1. Tender (2021–)
    1. Information
    2. A time-based currency exchange, Tender explores publishing as a radical act of relation. A shareholding. Drawing language through thresholds of care, Tender is a thickness. A dividend. A Lure. We cannot say we publish this or that, only that we are published by our experience between and beyond. Tender seeks to expand new temporal horizons through sociality, collaboration and trade.

      Opening both the field of enquiry and the means of producing the intrinsic rewards of its exchange, Tender is a relation. A fluctuating body of concern. Perhaps it is too easy to call it love, this participatory economy of dull ache and sponge. This queering of value. This moving towards. A waterfall made of trying.

      In partnership with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Studio Residency Program (fall 2021) and Brisbane Writer’s Festival (2022), Tender gathers seven artists to join A.P.E. —an invitation to exchange, transform and multiply time: Jen Bervin (US), Nancy Kuhl (US), Fayen d’Evie (Aus), Catherine Evans (Aus/Ger), Ilana Halperin (US, Sco), Wendy Morrow (Aus) and Paul Mylechrane (Aus).

  2. Erratic Ecologies (2019–)
    1. Information
    2. In this ongoing body of work, A Published Event are testing the possibilities of erratics beyond the geologies of glacially-transported boulders — those rocks that were carried by advancing glaciers and deposited away from their bedrock when the glacier recedes—and towards movement—a metaphysical condition; wandering, eccentric and queer.

      Tracing the history and etymology of the word ‘erratic’, which comes from the Latin errare, to wander or stray, A Published Event find the first notation of the idea in the ‘erratyk’ stars of Chaucer’s 16th century poem Troylus and Cressida. Surging then through the erratic motion of the planets in Copernican astronomy and then into the geological record in Charpentier’s Terraine erratique of the Jura Mountains. Over time, the term ‘erratic’ has wandered and strayed through fields of astronomy, theology, cosmology, geology, glaciology, cardiology, psychology, literature and climatology. It is in this rich composite of knowledge and language that A Published Event field the concept of erraticology. A conglomerate, accessible beyond any one field.

      Proposition: Erratic ecologies.

      Question: How might one begin to field guide the erratic?

      1. Erratic Ecologies Field Station
      2. Oct, 2019

        Ruth Stephan Research Fellowship

        Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
        Yale University
        New Haven, CT

        Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). Comprising sixty-two copper-foiled episodes, two lengths of solid copper bar, one block of quarried Stony Creek Granite, one archival blueprint. Edition/ 3. A Published Event.

        This ‘field station’— is an apparatus for viewing and recording erratic activity, glacial movements and materialities of the body. It records the activities, experiences and feelings of A Published Event during their 31-day Ruth Stephan Research Fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, and associated fieldwork in the post-glacial landscapes of New England, USA.

        During this research fellowship A Published Event developed an experimental approach to studying ‘erratics’, most commonly understood as ‘glacially transported boulders’ and investigated the origins of the word ‘erratic’, which comes from the Latin ‘errare’, to wander or stray. Through their research, A Published Event came to understand how this term, over time, has wandered through fields of astronomy, theology, cosmology, glaciology, cardiology, psychology, literature and climatology and has come to rest so firmly with geology.

        The Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019) is a tool or technique for developing a greater awareness and attuning to a given environment. Composed of a set of 62 unique field station cards, each card is an episode; a daily tool for attuning to archive, site, and the confused circulations of the body using languages of metallurgy, deep time and materiality. The accompanying blueprint traces A Published Event’s journey through the holdings of the Beinecke library and across the landscapes of Connecticut and Massachusetts shaped in the wake of the Wisconsin ice sheet some 18,000 years ago. The granite block was sourced from the Stony Creek quarry, in Branford Connecticut, famous for quarrying granite for iconic monuments and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty. In this work the artists are asking, How might conditions of ‘erraticness’ call us to the present? And how might this calling prepare us to take action? This work is held in the collection of The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

        Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). Comprising sixty-two copper-foiled episodes, two lengths of solid copper bar, one block of quarried Stony Creek Granite, one archival blueprint. A Published Event. New Haven, CT. Edition of 3.

        Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). Comprising sixty-two copper-foiled episodes, two lengths of solid copper bar, one block of quarried Stony Creek Granite, one archival blueprint. Edition/ 3. A Published Event.
        Copper foiling plate (detail) from Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). A Published Event.

        The Erratic Ecologies Field Station (2019) looks simple enough, but it also gives language to both the physical, linguistic and philosophical dimensions of our experience in Connecticut and is very much an emergent tool for speculative research. It offers the possibility of a new relational field that explores the erraticology of matter itself.

        Erratic Ecologies Field Station (2), Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). Comprising three copper-foiled episodes, two lengths of solid copper bar, one block of quarried Stony Creek Granite. Edition/ 3. A Published Event.
        Erratic Ecologies Field Station Episode Card (detail), (2019). Punched, copper-foiled episode. Edition/ 200. A Published Event.

        Whilst ‘striation’, names a glaciological term that refers to the scratches and marks left on rocks by the linear action of a glacier, indicating its direction and flow; our term, erraticology might come to name a far more complex and massive organism of deeply affected matter. When the artists talk about hardness, heft or specific gravity (geological terms that are used to describe rocks and minerals), they are re-claiming these qualities to articulate the physical and emotional materials of a more-than-human condition. What has become imperative to their work is to develop a shared language – what the architect Christopher Alexander would call a pattern language – that operates between these specialisations, enabling the erratic to expand experiences of the more-than-human.

        Erratic Ecologies Field Station, Or an emergent apparatus for speculative research (2019). Production image. Comprising sixty-two copper-foiled episodes, two lengths of solid copper bar, one block of quarried Stony Creek Granite, one archival blueprint. Edition/ 3. A Published Event.
      3. Ruth Stephan Research Fellowship
      4. 21 Oct, 2019

        Visiting Scholars Seminars: Yale Center for British Art/ Lewis Walpole Library/ Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

        Bass Library
        Classroom L01
        101 Wall Street
        Yale University
        New Haven, CT

        Erratic Ecologies: A Field Guide (a short talk by A Published Event)

        The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1963. The building’s design includes a six-story glass-enclosed tower of book stacks, holding approximately 180,000 volumes, and large ‘windows’ made of translucent Vermont marble panels. Image: A Published Event.

        We would like to acknowledge the Quinni-piac and Mashnatucket Pequot people, as the traditional custodians of the land on which we are meeting today, and upon which we are undertaking this body of research.

        We (Justy Phillips & Margaret Woodward) are Visiting Fellows at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscripts Library, here as Ruth Stephan Fellows in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library. Unexpectedly for us, the poet and publisher Ruth Stephan, has emerged as a constant presence during our time here – her ideas and influence we will return to in the latter part of our talk.

        As artists, we make long-term relational artworks through shared acts of writing and public telling. Our work is fuelled by an interest in the everyday, chance encounters and constructed situations. One of our key primary sources in the Beinecke’s collection of American Literature is the archive of American artist and publisher now living in rural Ireland, Erica Van Horn. We are drawn to Van Horn’s quotidian observations of small matters – she is a master of chorography – a practice of acutely attending to a part rather than ‘geography’s’ broad sweep, whole.

        Today, we would like to move you through one particular striation of our research, the visuals of which will run concurrently with our words.

        We came to this research through a proposition of what we are calling, erratic ecologies and what it might mean to field guide the erratic. In this sense, we are testing the possibilities of erratics as; glacially-transported boulders – so, those rocks that were carried by advancing glaciers and deposited away from their bedrock when the glacier recedes; a movement, known as wandering, eccentric and queer; and a metaphysical condition, we are referring to as erraticness.

        It is important to acknowledge that as artists, we have forged a very particular direction through the Beinecke’s holdings – a journey that has, in unequal measure, drawn us into a large number of folios, bookworks, maps, archives and a number of ‘errata’ – mistakes, omissions and absences – a publisher’s curse which also derive from the latin errare; compelling us to construct a mobile ‘field station’ to activate these findings; and drawn us into some of Connecticut’s most significant erratic boulder fields.

        Since our first day in the Beinecke Library, we have recorded the physicality of our sensing bodies in the Reading Room, through the books we’ve touched, words shared – our fortitude, tenacity and appetite to move-with and through these holdings together. Like all researchers, we keep meticulous records but alongside these we also create other publishable events that enable us to record episodes, in real time, as they unfold. The first of these is titled, Erratic Ecologies Field Station. Composed of a set of unique Field Station cards; a 6 inch length of copper square bar to aid conduction; and a quarried block of Stony Creek Granite for support. This publishing should not be understood as a record of activity alone, but rather as a tool or technique for developing a greater awareness and attuning to a given environment. This is an ongoing practice.

