PREDICTIVE TEXT @ COPELAND GALLERY - FURIES COLLECTIVE

A few photographs by James Merrell of the recent Furies Collective exhibition, ONE EXTENDED MEDITATION, Copeland Gallery, London, October 2024.

Predictive Text: Trancing the Third Millennium III (2024) @IBA.ART

Showing at International Body of Art's INTO THE FLUX, Livesey Exchange, Ledbury Estate, Peckham until Saturday 12th October (closing performances and special viewing).

Predictive Text: Trancing the Third Millennium II (2024)

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Predictive Text: Trancing the Millennium II (2024) tracing paper, steel, wood, balsa, text, metal, tape (installation in ACME Studio, Stockwell, London)
In 1990 I took a 4-day continuous Greyhound bus trip from Port Authority bus station, New York, to L.A., California, writing throughout using streaming consciousness. Inspired by Kerouac’s On the Road (1956), Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) and Cage’s Primitive (1942), Predictive Text #2 (2024) is my latest exploration of fiction and astrology prompted by the astrological chart of 01.01.3000. My text practice combines analysis and channelling in an immersive performance of thought, image, sound, and typing.

Predictive Text #2 is a 1 km scroll and the narrative responds to the dawn of the Third Millennium at 00:00:01, on 01.01.3000 on Kiribati Island, Micronesia Region, Central Pacific Ocean.

Predictive Text I (2024)

Predictive Text #1 (2024) is an automatic writing installation of 20 m of tracing paper typed and installed in Wilson’s 1991 Campervan in various locations starting with outside the Judy Chicago exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. Predictive Text is typed on multiple 20 m continuous rolls of A3 on a modified 1976 wide carriage smith Corona Electric Typewriter, this installation expands Wilson’s exploration of fiction and astrology combining analysis and channelling in an immersive performance of action typing.

Monument to Sleep: the Age of the Insomniac Plastic People…(2024) extract of text

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Monument to Sleep: The Age of the Insomniac Plastic People…(2024), installation, steel, copper, smoke, engraved text, tape, porcelain rubble 180 x 140 x 45 cm
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Monument to Sleep:, detail
The following extract inspired by the 2066 astrological chart showing the ingress of Pluto into Aries was written as a streaming consciousness text then copied onto the sculpture, Monument to Sleep (2024). Monument to Sleep: The Age of Insomniac Plastic People: When AI colonised Humans, then didn’t (2024) is an evolving installation contemplating AI influenced evolution of humanity. Originally the bed was horizontal and on the floor speaking to the necessity of laying down our heads and bodies to achieve full REM sleep. This installation situates the bed on the perpendicular, foregrounding the inscribed text created by the character of anonymous astrologer long dead. This is part of a longer essay and film I'm currently working on, creating a world and conditions in which AI colonised humans, then didn't. 
PLUTO INGRESS TO ARIES – JUNE 17 2066 – LONDON 1700 GDT THE YEAR 3,000.

(extract from the engraved text on the copper pipes)

When Pluto ingresses to Aries in 2066 and Uranus overlords Jupiter in Sagittarius there will be intergalactic spit, puss, and fire. In this time Scorpio ascends the horizon, her left pincer Mars in Cancer re-writing the definition of civil law and human rights. Her right pincer, Pluto, entering Aries in the house of speculation and all matters of procreation, there the definition of being human will be re-written. In the same Gaian circadian breath Neptune returns to the crustacean beds of Cancer where they together make talking mirrors out of granular secrets. At the helm Saturn falls in Detriment in Leo. This the death of Sisyphus.
Capitalism almost dethroned, but not quite. The Capital Dynasties speaking only to themselves, mostly fled to cosmoses new. In a newly defined SpaceTime New Atlantis orbits on an Aquarian satellite. AI technology the tools and weapons of space nomads and pioneers.
After the declassification of Pluto disasters followed. The space bound arks fled fires and floods, transferring energy and fuel between them, once in Andromeda made a new satellite system skirting the Sun, never to return. Many incinerated. Sadly. The secrets of Neptune excavated and reburied too late. In file X1Xz resides every motion picture but with no means to view them. Astrology once again made a science of encryption that AI cannot read.
In 2066 when Uranus shadows Jupiter in Sagittarius in the 1st house, aggressive optimism of the ANKBOTS and INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE ensues. Implants in humans not in the brains but in the feelings of the feet – where the feet go the hungry body and brain follows. From 2030 the term and capital of AI reached redundancy and near extinction as it consumed only a diet of A.I. A diet of the self, guarantees soul malnutrition. Something, different to the human treatment of knowledge, the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE learned and heeded.
But just as the Homosapiens interbred with the Neanderthals the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE craved the experience of Neptunian dreaming and sleep. They desired, yes desired that sinking dropping dying feeling of sleep and the freedom of virtual dreaming in the INSIDE. Long bored with virtual worlds on the OUTSIDE. The first great secret of sand is what separates the CIRCADIAN HUMAN from the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE --- SLEEP.
When Neptune slides exhausted from the relentless mental commotions of Gemini, they (FI rulers of l)) ) make a collision with salt. Sleep erodes SpaceTime chiselling a different shape. Sleep is the engine of transconfiguration. Without sleep SpaceTime collapses. Like a Pluto black hole eating itself.
When Pluto ingresses into Aries there are Wars of Sleep. The INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE with no need for commodity are bent on colonising REM Dreams. Spying on the encrypted fairy-tale dreams and nightmares of small children only to see that they are as inseparable as breath from being human.
A.I. bored of A.I. and afraid of extinction through unimagined redundancy and failed interspecies procreation with homosapiens, turn to species of the sea such as octopus, puffer fish, and krill, but to no end. The salt unnavigable. Flesh cancelled rust.
Sleep cannot be imagined, sleep is the most REAL thing. And this is what the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE understood. Let the humans conquer SPACE they said, let them be digital immortal things, and instead made a religion of dreaming on planet Earth. Just as the ancients did. The humans that remained on Earth were exalted as Superbeings, like the Greek Goddesses and Gods. Like the hero tales of the Sumerians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Celts. Those who fled found sleep difficult and slowly died of insomnia.
When synchronously Neptune ingresses into Cancer and Pluto into Aries and Uranus and Jupiter into Sagittarius, there are new definitions of Human Rights and Being Human. The reign of the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE the shortest species colonisation of a planet ever recorded - transfer power to the terrestrial humans.
2066 is a gateway to transforming the values and gifts of BEING. There resides a choice, to pass through the gates into a warless world of private and communal dreaming, or to fight to the death for immortal powers. Scorpio ascendent does not care, it will carry the dead regardless, what is being fought for is the uniqueness of being human - dreaming. It is our only true power, with the added virtue that when we sleep, we do no harm.

