The Violence of Living. Mimicry. Issue 5. Wellington, New Zealand. June 2019.
the violence of living
buddhists believe that being alive is violence.
we come from nature, and in turn, we destroy it.
life is violence. every step you take crushes microbes and bacteria.
if consumption is violence, materialism is violence as talking is violence.
not talking is violence.
how does one manifest the ability to self realise when you have little or nothing?
the more one needs the less they are able to articulate it
eating a crumpet, syrup dripping down your wrist, you ask me, ‘what is this?’
i respond, this is what's keeping you alive.
i respond, this is what's keeping you alive.
do you ever think about how you become what you consume?
the consumption of food, space, and silence.
the more you consume the more you become terrorised flesh
the act of breathing causes oxidative stress
consumption is internalised violence
bodies as a site of resistance, bodies as a site of denigration
the universal dream of the Young-Girl…
an object, the perfect consumer product in the market…
the spokesperson of the perfect brand, an ambassador of total beauty and health…
in waiting for godot the physical world is positioned as the perfect escape from the monotony of life.
in the play, lucky's job is to carry around bags of sand
in the play, lucky's job is to carry around bags of sand
an allegory for being the footman of capitalism
my fave labour is aesthetic labour because it reveals the banality of being
the beauty that subjugates. if women are worshipped because they are beautiful, they are condescended to their preoccupation with making or keeping themselves beautiful.
how else can we explain the association [of beauty] - with mindlessness?
the mass power consumerism of the Euro-enlightenment turns the Other into something to wield control over, to possess, a spice in the venerable palate of Western civilisation.
when our bodies are stripped of political integrity, we become a product. thus, our marketability renders us meaningless, soulless flesh which ‘denies the possibility we can serve as a catalyst for concrete political action...communities of resistance are replaced by communities of consumption.’
you are just being used for your name, under the veneer of representation, you embody the object of possession
our culture is based on excess the way excess is based on your desire for more and more until
we weighed everything words / thoughts / meaning around us and conformed
until you become nothing but saturated content
until you become just objects with no meaning
the depression your head left on my pillow
the way your face dimples when you smile
so you drape your body over bedroom furniture and shrink into a pool of fabric on the floor. but you are neither of these. and you don’t make sense
·
do you ever feel separate from your body?
you go days, weeks, months without acknowledging your desires until someone asks if you are okay
and you say yes
“I started to think about bodies falling, then larger objects, then empires, nations, whole modes of existence. Bodies may fall in whole or in part; all the way to the ground from place to place; mortally of immortally.”
a violent separation from your body, shuttling into the temporality of your own abstract desire
until you are just names that lose their momentum
averting your gaze becomes the only way to disengage. the feeling of your body turning in on you, consumed in the haze of the undiagnosed illness turning like clockwork.
the ten second rule is if you can bear something for ten seconds then you can bear it for another ten seconds.
and another.
and another.
Feeling your head exploding. Feeling your brain on the point of bursting to bits. Feeling your spine jammed up into your brain and feeling your brain like a dried fruit. Feeling continuously and unconsciously like an electric wire…
turning to self diagnosing to create explanation without it…
makes you feel like your body has turned on itself
til you become an impossible space
something bigger on the inside than the outside
the film on the inside of a tape deck, a backpack, a teapot
˙
i said, i am going to stop writing
go back to everything
before there was time for mapping
more of a threat
we try to elucidate reason, but we are reasonless
i say, tomorrow i will go swimming but the sky is so full
and the ocean is empty
Bibliography:
Aoake, Hana Pera. Til the World Ends. Curatorial Project. Forthcoming.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 1954.
Butcher-McGunnigle, Zarah. Autobiography of a Marguerite. Hue and Cry Press, 2014.
Carson, Anne. Float. Alfred A Knopf. 2016.
hooks, bell. Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance In Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), 21-39.
Posna, Lee. Arboretum. Fir Press, 2016.
River of Grass. Directed by Kelly Reinhardt. Strand Releasing. United States. Film. 1994.
Reines, Ariana. Mercury. Fence Books. 2012.
Rose, Gillian. Love’s Work. Schocken Books. 1995.
Sontag, Susan. I, etcetera. New York: Picador USA / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. University of Nebraska Press, 1952.
Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. University of Nebraska Press, 1952.
Weil, Simone. First and last notebooks. Oxford University Press. 1970.
Tiqquin. The Preliminary Materials for the Theory of the Young-girl., trans Reines, Ariana. Vol. 12. MIT Press, 2012.
