Insomnia

The thing we didn’t know when we showed up at the ‘Insomnia’ event in G39 Gallery is that we were meant to email beforehand and book. The space, as it turned out, was quite small and could only accommodate a certain number of people. The organisers, however, welcomed us anyway, and it turned out alright - but we did feel bad for showing up unannounced!

The first part of the evening centred around ‘zine’- making. We had never really heard about zines before, so the little guide that Megan (who works at the gallery) provided us with came in very handy. Zine-making involved looking through the various art books available in the library, photocopying whatever pages, texts or images inspired us, and creating a small ‘book’ out of folded A3 paper. 

It was a lot of fun. Richard and I, being creative writers, enjoyed the process of creating something new out of the resources we had, and I even included some blackout poetry in my Zine. I would say we spent about two hours making them, and I was so involved in the project that I hardly felt sleepy at all!

We also read aloud some of The Remains of The Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It made for a nice midnight read. Then came the midnight meal, a delicious vegetable stew sprinkled with cheese. Coffee, tea, cakes and chocolate were also available through the night to keep us from going to sleep. 

After our late-night dinner, the next activity was a showing of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Despite some difficulties setting up the projector, I really enjoyed the film - which I had actually never seen before. Another classic off my list! 

The only setback was that the length of the film delayed our sunrise walk to Roath Park. By the time we left the gallery, the sun had already started rising. But we did get to watch the sky change colours from the streets of Cardiff, and to smell the fresh 5am scent of the first day of summer - which, to me, was more than enough.

by Julie Primon and Richard Axtell