Office Kabbalah
Photozine
32 pages | 20 cm x 14 cm | laser printed black & white on corona offset 120g | unbound
A collaboration with carpark magazine #13

Electric House
Electricity showrooms for County Borough of Croydon by Robert Atkinson 1939-42
Home Office and Ministry of Home Security public basement shelter  1941-1945
Remodeled for the home office UK Border Agency  1990-2013
Listed Grade II Heritage Building   1995
msdm studio 2018-2019 

The past persists in the present in the form of a dream (participatory architectures, archive and revolution)

NEWSPAPERWORK
12 pages, colour, digital print,
 29cm ×38 cm 

outdated remains of a 20th century architectural utopia, a village developed as part of national housing project code-named SAAL, the experimental programme of peoples’ right to place emerged in the short experience of participatory democracy during the Portuguese revolution

Just around the corner from msdm studio, was one of Lea Valley wastelands, running east of Blackwall Tunnel Approach, between Gillender Street and River Lea Bow Creek.

24 pages, 20 x 28.5 cm, laser printed black & white on corona offset 120g
unbound + colophon insert
msdm publications

Just around the corner from msdm studio, was one of Lea Valley wastelands, running east of Blackwall Tunnel Approach, between Gillender Street and River Lea Bow Creek. Here, a few miles south of the Olympic site, lived homeless people in cars abandoned by the roadside, amidst massive accumulations of urban waste. Early October 2018 we all received news that our homes – from artists’ live/work warehouses to do-it-yourself street-level shelters- would be shut down. As construction teams started moving in, we found ourselves in the same side of ‘demolition road’. During the last days I kept revisiting the area for final images, always in the company of other visiting  photographers, attracted by the photogeny of the terrain vague, pulled by random beauty of excessive consumption and technological obsolescence.

Fujifilm instax camera photographs: constantine tsapaliras
Featured in issue 13 of CARPARK magazine: A STATE OF DISREPAIR 

Once a week, like a ritual regularly enacted to keep a friendship alive, Hugo visits me in the studio.  He always brings a selection of clothes -found, vintage and new-  from his personal archive. Things collected here and there, like a prayer skirt from Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a Charles Jeffrey Loverboy kilt, or a pair of Tabi boots from a collaboration between Maison Margiela and DSM. 

hhuugg1/2/3 + hhuugg remix
Photography & design: paula roush 
Modeling & styling: hugo santos
Creative direction: msdm studio, London 

HHUUGG1
36 pages 29.7 x 21 cm
Laser print on fabriano paper, cover and a selection of pages are  individually customised with acrylic ink monotypes

HHUUGG
Once a week, like a ritual regularly enacted to keep a friendship alive, Hugo visits me in the studio.  He always brings a selection of clothes -found, vintage and new-  from his personal archive. Things collected here and there, like a prayer skirt from Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a Charles Jeffrey Loverboy kilt, or a pair of Tabi boots from a collaboration between Maison Margiela and DSM. 
When he’s dressed up and ready for a shoot, we drift around the three storey building, looking for inspiration. For HHUUGG1 we grabbed a bunch of wild flowers just harvested  from the neighbouring park. For HHUUGG2 we followed a ray of  sunlight striking a mouldy wall. And HHUUGG3 came about whilst Strange Things Series 3 streamed in the Reception room’s smart TV.
We play. We improvise. There is never a plan. We follow a manifesto we wrote with our friend Travis outlining three mindfulness principles in the studio’s practice.
Be grateful for the moment unfolding around us.
Follow the bliss of infinite creative source.   
Assume   the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
The results keep surprising us. When we decided to share them through a publication, our friend Constantine suggested Hugo as title, in the tradition of photographers’ zines named after their models. Hugo is actually the modern german form, the old name Hugh meaning Mind-Thought-Soul. It is so wholesome that we settle for HUG. Not just HUG though, but HHUUGG spelled twice  [HUG HUG]. For  Give me  hug, are 3 magic words we say each other every time we feel pure joy and we embrace to celebrate. And also, in deference to the kundalini yoga mantra har-har that sounds like hud-hud.  The vibration of the heart that has the power to clear all blocks  preventing one from manifesting prosperity and success in the world. Namaste.    
paula 

HHUUGG1
36 pages 29.7 x 21 cm
Laser print on fabriano paper, machine sewn, cover and a selection of pages are individually customised with acrylic ink monotypes

