Dial-A-Screamer

two screamers

have you or someone you know been adversely affected by the current economic conditions? Respond or forward if so….

[+]This project builds on the success of Scream at the Economy.In a previous project, the Floating Lab Collective performed with the Screamer, a sculptural phonograph, aiming its eerie music toward government and financial institutions. In it’s present incarnation Dial-A-Screamer intends to explore specific stories from the people behind the economic realities around us. The Collective invites anyone affected by the current economic situation to share their story and express their angst via the Screamer. We are sincere in our belief that an assertive act of sharing and recognition will bring some relief from feelings of anger, abandonment, inadequacy or the many other emotions evoked by an economic reality over which we have little control. A pink slip or foreclosure, loss of independent transportation or many other affects are being experienced everyday by our neighbors as they struggle to adjust to the new economic reality.

How has your life changed as a result of economic forces beyond your control?

Call and share your experiences about the state you find yourself in and how The Screamer may assist you in financial catharsis:

646-402-5701

ext. 09141

(this number functions like a voicemail – there’s no rush – take your time and leave a message for the Screamer detailing your financial woes and an assistant will return your call to schedule an appointment.)

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Look for these ads in local DC weekly’s and on Craigslist:

“Laid-off? In foreclosure? Have you been unable to express your true feelings? Call Dial-A-Screamer and request a professional Screamer to escort you to the location of greatest anxiety and express your true feelings, for free. 646-402-5701 ext.09141″

“In these tough economic times with tensions running high and financial worry dictating our decisions, The Screamer is an ideal way to exorcise the anguish you may feel after foreclosure or the pink slip. The Screamer is a modern hero whose presence can be summoned to accompany you as you revisit a lost home or the workplace that booted you when times got tough. Maybe your anger runs toward poor governance on the part of your elected leaders and you would like to pay them a visit to express your feelings directly? The Screamer is available to hold your hand as you work through the emotional distress that the economic situation has visited upon you. Call Dial-A-Screamer and request a professional Screamer to escort you to the location of greatest anxiety and express your true feelings, for free. 646-402-5701 ext.09141″

Housework is not a paid job

This is a small but growing preoccupation with me, do you have any comments that could help me?

Housework is not a paid job

Why is it that keeping a home has shifted from being a valued occupation into a non job? So much is required to keep and run a house, which becomes apparent when the jobs are filled by paid employees and yet for those of us who attempt to take on the whole burden, the work becomes invisible.

We all need a home whether or not we live a nomadic or sedentary lifestyle, so who makes it home? THE PERSON WHO FITS THE ROLE BECOMES THE NURTURER, WHO NURTURES the nurturer ? If it comes down to being valued, how universally is the role accepted as one of value, is it family or friends or the wider community or is it the state who support the role? It could be none of the above.

Is Global Interactive

I f the future is Global and we spend it on the internet are we having a time of isolation ahead of us. I ask this because the blog is a great way to be together but apart, a cliché should always be avoided, I admit, but they stand to save us from thinking up a new truism everytime. I am admittedly no whiz kid on the internet, each month it takes around 20mins even finding the link for this blog and remembering how I download what I write onto the blog and I try to leave out the pictures because they go on a direct route to Mars by passing my blog altogether. But its all worthwhile because this is an intriguing way of keeping in touch with, a bit like walking down the High St and bumping into a friend and saying hi!
But, only its not, I have serious doubts if anyone ever reads it, if you are reading this now then let me know, send a comment. So Im left thinking that it’s a great way of pretending that you are walking down the High St and bumping into people, Hi Jen, Hows things, was India good, Hi Reuben, what are you upto now, and Mark you are totally irrepressible love to see some of your work. No its not like that at all, I am instead talking to myself. Once people thought you a little odd, but now noone notices everyone has plugs in there ear and is whittering to someone or noone, who cares? And this blogging is like sending myself a Christmas card, noone loves me so Ill send one to me and put it on the mantelpiece and pretend they do. I do believe we are all blogging and twittering to ourselves talk talk whitter and noone is listening, Go Global??, No go local instead. Prove me wrong!

