our lady of

Today I woke up very cold and looked outside to find snow falling. Today is the first day the snow had built up on the ground here. I saw Takako at the apartments and she thankfully persuaded me not to ride my bike.
The CCA garden and parking lot.


outside the studios.

I walked up to the cable car and took a trip up Mt Sarakura. Snow was maybe 30cm thick at the top of the mountain, deeper off the paths.


walking down back to the studio, many drawings in the snow.

I go to Kyoto tomorrow, will be cold there i think.

On wednesday I went on a road trip to Beppu, driven by the lovely Youichirou and accompanied by the lovely Carl and Tamara. Beppu is famous for its Onsen, for bathing and “Hells”, that are volcanic water and mud features for looking at. Our practical excuse for going was to help Youchan collect spring water for his bar, however we had a great day exploring waterfalls, gorges, going to farmer’s shops, eating on bamboo covered mountainsides, marvelling at sulphurous steam craters and of course soaking in a hot mineral spring.

stowing the spring water.

One of the springs we collected from, this one is in a temple.

ummm volcanos.

Youfuin Gorge, a river gorge carved out of volcanic cliffs.

Tamara and Carl climbing up near a gigantic waterfall.

in Beppu town.

Volcanic mud crater. This being Japan, there was a woman wearing insanely high stilletoes and an evening dress right next to this boiling and sulphurous pool.

smelly!

ahh our own onsen. The water tasted coppery, i think we still smell like money.

Sorry that these posts seem to be getting fluffier and fluffier - but when you are in a nice country like Japan it is hard not to just blog the fun stuff. I will make a concerted effort to get more art stuff up on here soon.

On Saturday I went to Fukuoka (about an hours train trip) to meet Michael Yuen. Michael had been doing a residency in Seoul, and had come across to Japan for a holdiay. We had a ball, eating, shopping, eating and chatting about the general strangeness of artists residencies. I now have wonderful new silver and red Onitsuka Tiger sneakers due to Michaels encouragement - and he has new Tiger bowling boots and jacket due to mine - ah a beautiful friendship. We shopped at the massive Canal City shopping centre, which was decked out in extremely early halloween decorations.

Here we are post shop, drinking Calpis next to the river. Yes i was really tired.

We had dinner at a great sushi place called ‘tok tok’ near the port and fish market area. Delicious sashimi!

and then to fill up the corners some grilled enoki and bacon skewers at a street stall. We think the guy ripped us off a little though - hmmm. Still a beautiful sight, hundreds of people milling around, tent like stalls selling food and beer.

Fukuoka is a big city (6 million) and it was so nice to get lost in a crowd, there were also many Gaijin everywhere - inlcuding a hugely tall completely bald white guy in a basketball uniform who was about twice the height of the Japanese passing him by. I kept starting at the other Gaijin - it has been a while since I have seen other foreigners! (apart from CCA artists) I nearly missed the train and got back to sleepy Yahata about 1am.

Tonight I went out to dinner with Takako. We were both tired from going to see KTL, a noise band, with Peter Rehburg and Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))). We were out til 6am last night and I had three hours sleep before going into the studio. I took the cable car up Mt Sarakura and sat watching the beautiful panoramic view for a few hours.

anyway… back to dinner, we went to a small restaurant, one woman (the owner) doing all the cooking. It was really traditional Mama style japanese food. We ate rice, miso shiru with two types of tofu, tsukemono, pickled herring with onion (which reminded me of thai barramundi with green mango), a beef tendon stew, grilled sama (an oily deep sea fish), grilled sewers of pork, leek and a type of acorn, and a green salad. Oishi desu ne?!

The total bill came to ni-sen-en (2000 yen) or around 21 aust$, so really 10 bucks each. plus the woman was so nice and chatted to us from behind the bar.

On the way home we stumbled into an old grocery store and met Ryoko San, a lovely woman who let us explore behind her shop, into a forgotten world of a deserted food market - gone for 50 years. The stalls borded up and decaying, a wobbly cobwebbed christmas tree lurking next to a shinto shrine at the back. Ryoko san gave us three pottery statues of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” Monkeys, a bamboo pail and an old hand dyed apron (which Takako collects). We washed the dusty monkeys and now they watch over the studio fridge.

Fridays seem to have become the CCA artists’ swimming day. This Friday I suggested (and then had to orchestrate) a bit of an ambitious project - a visit to the Sugao Taki(waterfall). To get there we had to take a train to Kokura and then a bus out of the city, and then a taxi to the falls. The closest town is the tiny Dobaru, perhaps 100 houses if that. To get back we hitched to the bus stop. All this envolved me using a LOT of my extremely basic Japanese, but I was so proud of us for getting there and being able to ask so many charming and helpful people. The waterfall is in heavily forested and mountainous valley, the floor of which is covered in tiny rice and vegetable farms. It was extremely beautiful being out in the countryside, the rice harvest is happening now, and sheaves of rice were hung over wooden hurdles to dry, the stubble was smouldering in some areas, woodsmoke over the valley and green plumes of bamboo on the mountain.

