ARTISTS TALKING

# 25 [13 May 2008]

Yesterday was spent travelling to Leeds to get some work done at the 'Film Lab North'. I can only recommend them highly. They are also £75 an hour cheaper than the equivalent lab in Soho. (Which is only useful for you to know if you live in equal proximity to both.)

I have had my cine film digitized  using a machine that costs 1 million pounds. Now THAT is madness. But if you had seen it you would bellieve it. A massive, really absolutely massive piece of equipment.

So here goes thanks to Mark and Glenn from the Film Lab North who charged me for an hour, even so I was actually there for 2! And like as if that wasn't already enough they lent me their hard-drive to take the digitized work home with me (there had been a glitch and I hadn't been told to bring mine, which nearly cost me the remainder of my already dwindling bundle of nerves..). I am flattered to be so trusted.

I saw the Quay Brothers's Euridice in the Leeds ARt Gallery. In one word: Inspiring.

I got ideas for another project, a poetic quiet, beautiful project. So there is my work planned until pretty much mid autumn..

This morning I met with carpenters to discuss my quixotic race against time to pull the 7 Giants back out of the abyss they fell into last week. We will start building this afternoon. Thank heavens for lucky connections. 

So I had to compromise: we will make a skeletal framework out of timber  and I will clad the hut part of it in cardboard.

I looks like I will be able to get help to make 3 Giants and then will have to get on with it alone after that. Oh but what a help.

Another urgent job for this week will be to source reclaimed timber, I would like the Giants to have patina, but with the increasing time limitations I may have to compromise yet again. Unless I can patina them myself in one way or another.. Some wood stain?

Will think this one out in the following days.

SO now I best get on with one of many of the jobs for the other two exhibitions, while I wait for the carpenters to re-appear.  

Progress: shaky but improving. 

# 24 [8 May 2008]

SOS to Liverpool Readers:

ARTISTS urgently needs an assistant / VOLUNTEER!!!

& 

ARTISTS urgently needs an assistant / VOLUNTEER!!!

please catch me on myspace.com/birgitdeubner

or on artreview

or tap me on the shoulder if you know me.

SOS..

# 23 [8 May 2008]

Today was quixotic.

 My hands feel like I think they might daily once I reach my 7th decade in life. A lot of cutting, sawing, pulling, pushing, drilling and so on...

And in the end:  well let me put it this way: What on earth was I thinking using cardboard to attempt and build 3.5 meter high structures..?

Now a miracle please... because the show opens in 23 days!

(The super thick board that I made out of layers of corrugated cardboard is nowhere near stable enough to ever hold a vertical position. Now I have a serious problem.)

(or do I?)

Hmmmm....

Problems also give more ideas. But it feels frightfully late to start on new solutions. 

Another serious issue is the weakness of my hands. I can not imagine them being of any use past just one more intensive day like today. Oh I am not a builder after all. But seriously: I am too weak, not whimpish, to do all this work on my own. And I have no assistant as yet, and the prognosis is that I will continue to put it all together in  singular line-up. 

I wonder, how long does it take to train up toes and feet to nimbly do hand's jobs?

# 22 [2 May 2008]

Currently the brainwaves are a little blocked due to unforseeable circumstances. But here is a basic drawing of the "Giants".

# 21 [30 April 2008]

Well I feel very supported.. Several large stores have taken to folding their cardboard very neatly as opposed to lovelessly throwing it into their respective skips..

Good people helping me get the maximum amount of womble-activity accomplished.. 

don't forget I am also found in these places.. :

www.myspace.com/birgitdeubner 

www.axisweb.org/artist/birgitdeubner 

(there will be one of these:  '     that you have to delete from the end of the address bar.. I don't know why it keeps appearing.)

# 20 [30 April 2008]

After attending a talk by Hew Locke about his work, at the Liverpool Bluecoat Gallery this evening I feel reinvigorated and re-confirmed in my plans for the "7 Giants" exhibition that I am building to show at St Luke's.

I was beginning to think that perhaps I am crazy to plan to build a whole installation, of really quite large dimensions, out of cardboard...

But now that I have seen some of Hew's work, which he made in the 90's  I am positively vibrant with excitement to continue on my mad quixotic venture..

So "7 Giants" there will be..

My god, I do have to say I love Hew Locke.  He was a bit on the guarded side, but if he is that inspiring on a day that appears to me not to be his best then I can only say" WOW.  Can someone please make sure he gets all necessary funding, so that I can follow his progress... And give him enough money to allow him to fully spread his wings. There is life in the artist and in his work.!

Am feeling very happy to have had an opportunity to hear him and shake hands, too.

(A handshake is an important barometer for all kinds of personality conclusions.. and Hew has a handshake that I sincerely approve of.)

Bravo to the Bluecoat for commissioning such an exciting artist.

Speaking to Brian Biggs I also hear that Alec Finlay may be back for a reading this summer. Oh, yes, please...

But back to me, me , me.. The life of the artist has gone mad in every possible way but I am pleased to report that somehow I seem to have become weather and life-hurricane resistant and am holding up quite well. And am still simmering the ideas and project development pool.

