This means while information is comprehended while it's being shared, the moment a dyslexic is asked to recall that information, it's become swamp water, has simply wafted away into nothingness. 

You know the feeling of having a really great idea just before you fall asleep, thinking its magnitude will surely mean that you will remember it when you wake up, only to find the next morning its complexity gone, only the memory of having the thought remains, I think dyslexics experience this but multiple times daily. 

One of the ways in which information can be recalled is by converting it into longer term storage, the thought has to be attached to something else, written down onto paper and therefore exiting the fickle mind and transferred into physical reality, or the information has to be connected to another concept. For example you meet someone new, they have a name, and it has a correct pronunciation, lets say Adrianna, pronounced ad-ree-an-na, she has yellow nail polish on, banana  adding ree like ghee to a banana and so her name is now connected with the colour yellow, cooking, adding ghee to a banana and this is how I will remember her name and how its pronounced. Systems like this are very usual for dyslexic people to use in daily life.

In a way dyslexia kind of lives in this radical presentness, without active effort to remember, days, names, months, years, language, words, the past blends into soup and only islands of memories with attached meanings are left behind.

This causes quite a lot of anxiety surrounding memory and forgetting, for some people with dyslexia like myself this leads to an obsessive attempt to document ideas and events in oder to not lose them into the abyss, of course in a quite disjointed and sometimes unsystematic way. Since I was around 7 iv always kept a notebook where my personal memory has been jotted down and recorded. 

what started as a journal, documenting the dramas of primary school life, has transformed into a pretty honed notebook system, that now makes up the vast majority of my artistic practice. 

the burning cheeked shame of forgetting a name, or appointment or idea or book or film, has been transformed into a system of remembrance and an externalised brain, I realise now my interest in the archive, or my version of the archive is directly linked to memory and my own naturally terrible memory and anxiety of forgetting. 

memory is of course political, and the collective amnesia that is currently on display here in Germany is extremely dangerous. Current german politics relies on the contortion of memory into extremely uncomfortable shapes, that hide violence behind paper thin versards. 

Each personal story/ experience/ archive is part of a larger web of interconnected memory, even the most banal or trivial recordings give insight into a larger story that only time will clarify. 

Now I would have liked to put a quote I once read, about how we are just one link in the chain of history, the link is connected to the one behind it, and will be connect to future links beyond, but I don't remember what the quote is or who said it. 

I try to produce the bubbles while they are being formed (real time) and in this kind of flapping manic desire to create them, much is missed out. But that’s ok.

When days, months, years pass, the negative space between the pieces I have recorded become more and more consolidated, the bitter ache of Oh I should have done this differently or I missed this aspect out, becomes dampened, an acceptance draws over me, this is the reality of what I have. When I'm ready, I come back to the information and begin to sift through it, recollecting the past and reforming it into a tangible memory. Active organisation of the past must be done in silence, or with a very specific soundtrack that is related to what you are looking at. This ensures maximal sensorial experience and a truer transmission/ translation of the past than if you were bought halfway into the future thru listening to your current top liked songs or playlist. 

This is also why I write only with the ambient sound of the space I'm in, preferably a large open space with a horizon view, filled with other silent people. 

I am concerned with archiving, in the sense that I have described above, but I'm afraid my hard drive is a complete mess and so many open threads of past projects lie scattered before me. I take the self appointed role of The Messy Archivist, always with the intention of clearing up, letting go, reforming, concentrating and expanding, documenting in this contradictory way, half trying to control the situations I mean to archive, half allowing them to unfold as they wish to, never knowing how much interference is necessary or acceptable. There’s also a problem of output, of where the transformed archive goes once it has been transformed. 

Every draft film iv ever made has ended up being its final iteration. 

My fingers hit the keyboard with weight, the noise they make is louder than any of my surrounding peers, the same heavy way my feet hit the ground, it is as though I cannot quite grasp a light touch, or that what I have to say holds self important weight and announces to itself as it rushes out. 

The 'Archivists Gloves' looks to work with this idea of the messy archive, to discuss the methods of creating an archive, to expose the labor involved in creating that archive and trying to display this as an artwork in itself

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The performative archivists wear white cotton gloves to deconstruct the canteen, at the Semmelweise Clinic home to a previously fully operational birthing hospital. The hospital is named after Dr. Semmelweise, who was a solitary concerned voice in regard to the lack of hand washing before helping mothers deliver babies. he was mocked for his then radical hygiene practices, and died from injuries sustained after being beaten on the street. 

