That's me, as if praying, at Senate House, London, last Tuesday evening 18 February 2025, during a brilliant encounter-seminar occasioned by Redell Olsen's recent artist's book Fossil Oil: a book of hours Fossil oil: a book of hours | redellolsen.
Books of hours were late-medieval personal prayer books, but Dell's work, while reflecting on and quoting from medieval spiritual literature, is really more of a call to open your eyes and re/act, to the consequences of fossil fuels, and their exhaustion, to our planet, never mind our paltry souls. Each copy is encased in a stunningly sculptural but also repulsive 'girdle' binding, made of PVC leatherette 'itself a by-product of the petroleum industry'.
For the seminar, we were all first equipped with 'silent disco' headphones playing 3 tracks: a reading of the poem, a drone / refrain, and Dell's seminar paper, while wandering around this imposing building, fully lined with striated travertine, thinking about the sedimentary geology that harbours oil. Followed by a group discussion.
One of a series of open seminars, 'Out or Practice', see Out of Practice Seminar | The Institute of English Studies.
