Some books can be regarded as works of art on their own merits. Joseph Agius discusses the concepts and the dynamics that went into the production of one such publication, Stories of Home, with its author and curator, ANDREW BORG WIRTH
JA: Stories of Home reminds me of photographer Richard Billingham’s publication Ray’s a Laugh and of Nan Goldin’s series Nan and Brian in Bed. Both document a gritty realism in rather squalid circumstances and relationships going sour – the former concerns Billingham’s relationship with his alcoholic father and his immediate family, the latter the distrust and loneliness of an intimate relationship. However, you managed to portray Janette’s story, although similarly painfully intimate and much more harrowing, in a mood that instils hope. Was this the underlying message of this multi-layered project? Can pain and hope coexist?
ABW: Stories of Home speaks about the beauty of the human condition. Whether it instils hope depends on the position a reader takes rather than our intentions as a team. I think that with this project, it was the vulnerability of the subject that is most captivating. With Janette, she condenses the spectrum of emotions and experiences which characterise a condition that ‒ for most ‒ is anonymous. I would definitely say pain and hope coexist, but are not often allowed to. In places where they are, our pure humanity is on exhibit, and I find that quite beautiful. This artwork is about the raw realities of the human condition and the decisions we make to exhibit them, in a world caught up in edifice.
JA: Referring again to the Nan Goldin series, which takes place in the photographer’s bedroom in her New York apartment, one can contrast its seedy nature and the lover’s mutual distrust with that of Janette’s living room, exuding calm and mutual respect and love in the cuddle that Janette shares with her husband Rob. I find this photograph as the soul of the whole project. Do you feel that this is so? Are there other instances of this that you can mention?
ABW: I love hearing which of Marija’s images people relate to most, because there I see the project operating. In Nan Goldin’s work, it is the ability to empathise with the image and its intimacy that is most captivating. The image that remains with me is the one I end my essay with ‒ Rob and Janette’s feet in a soft caress. There I find home to be best expressed. The soul of the project is the human condition on display ‒ laid bare for others to aspire to, and hope for.
JA: The plural ‘stories’ in the title suggests a storytelling dimension through different chapters. Can you please elaborate on this?
ABW: My work is always narrative-driven. I find that stories are important not for what they contain, but for what they allow people to make out in their own mind. I am often distracted by parts of a story that are said to me, because I am making up the rest of my own story in my mind. In this way, the project becomes nostalgic ‒ not only for a time or place that have existed but also for things which haven’t.
Janette is a gifted storyteller. The patchwork of stories I know from our friendship has been important, so I like to think the book operates in much the same way.
JA: The home as the safe space – made of memories and memorabilia that can help to overcome the trauma. The hospital is cold, unfamiliar and disconcerting. It is a place where people can die, though most of them do recover. Would you define this work as being one about dualities?
ABW: I haven’t thought about it as a work on dualities, but definitely one about potentialities. In the book, I draw parallels between curatorial practice and the medical world to celebrate the importance of the archive as a source of new knowledge. I think this is something that became clearer to me as I saw the project develop as more and more of a ‘collection’. In this way, once more, it is curatorial as the artwork lies in the exhibition/display of the archive.
Your provocation on ‘dualities’ is interesting because it suggests that there is always an alternative gaze by which to interpret things ‒ this I think is fundamental to the project. In fact, we oscillate in position between mine, Marija’s and Janette’s at various points in order to establish a shared narrative.
JA: Does sickness make us feel nostalgic for times and places before the diagnosis – a longing for normality, for pain-free moments free of medications with strange names and having the most horrible possible side-effects, a craving for people with whom we shared happiness and who may have passed away? Does loss make us yearn for this happy place frozen in the most momentous and joyful hours of our life?
ABW: I would argue that nostalgia is a condition we are suspended in not only in abnormal moments (such as those of sickness), but actually quite often. With Janette, it was not a past that she was nostalgic for, but rather a future which she saw being taken from her. It is in this longing that we situated ourselves because it can be such a claustrophobic and discomforting place to sit ‒ in its stead, surfaces an empowering encounter with life’s most crippling realities.
I find that stories are important not for what they contain, but for what they allow people to make out in their own mind- Andrew Borg Wirth
So rather than focusing on what loss makes one yearn for, it is the longing that we are interested in using to create statements with.
JA: Can nostalgia be cathartic? Or can it lead to further despair through a sense of loss? Is the home a cathedral for nostalgia?
ABW: Nostalgia is at once cathartic and a coping mechanism. Ultimately it is about a process of longing, which we are suspended in through many of life’s situations. The home we speak of is not the physical enclosure we live in, but extends itself onto other realities ‒ yes, I guess one can say the home we speak of operates as a cathedral for nostalgia.
JA: In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words: “A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.” At what point does a house become a home? Maybe when one is away from one’s own house due to unforeseen circumstances such as in sickness? When one has time to dream about it while physically away from it?
ABW: To answer this question, I think it is best to draw upon one of the main points of interest in my central essay for the book: Sir John Soane’s House Museum in London, an incredible location inundated with artefacts, objects and mirrors, from across the travels of Soane himself:
“After each visit [to Sir John Soane’s museum], I entertain the same conflict on whether his ‘home’ lies in the building I walk through, or in the collection of places that his artefacts have come from. Is the image of home that of the building from the outside? Or is it the backdrop of his travel archives behind my reflection in each mirror?”
The act of longing needs a setting ‒ either one to long in, or long for. Home lies in the distance between both.
JA: The book mentions Janette’s relating to British artist Tracey Emin, so famous for the grittiness of her unmade bed and her portrayals of personal despair. Emin has similarly been through a brush with cancer which has physically scarred her. She lost most of her sexual organs in the process and has to live the rest of her life with a stoma. Both women managed to find peace and redemption in some way, through the most desperate of life experiences. Is this book also about finding bonds in illness via a universally rich creative expression and human empathy?
ABW: Definitely. It is about suspending one’s self, in our case to Marija’s lens, that makes it such a statement on beauty. The fragility of the human condition is on display for an other’s interrogation, and in this way it becomes a tool for empathy. I think Janette’s repeated reference to Emin comes because she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with this project ‒ but she did know how she wanted someone to feel upon experiencing it.
JA: Do you consider Stories of Home as an artwork on its own merits, a tripartite collaboration between protagonist, photographer and documenter/curator? Can it be regarded as a collaborative ‘artist’s book’?
ABW: The book makes reference to a statement that has been intrinsic to my process: In the gaze of others, we find versions of ourselves that we have not yet met or been made aware of. The book is the art form we have chosen in order to test and investigate this speculation. In this way, it has become something of its own; something collaborative and documentation, but something experimental and empathetic.
It isn’t simply reportage, because that would mean it ends as one reaches the end cover. It is an art form because it survives in each reader who relates to its process and the way it is assembled. It is intentionally non-chronological and haphazardly presented so that the archive can produce more knowledge in its consumption by others.
Stories of Home is available against a €50 donation for the MCCF via Camilleri Paris Mode, People and Skin, and www.storiesofhomebook.com.
