Quicksand

Eighty-page programme book score, and libretto, for performances by Indigenous musicians of in memoriam…Mary Cecil,Victoria Callihoo (née Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau and Robert Ashley’s in memoriam... Curated and edited by Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective.

[from back cover] …in memoriam Mary Cecil,Victoria Callihoo (née Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau adds a new score and production by Postcommodity and Alex Waterman to a suite of four early scores by the American composer Robert Ashley. The fifth score honours the lives of Mary Cecil, Victoria Callihoo (née Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau, three Indigenous women from territory at the turn of the Century as it became the province of Alberta. This significant addition continues Ashley’s project investigating the connections between musical forms and constructs of historicization, opening a conversation regarding whom and how we memorialize individuals and inscribe their legacies.

[from essay by Candice Hopkins] What histories are remembered and who is doing the remembering? What form do these rememberings take? It is not as simple as taking down one monument and replacing it with another. We need to ask more questions, take note of the voids that stand in for the past, and actively make way for other voices, particularly those are trapped under the ‘sea ice of English’. “Listen for sounds”, writes the Tlingit poet and anthropologist Nora Marks Dauenhauer, “They are as important as voices. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.”

McKenzie Wark invents a new genre for another gender: not a memoir but an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.

Another genre for another gender.

What if you were trans and didn't know it? What if there were some hole in your life and you didn't even know it was there? What if you went through life not knowing why you only felt at home in your body at peak moments of drugs and sex? What if you expended your days avoiding an absence, a hole in being? Reverse Cowgirl is not exactly a memoir. The author doesn't, in the end, have any answers as to who she really is or was, although maybe she figures out what she could become.

Traveling from Sydney in the 1980s to New York today, Reverse Cowgirl is a comedy of errors, chronicling the author's failed attempts at being gay and at being straight across the shifting political and media landscapes of the late twentieth century. Finding that the established narratives of being transgender don't seem to apply to her, Wark borrows from the genres of autofiction, fictocriticism, and new narrative to create a writing practice that can discover the form of a life outside existing accounts of trans experience: an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.

Vanus übermann des villes, le roi de la ville, le roi du monde, se fait des odes à lui-même et met ses chaussettes dans la pâte à pain. Sophie Couderc raconte quelques-unes de ses péripéties.

Vanus übermann of the cities, the king of the city, the king of the world, writes odes to himself and puts his socks in bread dough. Sophie Couderc recounts some of his adventures.

Je jette le matelas dehors, il rebondit sur trois cons et tombe dans une grosse flaque de jus de rue. Ok, pas mal mais il m’en faut plus. (Vanus)

Carie, comme le trou qu’on bouche au plomb, est une collection de textes courts et moyens qui se glissent dans la poche. Chaque livre (la dent) de la collection (la bouche) est troué (la carie) et cerclé d’un œillet métallique (le plombage).

Carie, like the hole filled with lead, is a collection of short and medium-length texts that slip into the pocket. Each book (the tooth) in the collection (the mouth) is holed (the cavity) and circled with a metal eyelet (the filling).

The Brotherhood fait suite à La Mariée et Bonne nuit Cendrillon qui avait provoqué une onde de choc lors de sa première à Avignon où Carolina Bianchi amenait des réflexions sur la performance et la théâtralité, sur un lit d'histoires de viols brutaux et de meurtres de femmes. 

Dans ce deuxième chapitre de la Trilogie des chiennes, Carolina Bianchi se penche sur la complexité de certains « pactes de masculinité », notamment sur les origines de la fraternité entre les hommes, mettant en lumière les codes mutuels violents qui contribuent à normaliser et perpétuer le viol et la violence sexuelle à travers leur lexique. Carolina Bianchi utilise les principes du théâtre pour articuler des voies possibles à cette discussion, créant des liens forts entre la représentation et le traumatisme réel, les structures de pouvoir dans l'art et la poésie radicale, les origines de la misogynie et une sexualité en crise. La structure de cette réflexion se révèle être un piège, affaiblissant l'auteurité de Bianchi et la transformant en un personnage qui subit les conséquences d'avoir scruté cette « fraternité » de si près. 

Texte portugais (Brésil) traduit par Thomas Resendes. 

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The Brotherhood follows La Mariée and Bonne nuit Cendrillon, which caused a shockwave when it premiered in Avignon, where Carolina Bianchi explored reflections on performance and theatricality against a backdrop of stories of brutal rapes and murders of women.

In this second chapter of the Trilogie des chiennes, Carolina Bianchi examines the complexity of certain “pacts of masculinity,” particularly the origins of male brotherhood, highlighting the violent codes of conduct that contribute to normalizing and perpetuating rape and sexual violence through their lexicon. Carolina Bianchi uses the principles of theater to articulate possible avenues for this discussion, creating strong links between representation and real trauma, power structures in art and radical poetry, the origins of misogyny, and a sexuality in crisis. The structure of this reflection turns out to be a trap, undermining Bianchi’s authority and transforming her into a character who suffers the consequences of having scrutinized this “brotherhood” so closely. 

Translated by Thomas Resendes.  

A day can be a composition not unlike an essay. Full of possibilities, full of limitations, bound by universal structures and marked by idiosyncratic desires. You go on walks. You read. You do your chores. All the while memory and other forms of imagination keep time with you. Books are strange companions; writing is a lonely thing rich with consolations.

Certain Things is a text by Claudia La Rocco, created with and through ideas such as these.

Published September 2022.

What happens when you peak in high school, or maybe earlier, or maybe not at all? When you hate your friends, or love them too much? When the warmth of nostalgia starts to slowly poison you? In Girl on Girl, Emily Costa explores desperation and loneliness, screen obsession, and casual cruelty as characters—mostly women and girls—struggle to be seen.