On Thursday night, I made my second appearance at the Catalyst Club. The venue was packed and I was a little nervous – it was the largest crowd I've addressed. Hopefully my nerves didn't show when I was talking.
My talk was about Psychogeography. I gave a brief introduction and talked about how the practises involved make you more aware of your environment. One of the things I spoke about Brighton's amazing street art, something I occasionally post about in this blog.
My favourite ever Brighton artist was 'Dean', who used to tag around the turn of the century. Dean's logo didn't look particularly impressive, but great care was taken with its placement. As much as I love this street art, I never think too much about the people producing it. I consider the art as a natural part of the urban environment, as something that simply emerges. Dr. Bramwell told me he had a story about the person behind the Dean tags and I declined to hear the story, because I like the idea of these things simply appearing.
Thanks to everyone who came along, and to Kate Shields for the photo above.
- Louise Halvardsson came along to the talk and posted in her blog about a stencil in Hove.
- While looking for links on Dean I found a good post about chalk shadow outlines in Brighton.
- Below is a photo that I took on Friday of a bin near Palmeria Square. Little things like this seem to be everywhere.
My favourite “Dean” tag was way out of town. I used to get the train from St. Albans to Brighton every other weekend for a good while (before I lived here), and between Three Bridges and Haywards Heath, it went over an old bridge overlooking some fields. In one of these fields, in the middle of the countryside, was a “Dean” tagged on the side of a water trough.
I’ve not seen it for ages, but hopefully it’s still there. The other thing I used to see was the big field of red telephone boxes near Crawley. Sadly they’re not there any more.
That was my favourite Dean too. It’s still there, but so faded as to be almost invisible.
I used to commute that line in 2000/2001 and sometimes I miss it. I wish I’d recorded it just once so I could put it on in a window on my PC, just see the journey pass like it used to be.