        Our Erratic field station looks simple enough, but its ability to give language to both the physical, linguistic and philosophical dimensions of our experience here should not be underestimated. Nor is it a ready-made device that we arrived here with, but was developed from scratch in response to our first seven days in the library. In this sense, it is very much an emergent tool for speculative research.

        The transect we are presenting here is significant to us because it offers the possibility of a new relational field that explores the erraticology of matter itself. Whilst ‘striation’, names a glaciological term that refers to to the scratches and marks left on rocks by the linear action of a glacier, indicating it’s direction and flow; our term, erraticology might come to name a far more complex and massive organism of deeply affected matter. When we talk about hardness, heft or specific gravity (geolgical terms that are used to describe rocks and minerals), we are re-claiming these qualities to articulate the physical and emotional materials of our more-than-human condition. What our Beinecke fellowship has enabled is to begin to trace the history and etymology of the word ‘erratic’, which comes from the Latin errare, to wander or stray, and to better understand how it came to rest so firmly with geology. We can now see how this term, over time, has wandered and strayed through fields of astronomy, theology, cosmology, geology, glaciology, cardiology, psychology, literature and climatology. It is in this rich composite of knowledge and language that we are fielding our concept of erraticology. A kind of conglomerate that is accessible beyond any one field. What has become imperative to our work is to develop a shared language – what the architect Christopher Alexander would call a pattern language – that operates between these specialisations, enabling the erratic to expand our experiences of the more-than-human.

        In our fieldwork – speculative encounters with books, rocks, fractures, language and people – we practice this verb to ‘field’ as a kind of in-gathering with one’s body, a way of bringing into relation, ideas, objects and experiences, within reach of the sensing body. The collaboration of our sensing bodies includes a 40% loss of hearing in one and a 40% loss of heart function in the other. Because of this we are acutely aware of erratic episodes, sonic, cardiac, or otherwise. For us, any process of field guiding is inherently imbued with frictions and fictions of the erratic. To work this relational field is to focus intensely on what lies between. Between gravel and boulder, block and behemoth. Fieldwork is itself an erratic activity – a deliberate and intentional strategy to shift context, build new relations and attend to a material awareness of place. It allows one to be both in and out of place at the same time.

        The Field Station itself draws into relation the seven technical characteristics of minerals; running from Habit on the left to Lustre on the right. Yet within these fields, a fluidity of language enables us to infiltrate these broad geological strokes with movements between the body, glaciology and deep time. Terms such as ablate, quiesce, surge and pluck span both human and glacial organisms. This Field Station enables each of us to record, in any one day, how we ‘feel’ and ‘field’ new knowledge in and through our bodies. This is an ongoing record we have been making for each day of our fellowship. For me, whose heart condition is constantly emitting curious signals, ‘lustre’ is often experienced as ‘dizziness’ and ‘Heft’ as ‘chest discomfort or pressure’. For Margaret, prospecting the library, is a process of attuning to the curious signals of attraction emitted by a particular material. Both episodes might insight a rapid pounding or fluttering of the heart.

        Given the extraordinary array of material we have accessed in the last three weeks, we find ourselves thrust into the terrain, inhuman geographer Kathryn Yusoff names as ‘corporeal geology’. For us, an erraticology of matter seems compelled to begin in the corporeal geology of the heart. It is what we might call, an apprehending of heart matter. The concept that the heart also has a brain – thought to have extensive sensory capacities and able to act independently of the cranial brain has been widely researched at the Institute of HeartMath, in California. What excites us about the direction of our research is that it allows us to draw language through the physicality of body. For us, this digesting takes form through writing and the subsequent manouvering of this physical language through publishing, that is, the act of making public. As a process of research-creation, we always publish as we go.

        WEARINESS

        I sat with a boulder on my lap.
        Around its dim girth my arms strained to strap
        It securely and steady its sway.
        I hugged the cold weight like a long denied bride,
        I laid my forehead against its rude side
        And slept. Then it melted away.

        [Ruth Stephan, Prelude to Poetry. Editorial Lumen. Lima Peru.]

        A.P.E.—Justy Phillips & Margaret Woodward, October 2019.

        You can read more about our activities as Ruth Stephan Fellows in New Scholarship at Beinecke – Erratic Ecologies Field Station, an article by Nancy Kuhl, poet and Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

      5. Babson’s Boulders, Dogtown Common
      6. 2 Oct, 2019

        Babson’s Boulders

        Dogtown Common
        Gloucester,
        Massachusetts, 01930
        United States

        Never Try Never Win, 2019. Documentation of a found event. Babson’s Boulders, Dogtown, Mass. A Published Event.

        During the Great Depression Roger Babson (1875–1967) commissioned unemployed Finnish Stonecutters to carve inspirational words into large glacial erratic boulders strewn across an area of Dogtown Common, Massachusetts. Babson was a businessman, notable for predicting the Wall Street crash, referred to his commissioning of these inscriptions as “writing my final and permanent book.” Strangely portentous and relevant for current economic and global circumstances, this work holds the friction of human and geological bodies, and brings into question languages and ‘publications’ that bridge human and lithic bodies. This field of 36 carved glacial erratic boulders, now covered by woodland, is commonly known as ‘Babson’s Boulders’.

        Courage, 2019. Documentation of a found event. Babson’s Boulders, Dogtown, Mass. A Published Event.

        Pages from Roger W. Babson’s Final and Permanent Book published on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts (2019) form Series 16 of the distributed artwork, Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series curated by poet Nancy Kuhl. This set of five postcards pays homage to Babson’s boulders, a field of hand-carved erratic boulders on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts. This series is a collaboration between Margaret Woodward, who photographed the boulders during her Ruth Stephan Research fellowship at The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry at the Beinecke.

        Pages from Roger W. Babson’s Final and Permanent Book published on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts (2019) by Margaret Woodward, for Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series 16 #2.4 curated by poet Nancy Kuhl.

        Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition series 16 #2. Five x stamped and addressed digitally printed postcards. Dimensions: 110mmx 140mm. Nancy Kuhl and Margaret Woodward. 2020.

        Pages from Roger W. Babson’s Final and Permanent Book published on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts (2019) by Margaret Woodward, for Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series 16 #2.3 curated by poet Nancy Kuhl.
        Pages from Roger W. Babson’s Final and Permanent Book published on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts (2019) by Margaret Woodward, for Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series 16 #2.2 curated by poet Nancy Kuhl.
        Actions and Reactions, Roger W. Babson, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1935. (2019) Margaret Woodward, Guest Curator for Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series 16 #2 curated by Nancy Kuhl.
        Pages from Roger W. Babson’s Final and Permanent Book published on Dogtown Common, Massachusetts (2019) by Margaret Woodward, for Room 26 Discrete Notions Exhibition Series 16 #2.2 curated by poet Nancy Kuhl.

        KINDNESS (2019) by Jen Bervin and A Published Event was made during the same field trip by the artists to Babson’s Boulders in Fall 2019.

        Kindness and Margaret Woodward, 2019. Documentation of a found event. Babson’s Boulders, Dogtown, Mass. A Published Event.
        Kindness, 2019. Production image. Kozo paper, tape and rock. Babson’s Boulders, Dogtown, Mass. A Published Event.
        Kindness (2019). Graphite Rubbing on Kozo Rice paper. Dimensions 1900mmx 460mm. Jen Bervin and A Published Event.
  3. Lost Rocks (2017–21)
    1. Information
    2. An accumulative event of mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling, Lost Rocks (2017–21) is a unique library of forty three books composed by forty five contemporary artists from around the world. Part artwork, part curatorial platform and part experiment in publishing as art practice. Increments of absence. This life that is all at once. Love. Grief. Relation.

      1. Forty three fictiōnellas
      2. 2017–21

        Lost Rocks (2017–21)
        43 titles
        Edn. /300

        Lost Rocks (2017–21), fictiōnellas #1—16, 2017—18. Printed books, Tasmanian oak and Stichtite serpentine. A Published Event. Hobart.

        In March 2016, A Published Event launched their five-year, slow-publishing collaboration Lost Rocks (2017–21) – an accumulative event of mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling.

