TEXT WORKS and PUBLICATIONS
i download you (2024)
i download you onto my harddrive
one broken pixel at a time your image glitches into something that resembles something familiar
my cracked screen pieces together the image of you as you were when we were younger, and knew more
the week after our birthday
the week we fell in love
on a roof
on the edge
of space we fell
together
we loved each other
until we didn’t
men imitate heartbeat on 16 bit screens
sequins pour down my legs
you walk away
tobacco crumbs scream ‘i love you’ from the bottom of my handbag
[i need you to update me
i need a reboot
i need to empty my trash
my RAM is full
my room’s a mess
my heart is broken]
i’m softer than you think
bodies fold themselves into other bodies
it’s interpersonal origami
simulations glitch on 12GB RAM PCs
(we are projected glitter balls; ultimate simulacrum
we are the bioluminescent bodies of those you try to ignore
we will never stop shouting)
the whirring of the PC fan keeps me awake at night
projections of rendered images slip in and out of focus
high contrast on soft skin
the images show vivid depictions of endless violence and rage
unimaginable monstrosities spill from LED screens
illuminating the future while numbing our internal hardware
(please promise me i’ll survive
that this feeling will go away)
helplessly hopeless, you carry on as normal
your silence as violent as bombs
(we are trespasser we flow like water, ignorant to the walls you erect
we are soup, endless concoctions of assembled things
hybrids
we slosh around in hungry bellies)
i typed out half my immune system into a chat box and called it a love letter
[thank you
that was great
a real treat]
it’s tough to be fascinating
synthetic flesh falls into synthetic flesh falls into synthetic skin, synthetic bodies, synthetic emotions
3D scanned bodies drape themselves awkwardly across the User Interface
their UV unwrapped skins are stitched seamlessly together
a few rogue polygons escape the meshes of these virtual bodies
these bodies which are learning how to dance
at first the inelasticity of their frames is a hindrance
but slowly;
surely
their artificial masses pick up the rhythm
(we are porous
our fluid membranes throb with the energies of those who pass through them, uncensored
we live on land borrowed from our children
there is no hierarchy here)
your scratch disk is full
please delete some memories
make room for me
in your thoughts/bed/harddrive
your breath is an earthquake in my ear
a tsunami in my veins
cheese-string rituals become the daily norm
pre-packaged processed lives are stocked up on shelves
rainbows gyrate in hypnotised minds
the blue wheel of death spins stoically at the ends of beds
waiting for the fall
the underbelly growls
hungry for more
it spits its children onto the streets
broken glass bottles in hand
(i fell asleep against the window of the corner shop
i was waiting for you
when they came for me)
i found you glitching in the garden
swimming in dizzy nostalgia
two-left trainers tied up at your feet
moss creeping over your bruising skin
artificial sunlight dappling your face
(C'est la fin du monde
quand tu pars
when you hang up the phone)
i stumbled upon a hibernating 3D model of a dead world
she was curled up in plastic leaves
she was hiding from herself
she was hiding from herself and from him and from them and from life and from everything that comes with it
closed circuit constellations illuminate the skies these nights
there’s nothing new under the sun, but we still feel our own firsts with blazing intensity
locked eyes
a brushed hand
the pull of a trigger
who will stop me now
the holes are empty
and I am tired
I want you to fill me up but you yourself are leaking
oozing echoes
they spill from your exhausted body
I see it in real time
24 frames per second
a tidal wave of the past
a tsunami of forgotten memory
computer crash
control alt delete
im sorry that you carry this burden
you deserve so much more
i want to make it easier for you
but i myself am stuck in a box
a box of my own creation
it is made of wires that threaten to fuse at any moment
they crackle at my presence
they sense my fear
they smell my desperation
i upload my pain into the cloud
where it can be free among the raindrops
data drips down onto this electric earth
crackling with every splash
sparking our synapses
we lose our minds in oceans of information
i don’t know how to be myself anymore
but
i also feel i am more myself than ever before
the heaviness of it all makes it impossible to process
when all lives are hopelessly entangled yet forever more individualistic
we live in concrete mazes
stuck in silicon cells
freaky yet gentle, we bend ourselves together
rupturing the boundaries put in place others
falling through infinity we forge our own path, one of togetherness and becoming
it is not easy, it is not kind
but
in the heat of that short depressive rage, miracles spill from tired and leaky bodies
i kiss you and i am w(hole) (2023)
not understanding while also understanding fully
slow comprehension (with a side order of quick-release tension)
you shudder into existence around the empty pillow
smelling like the colour of hickeys
sounding like the silence in waking up before the alarm
a soft peace
swelling into worlds we stumble blindly through internet-based fear
the blubbering lips of a spent lover fumble over glitter-covered chicken pox scars. the only residue of pre-pubescent innocence.
