Cynthia Schwertsik (SA)

Take Up Residence 2020

Writing for Cynthia Schwertsik, Take Up Residence at FELTspace, October 2020 by Inneke Taal[man]

A poem:

bend stack stick interwoven earth pressed through mechanical process residing between soft hard translations for the built  they record us and we them  writ over we become scripted into  reality and yet actions speak louder than words they say

to move is to realise the becoming of time as  moments I am the texture of time reflecting my own revolt and embrace reduced to it and those words lost in the question  now the ? has been pulled away from itself ||||

    I am built in.

A quote:

‘Sometimes I wish the wardrobe would get up and walk around and forget that I was in there.’

-       Ian McEwan, ‘Conversation with a cupboard man’ in First Love Last Rites, 1976, Pan Books Ltd, London, p. 86

A paragraph: 

Cynthia Schwertsik performs our ‘papereal’ reality. A term I made up just then on thinking about Take Up Residence. Whether print or digital, we are engaged with the words of others on paper. Words as actions that disrupt, distract and promote. Schwertsik prompts us to consider ourselves ‘one of them’; the papers (the words, the actions). What is our becoming when we absorb careless and considered words? Do they transform us or we them. The cupboard suggests our exposure to any reality is limited, confined to time and space. Yet our content, our live-d moments are so much bigger than this cupboard but it muffles the screams just like the words it swallows. Through the camera lens Schwertsik appears flattened into object, another paste-up. But the figure reduced to a series of still photographs is also in motion resisting the smooth transitions of film. This is a space where time can be held. Occasionally Schwertsik peers at us through the fibres of her own ‘papereal’ strands of hair not yet woven into conformity. The residence ajar.

Inneke Taal is an artist and writer currently based in Adelaide.