A particularly strategic friend of mine today did a grants search on my behalf and found a few leads that may promise some future. I love practical friends. I love some others, too. But practical ones are extra special at a time when life is throwing bad weather at me.

So if the rain could please stop (in both the literal and metaphorical sense) then I can start building my Giants.

I have to say I am very genuinely impressed with the performance of the Bluecoat today. They did so well and I left as one should always leave a gallery/ arts centre: brimming with inspiration, drive and gusto.

# 19 [26 April 2008]

A sisyphean day of 30s... having freelance work at the FACT centre to earn £30 only to find a parking ticket to pay £30.. 

... now that was today. What do I gain from the experience? A pat on the shoulder for having tried my best. That doesn't quite seem satisfying.

A brief meeting with film-maker gained me a confirmation that he is up for filming for nothing much more than the covering of the actual expenses of doing so. Oh thank all heavens for that. Now I am short of one assistant and then the camera can roll... I think we will schedule the weekend for mid-late May or mid-June, alternatively.

All my applications came back rejected. I am an artistic reject. Let's see if I can't turn that round by 180 degrees in the next 12 months. Can I become the equivalent of hot-cake instead? My other collaborator said this: Turn towards the light... And so I shall. As spiritual as that sounds. But what is wrong with spirit? Now I have 30 days to make the structures for exhibition in St Luke's and perhaps I can find a follow on exhibition for them, too.

The 7 Giants will stand tall and proud, strong a watchful in the ruin of St Lukes which was severely damaged in WW2. The church remains a memorial to lives lost, fates suffered. Not that its presence often stops anybody in their tracks anymore to contemplate the past and it's lingering echos into this presence.. But there it stands nevertheless, a memorial. In it I will place 7 bird hides / forester's hides, standing tall on elongated legs. watchful. Whether they are friend or foe remains open. 7 giants on tall legs viewing over the space. 7 because that is the great number of fables, tales and belief.7 to indicate the quality of my thoughts and search for expression.

My project is not a statement, not a conclusion or answer but a search for truth, abstract notions of truth of who we are, us, these humans. My art work really is better described as a journey not a conclusion. To ask what my work is about is to ask "What has moved you in the past year, 10 years or in fact since you became aware of anything moving you at all." And just how does one give an answer, a concrete solid answer with brevity..? It's "always" that is in the art work, it's not the isolated moment that is in it.

A life philosophy becoming visual, tangible, solid. A sharing of intimate concerns and searches, that is what the art is. Of course I have no expectation that it is that to you, to the audience. But I hope it shows. A section of the inside of my thoughts, on exhibition in St Luke's. From the 30th of May for 2 weeks only..  

My spelling makes me laugh: a wether is a castrated ram... (wether = ram; whether ..) 

# 18 [18 April 2008]

I am still busy collecting cardboard. Like a womble...

Tonight I sat here looking through old images that I took to draw from and I got carried away altering them, getting ideas from them. I sometimes feel like an ideas-factory. Let's just hope it's a good, stylish, chic, italian one, not a cheap chinese one with slave laborers..

I found out about a great website. I think this is where I clearly have a few adulterated genes in me... I started getting very excited when I heard about this site... A website selling hardware like nuts and bolts.

Cheaper than those dreadful chain DIY stores.. Oh, I shouldn't be mean, one of those is currently my life-saver.. Oh dear..

So re-phrasing : I very much love the chain-DIY store, it is my life-saver, yet, my wallet loves the online store more.

I hope that is suitably diplomatic?

If you want the name for the site then please contact me somehow. I can't type it here, because it sounds dreadfully dubious.. (Just apply your imagination as to how dodgy a site for nuts and bolts could accidentally have been named...So as I would prefer not to end up in someone's bad books for advertising a site that sounds like it contains nudity... but doesn't.. well, you get the picture. Contact me and I will give you the online-diy-store details).

So here in this post is a photo I took of myself for my drawing practice. The image has nothing to do with my current main project, but could easily evolve into one of my next 'sideline-projects'.

Good night. 

# 17 [14 April 2008]

taking stock in case I am confusing everyone:

I am working on:

'Dungbeetle and Sisyphus'    

'Giants' for St Luke's, Liverpool

'Devotional Choreography' for Bridewell Gallery, Liverpool 

and am working with Steve Boyland on a variation of Devotional Choreography "Khoreia".

And I am devising a new project based on Idioms. 

Yes, it's a lot to co-ordinate and sometimes I feel fuzzy. 

# 16 [14 April 2008]

Now I have 7 huge stores collecting their cardboard for me.. 

It occurs to me that I could easily accumulate enough to build a warm shelter in which I could live when I move to London.

Tomorrow is a big cardboard collection day. I decided to collect a bulk load before starting the constructions.

So this thursday I will go down to London and spend a few days between galleries and friends. I have been barred from my usual habitat down there which makes the prospect of living in cardboard dwellings all the more tempting..

I am looking for an assistant to work with me from next week. On 4 long afternoons a week. (5-6 hour sessions) It would be acrazy amount of work to try and construct all of my cardboard hides/watchtowers on my own.