i. some initial unfoldings - unravelings - unfurlings
What are we beholden to?
(What am I beholden to?)
What do we care about?
How do we spend our time?
What do we choose to linger[1] with?
Who gets to choose?
—
unfolding is an exhale, a release, a never ending breath
unfurling is a navigational tactic, one that comes from being in relation with the sea and wind and wave
we were oriented with these things, once upon a time
“From” “Hong Kong”
“To” “Vancouver”
AA, then LA —
TO ? / !
//
ii.
Dear Night City Dear Los Angeles 2 0 4 6 + 3 Dear Cloudbank and my dear Cities of Glass[2]
of Water, Reflection, and Rain
What is your shared space? This is a site of multiple languages, of interlocking codes and surfaces, reflecting and refracting to form: She, of the interval.[3]
We belonged to each other, once.
Dear Porcelain, Dear Page, Dear Ornament[4], your inscriptions leave their marks
{ decadent delicious lush captivating alluring shiny enveloping }
What harm is there in beauty?
Dear Ghost in my Shell which points are we passing pass by reference only please Dear wiring and connections our encodings have too many channels and have started to fray Dear OS update to use new features we are made obsolete our ram is getting slower Dear Major you are enmeshed with the synthetic sentience of the Puppets teach me your navigational practices Dear Minor Dear Method Dear Margaret[5], have you found your robot yet? Would you help me find mine? Look at my errors at my seams they might point the way
relinking, relaying, relating…[6]
The void[7] is a place of shifting grounds
She inhabits there, is habit there.
The void holds, wraps up in its folds and swirls
She, naked, immediately available, cold and removed.
Dear Man Dear Adam you are a fiction a fantasy constructed and crafted no more real than I am you make demands to Truth and Knowledge you consume and take under the guise of rights to possession and liberty Dear Nation Quotation your circulation recursively enacts its self the presumed white blankness blankets your being the whiteness of Dear Empire Dear Emporium the carnal Carnes who peddle Porcelain selling sartorial splendor stillness silence spectacle speculation embodied embroidered enigmas oui-on-demand, constant availability, here to serve your [psychic, emotional, mental, computational, physical] needs overlooked by default, the ghost of the operating system, the guide, the representation of the narrative hand, the voice menu bot, the inoffensive unaffectable here to happily guide you on your way, I will be your blinders what injury in politeness productivity performed
We take the constitution of her subject[hood/gation] for granted. Aesthetic injury manifests through many threads and folds.
iii. an interlude on writing
writing isn’t just putting words filled with meaning on a page, to loosely form a “text”.
It orients. It’s a process of crafting a space, its colors and textures, creating a space for holding and pulling. Writing is shaping breath and how it holds in the body, how it moves from phrase to phrase, from the bottom of the right shin to the outer tip of your left clavicle.
It’s spilling and wiping and soaking and . Writing exceeds linguistic forms and pushes at its bounds, unraveling into the field of relation.
Writing is suggesting a ground for meeting, for learning,
for sharing and negotiating
for uncertainty + vulnerability.
What do we make accessible for others? What do we keep for ourselves?
Who seeks to know?
iv: now executing:
Cyborg ceremonies.
Robot rituals.
Porcelain patterns.
Automaton acts.
again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
I am an automaton. I am a robot. I am a cyborg.
I am just a series of state machines.
Neoliberal sacrificial lambs up for execution.
Another mannequin in the conveyor belt.
Which model would you like next?
I do not want to linger in these sites of injury.
We are not having the same conversation.
Please be gentle; I long for rest.
"preface"
printed in exhibition zine New seed. XXXXXX. New seed. XXXXXX.
Human Resources LA, July 2022
initially composed for Centre A's Arts Writing Mentorship Program (Spring/Summer 2022)
notes
[1] Han, Byung-Chul. The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering. Translated by Daniel Steuer. 1st edition. Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA: Polity, 2017.
[2] The epistolary address in this section is an invocation of Larissa Lai's Iron Goddess of Mercy, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.
[3] Minh-ha, Trinh T. When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics. 1 edition. New York: Routledge, 1991.
[4] Cheng, Anne Anlin. Ornamentalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
[4] Rhee, Margaret. “In Search of My Robot: Race, Technology, and the Asian American Body.” S&F Online. http://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/margaret-rhee-in-search-of-my-robot-race-technology-and-the-asian-american-body/.
[5] Glissant, Edouard. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
[6] "The feminine becomes elaborated as darkness and abyss, as void and chaos, as that which is both fundamentally spatial and as that which deranges or unhinges the smooth mapping and representation of space, a space that is too self-proximate, too self-enclosed to provide the neutrality, the coordinates, of self-distancing, to produce and sustain a homogeneous, abstract space. The feminine becomes a matrix that defies coordinates, that defies the systematic functioning of matrices that propose to order and organize the field." Grosz, Elizabeth, and Peter Eisenman. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2001, 158.
"The Void: a tissue which is formed as its meshes (mirage, event, nothing, unreal reality, the matte, suspension) takes shape. And it is in relation to the Void that these meshes are woven. Writing unravels (délie; dé-lit) and weaves (relie; relit); it repeats tirelessly the same gesture." Minh-ha, Trinh T. When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics. 1 edition. New York: Routledge, 1991, 214.