Folkestone

In Folkestone, my mum and I celebrated her 65th birthday. We wandered along the beach and underneath the arches, revisited artworks from the Triennial, ate tiramisu cupcakes I had made, drank coffee, and watched a surfer trying to stand amongst the waves.

Yesterday also marked 25 years since the hurricane. I wonder how tall all the trees that were planted after that to replace those that fell, have grown.

Memory Marathon - Sunday

From Sunday at the Memory Marathon, I remember:

People wearing sandwich boards that said things like, "I will masturbate later darling".

Richard Wentworth and Lynette Yiadom Boakye both showed photos of their relatives.

Jacques Roubaud talked about a mnemonic hand. He's been a member of OuLiPo since 1966. "The art of forgetting is perhaps the most important part of the art of memory."

A piece of coloured paper was handed out by Alberto Garutti with the words: "Every step that I have taken in my life has brought me here, now."

I thought about that.. How one of the steps I took was reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland in 1994 from the library and it smelt of aftershave, and that somehow led me to here. Maybe I would still have attended this event even if that hadn't happened but maybe I wouldn't have.

Dimitar Sasselov talked about cosmic memory.

Alice Rawsthorn talked about design and memory, how design is an agent of change. As a designer, I am someone who changes things.

Fumihiko Maki showed different buildings he had designed.

Gilbert and George sang a song and then recited the Brussels alphabet.

China Miéville and Evan Calder Williams talked about salvagepunk, images of rubbish, of waste, and ampersands made of flies. I see flies when I see an ampersand now. &&&

Jan Szymczuk, a former police artist spoke about how he helps people remember so he can sketch suspects.

David Goldblatt talked about how he took people who had previously been convicted to where the crime happened and interviewed and photographed them. Only one was a monster, he said. He also photographed asbestos mines in South Africa.

There are videos of various talks online and the live blog also has some good quotes in it, so really, I don't have to try to remember everything about the Memory Marathon myself. Read: Memory Marathon blog. Watch: Douglas Coupland's talk and Michael Stipe's talk.