Today I begin a four day weekend as part of the Tate festival and as today is also my blogging day you are also globally internetly part of it. The day begins now even though I am still in bed, wearing glasses, extinct cup of tea beside me and the computer on my lap… here goes…… answers please, for each answer I will send you a virtual nomad (aka peg doll beautifully dressed in contemporary clothing made from found materials, because we are here and now talking about contemporary nomads, read below if you don’t know what Im talking about

Nomadic endings

Home became home at a certain moment, which I never recognised at the time. In that moment my home replaced the home I left behind when I was 18. That day, years later, what changed in the house or garden, or within my mind? Which new plant turned my home into my mother’s garden?
In the garden the hand that was mine was always visible, but one day it had my mother’s hand in it as well. (Maybe it was the daphne, that keeper of perfumed memories, that did it) not my fist daphne , but the first that flourished like my mother’s. Was ikt when I knew it was going to flourish that I knew I was also ‘at home’?
My childhood was criss crossed with nature wanderings, alone in it, a private world. It is nature and dirt-stained hands that , years later, take me back there. Where I can till my own earth, there I have a chance of recovering that sensation of being ‘at home’.
For others it is people: immediate family or a circle of loving friends that make them feel at home. In a city that is largely comprised of a mobile population, some long-term-temporary, some short-term-temporary, but few who live and die in the same place, much less with the same community, what constitutes a home?
In times gone by the name for those who moved to survive, in pursuit of pastures new, were called nomads. Groups of Gypsies ad Irish Travellers have continued a lifestyle of moving on in pursuit of income or a need to change location. These groups had a network to travel with or meet up with. Today many of us who live in cities move on also, but is there a network to support the the person in replacement of home? Today life is characterised in the west by a nuclear family, the smallest possible group outside of solitary. Under these circumstances how easy is it to be ‘at home’? What is a home, who is a nomad?

writing / answers

who is a nomad

Where one can find the Future.

Borges’ future

  “A Weary Man’s Utopia” by Borges is a beautiful short story in which the 70-year-old writer mysteriously encounters a man from a distant future. I don’t want to say much more as it is only a couple pages long… but here are some elements of Borges’ imagined future:

“No one cares about facts anymore. They are mere points of departure for speculation and exercises in creativity. In school we are taught Doubt, and the Art of Forgetting.”

Printing has been forbidden since it is “one of the worse evils of mankind, for it tended to multiply unnecessary texts to a dizzying degree”

Although painting is most definitely well and alive in that world, the colors on the canvas are indiscernible to our eyes (interesting to note that the writer was almost completely blind by the time he wrote that story).

Nightingale

                                                  NIGHTINGALE

 

 

 

If the future is circular and I keep missing the train, then I only need hang out a bit and the next one will come along. That is a fruitful thought. I am immersed in thinking and thinking and thinking on how to fulfil my next art obligation, you must know what I mean, you try hard to get into a show or be part of some amazing opportunity and you make it. Then you have to work out what in heavens name you should really be doing for that show or how to best fulfil that opportunity. Your thoughts, or mine at least, go round and round and round and ideas good bad and ugly appear. And that’s when you miss the train.

 

That’s what happened to me last week before I went to Italy with the promise of working on it there. No way, the weeds were high, the sun when it shone beckoned, the nightingale not only sang day and night but was nesting on the side of the loggia. I cooked, I shopped I haggled over the price of strawberries and left them at the market!! I recovered the sun chairs and paid the water bill. But did no thinking what so ever.

 

 When I got home last night, I caught that train, the one that I had missed the first time, took a look at my notes and my art work stuffed in my bag and knew which of the hundred ideas was the good one. 

 

 

 (I think!!!!!!!)

The future of Memphis is coming…

I recently found out about an up and coming project that could help bring about another arts revolution Memphis.

 

The Memphis Art Park would be a public art complex located downtown that would provide a public space for visual arts, music, dance, theater and film to work, and showcase artistic creativity.

 

While this idea is still only on paper, it is something that the city desperately needs and deserves.

 

Check out this link to a wonderful art park that is growing from idea to reality. 

http://memphisartpark.org/

Variation & Variation

From Sybian Sign Language, written by Jack, illustrated by Joe, published by Fartagnian, today.