Upon further investigation. A site visit to Ludgate Car Park in Birmingham (UK) – which hasn’t been built on since World War II.

BACKGROUND TO PROJECT

The idea of this project was to adapt (some would call is ‘appropriate’) the term ‘Sites of Significant Scientific Interest’ into a personal exploration of ‘social significance’. I therefore began a series of accounts in the city of Birmingham (UK) in which is ‘investigated’ Sites of Social Special Interest or SSSI. Herein are some documentation of ‘events’, gatherings and exploration under the SSSI banner. Enjoy.

THE SSSI TEAM IN ATTENDANCE BELOW

Investigating Team - Paul, Ian, Brian & Harry. June 28th 2008

Note the tiling on the wall behind

(possible remnants of an old victorian toilet for example?)

Private ownership amongst paying customers?

An eccentric archaeology outing (Sites of Social Special Interest No.4) - to investigate informal musings regarding the Ludgate Car Park in central Birmingham (28th June 2008). A place, seemingly abandoned, is arguably one of the poorest maintained car parks in Birmingham (with little upkeep and a skewered layout, confusing and ugly in the very least). This site has not been built on since the Second World War. It is also the location of the last public execution in Birmingham of Phillip Matsell in 1806 (50,000 public members attended).

Following an announcement to invite fellow citizens to explore this environment initiated by myself, a small group of us (Ian Edwards, Brian Simpson and Paul Nocher) spent time in-situ, serving as an eccentric time team reasoning clues to the present physical condition of the car park.

Whilst I discussed the psychic and mental ambience of the place itself, suggesting that noise pollution and other forms of anxiety are deeply shocking to imagining and thinking – to allow contemplation and concentration to underpin and explore that which would come to our attention; During this announcement, the whole group became aware of the overhead police helicopter hovering and somewhat static above us (lasting 15 minutes approx). We seemed to have an audience of some description. We were unperturbed. Eitherway, this was compounded by Great Charles Street / Queensway dual carriageway traffic noise that roared itsway into our conversation, demanding extra concentration between ourselves (and effort to listen to myself reading the brief story surrounding the execution of Phillip Matsell during which time we noted the synchronicity of a scaffold van signage that simultaneously drove past whilst reading about the large scaffold execution structure that was rigged here in 1806 for the last public hanging. The noise surrounding us, hostile in nature, echoed the noises of air-raid planes, of a 50,000 crowd that littered this area in the past. Another psychic resonance that continued to be ‘attached’ to this neglected and historic landmark?)

This car park is reported to be haunted. It is suggested in Haunted Birmingham (a book by Arthur Smith and Rachel Bannister) that sightings of the ghost could possibly be Phillip Matsell (the last person in Birmingham to be executed and which took place here at the corner of Ludgate Car Park and Snow Hill). It could, I reflect, be a person(s) killed as a direct result of a 2nd World War bomb via the destroyed tenant back to back housing that once stood here - a bomb victim killed by the blasts? Days leading up to this investigation, I imagined previous inhabitants being of a medieval nature way before the industrialisation ever took place. In my mind, I saw huts and small fires – the living and working conditions of yesteryear. What are the remnants of history here?

In reference of ancestral communication, further investigations are planned including an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) readings to attempt to record sounds inherent in the immediate atmosphere from the bygone past (I shall report on this in the coming months).

The BT tower is located only 50 yards away from one of the main entrances to Ludgate car park. The tower, it is claimed, can withstand a 5 mega ton nuclear atom bomb. From World War II to a nuclear communication tower - bombs seem to be the symbolic resonance of this particular location in Birmingham - a certain psychic connection that is drawn to this part of the city?

Why has Ludgate Car Park not been built upon since the 2nd World War? Suggestions ranged from perhaps the challenges of surveying and securing the ground to be safe and fit for building upon? Were the foundations safe? The uneven road surfaces, the undulating and sloping ground (twisted and curved), the maturing trees and wild overgrown grass indicative of intentional neglect and sculptural bombing? Perhaps the site, as it is seems privately owned in part, is difficult to resolve as a full use site? Perhaps the cost of purchase is excessive? We were not sure. It did seem strange, in our opinion, that a site such as this, would not be purchased and built upon until now (Ludgate Car Park has just been sold after 60 years) – particularly as it is a prime site in central Birmingham (please note that the Gun Quarter is situated about half a mile away from this car park – the location explains itself – a manufacturing munitions location (the remnants of a war-world nonetheless)).

