Dear Amber-From my window I have a very nice view of the dumpsters and many discarded refrigerators. The city is beautiful, just as Manhattan is a beautiful, man-made space. Glasgow is a gritty post-industrial place, a blend of Manhattan and northern New Jersey. In fact, I probably feel so strange because everything looks familiar but slightly askew, as in a dream. There are bodegas but no plantain chips. Bums say please. Imagine living in a dream memory all the time, where a kitty says, "moo moo" and you know it's slightly weird but you're dreaming so you can't change it.
James-I am surrounded by many funny-clothes-wearing troublemaker artists, and it is very amusing and nice. The townspeople/citizens of Glasgow are a widely-varying mixture of gold chain-wearing thugs, old ladies with hunchbacks, smoking pregnant teens, the odd posh person and many many Pakistanis.
Hi Ma-Scotland is very nice to me. It is very very cold and freezy as well!
Dear Amber-Here is one of my homework assignments: Go to Dalhousie Lane (a randomly selected location picked by throwing a dart at the map), do nothing for 15 minutes, return to the studio, make a drawing of the experience. There is no definitive answer to the assignment. There are an infinite number of outcomes.
Hi Ma-I am going to take illustratory photographs so you can understand the full scope of banal/bizarre that so eloquently expresses Glasgow.
James-The misery that so enveloped me last week has subsided and I feel refreshed. I no longer consort with fools and I do not smoke cigarettes.
Dear Amber-Everything is going better today, especially since the lecture focussed on my beloved Guy Debord, to whom, you'll remember, I am inextricably linked, now that I've read his book, "Society of the Spectacle." What a tiny tome so full of elitist cynical prophesies! So elite! So cynical!
James-I am going to Norway on Sunday for a weeklong school trip! I am in the Environmental Art program, meaning that I create work that considers the space in which it exists, such as a public project or a performance artwork or a video or whatever. These works exist outside of the gallery space; they can't fit into a gallery context. I have a project right now where I am making a map of the city of Glasgow by experiencing it through direct contact. My practice is a form of "research." I am working on public performance projects.
James-I missed the professor's phone call when he ordered tickets, so someone else took my place to Norway. Bootleg. Oh well, I'll just go to Burger King today instead of Norway. They have the Whopper Jr.
James-I gave a lecture about concrete bridges under a concrete bridge to an audience at the M8 motorway. Loud as I'm shouting, they cannot hear my words. They stand 300 feet away from me across three lanes of traffic. The concrete bridge is a literal and metaphorical obstruction to communication, a signifier of the alienation and mechanicalization of social space through utilitarian architecture. Looking into this topic of urban architecture.
Dear Amber-Glasgow has worked out marvelously. And from five in the evening until half past seven, the pints of ale are but a pound.