Spirals: A multilingual poetry & art anthology

We are delighted to share with you the publication of this wonderful anthology, which, amongst many other inspiring, intriguing, evocative works, contains some of the poetry Hari Marini and Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo created for their performance at the Experiential Translation exhibition in 2022.

‘Over a span of 10 years, the anthology gracefully weaves together words, music, bodies, geographies, and sites, crafting a profound understanding of both each other and the contemporary world, while challenging boundaries of all kinds. […] This interactive anthology transcends the constraints of linear time and space, spiraling in and out of temporal boundaries. It initiates conversations that traverse waking and dreaming realms, navigating through cityscapes and landscapes. The interplay between interiority and exteriority creates a rich tapestry that invites contemplation and engagement. The anthology serves as a testament to the resilience of human connection with other humans and the more than human, evolving beyond conventional notions of time and space into a harmonious convergence of diverse narratives and shared expressions.’

Sara Matchett, Associate professor at the Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies, University of Cape Town and Artistic Director of The Mothertongue Project.

Text by Hari Marini

This interactive and multilingual collection of poetry, creative writing, and artworks by international artists marks the celebration of the ten-year project SPIRALS created by PartSuspended Artist Collective. It documents the outcome of working with a wide community of artists, and of making artistic work that emphasises the value of exchanging languages, cultures, and personal narratives.

Initiated in 2013, the ongoing SPIRALS project is a collaborative, multidisciplinary, poetic journey that unites the voices of international artists who share a feminist perspective from across the UK, Europe and beyond. The spiral acts as a sign of becoming, transforming and awareness that allows us to re-imagine the body’s relationship with organic forms, space and time. PartSuspended has experimented with verbal, physical and digital language exploring thresholds, migration, path, nature, home, circular movement, and sense of belonging. Through the symbol of the spiral, performance rituals, artistic interventions, performance writing, audio-visual manifestations, online projects, exhibitions, publications, and public workshops have been created.

The poems, artworks, sound pieces and videos presented in the anthology have been created and performed in various locations across Europe and beyond. Often employing abandoned and ruined urban locations, SPIRALS video-poems have been filmed in the UK (London, Broadstairs, Coventry, Devon), Spain (Barcelona, Agost), Serbia (Belgrade), India (Pune), Ghana (Kumasi), and Greece (Athens).[i] SPIRALS work has been presented in a variety of venues, festivals, symposia, online platforms and conferences in the UK, USA, Spain, Iceland, Czech Republic, Greece.

The SPIRALS project aimed to foster collaboration across art forms, to encourage creativity and to emphasise the value of sharing, transforming and reconnecting.[ii] These values became even more evident and urgent during the Covid-19 pandemic when human contact, exchange, movement, live interaction and artistic expression were greatly affected and shifted.[iii] The collective maintained online contact and made work throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Repeated lockdowns and the added complications of Brexit placed further restrictions, creating a challenging environment where regular communication and planning new work was particularly valuable and at the same time vulnerable. In this context, the isolation we all experienced prompted a strong desire for the collective to seek out connections and open creative dialogues as an act of resistance and an act of care.

The anthology communicates the SPIRALS journey and becomes a trace of the creative process. The anthology has an interactive element – QR codes that lead to online audiovisual material created throughout the 10-year process of working on the project – and includes a preface by the poet, critic and editor of the independent, international literary journal, Tears in the Fence, David Caddy; and a creative essay entitled ‘A Ritual’ by the writer and curator Mary Paterson. The book consists of three parts.

The poems featured in Part I were written by contemporary female poets: Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo (Spain), Beatriz Viol (Spain), Barbara Bridger (UK), Ana Rodic (Serbia), Eirini Margariti (GR), Hari Marini (GR).[iv] The video-poems included in this section were filmed in each poet’s country of residence: the UK, Spain, Serbia, Greece. The poems are bilingual (Catalan-English, Spanish-English, Serbian-English, Greek-English) and create a dialogue between languages and cultures.

The texts presented in Part II were created during the pandemic of 2020-2021. During this time the company met regularly online, documented their dreams and exchanged small spiral acts and observations. Texts are written by Barbara Bridger, Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo, Tuna Erdem (Turkey and UK), Seda Ergul (Turkey and UK), Georgia Kalogeropoulou (GR), Hari Marini, Nisha Ramayya (UK). Also, in this section, the book includes poems that Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo and Hari Marini used in their performance work Spiralling Words: Πoesia en acció presented at Somerset House, King’s College London (2022), as part of the ETN conference and exhibition.

In Part III, the artist collective presents fragments of PartSuspended’s SPIRALS Open Archive (SOA), a flexible and open archive that consists of artists’ responses to SOA prompts devised by the collective. In SOA, PartSuspended establishes a dynamic archive that accepts a variety of artistic voices and promotes a feminist perspective. In the creative responses our contributors explored their personal engagement with the theme, their personal memories and desires through a variety of artistic expressions, and the connection between the local and the global. SOA provides a shared space where unexpected connections can be made. Texts presented in this section of the anthology are written by Barbara Bridger, Sarahleigh Castelyn, Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo, Georgia Kalogeropoulou, Hari Marini. Furthermore, texts and artworks are created by the invited artists: Simon Persighetti (UK), Sally Pomme Clayton (UK), Niya B (UK), Colin Cruise (UK), John London (UK), Suparna Banerjee (India), Kostis Ntemos (GR), Dimitra Adamopoulou (GR), Lynn Lu (UK and Singapore).

The SPIRALS project opens a common space for dialogue and sharing, resisting isolation and dominant narratives. It creates an international community of ‘spirallists’ and a multivocal poetic environment that remains open and inviting. Through the anthology, PartSuspended brings together participants from different cultural, linguistic and artistic backgrounds and aspires to establish a creative dialogue beyond geographical borders, celebrating artistic acts of being together.