In The Open | Bethan Hughes & Caitlin Stobie

Bethan Hughes makes artwork combining digital processes and sensual materials. She uses 3D rendering software to create virtual images and animations which then migrate off the screen and eventually manifest in print, prose, publishing and audio-visual installation. Bethan is currently a practice-led PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. http://www.bethanhughes.com

Caitlin Stobie is a poet and doctoral researcher in the School of English at the University of Leeds. She is an editor of EPIZOOTICS! and has been published in journals including The Stockholm Review of Literature, Poetry & Audience, Plumwood Mountain, New Contrast, New Coin, The Kalahari Review, and ITCH. Her debut poetry manuscript was recently shortlisted for the RædLeaf International Poetry Award. http://www.caitlinstobie.com

Read These Leaves is an exquisite corpse of text-images and audiovisuals exploring posthumanism, animal studies, anti-anthropocentrism, digital (dis)embodiment, and materiality/tactility and the digital. Originally conceived as a feedback loop of inputs and responses by artist Bethan Hughes and poet Caitlin Stobie, the collaboration formed over several weeks and spaces in May and June 2017, and was collated using cloud software. Geographically dislocated yet always on-line, transdisciplinary responses to environmental and migratory matter(s) developed through the collaborators continual intra-actions. Importantly, the final pieces deny linear structure; instead, the body of work has been repositioned to expose uneasy contrasts between contemporary conceptions of places and spaces, departures and destinations.