It’s Thursday today and we had a great breakfast together. A really good way to start the day and people got right into their projects. Bit of a power problem, but apart from that all seamless.  Power as in electricity not people.

We had a storytelling session last night. I recorded everyone telling a story from their life, a book, childhood, whatever they wished. That was really lovely and the diverse nature of the content and styles was unbelievable. A little insight into the inner workings of people, or a bit of fun. It was all recorded and now I need to figure out how to edit it a little. So watch this space for some storytelling history…

Now all i need is a few cd’s so everyone can take this little memory away..

The 6am Needle in the Hay Stack Project has been a failure – I started the sound system at 6am and some people came down at 6.30am totally pissed off because of the loud music – although it was mostly ambient electronica until then and (almost) no beats. Sad – after all the work I did I have been forced to shut the project down barely half an hour after I started the first session.

A long discussion followed for pretty much for the rest of the day, where I tried to explain not only that art is not meant to please but also to provoke, and the provocation I wanted to achieve was indeed a wake up call to come enjoy and celebrate the birth of the day – but whatever….

Just before lunchtime I preferred to cut the polemics and just be on my own for the rest of the day. As a matter of fact I enjoyed getting one of Pere’s bikes for a ride into town, where I finally had a bocadillo de jamon after all the veggie food of the last days (good stuff, but I’m carnivore and I was craving jamon). I also bought some chorizo that I will share with everybody over the next few days and I truly enjoyed a little bike ride in the countryside, and to chill in the sun on a solitary field full of little white flowers and bees doing their job who respectfully left me alone. Then I spent the rest of the day sleeping in the barn and trying to figure out what to do.

I’m no sure if this is really the place where I can experiment my art, and not sure if this is the right community to develop art project with. So today I also bought 40 pairs of earplugs at the local hardware store, thinking that by providing earplugs for those who want to keep sleeping I would have more chance to run the project. But I finally decided that the best thing to do is to tear it all down tonight.

I’m sure nobody will really notice during the day, as the LEDs in the hay are not visible in the daylight – somebody will notice their absence only at end of the day, but of course everybody will notice the absence of sound tomorrow morning. Or maybe not, since everybody will be wearing earplugs. Whatever… anyway, I will find a way to reuse the material (of course) and to do something else. And I can’t wait for Toby to come in tomorrow so we can start working on the Singing Tree Project!

or should that be al el farmo ?

The temperature is rising here at Growing Nowhere in more ways than one.

The weather is favouring us as the strong winds of last week and our first night have given way to sunny days with bits of cloud and the occasional gust. Some of the boys even had their tops of while working today which was a treat for all.

Itś also really exciting seeing pockets of creativity springing up everywhere you look.

Rubyś magic blanket and her improvised methods for pulling it together, Nicolas’ creations springing up in bright colours and unusual shapes and then finding their way onto willing bodies who jump around and bring them to life, the Soundscape sculpture being brought to life from scrap, Johnś giant chair and Simonś mural are just a few of the floating projects.

Then there is Alannaś giant jellyfish, en route to Decompression, Emilyś story telling project (she only decided on it this morning), Chris Element and Familyś precious little Earths, Frannyś moth inspired dance, Simonś Berlin Mural, Massimoś dawn chorus and Tessaś Rite of Spring performance.

A list of whatś going on doesnt do any of it justice or illustrate the magic that surrounds the pieces coming together. Itś wonderful to watch the way people’s projects intersect and ideas seem to be flying around like sparks.

Just like Nowhere, thereś so much going on, itś hard to know where to look or what to do next.

The work is also fuelling some interesting debate. Todayś seems to centre around whether an artist should alter their work if it produces negative reactions from some of those around it or whether that diminishes the art, the artist and its observers. Discuss.

Personally, Iḿ enjoying filming it far more than I expected to and am looking forward to pulling the film together.

2009 was my first Nowhere, but I was lucky enough to be accepted here at the first Growing Nowhere in Reus. I initially intended to facilitate a mural, with no thought to space or context.

But I have spent the last year thinking about the changes that were brought about by 1989, and came here straight from the Berlin Wall anniversary celebrations.

So – perhaps unsurprisingly after visiting the painted sections of the Wall at the East Side Gallery again and seeing the 1,000 decorated dominoes that fell in a line all the way from Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate – it occurred to me that a simulation of the border environment would be a good place to do any mural-style painting.

I am trying to recreate a suitably spartan environment where the use of colour and free artistic expression will sit at odds with a claustrophobic fenced-in feeling that a wall gives.

Pere has very kindly given us free reign over his farm, and it is amazing what can be found in the various barns and sheds that dot his land. With a little imagination and a lick of paint, I hope to build my own enclave of austerity.

Well, It’s Wednesday and we are half way through the week.  It has certainly been a bit of a roller coaster, we have people arriving by all forms of transport and getting stuck in various places around Europe.