The archivists pull apart the canteen of the clinic wearing gloves and paint over the previous inhabitants mark of pink, transforming it into white. stripping the eccentric bubblegum away from the room it becomes a 'blank space'. Dirt, evidence of the effort is picked up on the gloves and when the work is done, the archivists place their gloves onto the metal tray slider.

Here the gloves are exhibited and photographed using the video graphic printer on thermal paper and then hung above the installed tray slider. Their positions are photographed and held in place. On top of the slider sits the printer that on a daily basis is used with a camera to document the increasing dirt that takes over the white floor, marked by visitor’s feet. 

The metal tray slider is gone, the show is finished, all that is left are the framed thermal photographs of the gloves on the metal tray slider on thermal paper which will slowly fade

A part of me wishes that I had more, that I had tried harder to hold onto the tray slider, or taken more photographs, different angles, etc. But from the pieces I do have, there is still space to generate to use a scanner to capture the thermal prints as they are now, to piece them back together on the flat planes of photoshop, to review the footage that I did manage to capture.

I guess what I'm trying to come to is a point about being actively passive, that passivity can be a tool to be wielded but can go a rye when not used in a purposeful way. There is, therefore, a balancing act that takes place with knowing when to grip on tightly to fight a corner for details, while simultaneously knowing when to let go, to allow the shapes of things to play out and deal with whatever consequences come out the other side.

Sometimes reality has done it better than anyone could reconstruct.

The worst thing about this whole process is realizing that you can actually very easily accept less than ideal situations, treatment or compromise integrity if you grip too loosely. If the 'default' space that Art exists in and world art is created in without criticality is built on centuries of exploitation, racism, homophobia, misogyny and class inequality under capitalism, then really a passive stance is poisonous and toxic yellow flavoured.

Maybe it is an aspirational desire to be passive in artistic creation, to have that luxury of not being invested but also maybe realism, action, poetry and abstraction are more inline with meaningful artistic creation. What does this mean for me, for my artistic practice?

I'm not sure what my individual practice even looks like anymore, as collaboration has shaped and shifted it so much. I hope one day I can stop running from what it is I have to say, I hope one day I will be able to create from a more active place, that that place might feel safe enough to work through, rather than this numbing practice iv been wearing the past 2 (6) years.

I guess I'm scared what might come out if I were to fully access that place. I live in fear, I live hiding from what I want to make, I live hiding behind other people, I live unable to communicate my desires, but being equally unsure as to what they even are.

my goals feel so far away and undefined. I feel a massive pressure on my back to be great, from myself. I feel as though I am wasting myself, that I am somehow fading away from my true desires, morals, ethics, everything is pulled into question. I have never been so evasive, I lean into the evasive I move my eyes around a room meeting every object with acceptance apart from your eyes

.

My ethical guidance system of parental care has been to manage other people’s emotions by changing my own behavior. I am amazed by people who ask for what they want, rather than accepting what is being given to them.

These are people I want to be around, and I want some of that for myself, and I really try and push myself into those awkward situations where I do ask for more, I ask to be paid I ask for fewer hours, I ask for it all, because what is given, or what is deemed ‘enough’ so rarely is.

This is my call to hold myself more accountable to action, not in the sense of over-exhausting or busing myself, but to challenge myself to spend longer periods of time active in a state of grounding rather than push through, busying myself to exhaustion so I don't have to think about what my desires are.

Actively passive,

without manipulation,

intuition finely tuned but

also followed through upon.

(I read this now in the context of finding and embracing community action, and how vital it has been in the past months, how it overlaps so heavily with art, that finding connection, solidarity and even sometimes hope in these times, this is what feels important (also this text is a bit of a mess, whoops))

keyboard in german 

How gorgeous and vivid is that word, so camp, reeks of extravagance, leaking 

it feels like a shake of a horses tail, or a performative shiver in icy wind shoulders high bob dylan

words do this thing where they dance on my tongue and jump up and down, tripping over one another, bouncing off the door frame as they tumble their way out. 

