Aye, there's the rub...ber band

The act of leaning over to pick up something from the street is a radical act.

The Situationists used to employ fancy dress and performance to juggle the social order. The Medieval traditions of carnival and misrule threw the governing order into momentary disorder (to the effect of their final strengthening, the Marxists would say).

The person stooping to pick up a discarded rubber band mimics the action of the chaotic living outsider. It can be a disturbing action to perform, gleaning bands while the straight citizen looks on.

In taking these bands (two today, New North Road, near the Regents Canal) I am both cleaning up litter and touching the untouchables. Both by running my fingers over the materials that the normal members of society consider out of reach (probably pissed on) and by opting to feel the looks of disgust usually given to those people who stoop for other's fag butts.

By refashioning the scattered, discarded rubber bands into single object(s) of interior design desire, I turn an irritation of the streets into a game. The universality of the rubber band as a token of urban experience means that, in constructing the rubber band balls, I communicate with urban Brits who have come to know these bits of rubber as discarded, scattered things. If I am right, and the rubber band ball is a thing of admiration, then it is the most brutally effective of reconfigurations.

My ball is still very bouncy. At this stage is growing very quickly. There may well be an equation to explain at what point its girth will take lots of bands to make even slightly bigger.