Coryat's Crudities: Reflections by Bram Arnold “Any Accidents or Injuries?” Exhausted by the inequities of modern living I found myself at St Pancras station in our fine and enigmatic city twenty-one minutes prior to the advertised departure of my destiny. The vessel of my destiny disappointingly took it upon itself to stop at more locations along the line of travel than was deemed prudent by myself. For the most part my plush surroundings were peopled by other fine citizens all as suitably exhausted as myself; a gently slumbering old gentleman would occasionally awake and attempt a few more pages of his intimidating hardback through his thick spectacles. However, at some point or other my carriage was joined with the churlish giggles and excessive expletives of two young ladies from god knows where. After disturbing my emotional slumber these girls disembarked leaving a wake of shiny crisp packets and papers behind them, my sympathetic heart was forced to pity the population of Leicester that had just become their next victim. Stumbling off the train you smell the difference, breathe the difference and generally begin to find life bewildering. Becoming part of the incoming tide I was wilfully swept up the platform to the way out, welcomed to this place of Nottingham three times by the station doors I fell upon the fresher air as confused and bewildered as the nearest elderly woman who was struggling to come to terms with the station steps and the concept of the so-called zebra crossing ahead. At the mouth of the canal, for instinctually from the station I turned inwards towards the cities heart, I was approached by a glamorously made up young native who added to my complications by asking whether I had “any accidents or injuries?” whence the title for this short venture comes. This question so alarmed me that it very nearly became the cause of accident and injury as my perplexed self stumbled along the pavement trying to digest the potential meaning of this question and quite why it was asked and for what purpose she held her clip board and pen, so attentively searching for ailments and emergencies. Did she realise her question lacked context, definition or anything that would allow the questioned to understand it more thoroughly, had I seen any? Had I had any? Recently? Here? Anywhere? The mystery remaining unsolved I continued on my way into this Nottingham in search of benches, art and everything else. It was after buying a map of the city and some confectionary aid that I spied my first spiv, or chav or pike for which the city, I hear, is renowned. His intimidating glare and cheap fake addidas trousers, with his hands thrust proudly down their front forced me on past my planned destination of castle road and onto a small park space where I found my first bench. And my second and my third and indeed my fourth, this phenomenon of town planning known for its desire to congregate in groups. Doubling back past these public receptacles of relaxation I found myself on Castle Street and infiltrating a large pack of street youths of which our aforementioned spiv was one. Forcing myself to avoid my habit of catching people’s eye I kept on up the hill through the cigarette fumes and footballing based ludity and on into the future… The Writer's Perspective The bench project in Nottingham was a reworking of a piece I had first undertaken in Oxford whilst at university there. It was done in a town I knew well and had developed a relationship with; my own purpose behind conducting this experiment in Nottingham was to discover how the project would work in a town I hardly knew at all. The results were quite stark. In Oxford the individual bench pieces hung together like a coherent set of pieces, though they were still conceived of individually on a bench by bench basis, I had by this time been in Oxford two years and had therefore a firm understanding of my relationship with the town, with all its quirks and ways of being; in Nottingham however I had nothing with which to ground myself, I had arrived by train for the first time ever just the day before, I knew nothing of the place and as such the bench pieces were very disparate, taking wildly different themes and influences as their starting point. In the original conception of the piece there were no other artists actively out looking for the messages for this was not their intention, they were intended to snare members of the public and draw them unwillingly into questioning themselves and their surroundings. However in doing this search Discotheque and I have unwittingly created a unique map of Nottingham that details the locations of its park benches, something that is surely a rare feat of mapping and one that I am very happy to have taken part in. The Bench Project Goes on Holiday: Reflections, Half Way Through Large proportions of statements were questions, suggesting that you can’t formulate an opinion about something you don’t know – Nottingham. The task itself was not as nightmarish as I remember it being in oxford. Nottingham, for all its unpleasant reputation gives off a good first impression. Not as many benches as oxford but when there are benches there are lots of them. Treated Nottingham like I treat any new city I go to, just walk around going to the parts I like treating the city like the opportunity it is. Going off the beaten track to find the everyday parts not just its tourist honey pots. The oxford set of bench projects looked like a coherent set of thoughts constructed by a mind in a familiar place whereas the disparate thoughts thrown out on the streets of Nottingham look like a badly curated exhibition that has forgotten its title. The problem is there are so many possible influences, none of which I can relate to, that hold me in sway. This project is controlled by the unexpected, as are the experiences of the self respecting tourist. As a place London seems to show you a lot of opportunities to leave it, from the low flying aircraft advertising the proximity of airports to its many train stations all proclaiming their proximity to their own countryside. Nottingham however seems determined to highlight only your reasons to stay, not the ease with which you can leave. Aeroplanes are distant streaks in the sky, tram maps highlight places to visit in Nottingham, the train station is tucked away out of town and everything highlights Nottingham’s exciting possibilities.