Bleach, dancing and full moons

Tuesday the 14th October I cycled into town avoiding the evil magpies, and carrying far to much tech on my back. First thing I put black out material up on the windows, with slogans similar to my tea posters written in giant writing: enabling to see the films on the viewer better and as an arms waving hello gesture. I had lots of fun spiralling strips of 35 mm film into a bottle of bleach, although my hands are burning. I experimented with different amounts of bleach and drying techniques: either bleaching completely so that I had clear film to work with, or letting the layers of colour separate and run, scratching and smudging as I went. I like this notion of working with found films, and think it would be interesting performativly: playing and watching, then recreating, this could be an ongoing evolution/cycle of work. I found this interesting to think about in the context of the museum where things seem stationary and cemented in time. I also bleached then buried a section of film, digging a hole by the post out side the museum, I'm curious to see what if any the earth and time have on it. The t-shirt plan was also put into manufaction today. With my kids fabric crayons I crudely scrawled out some slogans and rubbishy designs. So far I have one that states "Draw me a map" with some little dotted lines, arrows and stickman style pine trees. The second one has a just about distinguishable teacup and "museum" written on it, obviously not finished yet. I'm planning on pretty much living in these three t-shirts, so hopeful people will respond to them, or at least get me to speak to them if their staring at them curiously. Finally my third effort in mission talk-to-me-Dartmoor, dancing at the community hall. Oh yes. I like to dance in my own special way, but I'm also ridiculously uncoordinated. I wasn't really looking forward to this event, but missed it last week and as Michael pointed out if I went to some of the community events people might come to mine. Actually I was terrified. The prospect of having to follow a dance routine or any kind of line dancing, was making me slightly hysterical: the car journey there seemed ominous as I watched the lines of fields and trees steam past, roaring further out of town. There was a lot of boot scooting, dosey-doeing, and thy slapping (all of which I managed to do in the wrong order), but it wasn't traumatic. It was fun, if a little surreal and I met some more lovely locals, and even got an offer of a drive out to the heart of the pine forest if I wanted to do more filming. The hardest part of this project has been getting out there and being social. I seem to have no idea of what I'm doing as soon as people ask me, and could quite happily spend 10 weeks playing in the forest, hills and rivers by myself or hidden away in darkened rooms experimenting with films. I know this isn't the way forward though, there has to be a balance, and the people and socialness of this community are as much of the context as the land. Driving home there was a massive full moon that set the landscape on fire, casting some kind of mystical blanket over us. Once back at the house I decided to jump in my car with some slide film and video camera and go make some work in the forest. It's amazing how the moon affects you, and how it lights the vegetation. Annoyingly though, my phobia of the dark overtook and I didn’t make it out the car. This moment made me really aware of the difficulties of working solo. It's hard enough to set up camera shots in daylight, but at night in the outback: not only was it going be hard, but probably not the safest thing to be doing. Maybe next full moon I can get some help.