Hello and welcome to Good Miss. With me Jo Maddocks, me Alice Evans.
And today we are joined remotely by artist and poet Stephen Emmerson.
Hi, Stephen. Hello. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
We are in a very sunny autumnal Oxford.
What in the world, Stephen, are you I.
Just about three miles outside of Hastings. In a static caravan at the top of a valley.
Looking out over ancient oak and Sycamore and Hawthorn.
And a few sheep. And some crows and magpies.
That's great. That's a great description of quite immediately.
Yeah. Thank you. So at the beginning of each of these podcasts obviously is an audio format.
So we are asking the artist if they could physically describe the object we're focusing on.
And for you, that's the real translation of this librarian pronunciation check.
Hi, this is Jo Stevens. Work is a translation of a novel by Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke, the German title of which I Could Do Justice to You.
So here's our colleague Junior with the perfect pronunciation de outside.
And this might allow. It's like a phone number, thanks to you.
Mm hmm. Okay. Yes, yes. The translation of true because only novel the notebooks of BRIGER.
And it's the German language version yellow paperback.
And it has. Mushrooms growing from it.
And those mushrooms have been. Dried, desiccated, so that they're preserved in that state.
So the book has has has has survived.
It's. Transition from menfolk to mushroom bearing body.
And I wonder, could you describe for the listeners what it's like to handle In Touch now?
Yeah, well, it's it's surprisingly light.
It's quite light because to make it had to be wet, had to be soaked, and for the spores to grow.
And then through the drawing process, I'm not sure what the exact process is,
but I guess the paper goes through some sort of process which changes the molecules and makes it makes the makes the pages more brittle.
Suppose it lose it loses some of the weight, loses more of its water being soaked in water and then being being dried somehow.
But it feels a lot lighter than it did in the first place. So it's quite delicate.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to snap the mushrooms off or anything like that.
I think if it if it was dropped, it would probably break. Yeah, it's quite it's quite it's quite brittle and and delicate.
I know about a year after I first tried out,
I was living in London at the time and the flat there would sometimes get a little bit damp in the corner and it did start to rehydrate once.
This was quite a few years back and so I had to move it.
I think I've moved into the I haven't come back for a while, so I think it could still be because the weather mostly you could rehydrate that much.
It could be rehydrated again. In theory. But hopefully it's no longer school producing for the sake of all the other books in the library.
That's good to know. Thank you for coming. I just want to interject that with her conservation, Howard has a terrifying expression.
Yeah, I went through a lot of emotions, but yeah. So that was cool.
And luckily in the library I work in the conservation team and we are constantly monitoring the environment to all the spaces in the library.
So we're hoping we don't have a similar damp patch.
Where is it? Is it kept in its own box or something to prevent it?
It's currently on display actually in the West End Library, but it's it's in a plastic box at the moment and it's also in our quarantine area.
I think the plan was to keep it kind of permanently in quarantine. Yeah.
Which is so we have this quarantine area in the stack, which is a processing area for our team.
When new objects are brought into the library, particularly things like archives,
we have archive collection that come from places that might be a garage or an attic.
And we do check these things for mould damn pests.
So it's actually quite a home in there with, with the kind of everything.
It kind of goes in transit while it gets moulded and the mushroomed.
But the translation just kind of stays there in a perpetual stay in motion.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So why did you choose this text?
Well, at the time I was I was invited by Steven Fowler is a poet who puts on lots of events in London and all over the world, really.
But he had invited me to take part in a series of performances where he was staging over six or seven periods, I think.
And I'd always Wilco was one of the first poets that I got into.
Well, that really blew my mind in some way. So I always had this connection to his work.
So I went through a period of I was trying to make translations of all of his work, but I was trying to translate the books rather than the text.
So that was some of his new his new poems, I think I translated, but I think I took each of the pages out.
So I basically made seed bombs out of the pages of that book and distribute it to
audience members and ask them to supplement the pages so that they would grow flowers.
So that was one translation. Another translation I soaked and then I drank the water.
And then and then I urinated inside my urine. And that was another translation.
So. And then another one, I, I kind of wrote it down and compost and another one I covered in fats and honey and going mould on it.
And then so I eventually and I got to this place and I thought about growing mushrooms on it.
