Ink Sack (for Bridget)

This contribution deploys experimental writing as part of a visual art practice to take up themes of embodied practices of writing, writing as a practice of care and writing/reading as affective, immersive flow. It weaves a personal account of the loss of my Ph.D. supervisor and friend, the curator, writer and scholar Bridget Crone into liquid experiences from my past, and quotes from Bridget’s text ‘Deep sea squid: A phase problem’ (2013) to consider writing as reparative in the face of grief. My writing method both refers to liquidity and is liquid in form, water and ink flowing across boundaries of different bodies, places and times. ‘Ink Sack’ also reproduces the tentacular reach of Bridget’s influence: her ‘Deep sea squid’ text was the inspiration for the artist Anna Barham in her 2013 work Double Screen (Not Quite Tonight Jellylike), which Bridget then responded to in her essay on Barham’s work Talking Squid (2013).