tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28533897143789641932023-11-16T15:58:54.371+00:00Echo SoundingsSarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.comBlogger349125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-65954977181571130792022-10-03T12:14:00.002+01:002022-10-03T12:14:25.028+01:00A Cabinet of Lights<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwn072Dl58QOu2vKP56PtvJ_mycgxDLJBuBXyWWOPxn4ZcRjOg1xkykqx01I7Kkm4yrhuOkDdpzaO_RI2WiRdI9tW_GFx8VaRgO2Du0-K48b4e3L-DiHjIxqn5NlJguYE5cZw-1MmqKCN0gmCFJXrOVYF64JFkZ2seCkMMm0nwGZ9vlFTLqURiw/s3156/front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3156" data-original-width="2809" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcwn072Dl58QOu2vKP56PtvJ_mycgxDLJBuBXyWWOPxn4ZcRjOg1xkykqx01I7Kkm4yrhuOkDdpzaO_RI2WiRdI9tW_GFx8VaRgO2Du0-K48b4e3L-DiHjIxqn5NlJguYE5cZw-1MmqKCN0gmCFJXrOVYF64JFkZ2seCkMMm0nwGZ9vlFTLqURiw/s320/front.jpg" width="285" /></a></div><br />The cabinet travelled inland last weekend to be part of <a href="https://funpalaces.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lancaster's Fun Palace</a> at the central library. So I modified it a little to be more specific to Plover Scar Light and included a fresh book for contributions. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLhrWz5sFB0y33-noj98XRvs2_2h7ND_Zl04nu7UJmLJiuUoCwBnCFTMRs3PWtGDZeakyMnUoamqp-n7sxaywnkPUV1bryhmK1kg3bSO6W5Vo7A9tsJp2auhKQOSUcKxUbB-1uZTYxFXNlNUhzUSIhaUc-E_YwM-xSe_IXDKYy9JeiADhmJ5omw/s3840/inside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3840" data-original-width="2880" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLhrWz5sFB0y33-noj98XRvs2_2h7ND_Zl04nu7UJmLJiuUoCwBnCFTMRs3PWtGDZeakyMnUoamqp-n7sxaywnkPUV1bryhmK1kg3bSO6W5Vo7A9tsJp2auhKQOSUcKxUbB-1uZTYxFXNlNUhzUSIhaUc-E_YwM-xSe_IXDKYy9JeiADhmJ5omw/s320/inside.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And new contents for the drawers</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4zCNXi3t_uWzCBTMIIfhXcBI7845weD8k7FNNwU18Wt-SZeeqKufNaFlQIhMKUTU7x_krP_L8DXGNxq33crptzd-yiZSyhfVcTyon_KAcCksXpy7kKmEh8VMNsv878eOyBgdlGou2zXd-jn88QlpjhFDWHAgIAm1DWlXrAXnbuaK-vYouI0oUkQ/s3840/boat%20drawer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2880" data-original-width="3840" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4zCNXi3t_uWzCBTMIIfhXcBI7845weD8k7FNNwU18Wt-SZeeqKufNaFlQIhMKUTU7x_krP_L8DXGNxq33crptzd-yiZSyhfVcTyon_KAcCksXpy7kKmEh8VMNsv878eOyBgdlGou2zXd-jn88QlpjhFDWHAgIAm1DWlXrAXnbuaK-vYouI0oUkQ/s320/boat%20drawer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The photo you can see in the above picture is one of a series I made into a booklet of photos from photographer, Richard Davis, who is a regular visitor to the lighthouse. They were all taken on 18th December 2016. That day he found the light in pieces on the skear and got some wonderful shots, not just of the light, but of his daughter Tegan amongst the blocks. I loved the addition of her energy in the photos as I also had a photo of keepers <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALiCzsbmErXals33jfaExYOMehSyzAgTSg:1664795239673&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=janet+raby+lighthouse+keeper&fir=6whuC_bUaUAblM%252CGthn6ethqTg-aM%252C_%253BrzQGkmWIW9mW9M%252C_xz5J7yyc8DISM%252C_%253B98WfWGVMXXtRqM%252C7n9djDzhtBE6AM%252C_%253BzSarYGRZZNdnyM%252CMlakOJ2VOzgxwM%252C_%253BCEVE70agheuO4M%252CVskeFW9i_BnapM%252C_%253BYMoY-QZm_K6D-M%252CdnfuCvv4NCFWpM%252C_%253BpprBhmKfh1yD3M%252CKpbdHtPFmqO_7M%252C_%253BtFfCQxzjcPYbAM%252CHipoNOq47k9z6M%252C_%253BWWFHXi-wstWCWM%252C1a47OOE0EBUetM%252C_%253B7DIFP5OyU98oYM%252C1a47OOE0EBUetM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTaNWrNwxRu67nRRjavD5VA_UzE2A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVsonH9cP6AhVJQ0EAHbYyDpcQjJkEegQIAxAC#imgrc=CEVE70agheuO4M" target="_blank">Janet Raby</a> and a link to the pathé film of the last keeper <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FACXNuGNKw" target="_blank">Beatrice Parkinson</a>. She feels like a continuation of their spirits in these pictures.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And one of the highlights of collecting the cabinet after its installation was reading the contributions from its noodlers, one of whom was called Beatrix. It seems the flow continues.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPxn7oe-A9mPnOkjlM9anmesEdIICREK8Ocsxh4cvdq-SiYppHzOhpKDuS0petKYXiTSnNTFz8M-MmhoDPLcQJ6yy8IbrGBW4SH8P-PiPRbwZj4BNxDztsnaMRZAg4VweYhtwR5UfvQoITdpcG5CyWQKWobZfvsMAGi-ZDMl8vNe5WnVGucOH_bQ/s1920/book3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPxn7oe-A9mPnOkjlM9anmesEdIICREK8Ocsxh4cvdq-SiYppHzOhpKDuS0petKYXiTSnNTFz8M-MmhoDPLcQJ6yy8IbrGBW4SH8P-PiPRbwZj4BNxDztsnaMRZAg4VweYhtwR5UfvQoITdpcG5CyWQKWobZfvsMAGi-ZDMl8vNe5WnVGucOH_bQ/s320/book3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As I've mentioned in previous posts. I love these comments and want to build on the books I have with people's engagement. Reading them are fun and poignant. It's clear the environment and fighting injustice is a common love.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7T3cMdV0jo_LEmWqXjDUkBQvPAcCSo-OZObCStyNOCNEDTjcKNMXqVDhSmp6CYIVbvKislYVvGHw6LCtGmg977e650V_NOSMxgyEXtIDWfj0N3aT5btFFZbNO2f_KwSwyYb6sBRfHbSBmV36S-N6lUzTIJbtk-ZNd03klhYXUGK_e2U4TWvkLww/s1920/book1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7T3cMdV0jo_LEmWqXjDUkBQvPAcCSo-OZObCStyNOCNEDTjcKNMXqVDhSmp6CYIVbvKislYVvGHw6LCtGmg977e650V_NOSMxgyEXtIDWfj0N3aT5btFFZbNO2f_KwSwyYb6sBRfHbSBmV36S-N6lUzTIJbtk-ZNd03klhYXUGK_e2U4TWvkLww/s320/book1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-18506014222389383602022-09-02T10:09:00.006+01:002022-09-02T17:41:38.160+01:00September's Exhibition at the Posting Box <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsqib3yWYKCW51vbimCvFbcTfPEye2RLN3loPBWj1v0GWo8YyfsSW06fD_2879-A_hISFknYC0jmQNup-ejHVwE9BjRp85K9a7TCN05B1nBqB0npRSFT-sgwiKc_kSAhlf3QP3xQ-VsozTHcgbKmsnpcbhhI4pPDk9RLGZRDO6jWvaKAlceZOIuw/s1920/in%20situ%20day%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsqib3yWYKCW51vbimCvFbcTfPEye2RLN3loPBWj1v0GWo8YyfsSW06fD_2879-A_hISFknYC0jmQNup-ejHVwE9BjRp85K9a7TCN05B1nBqB0npRSFT-sgwiKc_kSAhlf3QP3xQ-VsozTHcgbKmsnpcbhhI4pPDk9RLGZRDO6jWvaKAlceZOIuw/s320/in%20situ%20day%202.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The cabinet has been up a couple of weeks and I've loved it.<p></p><p>Loved taking it first thing, bringing it back, despite its cumbersome weight. </p><p>Loved seeing what people have left for me in the way of messages or knick knacks. It's way way better than social media! A small selection:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoG2X7mvx1n9TBVXcQe6ajbKl4ElonbKc9CAWJ76FQ_xPL5rWSo950qlbDBGHU6awayBq4Y0XxRqIDTWbyc8tB_1IbqXINHhUCMLRIQoG02QucgHx_NIOOnYkCcjgMj8CeDT4g3RztxmlCooOgfaRRwi809m-8M5G-iHH2PUUU3zW5ERqN_zeXg/s873/pages%20cropped.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="873" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoG2X7mvx1n9TBVXcQe6ajbKl4ElonbKc9CAWJ76FQ_xPL5rWSo950qlbDBGHU6awayBq4Y0XxRqIDTWbyc8tB_1IbqXINHhUCMLRIQoG02QucgHx_NIOOnYkCcjgMj8CeDT4g3RztxmlCooOgfaRRwi809m-8M5G-iHH2PUUU3zW5ERqN_zeXg/w380-h221/pages%20cropped.jpg" width="380" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>I've also put a call out to friends asking for contributions for October and beyond. And will post up what comes as it comes</p><p>Meanwhile September's installation is a modification on August's.</p><div>I've added a 'doodle' from my super talented friend Ruby who has stayed here several times and I met when we were researching our phd's together. The 'doodle' (her name for it, I think it as far more than that) is a response to what became the 'Becoming Ocean' thesis. And tucked an old screen print from when I took the course at Hot Bed Press</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioc3nj8IvSq3xa03EI74MZ213zGxIlZe9hIGK0xDu09oKSAeOY9aYt5c3QufEgjOh4t2xnsP3hEIce0f-LyaS2mTTIzMjQPxQVeo-0oHEt5Gs-h0RcKIFPSrLg7mc530a6Hh09EKRpwEHUqvjfE3o8Mrr1DL9dMdXmKMbImnzDH9ij2gZnHGh_Fg/s1920/inside%20small.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="a shelf with artistbooks, a doodle of sea related things, screen print of ocean and a message book" border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioc3nj8IvSq3xa03EI74MZ213zGxIlZe9hIGK0xDu09oKSAeOY9aYt5c3QufEgjOh4t2xnsP3hEIce0f-LyaS2mTTIzMjQPxQVeo-0oHEt5Gs-h0RcKIFPSrLg7mc530a6Hh09EKRpwEHUqvjfE3o8Mrr1DL9dMdXmKMbImnzDH9ij2gZnHGh_Fg/w320-h240/inside%20small.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I've also changed the contents for the drawers:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-c-d5q7ZluDSM4XN5zOqEsbhtSdsIGzY2KgQMUhkwCB0wgftJPM_lQnoDrkrVyXSmfDTFS7a25GITUIF37iRqJk2ILivV4Ha3okPwrjm9fzx4sLAMJ8qicvwJj80XdZthQcvMYiFAw4j8E7r9KjFMSLbnALJv-jOWPNfQ9oq1u73hDWZEFnp1eg/s1920/drink%20drawer.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="tin yokes and an origami whale" border="0" data-original-height="1076" data-original-width="1920" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-c-d5q7ZluDSM4XN5zOqEsbhtSdsIGzY2KgQMUhkwCB0wgftJPM_lQnoDrkrVyXSmfDTFS7a25GITUIF37iRqJk2ILivV4Ha3okPwrjm9fzx4sLAMJ8qicvwJj80XdZthQcvMYiFAw4j8E7r9KjFMSLbnALJv-jOWPNfQ9oq1u73hDWZEFnp1eg/w320-h179/drink%20drawer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the 'drink?' drawer</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVM2bazOI2PnQrWKTOVO8hW6nv6Hwc7WvGZuzp4WiwRIf73JE-ZVGIfRWgvWzVYVcPoVInw_luVOcg9ulaygXaDjrrUw1-POKZmFuWNQdxNJgJXUJFvoM8X75Dllc6kfJyB8iEl6i8U6ZGzOHiFKt4GpoiEBWrUWZx23gSXz0EIpyDzL4rFDbYw/s1920/see%20drawer.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sea glass lying on top of a photo of plastic flotsam collected from the beach" border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="1920" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVM2bazOI2PnQrWKTOVO8hW6nv6Hwc7WvGZuzp4WiwRIf73JE-ZVGIfRWgvWzVYVcPoVInw_luVOcg9ulaygXaDjrrUw1-POKZmFuWNQdxNJgJXUJFvoM8X75Dllc6kfJyB8iEl6i8U6ZGzOHiFKt4GpoiEBWrUWZx23gSXz0EIpyDzL4rFDbYw/w320-h168/see%20drawer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the 'see?' drawer<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Pictures are one thing, but it's exploring it in situ that really makes everything come alive (me included). Hopefully I'll post a new installation for October, or at the very least some more messages<div><br /></div><div>And if you'd like to know more about its story, I've <a href="https://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2022/08/post-box.html">written about that here</a></div><div><br /></div>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-81747924192836573472022-08-17T13:35:00.021+01:002022-09-02T17:41:48.553+01:00Posting Box<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU5_anLB0zFmahyh9gACP6KciudPUxoGCD7sNmNONay2myT4UDRaW4Q1bAXMkhJu3ipk0kr4NMIssigTFKIEyZUVamyuJCwGvWGs_ztLUR17DKuLjtBukinfZDMZMMk2Och4Ox-PprAqH4diO6BwAF9ClAH1RgNKjaee0XEbsvwg3XeRON5iafFQ/s1920/cainet%20small.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU5_anLB0zFmahyh9gACP6KciudPUxoGCD7sNmNONay2myT4UDRaW4Q1bAXMkhJu3ipk0kr4NMIssigTFKIEyZUVamyuJCwGvWGs_ztLUR17DKuLjtBukinfZDMZMMk2Och4Ox-PprAqH4diO6BwAF9ClAH1RgNKjaee0XEbsvwg3XeRON5iafFQ/s320/cainet%20small.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />This writing bureau desk cabinet thing has been with me since I was about sixteen. My grandpa made it. Not necessarily for me. But he did give it to me. Originally it was dark wood. I didn't really like it but kept it in various garages as I moved around the country. It didn't feel right to give it away, or sell it (even though it did originally come to me with a price tag inside). Just the other week I thought of it, possibly getting all damp in its current garage, and how I might do something with it. First I'd paint the dark wood white. To reclaim it, release it, from its original rather serious, weighty sensibility. If a cabinet can have such a thing. <p></p><p>Then I started to get all sorts of ideas for it. Build a website for it. I could collate information of the area, ask for contributions, raise awareness of the ecosystem here. I could make zines and other stuff to fill the cabinet with. I could write things especially for it. </p><p>I could do anything. So I dithered. While I dithered I painted layers and layers of white paint and considered the possibilities. It seemed to take ages to hide the ugly dark wood satisfactorily.</p><p>It became obvious I could continue to consider all options for weeks, devising a great big networked plan for it, fretting about it being fabulous, ridiculed, ignored, or being overwhelmed by possibilities well into the autumn. And it isn't waterproof. So, after a friend said, 'Just experiment. Stick it out there and see. Try stuff', I decided to forgo the aesthetics of neatness and perfection and found a roll of masking tape and a sharpie.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ljryHXg2xaTA1WUhuO35lFYv1YH7y2hkbbtTl3YC8pVaekIbqQSncghbJCigqqw3whV0UKFgegT-hzCWI3Ch233xHZ6uQl9lKpwRrg95-Jt6WHxdNp5M5AAaAWiXIRL9ONw0qTDUEYez3mHK8seKGxL0i33NKJy-WyS8JCXLSGYlaWCqFgwoYA/s1920/close%20up%20small.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ljryHXg2xaTA1WUhuO35lFYv1YH7y2hkbbtTl3YC8pVaekIbqQSncghbJCigqqw3whV0UKFgegT-hzCWI3Ch233xHZ6uQl9lKpwRrg95-Jt6WHxdNp5M5AAaAWiXIRL9ONw0qTDUEYez3mHK8seKGxL0i33NKJy-WyS8JCXLSGYlaWCqFgwoYA/s320/close%20up%20small.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Then spent half an hour finding stuff to put in it, wrote a few messages on it and carried it outside. <div><br /></div><div>As I was heading out a women friend of a friend who's just discovered the car park was leaving and asked if it was a postbox. I hadn't considered it as such, but of course it was obvious it could be.