Month: September 2015

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From Hill to Sea: Book and Film

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We are delighted to announce that our book, From Hill to Sea, will be published in November 2015 by Bread and Circuses Publishing. (Tom Vague, King Mob, Guy Debord etc). Details about the book’s content and a ten minute film can be viewed on the Bread and Circuses website here.

There will be an initial, full colour, limited edition print run and also an eBook. Further information about the book will be posted here and on the Bread and Circuses website when available. If you are interested in reserving a copy of the numbered, limited edition print run, or being kept informed about the book’s publication, please email:

info [at] breadandcircusespublishing.com

What started out as a short trailer for the book, expanded to a ten minute film. Any rational person may have tried to edit this down but we have left it to view in whole or in part. If nothing else, you can enjoy the sounds of Oneohtrix Point Never and The Durutti Column.

Murdo Eason will also be doing some readings from the book at various forthcoming events. We will post details on this blog and on twitter @fifepsy

Thanks to everyone who has been supportive and encouraging of our endeavours to date. It is greatly appreciated.

Categories
Encounters Field Trip Found Art Observation Psychogeography rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers Symbol

Underneath the M90

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Up above, the sound is like a collision of thunder arriving from north and south. Traffic heading to unknown destinations, running up and down the asphalt spine of the M90 motorway. Here, underneath the flyover, the concrete walls have become vast, abstract-expressionist assemblages. Layer upon layer of weather effects, pollution spray, pigment and human mark-making.  It is only the walker who will notice these. Why, would you dwell, to look, if travelling in a car?

Has any disorientated walker followed the arrow east TO DIVIT, or west TO THE RO?

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Unusual names – DIVIT, THE RO.

Consulting any official map will be of little help. There will be no record of these places. Perhaps we are standing on a territorial boundary line. DIVIT being a local name for Inverkeithing to the east. THE RO is Rosyth to the west. That human compulsion to establish borders and territories. Points of entry or exit. Lines pronouncing otherness, even when invisible and local.

Not far away, a universally recognised symbol. How many times has a heart shape been inscribed on a surface across time and space? From Cro-Magnon cave walls, via the ancient Greeks – a symbol of life and morality and possibly an association with Dionysus and love – to the more familiar symbol of romantic love emerging in the 1200s. Anyone using social media will recognise ❤ ❤ <3.

Under this motorway flyover, a black heart in brush stroke, partly over-painted in white. The shape immediately recognisable, a symbol we can all ‘understand’. But does the nuance of its meaning remain with the mark maker? We connect through common language but subtleties of difference always escape, to be either celebrated or repressed.

Is that a human figure we see enclosed within the heart? Possibly kneeling? Who can say?This small detail, on the patina of concrete canvas, remains a daub of mystery. A symbol as elusive and remote from the casual observer as the Pictish symbols, found further up the Fife coast, carved in the Wemyss Caves around 600 – 700 AD.

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The difference between the who and the what at the heart of love, separates the heart. It is often said that love is the movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way that someone is?

Jacques Derrida

Now playing: Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto – Love, Love

Categories
Observation Psychogeography rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers

The Brutalist Butterfly

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Walking up Lady Lawson Street in Edinburgh, I stopped for a closer look at Argyle House, an office block dating from 1968, designed by the architectural practice of Michael Laird & Partners.  The building has many critics and is often described as an ‘eyesore’ and one of Edinburgh’s ‘ugliest buildings’. It appears to exist under a constant threat of erasure from property developers, and the City of Edinburgh Council, proposing new (re)development schemes.

The façade which borders the north side of West Port and the junction of Lady Lawson Street is very much of the brutalist box style. All right angles, rectangular windows and the material heft of concrete and harling.

Today, walking in behind the building, I see it from a different angle. The hidden curves, the windows as light reflecting scales. It takes on the appearance of some brutalist insect, flexing its wings, as if about to fly.

Now playing: Asva – Futurists Against the Ocean.

Categories
Happenstance Observation Poetry Signs and Signifiers

The Moon Whispers

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Almost fully formed, a singing light filling the sky. The temptation to climb up a ladder, over the chimneys and walk through the clouds. Like a moth, drawn towards the light.

 

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On nights such as this, we all stop to gaze at the moon.

But the moon returns our gaze. Whispers softly to us:

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In the dark, I see

a small blue planet.

Care for her well.*

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The moon photographed over Fife on 27th August, 2015.

*a contribution to Ai Weiwei & Olafur Eliasson’s interactive Moon project.

Now playing: Terry Riley and Don Cherry – ‘Descending Moonshine Dervishes’ from Live Köln 1975

Categories
Happenstance Observation Psychogeography Quote rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers

To dwell means to leave traces

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Very small ghost sign on doorway entrance, St Leonard’s Street, Southside, Edinburgh.

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“To dwell means to leave traces”.

Walter Benjamin

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On the front elevation of the same building. Traces of the old bell pulls.

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Now playing: Polwechsel & John Tilbury – ‘Place/Replace/Represent’ from Field.