[22 October 2023]: "Primitive Hypertext" — exhibition reading list; petite and lo-fi-coded playthings; deceptive cadence; unopened herculaneum scroll; winter in america
exhibition reading list; petite and lo-fi-coded playthings; deceptive cadence; unopened herculaneum scroll; winter in america
Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.
This is part of the newsletter's “Primitive Hypertext” (Octavia Estelle Butler) strand.
An annotated list of five things I’ve read/seen/heard and want to share. [weekly: every Sunday] Read more about the changes in the newsletter rhythm here.
Hiya!
I am late (but still got it in before Sunday ended) and this week’s links are a bit of a cheat because two of the five offerings are things I wrote, lol but that is okay!
My show at KW Institute is up through January 2024. Each month, I am writing a blog post! They will be a mixture of lists, interview excerpts, and reflections. The first one up is an annotated reading list! As it reads, “Below is an inexhaustive list of texts I started before, during, and after the installation of in the coherence, we weep.“ The list includes Ashon Crawley, the Holy Qur'an, Amelia Groom, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Elvia Wilk, Sylvia Lavin, Harryette Mullen, Clarice Lispector, Pope. L., Tina Post, Bhanu Kapil, and Malidoma Patrice Some.
Installation view of the exhibition Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2022: Kameelah Janan Rasheed – in the coherence, we weep at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2023; All works: Courtesy the artist and NOME Gallery, Berlin. Photo: Frank Sperling. will you help me find new words? my sentences are growing lonely and desire the company of others.
I am working on a few other code-based playthings focused on word games and language constraints. The first one up is my little baby - will you help me find new words? It foregrounds my interest in intuitive, constrained, chance-based writing as well as a deep desire for collaborative writing. I am calling these invitations and games petite and lo-fi-coded playthings. I am basically creating homework assignments for myself because I have always been that person (— like that time in elementary school when I thought my teachers were not assigning enough homework so I *publically* asked for more homework and went on to literally create my own worksheets…needless to say, I was not a popular child!) The first writing constraint system I (consciously) created was in the summer of 2020 when I was doing a short-term residency at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. It produced the poem below:
Designing what I call petite and lo-fi-coded playthings (both simple code and more analog versions) is a reminder that at the heart of these playthings is the invitation to other possibilities; what other forms are possible? How can the constraint offered, open us up? I believe unpredictability can be offered as a language of liberation. By unpredictability, I mean the welcomed disruption of the expected program, the pleasurable unfamiliarity with the unfolding part of the story, and the inability to name the thing that now exists because no language can even begin to capture it. I do not think liberation is as simple as breaking syntactical structure; however, the analogy of a writing system offers up the schema of “waywardness” (in the way both Emily Dickinson and Sadiya Hartman talk about) and internal rebellion.
Weeks ago, I wrote this:
I want the sentence to feel unfamiliar and fleeting. This discomfort can be invitation to a different sort of relationality where the knowledge that is prioritized is not which comforts the existing reign of an epistemology or sentence structure, but that which challenges it. I think that if we can read a sentence that bypasses the statistical expectations of collocation, then maybe we can also consider the possibility of systems that disregard the historical expectations of who does and does not survive. If nothing else, I think this was the rhythm of this piece below. It was an accidental and unexpected juxtaposition. But yes, “Black people want irony!” Black people (some of us, lol) desire a decade that does not rhyme with the last decade; and encounters that break the rhyme scheme.
Title
| Black people want/ironyYear
| 2021Medium
| Archival Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315gsmSize
| 10” x 8”Edition Size
| 20 + 5 APOther Details
| Produced in conjunction with the MASS MoCA 2021 benefit auctionI am thinking about the desire for irony as a desire for radical change. What would irony look like in this moment?
So here is will you help me find new words? Please consider gifting me a word :)
Gil Scott-Heron and his Amnesia Express from March 14, 1990 in London, UK.
Thank you for reading,
Kameelah 👽
Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this wee little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at $70 USD :)
How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL