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DAVID
CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISATION / DESIGN / ART / KITSCH / CHANCE
ALLOTMENT
IMPROVISATIONS
VENUES FOR INDIVIDUAL INVENTIVENESS -
PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY ENDORSED
INDEX
IMPROVISED-ARCH
IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
ALLOTMENT
IMPROVISATIONS - ONE TREE HILL / GUN SITE
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - WANDSWORTH / KEW BRIDGE
VERNACULAR & STYLE - BERDUN, HUESCA
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE
- FRANK'S CAFE / SOUTHWARK LIDO
"HOME"
- MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS
'CUBIST'-COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
.
ALLOTMENT
IMPROVISATIONS
- p2
p1:
INTRODUCTION
p1:
ONE TREE HILL ALLOTMENT
p2:
GUN SITE ALLOTMENT
.
"GUN SITE" ALLOTMENT -
DULWICH, LONDON
...
in process
I visit "Gun Site" like an art college
exhibition, browsing the allotments for
interesting/strange objects and formations which are shown below in typological groups:
PLOTS
ARCHITECTURE FOR GROWING & PROTECTING PLANTS
STORES, STORE-BOXES, STORE-PLACES, STORE-SHELTERS
LITTER-STORES
SIT-PLACES & SIT-SHELTERS
NEXUS
GARDENS
AESTHETIC CONSTRUCTS / IMPROVISATION AS PRAGMATIC PLAY
ODD OBJECTS
.
PLOTS
The
basic allotment form - a naked plot, stripped of natural growth for cultivation,
and sometimes conserved: wrapped to prevent the growth of weed seeds
- inevitably divides into two main zones: the largest for growing plants, the
smaller for storing the means of cultivation; both these zones differentiate
further, the first into patches adapted for plants with different life needs,
the second subdivides for tool-storage, construction-material storage,
germinating plants, making, resting. The growing zone is structurally, visually,
'architecturally' simple, predicated on the needs of
plants - here human initiative is only visible in the isolation of plant types
and provision of artificial environments that model each type's natural growth
needs. The second zone's complexity grows in step with the discoveries, crafts,
satisfactions of the plot's human initiator - distilling and seperating basic
work-needs, from physical tools to invention, fantasy, rest.
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GUN SITE: PLOT WITH CARPET-COVERS
(pic 31-5-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: PLOT
WITH CARPET-COVERS & DUG-EARTH
(pic 19-5-09 / to N)
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GUN
SITE: SUB-PLOT
WITH CARPET-COVERS & BRICK-WEIGHTS
(pic 19-5-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: PLOT WITH COVERS & PLANTED SUB-PLOTS
(pic 31-5-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: PLOT COMPLETED
(pic 1-6-09 / to SW)
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GUN SITE: PLOT COMPLETED WITH FLAGS
(pic 1-6-09 / to S)
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GUN SITE: PLOT WITH RED POSTS & SIDES
(pic 15-6-09 / to SW)
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ARCHITECTURE FOR
GROWING AND PROTECTING PLANTS
Architecture for plants is a very simple kind - structures whose purpose is to
nurture, protect and sustain their growth (mimic natural habitat features), that can be made easily from
common debris materials: all sorts of miscellaneous grids, sticks, bamboo,
plastic sheeting, nets, skipped carpets, plastic tubing, demolition wood,
pallets, bottles and cans.
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GUN SITE: TRELLIS & HOOPED CLOCHE
(pic 19-5-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - TRELLIS ROWS OF METAL-TUBE, CANE, BEER-CANS
(paste-up 2-pics 1-6-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: STEEL & CORD BEAN-FRAME
(pic [1/2] 1-6-09 / to SW)
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GUN SITE: STEEL & CORD BEAN-FRAME
(pic [2/2] 25-8-09 / to S)
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GUN SITE: STEEL & WOOD BEAN-FRAME
(pic 29-5-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: ALIVE CONICAL TRELLIS
(pic 29-5-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: PLASTIC-BOTTLE CLOCHES
(pic 31-5-09 / to
#)
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GUN SITE: PLANT-POSTS WITH NET SUPPORTING POTS
(pic 31-5-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: TUNNEL NETS
(pic 7-6-09 / to
#)
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GUN SITE: HOOPED NETS
(pic 31-5-09 / to
#)
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GUN SITE: NET ENCLOSED TREE
(pic 7-6-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: PINK-NET ENCLOSED TREE
(pic 1-6-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: NET ENCASED PLOT
(pic 1-6-09 / to S)
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GUN SITE: STEEL-MESH & NET ENCASED PLOT
(pic 25-8-09 / to NNE)
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STORES, STORE-BOXES,
STORE-PLACES, STORE-SHELTERS
A 'store' is an orderly-accumulation of materials/objects for foreseen
use. Stores range from a simple 'heap' or open box to a complex of ordered heaps,
boxes, shelters. Some of the stored objects (eg pallets) may serve to contain
others. The most developed stores resemble small commercial yards: including space for
crafting as well as storing materials.
