Happy second-last tuesday of October.

The hands on the clock seem to be picking up speed and rushing to a slurping black hole of an omega point just over the horizon. Where does the time go fer chrissakes? really…..Rhetoric aside, I beleive the answer is back.
Over a week has passed since the design workshop has ended and I’ve been bashing around the Northern provinces. The journey has taken me from the paddy fields neighbouring Burma across the Northern provinces to the border with Laos, sticking my big white nose into small tanned people’s huts, tensing torso muscles on drives through snaky mountain roads, even invading local festivals that involved seriously inebriated men pushing around a lifesized paper elephant and beating it with bamboo sticks. Many a culinary adventure was had and a few times just observed. Namely, me holding back with papaya salad while watching the natives rip apart a full chicken and chase it down with crickets and ant larvae. The first evening in Nan was spent heartily tucking in with homemade whiskey and sweating out a torrid homemade hangover in the blistering sun beside a river where over 100 dragonboats with redbull-jacked rowers competed for a prize that is as yet undetermined by me. On a few occassions, callow attempts to play the blues on a local lute-like instrument with two strings were made. On the homestretch I sat in on a temple ceremony that involved xylophone players reminiscent of the Rebo band in Return Of The Jedi, slept beneath ancestral shrines in a traditional teak house, etc, etc. Many a box in the once in a lifetime list was checked with a flourish and a sloppy grin over the last week. My undying thanks to Ajaan Jip and Ajaan Vithi for tossing me into the wilderness.

So now I’m back in Chiangers and thought it high time to recap the two weeks of the design workshop; chronicle our travels, studio time and shenanigans, then regale bloated anecdotes about the stunning festivities that bookended the thing.
Lo and behold, some crafty devil beat me to it. Mr. Dane Larsen, a fellow participant, molester of wood, ruiner of ipods and all around nice fella, has made this task redundant by giving a great blow by blow (with some video footage n’aw) of the thing over at his own blogeroo. It’s very well informed, whereas my version probably would have involved fart jokes. My shame is only outweighed by my embarrassment and technological ineptitude. Dane’s pictures are bigger and his videos are longer – and we won’t even get into physiology…So click here to see what a proper blog should be…
Cheers to the conscientious and thorough Mr. Larsen, jeers to the lazy, post-thieving Mr. Besseling.
Good on ya Daner.

Hazy caked-eye greetings from the land of post-celebratory, self-induced ethanol poison recovery. The Lanna Style International Design Workshop at the Faculty of Fine Art at Chiang Mai University is done and this was celebrated in the true fashion of chaos that has become wont and custom in the past two weeks. As promised in my presentation yesterday, a more succinct summary of my jittery rambling is here for your perusal, critique and eventual polemics. More pictures of the prototypes will be posted once the photos are taken for the catalogue. gimme about two weeks…

Über-props to my fellow doodlers and nocturnal voyageurs of the Chiang Mai underworld, especially Ofer and Lek, Masamichi, Chikako and their assistants Paek and Atsushi. I want to write something sincere and heartfelt but fear trite cliché would surely result. Perhaps sleep is a better idea…
So here’s what yesterday’s talk would have sounded like if I wasn’t paralysed with irrational fear, although it’s still quite rough. Forgiveness please.
if you were at the museum yesterday and didn’t notice my stuttering mouth or shaky hands, forget I mentioned it…..Cheers.

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Alright, now that I’ve spoiled the fun for the space babies, we might as well clear a few more calcium dustbunnies from the closet regarding the hypotheticals series. This was also written as a supplement to an institutional application in *****, also to which I was not accepted. I’m starting to see a pattern here.
After exhibiting this series a few times in Europe, allthewhile obstinately refusing to divulge any information relating to the symbolism, I feel a bit guilty just throwing the whole thing on a blog post, but hey, that was then and this is now.
This post also may dissapear suddenly…

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This is the rundown on the basic themes of the series. It was written as part of an application to ****, *****, *****, to which I wasn’t accepted, although the painful process of cajoling abstract themes into relatively succinct linguistic snippets has left us with this rambling amble through the creative process. I’m still not sure if I want to share this, thinking it may kill some of the fun, so this post may just dissapear one day.

Anyways, here you go….

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