----------------------- Headers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey Robert, Remember a while ago I asked whether you had a copy of “Can’t put your arms around a memory” on 12” vinyl for a project I was planning? Well, that never really panned out but the title stuck. In January of next year there’ll be a work in Liverpool - another billboard work - entitled “can’t put your arms around a memory”. I got hold of the record eventually. I just seem to remember you having a copy of that record (!) along with some NY Dolls stuff, but maybe it was someone else. Then I thought maybe it was your brother that had it? So, what’s this all about? Just finished what I think is the final ‘design’ for the billboard and I was messing around tonight with the webpage (at www.alandunn67. co.uk ) and wanted to write through why I was doing all this work. Just ramble. Create more questions. This e-mail to you will appear on the site, without your address of course. No point in keeping the questions private. I’m not asking you to respond, just to read and consider. I guess the work is kind of about my brother, but there’s no point in saying that. Maybe it’s about that Johnny Thunders record. Ditto. Or maybe it’s about a weird week I spent just east of Frankfurt recently. Or maybe it’s about putting some mystery back into art. Or maybe it’s about confusing navigation systems and logics within websites? I find it interesting in your recent e-mail that you can talk about your art, your work in the gaming industry, without being able, or allowed, to say exactly what it’s about. You also did that before with the MOD work!! So, let’s say fine artists weren’t allowed to say what their work was about (while it was in progress) - we’d have to talk around why we were doing it and who we were doing it for and the cultural context and the way we wanted it to look and operate. Let’s say that “can’t put your arms around a memory” is part of a trilogy, then it is an incomplete work. A trilogy stretched over probably eight months - no point in making it easy for the viewers. Let’s say that it deals with current art vogues (trilogies, memories, correspondence etc) but isn’t really interested in those things at all. Let’s say it’s green and blurred. There’s some strange details in there but nothing too significant. There seems to be a door (ah, that old cliché from Duchamp to Huxley!). Remember all those days at Bridge of Orchy looking at landscapes and trying to find something interesting to focus in on? The trilogy has become a series of landscapes which I did not intend - it just happened. The first - can’t take my eyes off you - was blue and blurry, a man sitting at the end of the pier in Rio. The difficult third one - too easy to pre-determine it. I’m already checking websites for song titles beginning with “can’t” and we’re off to France in a couple of weeks to ski for the first time so maybe the third one will be white... Anyway, I’ll continue in the next e-mail. ----------------------- Headers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from ([...228]) by .com (v90.10) with ESMTP id MAILINZD41-12052039; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 05:20:39 -0500 Received: from .net.uk (.net.uk [80.]) by .aol.com (v90.10) with ESMTP id MAILREINZD47-12 052027; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 05:20:27 -0500 Received: from gr..dial.global.net([80.189.]) by .net.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1) id 18Ingg-000Jjt-00 for Dunnjurack@aol.com; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:20:26 +0000 User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022 Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:19:58 +0000 Subject: can't put yoru arms From: To: Message-ID: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hello again, We’re fine. Meant to say that we’re just starting the adoption process too, beginning with the infamous F Form in which you have to write down (and interpret) childhood and teen memories for strangers to begin to make judgements on. Not as easy as it sounds. Anyway, back to writing about your own work. Let me randomly quote from an arts magazine that’s just popped through our letterbox: P62 “my work is an ongoing enquiry into how art can reveal hidden, shared or even sub-conscious aspects of place and time” P46 “...while my sculpture is about excluding visual images - so I can focus on a tactile aesthetic...” P34 “strive to make others look good and you will find the way to make your project happen” P26 “he appropriates a social space and subverts our preconceptions of function” And so it goes on. It’s difficult, when it should be easy. Later. ----------------------- Headers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from ([...228]) by .com (v90.10) with ESMTP id MAILINZD41-12052039; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 05:20:39 -0500 Received: from .net.uk (.net.uk [80.]) by .aol.com (v90.10) with ESMTP id MAILREINZD47-12 052027; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 05:20:27 -0500 Received: from gr..dial.global.net([80.189.]) by .net.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1) id 18Ingg-000Jjt-00 for Dunnjurack@aol.com; Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:20:26 +0000 User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022 Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:19:58 +0000 Subject: can't put yoru arms From: To: Message-ID: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit