Notes from Source: Through an exploration of the ephemeral, both as a mode of practice and matter of engagement, this project wishes to materialise the tacit, impermanent and imperceptible. It also aims to engage work in translation processes, both physical and linguistic, encouraging a sensitive perception of our environment and the spaces we occupy. I hope that the ephemeral nature and slight quality of my work will probe, prod and prompt new visibilities in relation to the invisible and help to find new material forms to present that which is formless. In exploring these poetics, I investigate the fragment as an aesthetic gesture in both art practice and art writing, and ask how it might open up a space of in-between: a space between thought and material. My project asks: how does the fragment intervene in space and time and can it produce (in)visibilities? By reflecting on Anne Carson’s act of translating Sappho’s fragments, I consider the impact of Carson’s aesthetic gesture and how her approach to translation reflects my own methods within artistic practice. I also explore Emily Dickinson’s intimate, physical connection with the page itself (as site) and the locative and non-locative power of her page under continual reconstruction. This research is generated through material and textual engagement and processes of translation, utilising a practice-led methodology of site-specific investigations. The premise of writing as an aesthetic practice and aesthetic practice as writing is fundamental in steering these investigations. By looking at the fragment’s cause and effect and the interstitial space it produces, my project considers how the fragment as an aesthetic gesture may accentuate materiality, site and gesture itself, and give breath to thought, movement and translation.

Further Notes: Accepted: 2021