About the social

I was told since little that I have to learn how to deal with others (humans) I assume I was complaining on how rude/bad the other kids or some of the adults were, commenting what attitudes I disliked from people. I was told to deal with it, learn to bend my manners in order to fit in and survive. I wanted to rebel against this obligation, I felt like condemned, like when I was told those Christian stories about the original sin, or tales on destiny and fate. I wanted to run away, escape from those nasty humans and find a place where people was more educated and civilized.
Since a tender age I had somehow the idea that people would be nicer if they were more educated. The old idea of the civilized and enlightened person against the wild beast. Was this an innate idea in me? Do not think so...I was influenced by the stereotypes from movies, books and stories. My parents would tell me that there were not such kind people, everybody has its falls. So I wanted to show them wrong, after all my happiness was at stake. I wanted to get out of my environment, run away, travel and find the place where people was kind. That is the reason I was always fond of traveling and going to new places, and meeting new people...
I have been traveling since very young, and expending periods of time at relatives/friends houses. I see now I was making an effort to change my environment constantly, also changing friends, sometimes juggling different groups of people in the same period. My friendships and romances had something in common. I used to get very close to someone, and then burn out, exhaust the love/friendship and started to dislike and not being able to stand the other person. This may be very common to all humans. After a period of time I will distance myself and find someone new. This applies to individuals, groups of people, friends, lovers. The more I know the more I dislike.
At a certain point I started to get over and to try to stay, make an effort. In some occasions due to circumstances I was forced to stay in touch, family is a good example. I can not say it works out, I do not get over my dislikes. So at some point I started to keep myself at a distance, not getting so close to people...

The obligation to make profit

The obligation to sell, how awful...
Yesterday while watching Blade Runner I made a necklaze, just to have my hands busy and as kind of relaxing multytasking... While into it I realized that I could not justify this production as something to sell and make money out of it, I could not think about selling it, neither it was for personal use, I do not use much jewelry myself. So why I was producing this item, it was not necesary, not specially pretty, not even money valuable, though someone would like I am sure. By now I have a box full of simillar necklaces, made from collected or my own ceramic beads, I thread them using the macrame knotting technique, which is time consuming... It would make me happy to just give them away, which I do sometimes. But in any case I feel this guilt for not making a profit out of them, not spending my time on making good marketable goods...I just do what I want, what capricious of me...Am I going to be punish?
My last selling outing was last Saturday, at the Abney hall in Stoke Newington Hackney, London. Funny enough, the venue was one of my former squatts, and even more I was bellow my old room, so many memories... The place is now a community hall, which gets rented for functions and events. More than community space is an asset to make profit out of it, not sure if the money goes to the community or if it is cheaper to rent than other places. When we were living there we run it as a community center. We made dinners once a week for £1, they worked as a social for people from the area, obviously more to the leftft alternative activist type and youngsters looking for somewhere to crash and score. Due to us being mainly spanish that affected sometimes the diversity of the non political users. We also offered the space for community meetings, quite succesfuly, workshops including theater and rehearsal space. We did gigs and then started to run a cafe with live music, it got really trendy, but we started to had power strugles when the possibility of making a bit of money appeared. We were supposed to be non profit oriented. A lot of manipulative assholes and ass-lickers also appeared, which worked/courted their way in to make mischief. We got popular, everybody liked us and wanted to be our friends, some of us did not know how to deal with this...So many stories, so many fights...I would like to write them...
I think I have opened the lid to something...

The feeding 5000

It was a very cold, snowy day, yesterday. I did not want to leave the house but I was curious and wanted somehow to participate on the feeding 5000 event... The idea was to feed 5000, with skipped food.
Skipping is a good practice. A huge amount of vegetables, bread and other goodies are thrown to the skip because they will be out of date next day or they are not pretty enough. If you do not have enough money to buy food the best is to visit the bins next to markets, supermarkets or even places like pret a manger, they throw away so much edible things...
To the point, when I arrived there I could see a few tents protecting the cooks from the weather, it was snowing, and lots of people, this was in Trafalgar square. There were two long queues one for getting a meal and another for collecting free fresh vegetables. I thought it would take me a long to get some food. I was wrong, the queue was moving really fast, there were lots of very good humored volunteers, giving up apples, facilitating and chatting to the people waiting. In less than 7 minutes I got my plate with curry and bread, there was even fresh coriander, i love coriander... There was a band playing music, under the snow... Also there was a big stage with someone cooking , giving recipes and advise. There was a special tent for the media...
The people being fed was a good mix of types ages and backgrounds.
Something I did not like was to see some people throwing away the whole dish they have received in waste bins...what is the point?... irony?.... maybe they did not like the food...
I think it was delicious, and I liked a lot the disposable wood plates and cutlery. It would be too complicated due to the amount of people and the venue not to use disposable.