<div><br /></div><div>I gave her an impromptu tour of the drawers and cubby holes before installing it by the wall. It was good to have her enthusiasm urging me on as I put it in place and left it there for the afternoon. We'll see if anything is posted by the end of the day.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAAQj_kvDXeO6s5xDwU_YJnv_pe67VpNYj9Awr-I_Ahlf8qykm6aI-FwYLA-sgid0QnDWjOWF0nPriR9iC2L-r0IddG2Dx9Mrw38-kFWvt9-S_PC8WnbkWg2IuJAqWUGKxSFJIeUiMK5ZyND5FHeCm37DPptKABflSmUokiwE_5W3n9HIOST_KWg/s1619/open%20cabnet%20small.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1619" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAAQj_kvDXeO6s5xDwU_YJnv_pe67VpNYj9Awr-I_Ahlf8qykm6aI-FwYLA-sgid0QnDWjOWF0nPriR9iC2L-r0IddG2Dx9Mrw38-kFWvt9-S_PC8WnbkWg2IuJAqWUGKxSFJIeUiMK5ZyND5FHeCm37DPptKABflSmUokiwE_5W3n9HIOST_KWg/s320/open%20cabnet%20small.jpg" width="285" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Depending on what is, I might take it out again. I might add different stuff myself. I might record what's left in it. Share them online. I might not. I might write more blog posts. I might take it somewhere else. I don't know. And that's the beauty. I don't need to know. I've not got a grant for this. I've made no promises to anyone. The woman I met as I was taking it out called it a project. And just like it being a post box I hadn't seen it as a project. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's also an experiment. A call for participation. A conjuring of a community. And I don't know what that makes it. Maybe it is a project. Or a projecting, which could be the name for a project that changes depending on the day, the contributions, the weather, the passers-by, the season, atmosphere, reception and other conditions I've not yet encountered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Any ideas welcome. Any invitations also welcome.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gUGWJmX2wHG0MRRYkXhaHdY7nFI55wjqSw942uinzpSFLQ-rpvvIwUuCtSVwYWfBhwWumbLhiZT0h9zEqx6AMjCOelFv0x1yvrj-Uj0CzDmZHU6UQ1B3BgDJzTsTHTBAYvSKdEaugSp2PsDum84X-3M4YrnL2b0Jd9mJfDWfrkuORPHsBRcWUg/s1920/in%20situ%20day%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gUGWJmX2wHG0MRRYkXhaHdY7nFI55wjqSw942uinzpSFLQ-rpvvIwUuCtSVwYWfBhwWumbLhiZT0h9zEqx6AMjCOelFv0x1yvrj-Uj0CzDmZHU6UQ1B3BgDJzTsTHTBAYvSKdEaugSp2PsDum84X-3M4YrnL2b0Jd9mJfDWfrkuORPHsBRcWUg/s320/in%20situ%20day%202.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A new collection of things arrived in September. <a href="https://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2022/09/septembers-exhibition-at-posting-box.html" target="_blank">See latest update here</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div></div>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-51683038786703309642021-02-14T12:21:00.002+00:002021-02-14T12:36:50.205+00:00the hispering<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ic980sAI-6hu1avWbCXBFqX8MrIUv-TyW-rktFz_6bABQW515TtO6QYXUxG0wvel9PmIdsOu-azhlLTOBku3EURHQ8jgRtheFsqM3hkybe38MlsTMyFBuwcn1fZMeoz5zZ9QPFZ87Q/s386/the+hispering+cover+sm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="259" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ic980sAI-6hu1avWbCXBFqX8MrIUv-TyW-rktFz_6bABQW515TtO6QYXUxG0wvel9PmIdsOu-azhlLTOBku3EURHQ8jgRtheFsqM3hkybe38MlsTMyFBuwcn1fZMeoz5zZ9QPFZ87Q/s320/the+hispering+cover+sm.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>Today is launch day for <i><a href="https://www.blacksunflowerspoetry.com/product-page/the-hispering" target="_blank">the hispering</a>,</i> a chapbook I didn't see coming. This time last year, when here in the UK I was one of many beginning to feel increasingly nervous over what was happening in China and had appeared in Italy, I had no idea I would be celebrating this curio a year later. A bright spot in an otherwise troubling year.</p><p>The first lockdown in March 2020 threw me into a strange elegiac place of drift. I didn't go as far as many to clear out any actual stuff (still haven't got round to that in this third lockdown of the pandemic). I found myself going back to an event, an encounter, from my early twenties, back in the eighties(!): talking about it, writing around it, trying to unpick it so it made some sense all this time later. </p><p>While it still doesn't entirely, I did get it down into a series of prose poems or poetic fragments or glimpses - in an almost-narrative that celebrates the value of storytelling, of dreaming, of lazing, of listening, and of believing in the irrational. </p><p>My friend Steve said of the story: it is what happens when the earth speaks to you and you listen. </p><p>Unlike <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/" target="_blank">melt</a>'</i>s gestation of maybe four years, this chapbook appeared within two months, from the first tinkerings of thought to the 'Aha, I think that's it' moment. I wonder how much of it was cooking under the guise of my faddling with <i>melt</i>. Sure it is far shorter, at 20 pages. It deals with many of the same themes - interconnection, haphazard temporality, the hydrological cycle - wrapped up in a very different personal story of a meadow story that holds a graveyard story within it. All these are also held by that strange limbo of the pandemic's early days. </p><p>I think the first inklings of the story becoming an imperative came from my reading Elizabeth Jane's Burnett's <i><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311/311935/the-grassling/9780141989624.html" target="_blank">The Grassling</a></i>. I read that, I think on reflection, looking for <i>the hispering</i>. And while I found a poetic and earthy story of a woman's belongings, inevitably it wasn't this. Half knowing what I was looking for I tried to write a way into it from various angles, to be surrounded by bits an dpieces of this and that. I had to throw them all into the air and to be caught in a net made from the books I surrounded myself with in those months, books I felt best placed to guide. </p><p>These are the books I knowingly furrowed <i>the hispering</i>'s terrain with, to whom I am indebted. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFB7WlNnsGbAtpo2FHpHgshwt7udVSQwQQu2bV_-uA4P5e-X4GqdSDHX7mMVnjIE3rqcukowK_DK_fXfpzE4VOLR7B__pHtgwQmDlWuV9v1lGrMcETD27pHFDF-J74PVP3EeK7k6sEtg/s1040/hispering+books+sm+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="1040" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFB7WlNnsGbAtpo2FHpHgshwt7udVSQwQQu2bV_-uA4P5e-X4GqdSDHX7mMVnjIE3rqcukowK_DK_fXfpzE4VOLR7B__pHtgwQmDlWuV9v1lGrMcETD27pHFDF-J74PVP3EeK7k6sEtg/s320/hispering+books+sm+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>What grew from these is a conversation between story making and story receiving, between dreaming and realising, between past and present, between our many consciousnesses.</p><p>Beyond its own hisperings, it is in conversation with the above, from which hopefully it'll seed many more.</p><p>If you're interested, it's available from <a href="https://www.blacksunflowerspoetry.com/product-page/the-hispering" target="_blank">Black Sunflowers Press</a> </p>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-86283714220948315572020-12-14T11:31:00.013+00:002020-12-14T15:42:55.313+00:00Extraction<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU5-edrNumcu9YevZ7UNpIJkoEiLOxrc7s-sscruiaWfS1rDFES6tPbFZqRm_CsrfOOrOn_f_81tXFVsSILhe3ktZTGmx4K05nMM6DxU3qoEbnqWvD2meuqXxMvQ8gGil1pO95OUYbRA/s892/melt_Sarah-Hymas_Waterloo-Press_Cover.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="892" data-original-width="599" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU5-edrNumcu9YevZ7UNpIJkoEiLOxrc7s-sscruiaWfS1rDFES6tPbFZqRm_CsrfOOrOn_f_81tXFVsSILhe3ktZTGmx4K05nMM6DxU3qoEbnqWvD2meuqXxMvQ8gGil1pO95OUYbRA/s320/melt_Sarah-Hymas_Waterloo-Press_Cover.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000;">with Joan Eardley's 'Winter Sea'</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Something happened in the later stages of setting<a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/" target="_blank"> <i>melt </i></a>to make clear I have as much control over it as I do the ocean. Which while frustrating is ironic. I set out for these poems to capture some of the forces of ocean, and of course those forces are, in part, immense, disrupting and glorious. Rupture is for me one of the base lines of art: how those unexpected events in life, sudden cracks in our perception, enable us to see anew, maybe even be anew. The ocean has no clear singular starting point. It rolls around the planet, taking, according to NOAA, 1000 years to complete a global revolution. This must be a guestimate since it would be impossible to follow even a cargo load of bath ducks accurately as some downwell to deeper currents and go one way while others are caught on the surface streams to travel elsewhere. No obvious beginning is a tricky thing to capture in a book, and I didn’t even try. However, it seems there are ways to at least reach towards this ongoingness that suggested itself without my involvement.</p><p>This rupture, while sideswiping me, spoke to my discomfort with book as end product. It's too easy to see a book as a made thing, extracted from the writer's imagination, despite extraction not flowing with the movement of the world's inherent creative forces. If <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/">melt</a></i> doesn't clearly begin, perhaps it doesn't clearly end. Of course I want to share it. I want others to engage with it, to see it as a thing to consider engaging with. Look, I might say, at this thing I made (past tense). And I'll look at it and squirm a bit at being able to hold it away from me and wonder if fulfils that imaginative space that grew and grows between me and ocean.</p><p>To perceive the book as a separate thing leans it to being used up, read, consumed, seen, and then discarded. The term ‘used up’ is only a tense away from being useful. When I think of my work being useful I think of the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort saying there were plenty of useful things in the world and for her poetry was not one of them. Usefulness suggests the thing as tool, which in turn implies having control over it. I already know that my favourite poems are the ones that wheel away from attempts of control. They veer in unexpected directions, or, like the gannets swooping low over a big sea, suddenly vanish behind a large rolling swell identical in colour to the more distant water and so magically cut off the bird’s existence as if they’ve flown through a portal into another world.</p><p>If I don’t know what a thing is, or what it's for, the possibility of it opens out, perhaps continues to open to become something else. A transformation which passes through any number of forms. So while I can say <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/">melt</a></i> captures some of the forces of ocean, I also want to say 'you decide'. Just as we're all currently fighting to decide what we think of this particular moment in the world we find ourselves in, the worldings we're involved in. Each moment inevitably unfolds into another and another, perhaps leaving us in various states of realisation that we'll never be sure of knowing anything again. One of the things I love about sailing is how surrendering to the elements, to what they demand of you, is inevitable. A trait I still need plenty of practice at on land, and will continue to need in the coming months and years: <a href="https://jembendell.com/2018/01/14/after-climate-despair-one-tale-of-what-can-emerge/" target="_blank">adapt, adapt, adapt</a>. </p><p>Transforming an encounter into something else enables me to witness and relive it, to bring about a new way of perceiving it or engaging with it, even if I don't understand what that might be. This making and gauging of the world is much a part of me as it is apart from me. It changes as I change. Each turning of a page is the enfolding of a wave. Some of these turns are gentle, soft breezy folds, others hold more of the force of wind against tide, choppier, discomforting. Any book can only ever be a momentary waypoint in its writer's process of being in the world. <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/">melt</a></i> marks the layers of me – the me who originally experienced something, overlaid with the various mes who worked, played or tinkered with it, until the me, who decided enough was enough, walked away from it. Then in walks the me who wants to share it.</p><p>Recognising myself as a continually changing writer / maker (through the extremes of believing what I have to say is worth writing down to the one who is horrified at the unworthiness of the thing she has spent hours making) is challenging. In the ten years since my last book I've relished working in more shifting, unsteady forms: short stories, audio pieces, soundscapes, poems, immersive walks, fragmented nonfiction, filmpoems, artistbooks, librettos, lyrics: anything to contain the idea, experience, feeling, without restraining it. My noodling is what gave rise to my love of artistbooks. They don’t follow the rules of flat page poems and stories. They ask the reader to reappraise how they approach the text. They expect the reader to make choices, actively physically immerse themselves in their amorphous forms. Their reach towards formlessness, seemingly simply made, prevents marking a categorical end point. Each zings with the potential of ‘what next?’ or ‘what could be’. It declares itself as a fold in the great unfolding, and aims to ensure its reader unfolds with it. I have been unexpectedly unfolded by <i>melt</i>.