A store
is functionally the most various part of an allotment: the source of tools and
materials; sometimes a place for inventing/making necessary
horticultural structures; also potentially suggestive of ancillary activities beyond the needs
of plants [see below: brick path making] [1].
On this
site (for some unfathomed reason) enclosed structures over one metre high are banned.
Thus 'huts' - the usual solution for storage of vulnerable tools (and for temporary private/sheltered work or rest)
are (almost) absent. Huts are completely enclosed doored lockable volumes, 'walk-in' minature 'dwellings'
- on these allotments their storage and
sitting functions are housed in their meanest analogue: a hut that lacks a
front-wall: a mere 'shelter', and their secure-storage function is demoted to
locked 'chests'. The hut restraint can
provoke funny objects: occasionally a small hut is
snuck into a store place, a 'chest' swells and acquires an upright door, a
shelter's volume is almost closed; 'almost-huts' pose as climbing-plant
frames; in at least one case a small bought hut blatently survives as a unit in a 'garden
composition'.
NOTE:
1. Note the role of its associated workshop in the making of an improvised
home [ref especially SILO
SQUAT].
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GUN SITE: WOOD PILE
(pic 20-1-11 / to SW)
The
simplist store: a pile, differentiated as to substance. All wood, tipped on
the outskirt ground at the site's S edge (where anything for general use is
deposited).
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GUN SITE: GUN-SITE'S WHEELBARROW STORE
(pic 18-1-11 / to NE)
The
next most simple store - a container formed for a single type of item.
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GUN SITE: STORE-BOX FOR CARPET
(pic 1-6-09 / to #)
A somewhat more differentiated container.
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GUN SITE: STORE MOUNDS
(pic 1-6-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: STORE OF & IN PLASTIC-BINS
(pic 15-6-09 / to SW)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS COMPOST
(pic 1-6-09 / to NNE)
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GUN SITE: STORE WITH WHEEL-BARROW
(pic 25-8-09 / to WWS)
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GUN
SITE: STORE COMPLEX WITH BAG-BOX
(pic 15-6-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: STORE BOX WITH WHEEL-BARROW, TYRE & GLOVE
(pic 21-6-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: STORE OF COMPOST WITH TWO TYRES
(pic 19-5-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: SMALL STORE COMPLEX
(pic 15-6-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: STORE-DUMP COMPLEX
(pic 7-6-09 / to EES)
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GUN
SITE: STORE BOXES AND LOCKED 'CHESTS'
(paste-up 2-pics 19-5-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: STORE OF COMPOST & WOOD WITH TREE
(pic 15-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: FENCED STORE-PILE
(pic 7-6-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE:
FENCED STORE-PILE
(pic 1-6-09 / to W)
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GUN SITE: STORE-DUMP COMPLEX - PALLETS / WOOD / DUMP
(pic [1/2] 15-6-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: STORE-DUMP COMPLEX - PALLETS / WOOD /
DUMP
(paste-up 2-pics
[2/2]
15-6-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: STORE COMPLEX (S-FACE)
(pic
[1/3]
31-5-09 / to N)
This
complex of varied types of store-containers and an area for young plant care and
preparing
paving-bricks has accumulated across the width of a plot.
