Another friend, C, when I am telling her about reading Peter Ackroyd’s ‘The English Ghost’, reminds me that there are things which can’t be explained.

Thinking about ghosts a lot this weekend as I return to my old college. Ridiculously beautiful place, Queen’s College, Oxford. I walk around front and back quad looking up at windows, longing to see a lost face looking back out at me. Front and back quad full of memories, full of ghosts. Memories are ghosts. Memories as ghosts. Many objects don’t get to have ghosts because how we make them now, they cannot die. Jesse Darling, in his Turner Prize short film, talks about how we have interrupted the organic cycle of life, death and decay by our invention and widespread use of plastics. “The Zombie Apocalypse is now”. We rhapsodise together about the beauty of heaps of unwanted rubbish to be seen everywhere now, the elegiac qualities of all this ‘stuff’, which I also am fond of photographing.

It is so quiet. No city centre sounds intrude into this enclave through or over its walls. It is and was an ivory tower. A bird’s call asserts itself. I become aware of a crow perched on top of the clock tower. I video it, pointing the camera straight into the sun, which becomes a cool white disc on the screen and the crow, black anyway, silhouetted there. A plume of steam rises up from a vent in the ceiling of the building, efficient college kitchen extraction systems. A wooden ‘A’ board gives directions to a ‘Memorial Room’. A room where we go to remember.

 

Sounding – Link to VIDEO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Processing experiences

I think about Annie Ernaux, her life’s work, remembering. Writing as excavation of memories. I am very aware of overwhelm in myself and realise I can go with rather than against that. A great garbage-patch of refuse floating on the oceans is what I feel I am dealing with. Which I cannot hope to cope with. It’s all bobbing around in my head, in my body, in my nervous system. All of it, everything that ever happened to me to my family. The incommensurability of history. I did write about this a bit when I was trying to write fiction. Perhaps I should go back and revisit that?

But also overwhelm as bounty of richness. The complete appropriateness and relevance of all this to everything that I have been working on and towards for nigh on forty years. Like trying to digest the biggest and best feast ever. Childish glee. An abundance of that. The bun dance of life. Jumping up and down with happiness. Feelings that can’t be expressed because they are pure child and don’t find any place in the adult world, certainly not in this world, as it is, with all its evils and misdemeanours.

Aware that I am creating all this ‘stuff’ in this writing, that is extra, excess, to the work itself. Wanting to keep the levels of ‘stuff’ down, not to write too much but there is so much to deal with. Too much material.

Bring this into the work. In such a way that it can be dealt with. Or not.

AE (same initials as Auto Ethnography) deals with one incident at a time, which overlap across different texts in echoes of re-mentions, creating the palimpsest which is the body of her work. Elegantly done, suggestive of self-control and focus. AE as only child (the sister who came before having died aged six), no siblings, and so freer to tell her experience. My self-perceived blocks on my right to speak as the youngest of four. Even to know if any of my experiences were really mine to claim as my own. Or told to me after the event, as their version, in their words.

 

 

A piece comes to me very early on. Bearing in mind the work should be off the floor and the walls cannot be drilled into. The work must hang to be in keeping with the conditions of the space it is shown in. Or be integrated in other ways into the life of the space, as serviettes, or cushions or other ephemera. But the work should endure for the life of the exhibition, be in keeping with the life of the Byre but not be too self-effacing. How work is and what it becomes has a lot to do with how one is in social situations, though the work can be more visible, more daring and make more of a statement than my own physical presence might like to be. The work is not me, it has, or should have, a life of its own.

 

I say to Jan in an email: “I am someone who works with given conditions and contexts. So I have already taken all the points you raise into account in my design of the artwork and am happy with the situation. You gave some very useful and comprehensive information when Elise first discussed the project with you, which she passed on to me. I am more than happy with the space and would like to build something of the specific history of the Byre Theatre into the new work, using the digital archive of images from its history that now exists. I like that the audiences won’t be primarily art audiences but that the work will be seen by anyone visiting the theatre, the cafe, using the social spaces. This is good for arguing the case for impact as well in terms of broadening the reach of the work.

