

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More or Less the Whole Story. Saturday 23 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo

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Forever seeking out ‘the space between’. Tuesday 9 July 2019, Yanaka, Tokyo.

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Endless movement. Friday 5 July 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo.

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Leaving Tokyo, Leaving Myself. Monday 22 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo.

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Forever seeking out ‘the space between’ #2. Sunday 21 July 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

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Departure, Skyliner to Narita Airport, Tuesday 23 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo.

Even though there are other colours of umbrella to be seen, for me Tokyo in the rainy season will be forever the city of transparent plastic umbrellas.

15.06.19 > Approaching Madrid (PHotoESPAÑA 2019)

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Fig. 1 Eraser purchased from the Museum Shop of the Museo National Centro de Arte – Reina Sofia

Arriving in Madrid for a three day visit to PHotoESPAÑA 2019, I immediately knew I had to find that token, that specific memento, that would bring me back to this experience of looking out the airplane window as it made its approach to Barajas Airport across olive groves on an undulating landscape.

Now, whenever I look at this pebble sized object that sits easily in the palm of my hands, I will forever enter the experiences that follow my approach to Madrid, forever looking at alternative perspectives of surfaces in which I can identify new pieces of myself (Fig. 1).

Saturday 15 June 2019

All the colours are the same. All the colours are different shades of mustard, yellow, orange and olive.

Patchworks like Paul Klee images. And cotton wool clouds in 3-D, their shadows just a surface on the landscape.

Mustard land transmutes into a porcelain blue sky, endless until the horizon.

Like floating above a sea of gold, like a Klimt painting …

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Fig. 2 Surfaces & Strategies Workbook excerpt 15.06.19

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Fig. 3 Surfaces & Strategies Workbook excerpt 15.06.19

13.06.19 > The tale of the sands

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I am exploring how 3-D surfaces can act as a memory of space. How can these surfaces act as a token for entry into that memory? On a beautiful beach I found a small, single-use, plastic spoon from an ice-cream tub. It seems to represent the transformation of a natural material into something artificial. What could this mean for the space around us? Is it something partly artificial, something that went through a transformation, something that is constantly going through transformation? What does this mean about ourselves?

Plastic. Extracted from nature and morphed into something else. Designed. Artificial.

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Plastic Ice-Cream Spoon (06.06.19), Presqu’île de Giens, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France

Shaped to scoop. Shaped to slide against the tongue. Smooth. Summer. Heat. Green. Greenwashing. Fun. Tasty. Sweet. ALCAS. Schism. Hairline crack. Memory of petroleum. The tale of the sands. Sand. Becoming. Gordon. The shape of me. The space of me. Boundaries. Surfaces. What is it? What am I? Extracted from nature and shaped. A surface? Inside. Outside. Plastic.