Okaisional Cafe

This is work was produced at the Okaisional cafe Game Cock Inn in Hulme.It was set some fifteen years ago as a collective. "The OKasional Cafe is a squatted space which holds a daily cafe, regular vegan meals and functions as a radical space for meetings, organising actions, workshops and events. Recently we were at the ‘Gamecock Pub’ on Boundary Lane on 25th February – 18th March 2012. OKcafe usually runs for 2 – 4 weeks with several months break between each cafe."



It was gratifying to be in a space were there was a different dynamic on property.The space was anyones, to do so as they pleased.Aside from this apparent lack of structure there was one that was solid.Solid in the sense were no one had an authoritive privilidge to overide antother.Here group decisions are made on consensus.Still with me, heres a link to the 'safer spaces policy'

http://okcafe.wordpress.com/about/safer-spaces-policy/



I've never been made to feel more welcome.It was awesome to be in a situation like this.Watching the point of any heirachical sturcture just piss down the drain.I learnt that basis of any heirachy even art school.Does nothing but supress creative expression.Constrained by taste.Imprisoned by aesthetics that just copy and recipricate old values.The ideas of Post post-modernism or metamodernism topple in on itself like a deck of cards.At least with modernism out look on life was optimistic.Its seems devoid of worth to base everything on irony on,on cynacism on irony of irony.Folding in on itself quicker and quicker as it tries to envelope everything thoughts will become useless, subsequently art will become useless.


Victims of our all knowing pluratity we will see our selves as gods.Actively encouraged to have dual lives existing on interactive planes that remove ourselves from real human contact.

Am i myself, or am I comodity for people to apreciate and de-apreciate.I couldn't possibly just be me, could I.Should I asign myself to a defined era, should i approiate myself to a people or a fashion.Maybe the best option is to just merge my identity with existing themes.This seems to be an approach valued by this world, so called icons and phenomina of the present.










Its not enough to be presented with the spectacle every minute of everyday.We are encouraged to become a brand ourselves.To become a projecting part of it.The prophecy of social networking made good the use of valueing emotions as a comodity.
The utopian ideals of self governence and collective autonomy promised by the internet are falsities.A life contained within the boundaries of a screen is emblimatic of our current predicameant.In its appeal to connect the entire world is its subtlty of its oppression.Direct marketabillity to the left and too the right of your visual lives.


Even if you can ignore the pestering objects of desire encroaching on what appears to be your life on screen.Projecting a false ego on to others and onto ourselves is in fact a hard task.It takes so much time to make sure your brand stands out over the infinite plethera of others. Its cripplingly compelling human tendency to relate and to feel related too.These feelings that used to be tangible can be relfected in some type Orwelian new-speak ('like','dis-like' 'dig').

All that has come of the new freedom promised by the internet has now become an infinite plane of opression.The binery form we invented for our computers has now become our lives.Online or Offline.

The 'ACTA Laws'allowing the U.S govt, carte blanche internationaly to seize assets, shows how a ounce utopian ideal of cyber space has become forced under the constraints of the physical world.Under the guise of the never ending 'War on Terror', the U.K govt plans to extend its Anti-terror legislation for U.K national security.Under these new aplications of this despotic law we have our emails,texts and website visits monitered.Recently too the anti-squatting legislation has criminalised the occupying of residential property.




My hope is that this would lead to more sub-versive action.People re-claiming space on mass.Especially places were corporate interests are heald in higher regard than the rights of individuals.Certainly the Reclaim and the Occupy movement are testament to this.

O.k cafe and the people i met there were enlightening.On a localized level people can exist in a community of peace and freedom without fear of opression.



