Minesweeper magazine ~ Issue 4 ~ summer 2015

Magazine ~ Issue Four ~ Summer '15

Contents Edito............................................................................................................4 I ~ The Undercurrents Gallery..........................................................6 Robin Stratton & Jacob Joyce !......................................................7 II ~ Wonder Barbee & Indignata Jones.........................................20 II ~ Events...............................................................................................27 Sunday Sounds......................................................................................27 III ~ Minesweeper Publishing............................................................31 Metamorphosis Book !....................................................................31 IV ~ Renovation....................................................................................33 V ~ Entertainment at Minesweeper...............................................35 VI ~ The adventure of the Minesweeper.....................................39 VII ~ Minesweeper Gambia..............................................................43 VIII ~ Contributions............................................................................47 Jérémy Chausse....................................................................................48 « Scum » by George F...................................................................56

Edito Summertime brings us wonderful things...

The residency of two Italians artists, Indignata Jones & Wonderbarbee, has been a pleasure & a true moment of joy.

Thank you, girls, for everything ! Come back when you want...

Actually, the residency is a perfect way to bring fresh blood & flesh, to enrich ourselves, to be more creative, more dynamic & more satisfy.

We hope we will announce another residency very soon...

Meanwhile, we opened this magazine to external contributions & we are very pleased to welcome two artists : George F. & JĂŠrĂŠmy Chausse So, if you want to publish, if you know someone who might be interested, if you want to see here what you don't see elsewhere, send us a friendly mail : internsweep@gmail.com We are around & we are aware : so get involved !

(illustrations by Andrew)

I ~ The Undercurrents Gallery www.undercurrentsgallery.tumblr.com

The Undercurrents Gallery is a Public Exhibition Space in Deptford leaving egos at the door since 2013.

Bringing Fresh Art to the People.

Out of the mainstream channel of official art giving everyone the opportunity to exhibit their artwork for free.

The Undercurrent Gallery space managed by the Minesweeper Collective, is part of The Birds Nest Pub (32 Deptford Church Street, Deptford, London, SE8 4RZ)

Robin Stratton & Jacob Joyce !

UNDERCURRENTS GALLERY presents: ROBIN & JACOB. New art exhibition open everyday, from 12.30pm to 11pm, till JUNE 25th.

OPENING NIGHT: Friday MAY 29!! 7pm to 1am!! FREE ENTRY!!

Free hot food buffet + Live music from 8pm till 11pm, featuring: POETICAT + SIMEON LENOIR + SCREAMING TOENAIL.

Last month new free art exhibition at Undercurrents Gallery presented drawings and sculptures by: ROBIN STRATTON - http://robinastratton.wix.com/robin & JACOB JOYCE - http://jacobvjoyce.com/ Program was : « FREE OPENING SHOW : Friday MAY 29th.

Hot food at 8pm and 10pm.

Bands will be performing live from 8pm until 11pm, featuring: POETICAT With roots in London and Lisbon, Poeticat is an energetic and unique rock band infusing elements of progressive, experimental and psychedelic music with a punk attitude.

Words - Catherine Martindale / Guitar - Baj Kenrick / Bass - Ivo Ramalho / Drums - Victor Meadowcroft SIMEON LENOIR Simeon Lenoir performs on stage as a " One man band ", playing guitar, keys, percussions, horns etc, and with a trio or a six pieces band.

"A fantastic performer, a multi instrumentist musician and a talentuous song writer who makes you traveling in music all around the world. " Melody Maker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqGFt5C5GM8 SCREAMING TOE-NAIL ANTI COLONIAL BELLIGERENT QUEER SCREAMING PUNK SASSY TOE NAILS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSVOY_wIeSw »

The UNDERCURRENTS GALLERY specialises in group exhibitions.

We host a variety of artistic disciplines and projects, with an emphasis on dynamic curation and collaborative benefit.

We do not charge our artists to exhibit and wish to provide the public with a chance to truly access the world of art.

The gallery is managed by the Minesweeper Collective - www.minesweepercollective.co.uk/ We hope you can enjoy our space as much as we enjoy providing it.