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GUN SITE: STORE COMPLEX (E-END)
(paste-up 2-pics
[3/3]
31-5-09 / to WWN)
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GUN SITE: STORE COMPLEX (W-END)
(pic [2/3] 31-5-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS TANK & 'POND-BOWL'
(pic [1/5] 15-6-09 / to SSE)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS TANK
(pic [2/5] 15-6-09 / to WWS)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS TANK
(pic [3/5] 18-1-11 / to W)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS TANK
(pic [4/5] 15-6-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: STORE PLUS TANK
(pic [5/5] 18-1-11 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: STORE COMPLEX (W-FACE)
(pic
[1/2]
1-6-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: STORE
COMPLEX (S-FACE)
(pic [2/2] 1-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: VINE-COVERED STORE-PLACE
(pic [1/4] 13-10-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: VINE-COVERED STORE-PLACE
(paste-up 2-pics [2/4] 31-5-09 / to N)
A special case: a simple single-volume (albeit very large) open-sided store-shelter, serves a second function: as a frame for a climbing
plant. [See below a 'garden-arbour' version of a 'vine-frame'.]
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GUN SITE: VINE-COVERED STORE-PLACE
(pic [3/4] 19-5-09 / to WW N)
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GUN SITE: VINE-COVERED STORE-PLACE - INTERIOR
(pic [4/4] 31-5-09 / to WWN)
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GUN SITE: STORE BOX HALF-HUT WITH TWINE
(pic 15-6-09 / to W)
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GUN SITE: STORE BOX HALF-HUT
(paste-up 2-pics 15-6-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: STORE-COMPLEX - HUT & TOOL-CHEST
(pic
[1/2]
29-5-09 / to S)
A group of storage containers and plant propagation beds so consciously neat
and elaborated with trellis and roses that they almost qualify as
'garden-signage' - eg a 'motif' signifying 'cottage-garden-charm'.
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GUN SITE: STORE-COMPLEX - HUT, STORE-BOX & PROPAGATION BEDS
(pic
[2/2]
29-5-09 / to NNW)
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LITTER-STORES
Allotments seem the only places where
adults can make a mess with impunity - their reason/excuse seems unchallangable:
'pragmatism' and its
essential aspect and context of continual change. Cultivators need easily accessable
and yet relatively unpredictable materials to
support and respond to the needs of plants, their horticultural experiments, and unforseeable conditions.
This circumstance and availabity of open space encourages the accumulating of
materials/objects that may serve as practical means/solutions and may provoke
Gestalt apperceptions.
A dump may be simply the waste product of organised work waiting to be
processed, a plot caught in transition, or long-term abandonment.
A 'litter-store' is little more organised than a dump, however as a source of improvisational
materials it stores potentials. In allotment terms only an
abandoned plot left for use by 'weeds' is pointlessly chaotic.
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GUN SITE: A TEMPORARY DUMP OF WEEDS & WASTE
(pic 13-10-09 / to #)
The beautiful complexity and phantasmagoric potential of chance - a rhythmical
mixture of plant parts and wood litter slightly resembling an 'Arcimboldo type'
of profile face emerging from a green fur collar, whose only design was at its inception:
the intention to gather and isolate objects of this type and dump them together for ease of transport
elsewhere (this is not waste since the plants
will certainly be composted).
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GUN SITE: A TEMPORARY DUMP - LITTER
& PLOT
-
(pic 1-6-09 / to SW(?))
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GUN SITE: A TEMPORARY DUMP - LITTER & PLOT
(pic 13-10-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: A DUMP OR STORE ALMOST LOST IN THE GRASS OF AN ABANDONED
PLOT
(pic 15-6-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: LITTER ON
ABANDONED(?)
PLOT
(pic 15-6-09 / to NNW(?))
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE CORNER WITH COVERED PLOT
(paste-up 2-pics 31-5-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE AREA
(pic [1/3] 31-5-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE AREAS
(pic [2/3] 31-5-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE AREA - A GROUP OF DISPIRATE ITEMS
(paste-up 2-pics [3/3] 31-5-09 / to
NNW)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-DUMP & SIT-PLACE
(pic
[1/3]
15-6-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-DUMP & SIT-PLACE
(pic
[2/3]
15-6-09 / to S)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-DUMP & SIT-PLACE
(pic
[3/3]
15-6-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE AREA
(pic-crop [1/2] 23-3-11 / to N)
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GUN SITE: LITTER-STORAGE AREA - 'SCULPTURE'
(pic [2/2] 23-3-11 / to N)
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SIT-PLACES
& SIT-SHELTERS
There
are six types of 'sitting-places': Fixed seating, 'rustic' (usually slices of
tree), seemingly posing as a 'natural
excrecence of its plot'; apparently for some
open-air social meeting, evoking in plan and rustication a more or less formal
convocation of dwarves. An association of an often single seat and pond (a
conjunction that seems to connote 'contemplation'). A roofed seat: a one/two person rain shelter. An
elaborated sitting area with leisure facilities of a 'home' garden. Formal
'garden' seating - having the air of a 'symbol' or an 'official facility': at
bus stop or on palace parterre. A haphazard chair or two for inconsequential
resting.