        Part artwork, part curatorial platform and part experiment in publishing as art practice, Lost Rocks (2017–21) articulates a library of forty three fictiōnellas composed by forty five contemporary artists from around the world.

        ROCKS, fieldwork (I) 2016. For Lost Rocks (2017–21). A Published Event. Hobart.

        At the conceptual heart of this ambitious project sits a discarded geological specimen display board, found by A Published Event at the Glenorchy Tip shop in the northern suburbs of Hobart, Tasmania. Forty of its fifty-six rocks are missing. At once, the rock board is both a decomposing geological taxonomy and a proposition for new mineralogical recomposings of body, duration and event. This artwork seeks to replace the missing rocks, not with geological specimens, but ‘fictionellas’ – processual ‘telling events’ of mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling.

        In Lost Rocks (2017–21), it is the material metamorphosis of absence that enlivens the library to its public. Not forgetting that the rock board itself is already a published work and has a public of its own, including amongst others, the person who compiled it, perhaps as a study aid; the salvage workers who saved it from the tip face; the 45 contemporary artists who attempt to re-compose it.

        ROCKS, Tasmanian mineral specimen board. Mineral specimens, Dymo tape, Masonite, string and Tasmanian oak. Documentation of a found event. 2016. APE.

        Despite its small size, the geological diversity of lutruwita/Tasmania is quite remarkable. Present in abundance are mineral deposits and rocks from every period of the Earth’s Middle Proterozoic era, a period that began over 2.5 billings years ago. As the first continents appeared so did the first fossils of living organisms.

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) fictiōnellas #1—21. Published 2017—2019. Digital webpress. 181mm x 111mm. Limited Edition/ 300. A Published Event. Hobart.

        Commissioned artists: Margaret Woodward (TAS), Justy Phillips (TAS), Jane Rendell (UK), Sarah Jones (TAS), Ross Gibson (AUS), Ben Walter (TAS), Ally Bisshop (Ger), Greg Lehman (TAS), James Newitt (TAS), Therese Keogh (AUS), Mary Scott (TAS), Rory Wray McCann (TAS) Julie Gough (TAS), Tine Melzer/ Markus Kummer (Sui), Raymond Arnold (TAS), Jerry de Gryse (TAS), Trygve Luktvasslimo (Nor), Lucy Bleach (TAS), Wendy Morrow (TAS), Ruth Hadlow (TAS), Louisa King & Jo Kinneburgh (NSW), Shevaun Cooley (WA), Perdita Phillips (WA), Tricky Walsh (TAS), Lyndal Jones (VIC), Bianca Hester (NSW), Catherine Evans (Aus/Ger), Caroline Loewen (Can), Helena Demczuk (TAS), Nancy Kuhl (US), Robin Banks (TAS), Erica Van Horn (US/ IRE), Ilana Halperin (UK), Jen Bervin (US), Loren Kronemeyer (TAS), Chris Henschke (VIC), Sofie Burgoyne (TAS), Katie Stackhouse (VIC), Polly Stanton (VIC), Siddharth Pandey (Ind) and Dominique Chen (QLD) & Tom Blake (NSW).

        ROCKS, fieldwork (II) 2016. For Lost Rocks (2017–21). A Published Event. Hobart.

        The Lost Rocks (2017–21) fictiōnellas are gestures, small movements that shift the axis just enough to feel it move but not enough to notice it moving. They are not, as so much of contemporary art practice aspires to be, spectacular. The works are soft and deep and raw and sharp, much like the rocks that did or did not come before them. A pulping of lithic love no less.

        Whilst maintaining a strict conceptual framework to the Lost Rocks (2017–21) fictiōnellas (all content should be drawn from lived experience), a consistent design style and production format; we allow the library itself (its holdings) to be punctuated by intrusions.

        In geological terms, an intrusion manifests as an inward burst, magma that cools and solidifies within the Earth’s crust. In the library, we explore intrusions as events that erupt and interrupt – between the writing of the rocks – creating new flows and relations between rocks, minerals, authors and readers. So far these intrusions have taken the form of live readings, curatorial residencies, installations of drawings, video and sculpture, lithic poetry salons and perhaps most intriguing of all, in the gifting of minerals and rocks. In a way, these intrusions become the new bedrock – the new caneite board, and in doing so, become a way of holding context and materiality as one. An attempt to gain a bearing, to crystallise a voice.

        This ambitious work is funded through crowdfunding, book sales, library subscriptions and over its six year duration, a number of competitive arts grants. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. This activity was assisted through Arts Tasmania.

      3. Field Library (Deluxe Edition)
      4. 2021

        Lost Rocks (2017–21)
        Deluxe Edition Field Library
        Limited Edition / 12

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.

        Published in a limited edition of twelve the Lost Rocks (2017–21) Deluxe Edition Field Library comprises: A complete set of forty three Lost Rocks (2017–21) fictiõnellas; two cuts of stichtite serpentine; two blocks of rare Tasmanian timber; one copper-etched plate; assorted postcards; field library case in hand-made in Tasmanian oak and Huon pine by designer/maker Linda Fredheim; including fixtures of brass, stainless steel, plastic and felt; signed edition certificate.

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Detail image. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Detail image. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Detail image. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Documentation in the field, lutruwita/ Tasmania. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Field Library, 2021. Documentation in the field, lutruwita/ Tasmania. Tasmanian Oak, stichtite serpentine, etched coper plate, 43 fictiōnellas, postcard series. Signed authentification certificate. Designed and made by Linda Fredheim for A Published Event. Edition /12. A Published Event.

        Download edition profile pdf.

      5. Seam IX
      6. 24–28 Feb, 2021

        Fossil. Fossil. Fossil. Copper. Silver. Granite.

        PMVABF
        Online, the world.

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam IX was launched on the occasion of the inaugural Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair. Hosted online due to pandemic restrictions, in 2021 Printed Matter, the New York-based art book specialist migrated their New York and LA Art Book Fairs into one spectacular online event. Since 2005, Printed Matter’s Art Book Fairs have hosted international exhibitors featuring a wide variety of works—from zines and artists’ books to rare and out of print publications, and contemporary art editions. This new Fair expanded upon the rich tradition of our long running Art Book Fairs, including over 400 exhibitors from 43 countries, with online programs, performances, games, and more.

        The PMVABF invited audiences to browse, buy, participate and converse with hundreds of artists through a system of dedicated websites, constructed for the occasion of fair. It was in this unchartered territory that we launched Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam IX: Fossil by Ilana Halperin (US/ Sco), Fossil by Erica Van Horn (US, Ire), Fossil by Robin Banks (Aus), Copper by Loren Kronemyer (Aus), Silver by Jen Bervin and Granite by Nancy Kuhl (US).

        Through A Published Event’s PMVABF Lost Rocks (2017–21) project site, we hosted a number of readings, conversations and interviews by our Seam IX artists. Here is a selection of those publishings, generously created by collaborating artists and produced by A Published Event.

        Nancy Kuhl (US) reads an extract of her fictiōnella, Granite for Lost Rocks (2017–21) by A Published Event. 2021.

        Erica Van Horn reads an extract from her fictiōnella, Fossil Lost Rocks (2017–21) by A Published Event. 2021.

        Epoch Wars Manifesto by Pony Express. Loren Kronemyer, Copper Lost Rocks (2017–21) by A Published Event. 2021.

        Ilana Halperin, Fossil, 2021 and Justy Phillips (A Published Event) in conversation on grief and other losses. A Published Event.

        Robin Banks reading from her fictiōnella, Fossil (2021). Filmed with Izzy von Lichtan, curator, Rock Library and Geological Museum, University of Tasmania. A Published Event. 2021.

      7. Seam VIII
      8. 27–28 Aug, 2020

        Copper. Granite. Red Sandstone.

        Listening in the Anthropocene Symposium.
        Online, the world.

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam VIII launched online as part of Listening in the Anthropocene, Exhibition + Symposium, hosted by Charles Sturt University. Seam VIII artists and rocks featured; Granite by Helena Demczuk (Aus), Red Sandstone by Caroline Leowen (Can) and Copper by Catherine Evans (Aus/ Ger). You can access the video recording of Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam VIII here.

        Included in the video recording are these two readings from Berlin-based Australian artist Catherine Evans and her fictiōnella, Copper.

        Catherine Evans, reading an extract (I) from her fictiōnella, Copper for Lost Rocks (2017–21) by A Published Event.

      9. Seam VII
      10. 12 June, 2020

        Stalactite. Sandstone. Granite. Copper.