 

I have studied the images of the available spaces you sent through and think I understand the hanging system in place and will work with that. I also appreciate the age advisory aspects and have made many public art commissions in museums and public spaces so am used to working to the conventions around this.

 

At the moment I am envisaging a diaphanous wall hanging (possibly on repurposed silk) of digital photographic images of familiar objects, from Ernaux’s writings, from my life and from the Byre archive. Things like a kettle, a table, a handbag, etc, ordinary everyday objects that people can relate to. It would be very lightweight, fairly indestructible and if it were to hang above the staircase on the large wall it would be out of the reach of anybody of any age or height.” (23 January 2024 email to Jan McTaggart, Deputy Director, Head of Programme and Marketing, Byre Theatre)

 

Summary of ideas so far compiled Tuesday 20 February

 

Silk wall hanging – objects overlaid

 

Rough draft for Christmas card Dec 2022 (unrealised)

 

Outlines from Byre Storeroom photograph inventoried above with selection as ‘archetypal’ images compiled from Ernaux, Byre, Diab. Composite.

 

These, or other, objects made in miniature from clay, fashioned by hand, as ‘props’, arranged in different combinations, photographed.

 

___

 

First exhibited work, ‘Must Sort Out That Drawer One Day’, 1991

 

Fantasy of order/organisation as understanding, overview, or comprehension of life.

Whereas life consists in overlap, misplacements, random configurations, disorder.

 

 

 

 

 

Front

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reverse

 

This piece consists of three panels with all materials taken from the odds and ends drawer at my Mum’s house, the house I mainly grew up in, in North London. The three panels were made only using these materials, which were sorted into their kind:

 

Wood: a wooden ruler, buttons, old pencils, worn down, nuts in their shells, some almonds,

 

Wax: from candle stubs and wax crayons

 

Metal: cutlery, scissors, hairclips, badges

 

Fabric: linen napkins, baize felt, remnants of dress-making fabrics

 

Paper: family photographs, Church collection envelopes, dress-making patterns, greetings cards, hospital appointment notices, price labels, recipes, shopping coupons, dishwasher tablet wrappers (foil), restaurant takeaway menues, confetti box

 

Combinations were made of materials in order to form panels:

Wood set into wax

Metal flattened at a Blacksmith’s forge and stuck together (rather unsatisfactorily) with glue

Paper cut into hexagonal templates for patchwork, as selected images and text set into reverse side of the fabric patches

 

‘Palimpself’ bringing me round full circle to where I started with this piece which looked to the future, to an imagined point where it would all make sense to me and meaning would be revealed. As I said, a fantasy.

 

Relates now to the ‘Dooferooney Jar’, being a large glass jar that originally contained preserved peaches, filled with small objects I couldn’t quite decide to get rid of when we cleared the parental home after the death of my Mother. For some time this jar has sat, unopened and unsorted under a glass dome (the type for museological display) in my study, gathering dust. The fantasy, to open the jar, take out each ‘thing’ and find it to be of indescribable charm and meaning. The fear, the objects would have no such resonance and be disappointing. So, far better to defer the pleasure and let the assortment of objects ‘brew’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dooferooney Jar, photographed Wednesday 21 February 2024 unposed as is in study, with dust, photographs of parents behind. Objects contained behind two layers of glass, with reflections.

 

‘Dooferooney’ from ‘to do for’ as in a reason to keep something rather than throw it away. It might ‘do for’ this or that at some future point.

 

Photographed previously 10 November 2022 in studio:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These two taken as seen in the viewfinder of my Dad’s old medium format camera, (uncleaned since he would have last used it in the 1950s or 60s)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__

 

Shapes laser-cut as frames for small scenes painted on silks as envisaged from Ernaux descriptions. Two cut-outs the same sandwiched together with the image on fine fabric between.

 

__

 

French ex-military ‘silk’ parachute. (Small print shows it to be silky fabric, not necessarily silk).

