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Melissa Johnson

I:I: Infinity, Issue 3

Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works 1997-2020 by Jen Bervin
Audiodescribed at University Galleries, Illinois State University, Dec 2020
Issue 3 as playlist 1:1:Infinity serial as playlist
Published by 3-ply and Liquid Architecture, 2020

A co-publishing initiative of 3-ply and Liquid Architecture’s Disclaimer journal, 1:1:Infinity is a serial audio publication, conceived as an episodic column that offers a radical expansion in ratios of access. Voiced descriptions of artworks, performances, and situations, commissioned from our friends and associates, pivot on the Describer as embodied proxy and subjective guide. Turning from objective tropes, we invite conversational, improvised description, as if speaking to an intimate other. Each description is recorded in place, as the narrator navigates spontaneous perceptions, personal reactions, and critical relations to works, structures, and happenings we cannot see.

I:I:Infinity, Issue 3

Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works 1997-2020 by Jen Bervin
Described by Melissa Johnson

Recorded December 7 2020, between 10am and 11am, at University Galleries, Illinois State University in Normal, IL, Melissa Johnson visits Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works 1997-2020, the first survey exhibition of poet and artist Jen Bervin, which closed prematurely due to Covid. The exhibition incorporated twenty-three solo and collaborative projects, artist’s books, embroideries, videos, drawings, prints, and a performance created from 1997–2020. Rather than a single track, this issue is presented as a playlist of close readings of selected works, including Concordance: No, Dickinson Composites Edition, The Gorgeous Nothings, Poems for Ruth Asawa, The Desert, River, Pierced Light (latitude 31.4482, longitude 109.9284), A Non-Breaking Space, Draft Notation, The Silver Book, and Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere, among others. Johnson’s descriptions enfold architectural and compositional observations, reflections on process and materiality, tactile impressions, and readings of poetry and prose fragments.

About the describer: Melissa Johnson is Associate Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at Illinois State University (Normal, IL, USA). Her scholarly research focuses on the histories of craft and its intersections with modern and contemporary art. She is currently working on a project that explores artists who make work in response to the writings of Virginia Woolf. She’s deeply interested in situating her academic writing and her textile-based work as parallel practices, and is also working on several writing and textile projects: “Woolf Words,” “Haptic Investigations,” and a project on mending and repair.

 

IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS:
Snapshots by Melissa Johnson taken December 2020 in University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal (IL).

Snapshot 1: The Desert (2008), artist book, Granary Books.
Stitches zig-zag across the text of John van Dyke’s The Desert. A few words are left unstitched:
say where one leaves off / and the other begins. / see / my attention to this. / There is no / hour / composed / of equal parts.
On the page’s backside, thread ends dance.

Snapshot 2: River (2018), Installation.
My giant self peers down at me from above the surface of River.

Snapshot 3: Pierced Light (latitude 31.4482, longitude 109.9284), 1998.
From the back, Pierced Light becomes a map for haptic investigations.