— Notes taken while on residency with Amy Suo WU at Motel Spatie; Arnhem Presikhaaf, 2020 January-February

In the time of that sojourn, a surface wound that stayed the entire time, irritated, flaming and hardened so much that it was narrated from being the oddity of a pimple on my hand to the paranoia of a wart-like abscess. It accompanied me during our conversations like a replacement for the biting of nails which had accompanied me since childhood, the extra psychosomatic conversation with myself to harmonise and discord with any other conversations going on in the room. And we spoke about intersectionality.

— from “Worlds in Collision: Multicultural Art History (Selection)” by Carlos VILLA, from Supporting Material by Celine CONDORELLI

I picked at it, making it bleed and scab over more than once, wondering if this would be the lifelong marker with which to remember this time. Other people get tattoos for such occasions, but somehow for me bruises, scars and mosquito bites were always enough. Sometimes I liked to think about the tiniest bit of spittle from an insect you never saw being smuggled transnationally, at peak seasons such that your body could carry two nationalities of mosquito saliva at the same time, recognisably different by the radius of red and degree of itch.

It was only a surface. But as my skin-scoring became manic, I remembered one of the first meals we shared together, when we were happy to find a few pairs of disposable chopsticks in the otherwise fork-and-knife-loaded space. A bit too brashly did I rip apart the two sticks and rub their ends together so as to smooth the rough edges in the way that we had learned, and somehow a little bamboo splinter had lodged itself into the meat between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. This is the pressure point you are supposed to massage in order to release anxieties, and so it was that this residency——initially planned as an artistic labour——unfolded into my body subversively with a small army of histamines hardening a point known as 合谷 hégŭ, or LI-4. Like a pain to help release pain.

I had been telling everyone that it had been such a difficult year for me, or for most people in my context, rather, but now, when I had limited this sabbatical purposefully to run back into the fire, that heat seemed to flake away into something much more quietly insurrectionary, like the last hibernation before the end of the world. What were we gathering amidst these stories and meetings, me picking self-consciously at a surface wound on the back of my hand and scheming in those vague ways afforded by poetry? Would it be possible to be productive about this care in letting go, somewhere in between concern and a manic extraction of the conversation one has with oneself, parasiting off of the glimmers of knowledge and joy and jealousy of these people around me. So many intensities.

— “Witch-hunt: gossip has always been a secret language of friendship and resistance between women”, Hannah BLACK

 

In many parts of the world, women have historically been seen as the weaver of memory——those who keep alive the voices of the past and the histories of the communities, who transmit them to the future generations and, in so doing, create a collective identity and profound sense of cohesion. There are also those who hand down acquired knowledges and wisdoms——concerning medical remedies, the problems of the heart, and the understanding of human behaviour, starting with that of men. Labelling all this production of knowledge ‘gossip’ is part of the degradation of women——it is a continuation of the demonologist’s construction of the stereotypical women as prone to malignity, envious of other people’s wealth and power, and ready to lend an ear to the Devil. It is in this way that women have been silenced and to this day excluded from many places where decisions are taken, deprived of the possibility of defining their own experiences, and forced to cope with men’s misogynous or ldealised portraits of them. But we are regaining our knowledge. As a woman recently put it in a meeting on the meaning of witchcraft, the magic is: “We know that we know”.

— Witches, Witching-hunting and Women, Silvia FEDERICI

Among you, it becomes difficult to compare all that has been said to all that has not been said. All of these conversations. And these words are a conversation with those conversations, if not simply out of a question of translation but out of the need to make space for myself in this constellation of you(s) and me(s). To ascertain, like that book I took from your bookshelf: Feelings are Facts. We(s) would need to meditate through hours and hours of these discourses in order to sift though the medley of feelings that make up this moment, and that is a fact, too. Yes, as the witches say, “We know that we know“.