</p><p>Of course I'm delighted to have made this book of these ocean-grown poems. And want to celebrate that, to honour <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/">melt</a></i>'s presence, its marking of where it has brought me even as I shift from that point. More so I want to splash around it, to acknowledge it as an element in my creative process: the artistbooks, whose makings, enfoldings and unfoldings, have embedded themselves into the structure and feel of the book’s pages; the coast of Morecambe Bay, that has fed and sustained me through every faltering step of wordlaying; my work with Steve Lewis, a musician who has fed so much of the space and textures within these poems; the trip to the Arctic that changed my perception of the world so profoundly it barely scours the surface of these poems (I suspect more of that will upwell in later work); and all the collaborations I've had the fortune to participate in, summed up in a brief stop motion animation by visual artist Sally Slade Payne.</p><p>I've made scratch pieces rising from each of these five elements to ripple the waters around <i><a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/melt/">melt</a></i>, to accompany it into the world. I wanted them to be spontaneous, to contextualise some of the thinking in melt. They could be see as a kind of retrospective sketch book. I want them to have the freedom to say oh yeah this and that, without weighting them too much and to allow the surf that is melt to glisten in its own temporary beauty. The first is already up <a href="http://sarahhymas.net/melt/" target="_blank">on this page of my website</a> and the others will be added over the coming days, circling around the solstice, in nods and ripples to and from the hinge of our ever unexpected co-worldings.</p>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-72863635599692098582020-10-15T13:15:00.004+01:002020-10-18T09:47:46.297+01:00The Subtleties of Violence<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrexIHd7lAo9Nf2dgL07C_BG4NM16kT3ykZAkGPeyz8KlXAfmLx7oqJuZYhP9of_s3AKekOtSvjujnilrOm_W1lmtfXmTp9cisGr-f2Dw65z4sJS13KY5kyeGuLwJ20MhcYQAZ8XL45Q/s1840/P1010048+sm.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="1840" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrexIHd7lAo9Nf2dgL07C_BG4NM16kT3ykZAkGPeyz8KlXAfmLx7oqJuZYhP9of_s3AKekOtSvjujnilrOm_W1lmtfXmTp9cisGr-f2Dw65z4sJS13KY5kyeGuLwJ20MhcYQAZ8XL45Q/s320/P1010048+sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shapes and forms in Barbara Hepworth's studio, St Ives <br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>I've been thinking about Sasha Dugdale's recent poetry collection <a href="https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784108984" target="_blank">Deformations </a>a lot since I read it over the summer, and its shortlisting for the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/15/ts-eliot-prize-unveils-unsettling-captivating-shortlist" target="_blank">TS Eliot prize</a> has prompted me to think aloud about what hooked me about it. I've still only read the first two sections of it - a sequence on Eric Gill's abusive relationship with his daughter and a cluster of poems rising from personal experience. I am still digesting them under the shadow of the <i>Odyssey</i> which is the focus of the final sequence. The smaller, more subtle splintering wars of violence at the domestic and personal level feel so pertinent at the moment, I am not ready to step into the battle arena of the mythic, just yet at least. <div><br /></div><div>I went back to the book this morning in anticipation of this blog and found inside the cover a squashed spider on one side and a small brown imprint of it on the card of the cover. Always a distressing discovery - to have unwittingly killed something - it reminds me of all those acts of violence committed without awareness everyday. The Dalai Lama defines violence as the intention to do harm - I wish it was that simple for me. I appreciate he's talking / thinking through the lens of mindfulness - an living, attentive witnessing of all we do - and that does give a very particular framework to the sense of 'intention'. And makes me aware of how little intention I bring to my daily life, the choices I make in purchasing, the words I use, the writers I read - I value <a href="https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/threads-sandeep-parmar-bhanu-kapil-and-nisha-ramayya" target="_blank">Sandeep Parmar's essay on Lyric Violence</a> for how it clearly and carefully challenges the exclusivity of the assumed 'I' of so much poetry - which is also challenged by the shortlisted books. So much of what I see, read, and how I subsequently act enforces my belief that violence is far more insidious than a knowing, conscious act of intention. Or perhaps it's how we obscure our intention, or layer it with well-meaning and justifications. This counter layering what I so appreciate about Sasha's poems of 'Welfare Handbook' - the sequence based around Eric Gill. </div><div><br /></div><div>The multiple 'I's of these poems seem to slip between the 'dirty things', the 'slaughter of pigs', the 'stolen virgins', the 'eyes averted' and make the accumulations of violations far more slippery (like love is convincingly described) and therefore pervasive, than the poems' presentations of what feels at one angle unremarkable. This is how things are. This is normal. They so often seem to be saying, filleting the hurt with the saucers on 'planed shelves'. The tone of these poems lulls me into a domestic realm of acceptability, of slippery authority, because what else can authority be but reliant on a position, a singular location that then enforces its perception upon everyone else? That the sequence ends with quotes from other writers / authors, including a translated one to muddy the boundary lines further, seems to be reinforcing this multiple perspective of how acts are received. How violence has permeated our thinking and feeling to the point of saturation, as in I don't feel when I am committing violence against someone. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am thinking of how I was told by a friend some years ago that my hugging her, which I would do briefly in saying goodbye, was painful, uncomfortable and distressing for her. I had been aware she wasn't the squishy hugger of some, but it took her to vocalise her distress for me to realise her even briefer hug of me was a gritting of teeth. </div><div><br /></div><div>Such misreadings of touch, the needful ache for intimacy are evident in the middle sequence Headland of <i>Deformations.</i> And to read them in wider circumstance, emanating out from a seemingly more fixed (or at least more coherent) 'I', even if the actual 'I' doesn't feature in many of them, seems to envelop the unavoidable cultural violence into simple acts of daily life and love. </div><div><br /></div><div>My own propulsion to write about subtle violence is both feed and dissipated in the light of reading this book. <i>Deformations </i>illuminates the complexities of violent ecologies: of my participation within them, and makes me want to unpick that further, to strip it back so I can understand those routes of violence that course through me - whether I feel them or not. It feels scary stuff to spend some of my time following, perhaps made more so given the unfixed, morally nebulous and isolated times in which we're living. It is scary. It is perhaps scarier not to spend that time. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have to remember that I am, of course, not alone. I can surround myself with lodestars and guides of those who have paved the ways before me. I will follow Barbara Hepworth's vision for art, as being an affirmative act, whatever it subject. The act of making, of capturing forces, of holding to witness is transformative, if I handle it with respect, if I do not turn that act of creation into a violent act - the forcing of expression, the tearing it out of context or the imposition of presenting it outside of its slow evolving place alongside mine - which all sounds muddled in themselves and are, I suppose, which is why I feel the need to write more, think more and tease the strands loose. </div>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-64940341901364231352020-10-03T16:25:00.008+01:002021-01-10T15:48:00.007+00:00multiple thinkings through a pandemic<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6OXmLwdCdmN1_V3fCbSRd96JSrvoWqPDc9GwCdJvew19yg23EYNfZ2WfCT1APb3VZoUtAxHTofz7ZzLuMCG-S1wayVFlh0PZ-XH_CHnaV_APCq_exphNtkvKRCsWRg3sPUW1dO8xRQ/s1840/P1010361+small.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="1840" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6OXmLwdCdmN1_V3fCbSRd96JSrvoWqPDc9GwCdJvew19yg23EYNfZ2WfCT1APb3VZoUtAxHTofz7ZzLuMCG-S1wayVFlh0PZ-XH_CHnaV_APCq_exphNtkvKRCsWRg3sPUW1dO8xRQ/s320/P1010361+small.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The welcome paperpack for the online Imaginarium</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Years ago I asked a friend if having a
child was a useful distraction to what seemed like at the time the
relentless turmoils of life. We were in our thirties and her son was
a toddler. She said to a point, yes, although she found being
distracted from whatever pain of living she might be experiencing
beyond her child wasn’t necessarily very helpful, and ultimately
she would always end up having to deal with it at some point.<p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I wasn’t asking with the thought of
having a child. I have never really wanted children in the way I
understand some women to feel – that urgent, unignorable pull
towards motherhood. As a child myself I had mild flirtations with
names I might call my children, in a continuance of some lineage I
felt connected to – familial and literary. The only physical
experience of that yank towards motherhood, a clear lure towards
being responsible for caring and nurturing another person, was when I
was cradling one of my five month old nieces soon after my father’s
sudden, unexpected death. My only certain and manageable response to
death in that moment was birth.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I'm working with a writer who is
writing about / around / from a complicated birth she experienced
with her child. It has brought up flashes of tangible absence –
which I’ve written about before – of not experiencing giving
birth, being a mother – and those stabs of awareness were what came
to mind when I tried to work out today what was going on with me when
I felt so upended.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have work, enough to keep me going,
and enough to give me space in my week. Recently, on the last day of
my working week, I had plans for seeing to some light admin in the
afternoon and in wondering how I might spend the morning, on what
creative project I might put my mind to, I felt an increasing
constriction or twisting in my abdominal area. I couldn’t settle. I
wrote lists of possibilities, went for a walk, recorded some work
that a collaborator was expecting, tried to begin the admin early but
our wifi – appallingly slow at the moment thanks to TalkTalk’s
inability to communicate clearly with us as customers – made that
super and unnecessarily stressful. I stared out the window as files
downloaded, or failed to download, or as others nanospectacularly
uploaded, trying to establish where this unspecified anxiety was
located.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Eventually I decided to have a bath.
Bath is where I can usually connect back with myself. I used to love
the decadence of bubbles, but after a friend suggested people liked
bubbles because of a dislike of seeing their bodies I wasn’t sure
they warranted all those plastic bottles, and now do without. Lying
in the warm water of a bath is, of course, a metaphorical return to
that original watery sanctuary. A fitting cliché, perhaps. Anyway, I
laid my hands on my body to ask it where the anxiety or discomfort or
unease or whatever it was I was feeling stemmed from. I found myself
holding my stomach in the manner of a pregnant woman – the image
that came to mind was the Epstein sculpture, <a href="https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/7328/genesis " target="_blank">Genesis</a>,
which I have very mixed feelings about. Appropriately for the
situation I suppose.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">My thoughts kicked in. What was I
birthing? Another cliché: book / writing as metaphor for birth. Of
course creating anything is a kind of birthing. Earlier this year,
during the April lockdown, I had an extraordinary experience with my
collaborators of creating a piece of work out of scraps of
conversations, writings, past experiences, old dreams, their visuals,
music, questions and our hour-long weekly zoom meets. At some point,
surrounded by all these bits and pieces of stuff, I decided I ready
to make a unified thing from them all. I remember sitting down with
all my scraps and their scraps around me on the floor. My computer on
a low stool, me in front of it thinking I knew what I didn’t want
it to be, then doing that cartoon thing with my fingers as if I was
about to play the piano before I began a new document. And pretty
much that afternoon <i>the hispering</i> formed. I wasn’t sure about it at
all – what it was, beyond four pages of super dense and wandering
prose – until I saw a call out for chapbooks by a new publisher who
wanted to specialise in poetry by older women and women of colour.
