SophB

My relation to writing:

I use texts a lot, often a mixture of found texts from articles and books, generic sentences or clichés and use them without attribution. I make notes on my mobile; often internal thoughts, private notes, reflections n your own actions; small anecdotes about particular objects; slogans from advertising; material people text me, from Instagram; then I put them in a word document and make it into a script, consider the length of each sentence, interweaving the sentences, reading them out loud as I work; I revisit the text intermittently. It provides the framework for a video piece (one of a few works in progress). Once I am happy with the order I record it. I use my own voice because I can direct myself more easily.

Over time I have created different styles of reading: I enjoy reading, I like listening to my voice recorded or through a microphone; there is something about planning the text; I am currently working with Erika so this is a negotiation at the moment. I like the idea of not reading in a performance, I like it to be precise.

[How does the relation between your own agency and this arbitrary collection of text work?]

Rhythm; I sometimes listen to music and have a generic rhythm. I choose things that are at the boundary of the absurd. I am thinking of non-art audiences who would relate to catch phrases as a way of hooking someone’s attentions. Phrases or words that are familiar but also surprising. Example: Tea bag: “let the universe fill you”; “every smile is a direct achievement”; an ad against anxiety: “in ten minutes…”

[What form of address do they achieve?]

I think of it as multifaceted, confused, bombarded [with its own information]; self-exhausting, relentless, internal and external.

[Images] The piece forms a framework of a story; the visuals involve textures, materials, bodily images, products and packaging, trash, the texture of a bin bag. I use the camera hand-held.. I was at my grandma’s over Christmas and filming a lot of textures in her house. This is different because it has a particular intention; she is getting old so this material will not be together for much longer; I'm perhaps pre-empting the day when my dad and me will have to clean it out.

Or perhaps this collection of images and texts is an archive. I collect images and texts, which inform each other [produce a relation] ...it could be endless but at some point I make a decision. I organise things under headings which are placed into different archives: grandma’s house; “how to… feminine” which is close ups of products and liquids, stuff with a bit of an ambiguous quality.

Always shied away from reading but now I'm in an environment where English is my first language it is easier. Would like to use seminars to make texts that are not scripts. To write something between the scripts and the crit report 1) What do you want from the crit and from the description? 2) What don’t you want from crit of the description?]

I was going to write about a performance, I don’t want to give away: talk about a body, a mass, abstracting from literal description.