Jellyfish,

Imagine suspended above staircase in Byre foyer.

Keep coming back to as source of some thread of thinking, not yet understood.

 

Research significance of silk: recycled parachutes, has fallen through the sky, poetic, non-stretchy, lightweight yet very strong, luxury references (Blackhurst article).

 

Other currently relevant visual source materials:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deconstructed bottle, street, 18 February 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bled – Offspring, disturbing crop of image, ‘Happening’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tate Britain, ‘Women in Revolt, Valentine’s Day with Kath, screen at entrance, feminist badges, find out who printed screen etc., not great sharpness but like its translucence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charity shop window, 13 February, 2024, things hanging, labels, always stop to look, cutlery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wall ghost. Black damp mould on exterior of house in Portslade. Interesting as presence. 4 February 2024

 

__

 

Next Steps:

 

Recap and write up all readings, notes and annotations of Ernaux so far about materials, objects, etc.,

 

Read: L’Usage de la Photo

And other texts outstanding

Refs given to me by Elise not yet read – recover references already given in emails, write out and summarise

Order library books

 

Make:

• Object arrangements on iPad in layers from Byre and other photographs
• Miniatures from objects
• Outlines: layers as frames
• Experiment with bright-coloured gels for objects

 

Research stained-glass. A friend has offered to teach me stained glass, not as intention for final work but as experiment for processes and discover relevance.

 

Revisit and take photographs in St Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, where we were yesterday (20 Feb) for Simon’s funeral. Take stills of trees blowing outside nave window disrupted by stained glass panes. Lamb of God cut up like ‘cuts of meat’ charts. Juxtapose these images.

 

Research processes for printing on silk and silk-like fabrics.

 

Plan research trip to Byre Theatre and to meet Elise and Jan, for a point not too soon but early enough for understanding of site to be gained.

 

 

 

 

Sunday 18 February 2024

 

I began learning French at the age of seven at Whitings Hill Junior School in Barnet, North London. French already featured in my life before then because my paternal Grandparents lived in Paris. My Grandmother was born in Iraq and French was her language along with Arabic. I don’t know which was more natural or ‘native’ to her. She would come and visit and speak a mixture of English, French and Arabic along with elements of Hindi and Urdu. I didn’t know that what she spoke was a mixture until I was older and had started learning French myself and could begin to distinguish some aspects of the different languages. Arabic and Indian languages would just have been those words I couldn’t identify and which didn’t sound French.

My heritage was not explained to me at any point by my parents. I just grew up accepting things the way they were because that is what children do. You are born into your world and that is it: your world. It’s just how things are. My parents had lived in India for seventeen years after they married. My siblings, all older than me, were all born in India. I was born in England because my Mum had come back home, to the Northeast, where she was from, to have me. So I was born in a nursing home in Gosforth, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, my maternal Grandparents being Geordie, from Gateshead. So I am a Geordie-Arab, or an Arab-Geordie.

Vocabulary from Indian languages and dialects featured in our household as well: words which my Dad would use or my Mum had picked up from their time in India. Dad was born and raised in India, educated by Jesuits from age seven, at St Joseph’s College, a boarding school in Nani-Tal, in the Himalayas, some several hundred miles away from his home in Mumbai, then Bombay as we grew up calling it. Dad knew English but also Arabic, Hindi, Urdu and other Indian languages. My Grandfather, his Dad spoke seven languages fluently, being an international business man in textiles, woven cotton. My Grandfather’s origins are complicated, to be told in another story. ‘Kachra’ was a word I would often hear my Dad use, meaning rubbish, a Hindi word. I heard ‘cuttchera’. It was used to describe anything that was shoddy, dirty or unworthy. I am very ignorant about Indian languages, never having researched them, which I guess reflects, up to this time previously rather unconscious, biases towards the European in both my upbringing and in the person I have become.

