Out of isolation and back in the game

WELL, OKAY! That was one hell of a week!

Last weekend my kid woke up with Covid exactly 6 days after masks rules were lifted for schools. The absolute dumbest idea. That year’s class started dropping like flies immediately. Anecdotally, please know that kids (and their parents) just weren’t testing with the RATs they were handed and turned up to school when they should have been isolating. 

So, I lost a week because I had to isolate as well as look after a sick child. I was furious and may have let off some steam in the form of twitter-ranting.

Isolation fare: the best scene from Orlando 

Last Sunday, after the big Covid reveal, I came over to uni to gather some material to work on from home.  I also registered our positive test to the official online site which told us our household must isolate immediately for 7 days, and monitor for symptoms. I cancelled our yoga classes (the ones that have been keeping us sane) and I cooked the most healthy meal I could, French Green Lentil and Mushroom stew with bruschetta side. My kid ate in their room and we talked to each other through the door. And we texted:

‘What are your symptoms bub?’

‘Sniffly/runny nose, weak voice, slightly sore throat’

[sad emjoi]

[3 sadder emojis]

Me and the kid

Monday, I notified the school with a little aside that I thought perhaps mandating masks would be a good idea. No response. And the week moved slooooowly.

I tried to concentrate on my own work in the spaces between seeing correspondences out of Ukraine and strange clapbacks from Germans saying they are ‘experts on Nazism’ therefore Russia saying they are fighting against same doesn’t stack up. The discourse is weird.

For a bit of a gear shift I wondered whether a poem is a snail’s trail, or a prayer, or prophecy, or a recipe or a figure. Then I made soup. With crusty bread. 

However, in the midst of it all I did manage to submit my abstract for a conference. Hoo. Ray. Now, to wait. And to try to get my momentum back.

* * * *

I have acquired a copy of Irwin Primer’s bilingual edition of Aphra Behn’s Seneca Unmasqu’d which places her text alongside (on facing pages) Rochefoucauld’s original French. The book arrived to me via interlibrary loan and I can only thank this age for being so connected. The book has come from University of Colorado at Boulder and I can have it until 30 June 2022. 

* * * *

I’m considering the way I’m going to create a portrait of this object, the manuscript. I have ‘sketches’ and ideas and some mock-ups. I’ve borrowed, from the library, books on portraiture and books on artists books. And the form I’ve decided on will be in the realm of the artist book (as opposed to a straight manuscript of poems intended for traditional book publishing, though I’m very much not against that happening at the end of all this 😊). But for now, my focus is on how best to express and represent the research and my response to the manuscript. And an artist’s book fits the bill.

So, since I had to change things up for study at home, I focused on Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books (1995).

The artist's book is created as an original work of art and not as a reproduction of pre-existing work. I have to think more on this bc I want this work to express the function of a commonplace book to a certain extent, which by its very nature is an object of copies, and echoes. Its function is to store and recall already existing text. I want to sketch out this zone of activity. As well as expressing its current state as a suspended object, no longer of use but to be a part of a collection, as a death in life. The artist’s book is flexible and varied, like a commonplace book. Unlike a commonplace the artist’s book has no single aesthetic and no single material factor. This week I’m circling back to the beginning in a sense and asking, what might the questions be regarding a commonplace book and its definition? Which might be a silly perspective, if I’m creating a portrait of one object; am I going to show its conformity to definitions or its difference from them? I think the answer is yes.

Nice to talk, Void. I missed you.

Jx

Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. 2nd. ed. New York City: Granary Books, 2004. 

Sheppard, Christopher., Sally Potter, Tilda. Swinton, Billy. Zane, Lothaire. Bluteau, and Virginia Woolf. Orlando. Widescreen collector’s ed. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment, 1992. [as seen on SBS TV]