        Online, the world.

        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam VII was launched online launch via Zoom on the 12th of June 2020. The event is presented in partnership with Negative Press, Melbourne.

        Listen to artists Bianca Hester (Sandstone), Lyndal Jones (Granite) and Tricky Walsh (Stalactite) discuss their slow-publishing fictiōnellas with A Published Event co-founder Margaret Woodward. The event is generously convened by Dr. Laura Harper, Monash University, Melbourne. A Published Event 2020.

      11. Seam VI
      12. 2019

        Marble. Granite. Fossil.

        Boston Art Book Fair
        Cyclorama
        Boston Center for the Arts
        539 Tremont St, Boston

        The launch of Lost Rocks (2017–21), Seam (VI): Fossil by Perdita Phillips (Aus), Granite by poet Shevaun Cooley (Aus) and Marble by artists Louisa King (Aus) and Jo Paterson Kinniburgh (NZ/Aus) took place in Europe across A Published Event’s participation in two great art book fairs. First came the Boston Art Book Fair, 2019, followed weeks later by the Small Publisher’s Fair at Conway Hall in London.

        Launching Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam VI at the Boston Art Book Fair 2019, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston..
        Launching Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam VI at the Small Publisher’s Fair 2019, Conway Hall, London.
      13. Seam V
      14. 8.03.19

        Rhyolite. Fossil. Mudstone. Granite.

        Victoria Gunpowder Magazine
        Queen’s Domain
        nipaluna (Hobart)
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7000

        The occasion of Fossil Performance by Wendy Morrow (soundscape by Leigh Hobba with technical assistance by Dylan Sheridan) celebrates the launch of Lost Rocks (2017–21), Seam (V): Rhyolite by artist Lucy Bleach (Aus), Granite by artist Ruth Hadlow (Aus), Mudstone by artist and film maker Trygve Luktvasslimo (Nor) and Fossil by dancer Wendy Morrow (Aus).

        I only know what I saw. That night in the dark. Residues of gunpowder. Labour hard felt. Lime wash. Woodworm. Soft blue light in the rafters.

        She had already washed the floor but I didn’t see any of that, only the aftermath that started on the floor and crept ever so slowly through the walls beyond the oak lining and all the way to the white brick line. For the photographer, who scornfully berated the building for some time later, this line was not a line but a devision of equity. Of light and dark. It, standing out like the invasive beacon it was. When the palawa were murdered in their thousands. The light, she said, out there (gesturing far beyond the copper lined door) would never reach such heights nor depths in the lands this Magazine was built to protect. One kilometre. Two kilometres beyond the ground line. It’s just like the great king Osiris said, ‘Water darkens everything’.

        Victoria Gunpowder Magazine Queen’s Domain, nipaluna/ hobart. Installation view. 2018. A Published Event.

        Earlier in the week, two biologists took to the floor for the Friends of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. Molluscs and soft bodied corals filled the room in all the muted colours of a world full of black out there and far below. Not so far south from here, the deep sea coral reefs of the Continental Shelf, flank the edges of vast seamounts. Invisible mountains with names like Pedra and St Helens. In my childhood in the north of England, St Helens was a rough industrial city. Hard to imagine its slopes flooded with soft corals tethering water to rock, the likes of which were on show in the Royal Society room this week. And urchins that feed directly from the water column by elongating their spiky bodies upwards upwards. Beyond this mass of black water.

        As the body slowly slowly moves with the gestures of fossil’s making, it begins to absorb its own column of softly folding air, begins to collect the small piles of woodworm dust that before this movement, collected only where beams and posts touch floor. It is not the artist who moves, but the shadows of her othering, the saturating sinkholes, the years of muscle memory – the lines of words and thinking, always repeating from the core. This is how she writes her moves. How her moves re-compose the space.

        Wendy Morrow, Fossil, 2018. Victoria Gunpowder Magazine, Queen’s Domain, nipaluna/ hobart. Production view. 2018. A Published Event.

        For many of the audience, this is their first time in this extraordinary Gunpowder Magazine. Built in 1853 by convict labour, a significant feature of this Battery was a Hot Shoe Oven in which the balls were heated to red hot before being loaded and fired at wooden vessels. The vaulted brick ceiling was laid without mortar so that it, rather than the entire building should be blown clean off, in the case of accidental incendiary explosion.

        FOSSIL performance, an exquisite opening of the space, of the seam, of Granite, Rhyolite, and Mudstone amongst it’s delicate layering of life and death, a synchronicity of rocks that never touched. Before. In the artist’s words, a penetralia of sorts; ‘the innermost secret parts and recesses; to go within, between rock and body, mysteries and doubt.’ (Morrow)

        Victoria Gunpowder Magazine Queen’s Domain, nipaluna/ hobart. Site view. 2018. A Published Event.
      15. Seam IV
      16. 19–21 Oct, 2018

        Copper. Copper. Lead Sulphide. Mudstone. Shale.

        The Unconformity
        Queenstown,
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7467

        Artist Raymond Arnold (Copper) leads ‘Copper: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 7:30am, Saturday 20 October. Meet outside old LARQ Gallery, 8 Hunter St, Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Artist Raymond Arnold (Copper) leads ‘Copper: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 7:30am, Saturday 20 October. Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Landscape architect Jerry de Gryce (Copper) leads ‘Copper: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 11am, Saturday 20 October. Performance view. Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Landscape architect Jerry de Gryce (Copper) leads ‘Copper: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 11am, Saturday 20 October. Performance view. Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Landscape architect Jerry de Gryce (Copper) leads ‘Copper: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 11am, Saturday 20 October. Meet outside Tracks Cafe, 13-16 Driffield St, Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Artist Julie Gough (Shale) leads ‘Shale: A Reading Walk’ for The Unconformity. 3pm, Saturday 20 October. Meet at the Galley Museum, 1 Driffield St, Queenstown, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Artist and prospector Rory Wray McCann (Mudstone) at ‘Rock and Awe’, his solo exhibition at the CWA Hall, Queenstown. lutruwita/Tasmania.
        Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam IV launch at Old LARQ Gallery, Queenstown. 19 October, 2018. A Published Event.
      17. Seam III
      18. 08.03.18 – 29.03.18

        Petrified Wood. Fossil. Petrified Wood.

        The Barn at Rosny Farm
        Rosny Hill Road
        Rosny Park
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7018

        Margaret saw the stumps of Huon Pine and I asked if we could rent them. Huon Pine $40 NOT DRY. HUON PINE $95 NOT DRY. HUON PINE $95 NOT DRY

        She was the one who thought they might be good things to own, if only for a month on the Eastern Shore. Good beings for you to confide in perhaps, whilst in the presence of other petrifying, fossilising schisms. In the back room of a well known furniture showroom down the Channel, planks of rare and hard to find Tasmanian timber are stacked like well thumbed books along the length of each wall. Three felled torsos decapitated on the floor. In black marker pen their pitiful price is instantly reduced when the owner agrees to buy them back for half their value at the end of the show.

        Heading down the Outlet, the three of them begin to suck the sunlight from our car, these half-price-three-thousand-rings-on-the-small-one-perhaps logs start to seep our cheapening souls. Start to fill us with cycles of a life we’ll never see. Stop it. All we care about is the price. And the fact that they are still, after all these years, not dry. Not dry enough for a kitchen bench top. A peanut bowl. A left handed salad server. All we care about is the price and their torso smell. Their slowly-slowly making-public smell.

        You must be standing in the forest now, perhaps decapitated too. Grounded in the roots of an ancient tree. Scott drew that one from a 19th century book owned by her grandfather, Eric Oswald Scott. A ‘fish man’. Or ichthyologist. His grandfather, Herbert Hedley Scott was a Palaeoxylologist – a wood man. In Petrified Wood, Scott meticulously traces the wise shape of Herbert Hedley, cleft in the roots of trees and other earthly matters. Here in the gallery, in graphite on untreated Ply, an image of a dis-assembled Oak. Limbs akimbo. Breaking down. Scott’s drawing suggests another technique for caring for the-lack-of-care. For as she writes to Herbert Hedley, ‘No one listens to the trees anymore’ (Scott 2018). Opposite Scott grinds cement dust or is it fossil casts.

        Most likely, your soul’s been hijacked too.