After I was born my Mum and I returned to India by ship where I lived until I was three and a half. At that point the whole family left India to return to England for good and it is here where I was raised. My most formative moments and years, the start of my life were spent in India, surrounded by all manner of languages, vocabulary and sounds. I had an Ayah, a nurse or nanny, a young Indian woman with the English name ‘Caroline’. I’ve got photographs of her carrying me. When we left India I was severed from her and never saw her again. The story told by Jane Gardham about the early life of ‘Raj orphan’ Edward Feathers in her ‘Old Filth’ trilogy is the closest I have come to beginning to understand what it is to be raised ‘English’ outside the context of England itself.

I spent most of my time in India in the garden. We had a country house in Pune, with a garden with plants in handmade terracotta pots and a snake charmer who made the garden safe. Tigers lurked in the bushes, or so I was told. A silver hairbrush belonging to my Mother, part of her marriage trousseau had a dent in its handle. Mum told me it was where a tiger had got hold of it and carried it off. To this day I remain wary of large animals; cows and horses on country walks do not have my trust.

Made at the start of ‘Autoethnos’ in 2018. Rough model of a snake charmer and a cobra-type snake dancing in a basket in a large piece of quartz crystal

When Paris-Gran, as she was known, came to stay, French was heard in our home. She was a bit of a Mrs Malaprop, often confusing words. It’s no wonder, I think to myself now, given the variety of influences upon her. I remember her mixing up ‘escalier’ (‘staircase’) with ‘escargot’ (‘snail’). Once I could understand a bit of French, her speech started to make a bit more sense to me. ‘Awaafi’ she would say, slapping her hands together. ‘good health’ or ‘bon appetit’ in Iraqi Arabic.

I always remember enjoying learning languages. I didn’t know when I was a beginner language learner as a small child that languages were the key to unravelling who I was and that the enjoyment of learning languages was connected to the dream of being set free. I have continued to enjoy learning languages all my life. The pleasure of beginning to understand words on a page or in the air which had previously been indecipherable is deeply entangled in the pleasure of learning to read English. Mum taught us all to read before we started school. She was a natural teacher and worked professionally as a school-teacher all her life, later taking further qualifications in children’s acquisition of reading and writing skills and becoming a specialist literacy teacher across several schools in the Borough of Barnet. Making the transition from looking at words on a page as shapes and wondering what they were to their meaning being opened up as if by magic to me as I followed Mum’s finger travelling beneath the words, learning to read with her patient physical presence at my side is a source of deep pleasure which has carried over into the learning of languages throughout my life. I feel accompanied by her in this pursuit, a deep and enduring comfort and companionship and awareness of her belief in my ability to learn.

Of beginning to learn French I remember being in a classroom. I can recall my position in the room, at a table. I could draw you a map of the school buildings, the position of the classroom within that and the location of the table at which I sat. The teacher announces ‘Today, we are starting French’. My excitement. Coming home, repeating some words, delighting my parents.

Dad would notice people’s names on the telly. He could say where they were from, or their family’s origins from their name. ‘Pereira’, that’s Portuguese, they’re most likely from Goa in Southern India where there is a large Portuguese population’ would be typical of the kind of commentary he would give. He could hear accents and identify where someone was from in the world. He was acutely sensitive to the sounds of words and the origins of names. Yet no one in my family explained my surname, Diab, to me. It was never mentioned.

When I was twenty and working as an English Language Assistant in a Grammar School in Germany on my year abroad as part of my Modern Languages degree a teacher called Herr Völker, who was near retirement and ever such a lovely, warm, kindly man, one day revealed the origins of my name to me. One day, in the staff room, he said: “Diab, that’s an Arabic name. It means ‘wolves’. ‘Th’ib’ is ‘wolf’ and ‘th’ab’ is the plural ‘wolves’. He told me that he had spent some time living and working in Saudi Arabia and had learnt Arabic and this is how he recognised and understood my name. I was amazed and a little embarrassed that I hadn’t known anything of this but found myself very ready to claim my new lupine identity.

