You I'll Be Following




On my final day in Stockholm, Claire and I went to Moderna Museet, to primarily see the the Yoko Ono exhibition Grapefruit, a collection of films, sculptures and text-based works all stemming from her 1964 self-published book of the same name. Grapefruit contained a collection of 'instructional pieces' describing actions to either be completed in a tangible form, or to exist solely in the imagination. Numerous film works of Ono's are visual interpretations of these instructions.  

Film No. 5 (Rape, or Chase) Rape with camera. 

One and a half hours, colour, synchronized sound. 
A cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position. 
The cameraman will be taking a risk of offending the girl as the girl is somebody he picks up arbitrarily on the street, but there is a way to get around this.
 Depending on the budget, the chase should be made with girls of different age, etc. 
May chase boys and men as well. 
As the film progresses, and as it goes towards the end, the chase and the running should become slower and slower like in a dream, using a high-speed camera. 

Rape was the most intriguing film, made with John Lennon in London in 1969. While watching I could feel the twist in my stomach and a tension in my chest related to the precarious, downward-spiralling situation of 'the woman' (Eva Majlata, a 21 year old Hungarian actress who couldn't speak English) as a couple of men relentlessly pursued her through London - on foot, by taxi, even into an apartment. It readily captures and (due to the year it was made, clothes, make-up and therefore perhaps a detachment from one's present reality) inadvertently glamourizes the thrill of the chase, and the perverse nature of what is actually happening. 




The decadence in the style and aesthetic of the late sixties, are so embodied in this film I feel it has become a sort of time capsule. And what once was intended to have a more gritty, documentary presence about it, now is more fictionalized, just another glimpse of 'The Swingin' Sixties', no part of our present reality. The longer you watch the film, the more engrossed you become, but at the same time, the sense you, as the viewer is being taken for a ride, strengthens. It's all a set-up, just like every other film, and all other 'reality tv' - the woman was in on it all along. I guess it give us comfort to think like that, as to accept that she was involuntarily hounded makes it more difficult to watch - especially from today's viewpoint.

Rape succeeds because it interacts with the audience on many levels, as many Ono films do. It can be a heavy-handed social commentary, as John says - "We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn't just about the Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam, everywhere." - or just a standard chase scene, albeit a rather subversive one.

 In fact while I was immersed in this film I couldn't help but notice a young two year-old girl in front of the monitor next to mine fascinated by Ono's Film No.4 (Bottoms) - (the title tells you all you need to know really), and having a great time, much to her brash American mother's horror/ my amusement.

After wandering around a city for three days, it was quite nice to site down and follow someone else.

Back To You

Claire has recently departed after an amazing two weeks in Scandinavia. Based in Malmö (where I currently reside) but also featuring a 4-day visit to Stockholm and a couple of day trips (perhaps night trips would be a more fitting phrase) to Copenhagen and its surrounds. In due course of our travels many photos were taken. With me equipped with a trusty point-and-shoot Konica film camera, and Claire with her Canon digital camera as well as her (smart) phone, we were armed to the hilt.
On looking through the accumulated snaps, a certain trend became rather apparent. And what was meant as documentation of two friends exploring three cities, ended up looking like Claire just followed me around in a rather stalkerish manner - a generous chunk of the images are of my back, or me in various stages or turning around. Perhaps there is now enough material for a 'Florence strides forth' tumblr or some such lunacy. But here let's keep things to only the choicest cuts.
My photos are due to be collected next week,and should hopefully even out the disproportionate number of Claire stalking Florence photos.

All photos by Claire Cooper.

PLACES: Drottningholm / Copenhagen / Drottningholm / Frederiksborg  / Stockholm / Frederiksborg /



Rain check

It has been raining heavily. It's the end of August and I can feel the seasons changing. Today is the last day of my holiday, tomorrow I will be back at work, and the beginning of the Autumn term will be underway. The Autumn season of Cinemateket commences on Tuesday, which will bring an extra couple of hours of culture and enjoyment to every Tuesday and Saturday, and a means of easing into the habit of stockings and more than one layer of clothing. There is something appealing in entering a cinema in daylight, then emerging again in darkness. A way to acknowledge time passing.

Time is passing, even though it feels as if I have gone back in time three months right now, and that will change again at the end of the week. I think I need the rain at times like this, when one is sort of stuck in the middle. August has been a surreal month, great excitement and happiness rubbing shoulders with anxiety and sadness. I think I would like my Autumn a little more constant.



rainy views from today's window. it cleared up later on.