This could be formatted over 12 pages at least, I thought. And so it
could. Given the competition was £2.50 to enter and I now had a
chapbook to enter and fitted their aspirational author profile, I
submitted, not expecting in the least to hear some months later that<a href="https://www.blacksunflowerspoetry.com/product-page/the-hispering" target="_blank">
<i>the hispering</i> had been selected for publication, due out, </a>nine months
after I first wrote it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>the hispering</i> is a prose poem sequence set in
meadowland, underpinned by themes around birthing, not being birthed,
creating and being wary of getting stuck in not creating but
repeating. I still read it and don’t quite know where it all came
from or perhaps more how it fell into place as it is. Which of course
I like. It has a life of its own.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Yes yes I birthed a chapbook. Nothing
new in the imagery of that. And nothing new in also feeling (hoping)
that this difficult time of our pandemic is a protracted labour
towards the birthing of a new worlding. I have been through several
incarnations since March, and am still morphing on a near weekly
basis. Some of these have been painful, incomprehensible, personal
coming-to-realisations. Some have been technically frustrating. Some
have been more creative. The slowing down enforced by that first
lockdown reminded me of the value of space, of the privilege of not
doing, which so often I might run away from – out of fear, guilt,
work ethic etc etc.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have several impending creative
launches occurring in this year of altered space, which were all
seeded – like the hispering – earlier – some twenty five years
earlier, others, like the new collaborative publishing experiment of
<a href="http://sarahhymas.net/skearzines/" target="_blank">Skear Zines</a>, germinated on the evening of 12<sup>th</sup> December
2019 (I remember the date for obvious reasons); <a href="http://sarahhymas.net/facilitator/imaginarium/" target="_blank">A Writer’sImaginarium</a>, which came out of my wanting company in the early
imaginings of my phd process, goes online next week for the first
time for the duration of its six month programme; <a href="https://waterloopress.co.uk/authors/" target="_blank"><i>melt</i>,</a> the creative
portfolio of my thesis which also touches on alternative senses of
maternity and birthing, is due out before the close of this year; and
we finally got the funding for the National Oceanography Centre’s
coastal resilience project which started last month - for which we are making two mapped augmented reality walks through as yet uncharted imaginings. Inevitably
amongst all these deliveries I feel flat on my back, semi-delirious,
surrounded by incomprehensible instructions, apparent experts, at
times out of my body, and still pushing.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I don’t know if this post signals the
first in a new development of blogging. I do know that writing helps
make my thoughts coherent. And writing to a reader (however vague)
beyond my future self ensures a more deliberate coherence. Perhaps
unlocated birthing - what might be experienced as the desire or
capacity to create on multiple microscales - like unlocated anger, is
a disorientating state, where I attribute lines of connection in all
sorts of haphazard and spontaneous ways. These are difficult and
challenging to track. Writing helps me to track them. I've been
writing in some form pretty much my entire life. My first extended
experience I remember was a creative response to the film <i>Mr Horatio
Nibbles</i> – a rip off of <i>Harvey</i> – in my second year of infant
school that went on for 16 pages, each page number proudly circled at
the bottom of the page.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I wonder now if the link between death
and birth can be drawn further from that sensation after my father's
death.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As a child I grew up under the shadow
of my maternal grandmother's premature death of cancer. I never knew
her in reality, but her life and her death were fully fleshed out to
me in my mother's stories. She was a near tangible, loving and
creative grandmother, who I in turn created stories about on my walks
home from school. These stories are intertwined in a way I cannot
delineate or chronologise from another story of my mother's: of how
when she was pregnant with me she went to a gypsy for a fortune and
was told she was carrying a girl child who would be a writer. 'And,
she was right!' My mother would repeatedly exclaim on telling the
story, 'A girl at last!' (I have older brothers) I don't know my
mother's interest in her child being a writer, I never asked, but
somehow that I took it as an instruction, as if I had no choice but
to follow the diktat of a women my mother met for an hour or so
before I was born. It wasn't always an overt, obvious following, but
the story lodged and niggled and slept and stretched in my memory so
it became as much a part of my mythic self as my angelic grandmother.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Perhaps this balancing of life and
death, of creativity and composting, is what I'm processing now.
Feelings and sensations that have yet to attach themselves to words,
that I'm questioning whether I even want to attach to words. I'm
fannying about tinkering with bits of poems and other writings
wondering if two publications in the next six months isn't enough
from me for a while? Are they ideas and energies I don’t yet have
the effort to get out into the world? Or am not sure if there is a
world that is interested in them? Is it that I'm shying away from how
I don’t know the world they’ll be entering? Rather than believing
they will part of the making of that world?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So many questions spinning around my
head at the moment, no wonder I’m on my metaphorical back, as if
these questions are the tweetie birds of cartoons flying around a
head injury. And if so then what else to do but focus on them,
acknowledge the discomfort, pain even, of not having the answers,
occupy that gaping absence that is not knowing? Surely that must be
less effort than distracting myself with more making or imagining.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Any personal sense of not knowing is
magnified by the stripping away of the wider cultural, environmental
state of not knowing that has been thrown into terrifying relief by
the pandemic. There is no kidding ourselves we can plan our futures.
And it is the sheer undefinable nature of this emptiness that makes
it so challenging. Even just to sit with it, accept it is difficult
since I don't know what exactly 'it' is. Which is why I think I ended
up going to bed, that day after the bath, wrapping myself in sheets
and duvet, strapping myself into a place, where I didn't have to
respond to anything or anyone, lying in a kind of bardo, that limbo
world of Buddhism that exists between death and rebirth.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Mingyur Rimpoche in<i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/589667/in-love-with-the-world-by-yongey-mingyur-rinpoche/ " target="_blank"> In Love with TheWorld</a> </i>talks about our transitions in life – from puberty to simply waking
up in the morning – as being bardos – opportunities for us to see
as preparations for the transition into death. Perhaps in a world
where we are in constant flux, that is far more amorphous than I am
used to, these points of slipping into limbo, bardo, are essential
transitions in the expansive passage of this unknowing space. I
should, perhaps, make more time for them, certainly welcome them as a
midwife might a newborn.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeeM0LjRtns1g-dnxA7MZxhmM3Y4JpxOiblWN-y9eH0z6mvoU1K5uMEKRxswaUWo7lzbdOKl7RCQbx_yEXlcPMrPimsTXy9g4QCHwVul8zlmVd7nznPFeFlzlh-ihwnWsqeJWFL59VTQ/s1840/IMG_2380+small.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="1840" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeeM0LjRtns1g-dnxA7MZxhmM3Y4JpxOiblWN-y9eH0z6mvoU1K5uMEKRxswaUWo7lzbdOKl7RCQbx_yEXlcPMrPimsTXy9g4QCHwVul8zlmVd7nznPFeFlzlh-ihwnWsqeJWFL59VTQ/s320/IMG_2380+small.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Map-making for the NOC AR walk <br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-45260019333163391452020-04-16T15:04:00.003+01:002020-04-17T11:05:48.127+01:00Swallow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-e0wcJlH9xJADHjLpervkmIk4tQtZ3jm6h3_LWqa_znbmPAB7ixZoiDTQkp0fCS4nzhy-YhfkDdC623SUJ1Ipb8L95scOjuNnO7MpNkUlE78lUWFyrq8xtbCz9Ck0Q63ZG6rsn0aqQ/s1600/sea+witch+blue+sm+upside+down.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="1000" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-e0wcJlH9xJADHjLpervkmIk4tQtZ3jm6h3_LWqa_znbmPAB7ixZoiDTQkp0fCS4nzhy-YhfkDdC623SUJ1Ipb8L95scOjuNnO7MpNkUlE78lUWFyrq8xtbCz9Ck0Q63ZG6rsn0aqQ/s320/sea+witch+blue+sm+upside+down.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Like many others self-isolating during the Covid19 pandemic who have found themselves in far more (temporal) space then they're used I've been faddling and dibbling in and out of my usual activities, sometimes able to do them (write) and sometimes feeling exhausted by the attempt. Just before I went into social distancing mode I was planning a longer piece of prose, some easier-to-read version of my phd. I had been writing and rewriting elements of it in readiness to piece together, then came the lockdown and my incapacity to sustain much thinking doing making or feeling for very long at all. I felt rubbish and, in the words of the social study I'm involved in, a 'failure in the eyes of friends and family'. I wasn't doing very much to help anyone. It took enough energy to keep myself afloat.<br />
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Someone somewhere said to feel guilty was a privilege and I certainly acknowledge my privileged position - in having a garden and being right next to a beach, getting on with my partner, having enough income to the household to keep us in beans, rice and rent - and in having the tools to absorb myself in words and foldings of paper.<br />
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I have been writing regular scrappy bits: a journal to keep track of the passing days, a daily #pebble prompt to get me to the beach and grounded. Sharing the latter on twitter and instagram has been heartening in terms of people telling me they enjoy them and motivating to go out and post another one on days I'm feeling miserable and can't-be-bothered - it's a just a walk to the beach, it's just a pebble to find, it's just a few words to be lost in the sea of internet blather. The ritual of doing it has proved to be very stabilising, a nurturing start to the day. I am also enjoying watching the stones line up outside my door. Thirty three of them now.<br />
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Once I let myself off the hook in writing anything more coherent or sustained, I felt a lot better. I have struggled for years with my writing - or rather my desire to write of my meeting the world, my experience of a world of wonder, perhaps more than comprehension. Of course I want to share that wonder with others. What my imagination unfolds, it turns out, is more often than not incomprehensible to others. I equate a lot of my imaginative life to my pre-glasses wearing childhood - having spent the first five and half years undiagnosed myopic (and severely so). That world was blurry, tactile and audible more than visual. I felt the world before I knew it. And continued to do so for years. I think that's where my writing goes back to.<br />
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The difficulty for me comes in the desire to share this. I still need to present an entrance (a two-way threshold perhaps) for others to know how or where to enter this unfamiliar to them place. This possibly unrecognisable place to those with twenty twenty vision. Some times it's more obvious how to describe where the entrance or handhold is than others. Sometimes by the time I leave the world I've just made I don't know where the threshold is either. It has become, to me as well, a blurry indistinct unformed, or stilling forming, world.<br />
<br />
This is all to say why writing anything, and not worrying about anyone (including my glasses wearing editor self) entering it, has been both a grounding and depleting effort. I never realised how much energy writing takes of me. I don't think I realised how much energy I had in abundance, overspilling to create these manifestations. Or rather how the manifestations of them used to energise me - it was, perhaps, a returning to my beginnings, to the place where I was in wonder and not having the need to understand imposed upon me. Wonder (as mystery) is a place we inhabit rather than analyse.<br />
<br />
This inhabiting of wonder has been the primary motivation for my writing and making. The sharing it through publication is part validation of time spent 'usefully' as well as the delight in sharing the wonder - who doesn't like to share things they marvel at? And who isn't slightly knocked when their wonder isn't mutual?<br />
<br />
This image I made from a puppet I've been intending to work with for years reminds me of someone familiar, younger, irresponsible, joyful, attentive, impulsive and uncontrollable. I love puppets for how we animate them. They embody a collaboration of consciousness. This image of the puppet was my edging towards a response to a call out for zines by <a href="https://twitter.com/zinesinthedark" target="_blank">Joanna Walsh</a>. I didn't know what I would write, an image was an easier place to start, an entry point for me wading back into that place of wonder. Maybe I wouldn't write anything. Maybe the image was enough, said enough.<br />
<br />
I did end up writing some stuff, about crying or not crying, about scrabbling and floating and wanting to change while not being able to witness clear changing and probably a lot more besides. The image and the folding paper somehow brings all these threads of wondering writings together so they swim or float or dive and splash in some kind of integrity - that holds it all together.<br />
<br />
Then came that desire to share. This time the difficulty wasn't so much that people wouldn't understand, more that it felt I was imposing something frivolous onto the world at a time of such suffering. I was being - that most judged of sins - inappropriate. The zine, if not frivolous, also represented a productivity, which also caused some issue, however small and insignificant it is. I have produced something. And productivity in this time of stasis is a pressure many of us are struggling against. What we ought to be using this time for. All this time of on hands. Time if not money could at least be useful, evidenced by product. This <a href="https://medium.com/@nicholasberger/the-forgotten-art-of-assembly-a94e164edf0f" target="_blank">article articulates much of what I</a> feel in terms of a resistance to the pressure to produce. Jeez I have that enough already, without added global pandemic.<br />
<br />
My compromise - make a few, not too many. Make it limited. Make it cheap - covering postal, ink and card costs. Tell people about it and let it go. There are a few left - you can buy one for £5, or more if you've a steady income and feel like it, or £1 if you're curious and not so flush, through<a href="https://www.paypal.me/SarahHymas" target="_blank"> this link</a>. The writing, the making the sharing are all small acts, pauses perhaps in the bigger amorphous sweep of the pandemic, a small carving out of a measurement that I inhabited for a short while and invites whoever to step inside, the door is open and, I hope, easy enough to find.<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-36627112245482105422019-08-16T15:13:00.003+01:002019-08-16T17:31:56.790+01:00The World is Dead! Long Live the World!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I was invited to participate in a residency - <a href="https://www.anthrotalk.com/" target="_blank">Let's Talk about the Anthropocene</a> - this summer in Brighton by <a href="https://www.adelegibson.co.uk/" target="_blank">Adele Gibson </a>who I met on the <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-flying-and-its-contrails.html" target="_blank">Arctic Circle residency</a> last year. Adele, coming home from the Arctic and needing to act, won ACE funding for the residency and an <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2019/06/towards-stranding.html" target="_blank">accompanying exhibition</a>.<br />
<br />
The exhibition was set up in the University of Brighton gallery for the second week and the residency was for those of us who wanted to do something, although what was unclear. The important stuff is always unclear in the beginning. Some important stuff remains unclear and I just flounder on feeling it and hoping hoping...<br />
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I was excited to be asked - it came at a time of transition and so offered a cushioned space for thinking around what was important to me - and uncomfortably aware of how tricky to make work about the climate crisis, climate injustice and capitalism when eight of us were white, and one black. Class also inevitably played a part in our discussions and perspectives. We were visual artists, filmmakers, activists, sound artists, performers, writers and photographers. We talked about the term anthropocene, the dangers of lumping all 'men' under one label of responsibility, challenged each other and ourselves, were restless, awkward and provocative for the best part of the fortnight. It was exhausting and rewarding. This post is me trying to work out the details of those emotions.<br />