The Jewellery Quarter is less that half a mile away from the car park. Ludgate Car Park is located between two significant churches – St Phillips and St Pauls. It forms a link from north to south respectively; the footbridge over busy traffic on Great Charles street - it is the physical marker into the new territory, with the car park right infront of you upon exit at the bottom of the stairs as you turn the corner. This transition is abject in feeling, creating an ugly composition mirrored by the strange mix of new, smart, 50s and older architecture that now surrounds you in an ad hoc fashion (abandoned warehouses, posh bars, dismal looking office blocks, modern designer company houses, for example). ((Note that the Jewellery Quarter is a wealthier part of the traditional business community in Birmingham, full of prestige, and a place where warehouses are being slowly converted into living accommodation for example)).

The group discussed the overall geographic layout, the implications of change and the noticeable signs of the past – a cobbled piece of road exposed, the concrete road of patchwork surfaces, tar and aggregate. The walls of old bricks and overgrown landscape, the butterflies that partnered with the burdock bushes, the remnants of a tile lined wall upon a small section of the think indented brickwork (possibly the signs of a gents toilet for example?); of cabling cut crudely and protruding out of another wall close by. Ludgate Car Park, irrespective of history, served today as an apparent eye sore, lost in no -mans land, neglected without any due respect. We at least, made our offerings there and then, a hallmark of eccentric archaeology investigated and honoured, to bricks and mortar of mortal men and women, girls and boys, of car park pay and display, of private landlords, public executions, of munitions and wildlife et al…..



Copyright©2008 Harry Palmer / Upon further investigation…A site visit to Ludgate Car Park in Birmingham (UK) – which hasn’t been built on since World War II.

FOR MORE PICTURES PLEASE GO TO:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsimpsonuk/sets/72157605858060372/.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanuman/sets/72157606040840875/detail/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11386588@N07/sets/72157605982442439/

Transmutationalisation never went away!

Painting, drawing – that is the process of meditation and the ability of transmutational story telling, time and space alteration – seen and heard through the senses – is a primitive and ancient instinct.

Cave painters, sand drawers – employing the use of colour and lines via the mobilisation of arms, feet, hands, mouth spray (wind power) – sticks, fingers, dyes and animal inks – the rattle of drums, voice, dancing and chanting creates the psychedelic hypnotism, enchantment. The Illumination of fire….Ghostly apparitions appeared. Gods were formed – some stayed for a few seconds, an hour, others for thousands of years. Our demons haunted us. Superstition emerged.

We divided experiences into pockets of memory time. We saw the stars move, the tides change, the wind alter, the temperatures fluctuate….clocks ticked – our feet became bionic as we increased our miles per second….bionic electronic…nano seconds, microscopes, cell division, transmutational evolution, energies..light and optics, filaments – The Television the world wide web, small steps to re-gain that which we have lost. A departure of flight and fantasy.

Silence revealed all. We began was a hum (ohm), jumping into noises of electric disturbances - emerging into frequency, frequencies. Out with oral traditions now threatened by the spark of the combustion engine and CO2 emissions. Molecules, molecular, mono, dynamo, fluxation - capitivating. It seems that we are frightened by our ancestors wisdom, disbelieving in the psychic communication of ancestral dimensions? Let us enjoy our communion once more, today – now! Cave painting and candle lights, herbs and raw meat and fresh medicines – food! We ate, wrestled with the elements.

We are passing, yet saved in the very eternal transmutational force - at every level. We cannot fail! We are shape shifting the (non) self in the universe. Tomorrow is not today as much as yesterday is not today. My transmutational Being is happening beyond the speed of light.

(I once saw my ancestors late one night whilst with a friend when we each played the drums across a room simultaneously).


Copyright©2008 Harry Palmer / Transmutationalisation never went away!

Creative Sanity and the fossilisation of recordings inherent in materials yet to be discovered.

(Above: Performance action re: vacumn cleaning my charcoal picture - 1998 approx).