So I,
so I spoke it and I think it was at one of the final shows for the series that Stephen was putting on that I'd actually made this translation for,
and I'd started doing it several weeks beforehand.
And when it came to the show, like no mushrooms and growing, I thought it was a complete failure.
So I didn't have anything to take. But luckily I translated another book.
I can't remember which one it was, but I had something to show and I talked about something else anyway, but I thought it completely failed.
So it was about four or five weeks down the line and it was just this book that was kind of been saturated and tied to elastic bands,
and it was just sat there on the windowsill and nothing was happening.
And I think maybe even a couple of months went by, nothing happened.
And then I went to France on holiday.
To my friend's house. And I took my book there with me, and then the mushrooms started growing over there.
And then I thought about cabinet and you know, and they make Ridge the size they are now.
And then I, I. Kept it on the windowsill longer and kept spraying it, hoping that maybe more would grow.
But it was starting to get quite sunny, I guess, at this time of the year and it completely dried out,
desiccated it, and that preserved the mushrooms. The preservation was kind of accidental to begin with.
I saw it drying out and then coming through the means as well and managed to dry out because I'd seen
online afterwards and I think there was a photographs of some books that spontaneously garden mushrooms,
and there was another artist who would grow in magic mushrooms on a book and had a photograph of them.
But as objects, they kind of disappeared because they were completely ephemeral, because the mushrooms died and disappeared.
So what was really placed around this object could be preserved by the drawing process and that it was there for as long as mushrooms.
And that's I guess I also really liked your instinct that you're going on holiday, so you have to take your unsuccessful.
I wasn't willing to give up on that. Yeah. Subjectively, I think aesthetically it's a really successful piece.
Was that something that was a consideration for you? Like, did you did you think about what it would look like?
Mushrooms growing is so organic. How they appeared was kind of uncontrolled.
Uncontrollable. Absolutely. No, I think so. Yeah. I didn't really have any control over it,
so I was hoping that they would grow and I didn't really know what they'd look like or how big that get or anything like that.
Well, a lot of my work is is a sort of controlled chance.
So it's like, you know, there's a lot of chance elements involved in something like that.
But obviously you can control to a certain extent. I like that.
And I think if if the concept is strong enough, then even if it doesn't look very good, then even then it can still be effective.
And in the main. But I was pleased with the way that they did turn out. Yeah, I think it was a nice sort of array of fruiting.
And so you mentioned that if the concept is strong enough and you've already mentioned quite a few of your other translation work,
what are you trying to explore in these works? Specifically, the concept authorship seems to be something we're questioning.
Is that right? So a certain extent, any sort translations like an act of destruction anyway?
I think because you're changing work like it's always becomes the author's original work.
Like someone like Tim Atkins,
he does lots of very loose translations and just uses the original works as a jumping off point really is a good example,
but even if somebody is trying to stay as close as they can to the original text, like it's always a completely different animal.
So I like the idea of of trying to translate the physical body of the book rather than its contents.
And I guess, yeah, it does question authorship, but also I'm interested in trying to enter into a dialogue with the materials of the book as well,
because the things that books are made of also have flood history as well.
From the paper to the clue and they think like they will in a natural part chemical and and I guess so the people that write that make
them I just want to try and get into those areas but I don't I'm not the sort of sits down and thinks about things philosophically say,
well, you know, I don't sit down and write things out.
What I want to achieve a new view. I tend to work through things creatively in mean I tend to think more in images and things like that.
So I'm just working through things. So there's lots of things that don't work out obviously, but I'm trying to put them in images.
What I can discuss in words in some way. So many of your works are books, the book form.
Can you just talk a little bit about what it is about the book form that you are drawn to?
I guess it's because, like many people,
I suppose books are a type of magic where you can escape to sort of as a child the way you start to
build your imagination or a place that you can explore things that you couldn't in the real world.
And the physical manifestations of those books can also take on a sort of magic.
You know, the role of of a magical object as well,
with the touch and the smell and sometimes just glancing the spine of a book that you you have a particular
affinity with sometimes that can bring back all that that the feeling of that book in some way.
You know, I don't necessarily remember ten of phrases from books, but I tend to end up with a sort of a field of images that relate to that book.