        Splinters axe the room from corner to corner. Facets of light split the screen. Split the logs. Leach the years before and after us. I’ve read Keogh’s Petrified Wood, hauling ancient logs up from the well. Her wax cast faceting of an underground marking surface hides the deepings of lost knowledge far below. In her fragmented gestures, Keogh scribes seven thousand years in the blackness of dark water.

        ‘Thousands of triangles were arranged in the shape of the timber beam made up of an expansive tetrahedral mesh, the digital plank was formed like crystalline structures. A singular dynamic movement wasn’t captured in a surface, but entered into a system of inertia through the untimely accretion of digital data. No single triangle came first. Instead, they co-emerged within a sprawling terrain.’
        (Keogh 2018)

        Her words flow ceilings into dust, split the concentric hearts of others.

        Wide open. Mother and son. Lie side by side in polished vitrines. Or do I mean latrine. A communal toilet where two halves of a brain struggle to strike each other clean. All this in close proximity of Keogh’s hand-made adze. The Newitt’s are here together, appearing as concentric forms. Fistfuls of clay and a pointing finger are all that’s left to stop the weight of all this paper. Balls of perishing held in crisp white vitrines.

        I try to calculate the cost in years of living organism. $40 for a 3ft length of someone else’s torso. I estimate one thousand years, thirteen thousand five hundred and eighteen turnings of the moon. And back again, Still. Not dry.

        High in the rafters Scott writes a mirror, so we can all see what we choose to see in this reflection of communal perishing. Newitt has clearly been here before. In Fossil (2018);

        We’re very sorry …

        The disconnection of standing next to myself, hearing the anguish, so sorry, in my voice while feeling a deep sense of relief bubble in my chest. Almost joy. Being shocked at how bad I am at pretending grief. Thinking about breakfast. Wondering if I could do eggs.

        – ready for you

        Turned on a lathe perhaps, Scott’s grove of ready-mades. Weapon-like, decorative, salvaged tools that could have cut the the wood that Keogh’s spent months hauling out of the well. Could have carved and stitched the wound that his mother absorbed as the waters rose and blackened around her.

        Large drawings of rings within rings give way to softer observations.

        © A Published Event 2018.

      19. Seam II
      20. 02 Sep, 2018.

        Basalt. Conglomerate. Marble. Crystal Bone.

        The Piano Bar, Etties
        100 Elizabeth Street
        nipaluna (Hobart)
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7000

        ‘In the room, we’d like to welcome to Basalt (Ross Gibson), Conglomerate (Ben Walter), Marble (Ally Bissop), Crystal Bone (Greg Lehman).’ Lost Rocks (2017–21) Seam II, Basalt. Conglomerate. Marble. Crystal Bone. was a feast for the ears during a subscriber-only event held at Etties Paino Bar in nipaluna/ Hobart. Readings from Ross Gibson, Ben Walter and Greg Lehman. Cocktails and conversation into the night.

        Greg Lehman reads Crystal Bone, for Lost Rocks (2017–21). 02 September 2017. A Published Event.
        Lost Rocks seam I and II, Etties Pian Bar, nipaluna/ Hobart. 02 September 2017. A Published Event.
        Ben Walter reads Conglomerate, for Lost Rocks (2017–21). 02 September 2017. A Published Event.
      21. Seam I
      22. 18–26 March, 2017

        Crocoite. Crocoite. Silver. Silver/Lead.

        Sites of Love and Neglect.
        Ten Days on the Island Festival
        West Coast Heritage Centre
        114 Main St
        Zeehan
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7469

        A female mannequin in steel-grey overalls and wide smile wears yellow rubber gloves. Hands resting on hips, her safety helmet (has clearly taken a knock or two) suggests the need for vigilance. And feeling. Where the weight of words might fall. Might injure. Might turn living, breathing life into inanimate beings that populate museums just like this one. We move in unison to a central room filled on every wall with books and rocks and bits of equipment that measure and weigh. Assay.

        Dressed in black and flattened oyster shell, Crocoite opens her mouth. Speaks slowly through the ologies of her life. The rocks do not move. The minerals stay in orderly lines. One after the other. Beneath the safety glass. She reads.

        We follow her into the World Class Mineral Room, filing past, one by one, the giant replica gold nugget.

        Encased in a brass-lined mineral display case are the rarest specimens of red-lead clusters. Shards of crystaline crocoite illuminate her books. She reads in swathes of red, divining rivers and fathers and men who cut tracks and fight in wars and die in seas. A prospecting of relations.

        We walk again. This time, over lush green grass and blistering light to the Underground Mine Simulation, that’s cleverly built above the ground from red brick and timber. Inside, every surface beyond the dirt floor has been blasted with shotcrete.

        Silver/ Lead speaks softly but with conviction from the start. Paints the cosmos with ink and water onto a giant screen that absorbs her voice into its porous skin and fills the parched cells of every living thing beneath this earth.

        Thirteen seconds from the end, she takes a spade and cuts in two, an earthworm. The mantle breaks. Opens. Swallows.

        Another cut. In the Power House, Urs Fischer’s, You gouges a massive hole in the floor of a New York gallery. Something about grains of sand falling from a woman’s shoe and the sedimenting cutting of a hole that is alive. A hole that beats with a heart and a car stereo speaks Crocoite through a set of home-made speakers.

        Walking again, snaking over the green green grass and up the concrete ramp. The Court House, basks like a sun fish in the great yellow light of an Indian summer. A drama for eight players. Scene 3. I am the RepRisk Analyst, perform my lines alongside Silver’s CEO, Police Prosecutor and Philosopher (makes a late but dignified entry).

        The audience ask questions and the sun starts to shy away. Now we are all touched, or maybe tainted. The court room jaundiced in the dying light. We head to the Cecil for Riccadona and Jimmy Barnes.

        Four distributed events by Crocoite: Margaret Woodward (AUS) in the World Class Minerals Room, Crocoite: Justy Phillips (AUS) in the Power House, Silver: Jane Rendell (UK) in the Court House and Silver/Lead: Sarah Jones (AUS) in the Underground Mine Simulation at the Zeehan School of Mines and Metallurgy, as part of Sites of Love & Neglect, curated by Jane Deeth for Ten Days on the Island 2017.

        These site-specific events are each expanded from the artists’ four fictiōnellas, part of Lost Rocks, (2017–2021). Hobart: A Published Event – and take the form of sound, video, object and live performance. The work is open from Saturday 18th March – Sunday 26th March 10am–4:30pm daily (114 Main Street, Zeehan). There will be live readings on Saturday 18th March, 4:30pm, 5:00pm and 5:30pm.

  4. The People’s Library (2017–18)
    1. Information
    2. In September 2017, in the midst of Petrified Wood. Fossil. Petrified Wood, our second Lost Rocks (2017–17) seam, we launched The People’s Library. An island-wide call to publish new books in any genre.

      Tethered in everyday acts of writing and reading, The People’s Library is a collective act of public telling. An invitation to swell a ground, to spill it through ear
      and eye and mouth. Part performance library, part contemporary artwork, in 2018, The People’s Library published 113 newly commissioned, original book-length
      works by Tasmanian writers. Through a state-wide call for unpublished works in any genre, the writers of The People’s Library share fiction, memoir, biography, non-
      fiction, history, crime, science fiction, thriller, poetry, plays and experimental other. For writer or public, The People’s Library created an opportunity to leave a trace, locate a life or sweep a narrative within a unique living library.

      In 2011, the Tasmanian woodchip industry fell. The now infamous demise of the private forestry company, Gunns Ltd saw the closure of the state’s only operating woodchip processing and export facility, located at Spring Bay, Triabunna. Ever since our visit to Iceland in 2012, two things had continued to play on our minds. One, how
      was it possible that so many Icelandic people, from all walks of life, found a way to publish their literary works? And two, it’s an odd thing that a country with so few
      trees (vast forests were felled by the Vikings) finds itself today, so heavily planted with books. For us, the book begins in absence, in the surface of lost trees. In the sap,
      in the rings, in the days and nights. In the fires that rage. In the chains that clear fell all the rare things that once were sheltered in the darkness of this horizontal green.

      We are what we hold.

      Woodchips collected from the Gunns Woodchip Mll at Triabunna, lutruwita (Tasmania). 2017. A Published Event.
      Woodchips awaiting export at Burnie facility, lutruwita (Tasmania). Documentation of a found event. 2017. A Published Event.
      The People’s Library. Installation view. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, nipalune (Hobart). 2018. A Published Event.

      For us, the book begins in absence, in the surface of lost trees. In the sap. In the rings. In the days and nights. In the fires that rage. In the chains that fell all the rare things that once were sheltered in the darkness of this horizontal green.