WHAT? Monthly new exhibitions with an array of live music and fully licensed pub attached.

WHERE? The Birds Nest Pub, 32 Deptford Church St, Deptford, SE8 4RZ WHEN? The exhibitions are open for public viewing 3 weeks out of the month, from midday to 10pm daily, starting from the opening night. Curated and Presented by the Minesweeper Collective.

WHY? Because Genuine is Everything.

HOW? by bus: 47 / 53 / 453 / 188 / 199 / 177,

by DLR at Deptford Bridge: 2 MINS,

by RAILWAY at Deptford: 3 MINS,

by OVERGROUND at New Cross or at New Cross Gate: 10 - 12 MINS

II ~ Wonder Barbee & Indignata Jones Two amazing Italian artists, welcomed in residency aboard the Minesweeper from 24th to 28th of July.

And thanks to her, the boat is much better...

We look forward the next residency... !

II ~ Events Sunday Sounds Sunday Sounds began in the bar at Russell Square Social Centre back in September 2005. It was basically an open rehearsal; a gathering of friends in a free and open space playing each other songs and jamming together.

From the tiny skuzzy ‘fishroom’ of Russell Square (where we piled in with the likes of Kate Tempest with Bones of Contention, Rob Rub, Daisy Beau, Venus CuMara, MC Angel, Sarah Bear, Yap, Babar Luck, David J, Len Hovis, Jamie Woon, jamming with Tom on double bass, Josh on electric guitar, Richard on the whistle, beat boxing Roger, and many more) it has grown and evolved, occurring on random Sunday’s in a variety of squats and unusual spaces, mainly in South East London. It can probably be best described as a happening with a slightly varying crew and vaguely hosted by Rob Rub and Sarah Bear.

After Russell Square was evicted, Sunday Sounds toured and then settled at the Spike in Peckham. It got pretty professional in the amazing hall with Steve on sound in the permanently set-up sound booth (as opposed to the vaguely portable Peace not War sound system) until 2009.

Manu Chao visited and played a DJ set, Kate Tempest had a new band called Zingaro, Ed Cox performed an acoustic set, also Emma Harper, James Riley, Jamika, Maverick Sabre,

Opaque, Patrick Neutral Zone, Yusuf, Patch were part of it… there were many.

The Ratcave in Camberwell had a certain vibe; a dingy solar powered barn with a crazy woodburner, with Rik’s sound (Big Trouble), memorably hosting Lisa Watchorn singing with her ‘cello, Du with Will on fiddle and Toby Why on the Trianglar (very unique percussion), Karen Barnes played, there was comedy from Dory, poetry from Becky Fury, Daisy and Priscilla singing, the Purple Ladies on the trapeze…

Just before the Heygate Estate was demolished there was a beautiful Sunday Sounds in the garden beneath the trees. The acoustics and scene was awesome, beginning with a hard hitting poem from Du as the sun set.

There was a similar vibe outside at St Georges Circus where we had stories from Steph by the bomfire and jamming from MC Angel amongst many others in the wasteland in the heart of the city.

Recently it has happened in an old church on the Old Kent Road and has now found a very happy home rocking on the Minesweeper boat down on the Creek where we have been joined by Barbarella’s Bang Bang, Odo, as well as the many regular rebel acoustic musicians who have grown together and been a part of the Sunday Sounds community for ten years.

These are just a few of the wonderful spaces over the years and awesome people who have performed. The sound that is Sunday Sounds is thanks to all who have ever come and been involved and the enchanted spaces that have welcomed us.

For the 2nd year, the Minesweeper Collective organizes an experimental music & arts & crafts festival (september 2015 - Deptford, London) !

Performances in a "secret" place / Exhibition at The Birds Nest.

It is a CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ! deadline : 1st of August.

* The best way to... keep in touch with us, be notified of events, fairs, concerts, etc, is to join our mailing list on the website. *

III ~ Minesweeper Publishing Metamorphosis Book !

