extensions

Navigating from one waypoint to the next, by means of poetic and intangible connections. These connections are made physical via tool/s. What dialogical contribution can my presence have? Is it simply being present in a line among others, and if so how do I avoid being trapped in the shallows? What are the politics of being trapped in the shallows / shallow thought / shallow action?

Tiller toward or away from the / a leviathan? What does it take to manage a trajectory. What are the fictions present in the becoming trajectory? (eg: saw horses swapped with Graham Hoyte, documentation of navigations…)

Step lightly, one step at a time, a helical staircase lies in a room once filled with furniture waiting to be erected, 2024.

Enamel paint, steel, stainless steel, block pulley, polyester rope. 

Dimensions variable

The potential of the ‘gifted’ spiral stairs is realised in April/ May 2025, erecting the steel structure within the studio of P.Mule to gain access to the platform above kitchenette. Agreed as a consideration of an art object’s transition to its intended formal use, not decommissioned but, as an art object. An object to enable movement, to be experienced, to enable transition.

-Eleven mild steel treads contributed by Blaine Western to enable ascent and descent.

-Electrical table and paper added by P. Mule to manage sharp edges.

Is the installation of the spiral staircase, connecting the object to site (be it private), significant to its previous consideration as an ‘work’? The install does enable ascent / descent, but when left horizontal / untethered the object allows all directions to be considered. Since the use is private, does the object become assimilated into and proscribed a role within the space it has been fixed? Now, unable to continue to be thought of as an art object, instead fulfilling an expected function?

notes on coordinates, steps, and materials to traverse a trajectory.

fold back

Consideration of past and future navigation with wind in mind. Motueka toward/via 171 Breaker Bay Road, Te Whanganui a Tara toward Tāmaki Makaurau. Virtue signalling? The necessity to consider weather forecasts using Ren Ring as a source for speculated patterns for future actions.

Consideration of past navigation, faux-control.

means of movement

How might one move from point to point on a Cartesian plane? Can a syntax of movement between moments be a system of navigation? Coordinates are recorded, these points are the moments brought forward, but do they allow anything other than positioning to be determined? (When will this be done, and to what end?)

Found and to be reconsidered, and although permission has been granted, is this reconsideration a sort of appropriation? Can it be appropriation when proclaimed potential is considered at inception, does appropriation of an objects trajectory exist instead as a prompt or instruction? Is sailing simply an appropriation of the winds force, aiding in propulsion through space and time?

To consider improvisational play (as in composer Anthony Braxton’s structured improvisation), assemblage of moments as montage (as in film maker Sergei Eisenstein’s montage), doing so by means as bricolour (as in anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’ bricolour), using these tools and means ready at hand, enables movement through poetics present in a trajectory. 

I understand that engagement with such attempts inherently embody values of te ao Māori, specifically manaakitanga (care and hospitality) and whanaungatanga (kinship and relationships). Whanaungatanga explicitly relates to the greater Pacifica concept of the Vā, describing the space between generally or specifically the relational space between persons. There is need to acknowledge the relevance of these values, and to allow them to support and inform process, actions and subsequent making. (edited: 11-06-25)

Clear sky, 12-15 knots (no other information recorded on the day) The intention to test the trailer’s ability to function went well, but the desire to sail did not go ahead due to damage to the sail track on the mast.

When, as in how often, can one reevaluate a past consideration? Does this reconsideration temporally relate one to a past moment? Does desire to connect and the inability to do so, due to this temporal space become described as disconnected correspondence with a past moment? Do attempts to work through connections of past moments to the present articulate the flow of Deleuzian immanence? (Deleuze, G. 2001, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (Trans. Anne Boyman) Urzone Inc, New York, pg 25.)

Where then can a construction be held? In a state of waiting, ready to come forward into a future so engagement can be attempted. What parts are used to assemble a construction, where does the assemblage end?

What is the structure of a boat trailer? During assessment of the viability of the vessels trailer, attention is brought to reliance on all parts, including support structures, within or outside of, visible or otherwise. What is it to transport a vessel that is itself a means of transport? How long will navigation from A to B take?

27-12-24. Clear sky, 12-15 knots (no other information recorded on the day) The intention to test the trailer’s ability to function went well, but the desire to sail did not go ahead.

Tasks often fail due to one detail or other that is made evident in the moment, eg: due to damage to the sail track on the mast, a bent point on the mast inhibited the sprit car from running all the way up the mast. Due to not having the sufficient tool/s on hand, the water test was limited to rowing.

Although this vessel has the ability to move on water, support structures are required to enable the vessel to be transported on land. Do these structures exist as part of the vessel, unable to be separated. With one support structure replaced with another, are the previous structures still present within?

The task of replacing a rusted out trailer for a ‘new’ trailer, which was found by asking around the community my parents are a part of.

