These two artists' books have emerged from my ongoing research into the archive as a source for particular historic languages and materials in the production of new works. Being invited to participate in a research project funded by The Baring Archive and CCW Graduate School enabled me to work within the Baring bank archive housed at ING bank. Using photographs of bankers, the diary and letters of Joshua Bates, ledgers of Nathaniel Hawthorne's accounts, and banking records, I was able to explore personal and public relationships between finance, politics and the arts. This research led to the production of Baring Antebellum and Bishopsgate Within, City A.M. which the curator Sarah Bodman selected for the UK section of the international exhibition 9th International Book Art Festival CORRESPONDENCE, presenting works of 84 artists from Europe, USA and Asia and touring Poland 2012 – 2014, and where these books were awarded first prize.
Exhibition at Five Years Gallery with Dr. Katharine Meynell. five sheets at Five Years presents the latest section from Poetry of Unknown Words, our feminising response to Iliazd's Poesie de mots inconnus, 1949. This is a series of transcriptions using an expanded sense of authorship and relationships with others through time. Winter 2012 we walk to Dulwich Park, site of the stolen Barbara Hepworth Two Forms (Divided Circle). Take note of its absence. Print image of recently missing sculpture covered in bright blue plastic sheeting and cordoned off with orange netting. Verso, delicate paper collaged texts (Bernard MT Condensed type) describe vandalisms of BH work dating from the 1960's. Internet trawl for architects throws up Ethel Mary Charles 1871–1962 first woman member of RIBA. Never heard of her. Go to library. Intrigued by her radical text A Plea for Women Practicing Architecture presented to the fortnightly meeting of the Architectural Association 1902. Reproduce and fold down big and bulky. Verso, shit-brown pochoir of earth closet from EMC drawings for labourers' cottages Wykehamica 1895. Lucie Rie, transcription from pot to page. Hand burnish a log off the wood-pile, shape of cross-section suggests a vessel. Wood-ring markings resemble pottery sgrafitto. Print airmail in the garden. Verso rubbings with silver, bronze and graphite of buttons (ref. LR button moulds circa 1941–1947) use our button collection (again). ZENOBIA IN CHAINS, Harriet Hosmer sculpture 'missing' (rediscovered 2008 in a garden, sold at Sothebys to Huntington Library). Reflects a political zeitgeist - the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women. "a conventional treatment of drapery in a tasteless modern Italian style, a low kind of thing…". Verso, H.H. had close relationship with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Rome, Aurora Leigh (1856) informed by this friendship. Examine Eileen Gray stencils and process notebooks at Blythe House, recipes for lacquers etc. Stenciled wall texts from her neglected E1027 (1929) letter-pressed with polymer plates. Sheets hinged with Chiyogami gold patterned paper reference EG screen in the V&A collection. Wrapper, black glassine with EG's handwriting. http://www.gefnpress.co.uk http://www.katharinemeynell.co.uk
This chapter, co-written by Susan Johanknecht and Katharine Meynell was commissioned for the publication 'The Book is A - Live!' This book was produced to document and respond to the conference 'Book Live!' International Symposium held in June 2012, at South Bank University. It was peer reviewed by Emmanuelle Waekerle, Bookroom, University of the Creative Arts and Richard-Sawdon-Smith, South Bank University, the institutions funding the event and publication. Collaborative practice and 'transforming' or 'expanding' of the page in relation to the book are key themes of my research. 'The Book is A - Live!' 2013 book publication was published by RGAP, distributed by Cornerhouse and DAP. Abstract Poetry of Unknown Words explores an expanded notion of the book and the archive socially culturally and politically. Using a number of libraries & archives we reference key works in a variety of technologies moving between the digital, letterpress and hand made mark. Responding to existing artifacts, making new works, we examine issues of material values and shifting meanings. This interest in the artifact itself, rather than the signifying text/image alone, gives us the opportunity to understand historical context through material means. Work aware of it's history allows "a re-emergence of (that) history through detail" to not replicate or eradicate history but to keep the origins as visible traces. Taking the format of Iliazd La Poesie de mots inconnus and applying it to a new series of works which in turn reference extant works by women makers and thinkers. Sections pay particular attention to technologies, their scientific and artistic applications thus reworking 'thingness'. If the medium is also the message, and the site and location carry additional meaning, these must be accounted for in a re-rendering – the physical qualities of the paper, ink or fustiness of the rare books collection –and being mindful of that which is left out. Implicit in this is our acknowledgement of the untranslatable, the lost nuances, and the stains collected by the shifting of context within a new language or medium. In both translation and transcription there are taints, residues and colouring, both lost from the original, and acquired in re-forming a work in a new guise, with new technologies. In considering the difference between translation and transcription it is useful to remember that one is notionally linguistic, and the other moves between modes of expression such as in music or in painting, or between movement and reenactment. What we understand we are doing in Poetry of Unknown Words incorporates both. For us these are open and moveable concepts – responsive and pragmatic. The literary section shown at the Poetry Library, South Bank (March–May 2012) included: HD's notes on thought and vision: taking the jellyfish as an erotic symbol of creative force, which we are using in combination with an archivist's account. Emmy Hennings' Dada performance writing and puppetry: reworked through 'Google translatate' keeping the spirit of non-sense for that era. Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons: transcribed from words to buttons, uses text to generate system and order. Scanned buttons represent words, set out as 'Type' in InDesign leading to a new typography and code. Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto: we consider the form of manifesto as a work, which linguistically proclaims a struggle against oppressive forces. Using Chicago type designed by Susan Kare and on the verso, a loss of information without uploaded font. Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women: using letterpress and random inking, presents her contents page as abstract with digital facsimile stamp. These processes of remaking engage with historical distance and new approaches to what the book can be. We see this chapter within 'The Book is A - Live!' as part of our ongoing 'process notes' - being reflections and documentation of our Poetry of Unknown Words project.
Poetry of Unknown Words is a collaborative project with Dr. Katharine Meynell. Taking Iliazd's La Poésie de Mots Inconnus (1947) as a format and making new works re-examining issues of material processes and their shifting meanings. An interest in the artefact itself, rather than the signifying text/image alone, giving us an opportunity to understand historical context through material means. We reference Iliazd's illustrated anthology of (mostly men's) concrete and experimental typography and sound poetry in folio form. Our use of title, simply translated, contains a sense of an 'unknown' which plays on feminist concepts of 'hidden from history'. Our folios transcribe works by women artists, writers and thinkers. These printed sheets pay attention to a particular individuals' relationship to their contemporary technologies and consequent artistic applications. Poetry of Unknown Words explores an expanded notion of the book and the archive - socially, culturally and politically. This project is being developed in sections, initially exhibited in public venues appropriate to that section; for example, this 'Literary' section was exhibited at the Poetry Library, London, as part of the South Bank Centre season of 'Women of the World' in March 2012.