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('RUSTIC')
(pic 7-6-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('RUSTIC')
(pic 19-5-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('RUSTIC')
(pic 1-6-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('RUSTIC') - WITH ARBOUR
(pic 19-5-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('RUSTIC')
(pic [1/2] 29-5-09 / to
#)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ( 'RUSTIC') - AS TEMPORARY WORK STORE
(pic [2/2] 1-6-09 / to
#)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE & POND
(pic 1-6-09 / to #)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE & POND ('MINI-GARDEN')
(pic 15-6-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE & POND
(pic 15-6-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE IN TREES ('ORCHARD')
(pic 1-6-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: SHELTER IN HEDGE
(pic 15-6-09 / to EEN)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER IN HEDGE
(pic 28-8-10 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER
(pic 31-5-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: SIT SHELTER
(paste-up 2-pics 15-6-09 / to NW)
View from the bench in a tiny frontless wooden box with just enough
roof-overhang to protect me from a downpour; at the hedge-end of an abandoned
field-like plot.
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER
(pic
[1/2]
9-6-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER
(pic
[1/2] 28-8-10 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER BENCH
(pic
[2/2] 28-8-10 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER - HEDGE BEFORE BENCH
(pic
[3/2]
9-6-09 / to SSW)
View from the bench - a screen from rain and wind ?
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE ('ARCADIAN RETREAT')
(paste-up 2-pics
[1/3]
19-5-09 / to NNW)
An
elaborated sitting area continuous with a garden.
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER ('ARCADIAN RETREAT') - SHELTER
(pic 19-5-09
[2/3]
/ to NNE)
Like
a suburban sitting-room with a plasma tv the open rear of this shelter
displays the antics of golfers. Here the idyllic 'isolation' of Gun-Site - a
huge container of peace within its perimeter-screen of trees - is breeched,
and so irrelated is the outside that it appears more easily as a 'display'
than an alternative real place. (In their turn the golfers seem completely
unaware of another place beside them.)
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GUN SITE: SIT PLACE SHELTER ('ARCADIAN RETREAT') - CHAIR FEET
(pic 19-5-09
[3/3]
/ to W)
Plastic
containers filled with plaster (yoghurt pots, etc.) shoe the legs of chairs to
prevent them sinking.
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GUN SITE: TEMPORARY SIT PLACE
(pic 1-6-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: POSSIBLE SIT PLACE - SEMI-NATURAL ARBOUR
(pic 15-6-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: 'ARBOUR' SIT PLACE - SEMI-NATURAL ARBOUR
(pic 13-10-09 / to NW)
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NEXUS
A
'nexus' is an ordered multifunctional complex, often comprising (at maximum) a
store, sit-place, tools, plant-nursery, plot for cultivation. An aggregate of
the facilities shown above.
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - PLOT & STORE
(paste-up 2-pics
[1/7]
19-5-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - PLOT & STORE
(pic 19-5-09
[2/7]
/ to N)
x
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - STORE
(paste-up 2-pics
[3/7]
19-5-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - STORE: E-END DETAIL
(pic
[4/7]
19-5-09 / to N)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - REAR STORE-SHELTER & SIT-PLACE
(pic
[6/7]
7-6-09 / to NNE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - REAR SIT-PLACE
(pic
[7/7]
19-5-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - REAR PATH
(pic
[5/7]
19-5-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT-SHELTER-TENT / STORE
(paste-up 2-pics 1-6-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT PLACE / STORE / PLANT-NURSERY
(pic
[1/2]
1-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT PLACE / STORE / PLANT-NURSERY
(pic
[2/2]
1-6-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT PLACE / PLANT-NURSERY
(pic 31-5-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT PLACE / STORE / PLANT-NURSERY
(pic 31-5-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - SIT-SHELTER / POND / STORE
(pic
[1/2]
7-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - STORE BEHIND SIT-SHELTER
(pic [2/2] 15-6-09 / to S)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS & PLOT
(pic 1-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS
(pic 29-6-09 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS
(pic 31-5-09 / to NW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - LINEAR WITH FLOWER-PATCH
(pic 15-6-09 / to WWS)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS
(pic [1/2] 15-6-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS
(pic [3/3] 15-6-09 / to SSW)
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GARDENS
A
whole allotment plot may be a garden, or only a designated strip or patch. A
'garden' is recreational and aesthetic - if 'practical' vegetables are grown
they may be excluded from the garden portion or planted in an aesthetically
considered setting.
