Emma Cousin selects the seminal novel 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre. Published in 1938, it describes Antoine Roquentin's existential crisis which plays out in the library, streets and cafes of Bouville, which literally means 'mud town'. In a world devoid of God, lacking in meaning, Antoine shrinks further and further inside himself as he struggles in his search for purpose, finally deciding the best use of his life is to write a really critical book. Like 'Nausea' I guess ! In our conversation, we focus on Emma's post-lockdown solo show at Goldsmith's CCA, though her ideas - from biology to geometry - and her approach to working across drawing, painting, curating and podcasting, encompass her whole studio practice. 

0:00-0:30 Summary of 'Nausea', fluid consciousness, isolation, observation, madness, body, dangling arms, a mouth as thin of a dead snake, spreading cheeks, vomit, nausea, seat as a dead donkey, natural states, the shortcomings of the autodidact, humanism, experiences, projectile vomiting, experimentation in colour, shift, change, the future, elitism, Rembrandt

0:30-1:10 Emma's art practice - contemporary dance, verbing reaching, showing an idea, actively working something out, bodily boundaries, breasts, skin, grounding of figures, 'New Dirt', colour, background as a surround,  'Wash your Hands' for Ambit magazine, wall drawing, social classes, 2D & 3D composition, drawing, drawing, drawing, 'Trigonometry', 'Flower Moon' animation for exhibition, failing meditation, the physical highs and memories thru gardening

1:10-1:20 other Emma stuff - Morandi, folk music, 'Bread and Jam', 'Chats in Lockdown' podcast, activism, what Emma's reading now!

EMMA COUSIN

emmacousin.info

BOOKS & WRITERS & THINKERS (get ready for a long list!)

Albert Camus 'The Myth of Sisyphus' 1942

Anne Carson

Derek Jarman 'Modern Nature : Journals 1989-1990' 2018

Eula Biss 'On Immunity : An Inoculation' 2014 

Elias Canetti 'Earwitness : Fifty Characters' 1974 & 'Crowds and Power' 1960

Edwin A Abbott 'Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions' 1884

Friedrich Nietzsche

Gregory Bateson 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' 1972

Honoré de Balzac

JG Ballard 'High Rise' 1975

Joanna Pocock 'Surrender : The Call of the American West' 2019

John Berger 'A Painter of our Time' 1958

Maurice Merleau-Ponty 'The Phenomenology of Perception' 1945

René Descartes

Richard Power 'The Overstory' 2018

Samuel Beckett

Sergei Eisenstein 'On Disney' 1986

Simone de Beauvoir

Thomas Mann 'Death in Venice' 1912

William Petter Blatty 'The Exorcist' 1971

OTHER ARTISTS

Amy Sillman

Andrea V Wright

Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom

Georgio Morandi

Hardeep Pandhal

John Cage, composer, artist, music theorist

Lindsey Mendick

Mark Morris, dancer and choreographer

Michael Tippett, composer

Paul Carey-Kent, art critic, curator

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

William Blake

PODCAST

'Chats in Lockdown' hosted by Emma Cousin