Evil Under the Sun



There was a slightly criminal atmosphere at the beach today, and it wasn't just my copy of Raymond Chandler's 'The Simple Art of Murder' which served as my post-bathe reading, accompanied by an Old Jamaica Ginger Beer.
I arrived to find that one end of the T shaped pier from which I swim had been burnt to a crisp, and not for the first time either. It made for a rather bleak image on a sunny, breezy day. It sort of appealed to the mood at the end of the pier though, the sea dark and choppy, colder than usual, me, the only person in the water - clouds kept covering the sun and dropping the temperature so regularly the Swedes couldn't decide whether or to have a dip or not. Most of the time they simply sunned themselves on the warm wood of the pier and looked at the cordoned off charred wood.
After a brisk swim to a buoy anchored a way off in the water with a pit-stop at the pontoon on the return trip, I left the pier to read my book in the grass, with the sun on my back.

Not in an empty room


Wise words from Agent Cooper:
Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee.

In my case, it could also be Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band - one of my favourite records, or LP's which contain some of my favourite songs (Deirdre by The Beach Boys, and 'You Better Move On, The Rolling Stones' version of the Arthur Alexander classic.)

It could even be sitting on the grass with a cold beer and a book by one of your favourite authors (Ngaio Marsh, Raymond Chandler and Haruki Murakami) after just having a swim.

These are a few presents I have treated myself to recently, to fill up sometimes lonely days with words, conversation, lyrics and music. 
Besides, there is something very comforting about reading Murakami when the times are tough - almost all of his main characters do little more than read, listen to music, drink beer or whiskey, and make mouth watering meals for themselves seemingly effortlessly. They are always alone, never lonely. And there is a comforting companionship when one follows another's solitude within one's own.

Alone Again

In May I started compiling a collection of my favourite songs about crying. Crying, tears, general sadness. I was hoping to play it at a clubnight or something similar - a misery laden dj set of a sort. But then my life changed drastically and I was unable to listen to 'In Tears', as I tentatively called it - because I have literally been in that state for the past 5 weeks or so. I have been told that crying is a side-effect of a particularly malignant disease known as 'heartbreak'.
I moved across the world to build a life with someone, and now I do not have that anymore. I do have a collection of amazing songs that seem to know how I feel though - even if no one else does.

I don't know what I will do with these songs. Maybe one day I will stand at a DJ booth in a small and relatively empty bar - I imagine it will be raining. Now a relative loner in this town, none of my friends would be there, and the regulars in the bar would be unable to appreciate the mixture of tearful moody-garage tunes, and woeful sweeping ballads, but I could at least play them in a respectively atmospheric surrounding.

In any event, I made a playlist of this set, for people to enjoy in the comforts of their own home while on a steady diet of Gin & Tonics (whatever gets you through the night, eh). But sad songs are always good to keep on hand, you never know when you might be needing them.

Enjoy! (if that is the right word to use in this situation) IN TEARS



Travelogue part I










  
Museu D'Art Contemporani De Barcelona / fruity furniture, La Rambla del Raval / beach loungers, Barceloneta / mosaic work, La Pedrera rooftop terrace / on the cross harbour cable car / interior courtyard, La Pedrera / Jardí Botànic de Barcelona / street scene, Barri Gòtic / Barcelona from the cross harbour cable car. 


A few of my favourite photographs taken with my trusty Konica point and shoot in Barcelona. More to follow.

At the Hotel Peninsular


While in Barcelona we stayed at the Hotel Peninsular, a typical one-star hotel just off the main drag of Las Ramblas. It offered all the mod-cons of a classic one-star hotel - sparse rooms, thin walls, a cornflakes continental breakfast - but the interior was highly unique. The building was originally a convent of the Augustine Order, and the rooms were previously monks' cells. All open out into the rather fantastical interior courtyard, with hanging plants, tiled floors, and wrought iron balconies running around each level.
One afternoon, after a morning of wearying but fulfilling touristing, we sat in the empty courtyard drinking a couple of Barcelonan beers, soaking up the peacefulness and planning our next attack on the city.
Staying in a place like this is what I search for in every trip that I make - I want to stay somewhere so completely remarkable that it reiterates the fact I am in a different country, experiencing different things.
In the photo above I am  standing in a small alcove next door to our room, ready for my first day of exploring, Barcelona guidebook loaned out from the library (overdue) in my hand.

These photos are the first batch Kris has sorted through from his digital camera. I am still waiting for the pictures off the roll of film I took. I was rather restrained with camera usage, not wanting a lens to continuously be obstructing my impressions and views of places. I tell myself I didn't come all the way to a foreign city just to photograph it. Some things have to be experienced first hand.