HHUUGG2
44 pages 29.7 x 21 cm
Laser print on fabriano paper, machine sewn

HHUUGG3
52 pages 29.7 x 21 cm, laser print on fabriano paper, + 12 pages insert 29.7 x 21 cm printed on tracing paper
A selection of pages are individually customised with cut-outs and collages
Machine sewn

HHUUGG remix
19 pages 29.7 x 42 cm
Laser print on tracing paper
Inside portfolio case, with labels and custom print title

When mum called for help, I had no idea I would be coming home to a landscape of pills and hallucinations …the Hypnotic Highway…

HYPNOTIC HIGHWAY
16 x 22 cm / 108 pages / 33 photos with additional family photographs and media research, in 10 gatefolds, 5 folio sections and 1 photo insert (42 x 30 cm) / Coptic binding with linen thread and grey boards with sticker in case made of cardboard / black & white laser printing on recycled paper/ photography, text and design paula roush / First edition of 88 copies, published by msdm in June 2019 / £80 (incl. shipping)

Hypnotic Highway is a photobook about the hypnotics crisis. I travel regularly between London where I’m based and Lisbon, where mum lived on her own.  This time, when mum called for help, I had no idea I would be coming home to a landscape of pills and hallucinations …the Hypnotic Highway…The photos were taken between the Lisbon apartment and the hospital, witnessing the impact of Zolpidol, a prescription sleeping aid, on mum’s physical and psychological condition.

Zolpidol is another name for Ambien, a prescription drug whose devastating effects are well documented in countless case courts and press accounts.  Whilst I was looking after mum, I immersed myself in research, only to find out that her  G.P had made her dependent on the same prescription drug that killed Heath Ledger at 28 and wiped out five years of Eminem’s life  when he was in his 30s. The same drug that has transformed so many brilliant individuals into Ambien Zombies as they’re characterised in the press, people with no memories of their actions under the influence.

I read the report Living With A Prescription Drug Addict Mother Compelled Me To Fight Big Pharma and Win by lawyer Susan Chana Lask, on her Ambien Class Action I against Sanofi Aventis, the pharmaceutical company behind the hypnotics epidemic, and this helped me identify the politics surrounding the company whose logos  printed in  plastic bags I found lying around the house, with pills inside. I also was inspired by photographer Nan Goldin’s essay and collection of photographs detailing her addiction to Oxycontin and her campaign against Sackler’s family Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical company behind the opioids epidemics.

Mum’s physical body didn't survive the hypnotics crisis and the journal I had started before her passing as a record of our time together, comes out now designed as a photobook masked as a personal photo-essay, but really meant as another call for action. As Susan Chana Lask wrote so eloquently The doctors who killed my mother still practiced after her death.  They never asked how she was.  They are drug dealers.

paula roush, London 2019

Hypnotic Highway in
Ragusa FotoFestival
Curated by Steve Bison /Urbanautica Institute
Palazzo Cosentini, Ragusa Ibla, Sicily
July 26 – August 25 2019


Available from
 STET – livros & fotografias, Lisbon
Atelier POP-UP Palácio Pancas Palha, Lisbon

Each work in the Orphan series explores a particular approach to publishing the printed material in the Found Photo Foundation collection. 

Orphan #3 FLORAMCCALLICA

Flora McCallica, photobook with collage of orphan photos sourced from Found Photo Foundation. A set dated 1958 found in Lisbon flea market and a 1920s herbarium (Herbarium Britannicum) discarded by London Kew Gardens. 32 pages  38 x 26 cm, laser printed black & white corona offset 120 gsm.
More about the photobook work here 

Orphan #2 LISBON VERNACULAR 

Lisbon Vernacular sources from three domestic porn photo albums, found in the offices of Lisbon’s leading telecommunications company and currently part of Found Photo Foundation collections. More info about the photobook work here

Orphan #1 BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY 

BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY is a 4-part photo-essay with photographs from the Found Photo Foundation. Parts 1 and 2 (Bus Ride) comprise a sequence of 32 photographs in the form of twin books, split in images of double and single-decker buses. Part 3 (A Story) uses  text and image with reference to the genre of photo-romance. Part 4 (Transport Enthusiasts) elucidates the raison d’être of the overall work, as well as the context in which the photographs were taken, through correspondence with one of the original photographers.108 pages
4 separate books (B&W, duotone and colour). More on the photobook here

