SMALL DIVINITIES. A BOOK WRITTEN  BY BARRY G. NICHOLS
PLACE EDITION 2020

A5 saddle-stitched chapbook,  with essay and incantations, printed on finest Tintoretto Gesso stock, and accompanying CD by Luigi Turra

Another tributary of The Land Incanted series of text-works, Small Divinities further extends the themes set down in the last edition, They Shall Not Rise Until Light Shines Upon Them.
Located on the remote Bronze Age site at Flag Fen, in Cambridgeshire , UK,  this project takes as its focus some of the archaeological records of artefacts found bequeathed to the waters at Flag Fen, and juxtaposes them with poetic ‘incantations’ accompanying my own offerings or ‘placements’. Made from natural detritus, these placements are secreted in remote locations and left to resonate with the environment, creating invisible links between object and place. In a similar vein, the ancient Bronze Age artefacts were deposited into the fen waters for reasons unknown. Were these merely the rubbish and litter of a decaying culture, or ceremonial objects designed as oblations – offerings to some unknown deity? More often than not,  it is the smallest, most discrete objects and gestures that resonate in the most potent ways…

….Inside the bag were the most extraordinary objects: a piece of amber bead, a small conch shell -and the broken piece of a larger one – a small cube of wood – a flint flake – a number of different dried roots –  a piece of bark – the tail of a grass snake – a falcon’s claw –  a small, slender pair of tweezers – a bronze knife in a leather case –  a razor with a horse’s head handle in a case bound with a leather thong – a small flint knife stitched into an intestine or a bladder –  a small inch and a half  long leather case in which there was the lower jaw of a young squirrel – and a small bladder or intestine containing several small articles. ..“

“The Mound People can have no doubts that the priests or chieftains, with the help of their amulets,  had power over sickness and hidden dangers . How, and for what purposes the use of  many different things had been used, we do not know, but faith in amulets for bringing happiness or warding off evil, and in their powers of healing and witchcraft, persist to the present day, and may perhaps have their roots in the Bronze Age. “

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Accompanying these written works, a CD of music by Luigi Turra

“For the first time, Luigi Turra’s music is composed and performed by a small ensemble formed by Violin, Viola and Cello.
Like fine dust, these compositions touch the surfaces of time to recall a past that is projected into the present.
What we hear is the sound of old deteriorated photos observed in a room by the light of dim candles.
Among rarefied refractions and signs difficult to decipher these compositions seem to crumble during their development,
ancient and broken mirror or through the misty outlines of a landscape near the ocean.

What emerges from these shapes are the motionless movements of Small Divinities.”

Composed / Remodelled by Luigi Turra in Venice, Schio (Ita) and Labin (Hr)
Performed by Marta Norbiato (Violin), Pietro Manea (Viola), Valentina Battaglia (Cello)

No Digital Download / No Bandcamp / Physical Object only

PREVIEW

Artemisia presents Small Divinities, a new art language, an hybrid work born from the collaboration between the writer Barry G. Nichols and the composer Luigi Turra.
Limited edition book + CD, distributed exclusively in the UK and Italy, at our gallery.

We met and interviewed the artists to learn more about their work.

Barry G. Nichols interviewed by Belinda Guerriero

SMALL DIVINITIES, WHY THIS TITLE?​
The title emerged as I was writing the pieces for this project.
I played around with several titles that referred to small, sacred things. Divinity implies “sacred”, or “god-like”, and I believe that the small offerings made at Flag Fen, and my own natural objects possess some form of divinity.

WORDS AND SOUNDS…HOW DID THE COLLABORATION WITH LUIGI TURRA START?
​I have known Luigi’s work for many years and when the original ideas for Small Divinities came about, I thought it would be interesting to pair my words with sound, rather than images, creating something more evocative and atmospheric. Luigi was an obvious choice, as I was looking for something that would last approximately the length of time it takes to read my words.. a kind of  ‘backing track’ to my incantations which would recall ancient and sacred energy.

YOUR WORK GENERATES VISUAL AND MENTAL HORIZONS IN WHICH IT IS POSSIBLE TO IDENTIFY ON AN EMOTIONAL AND SENSORIAL LEVEL, IS THIS ASPECT INTENTIONAL?
Yes, very much so. Our sensory and perceptual mechanisms have, over many millennia become dulled and less effective. We tend to ‘tune out’ much of the sensory input that we are bombarded with every day, and in many cases, for good reason.. but I believe with that comes a great loss of contact with the natural world. In ‘tuning out’ we also miss vital and somewhat essential connections with nature that we may have once had. In the ancient past, our audible, visual and olfactory faculties were, I’m sure, more highly attuned to the rhythms, cycles, and language of nature, as there were few other distractions, other than of course, basic survival.
My first sequence of words was called Laments and Incantations.. laments because of my deep sense of destruction of the natural world and our place in it. Overall it is my personal mission to re-enchant the landscape, and bring attention to it in hopefully unique and interesting, possibly even challenging ways. The first step to transformation is transformation of the self.. this then transmits to others, and creates a special bond, an energy for transcendence to higher forms of thinking and existing.
The fact that we exist between two states indicates to me that we are highly privileged to exist in this form, and we have an opportunity to do something very special and significant…my work is essentially about establishing critical connections between mankind and the natural world, and hopefully bringing the two much closer together in a more transcendent, magical,  and creative way. 

WHAT CULTURAL ROLE DO YOU GIVE TO YOUR WORK?
This is a very difficult question to answer – I have always actively denied my position as a ‘poet’…Yes, there is a form of poetry in my writings, but I prefer to call my textual work ‘incantations’ as they suggest something much deeper, more in tune with my overall “mission” if you like. I hope that I act as a resonator, or an access point for those who think in similar ways, or perhaps as a way of changing people’s perceptions, challenging orthodoxy and the status quo.. I think that is the role of many artists, writers and musicians, to create access points to higher fields of thinking,  and in tune with intuition and universal forces.

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Luigi Turra interviewed by Belinda Guerriero

VISUAL AND SOUND. HOW DID YOU WORK FOR SMALL DIVINITIES?
The compositions created for Small Divinities are essentially “non-visual” places or non-places of sound. My music doesn’t have narrative characteristics because it doesn’t try to convey a single message but it rather trigger a sort of stratification including various kind of sensations without necessarily having to describe something.
In this specific work instead of operating by subtraction (as it usually happens in my work)  I operated by disjunction or even more by rarefaction, because it seemed interesting to me to develop an extremely suspended time / space condition.
It is as if I had let layers of dust lean on the instruments scores, so to reveal the idea of ​​a place that in fact is essentially a non-visual memory. From my point of view one could even speak of imaginary geographies which in some way possess an archaic emotional quality.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF LITERATURE AND WORD ANALYSIS IN YOUR RESEARCH?
Certain 1900s literature occupies a truly important space. Not only the word analysis but often also the absence of the word. For example, the absence of the word in Cocteau’s “The Human Voice” has often a devastating power.
This kind of literary absence really influenced me as a musician.