project research - not for circulation

the book as shelter - an open exploration

some starting points >>>>>>>

GHOST CARGO 2011

Leeds, Writing Encounters, Leeds & Refugee Week 2011

An airplane flying in a cloudy sky with a banner trailing behind it that reads 'UNKN-WN P-LITICAL PRIS-NER.'

materials for the talk

Three abstract wooden sculptures with small trees in the background.

letter O

sans serif: perfect circle

sculptural, empty, container or passageway

CROP 2018

John Hansard gallery, Southampton

A white wall with orange text in French that is fragmented and jumbled.
Interior of a modern gallery or museum space with a large white wall featuring red text and a glass wall with windows to the left. There is a small black speaker on the floor, partially visible near the bottom left corner.
The exterior of a modern building with large glass windows. Inside, pink and green text displays phrases about language and communication.

Nocturnal - to not see to not know

how/where

step by step

letters as moving mass

depths and constellations

Drift (2015) - texts, performance, soundwork, electronic text (in collaboration)

text mass: a moving changing book / form / mode

contemporary and historical sources, original writing

Text cloud depicting a story about a girl named Meg who took a boat from Scotland to Greenland and then to Norway, describing her journey through icy waters and the landscape.
A woman with short blonde hair stands at a microphone with a man playing drums nearby. Behind them, a large screen displays text in white on a black background, with some words inverted or distorted.
A large white ship sailing in the ocean during daytime, with several smaller boats nearby. The ship appears nautical and is likely a cargo or cruise vessel.
A printed sheet of paper with dictionary-style definitions and explanations, highlighted and underlined words in red, a microphone on the left side, and some office supplies in the background.

A1 print, text-work + sound install for group show
Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Art & War, March 2025

Text and sound work created for Nattsong performance

REFUGIO (Seeking Shelter)

printed text-work + sound

Etymology and uses

A large wall text display with definitions and explanations related to shelters, refuges, and sanctuary cities. On the lower left corner, there is a black headset hanging on the wall plugged into an outlet.

Because we need shelter.

The Language of Literature”, in Azadi, 7

Close-up of black handwritten words 'Because We' on white textured paper, with a fountain pen pointing towards the words.

live drawing

khadi paper, wet, ink, live voice - YT recording

Handwritten note on textured paper reading 'Because we need shelter' with a small star symbol at the bottom right corner.

120325. A week in and entering the library of the HMI everyday for the past 10 days with an open-ended project or idea

is an increasingly daunting exciting overwhelming prospect.

I approach it through the artists I think I know and let the stream develop from there

In practical terms this also allows me to bring a close to my 2026 book with a few quotes I was missing: Agnes Denes, Song Dong.

These readers, out there on the front lines, already being singed by the spreading fire,had an entirely different idea of what literature is or should be. I mention this because it taught me that the place for literature is built by writers and readers. It’s a fragile place in some ways, but an indestructible one. When it’s broken we rebuilt it. Because we need shelter. I very much lie the idea of literature that is needed. Literature that provides shelter. Shelter of all kinds.

Arundhati Roy

080325 this quote has been with me for the past few years.

I use it when I think about the millions on the move, and wonder about the purpose of my presence/work/life given all this. It helps me to measure the role of writing and art in relation to its direct connections with its readers/audiences. Rather than a less measurable suffering world at large.

Yet the vision and the commitment of the work stems from sth larger.

develop my workshops, when I think about my 2026 book, and has led to this project wanting to take root.

Q1. what is a “literature that is needed”? what is art that is needed?

Abeer Seikaly

“Weaving a Home”

Close-up of a wire mesh structure with intricate, intertwined metal wires against a beige background.

This design uses a unique structural fabric composed of high-strength plastic tubing molded into sine-wave curves that can expand and enclose during different weather conditions, and also be broken down to allow an ease in mobility and transport.

Jordanian female architect

13.5 million Syrians internally displaced or are refugees outside Syria. Abeer creates these self-contained tents.

Desert landscape with multiple dome-shaped structures and people walking near them.

week 030325

Agnes Denes

A digital line drawing of a torus with a grid pattern, appearing 3D with perspective.

"Snail Pyramid – Study for Self-Contained, Self-Supporting City Dwelling – A Future Habitat" 1988

shell terra ?

The word 'SHELTER' is spelled out in black 3D letters on a flat surface.

Derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/, Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ) via the Greek letter τ (tau). In English, it is most commonly used to represent the voiceless alveolar plosive, a sound it also denotes in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second-most commonly used letter in English-language texts / wikipedia

T for shelter

A black paper cut-out with the word 'SHELP' and a stylized house roof on top, placed on a dark surface with a window in the background.

shell terra ?

