Episode 2

BRIDGET

Hello and welcome to ‘Deep Time’, a podcast in which we meet with artists to discuss time and its relationship to creative processes, with me, Bridget O'Gorman. Invoking the evolution of geological formation, ‘Deep Time’ is a non-conforming, collective research project, website and podcast series. It honours the accretion of knowledge inherent to crip, feminist, queer and decolonial thought.

Deep Time stems from ongoing research around holding space for my practice in a disabled body. It seeks to think about how complexifying what access is, and what it could be, might nourish broader approaches to working in the arts. Throughout the first half of 2025, I invited a group of artists and writers including D Mortimer, Deirdre O'Mahony, Libita Sibungu, Onyeka Igwe and Taey Iohe to take part in virtual and in-person slow conversations about time, in relation to their own practice and its sustainment. Each participant was invited to make an offering, which reflected their experience, which can be found at deeptime.ie, an accessible online publication launched as part of EVA International 2025.

In today's episode, we are delighted to be joined by Marlo Mortimer to talk about their work in progress as part of ‘Deep Time’.

D Mortimer is a writer and artist from London interested in the crip unknown. Mortimer held a Techne scholarship in trans auto fictions at The University of Roehampton where they completed their doctoral project, The Beef Journals: Naming the Uncertain in Transgender Subject Formation and their monograph Speed Glum Hero (2024) has just been published by Sticky Fingers Publishing. Marlo's pronouns are they, he.

Marlo, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for being part of Deep Time. It's such an honour to have you.

I'd love to hear about how you came to writing and about what initially drew you to saying yes to being part of the Deep Time project.

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D MORTIMER

Hey Bridget, it's great to be on the podcast. Maybe my first ever podcast recording ever. How I came to writing, wow, that is a huge question. It has to start when I was young, I suppose. Both my grandparents on my dad's side were writers. My granny was a novelist, also a Virgo. I'm a Virgo.

And she wrote, like, she had five kids by like three different men. She wrote, I think, around five or six novels. She died when I was twelve because she was also like a champion chain smoker. And there are these incredible pictures of her on a typewriter, chain smoking.

So I didn't know her super, super well. But I feel like through my dad and through also reading her work, which was very thinly veiled autobiography as fiction, I feel like she influenced me, like maybe not in a super explicit way, but having writing as a possibility, especially for AFAB people. I think that actually makes a huge difference to have had someone in your family kind of make writing whilst also, you know, raising a family, doing all this other stuff. And yeah, she certainly wasn't a cozy person and had this kind of real grit.

So I think having writing and her husband, they divorced, but he was my granddad, he was a writer too. I always read my granny's work because I thought, oh, okay, there are like these commonalities that I can more like immediately see. But then I read my granddad's work and he expresses all this homosexual love, basically, without shame. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's incredible.

And now I'm thinking maybe I had more in common with him than I thought. And that's the question of like open secrets in families. Like, no one sat me down when I was little and were like, oh, your granddad, yeah, was bisexual. Yeah, I think it's strange, isn't it?

When you sort of feel the reality of that in a family is sort of in the air somehow. And then I think part of my writing practice, to get back to your question, is trying to basically piece together elements of my life, my past, my present. And in a way, writing for me is a type of problem solving. And I think kind of the mysteries of life and love and sex.

And I think that writing for me is the discipline I have chosen or has chosen me to kind of like work out those problems with an awareness that you never work them out. I guess when I was little, I did write, I wrote this like adventure book. It was called The Adventures of Dr. Splosh-a-tosh. I would draw all these pictures about Dr. Splosh-a-tosh.

And he had this Aunt Agatha. So it was like Aunt Agatha and Dr. Splosh-a-tosh. My dad actually was a radio producer for a long, long time. So he did this kind of set up.

And we recorded all the volumes of this little story I'd written when I was like six or seven.

BRIDGET

Have you still got that?

D MORTIMER

You know what? I listened to the tapes on this old tape player. It was so interesting. I'd love to hear them again.

But I think I've lost the tape deck that you could play them from.

BRIDGET

It's really interesting to me that you immediately kind of referred back to your grandmother. And then you're jumping forward into your own childhood. I get the sense that you're almost like feeling them through your own embodied experience of writing. I guess, as you said, something about something being in the atmosphere, like maybe, you know, your granddad's bisexuality was in the atmosphere.

That almost like you've kind of absorbed this without consciously being told it as a child.

D MORTIMER

Hugely. I mean, hugely, Bridget. Actually, this piece I wrote recently, it was for this brief, write a letter to your little trans self. Well, first of all, I started by kind of bristling at this brief.

And it's almost like, where do you start? But I did actually start with my granddad for that brief. He would always call me when I was a kid, Mr. D.

BRIDGET

That's gorgeous. Wow. He saw you.

D MORTIMER

And I think in a way, whether or not his bisexuality was explicitly mentioned kind of isn't the point. He was, I don't know, he was mentioning it without mentioning it somehow. He wrote so beautifully and so shamelessly about his love of boyish girls, actually, and also girlish men. I want to write something about him because he actually was sent down from Oxford.

