What follows is the script of the 140 second performance that I delivered at SFAI 140 last night. Each book was read for the length of time a slide was shown on the screen (20 seconds). For each image transition, I closed the book and went on to the next –eventually making my way through the tottering pile of 6 texts that I brought with me to the mic. Thank you Natalie M. Ball who spoke before me and who managed to catch all of the books as I went through the pile. See the performance here – https://vimeo.com/162389047
The project that I am working on during this residency responds to two crises: a crisis in reading, and a crisis in migration or failed migration. This is a tiny piece of my project.
The Illegal, a novel by Lawrence Hill
After taking the overnight trip from Buttersby and disembarking in Clarkson, Keita entered the bus station that he had been using since he had done into hiding in Freedoms State. … He would not live to an old age. He might not make it to thirty. It didn’t matter. He just needed to stay alive long enough to run again … (182)
Ru by Kim Thúy
Because of our exile, my children have never been extensions of my, of my history. Their names are Pascal and Henri, and they don’t look like me. They have hair that’s lighter in colour than mine, white skin, thick eyelashes. I did not experience the natural feelings of motherhood I’d expected when they were clamped onto my breasts at 3 am, in the middle of the …. (3)
The Beast by Óscar Martínez
El Paso del Norte International Bridge, better known as the Santa Fe Bridge, spits out dozens of deported Mexicans. It’s a busy day. Every Friday at five o’clock in the afternoon, airplanes from all over the United States… (238)
The recently translated journal of my grandfather Gerhard Klassen
And yet my memory of my journey is marred by a dark blot that is associated with my interview with the Canadian Consul in Riga. At my hearing the agent perceived that I was no farmer …
“how to write a successful poem part 2” by Israel Francisco Haros Lopez (from Waterhummingbirdhouse: A Chicano Poetry Codex)
don’t use the word border
don’t use the word scapegoat
don’t use the words nation of immigrants
possibly don’t use the words minute men … (7)
“The other language or translating sensitivity” by Julia Kristeva (in Imported: A Reading Seminar, edited by Rainer Ganahl)
Immediately, but also fundamentally, the foreigner differs from someone who isn’t, because he speaks another language.
Looked at more closely, this fact is less trivial than it appears; it reveals an extravagant destiny … (194)