— “Moral Injury and the Ethic of Care: Reframing the Conversation about Differences”, Carol GILLIGAN

And maybe I know too many things. My head is filled with all sorts of banalities like the facial expressions of strangers and the taste of your favourite Grüner Veltliner and the prick of winter mosquitoes. Like the approximate sojourn of a piece of shit that appeared a few days after I arrived. It was the lack of anyone’s care to remove it from the narrow path between our residency room and the project space, making it such that you took the long route around every time, while I forged ahead to play hopscotch. I had the forethought that this dog I never saw had left the natural wastes of its circulating body just like the mosquitoes, and perhaps I should bring other contraband back this time as another memento of my stay. But an uncared-for poop was just a parallel temporary visitor like us to this space motel, and the day before I departed, what were now like hardened coal nubs finally blew away with that strange storm of not very much rain. Perhaps its winds were so great it blew its own rain away, a storm having a frightening conversation with itself. Its utterances came out like screeches and gales that shook the glass of our cove. From inside, we lifted our heads up in awe, and when we went outside we walked at strange angles with our heads down, pretending not to overhear. Buddha was also blown violently away that day, falling off of a neighbour’s balcony and left as an Asian corpse shattered in the white neighbourhood. In the beginning I kept thinking we would have been a strange sight here, our little crew, but actually there was nobody around most of the time, and we were left to play on our own like children at the slumber party. We stole time that way, turning their money and our own productivity into a space for taking care. Even so, I walked on that shit at least once, but you took time, and we cleaned up our tracks together. Self-quarantine, if you want to call it——I gained ten kilogrammes, too——but something else feels lighter because I know we had taken it on together. This takes space and so it was that ‘project ruimte’ was exactly that, not as the space for projects but a project to make space, as a fact of feelings between us——to read together with long pauses in between, to write letters from near and far, and to eat and resist the fallen communality of a shared meal out of one bowl. To be together and trust in someone else’s voice to guide when our eyes are closed.

I don’t know yet how to bring this space into visibility. And maybe it doesn’t have to, except as mischievous glances and giggles between those of us who know, and even if you don’t see us you will feel the smiles in our voices in that space behind your ears and in front of your neck——a tingling somewhere between an itch and a tickle to make chords and discords in you, too. Take care.

— Altered quotations and notes taken from the afwasdoekje reading group, PWSSSRFS No. 1, 2020 January 25

spring sprang sprung

sachiko learning to do a backflip in katsuhito ishii’s “the taste of tea”

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nusantao and a trans-pacific dialogue with Chris Kraus

dirty south.

In a hypothesis developed by Wilhelm Solheim, the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network (NMTCN) is a trade and communication network that first appeared in the Asia-Pacific region during its Neolithic age, or beginning roughly around 5000 BC. “Nusantao” is an artificial term coined by Solheim, derived from the Austronesian root words nusa “south” and tao “man, people”.

— filed under “Nusantao”, Wikipedia

the spread in many directions as “a kind of excuse to party, right“, T. commented, and W. agreed, even though she was disappointed that nobody was listening, and even though she wanted to find some theoretical right to party, like a Brechtian sausage.

— 恩斯特·布洛赫

There would not have been a French Revolution, as Marx stated, without the heroic illusions that natural law engendered. Of course, they did not become real, and what did become real of them, the free market of the bourgeoisie, is not at all that which was dreamed of, though wished for, hoped, demanded, as utopia. Thus now, if a world were to emerge that is hindered for apparent reasons, but that is entirely possible, one could say, it is astonishing that it is not——if such a world, in which hunger and immediate wants were eliminated, entirely in contrast to death, if this world would finally just “be allowed to breathe” and were set free, there would not only be platitudes that would come out at the end and gray prose and a complete lack of prospects and perspectives in regard to existence here and over there, but there would also be freedom from earning instead of freedom to earn, and this would provide some space for such richly prospective doubt and the decisive incentive toward utopia that is the meaning of Brecht’s short sentence, “Something’s missing.” This sentence, which is in Mahagonny, is one of the most profound sentences that Brecht ever wrote, and it is in two words. What is this “something”? If it is not allowed to be cast in a picture, then I shall portray it as in the process of being (seiend). But one should not be allowed to eliminate it as if it really did not exist so that one could say the following about it: “It’s about the sausage.” Therefore, if all this is correct, I believe utopia cannot be removed from the world in spite of everything, and even the technological, which must definitely emerge and will be in the great realm of the utopian, will form only small sectors. That is a geometrical picture, which does not have any place here, but another picture can be found in the old peasant saying, there is no dance before the meal. People must first fill their stomachs, and then they can dance.