Pleas follow and support

http://www.okcafe.wordpress.com
OK CAFE MANCHESTER

Builders Totem

I made a builders totem for a exhibition heald whilst i was away in the link galllery.It was drawn intermitenly over two days.I like that builders bottom is at the top.Not sure how long this stayed up for but for a few hours watching the builders and chilling with Arisuhttp://artofarisu.tumblr.com/ was a good way to speand the last bit of limited time i had before setting off for Europe.A rolling gif of the exhibition that doesn't work on blogger can be found at http://mmulinkgallery.wordpress.com

Hell

A test with a intervalometer, a fish eye and some poscas markers.The intervalometer was taking flics every 10 seconds.The drawing was done over two days with a brief hospital trip inbetween.If you look closely one the frames you can see my bruised tongue were i bit it fitting.The image is made up of two composits of the human head, made up of a multitude of other smaller heads.Stemming from some work I had been doing for Baptist and Bootleggers inspired by Dante's Devine Comedy.Its been really good getting ingrosed in these writhing forms as i imagine the summing up of all my insecurities and shortcomings in one maluble form.Of course 'hell' is a romantic idea of torment created for masochists to revel in and those easily lead to be indoctrinated into.Aside from this it doesn't detract from the real torment in reality that humans are capable of cognitivily and physicaly.

Hell from Daniel Watson on Vimeo.

I felt confirmed in my conviction to finish it, knowing that i had been robbed a day and had to give the space to someone else.The whole experience of making the work finite, by destroying it almost instantaneously was very modestly carthartic .I like that.It would be sweet to do some more of these thinking about the production abit more.Perhaps if i ever can afford a better laptop and if the autocratic S.O.A.P.A laws havn't destroyed the internet for everyone.

First post this anum

Its been a productive few days, as procrastanation is one of the greatest incentives to create i have .I have managed to start knocking at drawings again at some pace too, hopefully i'll fill a little book.Plans this week are too get in the studio early and set up for a week of staggering drawing intensity.I plan to fill the entire darkspace in uni with similar drawings to these i have been working on, I'm going to be using chalk pens and poscas again because it would be torturous to do with fineliners.Plus I have to be in and out in a week.I like the rough quality i've acheived before just by simly resizing stupidly small drawings into larger sizes.Tommorow armed with intevalometer (a photo remote that you can put on a timer),a borrowed fish eye lense and a d.slr i plan to make a stop motion of the entire process.




Daniel Watson, (2012), wiggle [black uniball eye fineliner, on cartidge paper ]. Available at: http://defectiveobjective.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post.html [Accessed 11 January 12].



Daniel Watson, (2012), wiggle head [black uni-ball fineliner on cartidge paper]. Available at: http://defectiveobjective.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post.html [Accessed 11 January 12].http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


Daniel Watson, (2012), Design for Baptists and Bootleggers compilation inlay [black uni-ball fineliner on cartridge paper]. Available at: http://defectiveobjective.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post.html [Accessed 11 January 12].


BAPTIST AND BOOTLEGGERS

BAPTISTS & BOOTLEGGER
Props to ex interactive arts James Moffat and current interactive artist Callum Higgins for creating such a mint opertunity for visual and sound artists.They gave me the chance to produce an illustration to be given away on the launch night of their first release.The last image is the idea i settled on, losely based on a quote from Dante Alighieri's Devine comedy "New torments and new tormented souls I see around me wherever I move, and howsoever I turn, and wherever I gaze.")


BAPTISTS & BOOTLEGGERS LAUNCH PARTY
They are a new independent non-profit record label and publishers of art and literature.Big things to come from these lads.

Thursday 9th February 2012 -ISLINGTON MILL -FREE ENTRY
//Go Lebanon//
Go Lebanon is an ever changing collective of musicians who like playing very loudly and don't worry too much about who they sound like.

http://www.myspace.com/golebanon

//Borland//The elctronic duo of Ian Breen and Robert Gregg. "Mixing bits of that whole Witch House scene with more typical, Four Tet style influences to create something that is much better than most of the acts hyped on every other blog." - Drowned In Sound

http://www.myspace.com/borlandsongs

//Veí//Veí is the alias of multi-instrumentalist, producer and former 'Kin' keyboardist Jonn Dean. Veí's sound is awash with samples of orchestral and world instruments mixed with complex percussion and lo-fi beats

http://www.veimusic.co.uk/

With Baptists & Bootleggers DJs and Mind On Fire DJs
This will also be your first chance to get your hands on a copy of the labels debut release for FREE!!!