What about the support structures that enabled the boat to be built in the first place? I visited Graham Hoyte on the 12th May, 2023 to discuss this ongoing project, in the end he offered the saw horses he still had from the construction of the MBP vessel in exchange for a new set. (Photo below provided by Hoyte on the day.) Although I have not found any photo evidence that these supports were used, they are a stand in for Hoyte as a support structure himself. A year later my father-in-law and I picked these up, dismantled the pair into two bundles as the new set were, and so they could be readily transported. *Look up the name of the tool — as in, considering those who labour over a vessel, construct a vessel, a barrel maybe, something to hold something else, using tools to construct another tool… objects related to an origin. As in, Albert Camus’ Le Premier Homme (The First Man) 1994. pg 124.

Graham Hoyte’s description of these saw horses being used during construction of the vessel / site of inquiry is curious. There is currently no photo evidence found that shows this type of saw horse being used. That said, the possible fiction of this claim could provide ground for considering fiction as a means to move forward.


Seek clarity of syntax in movement between moments

Forward, back, ascend, descend, turn left, turn right, 45, 90, 180, 360 degrees. Entry and exit a site once defined by particular expectations and understanding of use. Is there a way to bring point A forward instead of point B as it is A that usually recedes into the background.

How will tasks inform navigation of varied trajectories? What direction do these trajectories lead, up, down, back forward? If only one line can be followed in an infinite of lines, is a provisional position best suited when moving away from a point of origin? While within this unfixed and responsive position, when do support structures, eg: collaborators, the wind, or a trailer used to store and simultaneously transport the boat across land become as relevant to navigation as the form of the vessel itself? How does one step into or step out of an unfolding situation? One option could be to construct a tool to enable this potential…

Within a site, efforts are made to navigate potential via use of a tool connected to that site. One extension controls the next but does not give firm instruction to the point of origin, only an apparition of action informs the movement at the point of origin - the point contacting the studio wall. Only a flow of movement is recorded through the extensions, no set direction is made.

Actioned by friend, Robert Van Garderen. (Documented by J.A. Kennedy)

Using the hoist system installed to support the spiral staircase if it were to be stood up, I instead lift myself up to he ceiling, traversing a part of the studio space that is typically not accessible without some sort of extraneous effort. What is it to be self supporting with use of a support structure?

(Photos courtesy of Hazel Davies)

Supporting vessels for an open studio made by Jack Tilson and students of Woodfired Pottery School

assemblage of faux control

What are the problematics of a tiller connected to a point of departure?

On reflection: considering the tool as part of a narrative that speaks to the cup as a vessel. How does one speak of navigation, does one speak out of the cup, as in, to not get to the/a point in a direct manner. This indirect approach opens a meaning to become confused. Using means available to avoid direct action, is separation from cause and effect possible? A tiller, when connected directly to a rudder is expected to be pushed or pulled in the opposite direction to where one intends to go, toward or away from one moment in line with the next. What occurs when one tiller extension is used? What happens when an extension is extended and extended and extended etc? Is connection to a moment lost or are attempts to effect become watered down?

http://jakennedy.net/lutnott2024

1,2,3,4,5, universal joints, an act to assess the ontogeny of entangled moments (Notes on tending to a vessel, a place to hold assembled parts.), 2024.

Enamel paint, steel, stainless steel, brass, aluminium, ceramic, epoxy and aliphatic glue, Oak, Kauri, Rimu. 

Dimensions variable

-phenomenal situation as research- a return to point of origin?

The opportunity to engage in research relating to labour and potentials associated with moving the sailing vessel ‘OM’ 🕉️ (MMSI 338316308). ‘OM’ is owed to the serendipitous requirement to aid the owner and captain Ahmed F. Agrama. Agrama’s daughter, Natasha requested the desire for her farther to take crew for the 2600 NM journey via a mutual friend, Chiara Giovando, who had recently visited Aotearoa. The timing and my vicinity to Opua, allowed me to be present and on hand soon after the request was made, which Natasha described as, miraculous.


Although the act of return did not transpire as intended, and my intentions to action tasks for 24 hours after passing the 180º longitude now impossible, we returned the sailing vessel to Opua safely. At the moment of returning, both directions were definable as a ‘return.’ The warp and woof of engaging with Captain Ahmed from the 9th - 28th April 2023 produced, a collection of audio recordings, still and moving images, a log book, and a series of drawings. This material can be seen to represent this moment or exist as phenomenal evidence, itself able to be returned to.

23-4-23, the first night at sea consisted of four-hour shifts. 7:30 hrs, as daylight broke through the mist, I thought of what to prepare in the galley for our first of a few breakfasts at sea. Dreaming of grilled cheese sandwiches, we settled on lukewarm porridge with dates and oak milk. A more than welcome sight, smell and taste.

