Wednesday, December 15, 2010

DIY MANIFESTO (1st DRAFT)

Manifesto of DIY counter culture as relevant to the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

Background of DIY counter culture.

DIY is a contemporary countercultural movement whose roots can be traced back to the Dadaist, Situationist and Punk movements. DIY can be practiced, both in a wider community and politics based sense, as well as on a personal level as a means of bypassing existing dominant ideologies within society. DIY has been facilitated by the advent of creative technology (e.g. editing and recording software, video camera and digital communication) becoming more widely available to the general public. As a result the means of distribution has been returned to the worker or creative.

What DIY is for the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

DIY is non-prescriptive by its very nature. As a result any attempt to construct a DIY manifesto might be viewed as paradoxical. However, this manifesto caters solely to my views and what DIY means to me. This, in itself may be viewed as an act of DIY.

1. DIY is a clever escape mechanism, social parachute and common sense injection that should be administered when there is a waft of oppression in the air.
2. DIY doesn’t think outside the box. The box isn’t an issue for DIY.
3. Do-It-Yourself.
4. ‘Don’t waste time doing things you hate.’
5. I think therefore I think I am: nothing is a given.
6. Fuck Health and Safety. The future is a concept we use to avoid being alive today.
7. DIY is trying to become lucid within the dream.
8. DIY is not a set of clothes.
9. DIY would like to associate itself with such ventures as ‘non-prescriptive suggestion’, ‘attempting to live in the moment’ and ‘the pursuit of a value system which places direct experience over money and societal responsibility e.g. getting a mortgage, owning a television etc.’
10. No one should feel obligated to jump on the DIY bandwagon. DIY is not Jesus.
11. DIY acknowledges Robert M. Pirsig’s theory of the Metaphysics of Quality. ‘For every fact there is infinity of hypotheses.’
12. DIY acknowledges eastern philosophy and ‘letting go’ just as it does John N. Greys theory of the illusion of progress i.e. ‘No political system will deliver man from that which binds him.’
13. DIY is a self-referential analytical framework situated in the determinist aesthetic criteria. This is present within the domain centralizing the permutative paradigm shifts in social interstice via epistemological praxis… No wait, its not.
14. So many definitions runs the risk of making the term do-it-yourself arbitrary.
15. Write-Your-Own-Manifesto

Artist Statement

Utilising the tools and philosophy of DIY, my work is a personal reaction to the world around me. Images, thoughts and emotions stemming from subjects such as music, peer community and relationships manifest themselves in the medium of art.

Having established my own aesthetic I work with a wide range of media including drawing, 3d work and video.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Alan vs. Giraffe

"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time or any length of time you wanted to have, and you would naturaly as you began on this adventure of dreams you would fulfil all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive and after serveral nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say 'wow that was pretty great'. Now let's have a dream which isn't under control where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would do that and come out of that and say 'wow that was a close shave wasn't it' and then you would get more and more adventureous and you would make further and further gambles as to what your dream, and finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usSHBgeE_ks

Sunday, March 28, 2010

D.I.WHY?

The following is a catalogue I put together, to give myself an overview of my work in (almost) chronological order so far. I did this because I feel I need to pin point what it is I am trying to do in my own practice, hopefully this will help... also it looks nice...

Friday, March 19, 2010

Old bits from sketchbooks i wanted to save...

'The 90’s and 00’s will seem so long ago. The future will come and we will look back at the past the same way our own parents do now. If we don’t live our lives how we want, we will regret it when we are old… and we will be old, and grey. That’s exactly why we have to live as we should and want and need to. Our children and their children- generations- the future; its’ imminent so do whatever. Fuck justifying everything you are. You are living in a memory. I am going to get old and look back. ALL WE HAVE IS RIGHT NOW.'
_____________________________________
'Living is subjective… But living in limerick is something else. Any remote scent of ambition is quickly snubbed out. LIMERICK IS A VEGITARIAN SNAKE BEING FED IT’S OWN TAIL.
Living is what you make of it! Limerick is ‘Countdown’ after yer man died. LIMERICK IS THE STRAIGHT TO DVD SEQUEL TO DUBLIN! Limerick is… ‘Gimme out yer phone!’
_____________________________________

'Do not live in fear. DO NOT, NOT DO! Did curiosity kill the cat 9 times?
‘Here is a bouquet of flowers to help pass the hours,
An exchange for change,
Stop, release- reform.
Inconsequential is as does.’
So very weird. I tried to think of nothing there for ages, just to meditate on it and I started eliminating all the external sounds and stuff and I could hear my heart beat and breathing way clearer after a while. Then everything started feeling fuzzy but I didn’t follow through when it got intense.
‘Words in print, on plinth.
Encapsulation via plentification.
Doing away with poetry and all man’s invention.
For it never was and always will be.
Where to begin?'
There is no telling how many us’es existed previous. If the universe is ageless and infinite this could have all happened before. Lifetimes lived and vanished. Celestial books in long gone libraries. When you remove the mystical and are left with the purely physical, something happens.
Certainty: nothing matters.
Ensuing: depression.
Solace: in endless possibility?'
__________________________________

The artist says; ‘Art is a system which claims not to be a system. The writer says; ‘This just won’t do!’.
The artist uses a variety of medium to convey a sense of something intangible. The artist does not want to tell the viewer how to see his work or to experience it as he did, because there is no way someone else will ever see it that way. The artist wants the viewer to come to their own decision on their own terms.
The ‘artist’ is very skeptical of art , but he is not a skeptic. After reading the last sentence he now feels like a moany bitch. He has won the Turner and Noble art prizes.

Monday, March 15, 2010

'Doing It Yourself' is trying to become lucid in this dream. Post mystical spirituality.'