He wasn't allowed to graduate because they found love letters to a boy in his room. And this is happening again. I only found out in the last five years. And I just wonder what a difference it might have made to, I guess, my nascent understanding of myself.

BRIDGET

I guess there's something really explicitly powerful then in terms of the gesture of writing that you've maybe inherited that unashamed, almost flagrant, like embrace of his sexuality came out through the writing. And again, that's a slow process, isn't it? Writing is, in my experience, really slow and repetitious, kind of has to build over time, no matter how you can't force it. And sometimes it comes in spurts and then other times it's just really difficult and constipated almost, if that makes sense?

And I wonder, or what I'm feeling from you in terms of the context of ‘Deep Time’ as well, is this notion of things settling in your environment or just being in the atmosphere somehow attaching to you? Or you're brushing up against this? But it's not an overtly kind of quick succession of kind of information that has been delivered to you. And it took that kind of time frame and process to form you for you at certain points.

I'm really interested in this idea of those moments that are not seen or spoken of necessarily, but that have these deep, you know, foundational kind of roles in who we are and how we navigate the world. And so it just feels very interesting to me that you have these very, very formative aspects to how you came to your practice, but they were all so quiet and so under, like not spoken almost and just happening under the surface.

D MORTIMER

I think sometimes what's unsaid is the opposite of silent. What's unsaid is very loud. And what can't really be covered up.

BRIDGET

It can't. It can be buried, I guess. And it's so interesting about the idea of like the debris and looking for clues. And it just really relates to me to this image of excavation or looking to those materials that are around us.

You know, I'm using the term Deep Time for this project borrowed directly from geological science to describe this notion of time, this kind of idea of something we as humans can't even fathom because it's so expansive. As a writer invested in trans and crip subjectivities in particular, I wondered if you could speak to how your narrative interests intersect with ideas around time and slowness and creativity?

D MORTIMER

Well, just this idea of slowness again, like really drew me to this project and your work, how we've interacted in the past, your work with Iarlaith, who I adore. And my work with Iarlaith has always been through this prism of slowness and understanding, this tacit understanding too. And I was reading back on the work that I've written for this project and there's a bit in it where I say being trans and crip has kind of always been in kind of a belated tense in a way, because something might happen. For instance, my knee might dislocate.

That's not to assume that people around me know what's going on. So the actual explaining has to happen later. You know, the amount of times that people, when my knee is dislocated and I've sort of like crashed to the floor randomly in the most like inapposite places, like a kebab shop, dance floor, many dance floors, karaoke stage, which I actually write about in the piece. Often people don't know what's going on.

I'm just crying in agony. And some people, well, yeah, about ten years ago, when it happened at a party, my friend thought I was doing a death drop. And she was like, slay. And I was like, no!

So the person in the trauma is then having to do the work of explaining what's going on. It's led to some very farcical moments where I've been like in absolute agony having to sort of say what's happened. I suppose it’s the burden of explaining which falls on a lot of trans people too. Yeah, that's come into the work quite a bit, actually.

And it links to slowness and productivity, I suppose, because it's these awkward punctuations your body gives you, or the ways in which I've kind of improvised around them. And the work reflects that too. It's very much, it negotiates with those interruptions, those interventions. That is expressed by my dislocating when I don't want it to, but also when I struggle to get out of bed.

BRIDGET

It just sounds like a huge amount of labour. If you're talking about the idea of carrying, you mentioned as a trans person, having to almost being in this position where you're having to explain or teach people somehow about what's happening for you, which is like a huge amount of additional labour. And that's just one of the things I really, really love about what you do—is how you so deftly weave these kind of feelings and moments of insight around that experience of—I have to explain even though I'm already carrying all of this stuff over here—or I'm in absolute agony, or I've got so much going on—trying to just get through my day, physically, mentally, emotionally, all of these things. I love that you do this where you're showing us in such a generous way, those links, interdependency, I guess, around the embodied experience, the connections, the connectivity between your experiences as a trans, crip writer.

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D MORTIMER

I agree with everything you say. And thank you for saying that about my writing. I feel, I don't know if this is true for your writing practice, but I feel like if I'm not feeling it as I'm writing it, it's an interesting thing about practice and time because, you know, I could be writing for days on end at my laptop, nothing is hitting. But then it's like, I don't know, I could wake up and like dash off a paragraph and feel like, okay, that was saying something true.

In all art forms, I think as artists, we try to aim for, attempt at the truth. I can't separate my body from the text. I talked to Isabel Wadner, who's my PhD supervisor, amazing writer, and they're like, oh, my body. No, no, no, no, no, I don't want to think about my body when I'm writing.

And I'm like, I can't, like, my body is so there. And that's why I love having a kind of performance practice alongside it, because I feel like the text is asking to be spoken in a way.