<br />
I am less interested in terminologies: anthropocene, capitaloscene, plastiocene, or other words being considered in academic circles, and more in what we might make that could say or do something in this time of uncertainty, inequalities and dispossessions. Is there need more more stuff - in the form of art? If so, what can it add to the world? Who is listening? Who cares anyway? What matters?<br />
<br />
We had visiting speakers. Some provoked arguments, revealed differences, adhered to traditional power structures, focused on things I didn't want to focus on, took up time in ways I struggled with, resented at times. All contributed to my understanding of how I want to work in this field, or threw up questions I still haven't answered. Particularly engaging was Zuky Serper, an artist activist, who brought a <a href="https://reelnews.co.uk/" target="_blank">Reel News </a>video in about bauxite mining in India and the <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/03/28/tribals-in-indias-niyamgiri-are-resisting-vedantas-bauxite-mining/" target="_blank">tribal resistance to Vedanta's</a> incursions. Talk turned to violence, power, the dissemination of the power of law, the logic of 'rights'. How to disrupt the power dynamic of subject / object relations? How to communicate the disruption? How to, in the words of Toni Cade Bambera, 'make the revolution irresistible'? Perhaps, first, how to define the revolution? How to define ourselves within it? In the video workers described themselves as earthworms in their work and resistance: saying, 'it is in our resistance that we maintain our dignity'. Earthworms - those vital if overlooked creatures. Creatures so easily stepped on, killed. We watched the video as the exhibition was being installed in the gallery, as the Old Steine outside was being drilled up for a new level that might divide the city into two. The noise of the drill sometimes wiping out the soundtrack was headache inducing, disrupting.<br />
<br />
The contrast between his visit and the talk in the afternoon from Jenny Edwards, a trainer from Al Gore's Climate Reality project - in the air conditioned room behind security doors - set the tone of the rest of the fortnight for me. I snatched a hour or so daily to write on various scales of violence - from shouting at someone, to the sea's spitting of shingle onto beach, to the turning of seabed into a resource, to the heat we suffered for a few days that week. No irony that our residency coincided with the UK heatwave - 40+ degrees in the SE stopped trains and planes. From the middle of the first week, the residency was split between the University of Brighton Gallery and the Onca Barge in the marina, thanks to <a href="https://onca.org.uk/" target="_blank">Onca Gallery</a>. The barge was cool, dark and quiet. Five of us spent hours on beanbags that first week talking, sharing films, questioning our perspective on what was absurd, what was art, what to celebrate, how to actualize ourselves.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhAOb58Y4YqVXeVHjCDiq-WAMsBw4N6hhuMsjJXrxuj3-6Tn2gc85UMPRxw4TcgVBHRHfaV1QS1CbJ3DS_5grX87r_Jk1J0kMXcsa3cU3qYhYelFS5qzRxsWITc3uklYe_wjlRXmJZg/s1600/IMG_1264.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhAOb58Y4YqVXeVHjCDiq-WAMsBw4N6hhuMsjJXrxuj3-6Tn2gc85UMPRxw4TcgVBHRHfaV1QS1CbJ3DS_5grX87r_Jk1J0kMXcsa3cU3qYhYelFS5qzRxsWITc3uklYe_wjlRXmJZg/s320/IMG_1264.JPG" width="240" /></a>We were expected to make something to share with ourselves and whoever of the general public fancied on the final friday evening, and established a desire to collaborate, to share our not-knowingness and open-ended approaches, understanding how slow that would be. Early on we devised a plan b - to go out and smile at strangers for two hours if we didn't come up with anything better. This came out of talk around methods of resistance in a time of absurdity.<br />
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It became clear we were all interested in making art that somehow echos the disruption the world is going through. Crisis, I discovered, means 'tipping point' - it's a point that can go either way. Of course for some the world has already ended: for those who have lost their homes, families, countries, their own lives. It is not the world that is 'dying', rather the world as we know it. What, then, is the world we want to 'save'? Or is now a time of new opportunity?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHGHYJcrRuRgWu_KVJBbb34_eKM0Hq2syRIfDLvkcogfr6YCUMiK8glnfKOVYGRZK5WwLLomnUGY6B404zbVH1jCpvV-u40IMCqou0wtQ1_nwHaZbFApH9Kfr7s_V6VUPQKglqQIrILA/s1600/IMG_1266.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHGHYJcrRuRgWu_KVJBbb34_eKM0Hq2syRIfDLvkcogfr6YCUMiK8glnfKOVYGRZK5WwLLomnUGY6B404zbVH1jCpvV-u40IMCqou0wtQ1_nwHaZbFApH9Kfr7s_V6VUPQKglqQIrILA/s320/IMG_1266.JPG" width="240" /></a>As we neared the Friday night and its shape formed, I was feeling unsure exactly about what we were making. The heart of the event was a rave: the Rave at the End of the World. Bearing in mind the event was 5-7pm in Brighton Marina, this felt risky, yes, illogical, yes absurd, and also intimidating or perhaps as invasive as I'd found the drill the previous week. But a rave would fill the space. It was spectacular. It was an event. We slowly built the rest of the evening around this stepping from solid land onto the more fluid world of the barge. In the dark of the barge's below stairs the rave would have at least one attendee: a slime monster (in reverence of the 'rise of slime'). There would be a slide show, a text of a collaborative poem we'd written earlier that week. Upstairs were beach readings - divinations from things we'd found on the beach; kids painting adults faces. And to get in at all, everyone was given money, depending on whether they were full price or concession, equal to what they might be used to paying. It turned out to be fun, and a little chaotic. A handful of punters. Some wanting to talk. Some just wanting to wander about and drink it in. Some leaving very quickly. Most importantly, for me, it drew us makers together.<br />
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I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the evening in the end. I enjoyed offering people money as they came in. Watching them confused, some pleased, some guilty, as they took it. I loved the slime monster downstairs and its mate upstairs. I felt the energy required for the event forced a focus in our thinking, all very well talking talking, but what to do? The event was a stepping stone perhaps - or perhaps more a floating island - loose enough to mean we could continue thinking beyond it. To take some of what we shared - the anger of injustice, the power to refuse the contract we've been born into, the location of agency of interventions, the absurdity of the world in which we live - and build on it or from it or alongside it or back from it or towards it again and again.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3UxeqKNWQUnKhjphVUHw2dGXn6oBG-XYrWkz2lQY41-wXr9-ZzZThU-imJi5xuLjTO6cbnWgpQ-DxPHv3Nwf5gwhE6fBACbwrAziZEoHq2a5jr0t_Z4zm-cJDSGsXjC7VeZ7-hjM0Q/s1600/IMG_1263.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3UxeqKNWQUnKhjphVUHw2dGXn6oBG-XYrWkz2lQY41-wXr9-ZzZThU-imJi5xuLjTO6cbnWgpQ-DxPHv3Nwf5gwhE6fBACbwrAziZEoHq2a5jr0t_Z4zm-cJDSGsXjC7VeZ7-hjM0Q/s320/IMG_1263.JPG" width="240" /></a>I believe really all art can offer is a place/space for a change in consciousness - however briefly. If there are enough encounters the change might become deeper or longer lasting. There is no guarantee. There is never a guarantee. To riff off Guattari: 'When I imagine, I become what I imagine'. The working towards the event, the wanting to find a space for what I loved doing/making/sharing, made me realize my love for the intimacy of writing, how this was such an important driver for my work. I love to dance (not the biggest fan of rave music these days with my sensitive ears) and I love bonkers sculptures made from weed and sandflies, but most of all I love the one to one interaction that happens when I read, or am read to, or talk with another.<br />
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Again and again I come back to the importance of making connections, finding the lines between things that run through them and across the planet to string us together. I want to continue to explore how our intrasubjective experience can be felt, how distant or close we feel, how we are all folds within a larger fold. How language can aid this and disrupt it, how together we can surprise ourselves and make things beyond anything we could imagine singularly. We learn through not being able to speak with rage or upset. We learn through trying to articulate what is important. We learn by listening: to each other, the drill, the wind, and whatever we find on the beach.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo7rlnyuMB9N0yj91HpZVjmKqJu8tMDJgeD2EXVGBT1gFwSyc-mJNaiTe9zgtgJV6ssZ8w36r-6jJPnPjv0NVI7zH6P893Ff-AN-IzJPFS6P2lO3kTHmzjbPgU8lyCWHq-l51u4Roudw/s1600/Rave+11+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo7rlnyuMB9N0yj91HpZVjmKqJu8tMDJgeD2EXVGBT1gFwSyc-mJNaiTe9zgtgJV6ssZ8w36r-6jJPnPjv0NVI7zH6P893Ff-AN-IzJPFS6P2lO3kTHmzjbPgU8lyCWHq-l51u4Roudw/s320/Rave+11+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo: Chris Shaw-Hughes</td></tr>
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It was an absolute delight to share this residency with <a href="http://emmacritchley.com/" target="_blank">Emma Critchley</a>, <a href="https://laurelhadleigh.format.com/#1" target="_blank">Laurél Hadleigh</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tinaoclarey/?hl=en" target="_blank">Tina O'Clarey</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/user27534045" target="_blank">Caleb Madden</a>, <a href="http://www.chris-shaw-hughes.com/" target="_blank">Chris Shaw-Hughes</a>, <a href="http://www.carolinepick.com/" target="_blank">Caroline Pick</a>, and <a href="http://paultuppeny.co.uk/" target="_blank">Paul Tuppeny</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "roboto" , "robotodraft" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">. </span></span>I couldn't have enjoyed being away from home for so long surrounded by so many people if I hadn't stayed with <a href="http://jackiewillspoetry.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jackie Wills</a>' BnB where there was calm and space to sleep deeply between each day. I feel expanded by having spent the fortnight with them all and Adele. I still don't quite know exactly what I gained from it, beyond feeling alive and wanting to share that vitality, urgency and compassion in my writing and my tutoring. I hope find out more details in future work.<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-15832808283853390112019-08-06T13:20:00.000+01:002019-08-16T17:32:25.761+01:00A Writer's Imaginarium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgB6wqkciqa7iwMkgvbnRaR5dKbsNNpbQPi8DQr4APL6E1a1zhVqgsoLrllAw0iHQOyIqnDrsgRc6OQu9Ktauwna7xrGqqUDJQERfWD1ka-hsWtA-W8ocg06JyE-bBwrVUgt9a3Xc6A/s1600/coast+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="1600" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgB6wqkciqa7iwMkgvbnRaR5dKbsNNpbQPi8DQr4APL6E1a1zhVqgsoLrllAw0iHQOyIqnDrsgRc6OQu9Ktauwna7xrGqqUDJQERfWD1ka-hsWtA-W8ocg06JyE-bBwrVUgt9a3Xc6A/s320/coast+small.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am really looking forward to running another Imaginarium again in the autumn. This photo sums up much of the reasons why. I love how tricky it is to see the horizon line between sea and sky, how it questions exactly where that boundary is. This idea of writing beyond our immediate horizon underpins the Imaginarium. Working alongside other people offers an extension of imagination. I've just come home from a fortnight-long residency in Brighton with a bunch of other artists - of music, film, performance, photography, painting, sculpture. The residency was set up for us to consider how to make art of the Anthropocene: the epoch we now live in, where human activity has impacted the planet to the point where our imprint is changing geological strata. We spent much of the fortnight sharing influences, passions in and out of our creative process, frustrations and ambitions. It seems to me one of the biggest conundrums is how to make art that doesn't preach, that can enlighten, empower and draw new connections and possibilities in a world that is looking increasingly bleak for many of us.<br />
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I'm still reeling from the residency, from my ridiculously ambitious reading list, the subtle shifts in my perspective, and in the new routes I want to make in my writing. Most days I bashed out words in a fairly random way for an hour or so, while being surrounded by other people talking, reading or doing their own making thing. I have no idea really what I'm going to do this these pages, although feel curious enough towards the ideas they hold to play around with it. I am thinking that the Imaginarium might be the creative space in which I will test some of these ideas, and question how to make something from bits and bobs.<br />
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What I enjoy about running workshops is the chance to unfold what I'm thinking about through discussion, other books, and activities with other people. I want to learn as much as anyone else. I want to see how much I understand about my writing practice, try out new approaches and find ways of communication that run parallel to my creative practice. We share our ideas and imaginations in many ways, each feeding into the other: my writing is fed by my conversations, by my listening to music, by reading books and articles, by looking at art and film, by being outside, or being aware how I move through the world. To consider my writing as extensions of these (and more) forms of connections and communications is to send it off in new directions with me chasing after it.<br />
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I relish being part of a new community, however short or long term. It extends my understanding of my perspective, loosen it from being singularly mine, enabling to see myself in a new context, to reappraise my ideas, to articulate my ideas to others. And for the Imaginarium's meets to be monthly is, I hope, to embed the group's discussions, and the exciting thoughts that rise from them, more deeply into our work, to try things out, feed back, express frustrations and excitements over the seven months.<br />
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The idea of running it over seven months is to give space to bring in other writers/artists to share their creative processes, to widen our language-based thinking into perhaps a more aural or visual arena. So often I find it easier to consider my process in the light of other forms because I'm not thinking about them with the same weight of expectation I bring to my own, or the same knowledge or experience. There is something far more playful and liberating for me to talk about visual art or music. I am more than happy to admit I don't know what I'm talking about. And to acknowledge we don't know stuff is to step into a new realm. I think the most interesting stuff we write comes from that fuzzy border of what we know and don't. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy pulling writers of different genres together. We see our work and form in a new light and maybe find it becomes influenced by other forms in surprising, delightful ways. Teasing out new ground, new subjects, new forms is what I want for this next Imaginariusm: a playful adventure, a joyful experiment, a step towards something different, for us all.<br />
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If you're interested in knowing more about the practicalities, this should help: <a href="http://sarahhymas.net/facilitator/imaginarium/">http://sarahhymas.net/facilitator/imaginarium/</a><br />
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And if you have any Qs get in touch<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-90400718015682612262019-06-24T14:44:00.001+01:002020-04-17T11:11:42.934+01:00Towards a Stranding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is perhaps no surprise that my first project after submitting 40000 words of literary theory / criticism and a creative portfolio that made up my <a href="http://sarahhymas.net/becoming-sea/" target="_blank">phd thesis</a> is a book of illegible scribble, paper cut ups with an audio soundtrack that is more sound than spoken word. Above is the first page of eight spreads, with some daylight infiltrating the rhs of the picture.</div>
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I think, in part, I needed to throw myself into something that felt far bigger than me to act as a buffer against the potential disorientation (or grief) of letting go the project that had taken up almost four years of my life. I needed a slow release, something familiar - words - alongside something that wasn't familiar, something I needed other people's help to being to fruition.</div>
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Another part of me wanted to explore the potential of non-linguistic communication. One element of my research was considering what happened in the white space of a page: how could the words of a poem be affected by the white page, and how did the white space affect the words? What are the resonances and ripples of sound and sense when given the amorphous sense of space? After all, space can't be instantly read, doesn't speak audibly as language, in fact how it speaks is received, I think, by a different part of our body. One where, perhaps, imagination dominates, or certainly is activated, bridging most evidently what is inside and what is out, to the point of blurring these distinctions.</div>
