Predictive Text: Trancing the Third Millennium III (2024) @IBA.ART
Showing at International Body of Art's INTO THE FLUX, Livesey Exchange, Ledbury Estate, Peckham until Saturday 12th October (closing performances and special viewing).
Predictive Text: Trancing the Third Millennium II (2024)
In 1990 I took a 4-day continuous Greyhound bus trip from Port Authority bus station, New York, to L.A., California, writing throughout using streaming consciousness. Inspired by Kerouac’s On the Road (1956), Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) and Cage’s Primitive (1942), Predictive Text #2 (2024) is my latest exploration of fiction and astrology prompted by the astrological chart of 01.01.3000. My text practice combines analysis and channelling in an immersive performance of thought, image, sound, and typing.
Predictive Text #2 is a 1 km scroll and the narrative responds to the dawn of the Third Millennium at 00:00:01, on 01.01.3000 on Kiribati Island, Micronesia Region, Central Pacific Ocean.
Predictive Text #2 is a 1 km scroll and the narrative responds to the dawn of the Third Millennium at 00:00:01, on 01.01.3000 on Kiribati Island, Micronesia Region, Central Pacific Ocean.
Predictive Text I (2024)
Predictive Text #1 (2024) is an automatic writing installation of 20 m of tracing paper typed and installed in Wilson’s 1991 Campervan in various locations starting with outside the Judy Chicago exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. Predictive Text is typed on multiple 20 m continuous rolls of A3 on a modified 1976 wide carriage smith Corona Electric Typewriter, this installation expands Wilson’s exploration of fiction and astrology combining analysis and channelling in an immersive performance of action typing.
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Monument to Sleep: the Age of the Insomniac Plastic People…(2024) extract of text
The following extract inspired by the 2066 astrological chart showing the ingress of Pluto into Aries was written as a streaming consciousness text then copied onto the sculpture, Monument to Sleep (2024). Monument to Sleep: The Age of Insomniac Plastic People: When AI colonised Humans, then didn’t (2024) is an evolving installation contemplating AI influenced evolution of humanity. Originally the bed was horizontal and on the floor speaking to the necessity of laying down our heads and bodies to achieve full REM sleep. This installation situates the bed on the perpendicular, foregrounding the inscribed text created by the character of anonymous astrologer long dead. This is part of a longer essay and film I'm currently working on, creating a world and conditions in which AI colonised humans, then didn't.
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PLUTO INGRESS TO ARIES – JUNE 17 2066 – LONDON 1700 GDT THE YEAR 3,000. |
PLI SELON PLI (FOLD BY FOLD) 2023
This is my magnus opus writing project, my Kerouac homage even though Kerouac did not actually type his On The Road manuscript onto a continuous roll of tracing paper. Instead he typed the manuscript then copy typed it onto sheets of architectural drawing tracing paper and stuck them together. There were good reasons for this approach, one being that the roll of paper (quite heavy!) needs to move in tandem with the typewriter. It also wasn't uncommon in typewriter days to use carbon paper to make a copy of the manuscript. Here, I have joined together 10 sheets of carbon paper inserted beneath the continuous tracing paper scroll. My reason for doing so is technical - my typewriter ribbon is bone dry and there are no replacements cartridges available in this country or anywhere else other than in California but is over 50 years old so not holding my breath in hope of ink. Despite the complex basis of this practice I am on fire with writing, writing about the same subject Kerouac did when he wrote on Buddhism (dharma) to Boroughs. This is my homage to Kerouac's absolute passion for spontaneous writing. Editing has its place for sure, but the continuous intuitive flow of text and type as marks and breath blows me away. Performance Margot Wilson and Smith Corona 8000 Typewriter Filming by James Merrell
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After we eat... (2024)
In our contemporary world, the act of eating has become intertwined with a myriad of complex issues ranging from environmental degradation and societal responsibility, to the earnest pursuit of colonising space. "After We Eat," a practice led visual art project, contemplates a future archaeological landscape set on a 2074 dystopian earth. Through a speculative narrative that unfolds against the backdrop of a post-capitalist world, abandoned by the global rich and tech-billionaires bent on the colonisation of other planets: "After We Eat" invites viewers to reflect on the legacy of petroleum-based packaging and treatment of our home as a garbage vessel. Inspired by Chris Marker's filmic approach of compiling stills, the video uses disrupted visual storytelling and spoken word poetry to glimpse a possible future where the unbridled pursuit of capital growth results in both the unprivileged and our planet being cast aside. At its core, the project is a visual philosophy and forensic poetics both as method and outcome that use the stable image to convey the unstable world.
