Collect books

The lovely book folk at Oxfam books are giving me all their rubbish books to make sculptures out of, they have bags and bags of them. I felt silly going in and asking for hundreds of books after being silently smirked at, at Blackwells, I could hear tutting inside earlobes. But they looked at me warmly and nodded as if it was an everyday request. Whoop!

I’m just about up to my 100 folded books mark and I still have maybe another 50 in storage, so this has been rather successful. I don’t know yet If I will need more books, I might. My grand plan could involve hundreds more books, but I won’t know that until I try things out.

After I started to install my books into the old fine art library I discovered I don’t have nearly enough to make any sort of grand installation, so it’s back to the charity shop and to set up Operation Bookery. I have even thought about putting an advert in the free paper to get some more. But I discovered that isn’t actually free. Maybe another group email is in order to spur people on, I mean it’s nearly Spring Cleaning season, and a few people who promised me some books need reminding as well. Other than that… ummm I’m out of ideas.

Book myself into a tutorial for the editing suite so I can edit my film
edit my two films
learn about wood engraving
try wood engraving
sort through the memories and decided which ones to focus on and use for the wood engraving
distribute random memories postcards and memory project badges
find a book on Doris Salceado and read it
Find Lucyann2 and take her to the Childrens Warehouse and maybe find me some treasures too
sit down and have a nice cup of tea

40 memories now, and they’ve been amazing to read, I love the insights into peoples lives, how they’ve grown up, how they’ve travelled. I interviewed a man the other day who used to be a punk he was very strong in his pollitical opinions, it was great watching him steer his own conversation, that started off from where he grew up to how to get money out of people going to the fair and what he really thought of Bush.

This has been so much fun to do, right now I’ve been littering the city with home made badges and blank postcards asking for random memories, it’s sad that soon I will have to move away from this and start making work. I wish I got paid to do this.

I also met a sociologist who is interested in archiving peoples own experiences through narratives, how we remember things and what we remember. He’s given me some great things to go off.