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Fiona Glen

–– writer –– artist –– editor ––


~fresh work out with ~ CWYR zine, Strings ~

Projects
++
  1. Shapeshifter: Tracing the Cultural Octopus
  2. Mycoglossia with Nina Hanz – HVTN Press
  3. transient guardians – Magical Octopus + De Gids
  4. Meat Dreaming – Sticky Fingers
  5. Slimy, Sticky, Sweet – Aww-Struck + SPAM
  6. Ground Up – ICA x BBC New Creatives
++ OTHERS

Workshops, Courses + Programmes
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  1. HUM MURMUR MUTTER – Camden Art Centre
  2. Attendant Writing – LOT + Glengall Wharf
  3. Inside Your Mouth – Camden Art Centre
  4. Gut Feelings – TACO!
  5. Playing Houses – Flat Time House
  6. *immersions – Al Ma’amal
++ OTHERS

Poetry
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  1. Unflock – Strings
  2. Wriggler + Squid – Brilliant Vibrating Interface
  3. As Silica – Dark Mountain 24
  4. On Alberto Balsam – Broken Sleep anthology
  5. Boundless + Transmission – Pollination
  6. Yeast + Headtail – Tentacular Magazine
++ MORE

Essays 
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  1. Being is a tender strength – Prototype 5
  2. Leaves, Alive and Otherwise – Still Point
  3. Heal Underfoot – Simulacrum
  4. Turning – Letters to the Earth
  5. Welcome to Elsewhere – NOIT Journal
++ MORE

Experimental Writing
++

Mark

Image: research screenshot from TED Ed (linked)

transient guardians, guarding transience
+ vergankelijkheidswake


A project in two parts, inspired by oceanic phytoplankton and their dialogue with celestial bodies like the moon and sun. Spanning cyanotype prints, poetry, translation and drawing, this project began as an invited response to Hato Press’ prints – which had in turn been a response to a poem – and evolved into a collaboration with Miek Zwamborn. 

KNOCKvologan is an arts centre on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. For their Magical Octopus Sequel exhibition in 2021, I produced cyanotype prints and a long-form poem, ‘transient guardians’, in response to risograph prints by Hato Press and my own research into phytoplankton. From Winter 2022 into Spring 2023, I collaborated with artist Miek Zwamborn, one of the founders of KNOCKvologan. Together – across distance – we created a series of experimental and shared drawings that built off my poem and expressed our wonder at the unsung yet world-shaping power of miniscule plankton species, and their intricate beauty. You can find out more about both parts of this project below.

Part 1 – Magical Octopus Sequel Exhibition
 
Four cyanotype prints created with handpainted negatives, and a 6-minute textural audio track of a poem. Made on invitation for KNOCKvologan’s Magical Octopus Sequel exhibition, first presented from 21-28th November 2021 in KNOCKvologan Barn.

In the Magical Octopus Sequel, artists with connections to the West coast of Scotland were given sections of the award-winning Magical Octopus riso print book to ‘translate’ into new artworks. The Magical Octopus book was itself a collection of responses to images and writings drawn from the landscape and seascape of Mull. These photographs, maps, writings, and drawings had been sent to riso printmakers around the world, eliciting divergent, tentacular expansions from the same initial resources. You can see some of the pages here. For the Sequel exhibition I was invited to work with the eight pages produced by London’s Hato Press, who had created organic, wave-like imagery on a scanner bed in response to a poem by Miek Zwamborn.

Wandering outwards from Hato Press’s exploration of repetition in erosion, printmaking and tide cycles, I considered the relationship between cosmic bodies such as the moon, stars and turning Earth, and the microscopic bodies suspended in our seas. Inspired by the question of ‘who is guarding who’ from Miek’s original poem, my contribution was created in praise of phytoplankton: the collective of photosynthesising microorganisms on which nearly all life in our oceans depends. As the first ever beings to translate sunlight into fuel for life, phytoplankton were the original oxygenators of our atmosphere. To them, we owe our breath – and in concert with the sun that feeds them and the moon that moves the tides, these unsung caretakers of our planetary ecosystem currently retrieve as much CO2 from the atmosphere as all other plants on Earth put together. My spoken poem and cyanotypes combine mythological, cosmological and scientific imagery in an attempt to express this vast yet delicate system of interconnection.



Image: transient guardians, 1 of 4 cyanotype prints, Fiona Glen, 2021


Excerpts from ‘guarding transience’ text:

here, the sun and moon preside over equal palaces of time
and the sun warms kind through every house
and the sun has cycles swimming in its skin
equal light: equal dark: equal light

... 

pure sheer pellucid, they bask all through the photic zone
and burst:
bioluminescing swarming gorgeous eyeless glitter
teeming       microscopic     mirrorworld
of ribbons.fans.zigzags and stars
a gravitas of spun glass
blind to its beauty
gods under micrograph clarity
an abundance, giving and giving
the unstill moment, again and again

...

You can listen to the full textural poem recording in the Magical Octopus Sequel exhibition, here.


Part 2 – Living Drawings + ‘vergankelijkheidswake’, De Gids

In autumn 2022, Miek and I started exchanging drawings in which we played with the forms of phytoplankton and diatoms, and the language in my poem. We started drawings and mailed them between London and the Isle of Mull in batches, adding marks and layers on top of each other’s work to create shared images. Allowing ourselves to draw in new and freer ways, we tried to leave behind ideas of the ‘correct’ way to draw, and allow something more energetic and surprising to happen on our pages.  

These ‘living drawings’ were published alongside Miek’s Dutch-language translation of my poem by De Gids, on their digital platform, De Internet Gids (DIG). Miek and I had discussed the ‘translation’ of light into life by phytoplankton, and our own attempts to translate their nature across scales and into new forms, so it was fitting to translate the text into another tongue. Over two iterations of our article, we animated our drawing process alongside dual-language poetry, conveying the living and open feeling of our collaboration – a conversation through drawing.

Excerpt from ‘vergankelijkheidswake’:

telkensweergeslingerd
in de lege greep van de zwaartekracht
sterren en planeten kuis uiteen door gewicht en afstand
aangelijnde schepsels
draaien rond assen als mensen verrukt





Credits
 
Magical Octopus Riso was initiated by Jo Frenken, a Maastricht-based risograph printing expert and long-term collaborator of Miek Zwamborn and KNOCKvologan Studies. Participating creators and studios were: Bananafish (Shanghai, CH), Calipso Press (Cali, CO), Corners Studio (Seoul, KR), Endless Editions (New York, USA), Gato Negro Ediciones (Mexico City, MX), Hand Saw Press (Tokyo, JP), Hato Press (London, UK), Issue Press (Grand Rapids, USA), kabinet.studio (Antwerp, BE), Knust (Nijmegen, NL), Quintal Éditions (Paris, FR), Raum Press (Salamanca, SE), Risolve (Lancaster, USA), Sigrid Calon (Tilburg, NL), Wobby.club (Tilburg, NL) and the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL).

Contributing artists to Magical Octopus Sequel were: Filip Andel, Andy Crabb, Derek Crook, Seth Crook, Elaine Dempsey, Rufus Isabel Elliot, David Faithfull, Fiona Glen, Katie Harris-MacLeod, Monica Haddock, Mhairi Killin, Naoko Mabon, Sue Murdoch, Julia Parks, Giles Perring, Christina Riley, Brodie Sim, Jan Sutch Pickard, and Brian Thomas.