Postal art collective: The Art department sketchbook intervention

more about this ferrari 2007 diary project here- the collaborative sketchbook project experimenting within the life and alternative realities of one insurance employee phillip gage who's lost his mind.......

Postal Art Collective- The Art Department- Sketchbook 2

Ok, so this is where it starts, the sketchbook i am sent to respond to. a joe bloggs man, very neatly recording his very ordinary life feeling obliged to take his kids to church in sunday, who works in insurance, wants a flashy sports car but his wife abi gets him this ferrari diary instead......who then goes off the rails and spends 5 months losing the plot gradually in hospital, fantasising about the nurse and scrawling his enraged thoughts across the pages til the end photo above climaxing in his 'bitch' wife selling his ferrari. to be honest its bloody funny, good little anecdotes and observations.

this is a real challenge to respond to, i want to bring the visual and performative into it. the whole concepts of diaries, why we keep them, these secret locked away worlds that is then shattered when others' sneak a look in, that we start with good intentions that then often peters out. the whole relationship to how this has often been replaced with online versions of real time recording our actions and thoughts in twitter, and use of blogs could also be of consideration.

in the next post i will show photos of how i have made my intervention......

Postal Art Collective- The Art Department- Sketchbook 2- First intervention

so.... in continuing the postal art project with my first intervention into this ferrari diary i was sent, here's the entry I made about the trip away keeping the diary with me as though through the eyes of phillip gage, the diary owner, recording visually the accounts of what was experienced- sightseeing, restaurants, car parks. these images are intended as a mark made as piece of process, so encourage intervention, i'm not entirely sure they interact yet.

the last image 'attitude of a winner' i love. what a slogan, eh. i'm going to head to the spanking new ferrari store on regent street for inspiration (phillip gage's dirty dream no doubt) for the where next. it isn't online for the london store, but there are some gems here....meanwhile it's been sent back to the sketchbook owner for their intervention......

Postal Art Collective- The Art Department: third intervention (my second)

so... here's the second intervention i made, inverting through the photogram darkroom technique and not fixing the resultant images. how much will they fade by the time they return to me? will it be obvious they are changing, what will the response be? am intrigued. i like the ghostly trail of these lost identities through the inversion, inspired by or the actual photos, from this book i bought on ebay. for the previous images I was responding to by E. Brass, and for more about the project see here

Postal Art Collective- The Art Department.....1955 family album- Second interventions sent back to me

ok...so here's the february intervention into the sketchbook by E.Brass. Here's the links to the previous posts on this : The original book bought on ebay and then the First intervention by me in January











so..the additions by E.Brass are the drawings, which are very beautiful but I was disappointed to find that the intervention was a scanned not an original drawn one, although it fits with the photo printed paper aesthetic, and the scaled down replicates my flickr photo intervention. were the originals large, where are they, were they drawn especially? will they re-appear at a later date? they seems to be the old grandparent perked up playing with grandchildren kind of idea present which is reflected in the photo themselves.

the sense that the originals were, perhaps, too precious to place in the album, perhaps too scared to let them go and put them at my mercy, seems interesting for me to explore, i feel i now want to remove and replace them- ha! what will i do with them next??. i like the idea of a paper negative photogram of the scanned drawings, not fixed but partly still visible, and which will continue to fade to black, true to my aesthetic of the photograph gradually disappearing from our presence. That the 1955 family are being replaced by something else, something more modern (flickr) something representing it (drawing) and now its trace showing it was once there, like the family in that moment that was.....

I've also realised how it feels very strange to collaborate remotely and anonymously like this, its intriguing, you are given entirely free range and can be as bold as you dare...how will E.Brass take the removal of their image? will this encourage further removal? so...now to make and send off my intervention by 25th march.....