120325

120325

Remembering discovering Kim Sooja through a recording in Aural Sculpture in 2007. Listening to it nonstop on headphones as I was working in NY / Bard. The tibetan chant underlying the agitation and firetrucks sirens of the city. Provided me with immense sense of internal safety or refuge. This memory and deepening my approach to her work feels like a pathway.

KIM SOOJA

BOTTARI

Traditional Korean bed cover used to wrap and protect personal belongings.

Representative of essential belongings and a nomadic lifestyle. Kimsooja extends the bottari concept to architectural spaces, transforming a room or building into a transcendental experience by wrapping and weaving light, sound, and reflection

Q2. avec les moyens du bord

à partir des moyens du bord

A small flatbed truck carrying a large load of colorful blankets or bedding items tied together with ropes in an urban setting.

receiving vast quantities of use clothes and preparing the bottaris.

Volunteer & KS: When we left Algeria we had to leave v quickly and we did the same: on mettait tout dans des ballots

Cities on the move: bottari trucks - 2007, MAC val de marne performance

Japanese Furoshiki

lunch carrrier handkerchief

the folds

carry the box by the knot

Ursula K. Le Guin

CARRIER BAG THEORY OF FICTION pp. 30 - 34 - 36

Two large, rounded fabric art pieces resembling soft, bundle-like sculptures resting on a wooden floor against a plain white wall. One is yellow with purple accents, and the other is pink with golden patterns.
Colorful fabric poufs or cushions arranged on a white floor in front of large windows in a bright room.
A cloth gift bag with a floral pattern and a bow handle, shown from different angles, with a hand carrying the bag by the knot.

d'Apertutto, or Bottari Truck in Exile 2.5 ton truck stacked with Bottaris, 20m x 6.5m mirror structure 49th Venice Biennale, Arsenale, Venice 1999 - dedicated to Kosovo refugees

A woman and a man in a room with cardboard boxes and clothes on a surface.

250325

“the novel is unheroic…”

“I would go as far as to say that the proper fitting shape of a novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us”. 34

Q3. the emergencies that require shelter of materials, knowledges etc

Brathwaite and the hurricanes and his library

150325

Scrolls and Folded pages/ Envelopes

LEWITT FOLDS

Fold piece - 16 Squares -1972

Close-up of a cream-colored quilted pillow or cushion.

POETIC PRACTICES AND RESISTANCE TO/ REINVENTION OF THE BOOK

CONCRETE POETRY / PERFORMANCE PRACTICES

A large blue paper poster with visible creases.

Folded paper -1971

270325

camouflage as shelter

secret language/writings

Scenic view of a mountain range with clouds overhead, a lake in the foreground, and rolling grassy hills.

many examples within poetry

go back to McCaffery Book

+for ex.

Sonnet L’abbé through Shakespeare’s sonnets

original intention of dazzle camouflage to disorient when viewed through periscope

WW!, first used 1917

origin: artist Abbott H. Thayer (1849–1921) published an article entitled ‘The Law Which Underlies Protective Coloration”

the link between art and camouflage

Surrealist war camouflage WW2

Book claiming material / organic forms / containers

Trees - Umbrella

Rock - Nesting

O-Caves

Umbrella

Nesting

Caves

Wrap

Envelope

Layer

200325

Ann Hamilton

various scales intimate handling

petite moyene et grande echelle

Performance of objects

Pragmatic structures

Craft / Assembly

SOETSU YANAGI

RICHARD SENNETT

Over time, my question: “What is making?” has enlarged to consider how the act and experience of reading might form the tactile material of my makings.  Though we may sometimes find ourselves reading in public, say on a crowded subway, for the most part when we read we read alone and silently.  We are absorbed between the covers of a book.  And although we might return from reading’s singular immersiveness forever changed, we remain physically unmarked. 

love her work but always found it sinister and bizarrely apolitical her burning off of texs in books - now I wonder what she feels (USA 2025)

note “how art makes connections and promotes interactions among concepts, objects, spaces, and human beings. Her talk will challenge the audience to reconsider their existing perceptions of art through a lens of social engagement.”

ALEC FINLAY - HAIKU PLATFORM

Patterns: pattern-making

to contain ? to distill? to navigate ? to hide text?

getting to one’s own comprehension of abstraction

works for shapes, does it work for language/text?

Inner refuge: Mandala

Black paper and graphite

semi-hides the text / protected?

the mineral quality of the graphite 

david nash wooden boulder

organic times of making and letting be, documenting the process over time, 35 years on the move
Three black-and-white abstract sketches. The first is a squiggly line, the second is a faceted wooden sphere, and the third features rocks over ripples, from top to bottom.