March 17, 2012

Aesthetics, military and machines

The South African Air force military museum in Pretoria.

I collected images of the textures, color and patterns in the museum. The military expenditure in the world is absolutely insane. The amount of effort and technology that goes into making military machines is just baffling. I find the military machines very aesthetically pleasing. I think its the total lack for aesthetics whilst making these objects and the pure focus on utility that is their appeal and beauty. One day in a post military age we would be able to look at the concept of military and marvel at the brilliant designs without guilt and a sense of complacency.
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February 26, 2012

Folded and kept in my pocket forever

The sky was filthy and mucky, a dirty smear running a trail behind the sun as it oozed down to the horizon. The streets a brick monotony, I spotted a mottled figure amongst the entangled mass of people. I approached the unmoving blur camouflaged perfectly on the surrounding sidewalk. The city it’s natural habitat. The abundance of missing teeth showed itself as a black gape every time a sound made an escape, a quick frantic convict finding any wandering ear that would give asylum. This pile of rags reached out for me and I grasped a limp oily writhing object in my rigid hand. I pulled away and the bundle of rags collapsed on the street at once, frantically I bent down to find the figure amongst the rags but there was nothing. In the tangled mess of people around me a man suddenly came into focus, a hard edged cold looking apparition with flailing arms shouting. I pushed him over, then picked him up and folded his body placing it into an envelop and then my pocket.

Human-head-dissection — Human head dissected

February 25, 2012

Maybe I poured too much velvet into your ears or talked too textured in this vapid texture less void. A sudden limping out of place. Looking out forever over the wooden sea

You stand erect with a glassy look in your eyes. The technicolor horse plucking out clumps of your hair. The open wounds good to keep your height in check. Your blood turns silver and hard like metal tears running down your face those precious metals, a risk upon the street.

The sun left a smear as it oozed across the sky and I got the feeling it’s going to be one of those my toaster won’t toast the infant’s hands properly days.

I reconciled and went strolling with the plywood woman living next door. I leapt limping down the path, my foot began stumbling, I wrestled the false leg from the blind man as he gazed milk eyed and lonesome. The cardboard expressions and discarded faces of children, debris cluttering the mucky glass panes that break the endless stretch of brick monotony.

Consider the hairy flap growing on my empty face, I conceal my rigid reactions below the mottled fur. Collecting each unclean emotion as grey rumpled bundles to be used as the correct response in the certain, uncertain future. A sudden outburst shot down as it bounded leaping away. A carcass there for all to see.

Yours truly

Peter Mammes

December 12, 2011

Weaving my hands to make a coat

Whilst sitting at my desk my head got tangled in some strings. I started to untangle the mess when I firmly decided to start cutting strings off, and so by deduction I would be able to find which one of the strings my head was. By mistake I cut my head off and it rolled towards and into the chalk drawn door on the floor. I panicked and stood up to collect it but the drawn door had blown shut in the cereal wind. I tried to open the little door but smudged the chalk picture and so lost my head. Without my head I couldn’t see how to redraw the chalk door. That’s when you walked in with your smiling nose and vegetable mind. I grabbed your head and pulled hard. It came off in a dazzling instant of silence, with locusts pouring from your ears, eyes, and nose. Your limping body ran about scooping up locusts to keep in the large bag around your shoulder. While your body was busy I quickly attached your head onto my neck and used your eyes to cunningly redraw the little door with a stick of chalk.
I opened the door and shut it behind me immediately, a cold shiver running down my back. I had to find my head using your head. I was standing in a large factory and as I looked about I saw that there where people coming at me from the factory conveyor belt. It seems I had emerged from the door into one human factory, in fact the very factory that had manufactured me in error. I walked towards the reception area where the receptionist was knitting a jersey, the wool strands pulling from her eye sockets. I asked her; “where could I find an extra head?” She looked lost like her candy floss mind was about to float upstream out of pink heaven when she pointed at the large rusting cupboard in the corner. I removed your head and threw it clumsily towards the bin, your face scraped off as it hit the side of the bin. I found a replacement head and stuck it on. My new head was much better, it had two tongues. I turned to open the door but my arm fell off and smashed into shards on the floor. I limped through the shards to get outside wounding my bare feet, cut open, my blood turning into locusts; I knew your body would emerge soon to scoop up the locusts so I started running trailing blood and locusts behind me. I ran towards a fire burning bright yellow in C major. The yellow hurt my teeth at first but as I walked further into the fire I started melting, my nose underwent a melting off first, and then my remaining hands fingers. I shouted as small animals appeared and licked up the droplets of me. I melted away completely, lying in a puddle on the steel grass running down towards the neon river. A five eyed rabbit came and lapped me up. My mind melted into the rabbit’s mind and we became one. I tore out from the rabbit retaining its five eyed head and strangely found that I still had my two tongues. A horse came past eating the steel grass, I grabbed a knife and cut the horses legs off at the knees and removed the bottom length section of his legs and discarded it. I sew the remaining legs back on and using an eraser I erase the stitches. The horse looks strange with these short legs. By accident I find your body wandering about in the field of steel wool flowers, I talk but find that both my tongues had atrophied and were just a useless mass in my mouth. Easily I capture your body and fold it up into a small square that I keep in my breast pocket for emergencies.