Now moving on from hard to soft copy, which tends to be in even more of a mess by the time I get around to cleaning - usually when my hard drive runs out of space. In the digital corners I found a random selection of photos taken on my phone. This one I thought was particularly worthy:

No doubt for UK locals its nothing out of the ordinary, but in the Australian vernacular it triggered lewd and bestial imaginings…

Scribbling notes, thoughts, rambles on random scraps of paper is a habit that dies hard despite the many notebooks that I have bought over the years to try and bribe myself into a more regular pattern of expression. I always put off sorting through these scraps until the end of the yearly filing extravaganza - what does one do with a page full of jottings about membranes, for example?

The thin membrane of a condom in the stomach of a mule that, if all goes according to plan, passes in a timely manner by the membranous columns and folds of the anal canal. The nasal mucous membrane through which the fine white powder diffuses to the brain.

The mucous membrane of the foreskin that protects the mucous membrane of the glans, that retracts and slides inside the hand. The removal of the foreskin that studies in Africa have shown offers to protect against the transfer of HIV.

The membrane filter through which the syringe plunges liquid media to remove microbial contamination.

The synthetic polymer membrane of the reverse osmosis plant through which the synthetic oestrogens of a collective contraception slide unchecked. The mucous membranes of the large intestine that reabsorbs them.

A gruff gasp of flatulence hits the tympanic membrane. Your air vibrates mine.

The differential diffusion space of the material world. A membranous architecture of density gradients, global commerce, individual bodies, energy transduction, and whole populations.

Caught out once again. Between recitations of

address,
phone number,
social security number,
member ID number,
claim number,
date of birth,
date of service,
date of last period,
middle name,
mother’s maiden name,
family cat name,
four digit password,
eight digit password - alphanumeric characters only,

I have sinned. I yelled at the customer service representative. I feel terrible. Like an animal provoked for sport I did what was expected of me and attacked my cornered opponent. I wish I could jump the ring and wreak some real havoc amongst the punters, betting and vying over my vital statistics. Instead I waste a little more of my vital time to join with the millions of other agrieved in the chorus AMERICAN HEALTH CARE SUCKS. Repeat 20 times with rosary.

Its summer in the northern hemisphere, which as of the current location seems to mean that the break neck speed of the nine previous months is suddenly interrupted by the urgency of global travel, road trips, residencies and a general being ‘elsewhere’. Grounded as I am by my broken heel, I have had no other choice but to confront the material conditions of my life in situ. Or in other words, I have been taking advantage of the space created to attend to long overdue piles of paper to be filed, data to be sorted, cables to be coiled. In the process of my filing, I rediscovered some of the funny, weird newspaper clippings collected during my brief dalliance as an office worker with internet, free printing and nothing to do:

Disabled seek damages for ‘wrongful life’ An Australian woman sues the doctor (who failed to diagnose her mother’s Rubella in early pregnancy) for her life, but her “lawyers deny she is complaining about being born.” Apparently such cases have been successful elsewhere, including in the States - just another example of paradox writ loud in this country of the pro-life bomber.

Astrologer courts trouble for NASA “A Russian court has ruled that an astrologer can sue NASA over plans to bombard a comet whose destruction would “disrupt the natural balance of the universe.” I’m assuming the case never made it very far but it has got me pondering on the astrological significance of satellites - my Acrimsat is conjunct my Cryosat this afternoon and its making me cold all over.

Ever since I started working with toasters I have been thinking a lot about toast.

Following on from my washing machine obsession I had been keen to continue exploring the material and metaphorical opportunities represented in the transformative functions of everyday devices. The opportunity subsequently presented to me in the form of a toasting oven from my classmate Armando, resulted in a sculptural installation work The Purge. Now I have a studio littered with the detritus of toaster remnants and I feel that there is more to be mined from this most mundane of objects.

What does the act of toasting represent? Half awake suck the moisture out of bread. Both my parents, for example, are liable to do this to even to the freshest, tastiest of loaves - not slightly crispy, but powder dry. Perhaps the sharpness of the crunch serves to send off the last remnants of sleep. To end one diurnal cycle, one loaf, and begin the next.

