OUR PENNILESS WRITE

By Richard Taylor

“On occasion I am dressed accordingly and on these occasions I get to lie about who I am. When wearing clothes I get to wander through the gardens surrounding the institute, passed the bamboo, over each and every stream circumnavigating the amphitheatre – where on other occasions we are instructed to perform – and then back through to the institute… and usually back in to storage.”

The divine sense of dummies – when I think of this I think of Ghost in the shell and an apparent consciousness or sentience in man made objects that are produced to resemble human existence. Cyborgian is the term. This term is perhaps now a little dated. If one part is human then the non-human part is the opposite of human.

The divine sense of dummies – I would like to extract the zombie-essence from these artefacts and question (tap in to) how qualified their reasoning is. Why do they exist and when they are stored out of sight what is their reason for being there?

The divine sense of dummies – is to be found in the basement then, at the bottom of the city museum. Here, in this room, a found-photographic composition is located. A lens is placed and the remote on the shutter is pressed gathering the correct exposure to render an image of these objects tied together like limbs. There is little stability yet something holds them upright and gives them a lingering sense of balance.

“I made up my mind and then changed it, I changed my mind, my mind changed… and all of a sudden I was naked like a doll exposed for a life-like drawing exercise. When I walk my legs wobble and my head remains still staring straight ahead. I do not have the ability to see rather I know the direction I am walking because of my prior function and my installed intuition. My reason for being here instructs me to walk this way and that, and eventually to climb the plinth in front of the spectators, to be observed out with obscurity and to be drawn from and sometimes upon.”

By Richard Taylor

The start of Euclidean geometries for me is like taking something away, and then replacing it with something else – developing an axiom for change. You know, making use of something instead of just letting it sit, thinking of how it can be something other than itself. By any sort of means possible – a way of remaining ignorant of your disuse in the world I suppose. I recall this. My dad received a parcel in the post when I was around eight years old, it was a Saturday – my mother was working, he was washing the car, my brother burying his new plastic toy in the green house. I was looking in the parcel hidden behind the kitchen blind.

The parcel contained six wooden blocks that would make a puzzle if you knew how. I decided no one would ever know how so stole one of the pieces and burnt it. By this point my dad had left the hosepipe unattended on the front lawn and was readying himself to wax the car. I felt I had to do something to replace the act of taking away, I wanted to connect the happening some how, make something a little more complete so sneaked out the house to the top of the drive way, the car at the bottom my dad finding leather cloths in the garage. I took my chance in his position of ignorance ran to the end of the hose, turned the tap on, then ran to the other end. My dad was still busying himself over the cloths. The next moment I had inserted the end of the hosepipe in to the exhaust of the car to flood the engine with water. My task was complete. But my dad and his fury were one step ahead. The tap was turned off where he stood… from then on it was a race.

“They puzzled me – that’s what I liked about them. They were my task towards absolution. They were a means for a race against someone who had gone before and my step ahead.

I was leant against this fire exit, preventing any means of escape. It was then I saw them, at first I saw them as fuel, but quickly refrained and took them for other uses instead.”

Right now there’s a simple spire standing across from the window. It gets looked at from time to time through the rain and the shine. And on occasion gets spied at, by me, through a slight gap in the curtain during the day. It remains stationary in its architectural grandeur – but I am sure if it knew it was being so observed, it would move. Before such concrete roving however I would like to climb it, scale it get to the bottom of its measure and decipher an accurate trajectory, from which to then reveal myself when ready. Of course – I would dress up as someone else for this.

When ready I would open the curtain at the right moment, at night, with the light on. It would see me and then disappear for good. From then on my purpose would be obsolete but to replace the spire with something of less interest – a flat or two alluding to the age of the plastic number – in the form of a Japanese bathhouse.

There’s an axoim for this – the best things happen when you’ve reached a state of in-between-function – a status of chance, a chance for completion and definition. I came across four shelves upon a time when I was looking for ‘something else’ in form of fulfilment – they were discarded in a piss smelling side alley ridden with broken glass and moans from the gallery on the other side of the fire exit…