Emily Johnston: ‘and the more recent ones’

and the more recent ones is an experimental publishing project spanning image, text and sound, established in 2019 and produced by Emily Johnston in collaboration with Cillian Finnerty and Irene Mansoldo. The project is a study of Johnston’s quotidian surroundings between 2019-2024. The print publication comprises a series of texts and analogue photographs. The language of the book is further interwoven with a soundscape by Finnerty, creating a narrative world inhabited by the text in an alternative manner to the page. The book ebbs between rural and urban contexts explored through playful punctuation and rhythmic arrangements of text. The writing style is diaristic and poetic, non-functional and experimental. Profound thoughts, daily chores and borrowed phrases are stacked together to create word tableaus. These word paintings are arranged to depict the multifaceted aspects of daily life and the many stimuli occurring simultaneously with each other. The text is presented in varying alignments across 71 pages. This expansive publishing project brings together our sensory experiences of the world, posing questions about how material objects relate to the act of listening and witnessing.