Newspaper work created for the exhibition And Then Again
curated by Ana Fonseca and Liz Collini
Pavilhao Preto Museu da Cidade, Lisbon 2010

8 pages, 500 x 350mm, silkcreen print on 120 gsm cartridge paper
printed in CPS studio, under the guidance of rui alves and joao prates
Edition: 90, numbered and signed
Published by msdm and Centro Português de Serigrafia

Cut and collaged by paula roush from a sample of Portuguese daily newspapers, in collaboration with nini (crochet patterns)  and additional material sampled from the essential Guide of the Portuguese Language for the Mass Media by Edite Estrela nd J. David Pinto Correia.

SOS:OK EMERGENCY KIT contains:
SOS:OK guide + SOS:OK biscuit

SOS:OK guide
40 pages duo tone 12cmx18cm 120gsm matte uncoated paper
litho printing: aldgate press
graphic design by ajdin basic and paula roush based on real life experience of being fed w/ emergency food during the wars in bosnia and portugal. 
typeface gyro designed by domen fras
publication date: october 2004 
edition:1000
texts: zeigam azizov, alice park and paula roush

SOS:OK biscuit

Nutritional biscuit designed for mock and real emergency food relief operations Contains: butter, sugar and flour, pre-cooked and compacted into biscuit form
Can be eaten dry (as a biscuit) or in the form of porridge made by crushing SOS:OK into drinking water, milk, tea or coffee.
Distribute either in mock emergency training operations (food relief, anti-terror exercises) to test readiness for emergency food relief operation or in response to real crises when food must be distributed for immediate survival needs.
Can be used by both collective structures (art galleries, museums, temporary feeding centres and community organisations) or by families and individuals. Developed for all situations of food scarcity, real and imagined.
Use as biscuit: Targeted distribution to emergency exercise volunteers or general distribution to displaced populations in humanitarian crisis. Dry ration for children in feeding centres, survival ration in case of total scarcity.
Use as porridge: Crush the biscuits into boiled drinking water or milk, cold or luke-warm and mix well. Use 200 ml of liquid for 2 biscuits
Should be eaten slowly, well chewed. 
Article to be justified: Reserved for simulated food relief operations or real emergency situations.
Note: SOS:OK Emergency Biscuit should not be used as a replacement for customary daily food, or in long-term feeding programmes if ordinary customary food is available.
1st edition (for Coleman Project Space) Valid from: 08-31/10/2004

Rositta is the main character in RS’s photographs, a companion and muse, whose images remained private until I arrived in Beirut, for a photographic residency at the Arab Image Foundation, in the summer of 2015...

Coffee table book edition
to be used for display on a table and entertain guests
waterproof paper protects from coffee marks and food stains 
care instructions: wipe clean only 
9 pages 28.5 x 40.5 cm each
85.5 x 121.5 cm assembled

ROSITTA (Hamra, Beirut, RS family home)
editing and design  paula roush
photographic source   EPS Collection/ Arab Image Foundation
published by msdm

In 2005, two dozen rolls of undeveloped 35mm film were deposited at the Arab Image Foundation. Stored in a bespoke wooden box each film roll was carefully wrapped in tin foil and enclosed in individually fitted drawers, carefully protected against Beirut’s dampness. EPS had found them in the family house, and brought them in for conservation and preservation. They were his uncle’s work, a Lebanese banker know as RS, born in 1904, who died of a heart attack when he was 54.
Rositta is the main character in RS’s photographs, a companion and muse, whose images remained private until I arrived in Beirut, for a photographic residency at the Arab Image Foundation, 10 years later in the summer of 2015. One day I asked the librarian if there were any seedy… sexy…photographs, any collection troubling the archive that I could work with. She brought two ring binders labelled EPS collection, with A6 size snap prints.  She didn’t know much about “the family” in the photographs, just that something was not quite right. She also warned me that it was “super private” (she whispered her words). The mysterious atmosphere in the photographs is beyond strict family conventions – more like a photo-roman noir including road trips, jet flights and secretive hotel room encounters. Was RS following a script? Or did things just happen as life unravelled itself in a glamorous pre-war Beirut and Lebanon? What looked like an unconventional  family album was something else, well beyond expectations.
pr

rositta explores the conventions of the photobook genre: using one single image it is designed literally for the table, a humorous twist of the "coffe-table book." The photograph is rendered bitmap, a process usually leading to the photo silkscreen surface a condition that  is eschewed here in favor of high contrast laser printing, and waterproof paper to protect from coffee marks and food stains. 

