"Eight poor Copies (electric speech)" – my article on the work of Beth Emily Richards in new special issue of Journal of Writing in Creative Practice Edited by Lucy Sames.
"A gossipy piece, emerging from a series of phone calls with the Devon based artist Beth Emily Richards in anticipation of her show "Poor Copy" at The Northern Charter and Jerwood Arts in 2018. It draws lines of connection between telephones, telepathic cats, urban legends and ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson’s apparent visitation to Devon in 2003. This visit which, as lore goes, is also contested forms the basis for Richards’ subsequent show and sustained engagement with contemporary mythmaking. Calling up lovers of the telephone Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous and Avital Ronell, celebrity impersonators and television illusionists, this article writes in and through the mystics of ‘electric speech’. The outmoded phone call is engaged as both a ‘conduit for thought’ and a poor copy – the line is cut or stalked, or a story is interrupted or interfered with – revealing a forensic fascination with the sinister and the unknown."
Get in touch if you would like a poor copy!
This article emerges from a series of phone calls with the visual artist Beth Emily Richards in anticipation of her exhibition Poor Copy at