They are just so great in a couple of different ways 

Firstly their form, words as a form, they look quite nice, the shapes of different fonts and how each font evokes a different kind of feeling or mood, I like to draw letters as shapes, attempting to look at them as shapes, as compositions first. This started when I accidentally got very high at the studio and couldn't read anymore. I started drawing letters as they came to mind on neon yellow sheets of paper. fuzzing my eyes slightly so they I was completely and utterly loose. I liked how they turned out, but unsure of what they were for, or why they interested me. I didn't even get through the whole alphabet 

Secondly words are just great because each word associates to a selection of ideas, and other words, that then lead to more words and ideas, and when the words are put together they create even more space for meaning, and then you can add the tone of which the words together are spoken, and then that creates another layer of meaning to jolt association!

(maybe this is why I don't like Ai voice, and talking is my favourite thing to do with friends/ my fav way of communicating ideas (i think)) 

you can wash with words, and they slide over your brain and sometimes don't make a way in, but no matter. and then things can get lost in words, misunderstanding and translation issues mean so many more realities open up in front of you, and when you add a connection to words, oh then things get even more interesting 

I can never understand why anyone would want a good conversation to end. I just want it to go on forever, to talk until you reach into delirium. 

my heart breaks slightly when I find out its spelt tastatur :/

somehow that changes everything

Places of study extend far wider than the city library, or bedroom desk. 

To study is to 'read in detail with the intention of learning' (Webster) and to read is not only to decode words across a page, but to look, observe, investigate, experience. Studying can also be something that is happening on a moment to moment basis, the important bits stick out in your memory in retrospect, maybe they didn’t feel important while they were happening. It is about learning and shifting pathways in different directions. 

A place of study then, is the environment in which this takes place. 

Below I list some places of study I have recently inhabited

1. in the coherence, we weep exhibition from Kameelah Janan Rasheed at KW Institute in Berlin

   walking into a show like a brick wall. Almost immediately I understand the importance it will have, my head is thrumming, moving so fast with thoughts I can barely read the words. I felt immediately understood by the works lining the walls, like they were speaking right in my ear, and I was whispering back. Rasheed is a master at work, she so expertly transforms her research, ideas and studying in such an artful way. It is language as form, as a poetic device, as pointed criticism and as a method of sharing ideas. She intertwines these all together so richly I can’t look away, its so sensitive yet assertive. I went back to visit twice more, and the effect never wore off. Her ideas and work will stay with me for a long time.

    

2. Library 4th floor, lift is broken, breath is shallow and labored echoing of silent walls, heads bent studiers deep in books and concentration, this is where I daily crash between 15:00-16:30

3. Cappuccino, sour cappuccinos, milky foamy, cappuccino handed to me by a plastic claw, crunchy sugar crystals dappling the foam top, cappuccino from a soup bowl, cappuccino with oat milk only when its free, coffee with milk realization that its not the same, sour disappointment, memorable cappuccinos, forgotten on the light box ones, 500ml cappuccinos 15 minute wait time drunken barista mixes 4 teaspoons of granulated coffee and shakes a bottle to simulate bubbles of foam, cappuccinos too late in the day, and foam tipped nose, the best cappuccino in the world in a tartan cup in a hardware shop, a cappuccino sat outside the library sipped quickly in a ceramic cup with saucer, cappuccino fading out a new method of drinking ready to replace it as the cappuccino budget dwindles to a slow halt. 

4. Berlin Hbf phone running out of battery and ravenously hungry, an extremely hostile station, could be made from playmobile, 1euro toilets, cross armed security watches my feet as I pee

   

5. Oranienstraße Berlin 2 kilometers long, standing, shouting alongside fellow protestors, followed by a solitary weep on a bench in the square 45 mins before cycling home 

6. Sitting in a green space next to my bike, eating a packed lunch sandwich between

7. Intentionally overwhelmed in shopping center, shoe shop, super market, train stations a real life version of doom scrolling.

8. Dinner with a friend, lying in bed with a friend, kicking legs behind your back, brushing teeth while speaking, eating in silence, standing on the train forehead pressed against the window, eye contact across a busy table, writing things that prefer to be spoken, spoken things that prefer to be written.

A hand reaches out over and over again in my mind’s eye, uttering a phrase I’m destined to forget, stored in little locked up holes that twist and turn. I see a London skyline, from a bridge in a film and I burst into tears.

