From his position lain on the couch, enjoying the shade as a break from the afternoon sun, S. yells me that he has "done something with the titles of the books" on my shelves. I go into the room and ask what, and S., still lain there, in serious mode, eyes scanning the chaotic and piled shelves to pick out the titles he needs, recites:

They All Sang Sharp Teeth and Nova Swing
in Japan, Seattle, Paris and Tokyo
and in the Mapplethorpe trees
they made a Massive Change
it Charmed them
like What is the What?
my words to you are
Black Swan Green.
 

The last few days I was with Hugo and Pascale in Italy where we were filming for my Manifesta 7 piece Art Flavours. For the project I set up an encounter between an Italian critic/writer and curator, Roberto Pinto, and a gelato maker from Rovereto,  Osvaldo Castellari, whose gorgeous Gelateria Bologna in Mori was the location for the filming we just completed. To start the work off Roberto briefed Osvaldo on a small selection of terms (or zones-of-practice) from contemporary art  - The Body, Memory, Spectacle and The Archive - and after this Osvaldo was charged with the not-so-small task of making new gelato flavours to illustrate these concepts. Translating art-thought into tasty ice-cream may not be the easiest job going but it made for a pretty intense few days. I was really lucky in the collaboration/ participation of Roberto Pinto - he was so calm and generous in how he talked with Osvaldo -  smiling and at the same time taking the whole thing seriously, playing it all very calm, on a human scale as we sat in the back yard of gelateria near the cherry trees. I really loved watching the conversation between them even though I didn't understand it that much until the translation came through.

One of those projects where you only realise what you are doing about half way through the thing, or where you are struck repeatedly by these kind of "oh *that's* what it s about" realisations at different points in the process. At the end of Tuesday we were looking at the footage of Roberto and Osvaldo's chat and watching the latter's worried face in close up again and again had me feeling really unsure how the whole thing was going to play out the next day.

Luck was with me regarding the collaborators in the project a second time though. Because as much as Osvaldo was nervous, anxious or even incomprehending at the meeting with Roberto, he was smart and together and full of ideas and energy when it came to making the gelato - what we might have expected I guess but it was still great to see. I had to think a lot about what it is to be a person with a skill, with an affinity for something, with a sense of grace or ownership in a certain zone or practice. It was so great to see Osvaldo in his element, adding fruit for flavourings, whisking up the gelato. And great to hear his reasoning for the choices he made in the flavours too.

In my mind The Archive was always going to be the tricky flavour of the four. Hard to separate from memory (although Roberto did a great job in defining a distinction) and in any case summoning for me the idea of a taste somewhere between dust and yellowing book pages I wasn't finding it the most appealing prospect. For Osvaldo though this all rolled rather differently as he decided that the human brain was the biggest archive we have, and that his response would be to create a complicated flavour, comprising many layers which would really necessitate thought and a trawl through ones mental taste-archives to locate and define its elements. Flavoured with some combination of fresh peach, strawberry and orange juice The Archive ended up as my favourite by quite some distance. Perhaps it was only once Osvaldo was well into his work - adding flavour to the first batch of gelato - that the project became truly tangible to me. I was stood in the big kitchen, watching him and his assistant at work and I was suddenly smiling at the thought that through the summer in Rovereto it will be possible to take a cone of gelato called Memory.

When the Manifesta show opens (19th July) in Rovereto, at Manifattura Tabbachi and Ex Peterlini, you can catch the video of Osvaldo, Roberto and the gelato-making as well as sampling each of the Art Flavours gelati. My piece City Changes - now completed in its sequence of 20 framed texts/drawings - will also be shown for the first time. More details here in the notebook a bit closer to the time.

Talking to Hugo about the Amazon. Some work trip he went on there years back, photographing scientists who were working on climate change. Flights to smaller and smaller towns, villages with smaller and smaller airstrips cleared out of trees and beaten into the dirt, then - when the airstrips ran out - it was still further to go up river, long day and night on a small boat heading up to their final destination; a middle of nowhere. Very dark in the jungle he said, the dense trees blocking all light. And the wildlife not so much visible as audible - endless animals, insects and birds you heard out there in the but never saw. Wet from sweat and moisture in the air the whole time and nothing ever got dry - not clothes, not skin, never once in the whole time. Amazing he said. But the best thing he mentioned concerned the long journey up river and how he had filmed very much of it, not really working on the project but more for himself. A lot of tape recorded looking off from the boat and out at the lush trees and the changing sky and the river bends and the light on the water. When they reached their final destination though he realised that by by accident he had left his stock of ten blank dv tapes in a hotel room way back en route and that the tapes he'd recorded the boat journey on were all he had left. In the next week, as various essential pieces of work-filming came along he had to sacrifice sections of the trip up the river - recording over it, bit by bit, inexorably. Trying to preserve sections here and there.... winding forwards and backwards, over-recording the bits he did not mind losing but trying to protect certain parts, scenes, passages. But slowly, day by day, minute by minute, he was erasing the trace of the journey that had taken him there, a kind of corollary for the process of forgetting until all that was left were vivid flashes, out of context views, moments, fragments cut up interviews and more work-a-day documentation.

 *

Some people may remember that way back here my brother M. wrote me about working to bury railway sleepers upright into the ground to hold up a bank where they'd cut a track thru a rich guys field.  A followup here in M's customary late night dislocated rambling style. As far as writing goes there's more than one in the familly. I have to watch out.

Still here. Been back to the boy millions place - nay more chainsaws and shite so much this time. The sleepers we put in still holdin fast the cut thru the hill. Didn't like to see the concrete so much I gather, gotta cover that up with somethin. Been doin a wall for what seems like an age, reconstructing something that was put 150 years ago but has kinda fell down and had same age trees growin thru it. Pull it out and put it back. found a farthing. Labour was cheap then and they built with any shite they dug up on the property. Puttin it back difficult on a time and money scale. Still. Put it back with better quarry stone mixed in to make my life and back easier. Cant build a wall out of medicine ball mishapen heads in 2008. Not on a price. That was the bank been put back, and on to the wall. Used to build walls and tall walls down here using naught but shite and lime mortar. Anyhow, the things been fucked and the stone blown with wet and frost and snakes and ivy, took 4ft off the top as it was at a mathematical angle full of un original matter and Not Safe for our £boys stoned perambulations with his dog. Lime mortar, a curious thing. Delving into the black arts. Ive spoken to experts, theres talk of damp hessian, mixes worthy of fuck knows who, hydraulic, quick, and hydrated.

Burns all the skin off your hands in 2 days.no finger prints. Time for the perfect crime. Cept youd get stuck to a coppers shirt on day 3 with the barbs and shite on ure hands for a week then. Nay escape. Burns eyes too tho thats no good for crimes.

He bought a new jag the other day, an F plate fucked v12 convertible for 6 grand. Does minus on the mpg. Happy. Collects his mail in it from the top of the drive. Must be a quarter mile. Tis a distance eh?

Back tomorrow for more wall. Only 50 metres and 17 hands worth of skin to go. and 13 eyes.