The Open Book Reading
Santa Maria la Ribera
The reality is this my dear
you are you and I am here
the lines of our communication
lost on highways of oblivion
my hands mottled from cold
I carve the words out with a knife
a list for perpetuity
the red of strangulation
the refuse of rehearsal
the compression of fingers on skin
the promise I make to only you
a clip from an old porno
dangling from your ear
you make a scan of my body
pomegranate stains on glass
I couldn’t resist the 6 seeds you caught me with
one reality gives way to another reality
it’s a hard master
I type out a letter I’m never going to send
the archives of forgotten promises
mischief, madness, words that cut like a blade
a name that holds tension
a special resonance
let’s converse with our lips
the white page of new beginning
Nova Mutum
I remain perceptive
through the frenzy
ever increasing heart palpitations
the revelations in your right dimple
a prison break starts with the promise of an orgy
the voices of women are covered with
a blank wall
to be painted
the power of my enemies is dwindling
words collapse in skulls
bodies tumble down concrete steps
stones press into shoulders, hips
a comfort speaks, holds, looks me in the eye
the hand of respite touches me
I dream of pantsless guards
handcuffed
not how they like
from A Lullaby
I’m wild and raw, all in
the wise never show wisdom
wonderful it is to cater, likewise nurture
the start of a war that draws jaws out
in the midst sits my mother, milk teeth smiling
taking stock as though still alive
her hands give off magnetic resonance
my eyes narrow tight
I’m wild with the view of black penguins
flinging against the brutal winds
of the coast where I grew
to view my minder as my everything
now I have none such
just sequential spirals of over its
visions of
milk teeth
breasts
uncovered
here
the bread of relief
when sleep brings dreams
I’m buggy
not sure if I am a body
all of my former herd
stomping new grounds
I write alone at night
speaking into the silence
A selection of poems I read at The Open Book on 22 May 2022. I enjoyed listening to the work of Chris Holdaway and Francis Libeau who also read at the event.
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Digital Collages
Some recent digital collages I made for ALive Archive
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Cut ups & collages
I have recently been experimenting with cut ups & collage poetry
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Experiments in Erasure
I recently began experimenting more with visual poetry - some initial results
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Borde: Body on the Edge
Bodies may not have permanence beyond their borders allotted by time, but throughout life they take on a temporary permanence, in their ability to evolve, resist, survive. This is what it requires to exist in the delicate instability of the world we inhabit, its shifting geopolitical forms, its uncertain future, the fragility of the environment after so much neglect. Borde: Anotaciones sobre la permanencia seeks to capture this permanence found in the body as it is placed in unstable territory, its own battles invisible to the viewer.
I wrote about Ana G. Zambrano's Borde for Colector
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ALive Archive is a collaborative online performance and education project that I started with Sara Martinez during the #Covid pandemic in Mexico City to catalogue the search for connection and community at a time of global separation and isolation. At the base of the project is a desire to address the decline in public mental health and a critique of the ways in which the relationship to computational technology can both facilitate human connection and enhance alienation. Using the resources currently at hand, ALive Archive creates antidotes to the fissures caused by the global crisis through shared creative processes and artistic and theoretical investigation. Thank you to Arte Abierto for this beautiful documentary about our work so far.
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For my isolation residency with Project Duna in June, I made this work Piercing the Distance based on the Zoom conference I had offered called Mutual Support for Artists in Uncertain Times. Starting from the question “What do you need?”, I took a transcript from the artists’ responses which I then turned into a visual poem. Some of the transcript also comes from Somya Dhiman’s talk on Women & Identity. The other part to the piece is a movement improvisation also based on the transcript, as during the call Ana Paula Miranda had told me she wanted us to find a way to collaborate at a distance. She will respond to the video with a painting and so the work will continue to grow.
Images:
Alvin Ailey Dance Company at Unknown Performance
Bauhaus Ballet costumes by Oskar Schlemmer
Thank you to Sara Martínez for the video
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Poetry collage by Lucia Hinojosa - Quarantine Emergency Call participant & poet
See more of her work here
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Culture Diary Poem by Lucia Melía - Quarantine Emergency Call participant
See more of her work here
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Poetry Collage by Mariana Rodríguez - Quarantine Emergency Call participant
See more of her work here
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Quarantine Emergency Call
Zoom Is Our New Rehearsal Room
On April 11, I hosted a Zoom meeting in English and again an hour later in Spanish with artists in quarantine around the globe in conjunction with Poesía sin muros. It was a chance to connect across disciplines and geographic contexts to share experiences about making, or not making, and thinking about art in quarantine. I made some notes during the call which I have consolidated here.
We find ourselves in a completely new situation. There have been stages of quarantine around the world and throughout history but this is the first time any of us can remember that we have been quarantined around the globe for such a long period of time.
We have the technology to keep collaborating together and sharing our work but haven’t had the absolute necessity of applying them till now. What we are lacking is outside stimulus and, most of us, space. Our stimulus is all coming from the internet or memory. Eres afortunada si tienes espacio para moverte.
Some of us are treating this as an enforced artistic residency, taking advantage of the extra time not spent on public transportation to make work. Others are taking a pause to think about our artistic practice and what kinds of projects we really want to make.
Many of us are learning new skills, from computer programs to new fields of study, attempting new disciplines in art, shifting our cultural consumption online, and creating new collaborations with other artists via online platforms. We have an opportunity to share work publicly, and many people are spending the days glued to their screens so we should consider taking advantage, without ego or being perfectionists.
This could be a great opportunity to begin thinking about our artistic practice in new ways. Es momento de pensar en qué se quiere, la relación con uno mismo, la relación con los demás.