— Ernst Bloch

W.’s trauma of not being heard was a structural problem as much as a genetic defect, more recently amplified by contemporary notions of #fomo, post-maturity and the simple fear of being lost and forgotten and useful to no one.

S. was then of an age where she thought about age at least eight times a day. Having spent parts of her life in New York and LA, she knew where she was “from” didn’t much matter. When she was a student at Wellington High School, S. recalled being told by the head English teacher, a salt-and-pepper-haired man in baggy black-and-white tweeds who’d published critical essays on D.H. Lawrence, that because of her emigration from the US at such a formative age, she had no nationality and therefore, despite her interest in literature, could not be a writer [see further at 版本 version 3.0]. Which is to say, S. had lived through various eras including the demise of nationalism.

— from Absolute Love, by Chris Kraus (Scary Topiary Press, 2016)

Unfortunately nationalisms have not really died if we are still looking for these genealogies of belonging, southern girl, and you empathised with O.’s alienation even though he talked about love and hate in a way that made you hate him. later, W. made a transnational gift of O.’s art object produced by W.’s semi-anonymous collective, her shy prefaces leading T. to make fun of W. because of her need to make a “finished product”. These are all various forms of trade and transaction, not so dissimilar from the way that cultures and identities and forms of belonging happen over time, across oceans. so while W. becomes a businesswoman she finally realises that her roots are not merely ethnic as much as gender-specific and class-based, contaminated, kind of like ‘dirty south’.

 

— “Southern Girl” by Rahzel feat. Erykah Badu, from the 1999 album Make the Music 2000

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不过几十年，玩儿个游戏（for wendy and tangerine）

攝影 photo:  Toto LOK

i still come across you from time to time. that smoke that made you blink two times consecutively––it’s digital. at the time, it felt like a border between us, an inability to approach you, regal. an observer limited by a border of mutual non-recognition, perhaps, that was our uncanny solidarity. now, i am touched in your absence. Touch physical, vectors of you, plastic tangerine, plush toy mother, there’s no comparison to what is felt, and those inabilities to withstand it. The world is regal as you are. Perhaps we see it better in absence, digitally. Like a once a year push-button interactive greeting, we could do without it, but doing as non-being won’t exist anymore, tangerine, and that kind of posterity doesn’t say much for the solidarities of the world, now does it?

by the third day of a new year, we emerge into aloneness again. he eats sticky rice cakes and asks, ‘What else other than border is produced during and after a project of solidarity?’ that border is a pixel archive that was accumulating all the while——even in your absence——like toxins seeping deep into the earth underneath pasts past. ‘Happy Holiday’ felt like apocalypse this time, and even that was digital, just another mailing list. Let us understand our being together via our common inclusion within the press release (a release, a notice…an obituary?). It’s all good news, it’s been a very good show, we’re all well-intended and each one can return to hurt alone——all theories, outside within, without inside. Your identities have been crushed, Wendy Tangerine, already lumped into another long list of women defeated, those precious creatures who feel too much (those that stand out, on the contrary, get knocked down for not feeling enough). Was it really that you felt more than the rest of us, or can we blame you for thresholds?

Maybe there are no projects worthwhile beyond our being united in death. Maybe there will be no more than a press release. Maybe there will be no more words to last longer than any of us, words just so untainted because they take to the form and reversal of each one who ‘finds’ them. this is not about selfishness anymore. such particularities, as she said, have been more terrifyingly replaced by the banal. words, words… these words, and the great collaborative achievement of collective misunderstanding. solidarity, as such. the fallacy is precisely that ‘our findings’ set apart, could never be so generalized—oh, value… like meaning, like etymologies for words long forgotten. we remember you totally and not at all.