A field (of interconnected realities), or, The week of mash-up goodness : roman, paula roush & maria lusitano. 5 newsprint volumes, colour, digital print, 29cm x 38 cm in a grey-board folio with DVD. HD, 34'45" colour, sound Edition of 10. London : msdm publica(c)tions, 2012. 

Available at the National Art Library: V&A Museum London. NAL is a public reference library.  NAL pressmark: 809.AP.0002  Registration for a reader card

"Commissioned by Living Room 10 Auckland 2010, presented at ISEA 11 Istambul 2011, published for Booklive! London 2012"--colophon.

"A project started in 2010 as the re-enactment of the artist's book Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Goodness, 1934) by Max Ernst. This was the first collage-novel to explore the unconscious as a series of traumatic tableaux in the book format, and a pioneering work in the ontology of the artist's book. The new publication and accompanying video piece (2012) extend our ongoing research onto the study of the modernist collage-novel. The main subject of the work is now Valentine Penrose and her book Dons des Féminines (1951). This pioneering collage-poem is both a re-enactment of Une Semaine de Bonté and a critique of "patriarchal hegemony" evoked in Ernst's work. Its poetic depiction of female friendship, combining elements of neo-gothic and surrealist verse and collage make it into an early precedent of the 'écriture feminine' with its claim for a language of female desire and transgression."

"The video essay ... is a 36-minute narrative collaged with fragments of film, painting, illustration and literature relating to the female gothic. Its departure point is Dons des Féminines and the backdrop story is Valentine's travels in India in the company of Alice Rahon."

Field #1 is for the first day of the week, Sunday, and its element is The winged domino. It presents a selection of historical portraits where Valentine Penrose posed as artist’s model. It is subtitled The muse’s productive mimesis and the centrepiece is The wings of history that we consider to be a series of genealogical portraits with a disturbance of meaning.

Field #2, the day of the week is Monday and the element is Gay pulp (or the penny dreadful), mimicking Ernst and Penrose’s collage method that used cut outs from popular and alternative press. The example is Valentine and Alice become mothers, a fictional narrative that situates them in Lisbon in the 1980s, living together and trying to have a child by using a sperm donor. Vintage lesbian pulp is weaved with an intertextuality ‘a deux’ found in the writings of Valentine Penrose and Alice Rahon.

Field #3, the day of the week is Tuesday, the element is the collage-novel and the example is Dons des Féminines. Traces from Dons des Féminines are projected onto the skin, exploring the moment when the virtual page disappears into the body. It is subtitled A feminisation of meaning, and functions as a dialectical speculation on time, memory and the future of the book.

Field #5 combines the three remaining days. For Thursday, the element is The will of the work of art and this is represented with the text Ghostly edges: the uncanny and after life in Max Ernst’s collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté; For Friday, the element is Photography’s archival order and the example is The research scrapbook, a collection of visual material cut out and mounted on a four page spread. For Saturday, the element is The killing of aesthetic ideals and the example is the text Out there in the east: desire and gifts in Valentine Penrose’s collage-poem Dons des Féminines.

A field (of interconnected realities) or The week of mash-up goodness, (2010-12), Installation at BOOKLIVE! 2012.

Newspaper work
40 pages, colour, digital print, 38 cm x 29 cm with original text (12 pages booklet)
Edition of 100, numbered and signed

Areopagitica (Milton’s Nose) is a newsprint publication made of two earlier  publishing projects:  Russian Ballet Riot, a newspaper work about David Bomberg’s pamphlet Russian Ballet * and Areopagitica, a newspaper work about John Milton’s pamphlet Areopagitica. ** The resulting newsprint publication, titled Areopagitica (Milton’s Nose) blends collages from the pages of Russian Ballet Riot with collages from the pages of Areopagitica, plus additional documentation of the newspaper works with objects - clay noses created by St Paul’s school students- as a table installation at Milton’s gallery.
John Milton  (1608- 1674) was a student at St Paul’s School, and wrote Areopagitica in 1644 in defense of an unlicensed free press.
David Bomberg  (1890 – 1957) was a teacher at London South Bank University (Borough Polytechnic Institute) and published Russian Ballet (1919), inspired by Diaghilev'sBallets Russes for the company’s London performance.