Warm knits

One of perhaps three or four large knitted lampshades hanging over the bar at the Grill Room, Barcelona. Evocative of bait catchers and fishing nets, made with slightly fraying twine, it looked much more robust in real life. They immediately caught my eye due to the current knitting work I am making at the moment, one of those pleasing coincidences in life. The wooden frame and brown twine complement each other nicely with the natural colours and materials, I am thinking of marrying my fishing line knitted pieces with the shiny copper wire, for a more sparkly effect.
From the restaurant's menu I chose their 'Japanese burger' - a pattie marinated in soy sauce, accompanied with Japanese mayonnaise, and the usual salad-y suspects. There was meant to be tofu in it as well but I couldn't see any (the possibility I ate it without realising cannot be ruled out). It was pretty damn delectable, but anything with Japanese mayo in it generally is. 

A couple in Barcelona

Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider at La Pedrera, during the filming of 'The Passenger', Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975.
Have just returned from an amazing 4 day sojourn in Barcelona, wandering the streets, cooling off with 'Majorcan Milk', and finally being able to experience Pierre Bismuth's work 'Postscript/ The Passenger (OV)' at Barcelona's Museum of Modern Art. Also mingled with tourists for the chance to be inside Gaudí's 'La Pedrera', trying to do some nonchalant Maria Schneider posing on the rooftop terrace but instead just ended up getting in the way of hardcore German tourists. 50 or so people holding up their cameras in the air simultaneously was rather like watching interpretive dance.


It feels right that one of my first adventures to a different European city should be the one featured in my favourite film. Basically I just wanted to stroll around Barcelona like these two.

As yet untitled



Florence Wild
Untitled as yet, 2012, 500mm x 400mm, fishing line 

An almost square of knitted fishing line. Strung up in front of my living room window. In it's simplified form, displayed in a way I had not intended it, it rather captivates me. The process of making the work sometimes challenges my original intentions.

patterns within everyday life


Patterns are present in every facet of our daily life, tangible ones and abstract. Patterns can be chaotic or reassuring - a hectic psychedelic kaftan or the simple routine of repeated motions.  I have always held an interest in patterns - how can one not when the are the very building blocks of our lives so to speak. Patterns are like clues - to a life/style, in a detective story. One is always looking out for patterns in a hope of building up the larger picture.

I have long thought about creating patterns myself, patterns that can be multiplied and replicated and printed on material, a thought that has wandered in and out of my consciousness intermittently throughout my teenage and adult years, and something I have tried to integrate into my art practice both conceptually and in more literal forms.
Above is a sculpture I made as part of my graduating installation at Elam. Apart from the sculpture papier machéd in fake marbled Formica, on the floor lies a piece of paper - a pattern I made stamping a letter W across the page, first right way up, then the wrong, creating a sort of diamond/chicken wire pattern, though one that was shaky, riddled with errors, obviously executed by hand. The result (virtually indistinguishable in the poor photo above) was a little similar to Latvian artist Viktor Timofeev's 'WWW', which I stumbled upon by chance on the website PATTERNITY.

It was from seeing the designs of Sonia Delaunay as part of an exhibition at Louisiana about Avant-gard in the early Twentieth Century. The designs we simple and intriguing, her involvement with the Orphism movement clearly influencing her use of colour and circular motifs, as well as using rectangles, forming patterns like parquet floors. And while seeing these patterns manifest themselves as clothing and fabric was beautiful, I was drawn to her original drawing and sketches, watercolour and gauche on paper, the illustration of the first hint of the idea. It all seemed so casually executed, yet with great finesse.

"I have done fifty designs, relationships of colour using pure geometrical forms with rhythm. They were, and remain, colour scales - really a purified version of our concept of painting. (...) The rhythm is based on numbers, for colour can be measured by the number of vibrations. This is a completely new concept, one which opens infinite horizons for painting and may be used by everyone who can feel and understand it."
- Sonia Delaunay

In a time where I feel I am surrounded by art that is grandiose and powerful, large-scaled, minimalist and monochromatic and technical, it is a wonderful feeling when such small, old, basic illustrations of ideas can capture so much of my imagination. And with the hectic pace of the fashion world, and the types of prints fabric and textile designers are creating: digital, luridly coloured, computer generated, to look back on the prints of Delaunay is not such a bad idea.

