Sophie Mak-Schram
Towards a Myth of Walking Backwards
“Many things happen concurrently,” begins the fourth text in our series of original texts commissioned alongside Artes Mundi 10. Sophie Mak-Schram, a primarily Cardiff-based artist and researcher who lives and works peripatetically, draws on queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman’s notion of “temporal drag” and past encounters with the work of AM10 artists to anchor a polyvocal contemplation on how systems of recirculation produce our embodied, sited encounters with artworks. Encompassing reflections on subjects as diverse as Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s installation at documenta fifteen and the Zapatistas’ pandemic-era “reverse invasion” Journey for Life through Europe, the essay seeks to “talk honestly of how things get to where they are, and what epistemologies […] looking sustains.”
Digwydda sawl peth ar unwaith yn y pedwerydd ysgrif yn ein cyfres o sgwennu newydd wedi’i ddatblygu ochr-yn-ochr ag Artes Mundi 10. Tynna Sophie Mak-Schram, sy’n byw yng Nghaerdydd ac yn gweithio ledled Ewrop, ar gyfarfyddiadau blaenorol â gwaith artistiaid AM10, a cysyniad y theorïwr cwiar Elizabeth Freeman o “temporal drag,” i angori ystyriaeth aml-leisiol o’r systemau sy’n cynhyrchu’n profiadau o fod yn gyrff yn edrych ar gelf mewn llefydd ac amseroedd penodol. Gan fyfyrio ar destunau mor amrywiol â gosodwaith Nguyễn Trinh Thi yn documenta yn 2022 a thaith hanesyddol y Zapatistas i Ewrop yn ystod y pandemig, mae’r ysgrif yn ymgais i siarad yn onest am sut mae pethau’n cyrraedd lle maen nhw, a’r sydd yn y fantol yn y weithred o edrych.
In this room at Amgueddfa Cymru, I am trained and willing to be moved, and appreciate leaning in to peer at the glass. This glass was formerly evidence or remains, and has now become conceptual ruin and poetic form. I feel the tension of this material kinship and its hidden material costs.
Sophie Mak-Schram cares about how a diverse ‘we’ (comes to) know and what forms knowledges take. She works with others, both as method and as form. Spanning experiential education, inclusion work, collective practices and artistic research, Sophie convenes, writes, reads, makes objects to learn with or listen to, and performs. @makschram
Mae gwaith Sophie Mak-Schram yn gofyn sut daw gwybod/aeth casglebol i fodolaeth, a’r ffurfiau gall gymryd. Mae’n gweithio gyda pobl eraill fel dull a ffurf. O ymchwil creadigol, addysg-o-brofiad a gwaith cynhwysiant, mae Sophie yn ymgasglu, sgwennu, darllen, perfformio, a chreu gwrthrychau i wrando arnynt a dysgu ganddynt. @makschram