PaperWork : iilwimi lipsing

edited art writing magazine & event series

I like how it sounds a bit like wimmin. Wimmin-ing. It’s queer and i and i, like we. It’s lots. Very plural-y. And very very and so. Sounds like lips and ellipses and singing and kissing and something about size, like a thing that is small and growing. It’s funny how ppl get upset from internet comments about bad lipsing. Lipsing is verby it’s doing. It’s now. It’s painting the chin and cheeks so the lips stand out. It’s a tongue in another mouth. To go inside your body. The i’s are quite wavy i and i and i and i and i and i. It’s slow then it’s fast. I’m thinking about the shapes the sound makes my mouth. what words do with me. ii is air muscled out. When did I suck that air iin even? iilwimi lipsing is nice to say softly against the hand. Rushy.

Catherine Smiles and I co-edited and organised the most recent issue of PaperWork: iilwimi lipsing, 2018, with support from Daphne de Sonneville. iilwimi lipsing is about a politics of not-translating and listening with a feminist ear which can also be an eye, skin or fist. You can read the editorial which is published online as part of So remember the liquid ground.

Contributors

Ntiense Eno Amooquaye, Alison Ballance, Uma Breakdown, DJ Lynnée Denise, Darkie Fiction, Carl Gent, Harry Josephine Giles, Halima Haruna, Monika Kalinauskaite, Johanna Maj Schmidt, Taylor Le Melle, Anna Sadlon, Himali Singh Soin, Daniella Valz Gen and Frank Wasser. + Madeleine Stack, Katharina Ludwig and Chloe Chignell.

We held three nights of live art writing: performance, soundings and screenings at Serf, Leeds, 20 October; PEER, London, 24 October and Primary, Nottingham, 2 November.

Alongside each event we hosted open reading groups on the theme: iilwimi lipsing. We listened to Donna K Rushin's The Bridge Poem, 1981 and read Sara Ahmed's A Feminist ear (adapted from Living a Feminist Life). We spoke about ways of listening with our ears, mouths and fists; how listening can be active and an action. We put time aside to collectively respond to Harry Josephine Giles' 'living document', For the Record. Thinking about writing and editing with care as practices of listening. Participants were welcome to join the reading groups if they weren’t able to make the performance event. Reading groups: Leeds , 21 October; London, 10 November and Bromley House Library, Nottingham, 3 November.

PaperWork is a sometimes-annual art writing magazine and event series. We invite writing for performance and writing for page; or writing for a group together at a gallery or writing for a person browsing the magazine in a bookshop or reading in bed. We give each element (print and event) its own space, so the magazine is not a document and the events are not launches. We offer editorial support by and for artists who write as part of their practice. PaperWork is designed by Stinsensqueeze with Sarah Charalambides, and printed by Hato Press.