part five
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proposal one - "stomping ground" a short film in hardy’s novel 'the well-beloved' the main character jocelyn revisits his old home after time away in london: "what had seemed usual in the isle when he lived there always looked quaint and odd after his later impressions…" - hardy, thomas; the well-beloved, macmillan london ltd, new wessex edition, 1975, page 3

there were parallels with my own life, having come from a small mining village and now living in london. i wanted to make a piece of art about returning to what was once my ‘home’. back to familiar territory, back to my ‘stomping ground’ as we used to say. i did the gig with a guy called ben, an ‘urban cowboy’ who sings a warped kind of country and western. seeing him on stage i got the idea for a short film. here is a possible excerpt: long shot from the front of the class from teachers view. one of the schoolchildren is wearing ben’s cowboy hat. he is staring into space. leaning against the wall at the back, propped up by his guitar, we see ben reading a book. we don’t know what he’s reading but it’s probably a story about a young african boy who lives in a desert. a boy whose head is full of ideas. or maybe it’s about hiawatha. we cut to the teacher who is wearing an arronbone patterned suit. he shouts at the boy in the hat; "mark, are you listening?!…what page are we on?!" the boy fumbles with his book, he has no idea. he’s probably been thinking about how much he likes to lay on his back and watch the clouds. we pan across the classroom slowly and fix the camera on ben’s face. we zoom in to see the same lost look of the child. cut to long shot. he closes the book carefully and purposefully. he then moves slowly from the back of the class. the camera follows him. when he gets to mark he places the book in front of him then takes his hat back. fixes it on his head, lifts it a fraction out of habit. then heads for the door. the camera follows him and the fixes on the door frame. ben exits out of shot. we then see the class follow him holding hands in twos in a quiet orderly procession. the teacher is the last to leave. they’re heading to the sports hall for a music lesson from ben… (the teacher will end up working in a call centre after he retires…)

proposal two - "the metal detectors" a video projection/sound installation images of metal detectors on a beach near portland will be projected on and off at one second time intervals to the marc bolan song ‘metal guru’

proposal three - "walk away/walk on" a short film a man and woman are arguing noisily on a grass verge just off a busy street. the woman starts to raise her voice. she is shouting something about how he ‘dragged’ her there.

the argument becomes physical. there is a struggle, the woman is thrown to the ground. she calls to a passer by to phone the police. the passer by walks towards them directing his question towards the woman, "are you ok? is everything all right etc." the man then turns his anger towards the passer by. he starts to shove him and push him, shouting violently "come on then?! do you want some?!" etc. at which point a monkey descends slowly from a tree. the monkey is singing in a folk-style… "you’re a frog you’re a frog while i sing and dance like a leopard my stride is my wilderness of freedom" he jumps on the mans back and covers his eyes. the man begins to spin to try and shake off the monkey. he starts screaming. he is terrified. they spin and spin. the monkey just keeps on singing. the passer by and woman stare in disbelief. after what seems like a lifetime, a voice from a window up above is starts shouting, "just walk away! just walk away!…". the monkey and the man spin. the monkey keeps on singing. the man at the window continues to shout, "just walk away!" the woman and the passer by now walk away, very slowly, in different directions. (fade out to matt munro’s version of ‘walk away’)

proposal four - "tarantula" a video projection/sound installation a computer program will be written to choose colours at random from the single pixels of a digital image of a turner painting. the chosen colour will be projected as a whole screen. these colour fields will be flashed up at regular intervals to the sound of an air ambulance.

proposal five - "village mentality" an exhibition a coach will be hired to take a group of artists from london to my ‘hometown’ of royston - an ex-mining town in the north of england.

it will be a pseudo-anthropological trip into the back of beyond, sort of like a 19th century journey into the ‘heart of darkness’. royston as a place like hardy’s portland that has "been for centuries immemorial the home of a curios and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs and singular customs, now for the most part obsolescent" xxii i want to put up a tent in the back garden of our council house. the artists will hopefully respond in various ways to the place and then we will have an exhibition called ‘village mentality’ that would take place in both london and royston.

	proposal six - "fire dick" a short film a short film the local hospital, now closed, was recently set on fire. black clouds are belched up.
i went to photograph it. i photographed the burning hospital with a digital camera. it can store up to 96 images. i held the camera still and took about 9o images at one second intervals. these images will be played back in sequence at similar intervals to make a short animated film. the soundtrack will be bach’s ‘cello suite no.1 in g major’.

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