After christmas I started thinking about going back again to the idea of seperating up the canteen but doing it without tape but with a projection of lines instead. So I did a bit of research on where I would put the lines and why by taking a picture of the canteen every five minutes so as I could see where people were sitting and how they were moving around the space. I have already put up a few of the pictures I had, if you want to look at them they are way back when I started this blog. Anyway I was going to do this out then maybe as a video piece as the research had become more interesting than the actual idea I was planning to do but in the end I had to wait a while to learn how to do it out as a video and I became disinterested as seems to happen a lot to me!Possibly has something to do with my fast moving tv generation..

Around this time I was taking a lot of photos of my area, especially of things which I thought represented boundaries. I got a little carried away because I think around where I live is beautiful but I hope you like them.

After that I started thinking about things like owning a field and watched the film The Field, for anyone who doesn't know it it's about this man who was renting a field from a widow for the past 10 years or so the widow decides to sell it at auction and its bought by an american, the farmer isn't happy as he feels very strongly about the land that he has taken care of for years and does anything to get it back. In his want for keeping the land he loses everything else, even his sanity. So really i was going back again to the importance of ownership and how strongly people can feel about these things. I was thinking about field patterns and ownership of airspace and the sea the fact that these things are moving and ever changing yet countries claim ownership of these things, of nature itself and try to control them.

Okay so during a group crit ( where we all sit around telling each other what we are doing at the moment and give each other constructive criticism and suggestions) it was suggested that with these black squares that they become my own country which was what I was thinking and that I work them like a country as in they have their own laws, own flag etc. So I started thinking that I would base these laws on my own morals and this is what I came up with:

1. Thou shalt not kill
2. Thou shalt not steal
3. Thou shalt not commit adultery
4. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours goods
5. Treat your neighbour as you would like to be treated yourself- this last one is the most important to me as really it covers all bases- stealing, killing, adutery..

The punishment for breaking these laws is to be cast out of the country.

I was really interested with the way they all came out of the ten commandments, that wasn't intentional at all. I was brought up a catholic so I suppose thats so embedded in me that it can't help but stem out.

I'm calling my country 'The golden land' as my name in Irish means golden princess, or-laith. I was thinking the flag could be gold with a black cirlce in the middle representing unity and peace.

I started thinking that maybe the country didn't need to be a place but a state of mind and the citizens of the country would just wear a symbol to show where they are from kind of like the star of david was for the jews but obviously not so they could be persecuted! But then does it become more like a religion or a cult?I may need to explore this a bit more..

ps I will put up the pictures I took of the black squares around my area so you get an idea of what i'm thinking.

Another idea I had was to use the black tape again but to use it to make squares on the ground in public places so as to appropriate that space and say 'this is my space I own this'. I came up with idea from researching the changing boundaries of different countries, I was taking note of the fact that some rulers of a country would just decide that they wanted to own this land from another country and would plot and take it over. I wanted to take on the same style of appropriating land. I did try this idea on a small scale around the area where I live but to be honest I didn't really have the confidence to do it where I wanted to do it in towns and cities. I was afraid of being embarrassed but now I really want to make myself do this idea not only to have it as a piece of work but to force myself to come out of my comfort zone, though many might think that I'm not venturing very far outside but for me it would be a big step towards opening myself up to doing things in the public eye and not leaving things within the college.

So from here I started thinking about doing more physical interventions in a public space like I did with the wooden pallet, making people walk around something putting things in their way and so controlling their movements. I was looking at artists such as Richard Serra at the time. I started thinking about using large wooden poles (like smaller electric poles) and maybe casting them as I'd really gotten into casting things. But as these things go I went onto other ideas and put this one to the side, I'm thinking about going back to it though if I can though I might use other materials but with the same basic idea of controlling peoples movements.

I'm having problems putting up the pictures of the layouts I did with the cast but as soon as I can i'll put them up!

For our course we had to do classes in different things such as welding and casting so we could maybe generate ideas from knowing how to do these things and of course to expand our skills so I decided to cast my wooden pallet. Obviously I couldn't cast the whole entire thing so I decided to cast one plank and one wooden block and put them all together in the end. It was really interesting doing them as they turned out like the wooden planks and blocks just painted in white especially when alot of the wood splints would come out in cast. In the end I didn't put it all together as the casts weren't very strong and would fall apart when you tried to put nails through them. Amanda (my tutor) recommended that I try laying them out in this white bright space in the college so I could learn about how important a space can be to a piece of work in terms of how the work is presented. so I started trying out different layouts, different positions, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed just working with the space I took loads of pictures but I'm only going to put up a few examples..