Cowboy stylings.

Part two of the opening backdoor.

For me what it really comes down to is that an emerging social and eco- orientated conscience with a willingness to work towards those ends which are of most benefit to humans living in modified landscapes alongside what might be defined as natural landscapes is that the old model of commercial/charity being the only way to approach a problem just isn't cutting it anymore and we shouldn't have to make that paradigm fit us as we design approaches to the re-vitalisation of our place on this earth.

It stands to reason, but a reason yet to be clarified, that it would be advantageous if we accepted a model whereby we all need to work to live, and therefore some sort of recompense was required but at the same time accept that that work can be of benefit to more than just ourselves and so in line with what might now be called a charitable contribution.

This might be what is termed post-capitalism, which might be almost the same as capitalism except the impetus and drive isn't to advance the individual in terms of material consequence but is a retention of the system of barter being afforded efficiencies using a monetary basis for exchange alongside and serving, as it were, a collective orientation towards the greater good.

Long ago I realised that an efficient process would do itself out of it's job, which is to say that anything started and taken to fruition would get to a stage where it became self perpetuating and didn't require human labour anywhere near the extent that it did at it's beginning but the biggest problem with this within a capitalist system is that there is an inbuilt tendency for this not to happen simply because it would no longer yield profit and so the initial investment of time, labour and capital would be lost.

The automobile industry is just one of many that illustrates this well in that it is well within our abilities as an industrialized economy to create vehicles which could easily last for decades upon decades with an absolute minimum of re-investment but we don't do that. What we do do and it's is hugely wasteful is to keep creating new vehicles year after year which degrade not mechanically at all, or at least not significantly, but that they degrade mostly in style as they are almost exclusively a fashion accessory and that this has almost become the paramount requirement to ensure full employment of the vested interests which have aligned themselves within that industry.

And it's completely stupid.

A comparison would be to look at the efficiency of growing vegetables and fruit trees on an average 1/4 acre block, because we all somewhat understand this process within our own little kingdoms, but imagine if every year we had to sell off more and more of that efficiency simply because wheelbarrows were badly made and it became our prerogative to keep changing the colour each season to the extent that the changing of the colours became paramount and the simple fact they were badly made had little consequence?

But now I must cede back into my original discussion and give up this easily embraced criticism of what things are like now because that's one of our big problems too. This inclination we all share to spend far too much time hauling the present system over the coals and not actually spending time, if any, in creating solutions. And that's why we need to work towards redefining the commercial/charitable paradox because we need people to be able to earn a living but also work towards redefining the possibilities of new ways of doing things.

The present system is unfair in the sense that people without backing can't afford to be as charitable as they might wish they could be and in that regard charity is the playground of the affluent.

But again I diverge towards criticism of things as they are... so simple!

One thing I have noticed over the past few years is one that effects the market economy, and I don't mean markets of the type that Merrill Lynch etc plays in but the type we see forming in carparks on weekends with a bent towards the craft market alike Titirangi and Coatesville which occur once a month. At once quite quaint and somewhat nostalgic they also often sit, the marketeers, on economic realities not visited upon the mass of economic activity to the extent that within what we might call the first world these people are almost having to exist in a third world. Case in point is that those who effectively engineer a product from nothing, or at least a cheap and available resource, must basically get in and make their money both to recoupe their investment and provide a living without protection from others who might recognise the validity of their works and the efficiencies they have created and just basically steal all the hard word they have done creating a market share for their product.

Yet the types of efficiencies these people create is what we actually need. This kind of seedbed architecture of how things might be is left on the forest floor of economic development to make it's own way and while on a personal level this is quite a good thing, as it makes the individual canny and aware (given they even make it through), such strengths are missing and decidely under-developed in the group sense and this is what we really do need if we are to cede into a post-capitalist system.

In short instead of seeing wealth creation as the end product of efficiencies we have to see, and embrace, wealth creation at the beginning of production.

And that which is our stream of waste is the most likely candidate to enact the groundwork required to create a feasible system where people are allowed access to that stream of waste and in a way that encourages both a growing and expanding view of that use whilst also ensuring these experimenters and possibility makers have a reliable source of income which doesn't require them to protect and lock out others from utilizing and making even more efficient the use of resource they have created.

