#551: PINS
In the coming months we will broadcast some six episodes of the radioplay PINS, written by Richard Foster.
PINS
Hold on in there, as style is surely on its way.
PINS is a game for all anonymous egos, everywhere, made through repositioning and
reproducing old dreams and documents.
PINS is a game that rejects the word “practice”, a ponderous barrage balloon of a word, one
with a thin skin that can be undone with a pin prick, revealing an awful lot of hot air. Leave it
for the doctors and lawyers. Or call it “praccy”. PINS favours the word “process”. Process
can mean the slow deconstructing of making art. Process also means something that can be
tracked. It means repeated and unglamourous toil, uncertainty, silence, private actions with
no hope of public validation, multiple failures and misunderstandings, and – eventually –
something or other.
In the 1960s you could enact “death by Process”.
There is rarely a plan, just an idea. Chance, whim, accident and other people play a role in
the end result.
What does Richard think about PINS?
Richard often feels between worlds. He remembers the congealed boredom of the analogue
industrial past. He is often wary of the earnest, yet fly-by-night present with its assumed
importances and digital fevers. Like Syd Barrett, he is “much obliged” to contemporary life for
regularly “making it clear that he’s not here”. Richard realises that being between these
worlds is both his natural state and his opportunity to act.
Between 1840 and 2023 he spent an incalculable amount of time looking out of bedroom
windows, or sitting in pubs listening to builders, plumbers and middle managers telling him
what real art is. Now he wants to bring those worlds he saw together, somehow. He feels he
has a lot to do, even if his work may not make much sense.
Back in 2004, Richard painted out all the images he didn’t like in hundreds of 12” record
covers. Only those that momentarily interested him stayed. The record covers are still more
interesting than Richard’s actions. They are now under the spare bed. One day he may
photocopy them. Now for the RULES, and ILLUSTRATIONS: both here and at the Museum
of Photocopies.
Mix & Edit by Ash Kilmartin
Text & voice by Richard Foster
a RadioWORM/Dr Klangendum/Concertzender production
