PAPERCUTS

Howdy y'all.

Here it is, as promised - the full version of my newest short story, PAPERCUTS. 

Enjoy!

PAPERCUTS

Alan was a photographer, first and foremost. He lived/existed in his mess of a London loft apartment, trying his best to make a masterpiece. Alan's talent lied in photography; none of that digital bollocks mind, no sir. Not enough heart in that branch of the art – the shots are mere ghosts of what the eye had seen, soulless reproductions, assembled pixel by pixel on a 4.5 inch square screen by a computer chip. No, analogue was the future.

They'd all laughed of course. No one seemed to appreciate the appeal of an image made by the reaction of chemicals and light; it was all about “my telezoom is longer than yours” and “Canon is cleeearly more superior to Nikon; the clarity of image is just to die for!” The whole business gave Alan a headache. But, with megapixel ratios climbing higher every year, and film prices following suit, Alan had a hard time making any profit from his work – that is, if he ever sold any. No one seemed to be interested in fuzzy, grainy shadows rendered in tones that were never quite the starkest black and white – they said he was sloppy, his images full of drunken horizons and meaningless subject matter. This is what truly made his blood boil sometimes. So what if it wasn't the latest technicolour digital masterpiece, tweaked and poked and prodded in an editing suite until any soul it had had died screaming in the margins? To Alan, true elegance lay in the mechanical clunk of a shutter release, contact of light on film to create negatives, that feeling of wonder as an image slowly fades into existence, willed into being by the chemical wizardry of the development process. That was true art.

Alan didn't look particularly healthy. Most of his time was spent under the red safety lights of his darkroom, so his skin was pale and translucent under his scrubby, greying beard and messy head of dark hair. A diet of mainly ramen noodles and whatever he could get his hands on at short notice at the corner shops had given him a thin, pinched look; his face was drawn and his eyes were often bloodshot and accompanied by impressive bags for someone of only 35 years of age.

It was a Tuesday. As far as Alan was concerned, Tuesday wasn't a brilliant day; it was the day after Monday and quite frankly was just too far from Friday to be worth much effort. More to the point, the bins were collected on a Tuesday – meaning that no matter how much Alan wanted to sleep in, he would always be awoken at 7am by the clunking and grinding of the compactor units sent around by Hackney council. The hiss and whine of hydraulic rams pulverising his refuse into a pulp was relentless and, in a way, terrifying. These compactors, behemoths of steel and iron, would grind and pound his waste into super-compacted blocks. These would then be burned to feed the national grid in the offshore energy recovery plants... Not that there was much energy in 2 weeks worth of ramen packets, thought Alan to himself.

Knowing he would definitely not be going back to sleep while the college dropouts rounded up everyone's waste outside, Alan rose from his squeaky army cot, fumbled for a moment to get his glasses, and went straight for the coffee machine, negotiating the matrix of strings criss-crossing the ceiling of his kitchen-diner-living room space. Multiple prints were pegged onto these strings – some of Alan's trademark fuzzy, grey images, hanging like a kind of macabre bunting... the fruits of his labour, the half-resolved figures and shapes constantly seeming to stare at him from their lofty positions.

Alan examined one such onlooker whilst the coffee machine warmed up – one of the better prints he had produced, simply a white corridor with one or two people with a grey shadow smudged across it, a suggestion of a tall, curly-haired man striding across the shot; head down, on a mission. He went to pull it down, then recoiled sharply as a tiny cut opened on the side of his finger. Alan cursed; he hated papercuts. It bothered him that something so small could cause so much discomfort... just another of the numerous hangups his creative mind was hampered with.

Half an hour later, Alan was still worrying this papercut when his phone rang; a strident bipping that cut through the apocalyptic hissing and crashing of the compactors outside. He checked the caller ID to find it was Barry, his agent. Strange, he thought. Barry hadn't called in months.

Tentatively, Alan answered, a croaky and half-hearted voice he did not quite recognise as his own.

“Hello?”

An overly cheerful, tinny, cockney accent rattled through the phone's speaker.

“Alan! It's Barry, mate! Fuck me, you sound rough. How long has it been since you left that dirty ol' loft of yours?”

