Happy Accidents #1 - St Michael's Church, Headingley, Leeds

These two lomography images were taken in April in St Michael and All Angels' Church graveyard in Headingley. This was the first time I used my new Diana F+ camera. These are my two favourite images, or 'happy accidents' as they are described in the literature that comes with the camera.

Related Links:
Lomography Website
St Michael's Church

Derrida Queen Mother

This jigsaw-cum-sculpture is part of the phenomena of our office in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. I'm not sure who placed the cut out of Jacques Derrida's face over the Queen Mother but it's a work of genius. Following a google search on the terms: derrida, queen mother, I was surprised at how many times the two names come up in scholarly works, including: Ashley Thompson's 'Post-cosmopolitical Theories: Sexual Difference, Vernacularisation and Art after Angkor' (2011) and Gyatri Spivak's 'Love Me, Love My Ombre, Elle' (1984).


Related sites:
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
An excerpt from Derrida the movie
Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Five Dead Women and Many Live Animals

The above map is based on the view from my window. It is an aesthetic response to the graveyard of which my flat borders. While it is a very quiet place, and not visited by people very often, because I live next to it I get to see the 'comings and goings' of not only the animals, of which there are many, but also the people. While the animals are totally open in their actions - the squirrels scratching themselves, the blue tits cleaning their beaks, the robins 'beating up' the hedge sparrows - some of the human visitors behave a bit 'cagey', like they think they are not supposed to be there.

The 'Action Zone' is the area around my window. It is named thus because this is where I feed the animals and hence it is a draw to all the birds and squirrels. The animals seem to think it is a tuck shop. Unfortunately they do not realise there is only food in the 'Special View' section, so sometimes they come in in order to see what other delicacies might be inside, much to their disapointment...

A Visit to the Freud Museum - Part 1: Childhood Rituals and Auburnophobia

I was very fortunate to be visiting the Freud Museum this week at the point an art installation was being erected actually over the surface of Freud's house by the artist Alice Anderson. Alice, who has lots of beautiful red hair, unlike my small paltry amount, uses red hair in her work. The current exhibition, Childhood Rituals, includes the work that is currently appearing at the Freud Museum. In the following picture you can see Alice's team on the roof draping and fixing the hair.



Being a redhead myself, and also a cultural theorist, I struggle with the ginger prejudice which is so prevalent today and has definitely got worse since I was a child. I think it was probably David Bowie that saved my teenage-hood from any potential bullying because of my hair. As a small child, older people seemed to love my hair saying things like "It is a sign of beauty", and one of my father's friends actually called me "Red". I remember seeing a straw poll on the campus of a university where they asked ten male students if they would go out with a redhead. Nine of them said that under no conditions would they, the tenth said he would sleep with one but wouldn't call her the next day - and these are supposed to be 'educated' people! Interestingly enough, and also in a somewhat contradiction to these figures, I can remember hearing about Edinburgh University doing a redhead gene study a while ago, in order to find the evolutionary benefit for those who have it. It turned out that one of its benefits was in attracting a mate. However, this appears to work for ancient Scots only as, going by the media portrayal of red hair, the pull has turned from attract to repel.

Below are some really good close-up shots of Alice's installation where the hair reaches the ground and is anchored in various places:





Alice Anderson's exhibition is on from April 15th to June 5th 2011.

Related sites:
The Ginger Phenomenon
Flaming Heck
Sarak Spanton

Have You Ever Been to Seahenge? or a Tenuous Homage to Spinal Tap

In Boston Square, Hunstanton, Norfolk, is a sensory park commissioned by Norfolk County Council and designed by Jeremey Stacey Architects. In the park is what looks like a homage to Seahenge which is a prehistoric structure that was found off the coast of Holme-next-the-Sea: a timber circle from the Bronze Age. It was discovered in 1998 and now resides in Lynn Museum. Here is a video I took in the sensory park, and it is my homage to the Stonehenge scene in This is Spinal Tap (1984), directed by Rob Reiner:

Boston Square Sensory Park

Below is the script from This is Spinal Tap, where it refers to Stonehenge (one of the funniest scenes in the film), including a link to the relevant section in the film:

Ian: Are you telling me that this is it? This is scenery? Have you ever been to Stonehenge?
Artist: No, I haven't been to Stonehenge.
Ian: The triptychs are...the triptychs are twenty feet high. You can stand four men up them!
Artist: Ian, I was...I was...I was supposed to build it eighteen inches high.
Ian: This is insane. This isn't a piece of scenery.
Artist: Look, look. Look, this is what I was asked to build. Eighteen inches. Right here, it specified eighteen inches. I was given this napkin, I mean...
Ian: Forget this! Fuck the napkin!!!

SPINAL TAP performs Stonehenge
(click here for film clip This is Spinal Tap )

HOTEL room after gig

David: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been...that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf...

Related Links
Seahenge
Stonehenge
This is Spinal Tap

Leeds Girls' High School - 'Development Opportunity'

A sign has finally gone up for the sale of the Elinor Lupton Centre building of the old Leeds Girls' High School in Headingley Lane. I spotted in when walking back from university so decided to have a wander around the building and take some snaps.

As you can see it is made in the same Portland Stone as the University of Leeds, popular for construction in this area in the 1920s and 1930s. It is a jurassic limestone and, interestingly, has tiny fossils in it if you looked closely.

According to this person who posted a photo on flickr, it is a grade 2 listed building and was purchased by the school in 1986 for £230,000:
Elinor Lupton Centre



I love this building and pass it every day on the way to and from university. I remember when I first came to Leeds (2005) it was still in use and drama performances were advertised on the board outside, in the same place as the 'for sale' board now appears. It would be lovely to see the building cared for again: some sand-blasting and graffiti removal.

The building is much bigger than it looks in my image. The Geograph link below shows a good image of the building and reflects its size much better.

There was a locked fence at the back and I managed to take this photo of this old sign through the railings:



Also, this detail I photogrpahed demonstrates the Greco-Roman influence in Art-Deco architecture of this period.



Related Links:

Leeds High School on Wikipedia
Elinor Lupton Centre on Geograph

Walking to the Beach

Video: Walking to the Beach

Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses respects, etc., the trajectories it "speaks". All the modalities sing a part in this chorus, changing from step to step, stepping in through proportions, sequences, and intensities which vary according to the time, the path taken and the weather. These enunciatory operations are of an unlimited diversity. They therefore cannot be reduced to their graphic trail. (De Certeau 2006: 99)

Reading the Arcades/Reading the Promenades
This mini-blog is part of the above project. All my seaside schizocartography posts are available here:
Reading the Arcades/Reading the Promenades
Or click here to link to my previous blog on the Norfolk seaside resort of Hunstanton: The Seaside in Winter

Bibliography
De Certeau, Michel. 2006. 'Walking in the City', The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 91-110