Thanks to Catherine Wheels, National Theatre of Scotland and Tramway for letting me photograph this tonight. No reproduction allowed without permission from the above organisations.
Monthly Archive for October, 2008
Ok. So I am sat in Tramway (Tramway.org) and they have super-kindly agreed to flyer all remaining shows of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES with flyers advertising this here site and project, and also the.ghostshow.org If you have come to this site from Tramway THANK YOU! leave a comment!
Can I just say, that there’s loads coming, but to thank you loads for visiting this, or the sister site the.ghostshow.org - without you, there would be no reason to make a blog.
I’ve been sitting on the sofa in the cafe for about four hours, writing part 2 of 3 of a short story that I began a couple of weeks ago. I hope to finish it before the weekend. Tomorrow night I am coming to see SOMETHING WICKED at Tramway with Eleanor Thom (www.eleanorthom.com) and Mitch Miller who is the chief researcher for Ghost Show feature doc and workshops.
In the meantime, to thank you for visiting, I have please in enclosing a snap from Miller’s Fun Fair which I took a few weeks ago near Dalmarnock, Glasgow. It’s a very old series of wooden columns that still work - they are very old - not sure how old, but considerably older than my 37 years. I hope you enjoy the redness…
I’d like to say a special hello to anyone reading this who has picked up one of our flyers at Tramway, Glasgow. We’ve been flyering the show “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES“ (actually if I am honest I am about to flyer it today, but I will be sat in Tramway also photographing the set at some point today).
There’s not a great deal to see on the site right now aside from a few archive photographs and a series of colour photos I took in in one of the homesteads, the yards where Travelling Showpeople in Glasgow live in the winter. The actual place where I took these is actually a lot prettier than how I portray them!
But if you stick around over the next two weeks, you will see my finished short story about Ducks and Saturn, more photographs and audio sketches and video pieces based on remixing the feature film soundtrack (see the.ghostshow.org for more details). For any of my past work visit www.dooks.org
My interest in the “first visit” images was initially purely aesthetic. But as I went around one of the walls in the yards I realised that this was where rides are painted and sprayed and spruced up before they go on the road again. So you’ve got this kind of aesthetic historical record of colours and splashes built up over the year.
If you look in one of the shots you can see wooden boards with the odd circle on them. I’ll be appropriating these as art in the near future and probably exhibit them at market gallery as a triptych. They were initially from rides before they were used as boards for the structure in the photo.
To anyone reading this, I am just catching up on ghostshow work but would be fine if you wanted to email me about any aspect of it whilst I am updating the site.
On the 13th of November, I have a ten minute spot at The Arches in Glasgow where I shall be reading / showing some work in progress. Please come. 7.30pm.
Here’s a wee taster…
He sprung onto the waltzer’s concertina-floor which spun him 180 and he flung off ducking under the ferris barrier.
Lost him.
I parted bushes, vaulted hedges and looked for bright yellow plastic spots in the darkening twilight. Sweating in my duffel, my palms were warming through knitted green Steptoes.
I spied a crab apple tree with lumpy tree roots. In the nest of the roots, upside-down, I spotted a bright runt. Come to daddy, ducky. I popped him in my pocket. I patted it gently. Where are your brothers my little plastic pal?
I was a few hundred feet from the shows with the happy hardcore soundtrack still palpitating but dulling to a softer throb. My heart followed suit. The ducks glow best at twilight. You don’t need to throw much light on them for that plastic plumage to burn your retina. If our man has dropped cargo, it will still glow until sundown is complete. Then it’s needles and haystacks.
chris@dooks.org
It occurred to me I have resources that didn’t occur to me when I began this ghostshow.org research project. A couple of years ago I did a commission for Deveron Arts and another arts agency up North in Aberdeenshire, which saw me remix the soundtrack of the Wicker Man and reshoot some spooky shots across deserted farm houses in rural Lumsden, Huntly and beyond.
I collaborated with Artist Cath Whippey, a fellow Northern-English lass who is a fantastic artist who has been specialising in mask work. She provided many masks that were used in various sequences including an amazing Day of the Dead mexican ghoul that hands out sweets. I filmed this creature walking about the landscape.
Recently she’s been doing these slightly performance-art events in clubs and arts venues where folk can wear a mask and write some thoughts down (see above).
She phoned me today. She’s gonna be in Glasgow for the next few weeks teaching at Glasgow School of Art, and I think it would be daft not to have her involved in Ghost Show somehow. I’m wondering if we can collaborate on the Show for Market somehow… So it’s just a starter for ten just now…
Chris :-)x The file below plays a song I wrote about Salamanders. It has nothing to do with Ghost Show, I am simply testing it for embedding flash players into future posts. Enjoy it anyway.
So, each week in October 2008 I am making at least one post to this site which tells you where I am with the project.
I’ve started. You’ve got to start somewhere and with this project it’s difficult because it’s all so exciting and wide and sprawling. But I am writing this blog entry to say that I’ve started thinking about Hook-a-Duck. I’ve started the ghost show thoughts this way because I haven’t visited folk from the communities yet - that is scheduled for the next couple of weeks, so I am in a kind of “brewing” mode…
Duck Keeping. This is a somewhat navel-gazing start to the project because my surname means “Keeper of Ducks” (among other things) and it occurred to me that Ducks feature in the lives of travelling showpeople in the forms of hooking a duck, or “Hook a Duck”.
So I’ve begun to think conceptually about hook-a-duck. But I’ve also been thinking of the big questions recently, like orbits, expanding universes and The Large Hadron Collider - home of the “Little Bang” experiment set up to recreate the conditions of the dominant theory of the creation of the universe. Apparently the latest news on this thing is that two magnets have overheated.
So I’ve been spending time thinking a lot about how ducks circulating around a circular moat can hold metaphors for this kind of big thinking. A lot. But then, I’ve been thinking of how can I put some of the visual material given to me by Mitch Miller - how can I integrate this into such big thoughts.
I don’t want to jinx anything but so far I’m writing a short story about hook-a-duck stalls, me, the rings of Saturn, and goldfish hanging in bags reflecting golden light like martian planets. I’ve also been thinking about Matthew Barney’s cremaster cycle a lot. Perhaps I shouldn’t reveal all the wiring under my board at the moment. But this is a blog entry about my high-fallutin’ creative process. And so far, I might be the only person reading this so it’s navel gazing the navel.
But against me are some bad M.E. days of health I’ve having this week, funding apps that have sapped me of the will to live.
But the Buddha said there are 84,000 doors to truth, so perhaps it doesn’t matter if I am starting from this angle. The important thing is I’ve started. Like Peter Kay says when the jokes start to appear - now we’ve started, we’ve started now. An interview with my favourite painter Francis Bacon on the BBC included something like this (I’m paraphrasing) start anywhere - and out of this chaotic anywhere, then lets see what happens. The emphasis is on the starting and not the where. As if the angle is irrelevant - the idea that any endeavor towards truth leads to the same place (now I’m hypothesising…).
Welcome to GhostShow.Org! - For an intro about this project please visit the page “Ghost Show Vs Chris Dooks” which will explain all. Go there now.