I wish to alert myself with the over population of creative industrialisation that is mediated upon mediation – stick in the mud quick sand, which is making lots of lemmings out of more lemmings. Quick not to judge, but quicker to ridicule, eccentric archaeology is a combustion engine of seekerishness, impoverished by mediocrum yet inspired, avoiding the term ‘art’ at all cost, so to ensure that which is exactly the spirit of individual free thinking, spinning in clarity and converging on mediums that best express the individual desire – creativity streamed from consciousness to consciousness. What tho thinks is disiarist is not all that import because it makes you unhappy. To be uplifted is a crucial stimulating factor in wanting to survive. It has already been proven by scientific research, for example, that when we think in an inspired way, we produce a little bit more growth hormone in our bodies as a direct result. This growth hormone in turn (and it’s not a lot) makes the body not only look young and healthy, but also biologically remain ‘young’ – our bones and muscles are less likely to deteriorate as such a predicted speed set against stress related disorder for example. Have you ever wondered why some artists or creative makers/thinkers can, albeit it is true that other factors also exist, look young and live to an old age? They say that the mind is the key to stimulating and effecting long life? Obviously, this is only a small picture in a large tapestry of factors that the universe, should we be listening to it (and not mediated by the manufacturing controllers and synthesising such energy that encourages us to gorge on this system) will slowly tell us; then we will have a golden age of knowledge – communicated and a/effected.

When it comes to creating, certainly pretensions are humbug and makes one ill. Why chase dreams when they live right in front of you? I spoke to my friend Megan about this in Kerrville Folk Festival (Texas, USA) this 2008, about the negative effects of peer insistence of ‘group art’ that 99 per cent of the time is delusional or distracting – in that being ‘mad’ qualifies as a mark of the so called genius. Insanity never helped a person yet. Living ‘hell’ is not that funny. I advocate a creative sanity whilst advocating the most unseemingly outlandish borne of personal fruition, unmediated by peers, presenting no argument within the ranks of institutionalism, culturalism etc…. The art of the immediate can demonstrate tremendous results (without distinction). Is it a conspiracy that promoting so called madness has somehow qualifies as great art!? Intelligent madness, perceived to be mad, is a quality of deviating from the norm (eccentric behaviour nonetheless).

Meditation is a good way to establish ideas, or at least let them not distract you that much. I find that when I meditated this week I had lots of ideas, many came and went, but it filtered the good from the bad (as I judge it). Mindfullness, alertness to mood swings, impressions, pulsations from billboards etc.. are bad news. Listen to the bees – they are suffering due to electronic wavelengths. However, thinking in quiet time (meditation wishes to slow things down) often ensures that those ideas you think about can find some clarity rather than pretension animated by peers once more (or mediated by external forces in which we are always given to manipulate).

All forms of meditation are up for grabs. Walking or cycling, driving along long roads in relative peace and quite, playing a song, whistling, sitting quietly on a train for example – dissolving the thinking stream, allows for new ideas to filter into our brain matrix. We are born anew! Our radiant thinking will insist on doing something. The mind, like the air we breathe, is in need or constant stimulation. Hence, songs can and do come from apparent ‘nowhere’, plucked from the ether of universal stillness. Politics is created from the afterburn.

Insanity is the quality of commitment to a belief in which you will become fixated and wish to ‘argue’ with and amongst others (most of the time with yourself, unhappy, that deep down things aren’t right! A bad trip; Simple). The bottom line of all of this is not to be convinced about the trivial pursuit of crazy meets bad health. Health is good. Clear mind – good. Prayer as meditational enhancement good. Now prayer – the psychic energy given out from our brain (body) will be something in the future which we, as evolved/evolving humans, will eventually use and apply as a direct result of understanding frequency, purveyed across the ether, resonating into our atmospheres like any other wavelength that we are already animating and picking-up from in our bedrooms via cable and satellite. We shall here voices (and that’s OK not schizophrenic in the conventional medical understanding). The EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) for example, indicates that we are at the early stages of listening to our ancestors. Audio recordings from yester year - have been ‘saved’ in brick walls, glass goblets, silver trinkets etc…– they live like fossils in the materials we come across. As yet, we still are awaiting the signals to be appropriately picked up by our inbuilt brain and body receptors, amplified, in part by mechanical systems currently - that inspire us to translate and hence put into operation and make manifest and use appropriately (this will be the first indication that material ‘saves’ – recorded like data for evolutionary purposes. This time will come. Other potential dimensions will become more and more apparent - psychic energy or resonance, for want of a better word. What an exciting thought nugget – our creative juices, convert our biological systems into an instrument of positive energy – animated not by artificial stimulation, but by honest (or negative) body talk. Negative thoughts/ and negative affirmations being detrimental of course. We make ourselves ill. The Buddhists for example, specialists in physiological and philosophical operation, work with this condition - the mind - have understood this dynamic. When we sing to ourselves, paint with a canvas, scribble a doodle, excited in lost meditational nonagitation– we communicate with our being, facilitating our unique self (of which there is arguably no self – hence the confusion with madness – naively aware of not knowing what to ‘grab’ onto that makes us – us. We must, therefore, ride the wave of change (encouraging transmutational states in all its glory).