And maybe this will be something I will continue with, interesting fabric patterns for and from everyday life. My first one (apart from the W netting) is a pattern of boots and noses.

an idea and something to accompany it


Leonor Antunes at Marc Foxx via Contemporary Art Daily.

"assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously"

(excerpt from press release:)
In this exhibition, Antunes considers Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi in “lina” 2012, a delicate brass and silver constructed curtain which is a reflection of the parquet floor design in the immanent modernist house she designed, known as the “Glass House” built Sao Paolo in 1951. Bo Bardiʼs influence can also be seen in the soft red leather floor work, “discrepancies with L.B.” which takes its form from the hard gridded window treatment of Bo Bardiʼs building “Sesc Pompeii”, also in Sao Paulo.

“lina” is installed upon “assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously”, 2012, the exhibitionsʼ title and largest sculpture. The 9.5 x 9.5 foot walnut wooden pavilion is also the venue for “chão”, 2011, a 12 part hand- knotted and incrementally increasing, gridded series of delicate black nets. The canopy itself delineates the room, asserting an almost domestic feeling and providing an exhibited arrangement of grid upon grid within the show.

Hanging from the rafters and breaking her gridded constructions is the organic work “random intersections #7”, a sculpture made from handmade black leather straps, similar to horse bridals and referencing Carlo Mollinoʼs equestrian school in Turin “Società Ippica Torinese”, built in 1937 but destroyed in 1960. Antunes, like Mollino, has a great appreciation for the movement of material and this work brings her materiality back to a more corporeal connection.

The marriage of the fine black netting, the metallic glimmering curtain and the robust and darkly slick wooden structure upon which the works adorn, makes for an interesting and pleasing relationship. It reflects various thoughts I have myself had recently, revolving around an abandoned metal spring-bed base (which has since disappeared, and whose disappearance I may not fully get over for weeks or months) and a large pile of flaccid overstretched rubber bands.

I think it is only recently that tactility has taken on such importance in my work. The overwhelming feeling of wanting to touch something is luring me into the photographs of Antunes' work.

Knotting, linking, twisting; connecting ideas and materials is a common motif represented in my practice, building up textures and surfaces, images from small marks or gestures - stitches, knitting, creating patterns, repetition of shapes, reshaping the line - whether it is a length of embroidery thread or a pencil mark on paper.

(some notes from my journal)
"an interesting object (the bed base), black and silver and brown, stripped bare of any embellishments. skeletal. the bare bones. structural, architectural. the inner workings, masculine. Uncovered, exposed.
a single bed, only room for one.
standing upright, no room for anyone.
removed from it's original function/identity.

the coils and springs have a hypnotic quality, round & round.
rubber bands - the opposite of the coiled spring: soft, flaccid, stretchy.
mirroring the circular motif of the springs but out of shape, wobbly, chaotic, disorganised.

spring : springa sprang har sprungit (run, ran, have run)
spring is run in swedish.

a netting of rubber bands, covering the upright bed base. draped over the frame like a caress, an arm across the shoulders. a shroud/net encompassing it.
the bands are like thoughts, ideas, anxieties, unanswerable questions, dreams.
what fills the mind and what weighs one down.
tangled threads - made even worse with no beginning or end, circles connected to more circles, no straight lines here.
rubber bands with the ability to be stretched and reached through but can they ever be escaped from?"


just some thoughts to be thought about.
first item of business, sourcing another perfect spring single bed base, and ruing the missed opportunity of the one I thought was languishing casually waiting for me to get home from work to be rescued.


I am a rock, I am an island


Part of a sculpture - knitted fishing line gathered into a type of bindle, in which lies collected rocks and stones from various Swedish Islands - Gotland, Fårö, Venn; limestone from the quarry on the outskirts of Malmö; coloured pieces of glass that have washed ashore at Matakatia Bay in New Zealand.

This is the first 'bindle' I have made, knitted with the finest fishing line I could find - perhaps it was too fine, I was forced to knit it using wooden kebab skewers instead of knitting needles. The line shimmers and flickers in the early morning sunlight, while it hangs in my bedroom window due to a lack of studio space.

More are being made, and using the thickest fishing line I could find, I will encase a large limestone rock and use it with a pulley system, which reminds me of sailing and boats, to be a counter weight to the smaller, more delicate bindles of stones and pebbles, which will hang in the air and slowly rotate, as hanging things are wont to do.

