I only read Life and Fate because I was stuck at home for a week with covid. It had sat on my bookcase for a couple of years looking dauntingly fat.

It’s an extremely dark book by Vasily Grossman, published in 1960, set around the battle of Stalingrad and describing the horrors of trench warfare as well as the building and operation of Nazi concentration camps.

I must have read it in a state of detachment because when I started again from the beginning I was more shocked than I had been first time round. So for some reason I started underlining all the passages describing food. I don’t know why, except that food provides a poignant yet concrete focus which avoids the major horrors. Mostly it’s quite abject food; a piece of sausage or a crust of bread brought out of a pocket and dusted off, or some mouldy potatoes and kasha.  

I just started at Cove Park by cutting pages out of the book and then slicing out all the text except the food passages.

My first thought was to make the cut pages into a standing concertina, but they’re far too flimsy to stand. I was working quicky and a bit roughly because of the 850 pages ahead of me, using Pritstik to join the edges. I started by hanging it between 2 trestles using thin battens as a support, then substituted waxed thread as it’s more minimal.

I realised that I’d need to build a structure to support the dangling threaded pages, and so the final object gradually emerged. I used timber and skinply which I’d brought with me, really enjoying the challenge of construction with minimal materials.

Once it was finished I was shocked to see that I’d made an elegant and rather enigmatic object, without remotely having planned it, and for some reason I could barely look at it for a while.

I also realised it could be some kind of ship. This was the closing of a circle – I had come to Cove Park wanting to make something site specific which engaged with Loch Long or the Clyde. And that’s what I had done.

The work is clearly about secrecy, redaction, concealment of the major facts. Whose power does that enhance?  

I thought about Trident, moving under the sea anywhere in the world, its power boosted hugely by invisibility.

The Clyde as a trade route, bringing food to the UK from all over the world without its origin stories. It sits on supermarket shelves as its fresh and shiny self, silent about the brutalities or deprivations which ripened it. 

The next thing which shocked me, far more deeply than the aesthetics of the piece, was that I had just erased all reference to atrocities, genocide or violence of any kind. The remaining subject was largely sausages. A wave of shame passed over me.

What are the ethics of remembering and forgetting? How do they function as survival strategies?

My partner sent me an article by David Reiff, called ‘The cult of memory: when history does more harm than good’. He quotes George Satayana saying’ those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. He then goes on to argue for the virtues of forgetting as an alternative to being perpetually embittered by ‘the sores of history’.

I’ve now wandered into a huge arena…

Maybe I’ve created a memorial to things that have been allowed, or forced to be forgotten…

Returning to the work, I needed to make it seaworthy, or at least ‘lochworthy’, hence the added crossbars, and then the outrigging using 50mm wastepipe, which would make sure it floated even though they’re a bit makeshift and don’t really relate to the rest of the work.

The launch party was a lovely thing; all the other Cove resident artists wanting to share in the trip and see the launch. Much nicer for me than going alone. It’s a beautiful walk down the road to the loch and across the shore, and we’d picked a calm dry morning after days of rain.  

Even so, the pages raced from end to end in the slightest breeze, reminding me of the huge difference between inside and outside.  

She did sail very nicely on the calm water, but the incoming tide and an onshore wind meant that she didn’t try to pull at her rope and head off towards the Clyde, so the launch felt quite tame. I would really like to let her go and watch her disappear towards the horizon, but does that constitute littering? – TD

• Roger Suckling was a fellow resident at Cove Park that week; he made a lovely video of the launch party.
https://rogersuckling.co. uk