For Langstme, Kunsthuis SYB’s 2021 triennale, Ash Kilmartin revisited her research on klokkenstoelen, notes and memories from her residency in 2019. The resulting thoughts turn around the traditional production of the bells, their historical functions and folklore in the village life around Beetsterzwaag, Friesland. Dutch translation by Caspar Stalenhoef. Designed by Linus Bonduelle/Studio Lieneman. The book is accompanied by a sound piece which can be listened to here.

A hand-printed book of texts and chine-collé/drypoint etchings, written, typeset and printed June 2022 at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee. What to do with a hunger for life? How to share an appetite for the small beauties that appear after loss? How to keep some for later? Produced in response to the form of the cookbook, Dorothy Iannone’s 1969/2019 A Cookbook in particular. Ash Kilmartin is a visual artist and radiomaker from Aotearoa New Zealand who lives in Rotterdam. She works in sculpture, performance, writing, audio and print, among other things. From May 2020 to March 2022, she opened the doors at a shop called LIFE. Edition of 25.

“The Almanack of Breath tells the story of two demons, one of whom exists in Medieval texts and one who I invented as a contemporary rebuttal to the first, nasty one. Against Tutivillus, also known as the Recording Demon, I write the tale of a nameless creature, an invisible and inaudible allegorical figure of Listening. Against the punitive, eavesdropping and misogynist Tutivillus, she promotes an ethics of listening by collecting and donating different forms of breath to those who need it.

The text continues in the form of a month-by-month almanac, each of the twelve ‘Seasons of Breath’ holding advice on the type of breath—a gasp, or yawn or a sigh for example—that the reader should take care to listen for.

Illustrations of each Season, and the introduction, are by Collette Rayner. Many of the drawings she completed very quickly, as I read the text aloud to her.”—Ash Kilmartin, 2018