{"id":1949,"date":"2018-06-23T21:52:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T20:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1949"},"modified":"2018-06-23T21:55:34","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T20:55:34","slug":"what-i-am-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1949","title":{"rendered":"What I am doing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote this statement in 2010. Nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

I am using this ‘credo’ as the basis of my new ‘great leap forward’ with the Thames art and technology idea..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Delineation of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTheory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122: An artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal statement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout my \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart-working\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 life some things have remained stubbornly, one might even say obsessively\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, constant. Be it in digital images as recently or in drawing or poetry and song I have remained constant in delineating a clearly \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmap-able\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 terrain. This terrain extends about 5 to 20 miles in radius of my hometown of Didcot in Oxfordshire, England. Always the poor relation of the illustrious centre of learning that resides but a stones throw away.<\/p>\n

There runs a hard core of intention throughout which draws on politics, ecological thinking and that obsessive returning to notions of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcplace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclandscape\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I regard my work as being a mapping of constant themes which recur sometimes years later. The River Thames is one theme and the Berkshire Downs another.<\/p>\n

Local folk tales and oral literature mined from local libraries another. A recent song \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHanging Puppet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 drew on one such \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctale. In fact one could describe it as artistic \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAnglocana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to differentiate it from Americana. I have written well over 2000 songs over the years. Mostly these are recorded in lo-fi versions and only really coming to life when in the hands of other more talented musicians (see the Moon Over the Downs CD 2003).<\/p>\n

Poetry has appeared in various magazines and in the Scottish anthology The Ice Horses (1996). I currently have at least 4 unpublished complete books of poetry on the shelf. One could describe my work as multi-disciplinary with a strong streak of green politics colouring the waters beneath.<\/p>\n

I have drawn on some clear influences in writing and art. Seamus Heaney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concept of a personal \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHedge School\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 going back to John Clare is one thread. My forebear\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal involvement in Agricultural Unions is another (see Skeleton at the Plough poems). I also am influenced by a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcworking class\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sense of writing picked up form Carver and Gallagher and other dirty realists. In song almost any Americana act would suffice.<\/p>\n

I am not American but I have strong American influences going back to Thoreau and Walden lake. To try and build an alternative \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEnglish\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 approach I have increasingly been drawn back to the English Civil War when the notions of science and arts were more fluid and interchangeable. As an example I would cite Robert Plot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Oxford a marvelous Natural History of Oxfordshire from 1677.<\/p>\n

In it one finds specimens such as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcStones that look like Horses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I draw heavily upon cultural geography theory post Williams and Berger and am heavily influenced by Patrick Keiller and David Matless.<\/p>\n

It is this kind of merging of scientific natural history and folk-lore terminology that I now most interested in both in poetry and artwork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this statement in 2010. Nothing has changed. I am using this ‘credo’ as the basis of my new ‘great leap forward’ with the Thames art and technology idea..   Delineation of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTheory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122: An artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal statement Throughout my \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcart-working\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 life some things have remained stubbornly, one might even say obsessively\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, constant. Be it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,81,98,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-poetry-research","category-psychogeography","category-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6nhh-vr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}