ASU2. I hope i haven't lost the thread. These are a few scribbled drawings for the Judas' Kiss plates ... knocking out ideas roughly with pencil in a europa notebook. I like drawing ideas out on lined paper i think it feels a bit like writing and a bit like drawing and not like either which  frees my hand.

ASU2. SNU. Judas & Jesus. You'll note that i've introduced the label/tag "Social Contract" this is one of the connecting points between my two projects but not just my two projects. The social contract is what binds society together, it is laws, it is government but it is deeper than the law or government of any country or institution. It is basic tenets of grace and respect that are seated within the body, a union of body, mind and heart, that commands the government of an individual within society. A society that might be any institution made up of more than one living being, from a brief encounter to a global civilisation. There is a lot to go into here and i'm not sure where to begin. 
Here at this moment in time humanity as a species stands at a crossroad Covid19 is running the show. The relationship between us as a species and the virus is that the virus has the upper hand and its a bit of a shock. What is happening to us as result of becoming subject to this virus is that we are meeting ourselves with all our clothes off. It is not comfortable our rights and wrongs are being exposed, that which is good and that which is bad about who we are as individuals, and within small groups and culture too is being revealed by our impotence.  
The element of being stripped naked is part of the stations of the cross, Jesus at the foot of the cross station 10 "Jesus is stripped of his clothes", and so it could be said that we as a species are there with him at the moment, but i am skipping ahead of myself because the work i am giving you now is related to Jesus' last night. 
Jesus went with his disciples to the Gardens of Gethsemane. He and three of his disciples/followers went to the Mount of Olives to pray. The followers fell asleep. Judas came and planted a kiss on Jesus' cheek. The guards took him. Simon Peter cut the guard's ear off. Jesus chastised him. But also he chastised those he had taken with him to pray for sleeping. Maybe they were tired but he in that moment raged that had failed to keep him company on his last night of freedom, his last night alive. In the morning he was taken before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to death by crucifixion. 
I am in a muddle here with how i take this blog/journal forward because my work here was a criss crossing of  thought streams but it may be that this thing, the social contract, is the hub of it. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss thereby breaking the contract. But Jesus had publicly admonished him when he took issue with Mary washing Jesus' feet. To publicly humiliate another is to break the contract. The disciples had fallen asleep and so broken the terms that Jesus had thought they were under. But also maybe Jesus had asked of them something they were unable to do also breaking contract. And so on and so on. Because this is the thing and it is why the social contract runs deeper than state laws or government. It is about common decency but each person's life and their fore-fathers/mothers lives creates the essence of that contract and its about survival, physical, social and emotional survival. The social contract asks that we step into someone else's shoes and respond with understanding and compassion and that they do the same for us.
I say that it is the hub of my projects but its also the hub of the universe, the contract we make with our surroundings, not just human intercourse but our intercourse with the world we live in. In the UEA/NUA collaborative project we looked at those who were homeless and how those who were not homeless related to homeless people. When questioned few gave money and most of those who did were in "low skilled" jobs and had lower levels of education. The sentiment expressed was that the government ought to be helping. There was discomfort with seeing the homeless which made people turn away. We know when we witness suffering that we should help, but are stopped, often by fear, sometimes by revulsion, sometimes by denial, a refusal to see. To help us to not see we make that which we don't want to see other, not us. To ask what is home allows us to meet the absence of home in ourselves. To ask what is love allows us to meet the unloved. To feel homeless or unloved with the other helps us to understand and feel compassion and thereby meet the others needs as well as we meet our own.
At this time i was also applying for various exhibitions, the Raveningham Sculpture Trail, The Bishop's Prize, an MA student-curator's exhibition called Self Love (more on that later) as well as finishing a postcard for the charity auction at Mandell's Gallery. I'm not sure why i mention this now except maybe because it was yet more divergent paths i was treading. When writing a proposal for a piece of work for an exhibition I have to take myself some part of the way down the road of making it in order to know it is possible, to be made it needs to be conceived and given time and body space to grow. Art does not appear out of thin air, click it is made, there is a process behind it. The curator writing to accept or reject an artist's proposal is respecting that process and the work being offered. It makes it worth the time and effort it takes to make the work. The formal acceptance is part of the exhibition framework for me, it feels right, makes me feel valued and supported as an artist. 

ASU2. Prints from drypoint and hard ground scribble plates, worked into twice. Not finished. And note the faces are merely different types of face to distinguish between them. I'm looking at how a thing is seen from a different point of view. I haven't really seen in my head the faces of either character as i want to draw them. Next page is some scratchy drawings but not anything worked into. Do I see Jesus as more refined and Judas as rougher ? or the other way about ? it is all in the looking, the viewer, perspective, perception.

 

ASU2. Plates. The drypoint scribble plates and drypoint and hard ground Judas and Jesus scribble plates.  