dreaming

So, this one was yesterday...
I do not remember how did I got there, but I was in a space without a clear background, maybe no background, just a grayish mood tone.
It was a kind of family reunion, my godfather, godmother, my aunt Fina, my granny, my mom, my cousin.. I can just remember the adult figures but my other cousins and brother should have been around too. We were going to have lunch and so we were involved in some small conversation, catching up... The relationship with my family is cordial but we keep to ourselves, we do not know each other.
. . .So I was chatting to my aunt, half sincerely about my life in London, focusing on my work with functional ceramics, how hard it is to find my market and to feel appreciated by a public too used to stream lined products made in a factory line fashion.. so far I was controlling the conversation... then she stops me, and asks for my attention. From the back of her chair she grabs a lace wrapped pile of boxes, looking like presents. She says,... look! I got presents for all of us, they are ceramic bowls, I got them from the pound shop, just one pound each, they even wrapped them for me....Is it not great, have a look, I am sure you would like them, as you like ceramics, they come from China...
After this I went from incredulity to gradually becoming very upset starting a discourse on how they were helping to my misery and the China potters misery by buying those items from the pound shop...How much do you think the potter or factory worker has been payed... I was screaming now... the cost of transport, the many intermediaries/dealers getting a slice of the final price.... how can I compete with those prices, it is not fair... are you stupid?...
By now I was the focus of attention, I had disrupted the peaceful fake of our family reunion. Granny was looking at me with dismissive eyes, like...you have done it again..
To my surprise all of them started to produce boxes/ presents, they were all wrapped and looked the same, they were all coming from the one pound shop. Apologetically they said they were actually thinking on me and my love for ceramics when they bought them...
What?... even my mum...

... so Thursday I was distracting myself, as any Thursday there were lots of openings , private views, events, I had a an acquaintance showing her work at CAMP in city road, i use to live opposite, in a squat which sadly is closed down now...another empty building left to rotten, a sealed box...
to the point, the exhibition/event was a good social, lots of drinks, lots of boys and girls, music, free drinks... it was difficult to get to see the art, there was just a couple of things acting more as decoration for the space (sorry ...) and I have to strugle with the punters in order to see them. There was a screening but but I could not focus on it, it was kind of London streets... I liked the work from Wayne Chisnell, creepy kind of dolls tower/ torture house made from wood and all sort of found objects(dolls head mini skulls, bones,hair, clock mechanisms) it worked well also as a volume. But this event was not about the art, it did not seem to, the crowd was quite varied, not so much in age though, and there were just a couple of characters. The difference with a club is that the music is not as loud so you can talk.. and some of the drinks are free, like lovely vodka and tonic.
I ended up on my way home at KK outlets, avery strange sort of book store for designers and hypsters at Hoxton Square, they have an auction of weird donated objects (art objects and memoralia or rare editions), and people was drinking bier. I liked the idea, people was having fun and spending their money, it was crowded.

...and what do I make of living in such a consumer oriented and self destructive place?
Do I know how to live differently?, more in consonance with nature, I think I do, I want to have that chance... at the same time, I think that humans should keep themselves in the already urbanized areas, not spread their disease even further...

I am still submerged in London waters, but I have not drowned yet... I will not. Actually I am having fun. Lately I have rediscovered an empowering felling of freedom and 'I do what I want' attitude... This means simply that I am not following a herd or group of people, I plan my life to suit me...it helps that I do not have children or family to feel responsible of...
I can deny that I am looking for something, but just half committed in this search as I want to move out from London, so is not that I want to find much in here, apart from learning experiences distractions and connections.
The distraction bit may be disturbing to me, can I allow myself to get more distracted? is it all just a distraction? a pastime...
The connections that I make are also worrying. Why? Is it to help my art practice or do I just want to have a way to come back ? Am I just fooling myself? and trying to root my life and art practice more and more in London, in UK...

rhizomelaoconte

Lots of things happening around me, it is hard to keep up. Sometimes London is like a vociferous hysteric headless chicken running around. I feel I would like to move to a smaller place so I may have an impact on it, instead of being engulfed and lost inside the turmoil of London. Things come and go, they are forgotten in a couple of hours, there is no much depth just speed.

One of my functional bowls.
I want my functional work to be used in many different ways. In the case of this bowl as a food container and as an aesthetic artifact.