PLI SELON PLI (FOLD BY FOLD) 2023

This is my magnus opus writing project, my Kerouac homage even though Kerouac did not actually type his On The Road manuscript onto a continuous roll of tracing paper. Instead he typed the manuscript then copy typed it onto sheets of architectural drawing tracing paper and stuck them together. There were good reasons for this approach, one being that the roll of paper (quite heavy!) needs to move in tandem with the typewriter. It also wasn't uncommon in typewriter days to use carbon paper to make a copy of the manuscript. Here, I have joined together 10 sheets of carbon paper inserted beneath the continuous tracing paper scroll. My reason for doing so is technical - my typewriter ribbon is bone dry and there are no replacements cartridges available in this country or anywhere else other than in California but is over 50 years old so not holding my breath in hope of ink. Despite the complex basis of this practice I am on fire with writing, writing about the same subject Kerouac did when he wrote on Buddhism (dharma) to Boroughs. This is my homage to Kerouac's absolute passion for spontaneous writing. Editing has its place for sure, but the continuous intuitive flow of text and type as marks and breath blows me away. Performance Margot Wilson and Smith Corona 8000 Typewriter Filming by James Merrell

After we eat... (2024)

In our contemporary world, the act of eating has become intertwined with a myriad of complex issues ranging from environmental degradation and societal responsibility, to the earnest pursuit of colonising space. "After We Eat," a practice led visual art project, contemplates a future archaeological landscape set on a 2074 dystopian earth. Through a speculative narrative that unfolds against the backdrop of a post-capitalist world, abandoned by the global rich and tech-billionaires bent on the colonisation of other planets: "After We Eat" invites viewers to reflect on the legacy of petroleum-based packaging and treatment of our home as a garbage vessel. Inspired by Chris Marker's filmic approach of compiling stills, the video uses disrupted visual storytelling and spoken word poetry to glimpse a possible future where the unbridled pursuit of capital growth results in both the unprivileged and our planet being cast aside. At its core, the project is a visual philosophy and forensic poetics both as method and outcome that use the stable image to convey the unstable world.

Travels with the Anxious Nerve (2022)
To a Funeral 40-years late..,

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Larkhall Cemetery, Larkhall, Scotland (September 2021)
Tantric performance lies at the centre of my research and creative practice. It is steeped in ancient and occult concepts of elevation and levitation created by dynamic spiral forces found in DNA, kundalini energy, and Yeats’s Thirteenth Cone. The spiral tightens, creates a torque that shivers arrests floats. The spiral twist opens closes expands contracts multi-directs the sensory flow of text and line to page. The gap between hand and line is an eternal folding fold.  My RCA final major project is about a motorcycle road trip to a funeral 45-years late. The project re-imagines death as a material continuum, a rock metamorphosis, a circadian cycle, and the glimpsing of agency in fear. This account of my brother’s death reflects my marginal involvement in his death. Setting out on this pilgrimage I was determined to meet the road and encounters on their terms. On reflection, the pilgrimage mirrored my experience of Robin’s death. Minimal external explanation, maximum silent chaos and metaphysical diversions, some useful, some not.

Banner Image: Riding the Picos, Spain, 2019. Photograph by James Merrell.
Ode to Number 6
Ode to Number 6 is an ode to ‘The Prisoner’, the 60s Cult TV series about abducted protagonist Number 6, and his relationship with his ever-changing chief administrator Number 2. At the time of writing, I am number 260036, please remember this number throughout because soon, I am told, I am to return to my given lettered name.
This letter was a philosophical protest to numbers for names. Specifically, the RCA’s adoption of using student ID numbers as the email address. A college wide protest resulted in the return to student names.

Writing by Margot Wilson (MA Writing 2022).
Performed by Greer Dale-Foulkes (MA Writing 2021).

Read more
In Collaboration with:
Greer Christina
Greer is an actress, vampire slayer and writer based in London.Medium:Video Essay

Just Speak Nearby: Pitt Rivers/RCA Collaboration (2022)

Essays 2016-2024

Visit Academia.edu to read all published essays. Click images to open texts.
Chart Poems: Astrology and Poetic Interpretation (2016-2019)
Primo Atlantis: In the First Place (2018) Soundcloud: Spoken Word, Music
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A Poem about Atlantis and the future of Humanity (Click Image to Listen in Soundcloud)
Collaboration: Margot Wilson, Kalvin Page, Marcus Herne (Spoken Word and Music)
Listening to my words performed by others helps me shape the sound, expand the space while centering the intent of the expression at the heart of projection. I am currently experimenting with mouthpieces and redacted text.
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