Roaming Graffiti Wall

It has taken a number of years but I finally edited Ivor's great footage of our temporary autonomous zone. Thanks again to all the supporters* of this project. At the time The Age ran this article.

Background
It's March 2006 and it's the height of two disparate cultures in Australia – Howardism and stencilism. The City of Melbourne is hosting the Commonwealth Games and the authorities of the city have taken it upon themselves to enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards graffiti. This was our response.


Roaming Graffiti Wall from Patrick Jones on Vimeo.

A WorkmanJones action, 2006. Film and music by Patrick Jones (Peej), 2009. Roaming camera by Ivor Bowen. Wall roamers and supporters*: Jeff Stewart, Cath Davies, Pete O'Mara, Tim O'Sullivan, Jasmine Salomon, Patrick Jones, Laura (the RMIT student we roped in off the street), Tara Gilbee, Jason Workman, Cath Ryan, Ruark Lewis, Petra Beuskans, Peter Tyndall, Adrian Kosky and Nikki Blanch.

Pushkick (or, the artist is dancing with himself)

An after-work, pre-shower, summer dance to punk rapper Saul Williams' "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)" is slowed and over dubbed with Olivia Newton-John's "Xanadu", 2006.

As posted on Olivia Newton-John's official website.

April sketch (with Zeph)

Jason Workman is returing to Melbourne next month, so I'm looking forward to more WorkmanJones collaborations in the not-too-distant. In the meantime I have spent a few days trying out some things in the forest, a short walk from home. I'm currently developing a practice of biophysical poetry, while at the same time thinking about the physical comedy of Jaques Tati and Buster Keaton. Zephyr came with me one afternoon after school and I started to see the potential for more advanced father and son play too. 

April sketch from Patrick Jones on Vimeo.

Permaplay 2

Happy Birthday Zeph!



Related posts: Permaplay 1 and All rights relinquished (or 'Copyright Nothing' after the Fugs).

Red Ecology (for Meg on her birthday)

Red Ecology from Patrick jones on Vimeo.

Mashed (elegy for the city)

Our elders are sick. Written on the wall of a child's tree-house by a Scottish poet.

Since Plato we have been conscious of the ill-logic of our cities but struggled to do away with them. Now for the first time in human history there are more people in cities than in rural areas. It is no wonder, therefore, that human existence is at its most abstract, most violent, most 'civil', most veiled, most mediated, most toxic, most insane.

Jason Workman gave me permission to do a mashup of WorkmanJones city interventions between 2006 and 2008, which I've just finished. The main track is by Esmerine, who I think are a Canadian band that don members of godspeed you! black emperor.

Permaplay 1

I'm taking a short break, but before I do I'll leave you with this summer holiday flick.

This video has been removed at the request of The Fugs, whose song "The Ten Commandments" was used as the sound track. See comments below. As I no longer have the film on my laptop and therefore cannot edit the sound out I have taken the whole thing down. This film was only to appear as a piece of home-brewed digital theatre for free public enjoyment.

Today's post, All right's relinquished (or, 'Copyright Nothing' after The Fugs) (19/1/09), will examine copyright and intellectual (private) property relations within a capitalist system of culture.

Tag

Jason and I had a day making new work in Melbourne last Friday. On Saturday we put together this collage.

Best Sellers

The Centre for Collective Wealth is a project-based initiative founded by Jason Workman and Larisa Marossine in Brooklyn, NY. The centre facilitates online projects, discussions, events, public works and shows.

For its inaugural project, the Center for Collective Wealth presents Best Sellers, a new video work by Patrick Jones. 

How to Do Things With Friends (2005)

Several years ago, inspired by reading John Cage, I asked Michael Farrell and Toby Sime to join me in a day's adventure with big dice in Melbourne. I made the dice with off-cuts of plywood and painted them with fast drying acrylic – my work tends to be compulsive; no rehearsal, little planning, loads of opportunity for de-authorisation. I asked a filmmaker friend, Ivor Bowen, to document the day as a surveiller, or as a jaw-agape tourist. Michael, Toby and I just hung around the city inventing games, sitting around, talking to people, walking aimlessly and throwing the dice. A few years later another friend of mine's band, The Haints of Dean Hall, put out an album and I choose the following, completely unrelated country soundtrack to accompany the activities we had previously invented in the city, and spun the two together into the following flick.

In short, Cage's writings on chance and the Situationists' manifesta on 'experimental behaviour' and 'drifting' cumulate into three poets fucking around the city writing poems with big die.

Composting as collective offensive (for Hamish Morgan)

The following flick is an eyepiece for aerobic composting, where the aeration of the body is contiguous with the world. It's a short flick cut to a short track called Fall by the band called The Thing (now Dirtbird). It's a how-to-do-words-with-things film that emits little methane, recalling "All things fall and are built again" (W B Yeats, 1939), together with "Once upon a time the world was round, and you could go on it round and round" (Gertrude Stein, also 1939).

Carbon is fixed in the soil if the compost is damp and aerated. If the compost is too wet and not turned (not aerated), the organic matter rots, giving off methane. Carbon is the gaseous nutrient. It's transformation, into a greenhouse gas, is CO2. But carbon is organic matter in the soil, if treated well there is less gaseous transformation, less reduction of humus and therefore less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

All things fall and are built again in a closed-cycle ecology – NO WASTE – and those that build them again are microbial and joyous. Our economics and our ecology can now come home – Oikos – together. To give up on gaseous transformation – aspiration/celebrity – is to act as a collective offensive, or in mutual self defence.

So take your pitchfork and give some air to your body. The movement exclusive of industrial agriculture – supermarkets, refrigerants and Monsanto – is in full swing!