(the heaviness of the wireframe makes it slow, weak. while simultaneously making it the most beautiful .obj in the system. a non-entity. only its bones are on show. free of stretched flesh, we feel sorry for this gaping body. a disintegrating whole. its naked structure exists in ignorant bliss, glistening with possibilities while wrecking my GPU.)
would you rather lose your bones or your muscles? I ask myself this daily. the answer is always the same.
tongues cause friction burns as they scrape along electric bodies. sparks fly, igniting both my hard drive and my heart. my arteries become wires, I try to ground myself but my screws are loose. I am hurtling through your own personal cyberspace.
what if plants named themselves? I ask myself this daily. the answer is never the same.
the holes are empty
im sorry I never looked you in the face
it reminded me too much of myself
(she laughed and sent me out for cigarettes)
(ocean dust floats gracefully through the viewport, glinting off light that has been reflected by both human and machine eyes. this pixelated marine snow holds many secrets, it overflows with them, exploding in cosmic light; the static white noise radiation that was vomited out of the big bang’s belly now lies waiting inside our screens
the blue wheel of death
[rainbows spin in hypnotised minds])
synthetic flesh falls into synthetic flesh falls into synthetic skin, synthetic bodies, synthetic emotions.
tumbling through infinity
a broken feedback loop screaming at the top of its shredded lungs
Instructions for drawing a circle: do not stand in the middle, you may fall in
wanting you to see me weak
capitalising on my own pain
and the pain of those I love and those who love me
a selfish act
a ((non)selfish) sacrifice
I think of you, it makes me weak. you are so strong. I want to hold you while you sleep, feel your presence melting into mine. plutonic skin on plutonic skin. plutonic flesh on plutonic flesh. you are my sister and you break my heart. I wish I could carry your pain. lighten the load. I cannot put you into words. how much I need you. how much I ache for you.
things building into other things
stuff pouring out of other stuff
a subtle leakiness
a blinding vagueness
porous entities, porous beings, porous hearts
symbiotic sharers smoke shattered shards of cigarettes
(BUZZWORD BUZZWORD BUZZWORD)
i cannot draw how much i miss sleeping with you.
it simply cannot be done.
I kiss you and I am (w)hole.
overromanticised cigarettes hold the pieces of my being together
deep fried brains make deep fried decisions
banana split slippers make me stumble on my words. the words catch in my throat, sharp as razors I am coughing blood made of pixels, their cubic forms make flowers on my grandfather’s pristine handkerchief. it brings tears to my eyes. they wobble on my waterline but never fall. I have forgotten how to cry.
how do you make a primary colour? I forgot the recipe.
things I crave:
a soft world
a soft space
a safe space
things I receive:
woven lands
fabricated skies
lubricated thighs
swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat
(the words that catch in my throat
never quite reaching my lips
how they make me ache)
poverty rubs against wealth
it is sickening
I am sick
I am powerless in my power
a 21st century coward
I am sorry
but
not enough
image as interface
entering the image
navigating within an image
texture mapping the creases of my heart so that they align (un)perfectly with yours. let me UV unwrap your perfect body, draped in unconfigured wireframe. I tear it apart so untethered vertices scatter the UI, flying through infinite space, smashing up mesh.
I assemble you like a jigsaw. each piece pulled painfully from deep inside my mind. you are a complete fabrication built from lost memories.
(love you miss you let me kiss you)
I am in flames yet I do not burn
we loved each other
until we didn’t
men imitate heartbeat on 16 bit screens
a second too long embrace
cherubs pluck ominously on heartstrings
whispering soft melodies, forgotten hopes, re-membered histories
gentle memories float through elongated time, travelling through wormholes and shredding up synapses, our electrical circuits short in synchronicity
decision fatigue
a passive man’s paradise
the holes are empty
and I am tired
I want you to fill me up but you yourself are leaking
oozing echoes
they spill from your exhausted body
I see it in real time
24 frames per second
a tidal wave of the past
a tsunami of forgotten memory
computer crash
control alt delete
pigeons with sunburnt gums
the sorry state of affairs
the terrifying uncertainty of life
stumbling across something, someone, that changes the trajectory of your life forever, completely by chance your entire narrative is altered and there is nothing you can do about it
how can we live like this?
