Had the pleasure of collaborating on a short film project with film maker Mark Mc Keown and artist Jim Mc Kevitt. I like to think all our collabs are of equal contributions to any project but Marks the heart and brains behind this one. Its a more involved and complex procedure than I had expected. In my own limited creative experience I am used to controlling what is produced on a blank page. Less so if I am script writing, more so if I am writing and drawing. Or at the very least I try to give the notion of creative world building in a shared project, which ultimately most creative endeavours end up being. So the filmic experience engenders trust in anothers creativity and such things rise or fall in how successful a project is left at the end. And this one really made me happy with the outcome.
Mark really believes in getting in there and delivering art that requires no gate keeper to enter. You go in to his work in much the same way you approach territories new which you have to adapt your internal compass to areas which are startingly familiar and yet possessed of a haunting liminal quality. There are so many everyday sights and sounds we tune out on a daily basis but these things are the soundtracks of our lives. Light ripples beautifully on thoughtlessly polluted local rivers and streams. Wind moves through swaying treetops surrounding abandoned buildings and factories graphitied back in to the corner of our shared vision. These and many more effects we selectively delete but Mark sees them and puts them into short films. Films that record, rewire and illuminate. His vision and sound combine in this one that cause my words to ripple as he lays them down. It was not intended by me to sound poetic but as he aurally rewired it he came damn close. Playing with visions from one of Jim Mc Kevitts many artbooks. I've seen them, Ive felt the pages his colourful images indented. You can smell the ink. I thought his most recent artbook, purely drawn for his own appreciation of the early morning minutes he translated into a visual diary were simply moving. No two clouds the same, the disaray of back gardens untended and doing their own thing, as nature always will. We are not gardeners anymore than we are sheperds. We have no land to tend or flock to protect. Yet we would like to leave behind some well intended appreciation of our lived experiences. Its all so transitory but no less valuable for its fleeting existance.
Please give our stuff a look see. We made it for you.