The George crew’s lights went out in France, and they had a pretty traumatic journey here.  But, it made for great  fun when we drew out journeys here and talked through them with the group.  It definitely created laughter when we heard of the full beamed lights, they couldn’t dim, and the various beeping and flashing of fellow road goers.  we thought that would be the end of the car stories,

but THEN, there was a visit to the scrap yard.

I got a call from Theo, saying the had lost their keys…you heard me.  Lost their car keys in a scrap yard.  So I was running around trying to see if any body could hot wire a car.  Trying to get the address of this plot of land in the middle of nowhere, to get keys sent from the UK.

After about 3 hours there was a txt to say they found them.  Thanks be to God.

That was the car story and the others were all fairly normal, trains, planes and automobiles….

anyway….next installment soon my friends.

Emily

Massimo did the blogging workshop, I hope it will trigger some more posts by fellow retreat participants…it would really be nice to add a virtual vector to whats happening here at the farm…people interacting and parttaking via online presence…after all its probably much more short-term-no risk no harm-perspectively-percieved ecologically-sustainable compared to hopping into a plane (or a car as we did…) and move the average weight of 139 pounds in bodyweight to this place… . But we do what we love, and we love to meet in reality as well, the question is…how are we gonna do this in the future to save the future ? Bikes, walking, camels….sailing ships, solar cars ? Hmmm…the dream of high tech walking hand in hand with nature, harmony…are we there yet ? No. So for the moment maybe we could TRAVEL more sustainable to meet on a flesh level…but how, how, how…when most of us are still part of that system ….logging out…need to do some final paper mache and then sleep…

I just finished the LED installation and the barn looks magic! =)

I can’t wait to start the djing sessions tomorrow morning! I also have great tunes that I just bought, can’t wait to start mixing them with the rising sun! =)

What day is it ? Monday ? Did we just start today ? Feels like longer…must be tuesday. Hm…

Woke up just before sunrise on the distant horizon beyond the poligon industrial located 1k east from here, the industrial strip outside of valls. It’s close and I actually wonder how much their energies and activities sync to ours during this week or the ecofarm pipirimosa in general, from a sustainability/ footprint perspective.

Maybe I manage to cruise the strip, you know, with an L.A. sunset strip attitude, around sunset, just to get a feel when things are quiet…enjoy the artificial lights, beautiful, and maybe even partly powered by fairly local wind generated energy…Lunchtime soon…will write in compressed style…my wife got 6h of sleep tonight, no milk requests by Leanne during whole night, great, did charge here batteries to a good enough level.

Leanne was not so happy in the baby carrying towel with me this morning while preparing mint, sage, rosmarin thyme tea in the kitchen….though she liked collecting the herbs outside in the fruit tree orchard. I think she has a trees moving in the wind fetish…stares at them with eyes wide open, impressed and amazed…I really love to be close to her and observe how she percieves and reacts to the environment….otherwise shes happy which feeds back to me of course. Oops, not so compressed writing anymore.

Ayla: Stimulating environment, so many things laying around everywhere, metal wood broken stuff to be repaired or permaculturally used one of these days. Me: must manage energies, very nice interessting workshop this morning about presence, trust…found a pair of house shoes in the free shop, have to repair and wear. Cleaned main compost toilet, people using it more and more correctly..nice weather…cut

I’m so excited we finally started this – we are in the Pipirimosca bar for the first tutorial on how to use the blog, stay tuned for more articles flowing soon!

Introducing the 6am Needle in the Hay Stack Project, a project centered around daily ambient dj sessions (with a little bit of beats and psychedelic noises and bleeps, don’t worry…) from 6am to 8am in the barn next the the house that will host us, and that will probably be also a bit of “center camp” for us.

The 6am Needle in the Hay Stack Project in not just focused on music, but it is also an installation. I will drop a few needles (not in dj sense, the sets will be digital) in the rectangular hay bails the walls of the barn are made of, and in the extra hay trays that are all around in the barn. No real needles, don’t worry, and no biohazards! The virtual needles will be blinking and pulsing LEDs, that I plan to place inside the hay bails.

The building process is a zen mantra – unpack the hay bails, place the LED, and repack them up, one by one, day by day – so there will be more and more needles in the hay stack as we progress through the week, with the final peak of lights on Saturday night. The LEDs will be visible at the beginning of each 6am Needle in the Hay Stack Session (and during the night before) but will disappear in the daylight towards the end of the session, creating a metaphore of transformation and rebirth.

The final nature of the 6am Needle in the Hay Stack Project is a temporary progressive ambient performance that celebrates the beautiful moment of the birth of a new day with the dreamstate of chilled ambient music and blinking lights (oh, we love blinking lights, don’t we?), while providing also a sweet wake up environment to all participants that are welcome to come enjoy the magic of trespassing from darkness into the light, meditate, do yoga, have breakfast, or – why not? – dance.

Of course I have my LNT plan in place – on Sunday I’ll re-unpack the bails, get the LEDs back and re-re-pack them to their original non-blinking status. =)

I hope you’ll enjoy the 6am Needle in the Hay Project! Participate! Schedule your activities and workshop accordingly! Or just be there!