Moments of study, yes, but not moments of stillness, and absolutely not moments of hiding. When clarity hits, it demands action, it does not stand for distraction and numbness, it calls out clearly and its call must be answered, too long have I sat idle, tummy aching and mind racing, I call into question my lonesome therapy, there is a reason it feels easier, closer, and more hidden, I will get fixed out of sight, I wake in the middle of the night, reeling and anxious to move, the call to action can no longer be ignored. 

The places of study are just the places where you happen to be standing when your thoughts hit the floor, touch base, touch grass. Where exactly that might be is pretty arbitrary. Without action, the lessons are only half learned.

Now I must act.

This week I would like to discuss the notion of thought hoarding.

1.

Working on my website is a task iv been putting off for maybe 3 years. Every 6 months or so I dip into wordpress become frustrated and confused almost immediately and tentatively give up for another 6 months. Its been on countless to do lists, a low level thrumming nag website, website, website. I have pretty much done everything around building a website except doing it, podcasts, youtube videos, even collected images and works I want to show on there and looked at friends websites for inspiration, but somehow the mood never took me to actually sit down and do it. 

It sounds maybe stupid, but sometimes an idea of doing something becomes so abstracted that it begins to not feel like an idea at all, but just words on a list. Its like the Ideas are ships and sometimes they sail right past and then it takes a huge amount of energy to chase up to it (not worth it a lot of the time) better to wait for the idea or inspiration to come back around again, however long that might take. 

This is of course, an extremely frustrating way to work as when ideas pass by untransformed it feels itchy and stuck, also a lot of guilt builds up surrounding the task/ Idea you've failed to realize, the idea itself becomes infected (guilt). 

There’s something to be said for switching the brain off when it comes to following through ideas, or allowing a more subconscious side to take over and follow, I come back to the realisation Zaphod Beeblerox has (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) that someone had surgically disconnected sections of his brain, his fear being that someone else was using that part of his brain to have good ideas with, that one a part of his brain is feeding ideas unknowingly to the other, for him to follow out. It turns out after multiple scans and tests, that it was he himself that detached the part of his brain that hesitates, that questions, that holds off, that knows what it is he's looking for that holds a bigger picture of where his ideas should lead him. 

'I don’t know what I'm looking for.' 

'why not?' 

'because... because... I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn't be able to look for them.' 

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

If we link this back to the process of thinking, of having ideas and then doing things with them, there could be a case built for the idea that we should not necessarily think to much about what knowledge we seek to find, as this over thinking inhibits the action of finding it. 

I have countless pages of writings in my notebooks about how ‘Im so stressed and have so much to do’ complaining about the exterior conditions of the creativity and its inability to make its way out, MEANWHILE the actual interesting thoughts are locked away. 

This leads me to think about the ideal conditions that would allow those ideas to make their way out of your mind, your body and transform into the 'world', the path of osmosis. But why even assume that the world needs to hear it? to hear of your idea? whenever I get down this path, I try to circle back around to the direction of: who am I to know whether this would be useful or not to the world without asking? Why is my judgment to withhold stronger and easier than letting go and allowing the thought into the realm of the public? why does information or art or writing need to be useful at all? The reader/ viewer is capable and allowed to decide for themselves what they want to do with the information, how much they value it, or how far they want to engage with it (is this maybe an overly individualist view to have? Must return to this thought later...)

2. 

so thought hoarding 

This is interesting because there are many different interpretations and meanings to the term 

A 'hoarding' as a large board in public space, used to display advertisements, the total opposite of the definition 'to hoard' to store away or hide, accumulate, to keep in ones mind for future use. To hoard is always forward thinking, it is always in relation to some point that is at a distance from now. To hoard thoughts, to hoard ideas is to hold them for a later date, to carry them with you until you might need them, or to hold on to them until the so called ship from before passes again, the opportune moment for such an idea to make its way out.  