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These pages are all black - the poem is set at dusk - and the paper cuts and scribbles do not fill much of the blackness, so it impinges on the visual, materiality of the text perhaps in a different way to white space. What does the depth of this colour add I wonder? The blackness is also filled with the sound heard through headphones attached to the book.</div>
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The audio is a Hymas&Lewis sound piece, worked from an existing poem of mine <i>Towards a Stranding</i>. As usual when working with <a href="http://www.deepcabaret.co.uk/" target="_blank">Steve Lewis</a> I fiddled with the poem simultaneously, editing it down, getting a stronger sense of what it was, what it needed removing, respnding to what steve did and said and sang as we mucked about over it. The music - made from a shrutibox and guitar - is slow and expansive, amplifying the depth of sound, the dimension of words, and, hopefully, enveloping the listener/reader in such a way they feel inhabited by it and inhabiting the world they create.</div>
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This 15 minute audio will be embedded into the book in such a way that follows the visual narrative of the book. I have asked the audiovisual artist <a href="http://kathyhinde.co.uk/" target="_blank">Kathy Hinde</a> to 'help' me with (aka make) the audio element of the book. </div>
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I've a residency in Brighton in August where I hope to show it, and am also intending for it to come with me to Plymouth to the <a href="https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/asle" target="_blank">ASLE-UK</a> conference in September, and, if it's still in one piece, to Manchester in October. If you'd like to know more about it, just get in touch.</div>
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Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-62734731741833608232018-12-05T11:24:00.000+00:002019-08-16T17:32:34.134+01:00Sea of Whiteness, as Glacier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWiirPVBKZN1GnT6XG0E1MC5IEKG48hDEXfspB3hfpBYPTTfPrvzLnoBbaU_iy2bJKgJnWTL1aNDtq6AAH1p5MLTRyYBPlfpnHhtOLZHB9g1DUU2eORu0enhaC1LvS3r_MxKniJ7mKQ/s1600/IMG_0559.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWiirPVBKZN1GnT6XG0E1MC5IEKG48hDEXfspB3hfpBYPTTfPrvzLnoBbaU_iy2bJKgJnWTL1aNDtq6AAH1p5MLTRyYBPlfpnHhtOLZHB9g1DUU2eORu0enhaC1LvS3r_MxKniJ7mKQ/s320/IMG_0559.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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After much faffing, scalpeling, glueing, sewing and thinking I've made this book / glacier / poem. It began life onboard the SS Antigua alongisde Bloomstrandbreen in Svalbard waters, and is being set afloat in the world from my corner of Morecambe Bay. I've <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2018/08/mapping-lines-of-glacier.html" target="_blank">already written much about the process</a>, and just want to add how grateful I am to my 'readers' - artists <a href="http://www.andreakrupp.com/" target="_blank">Andrea Krupp</a> over in Philly and <a href="http://www.carolinepick.com/" target="_blank">Caroline Pick</a>, down in Lewes - for giving time and crucial feedback to it and me.<br />
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Appropriately, I feel I've just touched the tip of my thinking around whiteness and being one body in a larger body of whiteness. I hope to continue exploring how I might write about my experiences as a white woman, articulate my sense of racial identity within the wider context of my privilege and accountability. <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/" target="_blank">Timely</a> to consider my position in relation to climate injustice.<br />
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You can watch the book / glacier in <a href="https://youtu.be/5FmoyCnVApA" target="_blank">'action' here</a><br />
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<b>Details</b><br />
130mm square (folded) cartridge paper, waxed linen thread and blue triangular text elements.<br />
Edition of 20. £7.50 (+p&p)<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-69998414245326141342018-08-26T15:45:00.001+01:002018-08-26T15:45:53.988+01:00Mapping the lines of a glacier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The beginnings of a new book. They seem to be losing words. The <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2017/11/introducing-octobook.html" target="_blank">octobook</a> didn't have so many. <a href="https://youtu.be/kpcGpLshVqE" target="_blank">Recovery</a> was more space than text; and this one - as it stands - even more so. I think in part it is the subject matter: what words would be contained in the map of a glacier? The design grew in my mind when I was lying on <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-flying-and-its-contrails.html" target="_blank">the beach alongside Bloomstrandbreen </a>- it was a sunny day and many of us lounged in full waterproofs like seals on the sand - I had a horrible thought I'd said in my funding application I'd make a book a day: there were only four days left before the end of the trip and I'd made none. This riffs from: the folds, crevasses and lines in ancient ice. I liked how the path through the opening of the pages has no obvious beginning, like a glacier that moves and pops and calves in all places. Once I made the first version I realized I wanted the paper wrinkled, as if having been scrunched up and thrown away before being rescued and flattened, carefully saved. I had to stitch the folds to prevent a flat opening, and used blue thread as unoxygenated water is blue, glimpsed in deep holes in the surface and edges of glaciers. I've been wanting to use material line in a book for a while because poems have lines, but these lines that have lost their words. I love how Hepworth's lines make space seem deeper in her sculptures, or draw our eyes to emphasize the hollow.<br />
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The words came much later: one sentence that is not set in order, which might be frustrating, might not make it easy to read. But I didn't find glaciers very easy to read. I made two further editions of the book from A1 sheets of cartridge paper which meant the words had to be handwritten - not ideal. In fact the more I thought about the words I'd used the more uneasy I felt. A single sentence set in all that paper felt an extravagance. It had to be worth it.<br />
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I read the embedded water in a sheet of A4 could be anything from 1 to 10 litres of water. I've been more conscious than normal this week of the sheer amazingness of having drinking water on tap. I'm thirsty I turn the tap. The water in my glass is a day or two old, I tip it away to refill. How can I be so complacent about such a precious resource. It has seemed crazy to me for years that in the UK we flush our toilets with drinking water. I have friends who have linked their brown water to their cistern. Why is this not standard?<br />
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And yet this precious life-source can flip to serve as a threat. Glacier ice is the largest store of fresh water in the world - apparently holding 75% . Imagine another 75% more of the water already in the world. And while that still seems an unreal apocalyptic scenario <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/arctics-strongest-sea-ice-breaks-up-for-first-time-on-record" target="_blank">ice that is usually too thick to melt is doing so now</a> and glaciers are calving as ever but snowfall is not accumulating at the same rate (we saw around most of the glaciers we visited the lines of retreat, marking newly exposed rock that was once covered in ice). Even if decisions are made tomorrow to curtail emissions the ocean will continue to heat up and more ice melt. And as my last post pointed out the decision I made to go to Svalbard contributed to that warming (although interestingly I read in <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/307155/no-is-not-enough/" target="_blank">No is Not Enough</a> that is takes 10 years for carbon emissions from a flight to convert into heat - which gives a little more credence to offsetting). <a href="http://invisibledust.com/project/under-her-eye-women-in-the-art-and-science-of-climate-change/" target="_blank">Christina Figueres </a>claimed that even a 1.5% rise in global temperature would only give a 50% chance to the most vulnerable people on the planet, while a 2% rise "closes the door to any stability" in low lying islands and coasts.<br />
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So all this is swirling about while I'm folding and unfolding this white sheet of crumpled paper that represents a glacier, unhappy about the words in there, wondering what words ought to be there, if there ought to be any in there. I start to think how lines might spin off or lie tangentially to the threads. Maybe they're stitched, a friend suggests. I try but such slow going prevents the possibility of it being a multiple. And I want more than one of these. Then, elsewhere, during a quiet moment, I suddenly see how lines of text could cross under or alongside the folds and thread. In short bursts of worded lines I see the poem cutting and carving along the paper like the lines of the glacial cracks, splinters of colour that drew my eye into and along the depth of the glacier. I think I might have a shape of a poem, if not exactly what it contains.<br />
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I can't let it go, not entirely. I'm working on other things, reading other things and find myself thinking of the folded paper and chew again and again over the correlation I made in my last post between Svalbard as metaphor for the Global North: the imbalance of power, impact and capacity for change between those able to visit (and leave) an intimidating wilderness and those having to face it with a view to surviving it. This is a possible place for those ideas. An object to bind thought and experience into its opening and closing, to draw together reflection to the original moment of encounter.<br />
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Through some fluke of internet browsing, during all this I came across <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ad660603596eec00ce71a3/t/58bec74415d5db1951fa9f15/1488897863830/Phenomenology+of+Whiteness.pdf" target="_blank">Sara Ahmed's Phenomenology of Whiteness</a>, which grabbed me by the lobes and didn't let go. In it she builds on the work of Frantz Fanon and Merleau-Ponty to write persuasively of how being white is historically embodied as an invisible inheritance: taking up space in a way that isn't necessarily felt - unless we encounter the stress of it, which of course as a white person is less likely than as a person of colour. She writes of whiteness as habit, as a repeated action, reinforcing this situatedness in how we act. I read and reread the essay and kept thinking of how this habituated embodiness could describe the movement of a glacier: the being pushed forward by what lies behind, the invisibleness of the inhabited space, being shaped by the encounter with an enormous, invisible force. How the whiteness that drove colonialism's view of the world in terms of resources to be exploited fueled the global disconnect that capitalism maintains in its denial of ecological reciprocity, that has led to where glaciers, as well as so much else, are threatened - indeed, seem to be regarded by some as scrunched up bits of paper.<br />
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And so the poem begins to stretch into the shape I had seen for it but not heard until now. Which feels like the first time I had a sense of a poem as receptacle before knowing how or what to put in it. And anything that is a first is, in my book, an interesting thing.</div>
Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-44302306008664285072018-08-08T17:36:00.001+01:002019-08-16T17:32:43.716+01:00On flying and its contrails<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/2018/05/listening-to-unseen.html" target="_blank">The trip</a> was everything and nothing I'd imagined. You can read about <a href="https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/08/10/postcard-phd-sarah-hymas-in-raudfjordbreen-svalbard/" target="_blank">what we got up to here.</a> This post is more about where I've been in the weeks since returning.<br />
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My return flight to Longyearbyen Svalbard from Manchester UK was, apparently, equal in its carbon emissions to one person’s yearly output in India (a per capita equation made by <a href="https://www.atmosfair.de/en/" target="_blank">Atmosfair</a>, the German government’s carbon ‘offsetting’ scheme). That’s one trip, within Europe - with a stopover - the taking off and landing are the most costly (environmentally speaking) elements of flight (when about <a href="https://flight.nasa.gov/pdf/18_jung_green_aviation_summit.pdf" target="_blank">25% of flight emissions happen</a>). I was there for just under three weeks, travelling on a boat which for most of the time motored since the winds were not strong enough to sail. It was a not-for-profit artist residency (although with <a href="http://www.thearcticcircle.org/" target="_blank">the organisation’</a>s registered offices on 5th Avenue NYC I wonder about the relationship between profit, status and tax deductibles). Out of the twenty nine artists I think five were vegetarian, two from non-Anglophone countries, four people of colour. I don’t know how many were funded to go and how many self-funded. It wasn’t cheap. We were a privileged crew, researching, making, sharing and discussing art, the arctic, and our distant lives.<br />
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Evidence of that privilege shone in how ill-equipped we were to be there. I don’t mean without thermals, Gortex, Muck boots, fleeces etc - we had plenty of those with their silly macho names (I remember a pair of wellies branded ‘Aggressor’) - but how blatant it was we were surface visitors in this wilderness, this inhospitable-to-humans place. We had armed guides who were never out of sight. We made few decisions for ourselves. We did not belong there. As such our presence is sorely felt. A polar bear was shot last week in an encounter with another tourist group. One of my fellow <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/05/will-giant-cruise-ships-destroy-wonders-passengers-claim-to-love" target="_blank">writers describes it here </a><br />
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In its huge vast whiteness, Svalbard, and visiting it, could be a metaphor for the Global North. I am reminded of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e16U8UsT4I" target="_blank">Wall-E</a> : on the boat, as all tourists in Svalbard, I am one of those far away from the dump Wall E inhabits. We are not quite on our loungers unable to move, but you can only tour the place if you’ve got the money to pay for protection from the nonhuman land that is Svalbard. The majority of us are no longer able to inhabit the wilderness we have stripped from the world. This doesn’t make it less alluring, just a whole lot more expensive. A little like the cost of air on Mars. We were like an inverse zoo: staring out from our invisible bars at the land and its creatures.<br />
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One of the most poignant moments of our trip was our arrival at the northern most islands of Svalbard: Rossøya and Vesle Tavleøya. We only knew they were the most northern because of the chart (although we were actually in unchartered waters). They were as rugged and sparse as the slightly less northern islands. Smaller, and therefore less snow, therefore more birds and therefore more algae. It was the algae that prevented our landing, well, thick slimy algae combined with a long rolling swell. But I loved the fact that something so small and so essential to our lives (for every three breaths we inhale, one is produced by marine phytoplankton) was preventing our (albeit temporary) colonisation of this most northern of rocks.<br />
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We weren’t in desperate need to land. And however much I enjoyed being repelled by the algae, I am still can't quite grasp everything I think this foray means to me. More and more species are moving north in the warming seas. Many of the places we went to were not accessible at the same time of previous years. We, as tourists, are part of that migration, albeit on another level. We are hungry with curiosity rather than hungry with empty stomachs. As tourists what do we contribute? Not much to the actual place. We can’t. It, like the sea, is not for humans to occupy beyond how we do - through our extended selves of chemicals, plastics and other unwanted waste.<br />
