Archery as vehicle in 20th century ‘arte povera’ commentary on social history… From the permanent collection at Tate Modern, London. Read more about it here.
Photo: Christina Brown.
bows from the concrete jungle
29 December, 2013
This has been around for a while, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth a look. Korean teenager Dong Woo Jang – whose previous hobbies included studying spider anatomy – started making bows as a hobby, and gave a brief (8 minute) TED talk on the subject. Watch it here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dong_woo_jang_the_art_of_bow_making.html
His handmade take on a traditional Korean bow shoots pretty well, but the more interesting aspects are unfortunately only glanced upon; the exploration of cultural heritage, the creation-as-escapism from a difficult ‘pressure cooker’ environment, and the hazily interesting idea of a ‘bowtopia’. But the diagrams are beautiful, and the fetishisation of the axes and blades cheerily worrying. Teenagers, eh? Great stuff.
There’s a good list of more ‘handmade’ TED talk stuff here.
glow
28 December, 2013
fabrication d’un arc traditionnel
22 December, 2013
Nice video from Martin archery. Always jealous of extreme wordworking chops (see http://1px.7f1.mywebsitetransfer.com/2012/12/18/arrow-building/ and many other posts below…)
amazon
12 December, 2013
Interesting, and somewhat strange, recent article from the Telegraph about Brazilian archery. Read it here.
“The quiet teenager is one of 12 boys recruited from the rainforest for his remarkable skills with a bow and arrow, honed since the age of nine and passed on to him by generations of ancestors.” Okay. I can’t make out if this is a genuine attempt to recruit more indigenous Amerindians to the Brasilian Olympic team, or some kind of well-meaning PR exercise. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, though. Good stuff.
outdoors
11 December, 2013
Sorry it’s been very quiet on The Infinite Curve recently. I just moved house, and the usual parade of real-life stuff has intruded (building furniture, buying new saucepans, mulling wine….). So I finally get some time to sneak out and do some archery, and this is what our outdoor ground in London looks like today:
Anyone up for a long metric?
not-exactly-primitive archery
30 October, 2013
More awesome work from Shawn Woods, who I’ve written about before. He makes a yew longbow using only copper and stone tools, and is kind enough to film everything for our delectation. It may be ‘primitive archery’, but it’s a level of technological and manufactory sophistication that I can only wonder at, then or now. Keep it up, Shawn. Thanks.
more terrible archery
29 October, 2013
This ad apparently came out last year, but I saw it run on some godforsaken digital channel only last night. Strongbow are a cider brand that have long used archery in their advertising, although I don’t remember it being quite as explicit as this.
So we have: sight set too high for 60m (or whatever that distance is), cheapo aluminium arrows way too long, stance too narrow. Whatever. Barebow anchor with a sighted recurve? Puh-lease. If you call that an anchor. And the ‘release’ is just hideous. Wish my arrows spun like that though…
The stupid thing about this ad is that real archers look completely awesome shooting. You could have found one with the requisite pecs and bearing without too much trouble, and it would have looked real – probably would have been cheaper than a male model, too. The viewing public tend to recognize authenticity when it is actually put in front of them, and that’s only going to add to the rugged individualism that they are trying to associate with their cider, right?
out with the old
We burned the old target bosses on Sunday. It’s a club ritual every year. A Windsor round, a barbeque, some red wine, the gathering gloom, and the five or six oldest, most shot-out straw bosses on the fire, along with all the dead wood and leaves off the field and the broken boss stands. Once you snip the strings, they unravel like snakes.
This time, there was a howling wind (the night would see the worst storm in Britain for a while) and the lot went up ferociously. A couple of the local residents came along to see the monster burn, and seemed surprised that we were an archery club rather than some kind of southern Beltane celebrators.
“So, is this so you guys have good luck with your arrows for the year?”
“Yes, yes, I suppose so.”
nothing new under the sun
24 October, 2013
Have been reading Hugh D.H. Soar’s The Romance Of Archery, a ‘social history of the longbow’ in Britain. Lots of amazing treats and facts, but this one stuck out. You will no doubt be aware that your standard Easton X10 arrow, the choice of about 99% of top recurve archers (and many compounders) is barrelled; i.e. it is thicker in the middle and thinner at each end. This means the the the shaft is stiffest where it has to resist the bending force, and since it carries no unnecessary stiffening, it can be narrower and lighter than if it was parallel, meaning it’s less affected by wind.
Of course, no one had ever told me this wasn’t a 20th century idea. When Hugh starts talking about his collection, he mentions…
Bringing you the archery FACTS. Cheers!