The next collaborative, DIY, screen-printed book, with : Alma, Ania Pawlik, Illustre Feccia, Rodolphe Gauthier, Vesna Parchet, Alvaromilt, Isra, Shihoko Nagai, Tréfex, Wonderbarbee, Indignata Jones, Kevin Seven, Thadé, Camden McDonald, Jude Kendal, Joe Fur Long, Enrico Cornuda, Nhattaleah Nichols.

Coming very soon...

IV ~ Renovation To go on with the pictures of the renovation.

For whom to know more about the vessel... (and see below the great Camden's story)

(the front deck)

(the – future – kitchen & the stage)

V ~ Entertainment at Minesweeper

by Shina Shihoko Nagai The Minesweeper collective has much experience working for, not only Arts and music, but also theatre and film in the past years.

I would like to write a little bit about our history of entertainment events for this volume.

This time, I would like to talk about a theater project I was involved in 2008.

It was our first time joining with Sanford Co-op Theater group.

Sanford Co-op is located in New Cross and very close to the Minesweeper boat, so we had many collaborations with them in the past. Sanford is the oldest purpose-built housing co-operative in London, founded in 1973. It has been transformed from a wasteland into a cosy, green and welcoming environment. www.sanfordcoop.org

We worked on the famous Shakespeare play, `King Lear’, and from the Minsweeper, Camden McDonald, Niccolo Bruni and I joined them.

Working for a theatre play with Sanford was quite an enjoyable experience for us. Actors were from different age groups, nationalities and diverse backgrounds.

Generally speaking, in the commercial theatre, you will only see native English actors play in Sheakspeare, so we had a very unique and original production in the end.

We rehearsed at Sanford collective every week for about 2 months and played at The Spike in Peckham in Feburary 2009.

The Spike was a beautiful and diverse community space. Emerging from the free party scene, the Spike Surplus Scheme landed, in 1999, in an abandoned, fly-tipped, burnt-out building, with a desire to build a creative and

therapeutic community.

The building was formerly the administrative block for the largest Doss-house in London (check ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, George Orwell), providing shelter for up to 1,100 wayfarers a night. Southwark Council evicted the DIY project early in 2009, deeming the building ‘surplus to requirements’. vimeo.com/spikesurplus

Our play was very successful, even though it was a community event in cold winter, we had many people come and see it. I remember we had wood burner in the theatre and we made backed potato inside and it was so delicious!

We had after party at Minesweeper with lots of wines to

end in style a beautiful and memorable experience. There are many funny story from the night but I shall not speak out loud hear, I will tell you some other time.

VI ~ The adventure of the Minesweeper

by Camden McDonald

expexWinter 2002 The rain came. The wind blew the rain into the unfinished venue space where the wheelhouse used to be, and dripped through the deck. We built a rough structure over the stern to hold the tarpaulin up, keep the rain off, and allow dry air to get to the damp, rotting deck. We put tarps up around the venue space to keep the rain out. I hoped that would be enough. That's all we could do until the spring. Meanwhile there were the problems below deck: 1) Water. There was too much of it up there, but none down here where I wanted to drink, cook, clean and flush. There was no nearby standpipe, so we would have to be selfsufficient (as with everything else.) That's where the large plastic roof over the venue space came in useful. I took out one of the gutter pipes, and put a large bucket under it, filled a filter jug from this, and tasted the result - pretty good for Zone 2. How about a cup of tea?

2) Heating. I learned alot about propane/butane gas and appliances very quickly:- for instance, the bigger the bottle, the more economical, but it's still very expensive if it's your only source of space heating. It's also potentially very dangerous on a boat because, if it leaks, there's nowhere for it to go except into the bilge where it builds up gradually,

undetected. I was very careful.

3) Sanitation. There were a couple of sinks. I plumbed one of them in - that is, stuck a length of rubber hose from the plug to an outlet through the hull. It worked fine. The Baby Blake sea-toilet took a bit more effort, but those things are built to last, and I got it working just in time for my first female visitor, Jacqueline Steinmetz. I even ran a pipe to it from some underfloor water tanks so it would flush when the tide was out.