      1. Open Call
      2. 2017

        Island-wide
        lutruwita (Tasmania)

        We launched The People’s Library in late 2017, with the invitation, ‘Amateur or professional, we are actively seeking contributions from those who write for leisure, pleasure or necessity’.

        ‘Tethered in everyday acts of writing, reading and telling, The People’s Library is an invitation to write an original book-length work in any genre. Part performance library, part contemporary artwork, The People’s Library will publish one hundred and twenty three books – unpublished works of fiction, memoir, science fiction, biography, non-fiction, history, crime, thriller, poetry, plays and experimental other.

        An opportunity to leave a trace, locate a life or sweep a narrative arc within a living library, The People’s Library is a supported publishing opportunity which invites its writers to contribute to a unique, collective artwork to be installed at Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart in 2018, creating a movement of public tellings – book groups, live readings, salon events and lending library. A groundswell of histories, cultures and experience awaits.

        The People’s Library Open Call poster. Designed by Paul Mylechrane. 2018. Displayed at in the community notices case at Granville Harbour, lutruwita (Tasmania). A Published Event.
        We wnt to publish your book. Invitation card for The Poeple’s Library. Designed by Paul Mylechrane. 2018. Graniville Harbour, lutruwita (Tasmania).

        By New Year’s Day, 2018, over 170 people felt compelled to submit an expression of interest to The People’s Library along with sample pages of their writing, and 123 were selected to write book-length manuscripts – of these we received and published 113.

      3. The books
      4. 2018

        113 printed books
        Each in an edition of /10

        The 113 books of The People’s Library are catalogued both by colour and the sequence of their acquisition. The colour assigned to each book corresponds to the 110 colour tints of Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts by P. Syme.

        Selection of books published by The People’s Library 2018 alongside a copy of Werner’s Nomelclature of Colours. A Published Event. Hobart.

        Werner’s nomenclature corresponds with poetic lyricism and scientific precision to the most commonly occurring colours of the ‘natural’ world. Published in 1814 by eminent Prussian mineralogist and geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner, the palette was later adapted by Scottish flower painter and art teacher, Patrick Syme (1774–1845) to include additional colours observed in animal and vegetable realms.

        Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours quickly became the go to companion for artists and scientists charged with classifying and cataloguing the colonies. This is the book Charles Darwin used to describe the colours he observed on his HMS Beagle voyages (1831–36). On this voyage Darwin visited Hobart Town in 1836, where he was certainly accompanied by the Werner/Syme colour book on his walks around Sullivan’s Cove, the future site of the sandstone warehouse that now houses the Salamanca Arts Centre. In Darwin’s journals from the HMS Beagle voyage, the use of Werner’s colours is well documented, including the snake he found in 1835, described as ‘Primrose yellow’ (Colour Number 63).

        An Alphabet of Banksia Serrata by Veronica Steane. Book #63, The People’s Library 2018. A Published Event.

        The process of recording the material world of lutruwita/Tasmania through European-tinted lenses was by now, well underway – the legacy of which persists as a deeply entrenched system of naming that continues to prioritise the European view. Werner’s toolkit is an inventory of a European world. In Tasmania it was used as a device to make sense of and impose a familiar order on an unfamiliar place.

        Colour matching print samples for The People’s Library with Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours. 2018. A Published Event.

        Our decision to furnish The People’s Library with Werner’s colour palette might be seen as yet another extension of the European impulse to catalogue and impose. And it is. It’s a deliberate strategy to recognise that this guidebook, this portable landscape that accompanied scientists, artists and colonists, is freighted with its own narratives and hierarchies of a nonhuman world: 24 Scotch blue; 40 Imperial purple; 48 Leek green; 76 Dutch orange; 95 Cochineal Red; 27 China Blue.

        Selection of books published by The People’s Library 2018. A Published Event. Hobart.

        By way of turning our bodies away from these dominant histories and towards each other, towards ‘other material forms, or immaterial apparitions’, we add our own ecology to this weighty inventory of colour. At first we see if its possible to meet the demands of this ecology by using Werner’s naming conventions.

        Selection of books published by The People’s Library 2018. A Published Event. Hobart.

        We decide to disrupt Werner’s system by inscribing three new entries on the colour register, named through our research in the material sites of The People’s Library. Returning us to the centre of all this growth is book 111, Repeat Pattern by Tracey Diggins. This free-verse poetry from the core is held in place by Defunct Board, colour matched to the Burgundy upholstery fabric of the boardroom chairs from the now defunct Triabunna Woodchip Mill. Swatch 112, Paintings in my Mind, a book by Queenstown poet Leo Deacon finds its tint in the touch of Bulky Paperback. Swatch 113 inscribes the library’s final acquisition, Memoirs of a Travelling Sheila. Written by Dunally artist Gay Hawkes, a bookend of Modified Timber inspired by the Long Gallery’s pre-colonial timber beams.

        The People’s Library, 2018. Instalation view (detail). Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart. A Published Event.
      5. Installation
      6. 8–30 Sept, 2018

        ‘Tell us your interests, needs and desires and we shall find you a book. One in the hand for each who shall enter’.

        Long Gallery
        Salamanca Arts Centre
        Salamanca Place
        nipaluna (Hobart)
        lutruwita (Tasmania)

        Like breadcrumbs on a forest floor, these words inscribed on the gallery’s long white entry wall, are perhaps both map and calling. Inside, the storehouse is sliced in two. From snow white to eucalypt blue, a double- sided arc of books holds one convict-built wall from another. A 16m long bookshelf – diagonal severing of spectral flow. Oriented Strata Board spills from beneath the covers. Crosses the floor in fits and starts. A cabin for reading built from a compacted forest of giant woodchips.

        The People’s Library. Installation view. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.

        This is where I take myself, take the book I was handed on arrival. Styx and Stones sits side by side on a spine-deep ledge with Peopling The Dirt Patch. Imperial Purple bruising Honey Yellow in the fray. There’s a hexagonal stage. I overhear another visitor say that’s where they used to roll the logs before grading and chipping them into pulp. A hard stand they call it. On the south side of the library there’s a table for reading and 11 boardroom chairs. To the right, complimentary tea and coffee served in hand-built ceramic vessels imprinted trees. Cut from tongues. Beanbags cluster like leaf litter beneath the gallery’s sunlit windows. I take a seat, it’s less comfortable than it looks. Woodchips, it turns out, aren’t the softest filling. I slump into the forest and read and read and read.

        The People’s Library. Installation view. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.

        The collective holdings of The People’s Library compel us to find new ways of holding these books and their writers in our care. Our hold is both intimate and encompassing. The library as a living organism is always bigger than the sum of its holdings. And we are all enlarged by it, knowing that assemblages of books, objects, events, ideas, materials and conversations held in close proximity behave differently than those kept alone. We make libraries because we crave proximity. In the words of artist Brandon LaBelle, ‘I speak in order to locate myself near you.’

        The People’s Library. Installation view. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.
        A list of over 150 participating writers of The People’s Library, 2018. Long Gallery, nipaluna/HobartA Published Event.
        The People’s Library. Installation view of custom-built book shelf benches. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.
      7. Performance(s)
      8. 8–30 Sept, 2018

        Long Gallery
        Salamanca Arts Centre
        Salamanca Place
        nipaluna (Hobart)
        lutruwita (Tasmania)

        Grand Opening, The People’s Library, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Grand Opening, The People’s Library, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Grand Opening, The People’s Library, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Hob/ART Book Fair, The People’s Library, 21–22 September, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Scholars en masse from the School of Creative Arts, UTAS, The People’s Library, 20 September, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Sholeh Wolpe, Visiting poet, The People’s Library, 18 September, 2018. Performance view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Reading Panel: University of the Third Age, The People’s Library, 15 September, 2018. Performance view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Radiooccult: Performance, The People’s Library, 28 September, 2018. Performance view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
        Writer Carly Byrne performing for her fellow students at Scholars en masse from the School of Creative Arts, UTAS, The People’s Library, 20 September, 2018. Installation view. Long Gallery, nipaluna/ Hobart. A Published Event.
      9. Readers in Residence
      10. 8–30 Sept, 2018

        Long Gallery,
        Salamanca Arts Centre
        nipaluna (Hobart)
        7000

        In the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Egypt, founded circa 295BC, the Ptolemies attempted to assemble in one place, the knowledge of the ‘known’ world. They sought to collect, buy, steal, copy, cheat or otherwise acquire a copy of every book in existence, to ‘create a hub for research, learning and cultural exchange’1. And then they invented a way to digest that knowledge, to distribute and share it. In The People’s Library we have made a curious digesting creature of our own. We gave it a name and prodded it all over to see what it might choose to reveal. About this place, it’s people, languages, absences and imaginations. We excluded no one. Only things that were for one reason or another, too difficult to hold.

