J. R. Carpenter & Barbara Bridger

Artists’ Statement:
“Notes Very Necessary” is a collaboratively authored web-based multi-media essay by Barbara Bridger and J. R. Carpenter that aims to addresses climate change by remixing images, text, and data generated by centuries imperialist, colonialist, capitalist, and scientific exploration in the Arctic. The title is borrowed from an essay authored in 1580 by the Englishmen Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman offering detailed instructions on how to conquer new territories by taking copious notes. In 2015 Barbara Bridger and J. R. Carpenter attempted to follow these instructions by making, finding, and faking notes, images, data, and diagrams online and reconfiguring them into a new narrative. The result is a long, horizontally scrolling, highly variable collage essay charting the shifting melting North.

Bios:
Barbara Bridger’s writing has been published, performed and screened nationally and internationally. She taught at Theatre and Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts between 1991-2010 and is currently working as a freelance playwright, director and dramaturg in Stroud, UK. Her work an be found at https://independent.academia.edu/BarbaraBridger.

J. R. Carpenter is a Canadian artist, writer, researcher, performer and maker of maps, zines, books, poetry, short fiction, long fiction, non-fiction, and non-linear, intertextual, hypermedia, and computer-generated narratives. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Eccles Centre for North American Studies at the British Library. She lives in South Devon, UK. Her work can be seen at http://luckysoap.com.