Firstly,
a 'natural' garden where plants are allowed and helped to display and increase their
beauty (grown for beauty not meaning) is a branch of practical
nurture akin to that of vegetables for their
taste - a beauty to be consumed. As an extension of the
spectrum of human needs to a point inevitably attained by well-fed moderns it
fits the pragmatic value of allotments (however profligate
it would seem to their founding users - poor city dwellers).
Secondly,
'patterned' plots: aesthetic habits or motif memories creep into some, dictating
patterned plans, as if just growing like a plant factory or on super-fertile
wildland is not enough for human needs - the ground must be patterned to be
possessed.
Thirdly,
a 'garden of signs' - normally an extension of a house, a private exterior
living-room fenced and individualised, a minature 'palace-park' of pride (or
squalor) demonstrating the taste and means of tiny royalty within, via style and
product choices that must be, in order to be judged at all, familiar and
meaningful to the majority of its tribe. From a base aesthetic of visual
precision and tidyness, such gardens select from
'motif-objects' proper to the grounds of palaces: beds of floral beauty, a pond
with lilies golden-fish and fountain,
sculptures of nymphs, rose-arbours and
arches, rocks simulating the sublime, paths pretanaturally winding, terraces for
reclining entertaining and dining ... all available in diminished sizes, various
historical styles, real wood and stone, plastic and cement, at local garden centres or
individually crafted by craftsmen. A type of garden whose 'fantastic' character
is amplified when transported into a setting of allotment-practicality - appears
like a mirage, perfected and planned as if private walled, yet open and public
as the vegetable plots around it; neat as a model of a dream of pretend beauty:
a statement of a quality that dwells elsewhere than in copies of copies of mere
memories of originals rich in meaning for their time and class. The opposite of
naturalness - that unique human achievemant: a fake.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-1: 'NATURAL') - ROSE-BOWER SIT-PLACE
(pic [1/4] 31-5-09 / to WWN)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-1: 'NATURAL') - ROSE-BOWER SIT-PLACE
(pic [2/4] 15-6-09 / to W)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-1: 'NATURAL') - ROSE-BOWER SIT-PLACE
(pic [3/4] 15-6-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-1: 'NATURAL') - ROSE-BOWER SIT-PLACE
(paste-up 2-pics [4/4] 15-6-09 / to E)
To evoke 'eden' (a
pre-gardening place) the
extravagant beauty of cultivated roses must be allowed to spread
uncontrollably in order to assert the splendour of a 'wild' reality ... a
natural super-abundence !
.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-2: PATTERNED) - WITH ROSE-ARCH
(pic [1/2] 1-6-09 / to SW)
An
example of a 'garden' type, but transitional between a
relaxed pragmatism and kitsch formality. The plot has a gratuitous plan, cut by diagonal paths
ornamented with rose arches, but the resulting triangular and diamond plots are casually used for vegetables and flowers.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-2: PATTERNED) - WITH ROSE-ARCH
(pic [2/2] 31-5-09 / to SW)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-2:
PATTERNED)
(pic
19-5-09 / to NW)
The
most simple division of a rectangle is into rectangles, the next is
into triangles. Radii define a centre and a centre has a special
significence as "the still point of the turning world" and as the
meeting place and disappearance of all paths - so it seems it must be emphasised and
its significence modelled !
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-2: PATTERNED) - NEW PLOT PLANNING
(pic
28-8-10 / to NE)
The
problem of deciding the disposition of 'appropiate' shapes when a plot must
be planned at its inception! Here the desire for a recreational lawn must be
reconciled with the requirement that an allotment plot is at least 60%
vegetables. Regions must have shapes, but with
no examples and no time for them to be defined by necessary use there is
only resort to absolutes of circles and symmetry.
