Delaying Identity « Sarah Tripp's portfolio of work

Bik Van der Pol invited sixteen writers and artists to respond to aspects of their exhibition, It isn’t what it used to be and will never be again at the CCA in Glasgow and then published their images and texts in a pamphlet with the same title.

Delaying Identity is a short text constructed from a series of observations made at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and an interview with the Librarian Joan Stewart. The Mitchell Library is the largest public reference library in Europe and a place where the general public can read national and local newspapers. The Mitchell has many civic and social functions but the job sections of its newspaper archive have recently been in demand. Delaying Identity places observations made in the Mitchell within a fictional parenthesis and connects them to themes of economic recession, the professionalisation of identity and the preservation of radically political literature.

A New Business Development Manager, newly redundant but still striving to identify with business development as his vocational calling, despite the uncertainty he has endured at the hands of the recession, does not yet view the period he spent developing new business as an insensate chapter in his professional history (or the wintry economic climate as a darkly absurd chapter in impersonal history) as he exerts far too much pressure on the already-illuminated UP ARROW. His whole body weight, normally distributed evenly around a six foot four inches frame and between size twelve shoes, is conveyed forwards and rightwards through his hulk, down his forearm, along to the first phalanx of his right forefinger and onto the UP ARROW. Under this sustained pressure his phalanx has turned numb and white. The pressure applied to the UP ARROW does not make the lift arrive any faster. The expression on the New Business Development Manager’s face is rigid. The increasing duration of the pressing action, in addition to the rigidity of the gesture, starts to look (from a distance) less like an expression and more like a protest.

The Inside of an Ambulance