The Martine Syms Wormhole
MARTINE SYMS
From Worms 7 we bring you a snippet of Clem Macleod’s interview with Martine Syms. Naturally we spiralled, and headed to Sadie Cole’s HQ to catch her exhibition, curated a reading list all around Syms and her work and reviewed some of her books and films.
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Martine Syms has truly worn all the hats. Working as a publisher, artist, writer, photographer, performance artist, filmmaker and director, Martine was even a bookseller and business owner before becoming a full-time artist. She’s a natural storyteller with self-exposure, identity, humour and analysis at the centre of her work; her viewer/reader can feel as close to her as a good friend. Her books are direct and vulnerable, helping her reader come to terms with feelings that might usually be hushed. Therapy, journalling, self-care and self-help; like the title of her most recent book, she offers everyone a Shame Space within her words. She celebrates ‘getting to the point,’ and here it is: writing is an outlet to come to terms. It’s a way to discharge energy and understand the world.
For the complete interview, buy your copy of Worms here.
Read an extract of the interview below:
Clem Macleod: What’s your personal writing practise like?
Martine Syms: I write every day. Not in some special way. It is a practice for more. I get up and do it. I don't have a lot of emotion attached to it at this point. It's like drawing for me. It is what I need to do to make things. Drawing and writing are the things I've been doing the longest and in some ways they overlap. I like to draw words.
Sometimes I'm trying to write something difficult, either the material itself or how to write it, and then I stop and read.
It's a funny question, what's my practice like? I don't know if it's like anything. I am the type to write too much and then edit it down. I like to use only the words necessary. I don't like a lot of punctuation. I aim to write as clearly as possible. I also have a flair for the dramatic, a penchant for myth, I love funky styling, the same way I like to hang my shows weird. I think a lot about voice, whether it is my own or a character’s. I listen to how people talk, how they move. I love watching people. I think we're all Greek gods.
Is there a difference between your personal/public writing?
The writing itself isn't different. If it's personal writing I'm not going to show it to anyone. It's for me. I have a LOT of writing that is just for me. I never want anyone to see it. I have to write to understand sometimes. I also have a lot of energy that I need to discharge. Writing is one of the ways I exorcise it.
To what extent do you think publishing is an artistic practice?
My publishing practice is dormant at the moment. I was talking with my friend Fiona Connor about this the other day. She does a publishing project called Laurel Doody. Both of our practices exist within an ecology of people, projects, industries, media. We were talking about it in the context of teaching. Publishing isn't my artistic practice but it's an important part of my world. Apparently even when I'm not doing it.
For the full interview in Worms 7, get a copy here.
Martine Syms Books
Borrowed Lady (2011)
The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2013)
BOON (2013)
Shame Space (2020)
Petra Cortright (2020)
Neural Swamp (2022)
The African Desperate (2023)
Martine Syms’ faves
(as mentioned in the interview)
Paul Beatty
Eve Sedgwick
Douglas Crimp
Fran Ross
Samuel Beckett
Adrian Piper
Chris Kraus
martine syms at sadie coles HQ
Make sure to catch Martine Syms’ show Present Goo at Sadie Coles HQ at the Davies Street gallery. A couple of words from the press release:
This September, artist and filmmaker Martine Syms presents Present Goo, featuring a group of new works – spanning film, installation, drawing and photography – at the Davies Street gallery in Mayfair. Syms’ new works encompass three distinct groupings, that each represent new avenues in her ongoing critical examination of narrative production. Distinguished by a versatile and research-based approach to her art, Syms’ multifarious practice draws on both personal and historical references that speak to the nature of contemporary life and human experience.
I Was Surprised to Hear Doom at Breakfast (2023)
In three new video works, Syms looks to surveillance footage and clips drawn from myriad sources to create nuanced filmic collages that coax a simulacra of psychological expression. In footage shot between August 2022 and June 2023, found materials are drawn from reactions and responses to messages sent via SMS.
In one film’s voiceover, the subjects’ express their desires as ‘wants’, referencing Sam Kogan’s 2010 book The Science of Acting; exploring the subtle shades of meaning and attitudes that can be invoked through language. Throughout, Syms consciously mediates the way in which technology – for example, the editing of the moving image, sound and its physical modes of viewing – may be deployed to evoke or alter the impression of perspective and character. The accompanying music scores are produced by Syms, with collaborators Emir West, Colin Self and Ben Babbitt.
Shown in dialogue with the video works are several enlarged photographic wallpapers and new drawings. By contrast to the intricacies of film’s technological processes and temporal outcome, these are created with relative immediacy, offering a series of intuitive vignettes that might equally communicate personal shorthand or a narrative in flux that speak to a wider public consciousness.
Drawn from Syms’ personal archive, the photographic wallpapers reveal the filtered fragments of images that relay the objects and minutiae of everyday life onto a monumental scale. Alongside these, a number of new drawings combine journalistic commentary, stream of consciousness phrases, diagrammatic illustrations and bold graphics recalling widespread commercial signage. Throughout her career Syms has used this vernacular style drawing and writing as a means to aid her creative process and approach to narrative construction. Shown for the first time here on enlarged scale, her new drawings reveal a diaristic palimpsest of narrative gestures, offering an insight into her ongoing practice.
Shame Space reviewed by worms
Arcadia Molinas
Around a month ago I read Shame Space by Martine Syms and was sent into a spiralling existential shake-up. The book, a gilded, bible-sized diaristic journey through three years of Syms life reflected some of my own likeness back at me and I didn’t like everything I saw. In Shame Space we witness Syms’ inner monologue, or the part she captures in writing, and encounter a repetitive, harsh, funny, horny voice, that is endlessly self-critical as she is trying to be self-accepting. The brutally honest stream of consciousness style reminded me of my own journalling when its at its best, capturing the world around me and glimpses of myself that transcend caricature, but also reminded me of the loops of negative thinking that dog me for years, constantly pestering me with thoughts about how I’m not good enough, fit enough, smart enough, etc. However the use to which she put all those personal conversations, namely sharing them in a book, was a gesture full of kindness to her readers and by extension to herself; an act of forgiveness (is that why the book is Bible sized?).
Film: The African Desperate
Photo by Pavielle Garcia
In your voyage through the world of Martine Syms, you simply can’t miss her 2023 film The African Desperate. The movie follows Palace Bryant during her first 24 hours after becoming a Master in Fine Art. Scathing and hilarious, long time collaborator Diamond Stingly delivers a class performance as the new Fine Art Master Palace Bryant. You can find an interview with Diamond in Worms 7 too. The film touches on many themes present in her visual and written work, like art, its functions and entourage, sex and desire, and friendships and human connections. Streaming now on MUBI.
