Re: The Employee & H9 Meeting Notes: September 1, 2022

Farah Khan <█████████████████████ > To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >, Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >

Tue, Sep 6, 2022 at 4:04 PM

Hi Josh!

Louis and I just debriefed and he's going to start thinking about this project's AD and concept. One of the things we discussed and really fell in love with is the idea that this book is a contemporary critique, and in the future, it'll become a testimony/temoignage (I'm writing this word out bc I want to remember it bc it's so pretty!) of our present day. Given that, we would like to make the book as complete as possible. If someone finds a copy 50 years from now, when the website has ceased to exist, it would be amazing if they can bear witness in some capacity to the visual elements we'll show in the website, like the overall timeline view showing the complexity and interconnectedness of the conversations, and perhaps to a larger collection of the video stills.

So, with that, a few questions came up. These answers will help us progress before the content arrives from you, so if you have a minute, this would be really helpful:

Book

Can we have several pages of small stills from the video of Camille working, perhaps with timestamps, presented in a way that's unrelated to specific essays or pieces of writing? We think that could look really beautiful and show the boringness/futility of this.
Run: ~100-150 copies?
Dimensions: 6 x 9 in (Lauren suggested this). Can we explore other sizes too?
Distribution? Will this be sold? Through where? Will you just be sending it to ppl?

Website

How many people are conversing? (30? 50? more? less? an estimate is ok!)
How many individual conversations are there? (hundreds? thousands? a big estimate will work)
How many people in conversations: (estimates are ok again)

Mostly 2 people talking?
Sometimes 3-5 people?
Max people in a conversation?
Are there people in CC? How should we think about people who are in CC who aren’t talking/participating?

Any filters needed? Ie, "show only the conversations that Josh is in"

Thanks so much!

Farah Khan
Principal and Creative Director

Fondatrice et directrice de création

she / her / hers

House9 Design

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Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ > To: Farah Khan <█████████████████████ > Cc: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >

Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 6:14 AM

Dear Farah,

I hope the last bits of summer are treating you sweetly and that your vacation was restful.

After all our conversation about the annoyance of missed deadlines, I am very sheepish to be late with the documents I promised to you. My apologies!

Attached you will find two text samples to help as you and Louis move forward with the design and concept. Please note that these texts are not the final versions, and should only be used for design reference.

1. Essay: This is the first section the essay by Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte. This essay is the most complex of all the texts that will be in the book as there are three sections with subheadings, some very long paragraphs, many citations, and block quotations, etc. The other essays will probably include a few of these elements, but this seemed be the best start looking at how to deal with all of it. You will see that some of the citations are still forthcoming, but there are two there to give you an idea of the format.

2) Conversation: This is an excerpt of the three-person conversations. We are not married to the existing name-formatting, so please feel free to suggest ways of differentiating the speakers.

And here are some stray notes regarding the texts and possible design-related details:

- Art Metropole uses the Chicago Style, so I will be adopting a simple version of that with Canadian spelling and open em dashes.

- I prefer numbered, essay-specific endnotes, by which I mean that each essay has all its "footnotes" gathered at the end of the text

- As we discussed, each essay will be illustrated with a few images. I will be sending sample images asap.

Hopefully this is a useful start. More very soon!

Warmly,

Lauren

Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com> To: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ > Cc: Farah Khan <█████████████████████ >, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >

Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 9:54 AM

hi Farah, Louis, Mark and Lauren,

thank you for your questions and the energy you are bringing to the project. I am a bit smothered in work for the rest of the week, since I am in Quebec City trying to gather material for an upcoming show, and have a grant deadline tomorrow, but I will answer your email in bullet form to add to what Lauren has sent.

Book

Can we have several pages of small stills from the video of Camille working, perhaps with timestamps, presented in a way that's unrelated to specific essays or pieces of writing? We think that could look really beautiful and show the boringness/futility of this.

I am open to this, but I think Lauren and I will make this decision after we choose images for the texts. I agree that it could be nice as a kind of visual leitmotif continuing between texts, a monotonous and ongoing grind of work....

that said, the images must include date and time-codes as a way of connecting them to the surveillance and quantification of the work and its online presentation.

Run: ~100-150 copies?

400 copies

Dimensions: 6 x 9 in (Lauren suggested this). Can we explore other sizes too?

yes, 6x9 is a general paperback art-book size that is easy to hold and seems large enough to have ample white-space around the text, but it is not imperative

Distribution? Will this be sold? Through where? Will you just be sending it to ppl?

The volume will be co-published by Art Metropole and FCG. Art Met will handle distribution and sales. FCG can sell from within their gallery, but won't be responsible for distro.