        The Unconscious Collective performing their seven-day ‘Read In’ as Readers in Residence for The People’s Library Reader’s in Residence Program. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.
        Dreamings by The Unconscious Collective, Readers in Residence for The People’s Library Reader’s in Residence Program. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.

        Inviting celebrated scholars from many countries (including Euclid and Archimedes) to take up residence in the library, the Ptolemies paid them a handsome retainer and asked no more of them in exchange than that they use the libraries resources. We decided to establish a Readers in Residence program of our own. We commissioned three artists: Ross Gibson + Kathryn Bird (NSW); Fayen d’Evie (VIC) and Unconscious Collective (TAS). We asked them to be curious. To use their bodies, hearts, souls to ‘read’ this strange performance library.

        Kathryn Bird at her collage desk as Reader in Residence for The People’s Library Reader’s in Residence Program. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.

        Perhaps at the bottom of it all, we wanted to ask: How might we (authors, readers, feelings shared in the company of others) hold in the palm of our hands, intimate gestures of a place and time known only by those who have come to live them? Come to hold a life just long enough to record it? To suture it?

        Fayen d’Evie (with Lizzie Boon and Izzy Hardisty) leading The Score, a workshop for Critical Practice students (UTAS) as Reader in Residence for The People’s Library Reader’s in Residence Program. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.
        Fayen d’Evie leading The Score, a workshop for Critical Practice students (UTAS) as Reader in Residence for The People’s Library Reader’s in Residence Program. Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre. 2018. A Published Event.
  5. Fall of the Derwent (2014–16)
    1. Information
    2. Fall of the Derwent (2015–16), is an experiment in hydrographic publishing by artists Justy Phillips and Margaret Woodward, commissioned and presented by GASP (Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park) Tasmania, as part of Swimmable: Reading the River.

      In their ambitious hydrographic score, Fall of the Derwent (2016), Phillips and Woodward draw from the river(s) Derwent, a living organism that re-composes with every reading. Generated in response to the current Energy in Storage Levels of the River Derwent, each hydrographic score is completely unique. You can download your score here. An invitation to move-with a marking, cutting, flooding deluge in the making.

      Through a year-long process of research-creation that included in-depth archival research, walking, writing, making, recording and publishing, the artists entered into relation-with the river as living event. Over two recent summers, the artists walk from the sea to the source of two Rivers Derwent. First, they walk from Workington to Borrowdale (UK) and then from Blackmans Bay to leeawuleena (Tasmania). They encounter more than one namesake. And then comes the fall. Fall of the Derwent is an actual, mythical event in the making–already made felt. A moving blackwards. No less.

      1. Fall, now a river.
      2. 26 Nov, 2016

        Performance

        Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park
        Elwick Bay Foreshore
        Glenorchy
        lutruwita (Tasmania)
        7010

        In Fall, now a river. Now a leech. Now a hook on a line on a rod on the arms of a man who walks with the night in a sweat-stained cornflower collar. Black lipped. Tight lipped. Union is strength, Phillips and Woodward invite a site-specific publishing of their ambitious hydrographic score, Fall of the Derwent (26 November, 2016). Made public with one hundred hand-to-hand publishers, this reading score is a marking, cutting, flooding deluge in the making. Each line, released through the current Energy in Storage Levels of the River Derwent. It is a call to move-with the river of life. An actual, mythical event in the making–already made felt. A moving blackwards. No less.

        Readers: Cullen Butters, Jerry de Gryse, Ruth Hadlow, Sarah Jones, Clare Larman, Justy Phillips, Colin Maier, Amanda Robson, Margaret Woodward.

        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        SATURDAY.

        With black in hand, the readers stand. Some of them lean as the concrete shimmers. Others scan the crowd for a flicker. A shifting eye. A presence of something so slight. Yet leaking.

        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        Clinging to their skin, a blanket of tree dust. The dying atoms of tree flesh and tree roots and tree leaves that once were green and ochre. Some of them purposefully spread the little black atoms up their arms. Touching now and then, the sweet spots of the neck. Brush hair from a fringe. Rub their fingers against the smooth of their lips and let the black just sit there. Some might call it an attractor to a river. A magnet that calls her glassy silver spine up and into their liver. Until they lick it clean. The black. Let the tree fall deep and fast into their chest. Let the dust settle.

        Reader Sarah Jones in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Reader, Justy Phillips in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        I’ve had my eye on a teenage reader. Slumped against the glass that’s pink and shattered. He is different to the others, tries in vain to stop the blackness from feeding his palms. With his eyes he draws a line across his wrist and then tries really hard not to break it. He can’t see the small black mark on the side of his face that’s about to bite him hard.

        The black’s unruly. That’s the problem as far as I can see. And I’m just an innocent bystander. I look at my hands. Now I’m the one who’s staring.

        Reader, Jerry de Gryce in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        It’s just after sunrise on the Alum Cliffs. A pacific gull splayed upside down in the pit of a broken tree. Should have taken more care.

        Her telltale red-tipped bill bleeds orange into the great yellow disk of the sun. All these years of life’s tethering. Osiris, god of the dead, whispers, inside our salty breath, water darkens everything.

        Reader, Amanda Robson in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Reader, Amanda Robson in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        I can’t quite work out what’s going on. But one of the readers comes and stands alongside. Opens a small black book and starts to read aloud. It’s funny, at first it’s not their voice that I can hear but I watch intently, their silvery lips moving up and down the river. The sound is coming from behind and to the right. It’s a woman. An older woman’s voice. And now there are people laughing. Amongst themselves. And others listen. But the man at my side does not leave me. Does not stop his reading. Not for the noise. Nor the river that’s trying to draw him blackwards. It’s sad what he’s reading, the parts I can hear anyway. Something about a man in a moss-filled forest. A pair of lungs full of river. When he looks up, the reading man, I think he’s crying. But he’s not. It’s me. Have the tears come up and out of me yet? I can’t tell where my skin in any more. He looks me right in the eye, the man. Doesn’t say a word. Just places his finger into the length of the book. As if to remember himself to the page. Brings the covers together and places it into my open hands. I am a raven full of maggots. A broken mother of pearl. Shards of light from the shell illuminate the maggots. Sets off a feeding frenzy obliterating dark matter from the hold.

        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        Whip snake.

        Sessile oaks and ash and rowan. All the body’s vital organs. In the hold.

        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Reader, Cullen Butters in Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.

        The wind’s picked up. Small white crests are whipping new peaks into water. I don’t want to open the book. Not right now.

        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. Performance image. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
        Fall, now a river. 26 Nov, 2018. QR Code, enabling instant generation and download of a unique hydrographic score. Wilkinson’s Point, Glenorchy, lutruwita/ Tasmania. A Published Event.
      3. Riverslog
      4. B
        Black here;

        we invite black to compose us. To touch. Make. Retch. Thrust. Keel. Us. Allow it to taste us, to smack its lips onto our lips. And make us.

        Black there;

        we walk into its shadow. See how it lives beyond and without us.

        black and greasy;

        ‘graphite is of a peculiar iron-grey or dark steel-grey colour with metallic lustre. It is absolutely opaque and feels greasy to the touch...Used for writing on paper it makes a clean, distinct black mark, which can be rubbed off with bread-crumbs or India rubber (caoutchouc)...The finest lumps of graphite were formerly obtained almost entirely form Cumberland, where they were found in the slate rocks of Borrowdale’. (Ansted, 1880, p.186).

        blackening;

        an act of becoming-black.

        Black;

        another name for wad, graphite, plumbago, black cawke or black lead. A colour. In A Word-list of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages, N.J.B. Plomley notes that, ‘No wide resemblances have been noticed between ‘black’ and the blackness inherent in certain objects and situations, e.g. (black) man and (black) woman, the night, and charcoal.’ (Plomley, 1976, p.165).

        blackberry cane;

        a vigorously growing stem of the blackberry bush (Rubus fruticosus). Recognised as one of the worst weeds in Tasmania, the blackberry was declared a Weed of National Significance in 1999.

        blackwards;

        moving-with and already towards, black.

        black breath;

        when we visited Dad in the Cottage Hospital, we both thought we saw tiny particles of black air fill his mouth.

