Artbeat
Issue 18, June 2020
Zine reviews writer Nick White
J, Some Reminiscences Of A Decade In Sunnyside Hospital (1976 to 1986) “One of the nurses said she used to do the same thing to her dead husband. It was a compliment, her expression of love.” This touching micro-memoir is a slight, simply photocopied account of the author’s time as an inpatient at Christchurch’s Hillmorton Hospital. J was institutionalized between the ages of 39 and 49, but was in and out of Sunnyside for more than thirty years, eventually being diagnosed with affective schizophrenia. A handful of small pen and ink illustrations sit between sparsely-penned recollections of isolation, violence, small kindnesses, and the eccentricities of the patients and staff. Though it’s a pretty rudimentary publication, the stark word processor type perfectly suits J’s subdued writing, communicating his fragmented memories of confinement in a deeply affecting manner. Distributed anonymously after its author passed away, it’s a compelling signal from an often ignored or overly glamourised demographic.
↑ J, Some Reminiscences Of A Decade In Sunnyside Hospital (1976 to 1986) (Cover)
Details: rideonsupersound.com Dormarch, FFFFM #1 “The ability of fleshward seeing heaving into being.” Another black and white photocopied gem, “FFFFM” is produced by Christchurch experimental recording collective Dormarch. Starkly typeset lyrics and felt-tip scrawlings are interspersed with crude collages of eyeless faces, cigarette ash, half-eaten food, incongruous magazine headlines, Nordic runes, a recontextualised takeaway menu, and a strange cut-up poem imploring the prime minister to “think of all
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