trading places tracing lines

This Image is of Conni Blom in a studio space in moscow - a very strange experience - one of many and one that I still don't really inderstand the significance of. I took the photo and didn't see him in it until I had enlarged the image two weeks later, in the computer.

I think this is where my idea about an exchange of self portraits started, but perhaps this was so subconscious that I am trying to do something artists wont want to.

The exchange of images and ideas that has been going on as part of the Passion for the Real started me thinking about Fair Trade in Art, we have been very trusting and generous to each other. Is this is because of the innate desire artists seem to have to share their work and want approval, response and affrimation that their ideas convey something more than just self interest?

I have been going into galleries, studios and cafes in UK to both exchange and collect work, self protraits mainly, to be included in the Fair Trade Art Project. This has produced intersting responses form all contributors and thos who don't want to contribute. I have had to both justify and think through the idea in detail, which should mean it is refined and more relevant to more people.

Until I had selected this portion of the image I had not seen the link to the icon shapes already there as well - how much subconscious is at work all the time.

New Language

The previous entry had a strange combination of fonts - somehow I couldn't resolve this or ran out of energy, I apologise if this affected your reading of the blog.

This is another image of the workshop I ran at the Dascha, with Conni Blom moving the whole 'page'.

I have been reading work by Nicolas Bourriaud, 'Relational Aesthetics' and 'Post Production' which is explaining the actions that I do and which Janette is doing with communities in LIverpool. The work is 'to consider interhuman exchange an aesthetic object in and of iteslf' except that our work is not purely about human exchange but about the living world, the non-human inhabitants as well the human.
I read Bourriaud in French to start with - simply because that is how I came across it first of all. I found it very strange to read it in English, there were some discrepancies between the original and the translation so I tried to do my own, but some phrases just could not be put into English. Somehow that is an expression of what I am doing in my work. There are gaps in both in the expression and the understanding, but this is not negative - just a different way to see and understand the world.