        Blacklead;

        ‘lat.te.win.er’ – N.J.B.Plomley, in A Word-list of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages, notes that ‘The blacklead of the aborigines was probably the mineral iron glance, which is found on the surface of the ground in several localities in Tasmania. It was used by the natives to make lines of black on the skin, such as markings around the eyes.’ (Plomley, 1976, p.166).

        black-lead;

        ‘This remarkable mineral, known by various names of which black-lead and plumbago are the most familiar, is particularly interesting in its relation to the rare, brilliant, and costly diamond, and the much more valuable and abundant coal, on whose presence and convenient position for extraction the national wealth and progress of England have so much depended. Chemically, graphite, diamond, and coal may be said to be identical. They differ only in the mode of aggregation of the atoms of carbon of which each alike is made up.’ (Ansted, 1880, p.185).

        Black lead;

        a carbon mineral first found in lump form deposits in the early 1500s at Grey Knotts in Borrowdale, England. Between the early 1600s–1800s, blacklead was used as lubricant, medicine and for the making of armaments. The best-known of the graphite-based industries is pencil making. The first pencils to be developed from Borrowdale graphite emerged around 1800, with the first pencil mill in Keswick opening in 1830. Black lead or graphite is currently mined commercially (amorphous and flake) in China, India, Brazil, Korea, Canada, Russian Federation, México, Ukraine, Turkey, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Norway and Austria.

        blackness;

        a feeling of saturating depth without colour. Colourless. Of every possible colour.

        Black devils;

        ‘Shoot the black devils down’: (Fawkner, 2007, p.23–24).

        Black market;

        an expression with origins in the illegal trading of graphite. First coined in the ale houses of Keswick, Cumbria.

        Back Sal;

        a notorious smuggler of wad who scavenged the mineral from tailings at the Borrowdale mine. Robbers like Black Sal made nightly raids on the mine and surrounding grounds, risking serious penalties if caught with even a trace of pilfered ‘black gold’, (Black Sal herself was allegedly hunted to death by a pack of hounds). As Tyler writes, ‘This quiet backwater had now become an area for vagabonds, rogues and thieves, who would stop at virtually nothing to get their hands on the precious wad.’ (1995, p.90). In 1751, George II’s Act of Stealing from Blacklead Mines was passed, dealing exclusively with the theft of wad. Penalties were harsh, making the stealing or receiving of illegally obtained wad punishable by a public flogging, a year’s hard labor or a term of seven years transportation to the colonies. This is what happened to James Butson, one of 186 convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the ship ‘Circassian’ in 1832. Butson was sentenced to 14 years at Bodmin Quarter Session for stealing 1lb of black lead. The 1751 Act of George II states that, ‘Theft punishable with two years imprisonment. Everyone commits felony and is liable on conviction thereof to two years hard labour as a maximum punishment who steals or servers with intent to steal the ore of any metal or any lapis calaminaris, munick or any wad, black cawke, or black lead, or any coal or cannel coal from any mine, bed or vein thereof respectively.’ – (Stephen, 1887, p.269).

        Black Line;

        a military campaign designed to subdue, incarcerate, expel and ultimately eradicate the Aboriginal peoples of lutruwita. On the 1st of November 1828, Lieutenant-Governor Arthur proclaimed martial law within the settled districts of Tasmania. By this proclamation he conceded the existence of a state of war and effectively ‘declared war against the whole Aboriginal population of Van Diemen’s Land’ (Calder 2010, p.181). Arthur strengthened military posts, by first forming ‘roving parties’ (groups of civilians set up to capture or expel the Aborigines), and then styled a levée en masse. On the 7th October 1830, 550 troops of the 15th, 57th and 63rd Regiments of the Van Diemen’s Land garrison formed a ‘line’ of men with the purpose of driving all remaining Aborigines southwards onto Tasman’s Peninsula. A campaign map drawn by the Land Survey Department commenced on the east coast at St. Patricks Head, then west to the Meander River, terminating in the south at Eaglehawk Neck. At an estimated cost of £30,000–£35,000, the Black Line campaign was a complete failure with Governor Arthur admitting that ‘no single party discovered any traces of the Natives’: (Melville, 1962, p.113). As Calder writes, ‘Martial law ended with the proclamation of the end of the campaign, and the status quo prevailed; that is, the people were once more British subjects under the care and protection of the Crown.’ (2010, p.189).

        black lines;

        marks that extend in both directions and have no beginning or end.

        blackthorn;

        (Prunus Spinosa L), a tree of ill omen. A deciduous tree also known as the Mother of the Woods and the Dark Crone of the Woods. It dwells on the edges of woodlands, forming dense hedgerows and thickets. An astringent useful in the treatment of diarrhoea, rheumatic illnesses, pimples or any kind of dermatosis; gallbladder stones and diabetes. The tree ‘bears wicked long sharp thorns, which if pricked, can turn septic’. (Hageneder, 2000, p. 185).

        black swans;

        (Cygnus atratus) is the only entirely black-coloured swan in the world. They are a highly nomadic species that enjoy very much the brackish waters of the River Derwent, either side of the Bridgewater Causeway. They eat algae and weeds.

        Black Milky Way;

        recorded by Plomley as ‘tone.ner.muck.kel.len.ner ’ (1976, p.408). Throughout trouwunna (Cape Barren Island), Aboriginal groups have a strong connection with the night sky. As Patsy Cameron writes, ‘the northeast Coastal Plains people claimed they were brought into being by stars which came from the constellations in the Milky Way...The arc of the Milky Way was identified in two parts–the Black Milky Way, tonenermuckkellenner, and the White Milky Way, pullenner’. According to Cameron, trouwunnans distinguished by name, not only those ‘shining objects that made up the non-intangible ‘white’ mass but also those in the intangible ‘black’ space that is also an integral part
        of our galaxy’ (2016, p.27).

        black wool;

        the thick and bristly wool of the herdwick sheep – a unique breed of domestic sheep, native to the fells of the central and western Lake District in Cumbria. So durable is their fleece, it is said that these sheep are ‘known to survive under a blanket of snow for three days while eating their own wool’. (Davies, 2009, p. 94).

        black bream;

        (Acanthopagrus butcheri), a bronze coloured fish, reflecting green when fresh. Lives in the estuary of the River Derwent, Tasmania.

        blackwards;

        towards the thunder.

        black lipped;

        mussels.

        black jay;

        the telling bird.

        blackening heart;

        it’s happening right now.

        blacken;

        a call to arms.

        black-breaking;

        a way of moving-with the colour ‘broken black’.

        Black land;

        Cape barren Island. Aboriginal land.

        Black snake;

        (Notechis ater).

        Black Bobs;

        blushed.correcting.estimate*

        Black Snake Creek;

        signals.download.wrinkling

        Black Sail Pass;

        blackmail.repeats.reviews

        Black Snake Road;

        ferrets.powered.dilemma

        Blackmans Bay;

        theatrics.guavas.relocation

        Blackwells Gully;

        imitators.panicking.liner

        Black Beck;

        poodle.assurance.trade

        Black Crag;

        node.caked.boomed

        Blackhall Gully;

        unfed.selects.morals

        Blackhorse Gully;

        dominate.decrease.initiating

        Blackstone Point;

        inconsistent.fallback.billions

        Black Bobs Rivulet;

        passively.undone.slur

        Black Hill Creek;

        panther.pints.quickened

        Black Gully Creek;

        user.dulled.swing

        Black Hill;

        motors.nutty.treasured

        Blackboys Opening;

        conversation.replacement.clarified

        Black Snake Rivulet;

        engineer.heartened.windows*

        Blacklead Mining Company (The Tasmanian);

        a company with the only Tasmanian commercial mining lease for graphite, operating on Cape Barren Island. Registered by Mr. Robert James Sadler in Launceston on the 30th day of July, 1898.

        black-gold seam;

        Dad.

        blackening ochre;

        a way of protecting the skin.

        What3words is a geocoding system for the simple communication of locations. In a unique combination of just 3 words, it identifies a 3mx3m square, anywhere on the planet. To access this system of locative nomenclature visit:
        what3words.com

      5. A river settles its own cairns underwater
      6. 01.09.16

        Island literary magazine

        Volume 146 3/2016
        Pages 38–39