This post is a way in to the blog I have kept throughout the project ‘Palimpself’, a University of St Andrews commission, making new work in response to the writings of Annie Ernaux. It charts the development of the ideas for work, images and observations collected along the way, interactions with my collaborators Elise Hugueny-Léger and Fabien Arribert-Narce, dreams, early morning ramblings, and the otherwise generally uncategorisable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Detail of ‘Chose’ adapted as basis for the exhibition poster

 

A blog is, in a sense, a kind of palimpsest, if a ‘palimpsest’ is a text written on top of another, the original having been scratched out or retained. One post gets written only to be overwritten by another, more recent one. The chronology of a blog usually starts at the top of the page with whatever has been newly posted and scrolling down into the mulch of earlier days, months, years, you can find earlier entries, superseded by what comes after.

I decided to write this introductory ‘entry post’ to the blog when I realised that the one I was previously giving a link to, called ‘Architectures of Possibility’, which I felt gave a good introduction to the context of the Byre Theatre, was, in terms of where it came in time, rather compromised by being about my first visit to St Andrews last April, but written up just under a week ago, in September.

 

The Byre Theatre, part of the University of St Andrews

 

I have already, it seems, disrupted the intended order of this blog when it comes to time but rather than try to sort that out, somehow, by pretending that the post I wrote last week, about some days in the Spring, was an April entry, jiggling around with the dates and reorganising the posts by doing something clever with the organisation of the order in which they appear, I’ve decided just to let it all be, as it is. So, just to say, you’re starting here but there might be some posts following on from this as the days progress and we start setting up the exhibition, then launching it, then doing the Byre World talk on 9th October. They’ll be at the top, likely under the heading ‘Recent Posts”.

You can scroll back to any months from February of this year, the start of the commission, to  by looking down the left-hand side of the screen under the heading ‘Archive’ and see how the development of the works and my collaboration with Elise and Fabien have progressed through time. Should you get lost in the depths of my website, then returning to the option ‘Palimpself’ on the top menu bar should set you back on the right track.

 

Cut out from an archive photograph of a storeroom in the Byre Theatre’s early days

 

Time is so far from being linear as it is lived. It is not coherent, not one thing, it loops and curves, jumps, stops and starts. Memory joins some of it up as does anticipation but these also serve to derail it, often necessarily so, preventing life from being too predictable or making too much sense. A blog as a document is a permanent first draft, growing up towards the light. This is not to excuse it but only to say that it becomes what it is, through time, whatever that might be.

 

If you’d like to ask me anything about any aspect of the project or get in touch with a question or an enquiry about any of the works you can do so here: info@susandiab.com

Thank you for your interest

À bientôt!

 

I’m not sure how to begin this post. One thought immediately is a strong contrast I have noticed between myself and Ernaux’s writing. In Ernaux there is an absolute lack of sentimentality. Actually, no, I’ll take that back. There are moments and I’m trying to locate one in my mind, perhaps the mention of the yellow forsythia she takes for her Mother when she visits her in the care home. (‘I Remain In Darkness’, ‘Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit’). The sentimentality there is maybe overridden by the image of the forsythia as it asserts itself in your mind, the colour, that yellow, and it becomes a gesture of love. There is a cut off point between sentiment and sentimentality. I think I could think of more sentimental moments if I tried and I promise to. The contrast I spoke of is between that scarcity of sentimentality in Ernaux and the bucketloads I know to exist in myself when I feel affection for others.

Intellectual companionship, the meeting of like-minded individuals in common purpose and friendship.

Allow me  to introduce them:

Dr Élise Hugueny-Léger, Senior Lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. She is brilliant. Her research profile is here: https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/elise-simone-marie-hugueny-leger

Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce, Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh. He is brilliant. His research profile is here: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/fabien-arribert-narce/

On my first site visit to The Byre I was looking round the theatre on the day of meeting them for the first time at midday . I looked at my watch, they were due to show up there to meet me five minutes later. A second later a young man, presumably a student, started playing the piano on Level One. My knowledge of classical music is extremely limited but I recognised the tune at once and its name came to mind: ‘Für Élise’ (‘For Élise’). How strange, you couldn’t make it up.

