Vital Signs brings together writings by artist Melissa Gordon, which she has performed live over the past decade in various contexts.

Focusing on the role and behaviour of gesture in her painting practice and that of others, Gordon’s texts move between topics of dropping out, (female) genius, con jobs, how one ‘speaks’ in painting, and notions of ‘suckcess’. Gordons’ writing emerges from a history of feminist organising and editing. Vital Signs shows the development from editor to writer to stand-up performer, and the shuffling and re-combination of the texts with each performative iteration.

The selected pieces – most published here forthe first time – are accompanied by full-page details of Gordon’s body of paintings titled Female Readymades, where inventories of objects, texts, letters, and gestures hang on fences and walls inside larger architectural installations.

Born in Flames – the publication – is the complete authorised graphic translation of Lizzie Borden’s mythical 1983 film Born in Flames. Kaisa Lassinaro’s post-facto screenplay captures all the political energy and visual brilliance of Borden’s film, which describes a futuristic society (eerily similar to our own) where the achievements of a past revolution are threatened by reactionary sexist forces. 

The published version of Born in Flames allows for a frame-by-frame analysis of the film’s complex plot and soundtrack, with songs by The Bloods and Red Crayola. Included is an interview with Borden conducted by Lassinaro, in which the filmmaker looks back on the making of her film.