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a two hour space of self-organisation, not-thinking

Most of us acquiesce most of the time, because non-thought——though it is powerful——never arises. What should arouse non-thought towards thought, and not-thought not feeling, when does feeling try to be thought, thought through? When does non-thought jump place, to movement? A body of time ruptures at any moment, and in two hours, after so many months, something changes.

Thirteen Minutes Past the Hour.  Arrive late for meeting outside of exit A, Central Station. Have the thought: avoid thinking at all costs.

Twenty Minutes Later.  Ass barely touches the marble ledge when security guard gesticulates wildly: no sitting! Begin to reflect on previous events, not sure why still feeling so disturbed from the evening before.

Thirty-Five Minutes Earlier.  The obstructing woman you come too closely behind while walking up the left side of the escalator chastises you in a patronising voice: “講聲啊呀 You COULD just say something, you know…”

Four Hours and 43 Minutes Earlier.  The sleek-skinned young persona who once told you he has less than two percent body fat appears early before the legislative council to plead against the passing of a wide-sweeping injunction against deemed obstructions of public space. This would include the outdoor seating of cafés, bicycles chained to railings and chess games on the sidewalk. Though he has gone to bed earlier the night before to be ready to make his statement, persona is unsure of himself, knowing it is a difficult topic to debate.

Nineteen Hours Earlier.  A peaceful ferry ride across the harbour under an animated sky, where one enjoys sitting silently next to another, moving with the feel of wind instead of words. To feel what I thought was the lack of any assumption. Maybe this was a guise. But at least you knew already not to tell him you are glad to be back.

Approximately Every 8 Minutes.  Uniformed security personnel from two different companies make rounds with their long, presumptuous footsteps. They wave horribly loud squawking bird machines left and right, shooing away sunglass and watch hawkers and deafening the ears of south Asian women standing around what one would have thought to be public space. People scurry around authority like cockroaches and rats, perhaps exactly because that is how authority treats us.

Fifteen Hours Earlier, A Neighbourhood Meeting.  Sitting as per the usual observer’s role and hearing pending-career-change neighbour say that operating the photo developing machine is really a man’s task in that instinctive sort of way like driving an automobile. Hearing my own acquiescent laughter at his comment stirs a slow brew that has actually already begun long before, before his pending career change, even before your time.

One-and-a-Half-Hour Later.  Lean against a marble-slabbed column, begin taking photos out of boredom. There is a movement of freight trucks playing an extended, illegal game of “Musical Parking Spaces”. The nostalgic looking, red “Da Da Transportation, Ltd.” truck has moved up two positions in the time since you’ve been waiting.

Fourteen Hours and Twenty Minutes Earlier, Neighboorhood Meeting.  The one formerly called boss pats my lips and says, “Don’t pout”. I brush him away and feel the annoyance twisting my face before being aware that I am annoyed. The first rising bubble is pricked, and some sort of accumulated non-thought begins to appear. Non-thought rises like a yeast of years, and recollection begins to fire into the night.

One Hour and 41 minutes Later.  A young woman takes pouty-faced selfies with her oversized mobile phone while moving around different parts of the metro exit. This kind of activity doesn’t seem to be a problem in non-public, public-esque space. She takes a couple steps and adjusts the camera angle. She must be waiting, too. I imagine her sending her pouts to tantalise the person she’s waiting for.

Nine Hours and Forty Minutes Earlier.  Take the metro home, getting off several stops earlier to escape the one formerly called boss more quickly and pass by the legislative building. Peering over a ledge, one can see through the glass walls into the lobby, where reporters and protesters and police gather. It doesn’t look as much like Taipei as it did in the photos posted in their secret chat group earlier in the evening. You walk back to the station but take the bus the rest of the way home.

One Hour and Ten Minutes Later.  A woman with a cropped blouse printed with the giant words “SIMPLY SAY YES OR NO” passes from the escalator around the corner to the street.

