What are we doing when we write about images? In a sequence of five texts comprising lyrical and essayistic writing, visual poetry, and text-art, What R-d Rose mulls over this question.
The linguistic mode of ekphrasis—describing a visual work in words—serves as theme as well as means, in a series of lyrical and analytical ventures: an ekphrastic search for the picture in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; riddling text-image in the company of Gertrude Stein’s roses; a collaborative exchange on the mythic imagery of Leda and the swan; ekphrasis as navigation; drawing writing through writing lines.
Arguing that text and image cannot be separated, Imri Sandström turns to artist-writers such as Susan Howe and Etel Adnan, the poetics of Édouard Glissant, and the postcolonial, queer writings of Sara Ahmed. What R-d Rose is an astute and lyrically charged examination of connections, differences, and indebtedness between the visual and the verbal, and the possibilities of writing the image.
Text: Praun & Guermouche, publishers of the book
Program
4.30–5.30 p.m.
Presentation of the book and reading by Imri Sandström. Short presentations by our discussion participants Cathryn Clasto, Olle Essvik, Alexandra Fried Magnusson, and Nils Olsson, who will draw on their respective fields and interests, and talk in relation to the book and its topics. A short discussion with the audience will follow.
5.30–6 p.m.
Mingling with refreshments
The event is free and open to everyone, no registration required to participate!
The research project Writing Visual Relations: The Possibilities of Transdisciplinary Ekphrasis has been running since 2022 and is funded by the Swedish Research Council.
The conversation will be in English.
