‘anagapesis.’ is the culmination of my time as Bower Ashton Library’s artist-in-residence. The project began in January 2020 as one aspect of the ‘Practice in a Professional Context’ module, and provided me with the time to consider where I would place myself as a creative practitioner.
With previous works exploring asemic transcriptions of narratives that hold great personal meaning, I proposed to search through texts of which I had no prior knowledge. The unique opportunity allowed for consideration of what would happen when one explores books completely foreign to them. What would an asemic translation of a fashion magazine look like? Or perhaps a photography manual?
In order to keep the emotional attachment at the heart of the work I took inspiration from Dadaist poetry, composing poems with found texts in books discovered at random. The poems soon became an anthology of autobiographical love poetry, each with its own corresponding asemic transcription which acts as a further reflection of the same sentiment.
The project became a metaphor for finding love in unexpected places, and aims to inspire the concept of getting lost in the library bookshelves. In the digital age it is difficult to get lost in search engines when a definitive search is typed in, but there is nothing quite like the journey of discovery in the library; there is a need for the book in the physical space. Though digital catalogues are a great resource, they lack the serendipity of unearthing books by chance.
The residency concluded with an edition of five offset lithography printed, kettle stitched, casebound books, as well as a series of lo-fi photocopied zines. I made the last minute decision to make the poems available as a zine because I was conscious of making the book available to as many people as possible. It was also quite fitting to make something for the library using the equipment in situ.
The publication is currently being exhibited at the library along with some of the working drawings and prints made during the research process. Unfortunately the university is unable to welcome visitors at this time due to government restrictions, so I digitised the finished book and made it available to view as an ebook on my website. Additionally I made a QR code that is attributed to the webpage and had stickers made to post around the city on lamp posts and bus shelters and so on.
‘anagapesis.’ exhibition at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol.
In recent times QR codes have become a prevalent aspect of everyday life, examples of which include ‘checking in’ to venues and buying food and drink in restaurants. I wanted to take advantage of this now commonplace method of disseminating ideas and have my book available to people through scanning a code. It is my hope that in offering my work out this way I will be able to reach out to a much wider and more varied audience than to solely share my work on social media.
‘anagapesis.’ can be viewed online at www.benjenner.co.uk
Examples of the QR code stickers in situ.
Examples of the QR code stickers in situ.