“Too long, I guess.” whispered Alan, trying to remember the last time he had actually gone out with something other than creative block or getting more filter coffee on his mind.

“Well Alan, I know its been a while, but I've found some silly twat who might actually be interested in your work. He wants to get you a job!”

Alan almost spat out his coffee. A job? A way out of this hellish half existence?

Surely not. It was too good to be true.

Barry registered the disbelief in Alan's silence.

“Oi! Earth to Alan! Do you want the job or not?”

“Yes! Jesus god, yes!” cried Alan, almost weeping with joy.

“Goody gumdrops. Now get your shit together; he wants to meet tomorrow. Don't be late now, or you'll be in a whole heap o' barney.”

The line went dead. Alan's elation evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. Tomorrow? That wasn't enough time. No way was that enough time. Alan could feel himself slumping back into misery.

But then one crystal clear thought sliced through the quagmire of self pity that threatened to overwhelm him; roundhouse kicked his panic in the face and told it to bugger off.

You can do this, the thought said.

How odd, Alan thought. This wasn't like him. Maybe it was the promise of finally making it which had caused this out-of-character thinking. But the thought was right. He could do this. He drank the rest of his coffee, now lukewarm, cracked his knuckles, and went for his chemical cupboard.

Since proper photo chemicals had gotten so expensive, Alan had started to make his own with his limited knowledge of chemistry. Alan entered a Zen-like state of calm, weighing out the ingredients he needed for his chemical wizardry: borax, sodium sulphite, hydroquinone, and countless other reagents with equally weird names. This was what he was born to do. Mixing the chemicals made him feel peculiar – after a minute he recognised it as the thrill of creation, an unusual singing which resonated through his body and made his nerves tingle. This was something he hadn't felt for a while. Once the chemicals were prepared, he checked all his equipment in the corner of the flat dedicated to printing, and closed the blackout blinds in his windows. The apartment was plunged into complete darkness, and a muffled silence descended, interrupted by the flick of a light switch. Red safety lights pinged and sputtered into life, and Alan exhaled. He was ready.

After hours of exposing, printing, and heaps of failed test strips Alan stood back from his work, and allowed himself a moment of brief reflection. For the first time in a long while, he was pleased with what he had achieved. This feeling of pride in his work filled him up and threatened to spill over into a smile, but this was halted by an unusual sick feeling in his stomach. In fact, Alan realised he really wasn't feeling quite right; he felt distinctly light headed, his eyes were sore and his hands were shaking. He figured he must be dehydrated and overdue a meal, but, desperate to finish the job, he carried on working. And working. It felt like he could print forever; despite a pain that translated as a low hum in the base of his skull, and that nausea growing stronger. But he ignored it. Must keep working, he thought. Soon he began to feel a little delirious, and almost fancied that the blurry figures in his prints were talking to him. The paper took on a life of its own, dipping itself in the chemicals and shaking itself off like a dog between each tray. Having observed all of this, Alan was not particularly surprised when the floor, normally reasonably pre-occupied with being under his feet, decided to rush up and smack him in the face for what felt like no reason at all. Alan briefly felt a bit miffed at the floor for being so needlessly confrontational, before blacking out.

Alan awoke in a cold sweat, lying spread eagle in the middle of the apartment floor. The red safety lights still hummed and flickered, making him wonder at first if he had gone blind. He struggled to the light switch, and turned on the white strip lights, cursing as the harsh white bulbs scored flaming afterimages into his retinas. Once he had recovered, a quick look around revealed damning evidence to back up what he already knew. He was surrounded by broken glass, prints of nothing, and – strangest of all - tiny origami sculptures, immaculately folded. He tried to remember the name of the form; his head felt like it was full of knives. The crane... that was it. He remembered his grandma teaching him all those years ago. He was the only member of the family that had inherited her creative flair – that same drive to create that had inspired him to take up a career in photography in the first place.

Things had seemed much simpler then.

