the following is an excerpt of a poem responding to BIOGRAPHICALITY (2023) curated by Dominic Eichler at Efremidis, Berlin featuring Tony Just, Tamar Magradze, Anne Jud, Marita Liiten, Alex Müller, Xavier Robles de Medina and Stephanie Stein. This text responds to One Night Locked in S036 (1979) a portrait series and performance where Anne Jud locked herself in the punk music venue S036 from 8pm until 8am the next morning. ward returns to Jud’s methodology by locking themselves in Efremidis for one night during BIOGRAPHICALITY, producing an automatic, somatic, poetic response. the complete text was performed on August 28, 2023, audio from this performance can be found on the un Projects website.
—
learning some simple appropriations of our civilisation by accident, bumping the pillar with your back
you notice orders, okay: the animal of your fright shows two allegiances, call them the fountains that croon divided, first, play something for the heart as it acts under the rule of the breath, then: okay:
- you wish not to disappoint
- you do not fear your loneliness
the third allegiance you had wished not be brought up; that you are no radical
one may as well get comfortable, learn the sounds of the room’s invisible people, smell areas you may never have a chance to again
counter tops like the private waft of pinned sculptures
***
i have chosen a lazy profession that supports my indulgences in pleasure and inquiry and (potential) escape from meaning
to justify one’s relevance through the employment
of the l e t t t e r s s ss sss ssss
is to expose their irrelevance as a shared operation
let me have my moment of whatever whatever whatever is that someone coming in right now what the hell sorry hello he-
eyy
nobody
ahhhhhh everyone’s irrelevant in a gentle universalising way yep yep yep
one third of a honeydew melon
i occupy the aesthetic of the dejected but promise optimism as if my government only not my government that doesn’t sound right either when i am a descendant of a people that treat any space they enter as a hotel which is to treat a space as if it is the womb and a womb in the worst most freudian way where its oedipal and you have returned to your place of birth everytime you drive somewhere and have to stay overnight and kill the father and maybe the mother too which is of course the universal mother and this is how a british government operated an occupation and a genocide and that's not the government i house my optimism in or maybe it is therefore where it belongs most and perhaps we are all similarly avoidant of our potential politician life but how disingenuous and unglamorous it seems
2x kaffee mit milch
buffalo mozzarella (one ball)
100 grams of prosciutto with an understanding
of it cannibalisms and recklessness (it becomes salt so no need for that and the wet
body of the cheese is of course the sauce as is traditional
of the civils)”
***
im writing in heels now
so take a guess
anyway at the
edge
the drawing
boarding
let's start with possibilities
- steal the most moveable and valuable art: simple, classic, 90s DeNiro type assistant could help
- a suite of tasteful, experimental and debaucherous exhibitionisms:
high art, alluring although in need of a willing, gorgeous, confident co-conspirator on the outside prepared to assist with documentation in a subtle, conservative, similarly tasteful manner whilst centering the shared nirvana of each other’s particulars
- abbreviated vipassana, this already feels possible, it could be happening i do believe in some things that a poem can do
***
with little time to grieve we could take to dancing or singing in hopes of accessing subconscious manifestations of denial, shame etc.
a man walks by with an arm-length dinosaur toy behind his back
don’t mind me looking, yes i am here taking this moment to solidify some convictions and perspectives with intentions to move on post-confession until of course they must RETURN:
- i am no longer interested in the separation of art and life, that it is all one grand project of ambiguous uh-meel-yuh-rey-shuhn, say: you are holy and unlimited and you will live forever, say, could you for a little longer?
- i hid rubbish somewhere and will never tell you
***
i miss being a bird
would we classify this decade’s neutralities
as shared delusions of metered gratification?
each day we arrive to this room which is all rooms and we ask
were we ever prepared to house anyone but existentialism, edging for purpose
would i
detox like this from pity?
my most loyal
convenience
the mirror of course
ever present, has all these attachmentssssss
extrassss, memoriessss, ghostssss