8:30 hrs, 100nm offshore, we experienced a series of alarms, resulting in a total digital navigation instrument failure. This meant the auto-helm had no data to function. With preparation for a minimum of eighteen days in front of us, we realise manual steerage would be exhausting in even moderate weather. This in mind, Captain Ahmed decides the boat has spoken, only eighteen and a half hours into our passage to Pape’ete.

Regardless of the favourable weather window ahead, our attempt to return ‘OM’ to Los Angeles, via Pape’ete and Honolulu, has failed. Now forced to return to Opua to diagnose the issue and consider an alternate plan.

While located at about 34S / 175E the boat had jibed and redirected itself 180° off our intended course. As fate may have it, heading directly back the way we had come. In response we simply adjusted the sails, that had been supported by the purposely rigged prevention lines, and settled into the site of the infamous long white cloud on the horizon.

19 hours later, back in berth F33, with a ginger beer in hand, we celebrated our gratitude for an uneventful safe return and for being 100mn, not 1000mn offshore.

What leviathan was avoided? The eddies hardly developed on our way toward the edge of the earth, we were brought back to land by means of a machine we were only part, not necessarily in complete control of. The consensus; it was fortuitous, we each needed to be somewhere else other than spending eighteen days at sea. It was the preparation of this trip that was required to see a little more clearly, the potential walked through, but not necessarily actioned. Instead of completing the passage itself, the failure allows other aspects of life to be attend to.

Is the effort to engage like lifting a box up a set of stairs? A Sisyphean slapstick joke or something more?  Laurel & Hardy, The Music Box, 1932.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8I6SG_DAU (Accessed 18-2-21)

How will I return to this waypoint later, and how will it inform engagement with the vessel of MBP?

Relation to the flow of prior efforts

Transitive verbs, actions in acknowledgement.

In late 2022, I was commissioned by Art News Aotearoa to write on the influence of artist Paul Cullen and his work in the current moment. I took this task as a means to examine the influence Cullen has had on ways I approach being in the world. The text came out of having aided Layla Tweedie-Cullen with re-staging and examining works within her father's archive earlier that year.

http://jakennedy.net/life-water-and-oxygen-as-a-guide

floating, a thought on actioning potentials

“….what has happened to the vessel as an object?  From this simple question, expecting it to be behind a door in a Te Papa Tongarewa storage facility, I was quickly pushed and pulled ... blown toward and into the vessel in question.

Built, exhibited, stored on a trailer, sailed, what are the potentials of an objet d’art, pushed out to sea? Although decommissioned, ballast is weighted with a particular provenance. Since decommission the vessel has been cared for, not simply left in the tidal mud, but still it exists within a littoral zone, a space between? If within a intertidal zone, a place that is redefined twice a day with regular fluctuations, what actions are to be taken? When, with the incoming tide, I’m forced to consider what happens between tides. At the moment of return is there an archive of what once was, or does the tide erase what once was. How does one engage with an archive in a tidal zone if all is in a continued state of change, with origin starting at both the last cycle and the first tide? Where does one stand when attempting to engage in such a zone?

The following actions originate from childhood interest and first experience of employment as a sailing instructor on the island of St. Croix in the USVI. Those interests now inform a position to engage with a vessel, an objet d’art that has avoided the archive. This allows empirically engaged research to inform the collection of material related to those actions. As an audience member myself, is this a means to transpose fleeting moments into tentative contexts where I hold them for as long as possible? Let' us consider language for an affective archive.

Let there be space to moving forward and back simultaneously with use of an “object of desire” / “tool to navigate” / “transitive object”

Once place a top a building, with approximate coordinates described as 41°17′26″S 174°46′55″E, what does it mean to return to a found object, one that once looked out toward a distant offing? Now, located at approximately 41°09′09″S 172°59′37″E, where and when will engagement occur? What does it mean for an object to change once another set of hands alters it’s static trajectory? What does the object become? When re/instigating this dialogue, what do I, as active participant within the object, become?

This inquiry has been made possible through the generous financial support of Mike Cole who provided the means to acquire the boat. My parents Jacqui and Richard are integral as they have provided and aided in finding the space to store the vessel at or near their home in Upper Moutere, Whakatū Nelson.

http://www.selway-fisher.com/mbp

Parts may not be perceived to always be moving. So, how can an archive of these parts be static, and if perceived as static, what does the movement look like? If understood as moving, what will occur during navigation between moments? If this imperceivable movement were to be described visually, where could interest in this inquiry be said to have originated? By what means will these questions be charted? Will a prescribed outcome be altered in form so one might float upon the sea?

These notes will be returned to and expanded on over time. Some holes may appear, these will be addressed in due time.