Crowd Montain in progress

Daniel Watson
Crowd Mountain: experiment one
Start of December...on going
Taken from my sketchbook
'7 by 7 inch'
Material: 0.1 ml fine liner on cartridge paper

Man print, prints man

A3 Limited prints on sale at Grotto just £1.50 and a full image that doesn't impede on the boudnaries of the page
Category: Tempory Venue
Address: Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1EU.
Opening hours: Tue-Sat - 10am-5pm.
Contact: Fraser Chapman

Website: www.grotto-shop.com/

Quick Tea Room Flyer idea

click to animate gif.

EXUMA patches

Watson D.2011'Photograph of my snazzy paper draw'

Although the bleed on to the fabric isn't exactly as sharp as i wanted it the rough edge quality looks quiete good.I did find the printing difficult and now i know why.Black white no problem.White on Black diffuculty in itself.If i do wanna get a sharper image I need to act quickly and use something like speed ball white :opague.Crywank patches to come!


Clayton J. & Watson D.2011 'Exuma patch'


Watson D.2011 'patches hanging on the line, note protentious John Coltrane poster purposfully in the back ground'

The Great is little and the little is Great : Ernst Haekel

"The Great is little and the little is great"


Haeckel.E.1 October 1874 Lithograph print double plate .Source: Nick Hopwood. "Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud:: Ernst Haeckel's Embryological Illustrations", Isis 97 (2006), 260-301


Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834 – 1919) was a philosopher, professor, physician, naturalist, biologist and artist.Haeckel’s drawings of plants and animals, including almost 4,000 microscopic species of radialarin he discovered out of the known 5000, each were rendered with exquisite precision.


Cytoidea


alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673913574495317154" />Mycetzoa



Stephoidea


Lichens

Ascidiael

He mapped a entire genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and the kingdom Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.




images cutorsy of Aquifer
sweet links to more Haeckel images

Documentary on the life and work Haekel. A worth while film to watch most of the footage apart from odd photographs is made entirely by the Haekel or from The Mariner by Samual Coelridge to which the film makes many parralels.He is such an amazing character one of many facets his contribution to the world is truely extraordinary.I can safely say he is one of my favorite artists if not one of my favorite humans from this day forth.I couldn't find an online stream of the documentary but it can be found to lowndoad here

Obeah Man

(http://juiceboxjosh.files.wordpress.com/2010/01)

"I came down on a lightning bolt
Nine months in my Mama's belly.
When I was born, the midwife scream and shout,
I had fire crystals coming out of my mouth.
I'm Exuma, I'm the Obeah Man!"

EXUMA is an island in the Bahamas, and it is also the title given to music made by Tony Mckinny.Exuma represents an entity in itself.Given that his name is a place he has tried to encompass cultural understanding in the place in eclectic sense.He presents the story of the struggling artist or creator.Coupled with the idea that this self professed 'Obeah' has mystical forms that he moves through on the album.The track, "Séance in the Sixth Fret," is exactly that; a séance were he calls out the names of three deceased people.The response comes back in synthasized sound constructed or not.He paints a very pretty piture of a modern mystic.

While "Black Mass" is a more lucid track were playing is loose and words are more like prose.It represents well concepts of concious detachmeant from reality that listener is invited to enquire into.The words are mostly prose relfecting conflict in Haitian influenced Voodoo :creation,physical and metaphyisical life and death

DOWNLOADDAOLNWOD : EXUMA I audio curtosy of http://tigersoflove.blogspot.com

These prints were conjured via the influence of the track 'Obeah Man'





Clayton. J ,Watson .D 2011 "Obeah Man"{Fine Liner on canvas board,additions made by fine liner tracing paper}

Clayton. J ,Watson .D 2011 "Obeah Man"{Screenprint on grey paper}


Clayton. J ,Watson .D 2011 "Obeah Man"{Screenprint on black cloth}

I'll never make this mistake again.I set up the screen without thinking and flooded the screen with white without any medium to loosen it up.It dried up very very quickly and thus i have this half printed black cloth.There are some bits like the stone work on the left that turned out really sharp.Given the looseness the quality of the fabric visually its sort of made the bleed more distinive and grany wich really works well with the image more patches to come .