I vaguely rambled to my friend Claire about it:

                       Florence:
but now i think i might suspend them with pulleysreminds me of boats                        Claire:I'm not sure they gave me an associationI was just struck by the mesh...and strange silkiness of the rock  Florence: to me they relate to islands
  like the islands that were thoght to exist but were actually mirages
hence the shimmery fishing line
  and the rocks within and i wanted them to be like baskets or specimen collections
  and they deal with loneliness too
like how i think of islands and boats being self contained entities
  alone in the sea
  and i like the idea of suspension
  how it relates to balance
  and also the word
  suspence
  tension
  waiting
  Claire:Its poetic
  I saw something more akin to strange fisherman like practices
 Which May seem unnecessary but which one doesn't question since
Fishermen and the practice of fishing as generally free of the unnecessary and all about purpose...

There are always more things to think about. And one does start to feel like a fisherman repairing his nets in the winter, and it gives you time to think about how the work will look, and how it will function, and what it means. The ideas about it and around grow as the work does.

Senast Inkommet


A collection of recent acquisitions I have amassed recently: one a birthday gift, one found on ebay, another at a second hand shop, and the rest picked up today in Lund at a record fair and in Repeat Records, where I also came across a copy of Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, which I quickly snaffled up.

Scott Walker - Jackie b/w The Plague / Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman b/w Back in the Race / The Hollies - I'm Alive b/w You Know He Did / Jane Birkin - Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus (with Serge Gainsbourg) b/w Jane B / Nina Lizell & Lee Hazlewood - Hey Cowboy b/w Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind / Chuck Jackson - Somebody New b/w Stand By Me / Ketty Lester - Love Letters b/w I'm A Fool To Want You /  The Rokes - Piangi Con Me b/w Che Colpa Abbiamo  Noi / The Poor - She's Got The Time (She's Got The Changes) b/w Love Is Real / Simon & Garfunkel - The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) b/w I Am A Rock / Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Did You Ever b/w Back On The Road /

I have always considered myself to be more of an LP than a single sort of music listener, but this is apparently changing, as I have 2 Love 45's hopefully winging their way towards me having bought them on Tradera. Long Players are not forgotten though, with The Moody Blues' debut 'The Magnificent Moodies', and Van Morrison's 'Astral Weeks' and Paul Butterfield Blues Band's 'East/West' taking their rightful places on my shelves.

At this rate, I may be able to do a dj hour of new records of my collection to accompany the playlist I am creating of songs about crying, which hopefully I will play 'live' in it's entirety somewhere in Malmö. For some reason I can't find enough sad songs to cover more than 1 ½ hours.

Kinder's Matakatia is just the same as mine



Kotanui, Monsieur Direy's House, Whangaparaoa, 1868 / Cliffs, Whangaparaoa, near Auckland, 1868 / Kotanui Rock, Frenchman's cap, Whangaparaoa, 1868 /
via The University of Otago Library's Digital Collections

Photographs by the Reverend Dr John Kinder of Matakatia Bay and Kotanui Rock in 1868. It never ceases to amaze me that these cliffs and rocks are nearly exactly the same today as they were then. In fact I was sitting at the base of that cliff just a few months ago. My only observation is that Kotanui's hairline is receding a bit these days.

And that there appears to be a pair of disembodied legs posing at the island's base.

Just the usual, thanks



Manly Takeaways is our local fish n' chip shop whenever we are up at the family beach house on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, just north of Auckland. The beach house was built in 1959 I believe, and almost all flat surfaces are covered in Formica, my grandfather was a Formica salesman. (I am not entirely sure about these facts, family members may correct me).
I have been going to the beach house ever since I was a baby, and I therefore assume eating fish n' chips from Manly Takeaways since then too. At the beach house I do the same things I have always done - swim for hours, go boating, eat large amounts of plums from the trees in the garden, do puzzles, read low-brow detective stories and do numerous sketches of Kotanui, the island that lies in the centre of Matakatia Bay, where our house is, always from the same angle. It has a misleading appearance: from the front, it is like a witch's hat settled on the water, but from the side is more like a rather prominent nose protruding from the sea.
Beach house holidays are a time for doing the same things I have always done. The menu boards at Manly Takeaways do nothing but add to the dingy 70's charm of the place, as I always always order the same thing - a fish, a hot dog (in the NZ fashion - a battered sausage on a stick doused in sauce) and a helping of chips. Actually, I think my entire family still all order the same things they did ten, fifteen years ago.

The map is one of two aerial photos which hang in the fish n' chip shop. Here it shows Matakatia Bay around the early 1960's, with the beginnings of the reef which stretches out to the island. Every time we get fisn n' chips, I make a point of spotting the beach house in the photo. Ritualistic, almost, just like everything else about my weeks spent up there.