* Published as part of the exhibition David Bomberg: Objects of Collection, at the Digital Gallery, London South Bank University, 10-12 December 2013
** Published as part of the exhibition Art in a Book Shell: A survey of artists working with and inspired by books, at the Milton Gallery, St Paul’s School, London, 26 February – 17 March 2015

Installation
table assemblage with newsprint publications Russian Ballet and Areopagitica with clay noses created by students at St. Paul’s School
80cm x 150 cm x 72 cm overall installation
Art in a Book Shell: A survey of artists working with and inspired by books exhibition
Milton Gallery, St Paul’s School, London 2015

Installation
table assemblage with newsprint publication Areopagitica (Milton's Nose) with clay noses
80cm x 150 cm x 72 cm overall installation.
Unbound exhibition, Herbert Read Gallery, University of the Ceative Arts Canterbury 2017

Photo-text composed of photographs of a collection of damaged photographs from the Al-Yom newspaper [Al-Yom was founded by Afif el Tibi, the father of Lebanese journalism, in 1937 and closed in 1975 when an armed militia stormed the building] currently stored at the Arab Image Foundation and text sampled from Elie-Pierre Sabbagh L’Ombre d’Une Ville, a book about Beirut in the aftermath of the war.

48 pages
21x29 cm
Laser printing black & white
on coloured paper Favin Le Cirque 80gsm
Loose pages on kraft card stock folder
Photographs (of photographs) and design: paula roush
Source: Arab Image Foundation / EPS collection
Text: Elie-Pierre Sabbag, from the novel L’Ombre d’Une Ville
Hand-bound & manufactured
Edition of 300 copies
Published in Beirut in October 2015 by Plan BEY
Based on research at the Arab Image Foundation and developed with Plan BEY in September 2015 during an artist residency at Makan, Beirut Lebanon

Al-Yom / Today (torn folded curled) is an experiment with the genre of the photo-essay, an attempt to work side by side with a collection of damaged photographs from the Al-Yom newspaper photo archives found at the Arab Image Foundation and text sampled from a book by the Beirut-based writer and architect Elie-Pierre Sabbagh.
The Al-Yom collection has been temporarily held in storage boxes at the Arab Image Foundation waiting to be catalogued and re-housed in safe archiving material, until it is ultimately digitised and made available online for access.
Al-Yom was founded by Afif el Tibi, the father of Lebanese journalism in 1937 and closed in 1975 when armed militia stormed the building giving the staff half-hour to leave the building. The collection was brought in by AIF former director  Zeina Arida who found it amongst Walid El Tibi’s remains after the newspaper’s editor passed away and the apartment where he lived was cleared out.

Al-Yom/ Today, loose pages over wall text, powered by vintage fan, 214 x114 cm approx, exhibition (installation view) Makan Space Beirut Lebanon , 2015

Further reading:
Marwan El Tibi
paula roush fait revivre les archives du journal Al-Yom
Al Ayam Magazine, Beirut October 2015

Hala Tawil
paula roush residency with the Arab Image Foundation
Report to the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut 2015

Alejandro Acin & Isaac Blease
Activating the Archive
PH museum July 24- Sept 24 2018

SCHISTIME (schist that has already been time) :  photobook by paula roush. 152 pages, 83 photographs, english text, 21 x 29.7 cm, hardcover, sewn binding, 160 gsm matte paper, ISBN 978-0-9553793-8-3, msdm publications.

SCHISTIME documents the memory of a place, deep in the mountain of Gois, in the centre of Portugal. The villages are almost deserted as the result of an authoritarian regime that planted the commons (a crucial resource for the locals’ cooperative way of life) with pine trees destined to private profit. This happened in the first decades of the 20th century leading to an abandonment of the area that still persists. Today the area is being rebranded as the schist landscape. The rebuilt houses stand side by side with the ruins, coexisting in a state of entropy, between decay and growth.

