A limited edition digital download
available here
Plaeriet for Aether / Plæriet 4 æther by artist Emma Hislop is part of a series of works created during her 2020 residency with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. As artist in residence, she has explored the concept of a circular economy through her unique lens as an artist. Using her perspective and the threads of her practice, she has conceived a theatrical production that may or may not exist.
"Plaeriet for Aether" is the script of this work which combines metaphors of alchemy, mysticism, Jung, Macbeth, and circular economy schools of thought. Hislop evokes a mythology that she calls, "a semi-fictional creation story for futurists".
The physical one-of-a-kind text will exist only in its semi-reality as a physical book as object, printed with Book Works, London with ecological and biological inks and papers. This book crosses into object as it finds its home in a glass slipcase bed. Should the script become a production in the future the book/object regenerates as oyster mushrooms spawn inside, embodying the words, to be harvested and eaten by the artist.
The book/object becomes artefact or 'relic of a possiblity' alongside the props named in the script; Gurgling gut - a scientifically glass blown stomach, Glugous - a scientifically glass blown stomach glug jug, and Bevelled Perspective, a convex mirror. The series find their home to wait, their purgatory, in the no. 34 offices of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on the Isle of Wight. The Foundation become caretakers of the artefacts, a sub-archive space for a future legacy.