There is of course an irony in hoarding also meaning a form of display, of exposure, because hoarding of ideas is something more internal, untransformed, as well as a physical hoarding of things is something that often has in it a lot of wrapped up shame and embarrassment, a condition hidden from view or contained. The opposite can also be true, there are thousands of youtube videos dedicated to showing off stockpiles of food, clothing hauls, consumption to an excess. these videos can feel cathartic to watch as they explore excess without having to live with it physically, something you can dip in and out off. In consumerist culture, excess is celebrated but only when you have space to purposefully contain it. It is excess with intention, walk-in wardrobe, the double door fridge, matching buckets, baskets, containers, spice racks, theres always an appropriate storage solution that goes alongside, beautiful enough to become a spectacle in its self. 

So the term thought hoarding kind of Alludes to these two different sides internal, external that exist wonderfully together. The building up, the accumulation of ideas and references over time, the withholding, that when the ship passes at the right moment, should all spill out and then be transformed (there are of course always opportunities to further transform, always levels of transformation, from writing something down, to acting upon that note, it doesn't not just end at the first step of initial transformation from synaps to paper, there should also always be space for thoughts/ ideas to be rejected, left behind, denounced etc) 

3.

Ideally there would be an un/regulated consistent siphoning off of the thought hoard, the tension that builds up, the tightening of the fist, a blockage in the flow of ideas, to then a release of them, for me this mainly takes the form of writing in a notebook or word document. However what I have realised is that the initial release is not, should not be the final stage. Scribbling down a thought/ idea, stream of consciousness on a word document, a voice note from the corner of the room, this release can give a sense of satisfaction that means no further action is felt to be required. But further action is always required. ALWAYS. Even if that is a rereading and rejection, it must be sifted. 

It is true some ideas need time to cook, and sometimes the best ones you don't even realize your having until you start speaking about them (verbal processors know this well)

This is in a way exciting, as its impossible to tell where an idea might lead at the front end of it, once it begins its stream out of the brain it flows through into all kinds of directions, but while the initial moment or realization feels great to have, its also important to kind of sort it in a mind palacey type way, to decide what should now be done with it eg: 

• to be filed away 

• to be dropped 

• to be revisited at varying intervals 

• to be released, handed onwards

• to be actioned upon and transformed 

• to be collected, categorised, and bundled with like minded thoughts 

• to be connected with seemingly unrelated thoughts

• to be shared 

• to be held on to, stroked, soothed, patted, guarded  

thoughts that we write down in the middle of the night feel so important in the moment to get onto paper to avoid the most terrible feeling of having forgotten the idea, but remembering having had it. And yet when I look back at those night notes the next morning, they are always pretty laughable in their earnestness, they feel unimportant, and yet there is a satisfaction in having jogged the idea again. 

thought = unfiltered idea 

idea = an actionable thought 

good/bad ideas = in relation to the perceived consequences of the idea 

My current conclusion is that hoarding ideas is necessary to an extent, but you must loosen your grip on them and allow them to transform, not only onto paper, but a stage further, to be decided upon, to be transformed, left behind or tucked away to bake a little longer, but most importantly this muscle of decision must be used with a light strength (I think if swimming technique here, swimmers barely moving there legs but moving through water like hot butter with total ease), not clenched jawed and lactic acid build up. There must be a trust that the thoughts that do not matter will be forgotten, but the ones that do matter or could matter must be released to make space for new ones. 

• The idea is that this page will be updated with a WEEKLY BRAIN SCAN where I can place all of my artistic development, writing, and photography in one place, to begin to build an archive of thought.

• Interspersed will be longer form, or more thought-out ‘essays’ that will look at a more specific theme or topic in greater detail.

• I also like to place here some references, quotes and clips that I come across so that I can refer back to them easily.

In my practice, I have been working across many different notebooks and digital files, and I think it’s time to create a digital home to help me structure some of those thoughts and ideas while also allowing them to exist somewhere else outside of my physical sphere.

It feels important to push some of these ideas out and not hold them so close to my chest where no one else can see them, I want this to become a digital archive of my ideas (brain scans) and photogrpahy (actual scans) and sketchbook pages that seem relevant or of interest.

Throughout this process, I will try and keep thinking about an audience or reader to an absolute minimum, I do not want to change how I write or what I write in order to fit the gaze of a reader, but I also need the pressure that someone MIGHT be reading to hold myself accountable and actually share my work/ ideas.

Ultimately, this could be seen as another form of my thought hoarding (incoming text about that) but I think that’s ok because a thought shared is a thought halfed(?)