Metafiction, Myth and Language: A World in Words (and Pictures)

 Yesterday, I collected the 5 copies of the printed, bound Gyldlandsaga books from the printers and examined them...it's always nerve-wracking to open up that first copy and peer inside at how it's turned out. But the books look very fine - they have good, solid (even monumental) weight and physicality, and the steel spine adds excellent durability. The lack of "real book" textualities such as copyright bibliographical data, page numbering, ISBN etc., I think, help to enforce the 'art object' aspect of them and take away the 'mass production' aspects of cataloguing and data storage: as far as the international records are concerned, this book does not exist as such (cf Hannah Arendt's idea of refugees with no identity papers etc. being classed as 'non-people by 'the authorities' - i.e those whose rules constitute being or non-being). All the Old English texts on which this is based exist only in unique manuscripts, allowing these very ...

 With the editing/spellchecking of the text now almost complete and due to be sent to the printers at the end of the weekend (after the final round of edits and fine-tuning), biggest concerns have recently been turning to the display space. I've added a chair and cushion to invite a viewer experience of the book - the narrative text. The cushion, with its poetic Latin inscription, is revealed to be a sarcastic mirror of the poetic content of the book. The nature of the Latin text is actually pretty significant, as this blog post and translation shows. The idea that it is itself a 'deconstructed' (cut up/rearranged/repackaged) text about poetry and writing poetry is another layer of playfulness and rebuilding in this museum space, which is more like a space that looks a bit like a museum space - like the Latin text which looks like a Latin text but isn't really (it's corrupt, edited and faulty). In another sense, the Latin may be as obscure as some of the names and...

 Monday's curatorial session went well, with new ideas developing from the first, and seeking ways to successfully deconstruct the 'museum' concept - whilst still keeping the recognisable trappings of what constitutes a 'museum' present. I experimented with the display case, which has been completely dis-assembled. I decided to use it as the means of 'shepherding' the audience  around the display, in an anti-clockwise spiral which is perhaps counter-intuitive - as is the placement of the 'big' (i.e formal, clean, detailed and therefore - by general museum curatorial standards - more 'important') stone at the end of this journey. The first stones the visitor would encounter in this set-up are the cruder, less-skilled engravings; the memorial stone and the 'votive' offering stone, currently at the front of the show.  The glass top of the case was a bit of a problem - but, leant against a corner (itself a 'marginalised' space), i...

 Recent tutorial discussions having inspired me to try reciting - performing - some of the Saga , earlier tonight I gave it a go. Four passages, of varying length and dramatic import, were tested out, to see how they might be presented in a live, public-facing environment.  So here follows a short reading of the 'Song of Haeleth of the Dawn's Light', which I think is my favourite 'poem-within-the-poem' if only for its deeply sincere elegaic tone, and the fact it was inspired by a Celtic, rather than Germanic, source - in which an elegy is sung for a brave swordswoman of the Ylfu people, Haeleth. Her vengeful sister, Gwearyffeth, has more than a hint of Gwalchmai (the Welsh prototype of Sir Gawain) about her. Inspired by the 12th Century Welsh bardic song 'The Killing of Hywel ab Owein' (Peryf ap Cedifor, 1170): And now for the beginning of the whole thing...   In classic Old English formulaic fashion, the story begins not with the central character...

In putting together the narration for a 'work in progres' disscussion of the project for tomorrow, I realised this made a decent summary of the project to date, including some new thoughts and research. So here goes:    And here is the text of the presentation (with a few extra explanatory points): This project explores the relationship between word, image, object, and idea, and the representation of a non-existent place and time in a very specific space of bounded, physical place/time. Deconstruction has become the theme of this project, via growing reference to the ideas of Derrida and Foucault, as well as a breakdown of binary oppositions, upon which much structuralist theory is founded -  as well as certain social, cultural and political restrictions which persist today. Originally influenced by the mythological research of levi-Strauss, it was created as a fictional myth system – a body of knowledge concerning gods, their origins, and tales – and their representation...

Looking back over some of the modernist poetry we studied in Semester 1's Humanities class, I've continued to apply more radical visual structures to the poetic text, using words and their placement as a means of enforcing certain feelings or concepts for the reader: for example, during an earlier scene where the main character struggles up the rocky path to her home at a pivotal moment, separating each word describing the journey onto a line, spaced out from the previous, and following, words to suggest a tricky series of steps (compounds and phrases such as 'rock-tripped', 'thorn-pricked', 'branch-beaten' enforcing the difficulty of the climb). And, in the climactic battle - the main emotional thrust of which is not the overall victory of the allies, or the defeat of the tyrant king and queen - but the loss of the main character's best friend, the effect of which reaches its pinnacle in the third page below, signifying almost unbearable isolation a...

Whilst editing of the text continues (the early chapters, having been derived from a long-abandoned prose work, need special amounts of attention), I also spent some time editing some of the design pieces for submission to the Masters showcase for this year. I doubt very much any of them will be accepted, but they will come in handy for the online degree show, which will be a very different form of presentation to the physical space:  I also decided to check with the art school print shop their options for binding hardback books - the 'thesis' style which I initially deemed "not quite what I'm looking for" some months ago, but which now seems wholly appropriate - being the traditional form of binding for academic, authoritative texts, an assumed status which is offset by the interior text in all its ambiguity and ambivalence. The print team also offered a choice of gold or silver lettering/design for the covers, which I found very interesting. I've never liked...