His head was pounding and everything hurt; it was like the worst hangover he'd ever had had come back to haunt him. His hands were covered in tiny papercuts, and he winced in pain as he attempted to flex his fingers. All the pieces of photo paper surrounding him bore no image, simply a square of deepest black. Closer inspection of the origami cranes revealed that they had been made using his own photographs – a glance to the ceiling proved what Alan had already guessed; all of the prints that had once hung there were gone. With a growing feeling of horror, Alan realised that his entire portfolio had been ruined. But how? Could it have been him? It must have been – how else could he have sliced up his hands so badly?

Suddenly a more urgent, panicked question came to mind: how long had he been out? Shit! The meet! Alan pulled out his phone, noticing all the missed calls and messages – and the date. Alan had managed to lose two full days... not to mention the job, he thought miserably to himself. There was no point calling Barry – That ship had sailed. Even if he could be bothered to bring himself to call his agent, what would he have to show? Blank squares of blackness and some ridiculous origami that a 7 year old could make... No, this is the sort of crap that only the most eccentric rich twats would be interested in. Definitely not the sort of company that Barry kept.

It was now Thursday. Another of Alan's least favourite days – purely because it was the day before Friday, an ambivalent, unnecessary day that quite frankly could fuck off. Alan felt sick, and hot... he strode to his window and threw it open. A cool breeze played across his face, the sounds of evening London traffic infiltrated the loft, and the yellow glow of the arc sodium lamps in the street below reflected briefly in his glasses. 

Suddenly, in a fit of rage and self pity, he gathered up the origami cranes and all the prints he did not remember making – over fifty separate sheets, with nothing but a blank, abyssal square of black burned into them by the light of the enlarger lamp – and tossed them all out of the open window. As the blank prints floated slowly to the ground, for a moment the tiny paper birds appeared to take flight, only to be knocked awry and scattered by the winds that howled through the dim streets of Hackney.

- fin.

And that's it. I've been working on this for a little while now, not entirely sure where the idea came from except maybe a papercut I had whilst working in the darkroom myself a few weeks ago. Some of those chemicals sting like fuck when they get into small open wounds like that.

I've also been making a foray into photographing gigs recently, if you're interested don't forget to check out my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/this.is.patography

That's all you're getting for now. Check back again soon for your regular fix of visual madness.

Beware of this and that, yeah?

- Padfoot

LEVEL 5 - THE RETURN OF PADFOOT

That's right... I'm back, baby. 

My second year of university is in pretty much full swing, and it's been pretty kick-ass so far. 

There's some new faces in the studio this year, as well as the old ones. Michael Wright is still as amazing and bat-shit insane as ever, and I've nicely slipped back into my regular work ethic of sort of just mucking about. As you do.

I've managed to chunk out a surprising amount of work - I was actually kind of worried at first. Me? Doing work? Don't be ridiculous. But no, the ideas are coming thick and fast, so that's one problem solved.

The subject of duality was something I was looking at over the summer, polar opposites that can't exist without each other. For example, light and dark, a lock and key, happiness and sadness; you get the idea.

Hoping to make a short film out of this, but so far it's on the back burner.

Also, to get the creative juices flowing again, I decided to throw together every single photo I took last year into a kind of stop-motion animation. In a way, its like a journey - you get to see snatches of places I've been, work that I've done, and people that I've seen. In another, its a completely bonkers audio/visual assault on the senses.

So here it is. Unfortunately YouTube compressed the living shit out of it, so its very low quality. Also it would have taken a whole day to render it properly if I'd done it in HD, and I'm just a tad too impatient.

I should probably give it a better name too.

Photos (c) me 2012. You thieving bastards.

Music - Juular by Devin Townsend Project

I wrote a short story as well, provisionally entitled Papercuts, about a middle-aged analogue photographer who just can't seem to make it in the digital future of the art world. This was based on some of my own vague anxieties about the future, and whether my particular practice would still be relevant in 20 years time.

Here's a short excerpt...

Since proper photo chemicals had gotten so expensive, Alan had started to make his own with his limited knowledge of chemistry. Alan entered a Zen-like state of calm, weighing out the ingredients he needed for his chemical wizardry... Mixing the chemicals made him feel peculiar – after a minute he recognised it as the thrill of creation, an unusual singing which resonated through his body and made his nerves tingle. This was something he hadn't felt for a while. Once the chemicals were prepared, he checked all his equipment in the corner of the flat dedicated to printing, and closed the blackout blinds in his windows. The apartment was plunged into complete darkness, and a muffled silence descended, interrupted by the flick of a light switch. Red safety lights pinged and sputtered into life, and Alan exhaled. He was ready.