.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - AN 'ALMOST-GARDEN' PATCH - FENCE & 'ENTRY-GATE'
(pic [1/2] 13-10-09 / to NE)
A
narrow slice of this allotment plot is confined between 'garden-type'
trellis-fences, one of which - with its (in this case useless and unused)
central gate flanked by rose-bush 'hedges' - suggests the 'road-facing' fence
of a suburban 'front-garden'.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - AN 'ALMOST-GARDEN' PATCH
(pic [2/2] 1-6-09 / to E)
Behind
its symmetrical 'exterior fence' this almost-garden dissolves into a desultory sprinkle of
casual and formal (eg: hanging-baskets) initiatives.
.
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - 'LAWN' WITH FRUIT-TREES &
POND
(pic
[1/8]
1-6-09 / to SW)
.1
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - 'LAWN' POND
(pic
[2/8]
1-6-09 / to W)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - 'LAWN' WITH SEAT / FLOWER BORDER /
VINE ARBOUR
(pic
[3/8]
1-6-09 / to WWS)
.1
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - VINE ARBOUR
(pic
[4/8]
1-6-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - VINE ARBOUR REAR
(pic
[5/8]
25-8-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - VINE ARBOUR INTERIOR
(pic
[6/8]
29-5-09 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - PATIO WITH STORE-CHEST AT REAR OF VINE ARBOUR
(pic
[7/8]
1-6-09 / to SSE)
The
sinister is never far from kitsch - its resort to visual clarity as a sign and
substitute for unity and subject definition,
far from revealing, gives the impression that something
is being hidden and stimulates paranoid associating. Kitsch epitomises the type of consumerism that seeks
total cleanness resolution and 'closure' - a bastion against the squalor of
natural excretion and degeneration. Its ideal environment mantains the total
cleanness and precision of an artificial (indeed industrial) product. On the
level of practicality this maintainence requires the hiding of 'waste' and the
consumers of the ideal must always deal with this problem - the
wastebins at the rear of the concert-hall, the 'back-stairs' of the palace, the neatly contained 'compost',
even
the 'privy' [NB <link>:
Richard Rogers' Lloyds building - the ironic exhibiting of excretion as an
ideal quasi-industrial process].
Indeed, for the ideal to seem real even the means of its physical maintainence must
(like the polished-out paint-marks of 19C academic paintings) be hidden, or at least 'idealised'. Here the locked tool-chest is as near an 'ideal'
as can be realised in these
circumstances, a box that on the one hand models the perfection of an ideal
solid and on the other seeks to 'disappear', hiding inside its 'avarage
environmental colour' of dull-green (similar to army camouflage) and sharing
its clean geometrical pavement 'work-area' with an attention distracting pot
of flowers. .
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GUN SITE: GARDEN (TYPE-3: SIGNAGE) - FLOWER BORDER & VINE ARBOUR IN
EVENING SUN
(pic
[8/8]
1-6-09 / to SW)
When
the visual clarity of kitsch is softened and confused (as in this case by sun-glare
and compositional chaos) paranoia is lulled and a dream such as 'romantic
ruin' may emerge.
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AESTHETIC
CONSTRUCTS /
IMPROVISATION AS PRAGMATIC PLAY
...
in process
Improvisation is a mode of 'play' (usually
buried under adult dignity) learnt in childhood when surrounding objects
could be thought to stand for others: transformed via fantasy, adorned in
mental riches, and later reassembled as constructions. Adult improvisation
substitutes for the child's 'story' an external pragmatic purpose, and just as a
child grabs what's in easy reach to mentally transform it into the furnishings
and landscape of a story, the improviser sees a solution to an external need
as a potential embodied in a
transformation of random surrounding objects.
It is the purest improvisations - the results of a purely pragmatic purpose: the
most immediate, economic, insightful, and (ironically)
untidied by aesthetic judgements - whose outcome is simultaneously
beautiful, visually fascinating, and pragmatic. Their
aesthetic aspect is compounded both of a mode of order analogous to the natural
(and thus an image of perfection) and
a fascinating collage of un-related
objects forced into cooperation in the service of an overriding practical
purpose (and thus a rich field of evocative conjunctions).
