You can never go back: the impossibility of memory

In the late 1980’s at a time when more than 2000 people a year were murdered in New York City, Southside Williamsburg, in Brooklyn was an extremely hot and heavy neighbourhood and was also where I lived from 1986 – 1990. In April 2012 I went back there with my camera to capture the past, but where was it….? The video shows me in the studio working on drawings for the upcoming blood/MarcyAV exhibition and talking about the inspiration for the show. blood/MarcyAV is  me visual artist Michele Marcoux, sound artist Lynne Thermann and poet Sheila Black and explores the nostalgia…

Catskills artlife: creating sound art in the mountains

 Lynne writes (and edits sounds) from Moon Hill Farm, a civil war era farmhouse at the top of a mountain near Claryville NY. She lives with Jean, who has owned the farm since the 60’s and her mum Carmella. This is her latest post from the Catskills………………………………………………………… i’m a woman who came of age in new york city in the 1970s, when definitions of creative art were really expanding. as a young person I heard a lot of music that was really brand new. it changed the very definition of listening, of being with sound. the listener became part of…

Homecoming: pollution and nostalgic disconnect

These balloons are part of on-going research begun in 2010 and were collected from a beach on Block Island, a small island off the coast of New England in the USA. The beach is an isolated and rugged environment of cliffs and boulders facing the open Atlantic. Along with the expected detritus of landslide, fallen trees and wreckage from the shipping industry, it is striking the number of cellophane balloons which accumulates here. Wrapped around boulders, buried in the sand, accumulated in masses like seaweed they are the dead junk of a consumer society which causes huge environmental damage. Formed…

Nostalgia Analgesic: therapy for a fragmented world

A Surrealist Therapy (Mud  |Blood  | Fire |Water  | Blackness | Sight | Unknown) nostalgia is a formation of  Greek compounds, consisting of νόστος, nóstos, “returning home”, a Homeric word, and ἄλγος, álgos, “pain” or “ache”. The word analgesic derives from Greek an- (“without”) and algos (“pain”). This collaborative project (poetry, visual art, sound) which is currently in progress  builds on a previous collaboration Continental Drift by myself and  poet Sheila Black which formed an exhibition  at the Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh 2010.  We are delighted that sound artist Lynne Therman has also  joined the project. check out Lynne’s blog: http://dollfur.tumblr.com/ Nostalgia/Analgesic will explore…