THE LITTLE OBJECT OF THE OTHER (Part 1)

Emma Bolland

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was…’ John 1:1 KJV.

 ‘At the scopic level, we are no longer at the level of demand, but of desire…’ Jacques Lacan. Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 4^th March 1964.

In The Realm Of The Scopic I Am Imagined. Photograph: Emma Bolland

In the beginning, before the beginning, we wanted to make a book. In the bitter winter of 2011 I sat with curator Judit Bodor and the authors David Peace and Jake Arnott in The Queen Vic on Great George Street in Leeds. David, Jake and I had just delivered ‘And from the west a pale horse…’, an event curated by Judit to close my exhibition ‘Nightwood’. David and I had discussed the themes and sensibilities that were shared by our respective practices. Jake had been the arch and erudite and ever so spiky host. The bar was crowded, noisy, our company spread across several tables, the energy of the evening contained within the closed and looping circuits of fifty or so knees and elbows. The four of us had formed a conclave amidst the mob; discrete, a precious clique, (the stage had been ours & lingering adrenalin was making us temporarily wary of those who had followed us from event to pub). Judit leant forward… ‘I’m thinking, we should do a publication, your images, David’s words, something…?’ ‘Yes!’ we say, ‘Yes!’ We are drunk with the rush of the evening, with beer, or performance, or both. A few months later, David has moved back to Tokyo and Judit is no longer working in Leeds. I am drifting around in the studio, picking up & discarding threads of thought from one day to the next. I have an overdraft, a broken heart, and no deadlines to meet. Nothing has been done. Melancholy coils its skin around me.

And, yet, still, despite, or because, we have become MilkyWayYouWillHearMeCall. Myself and Tom and Judit, with emails to David that tell him of our readings and our wanderings. We still want to make a book. We still want to be a book. We want to see our words, and our images, and our wanderings taken in hand and brought to order. What we must ask ourselves now, is why…

Place & Memory

Holy Trinity Church, Leeds. Photo: Emma Bolland

Place & Memory is a professional development project as part of Milky Way You Will Hear Me Call.

Between July and October 2013 we will work with a wider community of creative individuals in Leeds who are interested in site, place, consciousness and mental health issues and how these can be approached through different media and arts practices.

Eight Leeds-based artists, who are currently not in education and who all experienced mental health issues in their lives, will be selected to develop new works towards a group exhibition in Holy Trinity Church as part of Love Arts Leeds Festival, October 2013.

A film and publication will complete and document the process and will be launched at Inkwell, Leeds as part of an event accompanying the exhibition. During the four months artists will work alongside each other and will be mentored by project leaders, Emma Bolland, Judit Bodor and Tom Rodgers through one-to-one and group mentoring, portfolio reviews and workshops developing their practical and critical skills.

Place & Memory is generously supported by Arts Council England, Inkwell, Leeds, City Council Leeds Inspired, Leeds Mind, Arts & Minds Leeds and the Leeds and York NHS Partnership Foundation Trust.