The objects shown below are those whose makers'
pleasure in gratutious wit and the adventures of fantasy is a motivation that
runs parallel to or even
overrides practicality (not however in the way that kitsch
does: falsifying meanings and value via quotations from memory [1]) but by
allowing (like a child at play) the acts of improvisation to evoke fantasy
discoveries and lead their performer through phantismagoric stories.
The first two examples
below reveal an almost even balance
between the two motivations: of fantasy journey and practical solution; in
subsequent examples fantasy expressiveness sometimes exceedes the practical.
...
in process
NOTE :
-
Re:
Kitsch 'llustration' of meanings and value - see previous section: GARDENS-
'TYPE-3: SIGNAGE'
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER & SEAT-ENCLOSURE
PLUS WOOD-STORES
(pic [1/10] 29-5-09 / to EEN)
This extraordinary 'monument' conjoins practicality and gratutious form-invention. The
agenda/motivation of its maker seem to go so far beyond a normal allotment's ad hoc
accumulation of facilities for work and rest, that I felt it could not be catagorised as (merely) a 'Nexus'. It seems as if an
overriding raison d'etre that is 'sculptural', subjective, monolithic, directed its making.
Encircling a quadrant of space at a plot's corner is a giant compost bin: a curved wooden trough, whose inner
face, elaborated with 'found' wood and extraneous objects, backs a strip of seating facing a 'forecourt' edged by plants.
It seems made by someone whose horticultural practicality cannot overwhelm
their aesthetic fascination with eroded wood, or their 'sculptural drive' to form a personally significant environment.
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER & SEAT-ENCLOSURE
PLUS WOOD-STORES
(paste-up 2-pics [2/10] 31-5-09 / to E)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER &
SEAT-ENCLOSURE
(paste-up 2-pics [3/10] 20-1-11 / to EES)
This practical-'sculptural' invention of compost bin, seat, enclosure seems
unchanged since my first visit, however on subsequent visits there have been
gratuitous 'decorative' additions. Its like a jay's nest, bits of 'attractive'
material are woven into the practical structure. This time a long orange pipe is
curled along and through the whole back row of poles and supports.
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER &
SEAT-ENCLOSURE - NORTH END
(pic [4/10] 20-1-11 / to S)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER
&
SEAT-ENCLOSURE - SE CORNER
(pic [5/10] 28-8-10 / to N)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOOD & IRON COMPOSTER &
SEAT-ENCLOSURE - FROM REAR
(pic [6/10] 28-8-10 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOODEN COMPOSTER & SEAT-ENCLOSURE - FROM REAR PATH
(pic [7/10] 29-5-09 / to W)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOODEN COMPOSTER & SEAT-ENCLOSURE PLUS TREE-STORE
- FROM REAR PATH
(paste-up 2-pics [8/10] 31-5-09 / to NW)
.
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOODEN COMPOSTER / SEAT-ENCLOSURE / PLANK-STORE FROM REAR PATH
(pic [9/10] 31-5-09 / to SSW)
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GUN SITE: NEXUS - WOODEN COMPOSTER - NORTH END
(pic [10/10] 29-5-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - CENTRE-PLOT FENCES ETC.
(pic [1/12] 19-5-09 / to NW)
This person does everything in a
spirit of 'pragmatic-play', thus everything he makes (even with minimum
attention) is simultaneously practical and aesthetic ... even the hose is held against the plot's perimeter in rhythmic waves across
its background mesh of fence (like a gridded graph). Here [unlike the previous
example] the 'aesthetic' aspect
is in fact an inevitable
''value-added' consequence of the
exercise of very pure improvisational practicality rather than an outcome of what is
commonly called 'artistic
talent'.
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GUN SITE: FRANK - JUNK-CAGE FOR PLANTS
(pic [2/12] 1-6-09 / to NE)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW & PLOT-JOINING ARCH
(pic [3/12] 19-5-09 / to NNE)
This
spookily active scarecrow is moved around the plots, always placed in relation to
objects that represent a possible task, always in mid-gesture, never a static
statue [ref: pic below] and always holding a beer-can: "for
authenticity". Peripherally
glimpsed, this crippled ghost must frighten humans more than birds - forming a
phantasmagoric image for a different class of creatures must surely be mostly
wishful thinking. .