There is a very large monastery next to the taki, and literally hundreds of stone buddas and shinto gods line the approach and surround the falls. The figures all wear clothes - either a bib like garment (often actual children’s bibs- hello kitty) or elaborate robes. The bibs were all a bit mouldy and the surrounding buildings were falling into decay, Quite Kwai, spooky.

At first we felt somewhat apprehensive about swimming, but then soon got into the swing of things. The water was freezing, but it is still so hot here the chance to feel cold was lovely.

 the following post is part of a conceptually tedious  essay i am writing for the research group i work for. it is in regards to our ephemeral public art project ‘there-forever’ at the Port Adelaide Festival in april 2007. but i seem to be writing it about my own state of mind. 3 days to go.

 

In Jorgan Leth’s 1967 film ‘The Perfect Human’ the narrator speaks over his mute subjects, ‘ See the perfect human, see him sit, see him tie up his shoes.’ Public space, (including architecture) always posits the perfect human as its inhabitant. The perfect human strolls down a boulevard, the perfect human drinks coffee at a street-side table, see him, see the perfect human, see him flying in a plane, see him enjoy window shopping in the sunshine. But we are all imperfect humans. What happens when we abandon timeless universal perfection as a goal? The unplanned (or that which punctures the dream of continuity) interupts the no-time of utopia.

 

Interruptions:

Something scraped smeared across a table top with a thumb.

Closing time in a pub

A spectacular dress

Hard rubbish

Spit

Dog shit

Road works

Sandwich board signs

skateboards

Big hair

Itchy foot

Bright light

Trucks passing

A greeting

 

 

Today a bird pooed on me twice. Another interruption

 

All is interruption, there is no ongoing-underlying continuum

How can you make one intervention into a permanent series of interventions.

All travelling is an interuption. It should(at least in the movies) be smooth, a creamy seamless moving through time disconnected from worry. Carving an effortless swath through places and things. Instead i am an interuption, and effortless is boring.

 

 

 

This peice of news from the wonderful blog  ‘our lady’s tears’, (link from my blog roll):
The Catholic Church has Approved a Marian Apparition, Knock, Ireland 1879

In this apparition, Mary is also known as Our Lady of Silence because she spoke no words at Knock, unlike her other famous apparitions.
OUR LADY OF KNOCK, QUEEN OF IRELAND

for those not in the know, Knock is a town in Ireland.

at the moment I am our lady of running and jumping, suitcase packing and wildly waving. Two weeks til I jet off to Japan. I will be sure to keep this site up to date.

I flew out of Adelaide on a small 30 seater Rex plane. More personal than a larger plane with an almost homely feel, the interior makes me think of ‘Cremaster 1′ and I wish that the stewardess had a more stylish uniform. The sound of the engines is more real and I can see the propellers spin, I keep willing them to not stop, keep thinking of how we are staying up in the air.

Cruising out of Adelaide we flew over the Coorong and lakes, the powdery white lines of surf continuing down the unbroken beach. The sun sets soon and descending into the darkness of Mt Gambier I was unsure where the ground was until I saw a passing car surprisingly close.

On the way home it is earlier in the day, taking off the land seemed scattered with disks of shining sliver, small dams and ponds littered the green paddocks. This country is sodden with water, it wells up the ground is moist, the rock, wet. So strange after the dryness of most of SA. I remember when I was around 6 we lived in Kingston SE, the first actual house we had lived in for years and it was so damp and cold, mould would grow on my pillow overnight from where it had touched the stone wall. Nothing could have been more different than our warm, flimsy caravan, and I hated living there.

The Coorong again, the massive estuary of the River Murray, so long! and wonderful, the sand pink in the evening light. The shades of water as it varies from the dark salty ocean to the milky ponds mixed with river silt. The beach so big it would take days to walk along, the many intricate curlings of land and water, islands, promontories and in front the unbroken beach guarding the sea.

The two Lakes, Alexandrina and Albert are huge bodies of light brown water. This is where I grew up but I am still unable to puzzle out which towns are which in their vast geography. I can hazard a guess, and in the distance I think I can see Strathalbyn.
We climb over the hills and I am so glad to be coming home.  The little city.

Directly behind the Riddoch Gallery in Mt Gambier is The Cave Garden, a strange colonialist park complete with Palms, roses and Monkey Puzzle tree, planted around a collapsed cave (sinkhole). The white soft limestone is carved with hundreds of mossy letters scratched into the rock. A tarmacked path winds down into the hole, everywhere there is water, soft moss, slimy rock, growths of pendulous bright green creepers. In the middle of the town, the cave is an otherworldly sight, quiet and apart from me, quite deserted. Down at the bottom is a Yakka growing in the swirling water-patterned sand.

Mt Gambier Has a pleasant smell of wood shavings and smoke. There are plenty of plantation forests surrounding the town, and I know they make paper here, so maybe this accounts for the smell. After the workshop I wandered around the town and discovered the Women’s Work Depot, where I purchased handmade shortbread and some underpriced knitted goods. The shortbread was stacked two deep on a piece of cardboard carefully covered in foil and the socks presented on a blue card in a cellophane bag, The total: $5.75. I gave them $6, the lady behind the counter had a Dutch accent and painfully arthritic hands. She was surprised at the extra 25cents.

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.

more of Mt Gambier.