About the City

it is a place where senses are bombarded with the intensity of the city, as a result we city dwellers build a perseptual wall through supressing our feeling responses and reactig not with the heart but with the head, a part of the body quite remote from depth of personality. Reason replaces emotion.

The Time of Tea

September - October 2007

Having had my childhood dictated by tea drinking (it is possibly Russia’s most prominent tradition), I chose to study the passing of time during this simple act for this final project for the year.

From My work

The table was video recorded while tea was drunk between me and my guests. Two girlfriends were invited, a father, and a lover, (I also tried to have an almost-stranger (new neighbour) come for a cup but unfortunatly that did not come to pass). The conversations were seen awkwardly beginning, cake was devoured and slowly and lazily they wound back down.

While editing, from the 3 events I tried to create a complete picture of the overall phenomenon, adding a bird’s eye view of the setting as a background was just another dimension I could show. The table cloths I kept, saving the stains and the crumbs of the conversation, the residue of the event. The cups changed with the people so did the passing of time, so did the ways of drinking.

From My work

From My work

I dentity

It seems that part of being an artist in today’s world is being good at presenting who you are. That requires making choices – deciding what nuances distinguish you form others and how they came about. This exercise is bound to expose conflicts within one’s self (and therefore one’s work), it is these glimpses of conflicts that can make a work magnetic to others.
This quote seems to describe today’s creative employment field well:
“Difference is highlighted, distinctiveness is valued, exclusiveness defined.”[i]

....to be continued

[i] Sean Mallon and Pandora F. Pereira. Speaking in Colour, Conversations with artists of Pacific Island heritage. Wellington: Te Papa Press, 1997. p 10

Our Age

In this time 'green' and 'global warming' seem to be everywhere we look, yet IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is warning that too many years have already passed occupied by doubt and words alone, that meaningful changes are still not happening despite these years. Their latest report has sounded like a call to arms, that if we do not make significant changes right now it can realistically endanger our very species’ survival, not to mention others. Yet it is not easy to help the cause from an individual’s point of view and that will have to change. The default consumerist way of life distributed by the developed nations and now present in every corner of the world has to become an environmentally aware one, it has to be easy to allow it to be adopted by every household and individual. It will also have to be commercially profitable in order to succeed, we need easier ways of distinguishing which product has traveled less distance to reach us and has made a smaller mark on the environment so that competition is encouraged.
To bring about these changes individuals have to take initiative, somebody has to, as many people as possible even if it is to the smallest effect and those that take those steps need our support to succeed.

The longer I live the better I understand what fragile beings people are. We can be strong and as dispersed as jelly… like plants easy to crush but can be strong as nails when dry (which is not necessarily a truly beneficial state). It is not only the physical consequences of the lifestyle that our society is leading that is failing us but emotional as well. Gone are the support networks of the villages our ancestors lived in, and changes that have come with ever increasing life expectancy have not been fully recognized.

In an apparently wealthy housing estate in the north west of Hong Kong despair drives its residence to suicide (reported by BBC 29/11/07 Outlook program) Because of the lack of jobs in the area and too-expensive public transport into the city, the residents (all supported by welfare) are unable to earn any more money and become separated from family by fanatical restraints on the travel of both parties. It sounds like tragic suicides are happening one after another from lack of hope and purpose.


We need to return to the ‘slow’ way of life, reverting to some of the traditional aspects of life which got humanity through past millenniums. Living in ‘organism-like’ communities has humanitarian advantages; older people can help single or young parents, shared gardens and cooking would be possible and jobs providing services within the community would stop some people from needing to travel to work. Overall this could improve both individuals’ and our planet’s well being.

Links on the topic:

New Zealand's Climate Change Solutions

4 Million Careful Owners

Exert From 'Taken' Steven Speilberg and Leslie Bohem Film

What makes us human?
That we can think?
That we can feel sorrow and pain?
That we can laugh? - I hope so.

We can hurt and we can laugh. And we know a past and a present, and in some
ways a future.

Maybe what makes us human is that we know just enough to think we know
where we're going.
___________________________

People say that when we grow up we kick at everything that we've been told,
We rebel against the world that your parents have worked so hard to bring us into.

A part of growing up is kicking at the ties that bind
but I dont thing thats why we kick at all,
I think we kick when we find out that our parents dont know much more about the world than we do.
They dont have the answers.

We rebel when we find out that they've been lying to us all along,
that there isnt any St Clause at all.
___________________________

People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to see things for what they really are.
But evething we do, every plan we make is kind of a lie.
We're closing our eyes and pretending, that the day will never come when we won't need to make any more plans.

Hope is the biggest lie there is and it is the best.

We have to keep going as if it all mattered or else we would'nt keep going at all.