“Visibility makes bare the conflictual nature of autonomy.”

I don’t remember anymore exactly what context these words were written, random scribblings here and there, nowhere near as precise as her drawings, my notes having lost their specificity in time and space——depending upon one’s mood, everything can be about art or love or politics. The truth of that is an X-X-X, or “cha cha cha“, as she says, and even if i didn’t want to teach anybody anything, words fall out sloppily and ego still wishes for someone to pick them up.

“Visibility makes bare the conflictual nature of autonomy.”

I write it down because i don’t know who you are, or perhaps that’s merely a reflection of how little i know myself. Our togetherness isn’t really about a specificity in time and space, so there was no need to ask for visibility in the first place; we could accept speed, the vaguenesses of motion, non-places and all that sort. And why, would that invisibility make us more connected in some way, as if we could melt into some general idea, the seamlessness of an a-history? “Let’s not leave any traces,” I remember thinking, but my, now isn’t that sloppy.

Autonomy was seldom and always the question. Even in art, love, politics and science, like cha cha cha, it was actually the struggle of a singularity, call it human, but this singularity was much more a plea, a collective bargain, only yeah, maybe without singular demand. To be seen is not the same as being heard, and if we tried merely to subsist, voiceless for centuries, would that mean we were toiling backwards, trapped or free? She said today, “It would be very difficult to leave, being born into this kind of life, and if we did, it would be very difficult to come back.” I thought of the freedom of precipices, another dramatic moment, that articulation such that we are changed yet again, forever. What does it mean to be heard?

Are we co-conspirators, simply because you see me; what makes this withness, and if love is the thing to turn anyone into people, what holds us together and must we stand apart from everyone else? There are wars in politics, disagreements in science, revolutions in art. But love is both an anyone and a people, constantly exchanging identities, on a precipice. I see you…

—all images taken Autumn 2011 from 张谷英 Zhangguying, Hunan Province