4) Electricity. This was the most difficult problem of all, and is, in fact, an ongoing issue still. At first I borrowed an old petrol generator which started only on good days. Then one of the businesses in the yard kindly let me run a very long extension to their unit, but only until 5pm on weekdays.

Dark nights. Ryna Cole gave me some 6v storage batteries and we rigged up some 6 volt lights. That worked OK. Then a friend of mine, Adam Crighton, turned me on to LEDs Wow, the latest technology! Sorted! Especially with another, more reliable generator. Later, with a 12v to 240v inverter it even became possible to charge phones and laptops! By the time the neighbours got fed-up of giving us free electricity, we were almost 100% off-grid.

The Mediterranean, Winter 1956 A certain inexpressible blue - even on a winter's day.

The poet Homer's, Wine Dark Sea. A stiff breeze - what they called the Melteme - blowing North towards Greece, but

HMS Ledsham M2706 was making good headway. The crew were at Brightwork - that is, keeping busy after everything was shipshape. Captain Henderson handed over the wheel to the Chief Pilot, went out to the aft deck, opened the wardroom hatch and climbed down into the officers' quarters. Lieutenant Evans was drinking his cocoa, and O'Brien, was collecting the breakfast things. Henderson hung up his cap, sat behind the folding table, and began again to study the mine-sweeping procedure manual.

"O'Brien would like to tell you something important, sir," said Evans, not at all earnestly.

"Oh? What's the trouble, O'Brien?"

"Well sir, the thing is, sir, I keep seeing things."

"What things?"

"Ghosts, sir, ghosts."

Henderson looked up at the man quickly - no sign of a smirk, O'Brien seemed troubled if anything, but then he always did. Evans was looking elsewhere, scratching his ear.

Today the Captain had to be the ship's psychiatrist. "The Ledsham's not even three years old, man, how can she have ghosts?"

"I see them, sir, every night, ever since we passed Gibraltar. There's one with bandages all over his head lying on one of the mess benches. There's a Japanese woman who cries all night long about a baby. The baby's lying up on the wheelhouse floor, just lying there smiling and staring at the ceiling. There's one that dances around the Oerlikon gun above the crew's heads at night; and if you go into the

radio-room, there's loads of 'em, all squeezed in there, shivering with this cold, ghostly firelight shining on their faces... It's too hot in there, sir, but the galley's cold, cold as..."

Henderson had seen this kind of thing before.

"O'Brien, pull yourself together!"

"I... I can't, sir..."

"I'm going to take you off punishment, but I can't relieve you of your galley duties."

"I don't want to be relieved, sir - the work keeps my mind off ...them."

"Were you in the war?"

"No, sir, I'm Irish - we were neutral."

Henderson ordered O'Brien to get some sleep, and he and Evans got back to the job at hand. In less than 24 hours they'd dock at Port Said, then they'd have to sweep mines.

Neither of them had done that before. Not with real mines anyway

VII ~ Minesweeper Gambia

By Alma

8/6/15 London, UK

Another winter down in Gambia !

I have found the secret to traveling in Africa and that is to be surrounded by as few white people as possible.

This trip was one of the best yet, but not without it’s challenges.

My base was in Brufut, at the school we helped to build with the Brufut Education Project. I kept busy in the screenprinting workshop and with Tossa the taylor (‘Taylor Scientist’).

The three color carousel is still working, but after a few years it needed a bit of TLC. We stuck a GoPro on the heads of some of the school kids and have edited a few videos from the footage. I also got the privilege to be assigned to multiple manual labour tasks, such as mixing cement for blocks, digging ditches, pushing wheelbarrows back and forth, etc.

When I’d had enough then I escaped to the beach. And when they knew where to find me on the beach, Tossa and I decided to catch the boat to the islands in Casamence.

Lush African jungle life is good for the soul.

After a while the infections on

my legs started to complain though‌ Back to Brufut we went; more work, more work, and then back to England.

I can still hear the echoes of African children shouting in my ears.

VIII ~ Contributions We are very pleased to welcome contributions from people not directly involved in the Minesweeper project but interested by.

