The haptic diary as a palimpsest
By Anabel Roque Rodriguez, curator and art historian
The project “Haptic Diary” of the Athens based artist and composer Esthir Lemi spans across two decades and incorporates many different facets. When the first initial thoughts started to emerge, the artist used the medium book to demonstrate kinship, she would gift one book “every year to my favourite person I met the year before”. The project became a vessel to think about the act of giving and taking. When we talk about artistic labor this exchange is sometimes hidden behind the economization of art, when works are translated into value and market prices. We often shy away to talk about monetary compensation in connection with creative labor as if money would somehow take anything away from the purity of creation. And yet, there is another very important core element in every artistic performance: a candid offer for a dialogue between the artist and the audience who can accept or decline that invitation. The artistic exchange here goes beyond monetary compensation, in particular when we look into the notion of gifting as Esthir Lemi emphasized in her thoughts, the exchange becomes then rooted in attention and emotional bonding. Amanda Palmer dedicated her whole book “The art of asking” on the many facets of artistic labor and the reciprocal exchange between artist and audience “It’s hard enough to give fearlessly, and it’s even harder to receive fearlessly. But within that exchange lies the hardest thing of all: To ask. Without shame. And to accept the help that people offer. Not to force them. Just to let them.”
Books, in particular in the form of more personal diaries, became a medium of choice for Esthir Lemi for a long time. She used them as portable studios during her travels and they became an important extension for explorations she was interested in. One can relate her practice in the haptic diary project to the palimpsest theory to gain fascinating insights. The term palimpsest comes from the ancient Greek term palímpsēstos translating roughly into having been “scraped again” . The term appears in textual studies referring to a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. A palimpsest becomes then a layering of different texts, approaches and developments. French scholar in literary research and philosopher Gérard Genette introduced his palimsest theory with a main focus on translations, and yet, there are some interesting connections to the work of Esthir Lemi, as she understands her own artistic practice as being a translator among different mediums and artistic forms. Genette presents a wide range to any possible form of transdoing and redoing a given text or narrative, including translations. In his wide theoretical approach I find his thoughts around the relationship these different layers of text build - what he calls hypertextuality - among the most useful ones to apply to the arts. For Genette every act of translation is a form of transformation and adds a layer of the translator’s very personal, subjective attitude or conception on how to shape a certain translation. When we come back to the work of Esthir Lemi we see that form of layered transformation in the haptic diary in particular.
From her initial exploration of the diary as representation of kinship, it became more and more an extension of her artistic practice. Over the years she expanded the notion of how she collects information in her diary for the “reader” to understand, away from a conventional textual understanding to a holistic experience incorporating sensory tools: light, different material that trigger certain sensual experiences through touch and sound as well as scent. The reader becomes an integral part as the translator of the material Esthir Lemi provides in her diaries.
In 2002 she experimented with incorporating lighting design projects and installation within the series. In 2014 she obtained as first European artist a Fullbright Schuman scholarship which granted her with the ability to extend her research in technology, social sciences and the arts. During this time her practice was enriched by another layer as she became interested in olfactory experiences through perfumes and how scents stimulate certain brain regions, in particular those areas related to memory. In 2018 she culminated her research and connected it with a certain level of storytelling. The Haptic Diary entitled “The Sound of Water” belongs since August 2018 to the art book collection of the Rikhardinkatu Library in Helsinki. The book works like a collage of materials providing tactile feedback and sensorial stimulation for the user in the context of water and weather creating a different approach to linear storytelling.
The narration in this book is no longer linear but really focuses on the layering and creation of a multi-sensorial experience. Coming full circle back to Esthir Lemi’s initial thoughts for a diary as an offer for dialogue, the haptic diary developed into a more inclusive offer focusing on books that are based on perception, other forms of communication patterns, and including a range of senses. She is able to use the medium book not so much for the textual meaning but rather to explore the ideas around the act of translation and meaning-making.