curator, Author at Museum of Photocopies

PINS – Rule Twenty-four: The Electoral College

It’s time to describe the people who run things. We think these people are members of something called the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is written on the back of a TERRIER ADJUSTMENT SHEET. This must mean it’s important, especially it’s got typed-out instructions on the front and the College names are written out in copperplate using a dip pen and ink, on the back. Here are some photocopies to help PUT A FACE TO A NAME for your own Electoral College.

The first photograph of four photographs of drawings of a photocopy of a photograph using colour pencils, showing a Polish Pilot called Richard. That is all we know putside of a dedication to the curator’s grandmother in a Polish-English dictionary. Maybe he can join the Electoral College in your game of PINS.

PINS – Rule Twenty-three: The Light Outside

It’s important to know where you can get good light and also where you can sing light comic opera without being laughed at. Both are essential ingredients to PINS. You can find out more here, or peruse the photocopies for clues below.

A photograph of a photocopy of a drawing of a local resident going up past Rising Bridge, Accrington. Them East Lancashire folk can be chippy and independent-minded. Bolshy, even, they laugh at light comic opera. They know about good places where the light is. One place is near the Haworth Art Gallery.

A photograph of a photocopy of a drawing of a local resident going to the butchers in CLayton-le-Moors. Them East Lancashire folk can be chippy and independent-minded. Bolshy, even. They know about good places where the light is. One place is up the street, where the Eric Morecambe memorial plate is.

A photograph of a photocopy of a drawing of a French bloke, from a book lent to the curator by a Liverpool friend who liked a Good Moan, and a North West Area cub scout badge for use on Church Parade, where you can hear all about the Apocalypse. Them East Lancashire folk can be chippy and independent-minded. Bolshy, even. They know about good places where the light is. One place is Cambridge Street, Accrington, or the corner of Queens Road West, where you can see the light on the Coppice.

PINS – Rule Twenty-two: Inner Mapping

PINS can be carried out anywhere. We know that. We think it’s best to do it in your garden. But you can also do it in your head. We don’t know if PINS is true. But that’s not a problem. Sometimes, it’s just what we remember, or imagine. Here are some images to help you imagine what may have happened to you. PINS is not played on any screen. And colour television is not to be trusted. This is the only real rule of PINS.

A photograph of a colour photocopy of a drawing using coloured water-soluble pencils and inks, and collage. It shows the Curator, entering his Inner World on top of the coal bunker. The tin drum is borrowed from Gunter Grass not David Sylvian, and the cap from Heworth Colliery Band. Inner Worlds shape you. You have to use them wisely. And also: remember the world around you, when playing PINS.

A photograph of a colour photocopy of a drawing using coloured water-soluble pencils and inks, and collage, including some figures taken from the Nursery Rhymes series of etchings by the late great Paula Rego. It shows various Guardians in the predominently matriarchal Inner World of the Curator, and nearby totems, such as the chimney of the NORI brickworks, an emotional weathervane of his early life in East Lancashire. Inner Worlds shape you. You have to use them wisely. And remember the world around you, when playing PINS.

A photograph of a colour photocopy of an in situ photograph set of six oil paintings showing the cover of Yeti, by Amon Düül II, made in the Intermediate Internet Age. It shows Der Sensenmann, aka Wolfgang Krischke, aka a dead commune member of Amon Düül. Designer F.U. Rogner said: “When he died I thought that the photo would be a perfect tribute to his memory […] maybe his image as ‘Der Sensenmann’ will work as a strange cover image and he could be remembered as a magical person.” The paintings are now most probably lost, probably by another magical rock band, Sea Power. Remember the world around you, when playing PINS.

PINS – Rule Twenty-one: Maps – More War

We all know the PINS War is between the Protestant new order in the North and the Catholic old order in the South and is played out in a fictional eighteenth-century. But if you don’t like war – and who does – there are a number of potential escape routes from the Garden where The War takes place. Below are some visual clues for those escape routes. You can make, and photocopy your own, of course. And you can find further clues here, too.

A photograph of a photocopy, coloured with colour pencils, showing a drawing from a photograph, of the curator’s Great Uncle Lawrence, on his mother’s side (East Lancashire), who was a “very nice, kind man.” That is all we know. He escaped into his own world, and from the rest of us too, due to his early death. Try not to escape like Great Uncle Lawrence. The other two slippery, bowler hatted characters are Newts.

A photograph of a photocopy on pink paper of a drawing by the curator in 2B pencil of Russian prisioners of war in Germany. The (striking) image is taken from a small privately published book called, ‘Fotograaf in Krijgsgevangenschap Duitsland 1943-1945’ by Dick van Maarseveen, a Dutch POW. The curator picked it up for 50 guilder cents in 2001. Think about this image when you think of escaping The War.

A photograph of a mind drawing of a a Tragic Figure from the 1920s, probably Isadora Duncan. The curator once saw a silent film about her being strangled by her own scarf in her car. Duncan holds a bronze mask, probably of Agamemnon, another artefact that fascinated the curator as a boy. The Duke of Wellington appears as a sphinx. Escaping the War can often be a discomboulating experience.

A photograph of a photocopy, coloured with colour pencils, showing a drawing from a photograph of the curator wearing his father’s Heworth Colliery Band cap, and banging a drum. The curator was escaping The War by clambering onto the coal bunker. The curator couldn’t help but bring notice to his sitation by banging his toy drum. The figure to the left of the curator is that of his brother, from a slightly later date. His brother was an expert at escape in the late 1970s.

PINS – Rule Twenty: Maps – More Special Features – Garden Worlds

One of the points of PINS is escape. Where better, if you can, to escape into a garden, however humble, where you can best set out your forces for PINS. More information, about gardens in the 1970s, can be found here.

A photograph of a photograph showing an illustration of a forest spirit, a Leshy. The curator used to think they lived in the garden where PINS was played.

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a trig point, which can mark the garden where PINS was played.

A photograph of a photograph of a plate showing a tacheometer theodolite, which can help measure the garden where PINS was played.

PINS – Rule Nineteen: Maps – More Special Features – Imagined Worlds

One of the points of PINS is escape. Escape from your job, ambition, dedication and mucking in. This post allows you to contemnplate the idea of escape, through judicious use of the photocopies found here, and work it into your own idea of PINS. More information, here.

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a WELSH WOMAN, who originally found her place on a postcard from the early twentieth century. She lives in an imagined world, which can be mapped. Can you do similar?

A photograph of a photograph showing a plate of K2, a Stadia Rod. This instrument can map an imagined world. Can you do similar?

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a LANCASHIRE WOMAN, who originally found her place in a different photograph taken in Manchester, in the mid twentieth century. She now lives in an imagined world, which could be mapped. Can you do similar?

PINS – Rule Eighteen: Maps – More Special Features – Lancashire Edition

Maps for PINS need features, we all know that. And it’s time to find the features for your Lancashire map. No matter if you have never been or don’t know where Lancashire is. Lancashire is a state of mind and a mnemonic portal anyone can enter. Just imagine yourself in such a place. You can find out more, here, too.