Oracular Transmissions reviewed in Burlington Contemporary

Oracular Transmissions by Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby

by Susannah Thompson

The physical heft and lofty title of Oracular Transmissions holds out a promise of great and grandiose things. What are the oracular statements such a tome will reveal in an age of crisis and uncertainty? Is this book, published in Los Angeles, a mind-body-spirit book repackaged as art? It is a little of both – this expansive, weighty publication of some four hundred pages is an extension rather than a documentation of three projects by the Lebanese artist, writer and poet Etel Adnan and the American interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Lynn Marie Kirby. While maintaining their solo careers, the artists, who are also close friends, have collaborated on a number of projects since 2002. As a work in its own right, Oracular Transmissions marks a further collaboration, in which Adnan and Kirby are joined by the poet and translator Denise Newman, the writer and curator Jordan Stein and, perhaps most compellingly, the graphic designer Brian Roettinger, whose design and typography synthesises different elements of the book and (as Stein notes in his introductory essay) ‘both records and reimagines’ (p.10) the projects Back, Back Again to Paris (2013), Alhambra Exchange (2016) and Transmissions (2017), which are presented in reverse chronological order. 

Collaborative drawing, by Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby. 2017. India ink on paper, 20.3 by 25.4 cm. (Courtesy KADIST, Los Angeles).

Adnan and Kirby have consistently worked with text and writing, having created multiple publications as part of their interdisciplinary practices. Roettinger’s design translates their three projects into a holistic, recomposed work, which subtly signposts where the reader should pause and reflect on each distinct body of work through the use of colour, font, layout and orientation. Each section is further interspersed with a series of poetic prologues by Newman, which give insight into how and where the work was made: 

They meet in English Sausalito. They meet in French Paris. They meet disembodied by email and phone. Long ago they met under the linden trees, passing a camera back and forth, drunk on friendship.

Later, Lynn disordered the images live on stage as Etel performed her poem pacing back and forth. Now they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, heads bent over a sheet of paper, making wide brushstrokes, talking about what to do for the KADIST show.

Read the full review in Burlington Contemporary here.