MILK Reads
Edition #3
Curated by Martina Copley
As if a dream of the night before is writing
As if seeing the trees and the flowers is writing
As if watching the sun go down is writing
As if stripping the sheets and feeding them into the washer is writing
As if napping on the day bed in the afternoon is writing
As if wanting the residency in Finland is writing
As if reading other people’s words is writing
As if stopping to have a chat is writing
As if making coconut rice in an oven pot is writing
As if someone you know is writing
As if bodies and the emotions that stream through them
As if sleep is writing
As if writing a novel about reenactment is writing
see Yanagihara
Ask Roni Horn if drawing is writing
As if to summon the dead is writing
As if to sing to the dog is writing
As if going by train is writing
As if bending my head to the ground is writing
As if watching what’s going on around is writing
the nape of the neck of a stranger on the tram where the collar slips is writing
As if kidney failure is writing
As if unbagging thinking on but not eating fried potato chips is writing
As if a new blue coat
I began to understand to what great extent our language constrains the world, arranging it and placing its various elements in logical systems that are of such nature that we see neither the system nor the logic, only the world it presents to us. See Knausgaard, The Morning Star, 2020.
As if
Leftovers
the Unconscious
The unbewasste
A hole
An unfilled hole
Is writing
see Eliot
Eyelids closed
not dying is writing
see Cixious
As if hearing something that is not said in what is said is writing
See Didion Why I write
As if pointing to something is writing
As if
Writing is not
World
As if life as work–the act or many acts thought included of it
Is writing
As if the reader’s imagination is writing
As if textural sensual
misapprehension
as if
Walking and composition
Wording
languaging that runs alongside
making space so there is room for everything
bigger than the self
Is Writing
Sing these words and make something of it
Rocks that show you how they are made
Contested islands
incoming tide
following the pace set by another
As if distraction
Encroachment
a calling forth
song song
Gratitude
As if
I always want more days
nightfalls
Dislodgement
As if a funeral feast is writing
READING LIST:
-
Claire-Louise Bennett, I am Love, 2014
-
Anne Carson, Short Talks, 1995
-
Moyra Davey, Index Cards, 2020
-
Joan Didion, Why I Write, 1976.
-
Harry Dodge, The River of the Mother of God: Notes on Indeterminacy, v. 2, 2014
-
Lyn Heijinian, My Life, 2013
-
Susan Howe, Concordance, 2020
-
Chris Marker, Sans Soleil / Sunless, 1983
-
Bernadette Mayer, Experiments, 1989
-
Patti Smith, Three Stones for Jean Genet, 2013.
-
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, 1914
Martina Copley is an artist, writer, curator and educator working in the annotative space.
An apprehension of contingent orders, the work doesn’t have a set form. Sound, idea, object and modality are collated to set up a structural space for something to exist, a space in which the work moves towards an opening and at the same time asks questions about itself.
Exhibition projects include Some Alchemies [heavy breathing], RMIT Project Space, Melbourne 2022; Pant and doorbell thump__is wants wants, with Lou Hubbard, BUS Projects, Melbourne, 2020; The other writing, Seventh, Melbourne, 2020; Between these worlds there is no ordinary continuity, Melbourne Festival, 2016; FM[X] What would a feminist methodology sound like? WestSpace, Melbourne, 2015; and A Listener’s guide to bowing, Melbourne School of Architecture & Design, 2015.
Publications and readings include Writing the virus, Expanded Writer’s Collective, Runway Journal-asemic, 2022: I’m nearly there and then I’ll stop, Liquid Architecture, 2022; The movement of the aside, University of Melbourne, 2019; Doubting Writing/Writing Doubt, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art + RMIT non-fiction Lab, 2019; No Notes (This is writing), with Francesca Rendle-Short, 2017.
Martina is Artistic Director and Coordinator at Blindside and lectures at RMIT University and LaTrobe College of Art + Design, Melbourne.