By Mary Paterson
A field analysis of Art Writing Field Station according to Instruction, Memory, Performance, Quotation and Time.
Notes from Art Writing Field Station, curated by A Very Small Kitchen. Patrick Studios, East Street Arts, Leeds, Saturday 26th March 2010, by Mary Paterson
Beginning: Flourescent light over platform 8b of Leeds Train Station: 18:31:01
Instruction: When I say matter, I don’t mean it literally.
Memory: It is a white room with a high ceiling, wooden beams and tall thin windows. Performance: When he speaks away from the script he comes to life, and those are the bits that everyone remembers.
Performance: What’s it like to be a writer in public? To bring the white squares into a public space, to press the nib of the pen til it squeaks?
Quotation: She says something like improvisation is often a quotation. Something like improvisation produces what is familiar.
Time: Imagine you could regulate time. Inbetween stations, the train driver speeds up or slows down so that it always takes five minutes. You must read more or less attentively, depending on how far you have to go. You must regulate your thoughts for each period of motion.
Time: 18:44:38
Time: Rolling out of Leeds in an empty train, the suburbs are a network of gently pulsing brake lights.
Instruction: When I say journey, I probably mean travel.
Memory: It is a large room with a chill in the air.
Quotation: He talks about Mark Rothko, who looks. He looks repeatedly (he looks repeatedly), and he looks hard. She looks as well. She looks for things she can’t see yet.
Performance: What’s it like to be a writer in public? To be identified with the words that fit you badly? To invite a reading and expect it to happen right then.
Instruction: When I say write, I probably mean think.
Time: 18:56:25
Time: We regret to announce there is no trolley service. Please relax, enjoy your journey, and have a very good evening.
Memory: It is an old building that wears its modernisation lightly.
Instruction: Write, then. Write to make it matter, to understand, to give yourself an alibi, to avoid eye contact, to generate words, to remember, to make a mark, to move your hands, to hear the sound of the pencil on the page, to join the dots, to regulate time, to travel.
Time: I’m meant to be somewhere else today. This afternoon I’m meant to be in London, where politics and art are being cut into a young man’s flesh.
Time: 19:13:09
Memory: She unfolds three beautiful rhizomes flattened on graph paper, which contain or illustrate or point to or simulate maps of her practice, and maps for her practice.
Instruction: What does it mean to inhabit a text? To take residency inside it? To roll your tongue over its syllables and coat it in your own saliva?
Time: 19:48:07
Time: As the train waits, my belongings roll gently off the table. My belongings are regulating time, or they know something I don’t.
Memory: The room’s long thin windows frame a view of a carpark, a lawn and a row of cottages owned by the church.
Quotation: Perhaps quotations are resistant to oral reading. Perhaps sensory, personal memories are easier to engage with than words written on the page.
Instruction: When I say page, I probably mean screen.
Memory: He used to place his teeth on the metal rail of the seat in front of him, and feel the vibrations of the bus run through his body.
Instruction: When I say audience [ ].
End: between Peterborough and Kings Cross Station, too dark to see outside: 20:43:04