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We come back with our stories (read this<a href="https://www.sarahmccarry.net/currently-reading/2018/7/6/all-the-books-i-didnt-read-in-svalbard" target="_blank"> one</a>) and make art. But how does that square to being complicit in the destruction of very thing we uphold? I know flying is a major contribution to carbon emissions. How can I expect our political leaders to make fundamental changes from the top down if I don’t? The first Lancashire fracking well was given governmental go ahead this summer, a second is due to follow, providing fuel for us to continue in our energy consuming ways, until … what? There aren’t enough glaciers (and associative ecology) in Svalbard to lure us; or the<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/jul/07/airports" target="_blank"> true economic cost of flying </a>is finally passed down to the consumer making them prohibitive to all but the 1% megarich; or weather conditions <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/uk-weather-latest-london-flights-cancelled-delayed-thunderstorms-heathrow-gatwick-luton-airport-a8374366.html" target="_blank">disrupt our travel plans</a>?<br />
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I don’t have answers: I’m a poet. I’m a white, Northern European, poet writing in English; in some ways part of the status quo that needs to be disrupted. What I’m writing at the moment in response to the trip is so disruptive it’s incomprehensible. I like it but am, metaphorically speaking, floored; grounded, detained for not offering a straightforward narrative. Maybe that's the point. I don't know. What happens next, after that and after that could be, in part, up to me.<br />
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(For a more tender version of these thoughts read Eloise Shepherd's <a href="http://zoomorphic.net/2018/08/white-bears/" target="_blank">piece in Zoomorphic</a>)<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-37356140909438669832018-05-31T12:15:00.001+01:002019-08-16T17:32:53.282+01:00Listening to the Unseen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With thanks to the <a href="http://www.nwcdtp.ac.uk/" target="_blank">NWCDTP </a>I'm off to Svalbard in June (via - appropriately - some <a href="https://marinetransgressions.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Marine Transgression in Bristol</a>). I'm not sure when I first heard the name Svalbard (only in existence since the 1920s when the archipelago came under Norwegian sovereignty), but in some sense it feels like my body has known it since before my brain attempted to articulate it: Svalbard calls me – with its hissed beginning, long vowels and plosive consonants - it synthesizes my auditory sense with my tactile: in voicing it, I enter an unknown space, uncertain, angular and expansive.<br />
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Svalbard is a place of sparse human population, contested 'ownership' and exploitation. There is no record of an indigenous human settlement, and anyone may live or work there regardless of nationality. It is a nonhuman more than human world: more polar bears than people populate the islands; and the mix of warm gulf stream with polar currents churns up plankton so the waters around the archipelago contain more than half the phytoplankton of the Arctic Ocean. This abundance of plankton brings more fish and birds to the area: these in turn bring more cetaceans and other mammals: all feeding vigorously over the three months of the summer season.<br />
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In traveling to the far north I hope to hear more clearly what it is that speaks to me, how I will receive its language of wind, light, surface, birds, fish, molluscs and mammals, and how I will respond to it. Almost twenty years ago I crewed from Iceland to the Faroes to Shetland, so have some sense of the North Atlantic. But this time I won't be sailing, crewing three hours on / six off. This time I have the luxury of unmonitored time, the freedom to watch and understand the navigational decisions of others from a distance, allowing to me to observe what is going on around us, under us, and above. I hope to understand enough to relate to that which is most obviously foreign: my intuition operating to transmit the experience, to find a language to remake this transmission in my poems, in my artistbooks.<br />
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This remote ocean offers the chance to traverse my sense of perception: from how I perceive, through the blur of my short-sightedness, to what I can’t see: the depths, the microscopic marine world, and the inherent interrelationship these have with our unseen futures. I cannot travel deep into the ocean. I cannot descend in a submersible and explore the unseeable sea that way. To travel across the sea, 3000km north, to experience the Arctic at the far edge of Europe is the nearest I can come to encounter that which is concealed from my European / island / white / female / middle-class view. Being both part of my geographical identity and apart from it, the Arctic represents the zone where familiarity bisects unknown, my physicality meets high sea.<br />
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This may sound romantic, idealistic, tending towards the heroic sublime of the isolated figure. And maybe in part that is a driver, but I am not expecting a pristine experience. I anticipate seasickness, there always in for the first day or two of being on board. I've recently begun to consider this as a shamanistic ritual: the purging of landlegs to open the mindbody of sealegs. I will be onboard with a bunch of strangers, all on their own quests, some of whom I'm sure I'll connect with, others, perhaps, not so. I also imagine there will be plastic, oil rigs, other boats, the ruins of ex-industry. There will be scummy water and dead things.<br />
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June. It will be twenty four hour daylight. What will remain hidden? How will the shadow of the archipelago fall on the sea? How will the continental land mass of Europe affect the ocean there? How will the current, the eddies, the down-welling and overfalls behave up there, where the water cools and, as the ice melts, becomes less salty? How will I perceive this turning of the currents at the polar north, the intermingling of planetary past – as held in our debris – with planetary future – as held in what that debris does next. This fieldwork is a phenomenological experiment with how to immerse myself in that which eludes me. An experiment, I keep reminding myself, that doesn't have a clear hypothesis and may have no clear outcome. An opportunity, as Haraway has it, "to cultivate the wild virtue of curiosity"<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-1076517316652794682017-11-19T11:16:00.001+00:002017-11-22T12:12:57.193+00:00Budget tally<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Of course I welcome the<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42033760" target="_blank"> possibility of a tax on single use plastic in the forthcoming budget</a>; and while for this budget the term 'single use' includes "packaging, bubble wrap, and polystyrene takeaway boxes", it does not include plastic drinks bottles which may be subject to a 'return and reward scheme'. Hooray.<br />
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On my beach clean this morning I thought I'd list everything I found that could be considered 'single use' (I was out for approx half an hour and covered a strip 10m max):<br />
35 plastic drink bottles, various sizes<br />
4 q-tip shafts<br />
1 burst helium balloon with ribbon<br />
3 seedling plant pots<br />
1 earplug<br />
1 bucket<br />
1 Tampon applicator<br />
1 gun cartridge casing<br />
1 two-litre screenwash container<br />
1 cleaning spray container<br />
4 drinking straws<br />
length of meshed strapping<br />
toy bucket handle<br />
toy spade<br />
3 spray cans<br />
5 drink cans<br />
2 food tubs without lids<br />
6 hot drink cups<br />
countless fragments of plastic sacking<br />
countless polystrene balls<br />
a zillion teeny bits of takeaway food containers<br />
3 chunks of polystrene packaging (all larger than 10cm square)<br />
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This amounted to four large shopping bag loads. Most of which is now destined for the local landfill, where it at least won't be eaten by sea-creatures but is unlikely to remain inert.Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-64936617450099089602017-11-13T15:46:00.001+00:002017-12-04T10:18:05.866+00:00Introducing the Octobook<br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Several weeks before <i>Blue Planet II </i>hit our screens the Octobook was gestating. A very different beast from my previous artistbooks it plays between physical, image and text equally, celebrating that most extraordinary of creatures, the octopus, or perhaps, rather than celebrating it, the book might be said to be envying or maybe even emulating it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">A how-to guide, a pocket survival manual for the curious and creatively adventurous among us, this beauty is the result, I'm sure, of spending most weeks this year playing (aka sewing, gluing, folding and dithering over colour coordination) under the expert tutorage of Sylvia Waltering (of <a href="http://battenburgpress.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Battenburg Press </a>). Not that we made an octobook in class, but having to think about how to make our best book from each design, how to nip and pinch out the cloth, to sew and fold and fold again and just what were we going to do with all these books we've made, the ones we didn't quite make and the ones we've yet to make, we slowly learnt how to, in short, make a book for any occasion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">I fell <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcsb8RMmHRg" target="_blank">in awe of the octopus </a>earlier this year when on a Marine Conservation Society organised rock pool safari we witnessed a lard white octopus caught in a net instantly transform to scarlet when it was freed and hit the water. I mean instantly. Split second white to red. I couldn't have blinked faster. Still confused it first swam away from the shore and then curved back towards us before finally diving under, all the while it seemed to be eyeballing me. I was held captivated by its black stare. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">A month or so later I heard China Mieville enthuse about their physical intelligence at Sounding the Sea as part of Hull's City of Culture, then dipped in and out of reading bits and bobs online, and just the other week I read <a href="https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008226275/other-minds" target="_blank">Peter Godfrey Smith's Other Minds </a>that explores cephalopod intelligence, the connection between their evolution and ours and their canny behaviour. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">Underpinning all this has been my thinking about how we might expand our sense of subjectivity beyond our limited egotistical concerns, so learning to converse with, or relate to, a wider world; how we might experience our embodiment differently to remember what our species is in relation to other species, how we might recalibrate our sense of exceptionalism by drawing our physical, mental and emotional understandings in and out of each experience, so we can recognise our power and vulnerability, our coming into ourselves as we reach beyond ourselves, as we lose the rigid sense of ourself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">And of course all that sounds ridiculously self-important and grandiose, so, much better to disguise it, as an octopus would, as something else... a book</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ0OWH3XruqOyRkJWF797s6WanBX0NfrLmU3p2gEIyxyvHuun7EYZgTst9pD9XAnrP789fhxBuP4I4_7DG1hMX2OoGtgrgiEPN87vfQ-YElyY4ESgAOYsS-W9KmhBd4rMf8rmqv0C2JA/s1600/octobook+open+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="1400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ0OWH3XruqOyRkJWF797s6WanBX0NfrLmU3p2gEIyxyvHuun7EYZgTst9pD9XAnrP789fhxBuP4I4_7DG1hMX2OoGtgrgiEPN87vfQ-YElyY4ESgAOYsS-W9KmhBd4rMf8rmqv0C2JA/s320/octobook+open+sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px;">You can buy one from <a href="http://sarahhymas.net/publications/" target="_blank">this page of my website</a></span></div>
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Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-43513121653969013572017-10-18T11:57:00.000+01:002017-10-18T11:57:00.564+01:00Fking Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For the past couple of weeks <a href="https://www.hotbedpress.org/" target="_blank">we've</a> been working towards a hardback book, collating things to photocopy onto various pages and then stitching them into signatures adding a spine, covers and fretting about uniformity. Except of course these aren't about being neat and regular. The pages are a mix of blank white paper and coloured textured papers and images of our things. The writing space I am used to is disrupted by stuff that I may be inspired by, irritated by, write around or have to skip over. When Sylvie first introduced the idea I was surprised at how unsettled I was by it. The space I was used to entering was already inhabited and I was going to have to negotiate it. This says plenty about me without having to go further. And enough for me to take the finished book in both hands, excited as to how I'm going to write in it, what I will write in it, in response to or against that which is already there.<br />
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I've been writing recently about the control I assume when writing, a similar control to what I inhabit when sailing: if not control perhaps then a calm resilience to face whatever, move through it or accept I cannot take the boat out that day. As part of this piece of writing I tried to write out all the expressions I use in speech (aka shout) with the word 'fuck', and then to string them into one sentence. I can trace this desire back to reading <a href="http://communeeditions.com/misanthropocene/" target="_blank">Joshua Clover's and Juliana Spahr's #Misanthropocene</a>. Mine hasn't worked out like theirs (obviously), but I like it as a first dipping in of a toe to the waters of angry. There's plenty to be angry about, and plenty of reasons to channel that anger into articulate writing that still reverberates with the anger to the point that its tension holds the words together while threatening to overspill. Tripping myself up within the confines of a homemade hardbacked journal that will suddenly present something I was not writing about seems like a good place to continue the experiment.Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-61423262175192797862017-09-20T11:14:00.003+01:002017-09-20T11:16:51.989+01:00an immense or boundless expanse of something<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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..according to the OED, also "(hyperbolically): a very great or indefinite quantity". And, look, all those vowels too. Vowels are how we personalise a word. We pronounce consonants similarly, but vowels, in any language I suspect, are open to how our breath passes through us. </div>
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We were playing with letterpress last night at Hot Bed Press, with the inspiring <a href="https://www.hotbedpress.org/artists/elizabeth-willow/" target="_blank">Elizabeth Willow.</a> There was a choice of four large wooden sorts - limited by the letters available and which each of us wanted to use for our particular words. So, I make a word that is of "indefinite quantity" out of a restriction. And in this image it is the word that has substance in the white, although due to my inexpertise, its substance is feint, thinning, patchy. </div>
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It is a word so huge, in a picture so apparently empty I am lost for more words for this blog. All this feels so contradictory, shunting against my skin somehow. And quietly. It is all so quiet - in me and on the paper here. How can that be when it is so enormous? So full? I do not know if this is foreboding or calm. Just as the letters could be rising or sinking.</div>
Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-45600506735528422312017-07-31T10:05:00.000+01:002017-07-31T10:05:43.535+01:00Fold upon fold upon foldAs part of <a href="http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lancaster-words/" target="_blank">Lancaster Words Festival</a>, artist Sally Slade Payne and myself ran a writing and book-making workshop on plankton for 7-10 year olds (and their adult). It's been a while since I've worked with that age group and I'd forgotten just how much fun and zeal there is to be had. Everyone pitched in with gusto: from the simple introductory facts I had about plant and animal plankton, to the relish of creating a new vocabulary for them. We worked as a group to generate ideas and information (there were a few experts on plankton and the sea in the group), and individually to begin to write from the plankton perspective before thinking about how to visually represent them in either a concertina book or a hanging one. Both books had layers in, to convey the ecology of the sea.<br />
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What I was most thrilled about was the interest in this amazing plants and creatures, how this microscopic ecology caught everyone's imagination to the extent they created these most amazing books. With luck and some organisation, this will be the first of many plankton inspired workshops...<br />