(to be continued as and when)

__________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came across this photograph from the archive of The Byre Theatre at a very early stage of this project. It feels like a key image, a seminal image, from which a lot of the project will grow. It was on a site announcing that the archive of photographs would be digitised during the pandemic and now the website of the theatre announces that this work has been done. So in a sense this photograph looks to the future and is from the past.

It is of a store room where things are kept. Perhaps a props storeroom of objects used in theatre productions.

The photograph is faded, the colours muted, the image not entirely sharp. I’m going to list everything that I can make out. You may see other things that I don’t spot or disagree with how I identify them.

Two ceramic plinths or pot stands. One approximately twice the size of the other. The larger of the two is brown and the smaller blueish-green. The larger, brown one has a round base and the smaller, blue one square. I notice that the brown one is slightly chipped around the circumference of the base where it meets the floor so that the white clay is showing through. They would have been useful as plant stands, for aspidistras, in a scene set in a country house. Perhaps an actor accidentally kicked the larger plinth as he or she made a hasty exit stage-right. Evidence of dust collected on their surfaces, could do with a good clean.

A wooden chair, in good condition. Turned, spindle legs. Light oak? This kind of chair most likely has a name as it’s a generic kind, recognisable, familiar. The sheen on its surface, catching the light means that it looks fresh, polished, in use. Did somebody sit on it, in that room, to eat their lunch, away from everybody, in peace?

A crate of bottles adjacent to the chair, brown ale bottles, hard to tell if empty or filled. One, a large one in the centre has a clip-top. Dusty, five in total (visible).

A four-drawer, grey, free-standing metal filing cabinet half in frame on the left of the image. Contents?

A wooden crate, just in frame, in front of the filing cabinet, tops of two uncorked sparkling wine bottles just showing. Capital letters P, then beneath, V E C O stamped on front of crate just visible.

Above the plinths, an object wrapped in brown paper, shape of a plant in a pot or inverted, narrow trapezoid shape. One of its top corners tied around with string, hanging from a wooden beam.

Hanging next to the object wrapped in paper, to its right, also from the same beam, an amount of jute fishing net. Or skein of fine rope neatly gathered or collected together.

Moving left from the paper-wrapped object, three old-fashioned fabric-covered lamp-shades. The two outer ones, approximately the same size, both reddish tones, the central one, larger, gold or beige-coloured. The reddish-pink ones, circular. All three fringed. The central lampshade eight-sided, octagonal, having a curved lower edge to each section. This central one has a shorter fringe than the ones to either side, despite the shade overall being bigger. The internal structures, with central ring which supports the shade on the lamp-stand, visible through the top opening of them. The shade to the left is visible full-on, flattening it, making it resemble a sanding disc, were it not for the just-visible gathers in its red fabric.

Two-thirds obscured by the central gold lampshade and also suspended from the beam is a large, curved, copper kettle, the kind to stand on a range. Front side catching the light, appearing dusty on its top surface. Attractive, old-fashioned.

Moving up from the beam several objects hanging from a higher beam: a white, wire object of indeterminate nature, the skeleton of some kind of sconce, or light-fitting?

Coming forward from that, a white enamelled, tin coffee pot with lid and handle just visible.

In front of this kettle, some red fringing.

A hanging small, metal object: a mouse-trap?

Then a grey, metal kettle, faceted sides, spout and lid not in view.

Hanging from this second beam, above the paper trapezoid, a wicker basket, upright, with string or fringing dangling from its top edge.

Three metal rods of indeterminate function, one tubular, one flattened metal. These may be historic, agricultural items.

Beneath the brown-paper item a carriage clock can be seen standing on a blue cloth on a sill. It has a wooden case and a round face. The time, which I assume to be fixed, is five to eight. The face has a keyhole for a wind-up key and the quarter sections are marked in roman numerals. There is some kind of oval plaque beneath the face, perhaps an engraved metal plate. The edges of the clock housing and the space beneath the face are outlined in inlaid lighter-stained wood.

An indecipherable rectangular object stands between the clock and the window and behind that more brown paper or perhaps a curtain.