Jérémy Chausse – photograph George F. - writer

Jérémy Chausse

To present him would give him an outline, a shape, a limit, a partition… collision! Release itself, here is the quest of this dreamer in the intuitions – unrealistic – infractions!

His practice builds itself around mirages, around appearances, which get married label fusion. The idea: explore the potential of the dark camera.

Of his trip in the heart of an illusion, a pilgrimage in his fiction, in the fatal breast, the penetration, he sees the beautiful of his passion… the fault to whom ? Fault in the written forms. Author French photographer, feet on Earth and the head in stars, the three eyes are opened to seize the Beauty which surrounds us. His photography – tinged with ecstasy and with fury – of dreams, falls, the truth of a found essence…its truth aims to be to create a footbridge, a link in the Other one.

Born in the North of France in 1977, I'm a young fine art photographer. The camera began to accompany my journeys in 2001 but it is only in 2008 when I was interested in the power of the photo, what she can convey and allows to share.

Anaïs Nin said ” the internal rooms of the soul are as the darkroom of the photographer. We cannot stay there for a long time, otherwise it becomes the cell of the neurotic. ” I enough agree with this quotation. The camera just like the human mind possesses secret one thousand which it is necessary to learn to tame. What I appreciate in this way of expression, it is the possibility that allows the photography to take the imagination and the spirit “somewhere else” beyond some centimeters of the support of exit. The alchemy which allows this one to be born. Once again several quotations express better my relationship in the photo than me could not make him : - ” A photography, it is a cardiac arrest of a fraction of a second. ” Of Pierre Movila - ” A photography, it is the fragment of time that will not return. ” Of Martine Franck - ” Any photo is an intelligence which exhausts a light. ” Of Denis Roche And finally because a frame is certainly necessary for all this and because i needs to honor masters : ” To photograph it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart. ” of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I used photo manipulation to create another world of image which shows the human being and of his report to the world. At present, I work on several projects of which an entitled series “GAIA”. Gaia is the personification of the Earth in the cosmogony of Hésiode – She is the

maternal ancestor of the divine races and the monsters. To Latin we find the equivalent Was in hiding there to Terra Mater or Tellus. The only one is Gaia, the earth. According to the narrative of Hésiode, it seems good that Gaia, who is a goddess in the well defined lines, the principle where from any things went out, was the big divinity of the primitive Greeks. As the Aegean, as the peoples of Asia, the Greeks doubtless had to adore originally the Earth-mother, in whom they saw the goddess-mother. Gaia ” goddess in the wide breast “, was a time the supreme goddess, of whom the majesty was not only imperative upon the men, but upon the gods. As first divinity, Gaïa is, in a way, the guard of the divine power: it is her who causes the rebellion of Cronos against Ouranos and that of his grandson Zeus against Cronos, in a certain quest of the perfect sovereign; but she also raises her monstrous sons, the Giants and Typhoon, against Zeus, doomed to failure mutinies. In this way, the Greeks doubtless wanted to represent both aspects of the nature: capable of creating the harmonious beauty, but also capable of making reappear the original chaos. You will find through this series an interpretation which is singular me and to return honor to Mother Nature - In parallel, I also work on the infinitesimal. In my serie "(All) chimie photographik et Temps moderne", I try to approach the movements of the society and the relationship between the human beings and the ownership. Here is the approach : an invitation, to whom will linger in its world.

« Scum » by George F.

SHOREDITCH BUSINESS SCHOOL, sometime in July …

The toilet is vomiting black shit. Toxic, vile, noxious – the rejected bile of the City of London spuming back up from the gullet under the street. Three maniacs in white overalls are jigging around, ankle deep in filth, their hair a red, black and green tricolour banner, mobile and flashing against shit and white suits. I bring them four cans of beer, and they flick the crud from their gloved hands off to clutch and crack them, laughing amidst overwhelming fumes like sewage tear-gas. The beer foams, clean and snowy, in contrast to the bubbling bilious blackness of the bog blowing black bubbles in the back of the Business School. It won't stop. We won't stop. So we grab the jigsaw and cut a perfect golden triangle into the floor to let the coal black frackshite drain into the empty office space below.

