Book Launch for Drawing and Other Writing, by SE Barnet and Sally Morfill (Everyday Press, 2016)

Through the work of SE Barnet and Sally Morfill, the Everyday Press publication Drawing and Other Writing offers a look at how meaning is formed and interpreted when we make a mark. The practices of these two artists include a range of influences and source material; from the Mass Observation archive to Henri Michaux's alphabet of lines. Additionally, artists Ana Čavić and Louisa Minkin have contributed work to the book.

The launch includes a short performance with SE Barnet and David Buob based around language and dialogue employing live transcription in real time. The goal of transcribing in this instance being less that of accurate recording than a subjective interpretation.

There will also be a screening of the short film Rules that order the reading of clouds (2016) by Sally Morfill and Ana Čavić

Performance
Score for two performers:
Sitting across from each other, facing each other -  one performer writes  while the second performer describes/narrates and reads from the writers completed pages.
Writer creates content whilst Narrator communicates it.
At stake is the verisimilitude of the experience(s) – subjectivity, control of the narrative, trust, and error all influence the outcome
Narrator might ‘correct ‘ what’s written, which might become apparent in subsequent writing.  Narrator might comment on what’s written. Narrator might falsify what’s written.
How much attention is spent on description and how much on accuracy and how much on commentary?
Might the verisimilitude be more an illusion, which slowly disintegrates with each additional page?
This all works towards building an ongoing dialogue incorporating agreement and disagreement.

Film
According to Laurent Jenny, the intention of the artist/writer Henri Michaux’s early graphic work was ‘to reconcile writing and drawing, which after all are both attributes of the same line’ .
In Rules that order the reading of clouds, Sally Morfill and Ana Čavić stage an exchange between visual and literary fields as the ‘same’ lines migrate from drawing to poetry and back again in an animated sequence. The starting point is a digitised line drawing of a dynamic skyscape. This image is gradually deconstructed as a series of lines are moved one at a time and recomposed as a poem; the poem is then similarly deconstructed and reconfigured as a drawing. Constant small movements shift the form of the lines on screen emulating the unpredictable movements of clouds. A generative call and response between drawing and writing is set in motion as each new configuration of lines conjures new meanings and readings
 
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Bios

SE Barnet is an internationally exhibiting artist previously based in Los Angeles, now a Research Fellow at Birmingham City University and an Associate Lecturer at University Arts London. Her work employs Instigation and Language with which she creates situations, collaborations and events. Her attention lies with the overlooked and obsolete aspects of daily life from collected reflections on personal experience. Barnet’s recent project involving Mass Observation, the British movement begun in the early 20th century, employed archive materials towards re-appropriation and détournement. Encompassing multiple outputs; from filmed performances to daily tweeting, extensive transcription to the creation of drawings, it was the subject of two exhibits at Five Years. The work has been included in The Everyday Press publication Drawing and Other Writing and PEER paper notes issue 3. It has also been written about in poetics journal TRIPWIRE 11 out of Oakland, California.

Sally Morfill lives and works in London and Manchester, UK. As a member of the London based artists’ collective Five Years, she has curated shows, whilst continuing her primarily drawing based practice. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Since 2014, she has collaborated with Ana Čavić on a body of work exploring themes of translation and dialogue through drawing and writing exchanges, most recently producing digital animation. Other collaborations with independent dance practitioner Karen Wood explore the shared vocabulary and grammar of drawing and dance through performance. Sally Morfill is currently a PhD candidate with MIRIAD at the Manchester School of Art where she also teaches. Her practice-based research has led to the development of new forms of drawing emerging at the intersection between drawing and other gesture-based actions, for example, the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech, improvised or choreographed dance, or rule based systems such as writing.
Ana Čavić is a Yugoslav born interdisciplinary artist based in London, UK. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008 and has performed both solo and as part of the performance art and publishing duo Ladies of the Press*, nationally and internationally. The Ladies of the Press* (Ana Čavić & Renée O’Drobinak, working collectively since 2007) re-imagines the role of the publisher and the publicist into a theatrical persona through live pop-up publishing projects.  As a solo artist, Ana Čavić has sustained an individual art practice that plays across the fields of visual and literary arts, performance and poetry. She has produced works on paper, poetry animation, ‘sculpture poetry’, video and performance.

David Buob is an animation filmmaker working with hand drawn water-color animation on paper, each frame on one single paper without compositing or computer work.  His film "Das Haus" 2011, was shown on more than hundred festivals worldwide including in Hiroshima. His second film "Utö" was premiered 2014 and shown on more than 50 festivals. He lives and works in Dresden and Berlin.