What turns us on, tunes us in! We become our own truth serum, willing ourselves to grow, avoiding limitations and restrictions and avoiding ill health. We become visionaries, enchantments incarnate. Now our visual and oral history makes sense. Now technology is no longer a hindrance. We convert positively all that we see, hear and smell. Transmutational activity is in operation (and I shall write about that later, based on prior research and pondering). Calm and collected we have nothing to fear. In positive balance, we will sleep well, rested in health, ready to negotiate the signals from the ever expanding Universe. Off we go!

Please note: This article seeks to support and encourage and not condemn. Needless to say, the health of an individual, if robbed of creative and affirmative environments, will likely be harmed by being displaced from listening to their inner affirmative self (sometimes and cautiously described as self truth). I do believe that negative environments, situations that are aggressive, all moods that discourage the positive self, will limit the positive psychic stimulation that we all require for the greater good. Long live the affirmative removed from manipulative orchestrated systems in society. Inter self -determinisation is best encouraged, salvation may well depend on it! Drop out and be responsible. Freedom requires it!

Copyright©2008 Harry Palmer / Creative Sanity and the fossilisation of recordings inherent in materials yet to be discovered.

Reverse Pedestrianism World Record Attempt 1996

Armed with an adapted bicycle helmet and video camera, a bag full of sandswiches and water, a bunch of Yorkshire White Roses (handed to pedestrain walkers) - I took a four daytime walk across the then biggest single spanned suspension bridge in the world...as an active and some what poetic modern day clown celebration of a so called regional change (reinstatement) in name and policy (Humberside County Council to East Yorkshire). I got up as a local prankster to signal these new changes in a way that I felt fit to do so!!!!!

Documentation with sound can be found at:

http://www.harrypalmer.co.uk/

Social Worker / Art Worker - Early Investigations

Back in 1995, I took to the streets in Kingston Upon Hull in Humberside, where I was living throughout the 1990s. This street work was a start at gathering public opinion of sorts. I leave you with the images! I turned this work into a video performance, performing transcripts in bars c/o VisionCollision in Manchester and then onto Brighton.

Introducing self proclaimed Eccentric Archaeologist - Harry Palmer.

My name is Harry Palmer and I am a creatorist, attempting to allow the pulsations of life on planet earth fall into my being, process that which is upon my unpredictions, encountering the fellow energy and results of mixing with ourselves plus myselfs. As a self proclaimed Zen Punk, a Do-it-Yourself anarchist with a soft hammer, an Eccentric Archaeologist (now publishing The Eccentric City - The world's first dedicated eccentric tabloid newspaper http://www.eccentriccity.co.uk/), here on this blog is my adhoc account of sorts of various things I have been doing and will continue to do albeit as a creatorist, non-dependent on industrialisation zones, best avoiding all possible places of commodification (some in which I have unfortunately slipped into from time to time like an earthquake or similar Act of Godessness), burnt by the tar of egos (and others' egos), exhausted by the prevailing insistence of machinary and monetaries (I have battled to moved on and moved on). Fuelled by a belief in intelligent creativitism, unconventional perhaps to some and unargumentative (art can be fun), spontaneous art in the moment, caputured and lost in medatative and psychic states, resonance, enchantments, non persona per se, a shift in all that is possible, oiled by what is yet to be - welcoming. I live in land where spelling mistakes are not critical and judgement not vital (the art of mistakes enjoyed and celebrated of course) - here on this blog I will open up and share that which is part of the whole incarnate ongoing in infinitumity. Peace, love, peace........