Session 3 The Proud Archivist and a new French Word

Today's lesson was at the proud archivist in dalstn, a lovely location, right next to the canal for a bourgeoisie overpriced coffee shop indeed, it seems like this will be a nice place to study this semester and i cant wait to see what's in store for us.

This lesson i learned a new word - 'derive', which means to explore a location in order to grasp as much detail about it as possible, so with that n mind i joined a few of my classmates and we went for a walk, or 'derive'.

We went on our derive along the canal, paying detail to every step of the journey and taking the time to take in the many normally disguised sights along the journey, the first thing we saw was what looked to be an old oven made out of bricks at the side on the canal, this, to me looked like a great place to cook some sausages at breaktime next week perhaps, or MAYBE we could get it running again and offer bbq food to passers by in exchange or a story about the area? or fill it with with firewood on a cold night and film who comes to stand by it for warmth?? FINAL PERFORMANCE IDEAS After taking in this sight we moved on, on our derive further along the canal, and stopped under a bridge to sing some songs in the greatly echoed surroundings of the tunnel,

we also noticed that the light when pictured at the tunnel from outside was completely different from the light when pictured inside.

and then headed past a vast amount of house boats which made my site-specific-ly tuned mind think about the meaning of home as a site to the people living on those boats, for most people  the notion of home is static in that your house is always in one location but in those peoples cases the idea of home as an area is constantly moving and fluid, just like the water itself. 

at the ed of the canal we came to a park that had inside a separate are with a children's Park where w stopped for a bit to eat (and to play on the climbing frames) then we came back to the proud archivist to re-group and there i met Jake whom i spoke to for a bi and then we decided to be partners in this project.

When we arrived back at the proud archivist we were asked to draw the journeys we had just made on a piece of paper, basically making a map of or our recent derive, so we began to draw a map of our journey using the pencils, maps and glue provided, but i got bored of the ingredients we were given as they did not represent my memory of what i had seen on my journey so i started using the salt brown sugar ( to represent the gravelly path on which we walked) and pepper, water and soggy tea bags (to represent the murky canal), amongst a few other things dispensable that i could get my hands on. I very much enjoyed this activity.

Images of the maps we made

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Session 2 Horrid Hoxton Hall

This week we met at Dalston library and discussed reading from last week ,we then talked as a class about our assigned walks, our daily commutes to university or work from a more detailed angle of the professional observer. It could be argued that EVERYONE is a professional observer but the distinction here is that instead of focusing on, and indeed heading towards and end goal, the focus is primarily, SOLELY on the journey, with maybe no specific end point at all.

 We arrived at Hoxton Hall and awaited to meet Lorna McGinty, a small, shy, librarian type lady wearing double layers to protect herself from the gusty coldness which i would soon find existed everywhere within Hoxton hall, who, upon arriving led us on a tour of the neglected and damp-smelling building. The building still looked as if it were stuck in the recent post-war era, as if someone decided that there would be no point in fixing up the place in case it got bombed again in an ensuing conflict.

I thought to myself that this looks like a rather dreary place, a place where once popular theater shows, after their twilight years, come to die, i tried to imagine what it would have looked like when it was active and being utilized 

Session 1

I missed this session due to my timetable not being up on UEL, but i cant it to start next week.