To the left of these a round stained glass pane involving orange floral motifs standing upright leaning against a roll of gold foil or paper.
I feel particularly excited by this object. Why? Perhaps because it is so immediately recognisable? But then so are clock, kettle, crate?

In front of this circular pane the hilts of some makeshift wooden swords, whose blades reach down to the ground behind the blue-green plinth.

Behind the taller of the two plinths I made out most of another copper kettle, less archetypal in form, atop a copper boiler.

Behind the chair a plastic foot-pedal bin, the lid upended.

Jumping around the image now.

To the right of the brown plinth, the tall one, and slightly behind it, an object viewable from one side. It has a curved top and appears to be inside a cloth cover with a banded stripe of fabric over its top.

This stands on top of a wooden, open-slatted crate, on its end, with the lettering HARRODS Ltd. _ KNIGHTSBRIDGE clearly legible stamped on the visible side.

Between the plastic bin behind the chair some foldable wooden objects resting against the rough stone wall:

A card table?

A double deck chair with pale blue canvas? Rust marks bleeding into the pale blue canvas surround where tacks have joined the fabric to the wood.

Some kind of trestle?

Above these a small wooden shelf.

On the shelf:

A woven balsa wood basket with squared off metal handle – perhaps an Easter basket? Inside this, one or more white eggs.

An oval wooden board, bread-board, slipped down between the back of the shelf and the wall.

Some dark wooden things to the right of this basket: a butter dish with knobbed lid, or a desk ink blotter perhaps?

To the left of the basket an upright white object, suggesting a metronome or similar.

On top of the filing cabinet next to this a dark wooden box containing various miscellaneous indeterminate objects, a folded cloth, a small lamp? Something white.

I write in my notebook:

 

Stock-take

Listing every item meticulously

 

Stock-make

Condense items into a compressed form
as inventory

 

 

Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger, from the Department of French, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews, in collaboration with visual artist Susan Diab (Honorary Fellow, University of Brighton) and Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce (University of Edinburgh), has received £5,000 from the University’s Impact and Innovation fund for a project entitled ‘Palimpself: a sculptural investigation into materiality in the works of Annie Ernaux’. The project will draw on expertise on the works of Annie Ernaux to create new artwork exploring the relationship between language, memory and materiality. It will be displayed at the Byre Theatre in October 2024, to coincide with the first English-speaking conference on Ernaux’s works and with the School’s Festival of Languages.

Image: ‘Palimpself: a sculptural investigation into materiality in the works of Annie Ernaux’, ©Susan Diab 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autoethnos: stories from the self

Exhibition devised and curated by Susan Diab showing new work by Susan Diab, Caroline Pick and Isobel Smith.

Opens Friday 13 April 2018 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Runs 14 April – 2 July 2018

At C&C Gallery

Check C&C website for gallery opening times

Three artists jointly present new works in this intriguing group exhibition conceived specifically for C&C Gallery. At heart sculptors, their common concern is to face and expose secrets of the inner world, expressing the intangible and emotional via material means.

Autoethnography is an approach within academic research and writing which places personal, lived experience at the centre of its investigations. It recognises that individuals, living at a particular time within a set of conditions peculiar to them, are representative of and relevant to the wider society.

The artists in ‘Autoethnos’ each speak out from their own centre of lived knowledge via the visual aspects of material objects. Yet, a material thing may still be in the process of discovering the shape it wishes to present to the world. An object may break down to become a ‘thing’ when it loses its function or take on other meanings due to the emotional connections it adopts. Sculptural things move in and out of recognition and definition. To a certain extent, this might be what the works of all three artists have in common – yet hasty reconciliations and resolutions may prove to be premature.

In approaching ‘Autoethnos’ the viewer is asked to bring their selves opened to the untidier and messier sides of life. Bodies, fragments, associations and damaged goods are on offer so neither refunds nor exchanges may be negotiated.

 

C&C Gallery

18 London Road
Forest Hill
London
SE23 3HF

www.ccgallery.co.uk
info@ccgallery.co.uk