Then what needs careful consideration is that once a resource becomes valuable within our current system the likelihood is that the suppliers of said resource, which started as rubbish, becomes part of regular economic activity and subject to increasing costs which then basically renders it rubbish again because the people who are able to utilise it when it was cheap cannot afford it any longer and this kind of irony, in the capitalist system is actually the most in need of re-aligning towards a sense of what charity is and can be as the future finds us acknowledging who and what we are as social creatures beyond economic slaves and masters.

Part three; How it happens at the Waitakere Transfer Station... or maybe even where I actually live, Manukau, simply because the vested interests at Waitakere cannot give up their individually lucrative stranglehold on selling dreams to the next generation.

Rubbish working Cowboy style.

Over the past few days I've gotten to know the Waitakere Transfer Station a little bit and it's kinda fallen into my usual estimation of Council run services in that I've kinda been able to get in and grab what they haven't regarded as useful yet and then seen walls up around other things I might be able to use in some way simple because the vested interests have locked things down.

Case in point was the simple fact they do up lawnmowers on site which is a good thing but then I asked about buying parts from their stash of unfixed lawnmowers and they basically said no as they use them to get parts from so what what we actually have here is a system which isn't so much interested in the overall value of that which is deemed surplus finding it's way back into the system if at all possible so much as an entity which has locked up a resource to ensure it's own survival. The follow on from that is that I must let my own lawnmower decay and have it become a resource for them and buy a fixed up lawnmower from them as opposed to me be able to draw on reserves of good parts to be able to make the lawnmower I have last for as long as possible.

Alongside this I saw a huge resource stashed away in the form of broken weed eaters and they have yet to find a use for them outside of just being weed eaters and I have a use for them but given the way they would certainly grab that use and then lock up the resource for their own employment continuation then I am loathe to give them the idea, which in fact isn't mine at all but something I saw some young chap make use of a year or two ago and has been filed away as a very good idea.

What this essentially illustrates is the basic problems with the system of capital as a driving force because of it's natural tendency towards ownership and needing to protect available resource to ensure that that defined ownerships investment is both in defining a resource and ensuring access to that resource.

Now I'm faced with a dilemma and that dilemma is basically do I give this idea to the control entity defined as the Waitakere Waste Minimisation Scheme (or something similar as those control entities love there ability to define themselves as compartmentalisations in branched out and supposedly independent relativities of consequence... SAD! (supposedly advantageous departmentalisations) in a style they actually understand as in a licensed ability to use an idea and pay out a dividend on... oops, then we run into what might be the crux of the matter where on one hand the Council entity has to make money to ensure it's own survival but is entirely loathe, one would suspect, to allow us to make money on it's behalf as it's stands behind some unspoken rule whereby we must all volunteer how we could actually become part of the system.

And then tucked up at the very back of all this inspired waste re-purposing, and it's a bit hard to find and without signposting... which seems really silly, is that modern approach to all great misunderstood problems where we're hell bent on just making sure the children of our world get the full impact, or rather gift wrapped in colourful jocularity, of that which almost completely mystifies us as a tarted up bunch of excuses that we're actually doing something and as my friend said as we left the place ourselves that what was actually telling of it's existence was the brand new Volvo and BMW that were parked out the front.

So I would encourage everyone who might read this to visit that award winning site of rubbish repurposing... if you can figure out how to actually get in, see, that's the thing. Incidentally I can't blame Council and the actual entity which is the Waitakere Transfer Station for that but it really is something that needs to change and change as quickly as possible. It needs a backdoor and a backdoor that's open wide.

Because entering from the front is all big gates and lights for when to drive forward and weight bridges and big trucks and I had to basically lie to get in. My friend is doing a mural next door in the Dog Pound and I only even knew about the transfer station because he told me it was there and had found out from someone else that if you said at the gate, the toll booth, that you were doing work with children as part of a charity and needed to view materials... as the impetus for the work was recycling, you'd be allowed in. So I did this and I got in and once in there and taking up the time of the important chap they'd arranged for me to meet I learned that all I had to do was say I was going to the Gate 5 shop, which upon realising the existence of as a adjutant to the 'free wood' pile was then modified simply to 'free wood'. What I actually did, and I see this upon reflection, was that I created my own back door and having done this realise that that is actually what this 'thing' requires.