Link to introductory essay & colophon

BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY 

BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY is a 4-part photo-essay.
Parts 1 and 2 (Bus Ride) comprise a sequence of 32 photographs in the form of twin books, split in images of double and single-decker buses. Far from being static, the collaged sequence suggests a bus ride through past time and spaces. The momentum stems from the varying points of view the constantly changing street scenes, as well as from the way complete and partial images alternate and run on from page to page, leading the reader’s eye back and forth.
Part 3 (A Story) engages with the narrative and fictional potential of found photographs –  a different approach to the material – using  text and image with reference to the genre of photo-romance.
Part 4 (Transport Enthusiasts) elucidates the raison d’être of the overall work, as well as the context in which the photographs were taken, through correspondence with one of the original photographers; additional material such as the reproduction of the copyright stamps at the back of the prints, as well as a letter dated 1971 between a photographer and a collector further highlight the tangible nature of the collection.

Handbound artist’s book with four  volumes in a slipcase, pamphlet binding with sequential structure
4 separate books (B&W, duotone and colour)
108 pages
21 x 30 cm (Parts 1, 2 ,4) and 14.8 x 21 (Part 3)
Laser printed on Fabriano 120gsm and 200gsm (slipcase)
Edited and designed by paula roush
Text by Mireille Ribière, with Colin Stannard
Photographs from the Found Photo Foundation by Colin Stannard, Douglas F. Parker, G. Mead, J. G. S. Smith, Phil Picken, Robert F. Mack, T.E.S., T. L. Jones, and unknown photographers.
edition of 250, numbered and signed, released 2016
msdm publications
£80 (free p&p)

BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY

BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY marks the launch of the Found Photo Foundation’s Orphan Series. Each work in the series explores a particular approach to publishing the printed material in the Found Photo Foundation collection. Orphan #1 BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY is the result of the collaboration with Mireille Ribière, author, photographer and scholar.

Further reading:

Jan Baetens
A Book, An Endless Love Affair
Cultural Studies Leuven, 10 August 2016

Erica Carter
Comments on BUS-SPOTTING + A STORY  presentation
at the launch of Order and Collapse: The lives of Archives
Personal email,  April 2016

Selected for:

The Photo-text Award at Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, July 4- Sept 25, 2016
THE PHOTO-TEXT Award, supported by the Jan Michalski foundation for writing and literature, rewards the best work mixing images and texts, whether through the interweaving of text in the image, the preponderant place of writing within the dummy book or a writer's text that supports the photographic intention.

KALEID 2016 Oslo exhibition at the KHiO Bibliotek curated by Victoria Browne, National Academy of the Arts Library, May 2016

"Rigorosamente Libri" IV Biennale del Libro d’Artisti
“Strictly Books...”  IV Biennial of The Artist’s Book
Selected by Maddalena Carnaghi and curated by Vito Capone & Gaetano Cristino 
Fondazione de Monte Uniti di Foggia 
June 1- July 15 2019

Pink Press, series of 17 hand-made collages with cut-outs from portuguese gossip magazines (imprensa rosa or “pink press”) on vintage paper, 35 x 28 cm each,

Photobookzine edition: 21x29.7cm unbound, digital print, 90gsm matte paper, 32 pages, edition of 100, msdm publica(c)tions b&w: £8; colour: £16 (free shipping)

Found Photo Foundation/FPF, newspaper
published for the exhibition
Dear Aby Warburg: What can be done with images?
Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen
2 December 2012- 3 March 2013
newsprint, colour, digital print, 29cm ×38 cm, 36 pages
Essay by Tanja Verlak: "An attempt at exhausting an archive / Found Photo Foundation"
msdm publications
available here

FPF #1 contributors: Will Ainsworth, Louise Bargus, Amy Bolland, Emma Chandler, Bradley Chippington, Sam Farman, Daniella Fedele, Valeria Gaeta, Melissa Kasilian, Lucinda King, Alexia Michalos, Liam Mulligan, Joshua Murray, Martyn Odell, Carlotta Paolieri, Rebecca Prideaux, Ieashia Sealy‐Jewiss, Sara Soupdemots, Ida Stigard, Lou Stevens, Tom Valentine, Laura Voss, Brogan Watt, Harvey Brown, Daniel Paul Davis, Sophie Green, Marija Protokova, Jennifer Browne, Holly Dawson, Yoana Doycheva, Sophie Engledew, Hannah Marie Maden, Malgorzata Sokolowska, Michelle Vickerman, Wesley Wise, Cara Morgan-Butler, Natalie Dawes, Laura Moss, Andreas Obexer, Daniel Olivier, Ivaylo Karaivanov, Louise Mcmorran, Tibor Pischinger, Vladimir Studenic, Vivian Truong, Rachel Moss, Ayla Theydon-Payne.

