Emma Cousin selects the seminal novel 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre. Published in 1938, it describes Antoine Roquentin's existential crisis which plays out in the library, streets and cafes of Bouville, which literally means 'mud town'. In a world devoid of God, lacking in meaning, Antoine shrinks further and further inside himself as he struggles in his search for purpose, finally deciding the best use of his life is to write a really critical book. Like 'Nausea' I guess ! In our conversation, we focus on Emma's post-lockdown solo show at Goldsmith's CCA, though her ideas - from biology to geometry - and her approach to working across drawing, painting, curating and podcasting, encompass her whole studio practice.
0:00-0:30 Summary of 'Nausea', fluid consciousness, isolation, observation, madness, body, dangling arms, a mouth as thin of a dead snake, spreading cheeks, vomit, nausea, seat as a dead donkey, natural states, the shortcomings of the autodidact, humanism, experiences, projectile vomiting, experimentation in colour, shift, change, the future, elitism, Rembrandt
0:30-1:10 Emma's art practice - contemporary dance, verbing reaching, showing an idea, actively working something out, bodily boundaries, breasts, skin, grounding of figures, 'New Dirt', colour, background as a surround, 'Wash your Hands' for Ambit magazine, wall drawing, social classes, 2D & 3D composition, drawing, drawing, drawing, 'Trigonometry', 'Flower Moon' animation for exhibition, failing meditation, the physical highs and memories thru gardening
1:10-1:20 other Emma stuff - Morandi, folk music, 'Bread and Jam', 'Chats in Lockdown' podcast, activism, what Emma's reading now!
EMMA COUSIN
emmacousin.info
BOOKS & WRITERS & THINKERS (get ready for a long list!)
Albert Camus 'The Myth of Sisyphus' 1942
Anne Carson
Derek Jarman 'Modern Nature : Journals 1989-1990' 2018
Eula Biss 'On Immunity : An Inoculation' 2014
Elias Canetti 'Earwitness : Fifty Characters' 1974 & 'Crowds and Power' 1960
Edwin A Abbott 'Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions' 1884
Friedrich Nietzsche
Gregory Bateson 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' 1972
Honoré de Balzac
JG Ballard 'High Rise' 1975
Joanna Pocock 'Surrender : The Call of the American West' 2019
John Berger 'A Painter of our Time' 1958
Maurice Merleau-Ponty 'The Phenomenology of Perception' 1945
René Descartes
Richard Power 'The Overstory' 2018
Samuel Beckett
Sergei Eisenstein 'On Disney' 1986
Simone de Beauvoir
Thomas Mann 'Death in Venice' 1912
William Petter Blatty 'The Exorcist' 1971
OTHER ARTISTS
Amy Sillman
Andrea V Wright
Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom
Georgio Morandi
Hardeep Pandhal
John Cage, composer, artist, music theorist
Lindsey Mendick
Mark Morris, dancer and choreographer
Michael Tippett, composer
Paul Carey-Kent, art critic, curator
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
William Blake
PODCAST
'Chats in Lockdown' hosted by Emma Cousin
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