And sometimes saying seeing a book can bring those images back or, you know, it's like a it's not it's not really a nostalgia, but it's a.
It's some sort of like psychic connection with with the book, with the physical object itself.
So I guess in transforming playing or re composing books, I'm trying to reconnect with that.
The magic of it was Ghost. So kind of bringing the conversation back to the object itself and it being here now in the book,
in libraries, collection is obviously incredibly fragile, as you described.
And its access to the reading is restricted, although it is currently exhibited at the moment in the West.
And so it is being sealed daily but behind glass. Just wondering, when you are making your work, are you conscious of where it will end up?
And does it being here somewhere like the Bodleian now?
How would you feel about that and kind of the ongoing life of your work?
I guess I start thinking about where I work, what will happen to work?
Probably after I've met, after I've made it. Mainly because I don't have anywhere to keep them.
But no, of course I want to make sure that they're looked after and preserved.
I mean, that's all any artist can ask for, really.
But yeah, yeah, definitely. Being being at Butlins is amazing, you know, knowing that it's going to that catalogue and then it's been preserved there.
And in this case being exhibited, as you know, it's fantastic.
It's brilliant because we obviously also have quite a few, few other works and the way that a lot of your works.
QUESTION The book form is something that really speaks to a lot of the academics
here who use our connections with teaching for so many different reasons.
I've got the impression that, yeah, I think so.
Archivists, I think, tend to like some of the work that I do in Viols that is kind of categorise work files.
It seems to be a hit with archivists in some way.
It makes our brain for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whereas then the mushroom book got all the conservators kind of like in it as yeah.
And then obviously endlessly appeals to the page. Yes, it's yeah, that's an incredible.
So that was something that I wanted to want to ask you about because a couple of your unique works here,
we've got the Mushroom book and we've also got Anna Sleep, which is a, I'm going to say concrete poem, but out of a wasp's nest.
That's right. But you also create works in limited editions.
Yeah. And I'm thinking of things like poetry holes and a box of ideas.
And I, as a curator, would say that they're probably in the tradition of democratic multiples that kind of affordable and accessible.
Is that element of your work important to you? Like having things accessible to people?
Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
I really like making work like that and that. Yeah.
Available to people and you know, for the price of of a regular book kind of thing.
And yeah, it's really important to make those works.
I think if you're. If you have a work like that, you know, it's going to be basically going to be seen by more people.
Your work is going to go out and people have access to something like a box of ideas, for instance, which is.
56 of 58 cards that they are basically all ideas for conceptual books of poetry.
So. You know, there's the idea, isn't there, that if you.
If you just write, all you need to do is write the concept and you don't even need to make the thing.
If you've got a concept, you just need to write down the piece of paper and give it to somebody and they can look at it.
You could just put them up on the wall and you could say, that is the OP as well.
So I like I enjoy that aspect of that type of work.
And of course, I also like making some objects as well.
But yeah, I do like that. Democratic schools is a great phrase.
I like that. But yeah, I think that was about a hundred of those books were ideas mags.
But Poetry House, I think James did to two different editions.
I think there was only maybe 30 of those made over by petitions.
I think so there's not many of those. But that seems to be work that people I know a few people who work in in creative writing universities
and a few of the under a few of them seem to like to use that when they're talking about form because,
you know, it's for anyone who doesn't know that 85 rectangles, the first edition was PVC, the second was wood.
And they have shapes of poems cut out of them like a one is just a rectangle.
So you can lay it over any text and it will create a poem. So it just basically cut out of form and you can just create a text and.
Using that. And I did a sort of inverse of that called cover ups, which were acetate with black shapes.
On that you lay over text and then you can it blocks out large portions of the text.
Which was also a multiple. And yeah, I like the idea of people being able to play with work.
That's another instance that that's something that's performative. But then I'm giving it.
So, you know,
somebody is buying that or I'm giving it to them and they're making the performance because because it comes with a brief set of instructions.
But then it's up to you and you're, you're performing that work and make creating something out of it.
So for quite a while I know I went through a period, I suppose maybe I still work.
In that way now, trying to make poems without any words at all, you know,
and somehow just having a brief set of instructions so that other people can make the poem.
But they would still be mine somehow if he then she published a book called Family Portrays Mine as well,
which is a hardback book with this several, several different chapters.