Has that tickled your fancy? It better have.
I'd publish the whole thing but its like, three pages long. Will probably chuck it on a seperate blog post when i've finished all the final tweakings.

Until then - ciao for now.

- Padfoot

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

Greetings once again, and welcome back. Did you miss me?

Well, it's been a totally kick-ass summer, apart from busting a nut working at t'cinema... but hey, I'm all about breaking conventions, me... and what's more unusual than a fine art student that's not balls deep in an overdraft? 

But I digress. I've not had much opportunity for creative outlets the last two months, simply because I had adopted a kind of one or t'other existence - either awake at work or asleep in bed. Occasionally a mixture of both.

However, now I've got some time off before going back to Hatfield for Level Five, I have been digging through some of my old work around the house... Found some proper old ones, like.

These for example - Some snapshots I took in college using a pinhole camera made from a shoebox. These were captured during a very experimental phase in the project and I was still trying to master the process - so they're a bit shit, but still pretty cool lookin'.

Slightly later in my college course - I made a small foray into urban exploring, or urbexing, to pursue a project based around a theme of decay. 

The full set of photos from this trip, an abandoned wing of an old Army communications base, can be found at facebook.com/this.is.patography

Whilst bumming around these various derelict spaces, I found several files full of old paperwork and letters, some dating back to the 1950s. I decided to combine these with my photographs, using both darkroom techniques and Photoshop to overlay the text onto the image.

These were the final pieces for the Decay project. I used the text overlay from previous experimentation, and processed the images using the HDR technique.

Also... I just found this lurking in a forgotten photoshop projects folder. Not really sure what the motivation behind this one was, I just remember it being based on Lonesome Big City Dweller by surrealist photographer Herbert Bayer. That dude had a crazy-ass imagination, make no mistake.

Right, that's enough of memory lane for now; check back tomorrow for another dip into the archives... who knows, there might actually be something worth looking at it in there.

Keep it metal.
- Padfoot

INKBLOTS... THEY'RE ALL BLOTTY AND SHIT

Hello again. Apologies for my recent silence; shit's been going down in Hatfield town.

I have now finished my first year at university... Blimey that went quick. Feels like only yesterday I was nought but a quivering fresher; tentatively sipping beer (as opposed to my champion chugging skills of today), taking photos of plastic army men cos I couldn't think of anything better to do, and panicking because my sketchbooks weren't arranged properly. Now, however, I am known in the art studio as someone who very rarely gives a fuck.

I like that.

But I digress. In my most recent post (almost a month ago, in fact... my goodness, how time flies when one just doesn't give a shit) I talked about some scrawly, inkblotty drawings inspired by Ralph Steadman, the pen and ink artist who perhaps owes the success of most of his later works to the writer Hunter S Thompson, and his ever-ready supply of sunshine acid and mescaline. I took a few photos of my fellow art students; one passport style photo, and another of them pulling the cheesiest, most grotesque smile they could possibly muster. 

I then set about ruining their beautiful faces with my black and red ink, and cheap-ass scratchy pen. I had way too much fun doing this... But this is the result: 

Did a self portrait as well, which is beyond awesome - but let's not go into that.

I then fused these amazing/terrible drawings together with some of the original photographs to create these monstrosities.

And that's pretty much it.

And so ended the first year of the almighty Padfoot's fine art education. To while away the hours (and help pay the rent) in between now and September I'll be mostly sweeping up popcorn at the local Odeon cinema, but I've still got some fucked up ideas brewing in the ol' brainbox... So keep checking back, yeah?

Until then - Ciao for now, bitches.

- Padfoot

PORTFOLIO: ASSEMBLE!

Assessment deadline is next week, and most of my work is only in digital form on this blog. And so commences the frantic rush to print everything out and stick it in some form of portfolio... I've now been in the library for about 3 or 4 hours wrestling with the university's printers. I swear, they're literally eating my print credit... and the worst part is, if my printer at home hadn't gone on the blink there would be no need for this madness. A pox on all EPSON printers!