how could anyone?
bodies fold themselves into other bodies
interpersonal origami
glitching simulations on 12 gig RAM pcs
projected glitterballs
ultimate simulacrum
you need something clean, something that’ll make your heart stop
I crave the ache of a broken heart, the simulated pain that triggers the most beautiful creations
my heart is on a shoestring
tied up at your feet
dragged through the same dirt as you, travelling together
(I never meant for it to get this good)
one basin that holds things
another that does not
you called me the love of your life in passing
the world span
the waves crashed
it all ended
tears that never quite dried
the memory of a wound
so clear we both had to look away
(we sink further)
we are in bed yet we do not sleep
we are endangered yet we do not die
I am in flames yet I do not burn
the right to the future tense
I’ll hold you on the kitchen floor
sweep up the scattered shards of your silent self
I’ll reassemble you
solitary moments spent in bathrooms across the world, catching your breath at your appearance in the mirror, wanting to share it with you the one you love, the one just out of reach
(first we feel them, then we fall)
I need you on my side
cutting up and rearranging
life wants to be on the edges
it’s more fun that way
the thrill of the unknown
something to sink your teeth into
a woman of no appearance
she glides through life
unnoticed
a ghost
only her bones are on show
sheathed in blue light, trapped behind her screen
she is a woman now
she stretches leisurely into all corners of the human condition
I fall through her pelvic floor
she was thawing
marinading in her own life, her own skin
desperate to escape the monotony of life yet unsure how to do so
she makes art and then she does not
unsure how to grasp the uncertainty of what’s to come and what’s not to come
she crumbles in on herself
(I crumble in on myself)
the escape is essential
my heart is heavy
a clenched fist holding onto old memories
I just want arms around me
I don’t care who’s
as long as their yours
and the image is flesh (2023)
hot destruction
the body as filter paper
a guttural litmus test
beds that are never slept in
taking things apart in an (un)orderly
manner and reassembling them similarly
(your breath is an earthquake in my ear
a tsunami in my veins)
(for) we are soft and awkward in our
beauty
syncopated synonymity
I miss you so much that it physically hurts. and you do not even exist. I feel it in the pit of my stomach. it starts as a small, pulsating entity. a smell, a colour. it catches my attention. it steals my breath. before i know it, it is spreading outwards, lapping like fire, stretching to my furthest edges and crossing to infnity. I am flooded. flooded with feeling, flooded with numbness. it is indescribable. a silent thing
it goes like this.
I need my mother
I need to wash my hair
I need a fuck
slapping flesh
slap away
slap slap slap
I kiss you, you are beautiful
you are the sobbing found in a
dropped drink
(don’t cry over spilt milk, they say)
fragility
constantly convincing myself I do not care
caring more than I should
not caring enough
(I do not know the difference
between these things)
[with tears not running down my face]
[but again no tears came out]
[my face was free from tears]
(exit stage left)
scraping our bodies back together we stitch the rhythm into our skin
bellies churning
mouths frothing
LEDs buzz
I watch you shaking
(you are trembling now)
flesh tenderised to perfection
from (y)our bodily vibrations
(but the music don’t feel like
it did when I felt it with you)
heavy chests heave through air thick with whispered secrets
sun-bleached sarcasm on a rainy day
gut instinct
yeast infections thrive in bags for life
recycled through collaborative bodies
mostly there
barely there
incomplete
complete
the rise and fall of breath, the creaking of the machine within
organic technology
held together by pixels, bits of body seeping out through holes in the wireframe, hideous and bulging. digital skin embossed with cross-sections draped over 3D-modelled mountains crested
with virtual snow made of voxels.
why, after all this time, is my greatest comfort still in your tshirt?
there’s a difference between stories that stick and stories that do not stick. sticky vs slippery. a wet fish. a muddy heart.
the image is beautiful
and the image is full
and the image is flesh
ecological mess (2022)
ecological mesh
ecological mess
a chimerical soup
a page in a book
a word tasted on the tip of a tongue
gurgled in a throat
the word laps at your gums, coating your fungal teeth
eventually, once all of the flavour has been sucked out, the word trickles to the end of your tongue, and rolls out of your panting lips
(symbiosis/symbiogenesis)
it’s a fleshy word, a fleshy world
an interconnected whole
the world is covered in flesh
all sorts of flesh
blending together into unsuspecting relationships
a storm of glitching fractals makes worlds out of bodies.
