Artivism Community Project

After another couple of visits to Armley Mills, the artivism project is really starting to come along. I've finished my puppet head! As creepy as it is I am definitely proud of it and love it a little too much.. We've been asked to create a story for our character, or give them some qualities or anecdotes that we have either taken directly from a particular memory or have based around an item, a smell, an object that has or has had a place in our lives.

Every time I travel anywhere I always keep the tickets, I've got a mountain of discarded train tickets in my drawer - I don't know why I keep them but I just can't bring myself to ever throw them away. It's as though I'll be able to hold on to the memories I had in a particular place better if I have the physical object that allowed me to get there in the first place. Of course this isn't true - I couldn't possibly rifle through my ticket stash and tell you exactly what I did on each trip but every new "tickets please.." I am adamant that I will try. So the combination of this/these memories (or lack of) and the general appearance of my hairy-nosed old man has led me to believe that this guy is a ticket inspector, or was at some point - probably in the 'olden days' though because I can't imagine him traipsing up and down an East Coast shit heap.

The next stage of the project is to create a wicker structure to house our puppet heads that we will eventually decorate with relevant objects/imagery/text. The whole thing will encapsulate the thoughts, feelings and senses we want to get across from our 'memory'. Throughout this whole process Shari has been documenting the sessions through video, photography and sound recording and is compiling everything into one final moving image that incorporates our collective journey and creates a narrative by combining each individual 'memory'. This video will then be projected onto our structures (the main skin of the 3d pieces are made from wet-strength tissue which has a certain luminosity that is perfect for projection) to create the final exhibit-able piece.

So far, so good.