The found photo foundation, set up to rescue work produced by professional, amateur, and anonymous photographers,  has a focus on photography found in flee markets and car boot sales from Lisbon and London, whilst containing additional photographs found world-wide.

The photographs are organised in informal thematic archives, and open to the public in workshops where the contents are made available for editorial and  publishing projects. More about the found photo foundation here

SCHIST | XISTO 

Photographed during Schistories | Xistorias, documenting the trail through the Schist mountains and villages of Góis, Portugal, for the performance-installation and walk developed in collaboration with the local community.

[row cols_nr="2" class="inverse"]

[col size="6"]

36 pages
14 x 20cm
laser printed black & white
canon ivory paper 80gsm
hand-bound, 3-hole pamphlet stitch

[/col]

photography and design: paula roush
edition of 100
released 2018
msdm publications

[/row]

Further reading:

paula roush
Paintball Field: Time that has already been time – a preamble in two chapters
Excerpt from the presentation of the project
Seminar The Uses of Time,Feminist University
Lisbon December 18, 2013.

Xistorias: Performance digital nas aldeias do Xisto- A Beira Serra em streaming direto
O Varzeense
October  30 2013

Manuela Ventura
"Xistorias" apresenta historias das aldeias serranas de Gois
Diario de Coimbra
October  30 2013

Sex’n’database: A Corporeal Taxonomy
Hand bound artist’s book with folded paper structure
29,5 x 126cm colour inkjet print folded onto 6 pages
accordion structure  (29,5 x 21 cm closed)
Epson 189 gsm paper and black boards (cover)
Editing and design: paula roush
Photographic source: Arab Image Foundation
msdm publications, 2015-2020

“Sex’n’Database: A Corporeal Taxonomy” was produced in the context of the research grant project “Found Photo Foundation: Sourcing from the Arab Image Foundation.” From June 22 to July 2 2015, Found Photo Foundation was in residence at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut. This residency was supported by the Centre for Media Research (London South Bank University). This residency was primarily focused at sharing archival methodologies used by the Found Photo Foundation in its exhibitions and publications and explore the potential of the Arab Image Foundation’s photographic collections as source for photobook publishing. Two of the Arab Image Foundation staff —Hala Tawil, archivist/librarian and Charbel Saad, collections manager— assisted me.

During the course of the residency, I also drew on the Arab Image Foundation’s online image database as source for an artist’s book. The work I created, “Sex’n’`Database: A Corporeal Taxonomy” is a photographic object comprised of creative data visualisation and a bookwork. Both showcase a series of experiments done whilst querying/queering the photographic database via textual keyboard input. To focus on a small sample, I utilised only search words related to sexualities and corporeality and documented linked photographic sources as they rendered live on screen. Words (taxonomy) and photographs (collection) were captured via screenshots, and collaged to showcase the operating system crashing on overload. The resulting “panels” evidence the tension between two simultaneous processes: taxonomy (cataloguing practices) and photography (photographic practices), whilst also rendering visible gaps in the building of institutional collections.

My next step was to investigate how screen-based photography transfers to the structure of the book. One single (126 cm) inkjet print, with a panoramic collage of screen-captures, was  folded into a six folds accordion. The case also has an accordion spine that sustains the book vertically and stores it as a six pages codex. This artist’s book sets up an interactive experience and the emergence of a quasi-narrative relationship between the screen-capture and the print translation. The accordion structure, allowing the reader to expand more than one spread at a time, creates a time space sequencing that contrasts with the flatness of the screen.  Both works have become media archaeology, for the image database has since then been replaced by an open access platform with a very different interface.

"Sex’n’database: A Corporeal Taxonomy is part of :  

Activating the Archive 
PH museum online exhibition, July 24- Sept 24 2018
Curated by: Alejandro Acin & Isaac Blease, 
Activating the Archive presents the work of 10 artists that explore and question the malleable nature of visual archives and the many ways that they can be activated through contemporary practices.

Membrana magazine 3
Cabinet issue: Collecting Photographic Images
Editor: Jan Babnik
Sex’n’database: A Corporeal Taxonomy features as the issue's commissioned photo- essay
Ljubljana, April 2018