It requires a whole new way to acessing what's available within it which has as great an influence on it's running efficiently as the front door has. It needs an entrance that can question and determine the legitimacy of people coming in from behind and letting them feed into the system whereby alternatives uses for the vast heap of raw materials can be put to use in a targeted way that suits this eventual ideal of Zero waste.
 Now I've actually done my dash for the morning and have to do some work but I'll come back to this tomorrow morning and talk about how this backdoor might actually be created.

So the pragmatic part of me understands the situation, as much as I can within the circumstances, and while hopefully the people at the above might be working in this direction already, this above photograph, and the description to follow, states it as my intellectual property and as such 'owner of' and it is within the development of how and where to actually fit in a pathway, both in terms of a driveway/walkway in real actual hard materials and the integration of a way to allow individuals and organisations to allow that pathway to fit their needs - as opposed to individuals having to fit themselves to bureaucracies needs, this being an absolutely vital part of the backdoor as a new paradigm worth embracing.

price list revel cafe ex hi bits sean.

My old mate Mike, who I refer to as homeless Mike, mainly 'cause it's easy and not to belittle his 8 years and rising on the streets of our dear city, is and was very interested in Numerology and it struck me... with a kindly feather, that these artworks talk somewhat about his easy method style of that particular esoteric field of understandings and discovery.
 So they basically, the artworks, run from left to right, or front to back (as in front of house to backdoor) and from the end to floor mounted as in No8 is the cabinet cum table that really needs higher chairs.

No1; Self. $865.00
No2; Couple. $901.00
No3; Creativity. $534.00
No4; Work. $1,111.00
No5; Freedom. $716.00
No6; Family. $438.00
No7; God. $1,240.00
No8; (tricky)... betweeness? $1,502.00

Oh, and offers are welcome but be reminded that if they are lower you must be poor and not just playing at it. And you are, of course, allowed to offer more but few understand that heavenly principle.

They stay there 'til the end and pickup will most probably be problematic as I can be decidedly obtuse at times in regards to your life being important.

All enquiries to artiwon@gmail.com

Art, recycling and wall building.

I would think that the ideas of building walls from found objects must have come seeing the work of Gaudi but it made real sense because I'd spent a large part of the 80's being a landscaper especially within what might be called hard landscaping. Even when I started basically laying cobblestones I became the one who cut them and later when they need to be fixed in cement, whether concrete or mortar, I was the one chosen. I'd done lot's of drawing as a kid and young adult so anything to do with lines, straight and curved, I was good at.

Towards the end of my one year at Art school a friend and I rented a space, a basement, right next door to where sky city was eventually built and pretty much straight away we started scouring back allies and skips for broken bricks and various detritus we could use to help us create the space we wanted in that basement. I taught this friend of mine how to mix a good mortar and how the basic elements worked and was quite amazed how quickly he took off with it.

Way back then was when I first realised this way of working could be taught to anyone as it's really just like playing with sand on the beach except it stays the way you make it... for a very long time.

So over the years I've pushed it quite a ways to see how things work and especially doing this kind of wall building without steel to realise how it can potentially crack up, which it has here and there, but I've learnt why and so I now have a fair idea of how this particular way of building can be used in all kinds of ways.

One of the things that has really appealed to me as an artist is being able to recycle bits and pieces especially in the sense of re-orientating how we look at rubbish because I really do think that most of it is useful in some way and that if we can start using it in ways which make it look good then this may very well raise what may the most important issue of seeing that alot of stuff will become rubbish and in doing so design it the first place not only for it's intended use but also with the idea in mind that after that use by date it can actually still have a use.

But first things first of course and this type of wall building using a sand and cement mix is basically about being able to glue together various already quite substantive rubbish as in glass bottles and jars, broken bricks and blocks, rocks, etc, as well as various steel and metal objects like old car parts. And because of the nature of the mortar, sand and cement mix, being pliable and then setting over a few days, the technique lends itself well to group activity just like a bunch of children playing in a sandbox.