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW
(pic [4/12] 31-5-09 / to SE)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - TWO SCARECROWS (STRAW-HAT & MOP-HEAD)
(paste-up 2-pics [5/12] 28-8-10 / to NW)
When
I first saw these figures I experienced a shock of fear because they did not
move. Their postures are so life-like because they imply motion, but caught as
if in a stopped film. It seemed, on the deserted allotment with no audience
but me, actors had been employed to pose as if in motion but like statues. My
'location interpreter' was challanged and panicked my flight impulse (are birds
likewise wired ?!).
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GUN SITE: FRANK - TWO SCARECROWS (STRAW-HAT & HOODIE)
(pic [6/12] 28-8-10 / to EES)
There were three of these almost-beings, their differing styles of working effort
showed not only in their gestures but in every stretch and ripple of their
clothes. Note that the posture of Mr Straw-Hat seems different from the rear -
having passed and looked back he seemed to have moved, though still as
stopped as before - there was a sort of horror there as if at any moment they
would begin!
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW (STRAW-HAT)
(pic [7/12] 28-8-10 / to NNW)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW (MOP-HEAD)
(pic [8/12] 28-8-10 / to EES)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW (MOP-HEAD)
(pic [9/12] 28-8-10 / to WWS)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - SCARECROW (MOP-HEAD)
(pic [10/12] 28-8-10 / to WWN)
.
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GUN SITE: FRANK - FOUR SCARECROWS
(pic [11/12] 20-1-11 / to EEN)
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GUN SITE: FRANK - TWO SCARECROWS
(pic [12/12] 20-1-11 / to NW)
Both figures look down, as if
seriously concerned with working on the land. Their postures and gestures are
forcefully 'intentional':
Straw-Hat: His leg-shadow emphasising the front leg
bend(ing) as if in movement; his stretched arm - pulled by the long shovel threaded
through the sleeve wrist-strap - seems to reach and grab it, as if intending to swing
it to his left side to dig the new mulch he looks down at.
Racket-Face: His flattened trouser-leg
is extraordinarily (and coincidentally) like
'cubistic' illustration; his two legs are so perspectively different as to suggest
spatial movement; he gestures behind him as if discussing the treatment of
the plot.
The
figures relate to each other in what seems an intentional composition. The bodies slightly
bend towards each other, seemingly cooperative.
Straw-Hat's stretched arm and Racket-Face's flattened trouser-leg visually relate from top left to bottom right; Racket-Face's
thrust out arm and Straw-Hat's nearest leg visually relate from top right to bottom left. They work together in a visually dynamic
arrangment.
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GUN SITE: SCARECROW
(pic 19-5-09 / to NW)
This is a quite different
'scarecrow' - its a 'model' of a thing not a sensational action, however it is
quite fright-invoking because such a ...
in process
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ODD OBJECTS
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GUN SITE: WATER-TANK
(pic [1/2] 29-5-09 / to E)
Via this image our inherent
brain-geometry abstracts and displays an illusive spatial parallelogram !
(The string and the allotments' far boundary / the post and the pipe.)
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GUN SITE: WATER-TANK
(pic
[2/2] 29-5-09 / to EEN) An
exquisitely 'natural-in-the-circumstances' solution to an annoying problem:
the persistant springing of the tap's pipe outwards from the tank. Note
how such an un-elaborated solution unambiguously expresses and enables
interpretation of its purpose. By leaving its components and their
fabrication exposed to empathetic recognition and clearly demonstrating its
mechanics via its form, it has become a specific lesson in some
general principals and geometry of constructional mechanics and dynamics.
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GUN SITE: MESH CUBE
(pic 1-6-09 / to S)
The
(by allotment standards) newness and perfection of this large cube,
seemingly carlessly tossed like a lost ball, made
its appearence seem 'sudden' ! .
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^ Top
< ALLOTMENTS - p1: INTRO & ONE TREE
HILL <
INDEX
IMPROVISED-ARCH
IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
ALLOTMENT
IMPROVISATIONS - ONE TREE HILL / GUN-SITE
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - WANDSWORTH / KEW BRIDGE
VERNACULAR & STYLE - BERDUN, HUESCA
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE
- FRANK'S CAFE / SOUTHWARK LIDO
"HOME"
- MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS
'CUBIST'-COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
.