When I was a child, my mother baked bread, setting it to rise in a huge enamel bowl and breaking it to make sixteen loaves at a time. On baking days, the pungent smell of reproducing yeast would fill the kitchen and we would breed dough people from the off-cuts. Read here: bread of life.

So if bread is life, is toast a cindery death - ‘We’ll all be toast mate’ - in the oven of our times? The heat is on. We’re gonna burn - in the hell of … (Select your own cult of the apocalypse here). End one cycle and begin the next.

Well I seem to be extremely accident prone this year. In January a (minor) head injury and now I have broken my heel bone. However, there are always things to be learned in the process. Indeed it could be argued that my interest in learning from the novelty of each new catastrophe prevents me from absorbing the most basic lesson - caution. This aside, my two accidents have led me to some interesting experiential conclusions about the relationship between bodily capacities and the construction of spatiality.

My head injury caused me to lose my sense of smell. This is a common effect of head trauma, as the olfactory neurons are particularly susceptible to shearing. Given the relatively minor nature of the injury, I have been working with the assumption that it will come back in some form and, thankfully, this does appear to be the case in recent weeks. However, the initial loss was total and caused a subtle but definite shift in my perception of the world - everything seemed flatter, duller, without nuance. When I first began to smell things again, I could only do so when they were pressed right against my nose. Now slowly, but surely, the world is regaining its emotive depth. The atmosphere around me has density, it is no longer populated only by objects, but by faintly sensed intensities, whiffs, swirls, incorporations. I am beginning to feel like I am inside the world again.

While I have been on crutches several times before (the accidental history of my life is long and colourful) this has to qualify as by far the most debilitating incident. All the objects in the room now seem to be an interminable distance away. The space of my immediate surroundings is indexed to exertion. I feel like I have shrunk to become an insect for whom the distance between couch and fridge is a journey not a reflex. The spatial ordering of the room appears static, its relations are no longer composed by motive rhythm and flow, but rather things sink in to place with varying degrees of inertia, calculated in terms of weight, time and number of hops.

I was in the ubiquitous Walgreens yesterday on an unsuccessful hunt for tampons without applicators - apparently American women don’t like to touch themselves - and I came across this glorious branding phenomenon. Unfortunately, I only had my (non -i)phone with me so the image quality is not great but you get the general idea…

I wonder if the inspiration comes from the bloodless quality of virtual warfare - 3D rendering and all. If we shoot the missiles from afar then we don’t have to experience the blood on our hands. Needless to say these ones were not available without applicators.

I don’t quite remember how it came up but I was discussing Braille porn with a friend the other day. While it doesn’t really qualify as porn in my book, Playboy has been translated into Braille since 1970 and we started to wonder how the centrefolds would work - would they be rendered as countours? I have since discovered that:

The Braille version includes all the written words in the non-Braille magazine, but no pictorial representations. That has to be a little frustrating.

Nonetheless I couldn’t stop thinking about how visual representation translates to the felt form. A photo translated to a contour is not going to feel anything like the naked body of a woman, or a man. Blind readers are not schooled in the conventions and condensations of visual representation? Wouldn’t it make more sense to work with certain discrete, life sized contours - nipples, labia, sphincter - which would then have the same metonymic, suggestive function as the partly revealed centrefold?

No time for rumination here at Stanford where the quarter system is something akin to force feeding a goose for academic pâté. And that is how I feel nearing the end of my second ten week stretch - like paste. Scrape me up and take me camping once I’m done…

But I did just come across a great quote, which in my current procrastinatory state I thought worthy of documentation:

Thus in the obscurity of their unlimitedness, bodies can be distinguished only where the ‘contacts’ (‘touches) of amorous or hostile struggles are inscribed on them. This is a paradox of the frontier: created by contacts, the points of differentiation between two bodies are also their common points. Conjunction and disjunction are inseparable in them. Of two bodies in contact, which one possesses the frontier that distinguishes them? Neither. Does that amount to saying: no one?
(Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday LIfe, p127)

Socialism bring it on! Equal access and equal opportunity in Extremadura, Spain.

The region’s socialist government has launched a €14,000 (£12,600) campaign aimed at teaching young people how best to set about “sexual self-exploration and the discovery of self-pleasure” – or to put it less delicately: masturbation.

I can’t say I remember my sex ed classes being anywhere near that useful.