The basic way to do this type of work is to have foundations laid with concrete and steel with a vertical steel every metre or so up about 600mm, just like a block wall, allowing each person involved about a metre each. Then you stagger off the people at 500mm intervals so they have a space to themselves and can work basically unhindered by what the person alongside them is doing and then the next day move along one or two sections, just like laying blocks again, so then each person fills between what two others did or builds on top of what others did. This takes for granted that the piles of things that will be put into the wall are piled ready for use with possibly a few personal piles alongside the community pile. Therefore I'd reckon about 8 people would be just about right because you'd get either one 8 mtr wall, two 4 mtrs ones or possibly even a 2x2 set of walls for a small building.

This is a wall at the front of the house built from the leftovers picked up on building sites plus various other bits stored to be used on another face and the floor of it, a patio out front of the house.

This is a wall out back and in front of my garage which I will soon take down by catting it up and using the bit's to finish a retaining wall out front made from broken footpath concrete which was obtained when the workers came in to fix up the footpaths where I live. And in writing this it has occured to me that the footpath out the front of my own place is the only section in the whole area which is somewhat broken but has never been fixed so it makes me wonder whether I shoudn't just go out and fix it myself in a style that suits me... almost as if the workers had already know this.

And here we have my collection of yet to be used soft stone sculptures which are made with sand, cement and vermiculite whereby the mix is cast and set for a few hours then stood up and carved which is a very simple and fun thing to do.

This is a section of fairly recent work with the big footpath concrete slabs set as a base and then various broken masonry used to infill. Then because it all quite organic the tiles to be laid will be set quite linearly to have a nice juxtaposition goin' on.

Most recent wall as part of a planter which features nice squarey concrete from when they did up a church down the road and made it into a childcare centre as the base then some of my precious whole bricks with the star's old kiln bricks from a wood fired kiln where lots of salt was thrown in.

Further along the wall above it starts to get organic because it's getting closer to where my place is which kinda starts to tell how these walls can tell stories. In the background is a small part of my collected plumbing collection except for the grey things with a massive fire jets for some humongous industrial process that needs lot's of heat.

Storage which in turn are always a snail farm extraordinaire so it behoves one to have it on concrete to collect the droppings... but it's not so that'll be problematic in the future.

More storage with a side, as on the left bottom, of how the detritus is broken up and used a path foundation which the kitty cats are adept at crossing without enduring sore paws.

Various stuff collected to start the vehicle workshops. The corrugated fence part is coming out and a proper block wall will go up to be regulatory in the sense that such wouldn't be questioned... and loads of old broken pots for pathways down on the right.

A planter within a planter, under-way, to raise the useful succulents to non-bending heights. The little aloe alcove.

A selection of kitchen stone leftovers... mainly where they cut out for sinks is surplus.

First it's picked up in the car then stored in the driveway then as bits, construction get to the point of skeletons then driveway stuff is brought to be stored pretty much where it'll be used so my whole place is kind of an ongoing construction site... which I traverse barefoot to keep them tough! Just like the kitties!

If there was a secret to stacking it tends to be untidy as one needs to kind of know what's available in an on-going conversation between irrational and rational.

And this finally, is one of the first walls I started on the property and it's way down the back and I kinda went from bottles to jars as jars are deeper and more square but the steel lids are problematic as they rust out so I reckon a heavier aluminium like throw out oven dishes would suffice to make my own lids.

(H)Ark Aotea.

Like any journey there's most usually a place to go, somewhere to be, but getting there with everything intended to be brought can often actually be more important than the intended destination. The two obviously go hand in hand.

It's like being offered a job as a hammerhand and setting off and eventually arriving then finding out you forgot to bring the hammer.

Therefore the reason for arriving at the destination is as important is as what is brought to the destination.

Excuse the above as I'm just myself trying to figure out what I'm saying here.