We want to be conscious of the different ways in which people are experiencing life under quarantine, the workers who have been deemed “essential”, and still treated poorly. We want to start to think of ways to use new technologies and our extra time to think of ways to work on global structural issues and inequalities. We want to consider what art will look like and what role it will play in a future where these kinds of crises are more frequent. ¿Cómo podemos crear usando solo las cosas que ya tenemos en casa y solo con presentaciones en internet? ¿Cómo podemos pensar creativamente para resolver los problemas del mundo?
We also want to be conscious of the great mental shifts that happen to us during this time. We want to be gentle to ourselves, avoid putting too much pressure to create. We are in uncertain times, and taking care of our health, both physical and mental, should be prioritized.
¿Esta bien desarrollar y mantener los ritmos propios, descubrir cuales son las necesidades propias? ¿Esta bien examinar la palabra "disciplina"?. ¿Esta bien aceptar que a veces no quieres y no puedes?
*At the end of the call I put forth 3 propositions, one based on an exercise conceived by Alejandro Van Zandt-Escobar
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No Tenemos Nombre
Ana G. Zambrano asked me to write a text based on her choreographic piece No Tenemos Nombre featuring Romina R Soriano - this is the result
We are plunged into darkness.
We experience the brutality of stillness. We experience the discomfort of uncertainty.
Interrupting this darkness, a woman begins to light her way, body part by body part. Her journey does not lessen our discomfort, but reforms it.
When she disappears back into the darkness, we strain to catch sight of her once more. It is a relief when she finally turns on the light. Though the relief never lasts long.
She is clad in sporty underwear. She is strong, and seems unperturbed by the darkness. She must complete certain feats. She is resolute. She has been preparing for some time.
We are plunged into darkness again and again as she journeys across the stage picking up small squares of light. She arranges her body into lit squares that hang from above or sit below.
In this way, we are introduced to her slowly. She emerges and rescinds like a faint image from a camera obscura. She is, or she was. It is hard to know if this is a memory of a person or if she is alive. Or if she is bringing herself back to life with the force of her own exertion.
For exert she does. She pins herself against the squares of light, and there she holds herself in torsions and positions of endurance. She is still for so long, then she begins to shake. We are at a precipice of anticipation. How long will she survive in this tiny pool of light?
At points she reaches through a lit square. She holds her hand out, but at this point her face is obscured. We cannot tell what she is reaching for. She holds her face out, but at this point the rest of her is obscured. We cannot tell where she is looking or what she is looking for.
She watches us, watching her. She is meticulous in her movements. As though she knows she is being observed. Or because she has to be in order to navigate the darkness.
The lights are not steady. The flickering fluorescent lights of hospitals. The familiar coming in and going out of brightness. The creaking sounds reminiscent of a Hitchcockian horror.
It is a tense atmosphere, but we are not afraid. We are alert, awake, attentive to our sometime guide through the darkness. She seems to know where she is going, and in this we trust.
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Stealth Care
Pleased to announce my Stealth Care column is now live on Mask Magazine, see archive here
Thinking about work outside of work sickens me, and following rules is something I’ve never been good at doing. I think I’m scarred from having severe insomnia for which the doctor prescribed “sleep hygiene”: a complex set of instructions that menacingly proclaim you will not sleep if you don’t follow them. I’m not into being told what to do, and I’m not into being threatened. Though, I did attempt sleep hygiene for a few ill-fated weeks. Ran myself ragged trying to remember to avoid caffeine, “stressful activities,” using my bed for anything other than sleep and sex (which meant cutting myself off from the joys of supine snacking and movie-watching), and the worst – if you’re in bed and you can’t sleep go sit in another room and read something boring like the phone book. The phone book?? It’s bad enough I can’t sleep, and now you want me to read the phone book?
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Bodies de Sangre
garden performance, 04/25/15
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sibyl of cumae: i can no longer make you smile, iteration, 1.12.15
a performance woven with themes of aging, the passing of time and the importance of ritual in female self care.
text written and performed by ruby:
Song of the Sybil
I wrote prophecies on oak leaves
One letter per leaf
The wind came & blew them away
I would not reassemble them
You wanted me.
I loved you.
You wanted me & I knew it would only be
once.
You offered me life
in exchange for flesh
You would breathe life into me
for eternity
Now I live under a bell jar
my human form is shrinking
you said I asked for this
I forgot to be specific
You spat out your gum & it went right in my mouth
You spat out your tobacco & it went right in my mouth
You spat out tasting wine & it went right in my mouth
Everything you spat out went right in my mouth
I don’t know how to leave this place
I can’t make myself beautiful anymore
I’m too small to reach my hair
I can’t make you smile any more
Is death the only way out
The years are stretching
Time is fleeting
When you don’t know when it will end
There’s a reason they say warpaint
there’s a reason I can’t see past
these walls
there’s a reason no one visits me
I don’t visit anyone
I don’t smile any more
This glass is not reflective
Except I’m looking inside
When I was young
My mother always used to say
“Run a brush through your hair!”
before I left the house
you took my brush away
you took my paints away
you took my coal away
you took away my desire to use them
I thought this is what I wanted.
I forgot to specify.
I am a woman. Eternal youth is the expectation.
I am a woman. Fear of aging is the expectation.
Your last stroke of cruelty could be undone
with one brush stroke
Your last stroke of cruelty could be undone
with one flick of paint.
I denied you because I loved you
I couldn’t bear to have you
& have you blow away
like my oak leaves
I loved you more than I loved my brush
I loved you more than I loved my paints
I loved you more than I loved my coals
I loved you more than I loved myself
Now I pick up my brush
I pick up my paints
I pick up my coals
I pick myself up
performance in collaboration with ruby brunton
film in collaboration with sarah sitzler
a winter night’s art party and benefit
curated by forward flux
theaterlab, garment district
video and image documentation in process—
Sybil of Cumae performance collaboration
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