BRIDGET

I came across this term recently where somebody was describing, it's like some kind of folklorish term, it's connected to folklore, Welsh folklore, I think, where somebody was talking about that they felt like a hollow bone, like this image of a hollow bone and that they were just being fed information from some other kind of time.

What you're saying kind of like, it comes through your body and it comes out onto the page. It's through your, you know, it's intergenerational as well. It's not just you, it's like who's come before you and it's your childhood self and it's all these other selves and these different time scales and they're all kind of contributing to this, to the flavour of what's coming through you.

D MORTIMER

That's so interesting. you say that because the working title of the piece is ‘Hollow Body’.

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BRIDGET

Oh my gosh, look at us.

D MORTIMER

You saying that makes me think maybe I should stick with it.

BRIDGET

Can you tell us about your offering to ‘Deep Time’?

D MORTIMER

As I mentioned, the working title is ‘Hollow Body’. I think in the plainest terms, like a long form essay, a long form essay incorporating hybrid writing practices like essay, criticism, poetry, memoir, images in there as well. And it's in three parts, all of which I suppose take a theme or an event, personal or historical as a kind of springboard to look into themes of disability and transness. And how I've approached it has been with this gift of the time that you've allowed us to really go into the work and let it evolve in this slow and organic way.

And it's a process of working that I haven't actually had before, I suppose, apart from my PhD, which didn't feel like this in lots of ways because it was kind of like within the laws and edicts of an institution. But I guess I'm talking about the time that is afforded for it like that. I feel like we've been given so much time and having this kind of elasticity, elasticity of expectation, this freedom in what and how we produce. And it's been really exciting and sometimes daunting, like because I'm so used to kind of to having more stringent rules and productivity.

So I've been led, I think, by leading life, which is not so different from how I work generally. But I feel like in this text are instances from my life over the last year or so from and actually in ways that I didn't even really realise. The retreat that we went on has featured a lot and the landscape of where we were, what happened on the retreat—has actually fed into my work hugely. I mean, it was interesting you saying about like how the things you're doing when you're not writing informed the writing.

This is just to return to the idea of the hollow body, actually, like where I live in Turnpike Lane, when I walk to the post office, I pass this like chicken shop where there's delivery drivers and Uber Eats drivers outside waiting to pick up their stuff. I sometimes notice they’re like having little naps or like looking at their phone on their bikes and they are in the hollow body hold with their feet up on the dash, either looking at the phone, sometimes they're even like actually asleep. And they're not being paid for that element of their work, but they are working, but they're trying to achieve rest whilst working. And I think that hollow body position, I think, represents that because you're fucking working hard, but people can't see that from the position, because it has this kind of like illusion of lying down, an illusion of, you can't see the effort it takes to maintain that position.

If anything, what I want to get across in this, is that sort of all the mechanisms happening under a society to like all those delivery drivers, all the workers that are kind of literally motoring the city, the labour is unseen. Samuel Delaney, the amazing writer, science fiction sociologist talks about this idea of kind of contact. It's not intended, it's not premeditated, it's not planned, but it's what the city gives you from interacting with it, right?

And this contact is different from the network because the contact is often across classes. The person you might speak to at the checkout who happens to share a love of Grace Jones, and you're working on a piece about Grace Jones and they say something and you're like, oh my God, wow, and that falls into your text, you know, that kind of contact is also solidarity for me, and it very much informs my practice. And I think vulnerability is a very pointed and deliberate part of my practice. It's certainly political for me to talk about the ways in which my body is unruly, the ways in which my friend Elliot calls it his lunacy.

I am someone who has been mad. I like this word lunacy. And so yeah, the ways in which your body and your mind do their own thing. I feel like if we're not honest about that, that way lies…I want to say fascism…but I'm going to say homogeneity. And also I have to admit that I am white and middle class. So I maybe I'm in a position where I can be vulnerable, maybe more than another person. Okay, I'm aware of that.

And in the piece, the piece has basically, the third section of the piece is all about this idea of the scapegoat. It begins ‘Courtney Love as the scapegoat..’. It's all about the power and the grace that the scapegoated of society actually have to be cast out, to be exiled, to be hate-crimed. To be scapegoated is to bear the sins of the community that they can't actually look at.

So I guess what I want to get at is illuminate the grace and power that scapegoated members of society hold. In some ways, shadow element, in some ways, truth tellers. I had my first role acting in a film in Athens, and I was cast as Satan, which I think it’s just the nature of who I am, but I then went into a real deep dive into trying to wrangle with what it means to play this character, which was a kind of huge thing to think about.

I took on the role as kind of his rebellion and his disobedience and his kind of like discomfort with authority.

BRIDGET

The Deep Time podcast is devised by myself and produced by Paul McGregor, consisting of three episodes with the support of Hannah Wallis and Iarlaith Ní Fheorais. Deep Time is made possible through the EVA International Platform Commission, Ireland's Art Biennial, Field Arts and the Arts Council's Visual Arts Project Award. Music courtesy of Audio Network.