Friday, February 26, 2010

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Nature Walk - Short Story

(picture removed because it was shit)

It was ten to six and David Attenborough was coaxing the frigit birds over the atlantic, pacific, baltic or something.

'Did you see yer father today' air from her black lungs.

This stumps me. The phylosophical implications of such a statement are beguiling and many. I am overwhelmed. I don't answer.

'I was away today I said already'

'Did you see yer father'

Well I thought I made myself perfectly clear. Of course, I didn't. It's like playing a game of chess, with the other person playing tennis. Nothing can come of it. Shouting silence at each other into the bare eternity. I have to leave myself behind for a moment.

'Nah, I didn't...'

'How is there so many there?'

She has of course fogotten the question she just asked me and changed the subject with a new question.

'How is there so many there'

The frigits are amassed and the zoom is fully flexed, filling the screen with white grey feathers and black dot eyes. All is silent for Attenboroughs calm entries.

'How is there so many of anything' I finally say.

She never knows how to answer these ones. I close my eyes make it all black and leave for a while. If only there was a lens on us then it would all be fine. This scene would have been left behind long ago and instead the focus would be on the drama of the penguins. Not the static of the humans. We are too good at this and i need to leave. To the bat cave!

As if he psychicaly intercepted my thoughts from the shed, the dog is situated in front of the glass, salivating and oblivious. Salivating and enlightened. Look at you. My boyhood wish to be a cartoon dog carrying a bindle, running away from home peaks its' head.

'Out, out!'

The only two words he understands. Big head on him. It's fucking freezing I tell him as I open the door. He doesn't seem bothered. Afix the leash, and we are off. We leave David and the wildlife in sitting room and head outside.

I usually take David Attenborough to the immediate right when we go for a walk. Thats also the dogs name. Sir David Attenborough. This time we go left and twoards the river bank. The sun is setting fast through the haze of piss rain. And I'm enjoying the darkness. It's that kind of suburban dark. Where everything looks like the lads at Warner spent loads on the lighting effects. My feet are already wet but my shoes are so tight I don't really mind.
We walk for several minutes along the river and come to the T junction at the trees. I let him urinate and flood the estate. The homeopathic rain and piss puddle dribbles to my toes. I look up to see the last bus sail past, anchors raised. Instead of following the street lights twoards the main road we take the dark tar path by the trees. I am fairly positive I have never been down this road and since I can't remember anything else about the day so far I welcome the offshoot. All aboard the SS Attenborough.

The path gets progressivly dimmer save the glimmer of the city pink. Davids coat is slick now and my layers are damp. I turn around and can no longer see the T junction or lights behind us. David looks up at me as if to say 'Who cares?'. As we move on I start to notice that the black mirror water has rissen. Sir Davids' legs are submerged and I'm up to my ankles. We must be on low ground, in a valley. I finger the coins in my pocket as I look for a penny. The bronze cap, is dim in my hand. I flick it into the mirror in the distance and watch the ripples race twoards me. Small and indistinct at first then wide and sparse, gaining momentum. The first hump like a miniturised hawian high tide dissapears beneath my hand. The leesh snaps. I look to David. He is now swimming in the murky. He looks back at me as if to say 'I told you I could swim'. If a dog could look smug this was a smug looking dog. He bobbed away from me twoards a tree about twenty feet ahead.

'Come back you idiot!'

I'm wading at this point trying in vain to match his stride. I can see where the trunk meets the mirror there is a hole. One of those holes they usually fill in with cement to kill the tree. David swims into the hole and the darkness covers him. My legs are cumbersome and slow motion in the blackness. I reach into the hole with one hand on the trunk propping my frame. I only feel wet bark and the roof of the crevas. I look down at my hand to see the soaking half leash and throw it in the water.

'David! Where are you?' All is silent for my bark.

'David'

I can hear his reverb yelp. The rain tap dances my eyes shut and spasming as I look up the trunk.

'How did you get up there?'

David stands atop the wirey ash tree, victorious. His remaining leash fluttering like a cape in the gael.

'How the shit did you get up there? Jesus fuck!'

He is panting with a big smiley head on him. He sits down and surveys the land.

'David! Down Here! Come Down! Down you cunt!'

He turns around and grabs something in his mouth. The water is rising to my chest. With a flick of his head he lobs me a rope. Its soaking and full of knots.

'What? Do you want me to climb up?'

Finding a foothole at the top of the roots i start to pull myself skywards. The rain lashing and blanketing all now. The bark is wet and untrustworthy but my shoes do most of the work. Davids' ominous glare getting ever closer. The splash makes rivers between his eyes and down his ears. He flicks his paw and I'm up. There's barely enough space for the two of us. He doesn't seem bothered.

'Fuckin' hell David'

I rub his skull and look around. The estate is somewhere else now. David knows this as well as I do. A mass gutteral howl in the distance makes our ears prick. A football stadium worth of bodies are venting at the moon. Syncranised and fierce. The rumble rattles me to my core. It's an amazing sound and it disapates as fast as it came. We share eyes and turn back to the sky. The pink from the city flickers and halts. The majesty of the night makes itself known and I think of that bit in the lion king when the clouds become Simbas' father. I should have told her 'Yeah I saw my father in the clouds today'.

Monday, February 1, 2010


Bad taste in mouth,
exes in my eyes,
doubt bombs in floorboard sea,
fine without all this CGI,

Spent the night spent,
and spilled your signs... all over myself,
myth makes matter missing the optimism and our time by the water,
she has your eyes,

You make it so everyone else... rationaleometer is fucked,

Friday, January 22, 2010

'A cabin, some firewood, a beach, some meat, a couch, ten sheets, a HD16, smoke signals, snow and sun and rum'