ASU2. I feel with this blog now a bit how i did months ago when i was at this stage of the term, my head spinning and like i have too many balls up in the air. I was aware that i had done very little for my ASU2 project. Remember, The Stations of the Cross. I'd been thinking the story, walking it through in my mind, the last days, Jesus' in the desert, Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, Jesus at the temple, the last supper, Mary Magdalen washing his feet, the conflict within his inner circle, the shared meal, the feeling of foreboding, Jesus talking about betrayal, "one of you shall betray me tonight", "one of you shall deny me before the cock crows three times", the blessing "eat, drink, this is my body which i give unto you, this is my blood". Who knows if he actually said those things but this is the story that has been passed down through the ages. 
And then Jesus and his disciples leave to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray to contemplate or maybe just to hang out, a group of twelve men after supper taking a walk on a warm evening or night, was it warm ? or was there a chill or a breeze ? maybe there was tension in the air, did they feel Judas' absence ? did they care that he was absent ? Was he the fall guy, the mate that got pranked and teased ? Was he fed up with it ? Was he jealous ? Jealous of Jesus ? Jealous of the other disciples ? Jealous of Mary ? Was he a bad tempered lout ? or too stiff for the group ? or too sensitive ? what made him give Jesus to the men of the temple ? what drove him to do that ? his suicide after suggests he regretted it ? was it an impulse ? a fuck you ? a cry for help ? a please see me ? his name has gone down as the name of a betrayer but maybe he too was destined for the role he plays in the story, maybe his life led to his end as inevitably as Jesus' life is led him to his. 
Jesus went with three of his friend to the mount of olives. I guess they were the favoured few, the inner circle. I imagine him looking out across Jerusalem, the sounds of city at night, animals, insects, and the small lights of windows, fires, the smells in the air. I feel him to be tired and sad, worn out with being idolised, by crowds and even his friends, i feel like he is thinking that the show is over. I don't know if he knows he is going to be crucified. Maybe he thinks he will get a hard beating and that afterwards he'll take his girl home and let go of his boyhood. Or maybe the atmosphere is so weighted its hard to ignore the feeling of impending doom, the dark politics that require a sacrifice, a scapegoat, an example to be made, rebel and you'll suffer, see, see how this man you all thought was great can be taken down, can be shamed, can be broken, can be killed if we like. 
At last as dawn is breaking Judas comes with the temple guards. He greets Jesus with a kiss. The kiss is the sign. This is the one. How does that kiss feel ? is there a moment of love between the two ? a warmth from that contact that strikes like a knife ? the guards move forward to arrest Jesus, one of his friends, Simon Peter ? steps forward and strikes the guards ear with a sword or a knife, protecting his master, the leader of the gang. Jesus remonstrates. He knows now that some rough justice is to be handed to him. Does he know that fighting is pointless ? Does he seek to spare others ? Why doesn't he fight ? Why does he yield to punishment ? Does he feel he deserves punishment ? What is his back story ? What is he thinking. The guards take him away. Peter denies him three times before the cock crows, realising only on the third crow that it was he his friend spoke of. Or was the story made up after. Stories are fluid at their beginning, it is only later that certain parts become set, the bones of a myth. 
And I am thinking about this part of the story of Jesus and i'm thinking that i want to make fourteen, or maybe fifteen if i include the resurrection, prints each depicting a station. I am thinking that i want to learn how to do drypoint on a copper plate and also how to make hard ground plate. These are pretty much new to me processes, i have done a little drypoint a good decade ago on aluminium and plastic but nothing really since, hard ground i have never tried. 
I am feeling exhausted and my nerves are rattling particularly because of the collaborative project so i ask to be excused from a taught session because i know i need to drop down a gear, i cannot take in other people's seed ideas and i cannot let mine out without losing it. I should not have asked. I should have just taken. I thought i was being polite. I regret trying. I stop trying. I hate everyone because all i wanted was a moment to breathe and because i asked i have less moments. It is resolved now. covid19 makes before covid19 feel like years ago, another life, but i write it because it was part of the process. 
I took the time tho i was told not to. And let myself scratch into a small copper plate front and back and an aluminium scrap too. Not good work. Resting scribbles.
The following day I took two scrap copper plates of the same size and worked on the back of one in drypoint with Jesus' face showing as Judas comes to him and worked into hard ground on the other with Judas' face as he approaches Jesus. Then after the hard ground was etched and cleaned i printed from them, one print each, and wrote on them to show what i liked and what i didn't, what was a typical drypoint mark and so on. The following week i worked into the plates again rubbing out parts and making further marks. I did not have time to write on them. I had planned to keep working into them. But there is never enough time. I printed on two types of paper the second time to see how that changed the prints. The prints are not good work, they are working work, learning work. I like how they look with the writing.