'Spending a week being an Artist': Day 2. Think, Read, Write, Research Day. Followed by movie-making in the city evening.

Day 2:

am. David Blandy replies to tweet.

@SadieEdginton Thanks for coming along. Glad it made some sense.

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Activity 1.
All artists sit in coffee shops for hours. I will brainstorm 'what do artists do?'

- Ask this question to 10 people.
- Organise meetings.
- Make meanings out of everything
- Think too much
- Go to artist talks/ debates/ gallery openings and millions of artist only sociallising activities.
- Have a studio
- Do research trips to exhibitions, museums and weird sites out of London, like Dungeness.
- If you were in a spoof film of a young artist what would you do?
- Minimal work- screw up a ball or paper, make a blob of blue tack, paint a white canvas white.
- Sit in a coffee shop writing in notebooks [like this]
- Talk about themselves and their ideas too much.
- Photograph and document everything.

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Activity 2. Write weekly plan.

Day 1. Take photos of everything of notice, particularly signs and symbols, hand-written things, and look for hand-writen notes on floor. Everthing has potential meaning, you are a performer in a narrative. Photograph everything.

Day 2. Make list of tasks- write on paper, follow/ switch/ pick out of a hat.

Day 3. Chance creator;
- Newspapers
- Internet
- Dice
- Maps
Use chance to decide actions, loosen up work, create, make produce without thinking too much. Let go.

Day 4. Ask people for tasks. Email, twitter, text. Should they choose timing as well? Photograph, over-blog, over-record everything. every 1/2 hour record what you're doing.

Day 5. Go with instinct. Be at studio from 10am to 5pm

NO INTERNET!

make make make. Instinct, materials.

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Activity 3. Write out tasks for doing later in the week:

RECORD feelings now

TAKE photos obsessively of one thing

OPEN a book/ newspaper/ mag- put finger on a word, draw what it makes you think of.

WALK following a set rule- 20 steps forward, 2 roads left, 1 right. Get lost.

CLOSE your eyes. Open write a paragraph of the first thing you see.

PHONE someone random by counting down 26 people on your contact list. Talk to them for at least 5 minutes.

TWEET 5 live actions you did today in a row.

TALK to someone random on the street. Ask them 'what does an artist do?'

LEAVE something you found, somewhere else, where it wouldn't normally be.

FIND an object, look at all found objects you see, collect them, and create an archive.

BE encompass this idea of an 'artist' that you always had, or wanted to be.

DRESS like an artist.

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Activity 4. Go to the Homerton Library. Find some starting points.

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Activity 5. Look for books on female artists.
[I have done this before in Kentish Town library. I found none.]

Found Lee Miller, Georgia O'keeffe and The Daring Book for Girls.

There were two Lee Miller books, and two Georgia O'Keeffe books. No other books on women artists were available in the library this day.

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Activity 6. Look at other books that jump out at you.

William Eggleston. Brilliant. Not technically an artist, but the kind of photographer I want to channel for a day. And the idea of a guide- a theme that keeps appearing recently. A guide through images.

Handwritten. Expressive lettering in the digital age.

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Activity 7. Take photos of empty Library moments.

Surely this place won't survive the influx of 'ideas' stores and concept library.

lonely chair, broken blinds

Bars over toilet window in case you try to escape.

I feel trapped. Today is hard. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm wasting time all day. Libraries are uninspiring places where unemployed people go. Or artists with no work. They shouldn't be like this.

I feel clautrophobic.

Lock on main toilet door. Too keep people out or in? Is it a house at night?

Decide to get the hell out of the library, and go to the studio like all artists should.

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Activity 8. Cycle to studio. Look for images of meaning on the way.

[Keep scrolling down till you hit her face]

Spot the artist 'leading ladies' campaign in Artists capital of London, Hackney Wick

Shame her face got shortened.

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The Artist's Studio of modern times.

Get nothing done.

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Train Hackney Wick to Stratford, Stratford to Bank.

Misty hopeless unemployed aimless Hackney Wick.

'Journey across the Olympic Park' part 1

'Journey across the Olympic Park' part 2.

Weird. The train we got on sunday 12.30pm when Louise Ashcroft did aimless guide to a captive audience.

But I get on central Line, to get somewhere with life and busy people.
[I think this is why I can't live in the countryside]
Only 1 day not working and its all doom and gloom.

An accidental mark on a Central Line train floor.

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Arrive:

55. Gracechurch street

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'DEPARTURE inside

look up

[like a wooley jumper I have. I'll wear it.]

spinning doors seem to be everywhere. what do they mean? what can I DO WITH THEM.
sorry caplocks just turned on then.
[especially symetrical ones that say closed both ways.]