MILK Reads
Edition #3


Curated by Martina Copley

 

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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:

 

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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.