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<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-67177959676789551582017-06-14T17:39:00.001+01:002017-06-20T09:49:26.144+01:00What the real prize is<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was my last class last night before the summer break begins: two months of thinking about the books and bindings I've stitched and glued and what I might use them for. With a stonkingly stimulating class a week many of us felt there hasn't been the time to think how we might put to use what we're learning ... although learning manifests in odd ways. Just going to the weekly class I've been thinking about my new writing in terms of three dimensional shape and form, how it occupies space and will be carried into a new place. Folds and territory are plentiful in my thinking.<br />
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The <a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/seeing-sea.html">piece I mentioned in my last post</a> has been bedding in - on the paper, in my imagination, and elsewhere - to the point I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZDHC-P2DpU">made a simple</a> origami whale to hold some of the lines from the poem. I spent one afternoon of great obsessional fun deciding on the right whale (as it were) shape - the more complex origami whales weren't so suitable for printing text on - and then faddling about with layout of the text. And whenever I thought, I really ought to stop and get on with some work, I remembered this was work.<br />
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It's only the last class for me because I've been <a href="http://www.ivanjuritzprize.co.uk/shortlist/" target="_blank">short-listed for the Ivan Juritz prize</a> and there is a party in London next Tuesday night to announce winners and for everyone to meet the judges and each other and hopefully have a jolly nice time feeling experimental and creative. I have an ambiguous relationship to competitions - notwithstanding the cost of entering them (although this was free) I feel uneasy about setting ourselves up in competition with each other. I'm not sure it <i>is</i> necessary in life - I prefer a more cooperative style of considering ourselves in context and amongst each other. Each of us feed and bounce off the work already made/written. Ideally (or idealistically, you decide) we are each producers in the creative chain that stretches in four dimensions (including the apparently invisible), without any of one of us another link might not be made.<br />
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And how can we compare such different things as individual artwork? However prizes are great ways of creating interest in what is being written or made. Because people have engaged with my work who may not have already come across it I already feel a winner. Since being long-listed I've felt a surge of confidence in my work that I've not really experienced before - in that I trust what I want to write or make, I trust that someone else out there might enjoy stumbling upon it, I trust that those ideas that just pop into your head and I say Oooh yay! to are actually worth exploring because they might just turn into something that works. I think most importantly, the channel for those ideas has been greased by this and I'm hearing more and more of them. What more of a prize is there than that?<br />
<br />Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-46072910639811009662017-05-25T11:42:00.000+01:002017-05-27T09:00:03.022+01:00seeing the sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnXhx2ojoDVIiJqAgyo-oQhNbCQaksQ36CzkN3nJCdkU6iVawVBGcKQc0V-dZ0QfRDGiZ-SiIPnfiB4O1U8P1vnuDehuP7W57eJGYA_MkiA44ueIRL-MOXhJ_0zBYxmzD-W3jFO1KqHw/s1600/phytoplankton+linocut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="511" data-original-width="1600" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnXhx2ojoDVIiJqAgyo-oQhNbCQaksQ36CzkN3nJCdkU6iVawVBGcKQc0V-dZ0QfRDGiZ-SiIPnfiB4O1U8P1vnuDehuP7W57eJGYA_MkiA44ueIRL-MOXhJ_0zBYxmzD-W3jFO1KqHw/s320/phytoplankton+linocut.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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These ar<span style="font-family: inherit;">e my first ever two-colour lino cuts. My first - last week's single colour - of a minke whale - did not work well enough to share beyond the workshop, so this week I decided to move to the other end of the oceanic spectrum: phytoplankton. A<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> few drops of seawater contains about a million
bacteria and about 10 million viruses naturally, swarming and multiplying. And while my registration is not as accurate as it might be, I am rather pleased with these six editions. I don't know what I'll use them for, if anything, but will content myself with being pleased for the meanwhile. It is a rare sensation.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">From these two weeks I'm interested in how slipping into the microscopic realm, attempting to represent what I've not seen, has proved itself easier to convey than the huge. Although I've not seen a minke whale in its entirety I was lucky enough to see the fin of one off the Northumberland coast a few years back, Yet what I produced via lino was, I think, too insubstantial to convey the wonder, the fluidity and musculature of the creature and my emotional experience of it. The unseen frees me from the shackles of subjectivity, to explore patterning and abstraction that then is released to become something other than my intention. How many of you recognised these as phytoplankton, after all? And it doesn't matter that you didn't -- that they don't really look like anything that actually exists -- they have a new sense of becoming -- snowflake -- crystal -- doodle -- wheel hub -- it doesn't matter now, beyond their cohesion within the frame they're in.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is interesting to me given my current writing project: which is notes towards a stranding, working off some fictions I wrote a couple of years ago, auto-writing, "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/15/no-cancer-risk-to-using-glyphosate-weedkiller-says-eu-watchdog" target="_blank">facts</a>"</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> and other - as yet unknown - stuff. It seems to me the only way to approach stringing these thoughts and experiences together is through a kind of abstracted patterning, maybe also to fuck up the registration so the layers do not lie neatly in sync with each other but create a tremor, a blurring, or, as was suggested in class this week, a three dimensional effect. So I think this means writing tons, mashing it up, writing more, cutting away and seeing what is left.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I feel a renewed sense of confidence for my anti-methodological approach to my work since being <a href="http://www.ivanjuritzprize.co.uk/shortlist/" target="_blank">shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz prize</a>. I wasn't expecting this at all. I was happy enough to have made an interesting piece of work to submit to it in the first place. And now it's sitting alongside all this other amazing work. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />This confidence means I'm prepared to work on / muck about with / write / read / walk / linocut / faff and ignore these ideas, accepting that much of what I'm doing just doesn't work, get excited by small moments of illumination, and keep on at it because I trust this compulsion that is interested in how these things do connect: a compulsion that has brought me back to thinking and wondering about them again and again, that probably won't leave me until I'm vaguely satisfied that I've got them out -- in a form that something in its own right -- distinct from me -- with a pulse of its own --</span></span>Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-63188326935672365102017-03-22T10:12:00.002+00:002017-03-22T10:12:42.501+00:00Screenprinting the ocean<br />
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I laid out the poem a fortnight ago for it to be set into a screen prior to last night's class, so I was already at one remove from it. It's a poem I wrote at the Manchester Art Gallery last year, in response to <a href="http://www.hondartzafraga.com/works/it-turned-me/" target="_blank">a drawing by Hondartza Fraga</a>. We were to make several prints of it, in the first hour of the class, so picking colours of paper and then mixing up ink was a speedy affair, overshadowed by the enormous frame we were to work with. With no previous experience of screenprinting there seemed a lot of potential fuckup points to it. Throughout the hour I was focusing on the paint: flooding it, drawing it back; the frame: propping it, setting it; the angle of pull: tippie toes, forty five degrees, pressure. It was me and this large levering machine, which felt as far it might get from writing a poem.<br />
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Then the covers: more colour choices, more folding, cutting gluing, tucking, wiping. The poem was lost to my consciousness, hidden away inside quick decisions, physical activity and the desire to get it right. So when I came to open the completed book and read it, I was strangely moved, in a way I've not experienced with a piece of my work before. It was familiar but unknown; mine but also somebody else's (I hadn't chosen the design, after all). I opened the booklet awkwardly, struggled to find the start of the poem, read it slowly, unsure of how clear the ink was on the paper in the folds, and closed the book with the sense of the poem in my hands, the poem had become the thing it was describing, the thing I was holding. It was both an embodied and disembodied experience. Unsettling, sad. It was the poem. The poem had enveloped me. I feel that means it's active, sparking. I think I'm pleased.Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-41539613531851047762017-03-01T11:14:00.001+00:002017-03-01T11:14:40.358+00:00Mermaids and other consciousness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is a trace monoprint. Before yesterday I didn't know such things existed. We were introduced to it at the Hot Bed Press class as a simple way of making edition images. I was skeptical, I'm not an image maker and because of the process any text would have be written backwards. Now I love backwards text. I used to relish reading it (I still enjoy reading text upside down) but writing it backwards gives it a naivety I'm not sure appeals.<br />
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So I went with a simple mermaid. Simple? Well, yes the process is remarkably simple, a skim of pain on glass that is etched in reverse onto a piece of paper. Strangely absorbing. But the mermaid bit? I'm not so sure. I've been reading about posthumanism, expanded subjectivities and interspecies entanglement and am very taken by it as a way of writing a positive view on the crisis that is our world, a step towards a positive futuring perhaps, that decentralises the human while not dismissing ourselves, especially as fundamental to the current situation. So these past couple of weeks I've been reading <a href="http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/" target="_blank">Donna Haraway</a>, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/leguin/carrier-bag.htm" target="_blank">this</a>, Rosi Braidotti and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the_World.html?id=tLlKCAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">Anna Tsing</a> and finding my thinking charged.<br />
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Until I ran into the question of consciousness, and what exactly it is. I understand the mythological usefulness of creatures like mermaids, but to explore and step inside the consciousness of a fish, as a human, requires another degree of engagement. How do I shed enough of my own perspective to engage honestly with the perspective, concerns and physicality of creatures that breath oxygen through water, live in the near dark and move according to celestial bearings, chemical clues and, the totally alien to me, drifting with currents (as most larvae do). And do not speak. I love Les Murray's <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857540055" target="_blank">'Translations from the Natural World'</a>, I think in it he manages to deconstruct language authentically to convey the consciousness of the animal, but how does this work if I wish to acknowledge the human speaker? If I wish to explore the potential relationship and dynamic between the two? If I want to acknowledge the human presence (and destructive capacity) alongside the animal. How do two consciousnesses interact? Where is that venn diagram? Where do the two awarenesses intersect and separate? How do the bodies know - on a chemical or physiological level - of the other?Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2853389714378964193.post-34390915838080706232017-02-08T11:50:00.003+00:002017-02-08T13:35:34.574+00:00On testing what I don't know<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is phase one of an artistbook of a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://westerndiatoms.colorado.edu/about/what_are_diatoms" target="_blank">diatom</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>chain. I'm not sure how it'll develop, beyond the folds and
spots. I have a poem I could put in it, but have yet to establish how it’ll
spread across the folds and if it is the right poem. I have a week to decide.
As it represents a colony it seems appropriate to let my thinking grow incrementally,
visually. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I currently believe it’s also the starting point of a workshop I'm
hoping to deliver with a group of 7-10 year olds in July on plankton, writing
about plankton and making a simple concertina to contain the writing and any
images.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is the first time I've made a booklet before knowing what
to put in it. I’m taking the year long artistbook making course at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.hotbedpress.org/" target="_blank">Hot Bed Press</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(thanks
to the <a href="http://www.nwcdtp.ac.uk/current-students/student-profiles/sarah-hymas/" target="_blank">AHRC</a>)
and last night was the first in a two-parter on concertinas. I was immediately
attracted to incorporating pop ups (those little corner folds that contain the
green dots). I loved pop up books as a kid, how they extended the reach of the
book, often asking for some interactivity; and while the geometric delight of
these triangles aren’t in the same realm of tugging paper slips and revealing
new words they do break the rectangular shape, add another layer of repetition
and throw shadows on the card. The concertina is already three dimensional in
its structure, the zig zag folds of the concertina and this will have two
separate hard backed covers so the booklet will remain expandable as seen
above. So to add the folded pop outs in the top and bottom corners creates
addition to this depth, a representation of some of the beautiful patterns
found in these microscopic algae. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Punching holes into the card may convey the silica, its lightness,
transparency somehow. Someone in class last night had used their awl to
pinprick tiny holes in patterns which gave me the idea of writing the entire
poem in holes. Gulp. This would require neat writing, precision and the
acceptance that you’ll only be able to read it from one side. Test required. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Question: how important is it that the two sides are mirrors of
each other?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another test: cutting thin strips diagonally to the folds. More
light, more clashing lines, more shadows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another test: using ring binder strengtheners. More geometry, more
texture, more layers of white.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Question: How much colour do I want for these creatures?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since only have the one concertina to experiment on I feel limited
in the explorations of adding text. There are two consequences to this: I don’t
use text, I become entranced with the blankness; or I become bold, step outside
how I’ve treated text previously, cut it from another block of text –
interesting if I could find text on sunshine or photosynthesis. Perhaps I’m
<a href="http://sarahhymas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/reading-into-light.html" target="_blank">thinking back </a>to the <a href="http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument" target="_blank">Humument</a> here … <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Question: How important is the threat of plastic to this colony?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another test: Stamping ink circles from the end of Q-tips found on
the beach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Question: could these be random or in syncopated patterns?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Questions and tests stretch ahead, which need to be punctuated by
walking and researching. John Cleese once said no one (or was it just Monty
Python?!) was ever inspired by the computer. I don’t agree. It can inspire if
tempered with interaction with the physical world. That lies as the foundation
for my current thinking and writing: the mix of experience and scientific
understanding. How essential it is for me to balance the multiplicities of how
to engage with the world, especially a world that is so often remote, invisible
or microscopic. </span></div>
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Sarah Hymashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575436459119208063noreply@blogger.com3