Once that gaping floor-anus is opened, I cannot resist it. I'll shit directly into the office space ten metres below to avoid crapping in an empty pizza box and being caught on the stairs delivering it to the street.

“What's in there?”

“You don't want to know.”

Once on the street I'll be sure to bury the forbidden crap-package at the bottom of the trash pile to prevent some unfortunate street-skipper excitedly scooping a box of hot poop off the floor to open it to nothing but disappointment. I try not to inflict my shit on other people.

It's raining down one-side of the room I am sharing.

The damp creeps across the carpet tiles inexorably towards the sofa-cushions I've shoved against one wall. The sound of running water pouring down the walls into the rooms below seems a mocking irony to the fact we have no toilet and shower. I can wash – awkwardly – with a kettle and running water in the delapidated kitchen, but most of the time I wonder why to bother.

Sunrise on the suicide-shelf at the top of the building where I stood on my 31st birthday and considered that drop into the street below as a gateway to something other than the misery and torment that I had sunk into. Sunrise each time when we brought the randoms and the strangers and the passersby up onto the heights on the edge of the city and tried our utmost to fuck them and open them up. In the end, it would all unravel around us and there would be nothing left but everything else. I wept there and considered the abyss but in the end I was not as strong as others around- or perhaps I was too weak. Eternity's fucking sunrise – sat upon the edge with a beer in hand and not sure whether to cry or to laugh or to puke or to whip my fucking cock out.

At night, we sit in the window-sill shrieking drunken madness at the passerbys of Shoreditch High Street, beckoning them in to join us beneath the gigantic twisted mural of an emaciated Auschwitz survivor, his eyes exploding from their sockets, painted over the alarm bell that signals each guest that arrives at the door, simultaneously evacuating his bowels and ejaculating in an ecstatic death-throw down one wall.

Mierda painted it, and I like an apprentice bounded

around her scrawling dubious ditties and sloganeering over the walls behind her, happy and glee to be free and creating amidst the shite and detritus of the city.

The rats run rabid – scurrying and seeking and clawing around us with their little human hands. The wolf stalks – barking a furious sonata to each guest that enters – a challenge and a question and a summons. When I first met her, the wolf terrified me into paralysis. I would stand and watch frozen and impotent, awaiting the next move – until I realised that the thunder and fury was just that - noise echoing around the clouds and concretising something that would be otherwise abstract and intangible. All the noise, all the mania, all the terror – that was something real and unreal at the same moment. The echo of a shout into a cave.

A cave set in the cliffs mounting the rivers of traffic and hubbub that flow through the City and out into the East End. All our noise and chaos was a hollow echo and tribute to the nightmarish babel that slurried every weekend past us on the streets.

It sounds terrible, but we skipped people like we might skip food – fishing them out of the bins to gorge ourselves upon them. Yet when I managed it, I was horrified at the callousness of the exchange. The one I managed came back, exclaimed at the rooftop delights of the city looming iridescent and sparkling above us, retired to my shared room half-soggy with rain, then fled to a taxi without so much as an exchange of numbers. When I encountered her again on Great Eastern Street a week later, spotty and empussed, she blithered empty excuses and averted her eyes.

I had been fucked and chucked and had no further care for

the experience. I'd fucked her like she asked, lying down on top of her beneath a canopy of electric stars, unfettered by her proclamation that she was on her period, exerting bto ejaculation despite my broken ribs and crippling liver pain.

Afterwards, she'd sucked in futility upon my flacid cock, hungrily trying to coax it back into action. Perhaps I deserved no less than her disdain, yet I still believed such acts meant something.

And so what if they didn't? Hadn't I returned excited and elated with bottles of shoplifting beer to find my lover in bed with another? What did any such brutish and base acts as fucking mean between strangers? I was no better and the ones I desired no worse. We were nowt but meatpuppets jigging on the strings of our desires. Yet – Mierda found a way into me through that gluttonous shite. But to this moment I still scarce believe it.

~ Minesweeper Collective ~ Summer 2015 internsweep@gmail.com www.minesweeper-collective.com