Read With Me – Call for Participation

Sarah Bodman’s artist’s book, Read to Me is the result of a collaboration with a psychometric reader, telling stories to objects which were then ‘read’ back. The book and a selection of the objects read to (and from) are now touring in an exhibition that is visiting venues in the UK and USA. The project began by accident in winter 2002 at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, USA, when Sarah undertook an Artist’s Publishing Residency to produce a limited edition artist’s book The Marsh Test. It was here that someone mentioned the Fox Sisters, Margaret and Kate who launched their careers (aged 16 and 13) as spirit mediums (170 years ago) with a public performance on 14th November 1849, at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY. Their performances played a part in the huge rise of interest in spirit rappings and in turn the founding of the Spiritualist Movement in 1850s America.

On Thursday 14th November 2019, an experiment will take place at Arnolfini’s bookshop at 6.30pm. In tribute to the Fox Sisters and the artist Susan Hiller’s Sisters of Menon publication, you are invited to come along and attempt to capture a reading that Sarah will transmit to you. A4 paper and pens will be provided to create automatic drawings of the transmitted image. The results will be displayed in the exhibition Read With Me, at Bower Ashton Library throughout December 2019.

If you aren’t based in Bristol, you can join in remotely. The image will be transmitted at 6.45pm on Thursday 14th November, if you can capture the image in your mind in the timezone you are in anywhere in the world, please close your eyes and do an automatic drawing of it for 10 seconds. Please write your name on the sheet of paper, and post to Sarah by 25th November, or photograph it and email the image to Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk by 25th November 2019. Contact Sarah for the postal address or if you have any questions.

You can read more about the project here and here. Download a pdf copy of this call here.