Kind of a good thing though, ended up discovering some missing works. For example, this composite I put together during the making of Lost in My Cups...

 Completely forgot that I made this, however since putting it on my Facebook page everyone seems to love it so I definitely want to include it in my portfolio for this year. 

Also found these from a modelling shoot done with the same plastic cup scultpure:

 

The versatility of this thing and the amount of work I've managed to make from it will never fail to surprise me; what started as something I cobbled together out of boredom has ended up being the germ of several of my ideas for the past semester.

Anyways - onwards and upwards. Recently I've been looking at some of Ralph Steadman's "inkblot" illustrations, and I love the messy, rapid style of it. 

Left: The Spirit of Gonzo                Right: Self Portrait

 

For the final couple of weeks and assessment, I'm gonna throw together some of these drawings, and superimpose them over photographs - perhaps making a kind of duality; the subject is smiling in the photo but the illustration shows a twisted, anguished form... a way of showing the id, or "inner evil" that we all possess. This idea was also influenced by Gillian Wearing's work "HELP". 

The subject looks reasonably calm, but the word HELP scrawled on the board he is holding evokes a strong sense of pathos; the feeling of an intense struggle below the surface is hinted at.

I'll update with photos once its all sorted. In the meantime, this sketchbook isn't going to finish itself...

- Padfoot

HE SO MAD

It would appear that someone disagreed with my "U MAD?" stencil.

This someone took a marker pen and scrawled PRICK in massive letters next to the design on the wall; at first I was a bit like "How rude." Then I thought about it, and realised that the original intention of the piece was to provoke a reaction. Which it did... somewhat spectacularly.

I'll try and get a photo of this, but I have a feeling that it will have been covered up already - Profanity doesn't hang around for long in the studios.

In addition to this I have received a surprisingly polite note from some of the older students, opening with "Dear Padfoot: Yes, we mad." Something to do with them needing the space for their degree show, so sadly U MAD shall have to be obliterated.

However - the piece achieved what it set out to do, and in that respect, I feel no remorse in painting over it.


DAVID SHRIGLEY - BRAIN ACTIVITY


I was recommended by several people to go see Shrigley's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery on London's Southbank, and I must admit I'm glad I did. I felt a very strong connection with his work, as he has very similar interests and the same anarchic and sometimes dark sense of humour. He works with a variety of media, including bronze, ceramics, pen and ink illustrations, and animation.


Here's one of his darker animations, entitled New Friends.

This animation, while appearing to be light hearted, speaks volumes about the need to conform to society's norms, and the base human instinct to reject or change things that are different or unknown.


What particularly interested me was his photography, which documented work similar to my "guerilla installation" ideas. Some of these were just small signs, one in the middle of a stream with the words "RIVER FOR SALE", and another urging people to keep an eye out for a lost pigeon. Made me chuckle.


Anyways, still sorting out how to make this installation idea work, gotta think of something soon in order to be ready for the degree show. Thinking maybe a team of three people, including myself - one to place an object / sculpture, one to take a photo, and another to come and remove it again. In essence, this is a kind of passive aggressive vandalism; the offending object is there, photographed - but only for a matter of seconds.


Hopefully all goes well with this and I won't get arrested.

- Padfoot

HOLY SHIT, I'M 20 NOW.

Had my birthday a few days ago... still reeling from shock at the fact that I am no longer a teenager.
I guess I have to grow up and be all responsible now.




Actually... Nah, fuck it.

Ladies and gentlemen - the stencil of my beautiful face.

Also done some pinhole experiments using colour photo paper. This is one of the best ones:

some of the results were quite interesting, but most were completely epic failures. Exposure times are tough to get right when your camera is essentially a Coke can with a hole poked in it.

The others can be seen on my facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/THIS.IS.PATOGRAPHY

Anywho. That's all for now folks, going to see some shows in London next week, so no doubt I shall be compelled to write some reviews in my trademark sarcastic prose.

Until then - keep it metal.

-Padfoot