We met. These two who had the idea in the first place to try to raise funding to commission me to make new work as a contribution to this year’s Ernaux conference, an idea which prompted this so significant and to me so seminal project. Generosity. In them. In Ernaux’s writing. An openness to possibility in others, a willingness to risk it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked round the building, we went for lunch, we visited the Wardlaw Museum where Élise took us up onto a small roof terrace to look out to sea. Limitless horizons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once a month since January we have met up online for a generous hour to discuss the development of the work, exchange thoughts and ideas from our readings of Ernaux and related secondary literature, settle practical matters and enjoy each other’s company. Their insights and creativity as collaborators have contributed so much to what the exhibition has become.

You two, thank you. Merci beaucoup.

 

I went to St Andrews in April to visit The Byre Theatre to understand its shape and character. I found a beautiful building, much larger than I had imagined from the initial photos that Jan* had sent me. The photos gave a good sense of the detail of the place but not of the scale of the building. I was intrigued by its having seemingly two entrances, one via a ‘wynd’ or narrow passageway from South Street, which takes you through a pretty garden to the Box Office entrance and the other, larger entrance on Abbey Street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latter looks more like the front of the building as it gives onto the street but it is where access to the back of the stage can be found, by means of a large sliding door for easy delivery of stage sets, equipment and so on. I’m writing this with hindsight, having understood much more about the building by now and the use of the different parts of the building were not apparent on this first visit.

I noticed a hushed interior with students seated at small tables getting on with their studies, mostly individually but some in small groups working quietly together. The place had an atmosphere of calm, rather like a library, which I am sure is quite different before and after a performance in the theatre with large numbers of people passing through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was able to move through the four levels using the iron staircase and travelling back down to ground floor, or Level One by means of the lift. I noticed wood, glass and stone as the primary materials but also metal, black ironwork in the detail. A sense of the outside coming in with a view to the small, sloping garden through the large double window on Level One.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I hadn’t anticipated before arriving in the theatre was the rush of ideas I would have with this visit. Having spent almost three months immersing myself in Ernaux and beginning to devise work for the spaces and imagining what it might be but without first-hand knowledge of what it is like to be in that environment, a vacuum had formed into which the ideas flew, some ready-formed, taking their place in specific areas or corners and presenting themselves to me clear as anything so that I could see them in my mind’s eye. They sort of announced themselves to me, one after another, spreading their arms, looking at me and beaming “ta-dah! meet ME, I belong here” they seemed to say, pointing to a particular spot.

I came away from that visit with at least fifteen completely new ideas for pieces of work, whereas previous to my site visit I had been working to one main one. I couldn’t write them down or draw them quickly enough in my notebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My head full and feeling elated I left the Byre when it closed to the public at 5pm and took myself off to the sea, walking around the ruins of the cathedral with its imposing double-horned tower glaring down accusingly at me. As I negotiated the walkways and walls of these ruins of Reformation zeal I could feel a barely repressed Catholic energy emanating from their stones like the warmth from the Spring sunshine. It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, fresh coolish air, a sweet breeze coming in from the sea. I stopped to look over the cliff edge down to the waves as they lapped the rocks below and saw the reflection of the tower on the surface of the water, like a fiendish beast, delineated by the setting sun caught behind the H of the ruined tower.

I brought that new stock of thoughts and ideas back with me and then was tasked with fitting them into the realm of possibility. A living, breathing, multi-functional building like the Byre, with its various constituencies of people using and inhabiting it has ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ zones and areas. I had mentally hung a sky-blue velvet curtain on the large white brackets of the large wall in the Abbey Street entrance, saw it waving in the sea breezes, erected fresh, wet, clay figures in amongst the stones of the sloping garden, seen them dissolve in the rain and become one with the ground, stood free-standing sculptures of varying dimensions and meanings on the different levels, viewable from ledges, balconies and when coming around corners. I had made a writing desk for Annie Ernaux on Level 4 with views out over the rooftops of St Andrews, filled the bookcase on Level 1 with a complete set of her works, in French and English.

My imagination and the possibilities on offer to it were limitless. One day, after the visit, I had a moment sitting on the sofa in our living room at home. I felt a door open onto a much larger world and imagined, for a moment, working to a much grander scale than I had previously. That is yet to come, for an appropriate place. For the time being, the human scale fits better with the safety and wellbeing of the people whose regular knowledge of the Byre takes precedence. But I’ve seen through that door and I can’t go back.

 

*Jan McTaggart, Deputy Director of The Byre Theatre