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Travels with the Anxious Nerve (2022)
Tantric performance lies at the centre of my research and creative practice. It is steeped in ancient and occult concepts of elevation and levitation created by dynamic spiral forces found in DNA, kundalini energy, and Yeats’s Thirteenth Cone. The spiral tightens, creates a torque that shivers arrests floats. The spiral twist opens closes expands contracts multi-directs the sensory flow of text and line to page. The gap between hand and line is an eternal folding fold. My RCA final major project is about a motorcycle road trip to a funeral 45-years late. The project re-imagines death as a material continuum, a rock metamorphosis, a circadian cycle, and the glimpsing of agency in fear. This account of my brother’s death reflects my marginal involvement in his death. Setting out on this pilgrimage I was determined to meet the road and encounters on their terms. On reflection, the pilgrimage mirrored my experience of Robin’s death. Minimal external explanation, maximum silent chaos and metaphysical diversions, some useful, some not.
Banner Image: Riding the Picos, Spain, 2019. Photograph by James Merrell. |
Ode to Number 6
Ode to Number 6 is an ode to ‘The Prisoner’, the 60s Cult TV series about abducted protagonist Number 6, and his relationship with his ever-changing chief administrator Number 2. At the time of writing, I am number 260036, please remember this number throughout because soon, I am told, I am to return to my given lettered name. This letter was a philosophical protest to numbers for names. Specifically, the RCA’s adoption of using student ID numbers as the email address. A college wide protest resulted in the return to student names. Writing by Margot Wilson (MA Writing 2022). Performed by Greer Dale-Foulkes (MA Writing 2021). Read more In Collaboration with: Greer Christina Greer is an actress, vampire slayer and writer based in London.Medium:Video Essay |
Just Speak Nearby: Pitt Rivers/RCA Collaboration (2022)
Essays 2016-2024
Visit Academia.edu to read all published essays. Click images to open texts.
Writing Biography
Margot Wilson is an artist and writer living with her partner on a houseboat in the outskirts of London. She read philosophy at Birkbeck and Glasgow and writing at Sheffield and The Royal College of Art. Margot’s work is obsessed with horses, death, levitation, vicious circularity, and numbers being kept in their place. Her plays have performed at The Cockpit Theatre (London) and Drama Studio (Sheffield) and her poetry is published in Route 57, The Mechanics Institute Review, Bare Fiction, Prometheus Dreaming. Prior to the pandemic she also performed at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York. As a self-taught artist she has created and exhibited sculpture and paintings since the 1980s, including: The Mall Galleries, Blenheim Gallery, Thrown Contemporary Winter Exhibition, and in 2021 her work received a Special Jury Mention at Art&Cavallo Exhibition in Verona, Italy. Following on from the MA Writing programmed Margot received an A* Distinction in Fine Art on the RCA's Graduate Diploma, and is currently completing their MA Contemporary Art Practice.
Chart Poems: Astrology and Poetic Interpretation (2016-2019)
Appearances: Redacted Text Poem (Visual/Spoken/Music) Soundcloud 2020
Primo Atlantis: In the First Place (2018) Soundcloud: Spoken Word, Music
Collaboration: Margot Wilson, Kalvin Page, Marcus Herne (Spoken Word and Music)
Listening to my words performed by others helps me shape the sound, expand the space while centering the intent of the expression at the heart of projection. I am currently experimenting with mouthpieces and redacted text.
Pollutions: Two Poems about Contamination of Plastic and The Pill
Reincarnation #2: Redaction