The Pearl Fisher

03/08/09

The Train to Leicester was very full. I had had to delay my journey a couple of days due to industrial action and was beginning to wonder if many of my fellow passengers would have preferred to have been on that canceled train. To make us feel sympathetic to the rail workers cause we were subjected to a two carriage train with no working toilets and a haphazard reservation system which meant that more than once new passengers had to negotiate to attain their allotted seats. After a bad tempered journey I was met by Eric who hefted my bags into his estate with preternatural strength. I was in Leicester to make a film for the opening of Eric's new gallery and studios The Great Central. The idea was that I would document the space using my Automatic film kit prior to its destruction and rebirth as a gallery. I didn't realise how pressing the refit was until I announced I had finished filming. With a large sledgehammer and a manic gleam Eric and Steve (who had seemed very calm and gentle up to this point) attacked a dividing wall with great gusto. Within five minutes the whole gallery space was opened up and the floor looked surprisingly like an installation I had seen in San Francisco early this year.

I am home now mulling over two hours of video that i must somehow craft into three short films. Whitstable must, temporarily, be pushed to the back of my mind although some ideas to do with performing women, vampiric control and magic are beginning to fester there.