from armpit forests to tundral scalps
- to what extent can i steal/manipulate other people’s words? -
horizontal inheritance. the transfer of genetic information between organisms.
imagine… a speculative evolutionary trajectory where organisms evolve not through genetic mutation, but by absorbing genetic information from friends, acquaintances… strangers.
reproduction as becoming with other. sex as sharing.
cosmosis
my RAM is full
— and? —
my heart is weak
i need to empty my trash
I cannot draw how much I miss sleeping with you
lorum ipsum as placeholder for something better, something stronger
bathe your wounds in shed tears
the salt will heal your trembling body, it will make you feel better.
entangled words in entangled times. elastic bodies. elastic thoughts.
how music can force an unexplainable emotion and make sense of it, a blues chord progression - looping upon the same theme but slightly evolving the melody each time. minor tweaks that completely change the narrative. natural selection or becoming with each other?
language is fiction. language is fortune teller.
slow progression
leaning to stretch yourself.
learning to stretch yourself but not so thin that you break/snap/crackle/pop.
slime renaissance
slime resistance
prosthetic metabolism
cosmic detritus
never close the loop
it is hard to embrace in a closed loop.
meddle. dive deep into unknown worlds.
push some buttons.
when you live in a single frame there is no past or future. animated lives. scripted fate. drenched in cosmic rays we push through time’s membranes, welcoming porous dimensionality.
i’m here i’m here i’m there
there is an art to becoming who you are
it can be unnerving, derailing.
artery stew, a blood bath. learning to negotiate with unknown kin.
maybe we have no true colours. maybe we are never ending recipes with new ingredients added every day, every moment.
maybe you are not a finished being, but an infinite piece of clay, moulded by all the fingers that surround you. not being manipulated, just gently nudged here and there, slowly becoming more yourself.
the world takes note. the cosmos notices.
pigeons patrol the gates of afterlives
invisible beings retreat into 3d animations, their wireframes illuminate the future.
instead of asking how much it hurts, ask what you would give up to make it stop.
maybe we actually are all lichens.
THICK SPACE: a script/manifesto (2022)
a script/manifesto:
setting: a club under a bridge, mark leckey style
the air crackles with nervous energy. can’t you feel it? bubbling in your veins.
don’t you want it? heavy hearts are filled with coco pops and other lies, it's a
survival strategy. we are myth we are legend we are imagined we are
forgotten we are remembered. we survive. shove some fairy dust up your nose
and get over it. we exist in THICK SPACE where clogged air fills virtual lungs. we
weave slippages (it resonates so hard so hard it makes my brain jitter my
bones shake my groin ache) i wish you could see the pace of my heart
thumping in my ribcage. its a dangerous dance machine so tread carefully. we
are trespassers we flow like water, ignorant to the walls you erect. we are soup,
endless concoctions of assembled things. hybrids. we slosh around in hungry
bellies. im trapped in a sticky shed I simply cannot get out. feedback loops
form gloopy skies, their silver linings are endlessly coiled springs. they pierce
my heart. body pumpage tear spillage blood leakage. we are bioluminescent
ecologies, we create our own energy systems. we are porous, our fluid
membranes throb with the energies of those who pass through them,
uncensored and free. we live on land borrowed from our children. there is no
hierarchy here. tongues cause friction burns as they scrape along electric
bodies. im so overcharged that all i can do is literally slam my
hands/head/breasts against the keyboard. i steal everything, even my own
breath. we are feedback loop, a sticky foreverness that makes me feel a bit
sick. a gradual depositing of matter, a highwater mark. there are treasures to
be found here. we are hibernating 3D models of dead worlds. fabricated
worlds. 'world' seems like too compressive a word for such astronomical
developments. we are a different sort of consciousness. we are the baseline
that throbs in your throat. we grip your heart with our pumping rhythms until
your arteries are drained of blood and your aching chest is empty. (ooh how
romantic) we are hivemind, diffused across galaxies. all are queens in
genderless space. (i dont have the words to express how i feel) i have made
myself a home away from the pain. a place that exists harmoniously. where
there is no ecocide, no war. a place where he texts me back. and in the heat of
that short depressive rage, miracles spill from tired and leaky bodies.