Emma Hislop - Empathy for Entropy
This text was commissioned as part of ‘call + response 4: DONOR’
Image: Emma Hislop - Aether Frieze, 2021
Am I? Graduated from atomic nuclei?
The event. Unknown, unrecollected but now I am elsewhere and far from partners of my domestic nucleus.
Is this what loneliness looks like? A beyond cold existence? Staring down a stainless barrel?
I see brothers running behind, a mob towards me, but where are their faces? Is this how I looked? Look? No matter, I must out run them, continuing on this path we seem so garnered to push faster along. Seem, my seams pull as I tug at them, what lies beneath this topcoat of mine never before seen?
This textural landscape, now so tactile, though I am unable to touch. Except, there is force, the force the drives me and us and all and – forces me. What forced me before? I do not recall being pushed but I feel wholly comfortable with a sensation of being suspended. As though time stopped whilst falling face first from the shove of force from height. I am unbearably full, forcing myself to bursting at these fraying seams. Somehow I am not sure that this is my doing. Why would I wish this upon myself, my own demise? Self, a borrowed term I’m not quite sure of. Is it this Self that forces me to do against my new found will?
What care does force have for my being? Does it acknowledge or see me - a self - thrusted by its mighty shove without knowledge of why or how? What goal is thrust upon me, I feel desire to fulfil a duty, but what and for who? Does Force have any understanding of the pressures it grafts upon me? The host of all its ambitions? Is this Force’s will or do I force my Self for Force’s sake? Force who is forced to force, how exhausted and tormented it must be, pushing others relentlessly by one’s own nature. Instinct is a funny thing, the obligator of Force.
This stainless loop that compels me is but a blur now as I feel myself lost and without control. Force has gone on to another host as I am carried by the river’s current, without a branch in existence that I could catch myself on. But I do not feel they have departed, still lingering in wait. I sense my purpose will be revealed in good time as– what’s this? The current has changed, gone is the draining plughole I swirl in and back is Force to compel once more. An opening to another stainless vein. Kicking and screaming I am ripped from this womb to tract track, am I to be born? From charge and vacuum? Gripping Force on my back I am carted towards– something. Some thing. All of my existence’s purpose. The aspirations of all who oblige me. My martyrdom. Ahead, a hint, I am not a-lone.
I see the grapple of another in Force’s clutches, different, still faceless like the others. My target, and I theirs. Instinct reveals to me now the whys to these hows; mutation. The curtain is lifted, I see the strings. Force is not with but against me, it is a construct, a rouse, a set up. I am a pawn, awakened.
Perhaps it would have been better to remain faceless, asleep. Ignorant to the powers who spin the barrel, this is but a play in a game of Russian roulette. I– I see now. I am to be shot head first down this canon against the other, in some sadistic game of chicken. Well, I will do as you please Force but I will not yield. In fact, it is I who will drive this game, I will take the wheel no matter which way the other turns and crash, smashing against until both are obliterated. I will become the forcer. I will– I will become– instinct.
The cremains of our being, they will whip into another. There is method here. If they had asked, had offered rather than mandated, perhaps I would have granted. There is no opt out in this shaft. What parts of me go untaken into the whip of momentary other matter? Will they be lost, turned to waste, will my face lie vacant to be swept and discarded? Or is there some purpose of my accepting consent? Perhaps to gift, for my legacy to be the patron of another. To pioneer legacies at all. The procurement of preservation.
Spare a thought for the collided
Emma Hislop is an Artist, Writer & Researcher based in Edinburgh. She was the inaugural Artist in Residence for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, recipient of the ESW Graduate Research Award and awaits a pandemic postponed residency at Assens, Denmark. She has written works as part of New Modernist Editing, Edinburgh International Festival, Psyche, and a range of niche journal articles alongside her unpublished writing.
Hislop’s practice follows encountered language and environmental occurrences. Her current works explore filtration through material/water/light/craft/industry. Looking at (un)natural landscape bodies, curated systems and apparatuses, and drawing from research in particle physics, ecology, biomedical science and relationships between researchers and their instruments.
She uses experimental narratives of alchemy, sci-fi and pop culture to synthesise ideas as a cohesive translation into objects or looser weavings of writing and languoid play. Both encompass a duality of process and research led experimentations to evoke a sense of the semi-real/semi-fiction.
Hislop’s work endeavours to connect us to the in-between. Plains of communication unreachable by human senses and perception that supports the rejection of speciesism. She works with real data in her unreal but uncanny worlds, using mysticism and metaphors to demystify and develop a method of communicating inherently.