Ark Aotea then describes the outcome, in a sense what it could be as against what it already is but (H)Ark Aotea is more of a question that embraces what it is and questions what it could be. I know that's fairly pedantic and I might be beating around the wrong bush but I'm sitting on this sense that it's all more about raising the awareness, spreading the load as it were, than it's about actually achieving anything concrete. That the ideas themselves need to ferment and even get a bit stinky before it get get to a usefulness which is a working model. Like it's almost too soon to create viability because the viability would somehow take away the spreading of the determination to take responsibility.

It's almost then the sense of rebelling just for it's own sake to get the opinions out in the open.

I would surmise that Gt Barrier is pretty much like most other places where theres a bunch of people trying to make things work and another bunch who are going to carry on regardless except those who are in favour of change are a bigger group than those who aren't. I may be paranoid though but I'm not in favour of preaching to the converted, they're already doing the good work, but I am very much in favour of working towards getting on board those who can't be bothered seeing plastic and imported dross as efficient process.

I don't see that pigeon holing them as enemies, not on board with a consensus ever does any good. Here I'm now taking on board your saying that the people over there are practical and want to see something useful from the energy output imported to address what is defined as problematic.

So we have the Authority off Island somehow wanting to possibly use the investment as a public relations event, give us something that makes us look good in the papers, a miniscule rendering which we can use in the big scale to look like we know what we're doing, and I know that's cynical but theres also what seems to be happening in these circles whereby there's a kind of solidarity going on with the frontline whereby they get on board with initiatives and work within their own bureaucracies whereby the story told to the higher ups isn't what is actually being done and therefore there is an acknowledgement speak which means two things within a chronicle of asking.

Then say for me and others coming to the Island there's a whole other solidarity which is about us imports finding a way to honour the spirit of the Island and not impose what we think should be done which then speaks about the rebelliousness of umbrellaring under the Auspices of the powers that be and doing what they ask but at the very same time using the energy to bolster the underlying spirit of rebelliousness already in existence on the Island.

I know I'm overcomplicating everything and I don't even know why it's even useful. What gets me and I don't know why it does is that without seeing any rubbish I have no idea what to actually do. But at the same time I do know that when I do see it a way forward will present itself but it's like that where ever that actually is needs to be known to be able to get the allowance to even procede. And in that respect then it's striking me as problematic. It then becomes a trust issue. That the whole issue is about trust and somehow I don't want that be be lost under layers of definitive gesturing.

It's a if what's coming forth is that the Island needs to assert that will. That 'hey Authority, we are us and we know exactly what's good for us and when it's done it will definitly be good for you too.' but that it's all put together in a way that makes it look as if it was the authority's idea all along.

I've mentioned 'Occam's Razor' in the past have I? It's basically that when things get complicated and overly so that the simplest solution is usually the best. It's a reminder that when complication arises go with it because that procedure actually makes simplistic more obvious.

And the boat thing is good... really good. It's like the intention is to make this boat which obviously can't be seaworthy, though it might be, but as a spectacle that makes sense, even while it doesn't, it's completely notable as a direction. It's like the Red Bull trolley derby, a silly childish thing which is all about fun but good golly theres some deep and challenging engineering going on.

So the launching of several boats thrown together from rubbish and derelicts has this altogether useful attribute which couldn't be stressed at the beginning because it's boring and inane of creating a sorting centre and systems of defining usefulness of specific rubbish chains that in the light of several sinking boats is completely useful and why didn't we see that in light of itself before all this began.

Spectacle and good fun on one hand because that's a party everyone one can be invited to and all of it sitting on a pragmatic process that can be left in situ and will keep on working for the benefit of everyday life which will in turn raise awareness that allows everyone to question what is imported in whatever form it takes.

What is the difference?

I'm essentially an artist, but not as we know it, as in I did art and quite a bit of it sold but now I might lean towards just being creative because these days I'm essentially spoiled in the sense I can pretty much do what I like and hardly even have to make money to support that.

Recently then I've been doing the inorganics of what might be called the more affluent suburbs and while I'm kinda searching for interesting things to bring home, as in back to Otara, what has stuck out for me this time round is the handful of people who live in these well off areas who've actually taken the time to have conversations with me, and that seems somehow far more interesting to me than all the stuff which in a funny sense is the effluent of the affluent.

