PAUL HAWKINS & JULIA ROSE LEWIS
POSTCARDS FROM MENTAL STATES (EXCERPT)
Paul Hawkins and Julia Rose Lewis began their collaboration by exchanging digital archives of travelling through America at times when they had both felt overwhelmed; a simple realisation that they tend to document difficult times in their lives. If ‘whelm’ originally meant to overturn, then a vessel is implied here. To overwhelm is to over-repeat turn a vessel. Turning over an engine gets a motorboat started, and yet overturning a boat pauses or stops the boat in the water. Exchanging their personal archives with one another felt like turning over an hourglass. The passage of sand back and forth and back and forth is a soothing and subtle reference to death. The pattern of sand grains runs on the hourglass…
Julia Rose Lewis is a poet, artist, writer and academic. Her research draws on her background in the natural sciences, philosophy of science, and medicine in order to create experimental and hybrid works. She is interested in digital and face-to-face collaborative projects. She has written or performed with poets, scientists, and chefs in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has contributed nonfiction, poetry, and transdisciplinary work to Serendip Studio since 2008.
Paul Hawkins works mainly in poetry, visual art, performance & publishing, co-running Hesterglock Press with Sarer Scotthorne. A Poem Brut-ist. You’ll find more at the HM&G website.