Website I will answer these questions next week, I haven't been able to make progress since my last meeting with Farah because traveling / other projects. Godwilling, I will be back in Berlin by Monday and will be working again on the email archive, etc.

How many people are conversing? (30? 50? more? less? an estimate is ok!)
How many individual conversations are there? (hundreds? thousands? a big estimate will work)
How many people in conversations: (estimates are ok again)

Mostly 2 people talking?
Sometimes 3-5 people?
Max people in a conversation?
Are there people in CC? How should we think about people who are in CC who aren’t talking/participating?

Any filters needed? Ie, "show only the conversations that Josh is in"

thanks for your patience and your motivation, things will be full speed ahead in a few days!

mark <████████████████████> To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>

Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 9:55 AM

Hello!

I’m currently on vacation and I won't have access to my email until I return. I'll be back at my computer the morning of Monday, September 19. While I’m away, you can reach out to Farah (please keep me in CC):

See you soon,

mark

🌊🌴🏖

Bonjour!

Je suis en vacances en ce moment et je n'aurai pas accès à mes emails avant mon retour. Je serai de retour à mon poste de travail le lundi 19 septembre au matin. Pendant mon absence, vous pouvez communiquer avec Farah (svp garder mon email en CC) :

À bientôt,

mark

Studio + Project Coordinator

Coordonnateur de projet + studio

he/him // il/lui

Tio'tia:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal

house9design.ca

Timezone: EST • GMT/UTC−4

Farah Khan <█████████████████████ > To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com> Cc: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >

Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 11:00 AM

Hi team!

Apologies for my late reply! Thanks so much for all this very detailed info. It's on my list to go through today and get to you properly :)

I hope you have a gorgeous week ahead!

Farah Khan
Principal and Creative Director

Fondatrice et directrice de création

she / her / hers

House9 Design

██████ ████████████

██████████ █ █████████ █ ████████

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Farah Khan <█████████████████████ > To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com> Cc: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >

Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 11:46 AM

Thank you both for your emails! I'm realizing that an acknowledgement of receipt was all that was needed from my side for now :)

Lauren, thanks for the texts. They look great! Noted re: design directives.

Josh, we'll await your website answers, and the rest is already very helpful!

Talk soon!

Farah Khan
Principal and Creative Director

Fondatrice et directrice de création

she / her / hers

House9 Design

██████ ████████████

Tio'tia:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal

Quebec H2T 1T7

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Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com> To: Farah Khan <█████████████████████ > Cc: Lauren Wetmore <████████████████████████████████ >, Mark Ambrose Harris <████████████████████ >, Louis Dollé <█████████████████████ >

Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 8:38 AM

dear Farah, Mark and Louis,

I am back in Berlin and getting through jetlag.

I wanted to get back to you about some of the loose ends.

So, Farah and I talked about an app that would connect printed images to online videos. The app is called Abstrakt, and you can find it here: https://apps.apple.com/at/app/abstrakt/id1569135688

Further re: the email archive, I am answering Farah's other questions below.

How many people are conversing? (30? 50? more? less? an estimate is ok!)

from my count, there are forty different "communicators" within and around the project, this includes project applicants, writers, and people who I briefly corresponded with about the project. This DOES NOT include representatives of funding councils (I would estimate another 15 contacts there).

we should also consider how to categorize automatic responses from mailer daemons (there are a few of those)

How many individual conversations are there? (hundreds? thousands? a big estimate will work)

I really don't know yet, since I haven't categorized them by conversation yet, I would guess around 1500???

How many people in conversations: (estimates are ok again)

Mostly 2 people talking?
Sometimes 3-5 people?

the majority of the emails are between three people: myself, Teresa (FCG director), and Camille (the employee). I would say there are also several two-person conversations between myself and others. A few of the emails are publicity emails sent to around 100 people (email addresses blacked out)(most of these do not receive replies), but few of those receive responses, and none are large group conversations.

Max people in a conversation?
Are there people in CC? How should we think about people who are in CC who aren’t talking/participating?

this is a really good question... it is rare, but not impossible. If we are thinking about the subway line design, I would suggest that those people would be indicated by a thinner or dotted line perhaps?

Any filters needed? Ie, "show only the conversations that Josh is in"

sorry this took so long, moving forward at a more regular pace from now on....

I have attached some of the email archive below. The folder "email sample" contains the first few months of the project after we hired camille. I haven't sorted these into conversations. The "applicants round 2" folder is from the application process, so there are emails from multiple people (and categorized into conversations / redacted) so you get a sense of this as well.

looking forward to talking about how to organize this with you soon!

applicants round 2.zip