Six Hours Earlier.  Ears ringing in bed, cannot sleep. All those instances from months before come brushing back across the lips, those loving little touches of his hand swiping my mouth, patting my head…it all becomes disgusting. Anger recalls in the form of misplaced laughter, a reprimand against the retarded, brewing animal I am. How much more efficient it would be to have deer’s tolerance, or maybe one of the government on crackdown. “Justice”, they say! I wish for blinded fists swift and made of shiny marble, rather than this mushy, marbled brew of sad self-rage that has been concocted instead. We identify marble by its streaks, and even mushy marbles are variegated, with cracks of guilt for the self-pity that collects like fat on its surface.

Two Hours After the Hour.  You think it’s fair to wait an extra thirteen minutes, since you were late before. You know we won’t make it to the island today after all, but at least you have cold marble to lean against while waiting in the not thoughtless, non-thought of brewing weather. Thirteen more minutes waiting at exit A could make a difference.

Two Hours and Thirteen Minutes After the Hour.  You watch the clock as it turns, without so much feeling anymore about the matter. Just silent relief, you can finally walk away.

 

There, a coalition has been formed…

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inadvertent soundtracks for inversion eyes

put your inversion eyes back on, proximity as the coming towards of embodiment, she says “the politics of location”. speaking as:

Ivo Kohler and Theodor Erismann, 1950

playlist:

__”Computer Eyes”, Jakob Boeskov/Timothy DeWit/Matthew Morandi, from The Wire Tapper 34
__”Golden Hours”, Brian Eno, from the album Another Green World
__”Pure”, Blackbird Blackbird, from the album Summer Heart
__”Tigers”, Christy & Emily
__”Talking History”, Xiao Hong & Xiao Xiao Hong, from the Dada Damage Compilation
__”Sullen Ground”, Mount Kimbie, from the album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth
__”Went Missing”, Nils Frahm, from the album Spaces
__”What Time is Love”, The KLF
__”Token Eastern Song”, Nirvana, from disc 4 of The Chosen Rejects: Live Rarities
__”Little Dreamer”, Future Islands, from the album Wave Like Home
__”Wait For Me”, 張曼玉 Maggie Cheung, from the Clean original soundtrack

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展览题为“如何独处” The Title of the Show is ‘How to Be Alone’

1// 《但愿我能为您描绘得更好》第二期里献给友子的歌: “菜单／那么今夜何处是京都／猫咪马琳”（演唱者：“声音向导”乐队，声音介入部分：何颖雅、何京蕴） From the publication iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter number two, for Tomoko: “Menu/So Where Is Kyoto Tonight?/Mullin The Mog” by DirectorSound with inserts by Elaine W. HO and Anouchka van DRIEL
2// “解手与生产”，尝试为高灵口头翻译Paul CHAN的文本  “Pee and Production”, trying to orally translate a text by Paul CHAN to GAO Ling

3// 爸爸骑着摩托， 儿子坐在后座上打着快板， 我们一起在儿童电影夜场喝了点酒，家作坊2010年  The boy comes home with his father playing kuaiban, we had been drinking at the kids’ movie night, HomeShop 2010
4// “你好呀，劳伦斯老师！” 这段对我外婆的采访录音是1991年我中学历史课上的家庭作业——“口述历史”，我妈妈也在“其间”。 “Hellll-o Mizz Lawrence!” An oral history project, my grandmother, mother and me, 1991

5// 五岁的我，在数数和唱歌  When I was 5 years old, counting and singing
6// 我在购买的迷你SD卡上找到了70多首歌，从中选了十首歌并通过数码处理，把它们的节拍统一成每分钟120拍（特殊感谢Ryan KING在数码处理） Music found on the micro-SD cards purchased to create this work, whereby among 70 songs in total ten were chosen and digitally synced at 120 beats per minute (processing courtesy of Ryan KING)

—–
装置在《第三房：如何独处》展览，站台中国，2010年11月11日－2011年1月24日
Installation part of The Third Party: How to Be Alone (or nowhere else am i safe from the question: why here?), on view at Platform China, 11 November 2010 – 24 January 2011

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mrs. jeanne dielman, objecthood, health and routine sadness

leaning towards, leaning on, attachments.

靠！to be close to.

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