So this idea came to me which simply put is taking these people with whom I had conversations and seeing them as neighbours in a macro sense and then taking where I live, and my neighbours here in the micro sense, and looking at a way to possible integrate and communicate.

And why might this seem an interesting thing to do?

On one hand there is that I'm an artist and artist's are kinda quite well known as being socially aware people in the sense that they've gone off and decided to do this creative thing and while not specifically socially unacceptable there is an underlying idea that doing something like this, being an artist, is kinda rebellious and somewhat risky.

But before I go deeper into that, as in the social aware rebellious artist, it might pay to briefly go over the support networks that might be in place to allow such people as call themselves artists to be artists and survive at such.

In this regard being a white boy from South Auckland has let me see that all my white friends from affluent backgrounds seem to survive as artists because they have that affluent network of known people who then seem to support their works and all the Maori and Island artists I know from less affluent suburbs seem to make full use of government intervention to create the support networks they need to survive and then there's me who is essentially white and poor and I have neither the network of other white people with money nor the necessary racial qualities to get support from the government.

Yet, I have managed to survive as an artist. And don't get me wrong if it might look like by describing the above I'm suggesting that it is wrong, as I don't, and it is what it is because it is what it is.

So what is it?

For me what it then questions is the limits of perspectives and how they impose upon society it's ways and means of seeing society which by definition set, or re-set, those perspectives, not in the light of what really is, but in the light of slightly less deep shadows thrown from the light of those perspectives.

Me going out and rummaging through rubbish piles is all about freedom. If I was needy and felt those I took from where more privileged than me I would be encountering a victimisation with each pile of rubbish I went through but I don't feel that at all. What I do feel most often is that even these supposedly well off people are victims because as I travel down these streets with their huge houses and their huge fences there is almost a desperation to fill out all the available space with their opulence and in a weird way it seems even more desperate and needy than the supposed squalor that poor people have to endure.

And then I wonder what is it that allows me to see things this way. How is it that rich people and poor people seem essentially no different?

The worst beginning possible.

Simply because you'll have to wait as I've yet to do anything but I do need a web address to link to even before anything is here to read.

Come back later by all means.

Created, but not yet anything, under the creative commons licence (even before I've checked out what liabilities that might tie me to)

but I promise I'll try and read this.

really quick though it's about sharing and discussing, I suppose what sharing is.

It's like we have to convince the people with money they can share it and we're not going to kill them if they don't. No enemies, just a great big ignorant world where it's okay to be ignorant almost as if we can admit we're ignorant it's the best possible beginning!

The unpainted painting for sale.

So it started with a post on facebook by an old friend from Afropunk 
and I commented that Orange was the new black... wow, I've just realised how blatantly ironic that is, excuse me world I'm an idiot (but it works somehow) and it's also, orange as a uniform colour, in a book I'm reading so maybe that's why it grabbed.

Anyways, I needed both tobacco ( yucky eh?, sorry I'm not a saint yet) and I needed a way to get money to register the domain name #worldkincollective and I arrive at the gas station and the guy behind the counter is named Aman and so I ask him if that has a meaning in Hindi, 'cause he's Indian (which is a small leap of faith but I'm an idiot and don't mind being wrong), and indeed it means Peace... beautiful, so I ask him to write it out in Sanskrit on the back of the receipt I normally wouldn't bother with but he asked so I took it and then actually had a use for... which was writing out Peace in Sanskrit. From this, so far, you may have gathered the syncronicity is rolling out it's divine carpet of opulence so I go with it and in the car I immediately see Leonardo's man in the circle so it's obvious it gets the Orange uniform of the oppressed and then Peace is written below this in Sanskrit.

Then, of course, the World Kin Collective moniker, which too is yet to be designed, goes below that in purple which is the mixture of the giving red and the taking blue.

I've just now decided that each week I'll do a new post and contrary to the laws of blogging I just keep adding to each weeks post, re-editing, filling out as I go with the turnover on the Lord's day of rest... Sunday.

Soon enough, if I don't get the urge to go in-organicking, I'll have some drawings soon. Though I should actually lay out some of the ideas of the World Kin Collective.