...excerpts
from a book size text
(5.9) looking down
Ruth sat next to a window flying home on one occasion. She's wearing new earrings and new earings feature in a film called looking down... and looping videos were often shown in studio windows. Things were about to change. We were still thinking about first plans at the start of 2011, but spent more time with Ruth's parents. We were often in two places with too much to do and were being pulled in other directions.
(10.6) woodcuts
I took Japanese woodcuts to Sotheby's and read the latest Murakami(IQ84)to Ruth. We started putting possessions into storage and left keys with an estate agent.
Stills suggest frequent trips to the Marsden and changing seasons and bedrooms in two places were full of boxes. Reading Murakami at night felt important for a while... and Ruth said she liked the sound of my voice. We got halfway through a long novel, then stopped, didn't go back to it and were leaving many things behind. I remember a day in London and time spent at the auction house. A few prints were chosen then undervalued and I remember disdain. A checque for much more than expected turned up much later. Hokusai and Mount Fuji were gone and the others still remain.
(12.2) video of sleepless moments
Ruth questioned what I doing or what I wanted to do. I started getting up at night and current work begins in the dark. We watched films, I made cups of tea, massaged legs and feet, but was on my own after she took medications. She took tramadol and a chemotherapy drug at night (and in the morning) and massage came between films and sleep.
Sex was something else after radiotherapy, but much had happened and changed.
I couldn't compete with strong medications and wanting Ruth turns towards the video of sleepless moments. What work I was doing began with video clips and stills. I did a little writing and Ruth helped with voice overs and feedback. It has somerthing to do with an unlikely continuum and unworn clothes is partly an unrealisable project.
Nachträglichkeit presses, a performing text or video pushes in a different direction... and something sometimes happens in between.
from ‘mirror text’
- which was once the second part of talking house(s)
(27) taken seriously
A Tarkovsky moment (blushing trees) more than thirty years ago came first, then a dream. I refer to coastal fields, neglected animals, museum employees and work to be done. Dreams lean on proposals and proposals lean on indifference. This one has no real form and can't be taken seriously. My mouth is open and I take in fresh air. The fresh of a proposal that can't be taken seriously.
Christopher Sands, Rut, digital still, 2010
(26) nightlights
I send emails to my phone. I’m in the dark, but have something to say when I turn off the light and it's that moment again. I switch off, see nightlight coming through the door.
(30) fresh air
The work is laid out or laid up... video is homeless and the rest trails and isn't a trial. Passages are often rewritten and I refer to Monsal Head and the Monsal trail in te Peaks in a first draft. I mention fresh air and not walking far after surgery in 2011.
from 'form of last text’ (revised second part of talking house(s))
(10) conversations
Conversation lingers after Ruth died. There are first notes or fragments and the disconnect is a first connection. I wrote, I'm in analysis but haven't managed conversations and get caught up in sentences in a room with an iMac... it's a starting point somehow following first notes.
(11) disparities
It's 2015 or 16, I was writing or doing something that seemed like writing, then texts or conversational texts started falling away. There are too many disparities and I saw something else looking at stills and video archives. Subjectivities are loose or set loose and some sort of description follows first notes and stills and they sometimes make up for floundering texts. I suppose an outside world and take time out writing during the pandemic and a reenactment script bemoans a surprising impasse. It's history now, but history based on current problems. A trajectory begins with work and work can be video and video texts... and something without collaboration and funding. I wrote two proposals, then left reenactments alone.