Skip to main content

Writing (MA)

Bryony Bodimeade

I am a freelance art writer and editor currently based in London. I received a BA in Painting from Wimbledon College of Art in 2013. In 2018-2020 I co-edited two books: 'Attention', an anthology of writing by RCA students, and 'Dust sheet embroidered snow', a collection of artist's writing, which accompanied an exhibition of the same name. I have co-curated a number of exhibitions, including Dust sheet embroidered snow, Project Gallery, Arundel (2019), Smoke Gets in Your Eye, Rural BAES, Near Lewes (2018) and Cavity, pop-up show, Nairobi (2017).

Contact

Website

Degree Details

School of Arts & Humanities

Writing (MA)

I am interested in articulations of relations, of the effects of particular circumstances, materials and dynamics on the possibilities of doing, thinking, being, feeling. I am interested in what writing can do to create circumstances, to open up, bring together, give shape, generate ground. To constellate physical and non-physical links between subjects in tension. Currently: representations in art, cinema and writing of relationships between people and animals: how these relate to geo-political histories, and might present ways of thinking about what family can be. 

Pieces I have written during this course have included an essay about the poetics of opacity and the conjuring of an emotional history of landscape in Zarina Bhimji’s film Jangbar, and an interview with Michael Armitage in which we discussed intimate and radical gestures in the painting of animals. I have also written about a playground and a Salvation Army playgroup, looking within these sites for ways to write inbetween structures and material and feeling.

Presented on this page are a number of extracts from my Final Major Project, 'If calves do cry,' - a 12,000 word two-part text comprising of a story, 'The Flood', and an essay, 'A Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment' - as well as a short story called 'Richie'. 

extract — from The Flood

extract continued — from The Flood

‘If calves do cry,’ is a two-part text: a story about a flood in 2000 in which many farm animals were drowned and an essay tracing a kind of lineage of affect in husbandry. The essay, called ‘A Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment’, moves between sixteenth century English agricultural writings and history; sociological and philosophical research into contemporary farming relationships; and feminist materialism and care theory, to explore the relational ethics, structural conditions, embodied doings and shape of feeling that can be found within the notion of husbandry. The flood narrative pays close attention to touch, proximity and perception, and centres around an act of collective involvement where, for a brief, tragic yet transformative moment, ways of relating and arranging are changed. Together, in the slip between husbandry and sentiment, the two texts work on feeling. By thinking about articulation, cultivation, suppression and exchange of feeling, about whose (who’s) feeling, they attempt to write in a way which is resistive to discourses steeped in both sentimental pastoral conservatism, and sentiment-denying logics of extractive productionism, and to search instead for different kinds of feelings and effects.

Medium:

Text

Size:

Long read
#agriculture#animals#care#cows#family#flood#husbandry#relationships#research#tragedy#work#writing

contents page & section 0. — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

sections 1.4 - 1.5 — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

sections 1.8 - 1.9 — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

section 1.10 — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

sections 1.10 - 2. — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

sections 2. - 2.2 — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

sections 2.3 - 2.4 — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment

section 3. — from a Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment. Images: still from trailer for Post Tenebras Lux, dir. Carlos Reygadas. Kiki Smith, Rest Upon, 2009. Free cows, Manchester, 2017.

‘If calves do cry,’ is a two-part text: a story about a flood in 2000 in which many farm animals were drowned and an essay tracing a kind of lineage of affect in husbandry. The essay, called ‘A Manual of Husbandry and Sentiment’, moves between sixteenth century English agricultural writings and history; sociological and philosophical research into contemporary farming relationships; and feminist materialism and care theory, to explore the relational ethics, structural conditions, embodied doings and shape of feeling that can be found within the notion of husbandry. The flood narrative pays close attention to touch, proximity and perception, and centres around an act of collective involvement where, for a brief, tragic yet transformative moment, ways of relating and arranging are changed. Together, in the slip between husbandry and sentiment, the two texts work on feeling. By thinking about articulation, cultivation, suppression and exchange of feeling, about whose (who’s) feeling, they attempt to write in a way which is resistive to discourses steeped in both sentimental pastoral conservatism, and sentiment-denying logics of extractive productionism, and to search instead for different kinds of feelings and effects.

Medium:

Text

Size:

Long read

page spread 1

page spread 2

page spread 3

page spread 4

‘Richie’ is a short, strange story about a cat, in a place, at a time. It was published in 'NOIT - 5: bodies as in buildings', which features a collection of essays, short prose and images written and edited by RCA Writing students as part of a collaborative project with Flat Time House. Illustration by Lucy Swan. Publication design by Emily Schofield.

Medium:

Text

Size:

Short read
25 July 2020
1:00 (GMT + 0)
Twitch

MA Writing: Short Provocations on Form

Form as a relationship
Read More

Previous Student

Next Student

Social
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
Royal College of Art
Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU
RCA™ Royal College of Art™ are trademarks
of the Royal College of Art