ASHLEY STRAZZINSKI
March 21-22 // Partner’s apartment // easthampton, ma
Shelter resident, Ashley Strazzinski, is a socially engaged, interdisciplinary artist and creative placemaker who lives and works in Easthampton, Massachusetts. During her residency, she continued work on a personal project, which she began in 2016. This project, “Confabulations”, is a collection of poems created from deconstructed emails that reflect on miscommunication, perception of language, and memory.
www.strazzinskiprojects.com
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” ― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Shelter in place, quarantine, isolation, unprecedented, social distancing, strange times, pandemic, outbreak… Do not touch your face, 6ft distance, wash your hands, stay home, work from home, furlough/layoff, two weeks, one month, wear masks, don’t wear masks, 100,000+, potential 2,000,000…
"Home" on New York/Massachusetts border, October 2019.
Home in Easthampton, Massachusetts, March 2019.
Last September, I began house sitting on the New York/Massachusetts border for my employer who was supposed to be in Rome, Italy for a year-long fellowship. After Italy went into lockdown in mid-March, he was sent back to the United States. With a day’s notice, I had to leave his house. He would need to quarantine. I packed a bag of clothes and a few things from my makeshift studio, which I had set up in a room above his garage. I went to my partner’s place for what we thought would be two and half weeks—long enough for Italy to gain control of the outbreak. We thought he would return to Rome. His flight was scheduled to depart JFK on April 1. We thought and I’d go back to the house and life would resume.... Within that week, “control” quickly dissolved. Not just Italy, but in Spain, Germany, and New York. It became clear that he would not be returning. It became clear—he would remain in the U.S. indefinitely.
Indefinitely — a word, as a result of the novel virus, that now carries new meaning for me. My two and a half week stay at my partner’s became an indefinite relocation. My partner and I went into self-isolation on March 10. With much of the world now experiencing the undeniable effects of the outbreak, my spirit and mind had been set firmly into a sober awareness. Despite uncertainty circling the months to come, one thing is known—the world is, and forever will be changed by this pandemic. For the first few days of isolation, I had a hard time finding comfort in anything I’d do. Everyday I work to strike a delicate balance of being “in the know” and not obsessing over news and/or misleading information. It felt important to be grounded in reality (no matter the fear) and to stay up-to-date on latest infection rates and death tolls; coronavirus research; and the CDC, state, and federal recommendations. I had (and still have) a hard time being “productive” despite my ability to continue to work from home and despite having just enough supplies and materials to effectively continue my studio practice. Focus is scattered, hope and motivation is fleeting.
Our stock of groceries for two weeks.
My partner's desk. We designated half of the desk space for me to work. The printer took up a lot of the work space, so we later rearranged the apartment to make a larger, more appropriate studio/workspace for the two of us.
I began the Shelter Residency on March 21, day 11 of self-isolation. The residency helped me to focus my energy into something productive—but not necessarily to produce. It was a respite from anxious information gathering and it broke apart my battle with uncertainty, even if only for two days. It felt good to have something calling for my commitment, calling for my attention…
I decided to continue work on a project I started in 2016—Confabulations.
Confabulations will be an artist book—a collection of abstracted text and poems constructed from emails. It explores the perception of language; meaning within or without context; memory; and false narrative. Confusion and manipulation juxtapose the orderly nature and controlled limitations of the process I use to create the poems.
Original email. This text and punctuation will be used to create the poems.
Words from the email, organized alphabetically. As words are used to create the poem, they are crossed off.
The process: I take an email and sort the words alphabetically and place them into a chart. Then, in the spirit of free writing or free association, I pull words from the chart and start to build blocks of text and strings of words to re-contextualize and/or subvert the original meaning of the message. Revision is a large part of the process as words are repeatedly swapped out for other words, and blocks of text are moved and sandwiched between others for coherence… or lack of.
As most of the poems have been already been drafted, I decided to use this time to develop the form of the book. Being a visual/tactile person I planned to create a few different book dummies to explore various layouts and structures. First, I made a very simple (and super small!) dummy to get an idea of the layout and number of pages. While this would not be the actual size, this gave me a chance to think about how the information might be best arranged. It was nice to use my hands to make something and it also lead me to think about how I can use blank pages as places of rest between the text and poems. This idea of “rest” led me to consider utilizing images and a series of gatefolds to create pause and interaction.
The revision part of the process to create the poems have become an interesting visual element that I’ve considered including in the book—this is where I thought I could illustrate the “chaos” and cut through it with an image to create pause.
I decided to create a dummy that would be the actual size, 5.5” x 4.25”, that would contain the draft/revision process + image overlays as gatefolds. While this was an interesting layout (the infinite ways to fold and read it seemed to lend well to the notion of confusion and information chaos), it was felt too complex and that text to be lost within the form.
In making the larger dummy I started to recognize the different ways the layout and the text could be more successful. I began to layout the text on the computer to make another dummy.
Washing our laundry in the tub. My partner and I don't have access to a washer and dryer at the apartment. We decided we want to minimize the risk of exposure, so we stopped going to the laundromat.
After creating the two dummies and working through the layout on the computer—I needed the break to recalibrate. I decided to do the laundry.
This task... the labor... cleaning your clothing with your hands—seeing the dirt and crud wash away—your clothing rinse clean, wringing out the water... It was quite meditative and somewhat therapeutic during a time where I feel like I don’t have control and I'm weighted by uncertainty.
After doing the laundry, I came back to the computer with a new thought about the words that aren't used. Previously I had envisioned the words not used to be released from the chart, and simply listed alphabetically, complete removed from the context of the original message. However, I began to think about the original message and how important it felt that the reader would have a sense of where these words came from. At this point I had envisioned each poem would take up three pages: 1) the actual poem 2) the chart of all of the organized words (possibly a scan of the crossed-out/marked up char to illustrate the process) ... and 3) an alphabetical list of words not used. My break from the project led me to the decision to depict the words not used in their original place within the initial email message. This way, if the reader wanted to try to do a reconstruction of the original message, they would a framework.
