Blog Post: Jasmine Johnson

The following are some diary entries by artist Jasmine Johnson during the period of her residency at Hospitalfield with New Contemporaries.

September 24th 2019

Today I am grateful for:

• The guillemot who Kim and I found on the beach with a broken wing on Saturday. We tried to keep it safe until the RSPB arrived. We carried it back to Hospitalfield wrapped in a towel and a couple with a buggy looked over at us and smiled, one young family to another. The bird then died in kim’s arms. One minute the guillemot had black and shiny feathers and was squawking away and the next minute the feathers were grey and dusty looking. We dug a grave for the bird and buried it. I keep thinking back to what kim or I could have done differently. I using am trying to use what happened to not dwell and beat myself up but to think: it happened and that’s that. And it won’t bring back the bird to keep going over it and over it. I have to decide to let it go.
• The gold ring that Vivienne gave me for my birthday last week that slipped off my finger into the sea
• Vivienne’s response to my losing it
• Kim for being here, travelling all the way up.
• A moment to read in bed before running with some others
• A few meetings this week to present my work and therefore a feeling of bringing the residency to an end
• The ability to acknowledge and observe a feeling of sadness which may be linked to: the changing weather, my impending departure, the ring, the guillemot. But... it’s something I don’t fully need to identify with. I can watch it like tv.
• Another day in a row accepting myself
• You for reading a long one

Have a wonderful day dear ones

Xxx

Thu, 26 Sep, 10:59

dear jasmine. today you are feeling tired. you showed your work yesterday to kitty. she talked about sharing - sharing intimacies, sharing labour and sharing space. we watched ed and rhea's work last night. the title of the screening was ‘taking up space’. towards the end of ed's film, one of the speakers in the circle, a queer muslim teacher in her 30s said that the lesson she has learned from section 28 history is the importance of not subdividing into smaller groups that are easy to pick off one by one by dominant forces. we must be always holding each other in mind. making space for each other. this morning i thought more about sharing:

- sharing transgressions.

-- cleansing through speaking.

----confession makes sex feel ok.

-----people police themselves.

------shame is a tool.

-------reproduction is a political and economic problem.

--------to monitor reproduction you must talk about sex.

---------also talking publicly about sex is good for cultural capital.

Kat sent you a text about requiring uninterrupted space. something like: 'for poems to coalesce, there needs to be the feeling that nothing will snatch away your attention'. this is what you have found out. jasmine, you need space and time for yourself with boundaries and walls. no sharing. there should be no phone calls. admin must happen on different days to these days. at Hospitalfield you have learnt this. work because it feels good, through breathing and reaching out, trying lines, colours, notes, sentences, sounds, images, activities, conversations, recipes, routes. through forgiving yourself and letting go of destructive looping thinking that only serves to snatch you away. so breath, 4,4, 8 or just in and out and feel the tingling inside your body. look closely at the physical world your body is a part of. life is fleeting, like the bird. cradle yourself every night.

Jasmine Johnson: BNC 2015 Artist Page