Each chapter has, I think, eight or nine and portrait shaped rectangles in them.
And it comes with a with a packet of laxatives, pills, placebo pills,
and you take a pill for each chapter and taking the the placebo is, is, is said to allow you to see the portraits.
So that's like another instance of the reader being the performer.
So I guess I'm a reluctant performer, so I'm trying to give, give it, give, give it away, give my phone away.
Really, really interesting interaction with the reader at that point that other of the artists we've interviewed for the series
have talked about that their objects and books possibly are still changing in a way that yours hopefully isn't.
But they kind of see the reader as actively involved in changing and the continued life of their works.
Yeah, which is something again. Yeah. Coalition is definitely a co-authorship theme coming through.
Yeah. I have another question as a conservative for you, which I'd be very interested to hear what you think.
How would you feel about future intervention if it was needed with this piece by my team?
So if a mushroom fell off, well, how would how would you feel?
Yeah. Would you have an opinion on what we did? Yeah, I might have an opinion, but I guess you guys will probably know better than I.
Yeah, I guess it could be closer, I think. I did think about.
I did think about using a bone and shot at one point using a clear PVC varnish on the whole thing to, like, encase it.
But I didn't. That might have might have had an adverse effect.
So I didn't do it and which would have protected it a little bit more.
But, um, I'd be very pleased if, if, if it was, if it needed repairs and you or somebody else would have to say,
we don't have any other books like this, so it would still be us working it out.
Yes. Preservation and safe handling is our number one goal at the moment.
Yes, of course. Keeping it kind of as it is. I just wanted to ask, cause I was interested if you did have any other.
I don't know. You could have said grow another mushroom on it, which.
I'm glad you didn't say that. No. Yes. So last question, Steve.
What's next? Okay. I just finished writing a big, long prose poem, which is a sort of abstract, lyrical prize poem.
And I've been working for quite a while now.
I haven't make them available yet, but I've been working a lot on these overwrites.
So I'm the I did a set for just after lockdown.
It was out of province Biloxi letters which he wrote when he was when he was when he was sent sent out to the Black Sea region.
And. When he offended the Emperor, he was, and since Coventry, as it were.
So I, I did an override. So it's made up of four books.
So I wrote the entirety of book, one on a piece of paper and over itself using different grades of pencils and so on,
sometimes using sign and white markers, which gives you a nice texture.
And I did. So I did a slightly different shape of override for each book.
Fourth one it's kind of like a liquid fills a whole one.
So it basically turns the text into a sort of abstract visual script in some way.
And so you have been working on quite a lot of those. I've done some with poems, some with the kids plays.
So I've been doing these overwrites. Some of them are quite big, some quite small and making interesting shapes.
I think I'm quite pleased them. And I'm also.
You're raising a book, an amazing book at the moment called Human Memory.
I've got this an old paperback book from the seventies, and it's an old series of books on psychology.
It's published by Penguin. And it's quite it's about a hundred pages long.
So I've been raising it with, like, a fine sandpaper and I'm keeping all the erased shavings in a in a in a big scientific journal.
But it's taking ages to do so. So you're going to do the whole thing?
Yeah. Do the whole thing. Oh, I wish I'd never started it because it's going to stick ages.
Lovely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Celeste.
It's been wonderful. Thank you. I really appreciate you asking me to come and talk to you.
It's been great. Thanks for listening to this episode of Fitness.
You can find photos of translation over on the conveyor blog and you still a few weeks see it on display in
the Sensational Books exhibition here in Oxford before the exhibition closes on the 4th of December 2022.
Join us next time for our final episode in the series when we'll be talking to Justine Vino about her research into Self-destructing Autistic Agrippa,
The Book of the Dead. See you then. Have you got a jingle for the podcasts?
We haven't got. We've got hubbub here.
Excellent. Do you want to provide a jingle? Yeah. Was that an offer?
Oh, no, no, no. Obviously, a library's quite a quiet place.
So you're trying to think of, like, audio things that we could shoehorn into the podcast format?
It has been quite. We should do it. Yes. Is that too cheesy?
Yes. Yeah. You could do a sort of sound piece with different.
Different, lots of different shushes. Or we could just record the reading room, which is just silence.
Yes.