bend it
OR
take it
leave it
Many years ago, I built you a villa, darling.
The foundation was poured, and its supporting columns
silently invaded the sky.
Sometimes I imagined you and me inside,
enjoying our happy home. These dream-like memories
will always remain, even if
my hope that you will someday return to me
has vanished…
IATO, Giovanna Chiara Pasini
While I'm Crossing, Isabella Arboleda
Confusion. Inner turmoil.
Freedom haunted by unclear expectations. Restlessness bred from uncertainty. A young woman stares out the window, her face mostly hidden, but sometimes startlingly direct. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew her…
MOSTRABUNDA #nudes, Lucas Koester and BRECHO Collectives
A flicker. An electric candle flame illuminating the pixelated outline of a ghost. It undulates suggestively. It convulses in either ecstasy or agony—which I could not say—and disappears once again into darkness.
And I was...
Waiting
.
.
And
Wait
I
n
g
.
Relationscapes: An exercise on waiting, Maria Pisiou
‘PleAse be assUred that
as sOon as
We are
in suCH
positiON
I shall.
be
in touCH with
you '
(John Cage, Notations)
But there is no rule against waiting, my dear. I can stand here forever—and would!—were it not for the world slowly changing around me, questioning me, demanding a response.
My thoughts were interrupted by a disturbance across the room. Someone was shouting. Someone else was throwing something. The woman before me stood motionless in the wind. The shouts felt like a violation. I should say something…
neither bread nor __, Cecilie Fang
The photographs were listing rules of their own, boldly asserting the many things that bread was not in a thin, nasal voice. Bread was not—apparently—a shoe. Bread was not a plate. Bread was not a duvet, although a mattress lay on the floor before me, decadently lined with fluffy, moist cushions. I was struck by the sudden urge to lay down. “The artist is tired” someone whispered…
A loud voice echoed off the walls. A woman was speaking urgently to a collection of black and white photographs, asking questions and nodding as if they were giving her the answers she was looking for. Cautiously, I drew closer to listen to the odd conversation.
They’ve upended the breading, my dear.
The mattress is laid bare.
Chaos. Destruction.
It reminded me of the last time we were together. I didn’t mean to yell (I’m sorry). I covered your screams with wailing guitars. I still remember the charred stench in my nostrils as I burned the sheets. Oh God, forgive me…
The RULE, Ella Tighe
this thing keeps happening to me when i THINK I PRESSED THE CAPS LOCK button but i didn't, Antrianna Moutoula
Breathe in. Breathe out. You always used to say I must calm myself before I speak. I know I must slow my heart now.
In this inhabited space of abandon, I fear to walk without instruction. I will walk behind this queenly figure, and strive to be a loyal subject of her rule.
(Click video for sound)
The artist is tired, Gustavo Tome Garcia
I don't wanna go to school
I just wanna break the rules
Boys and girls across the world
Putting on our dancing shoes
Going to the discotheque
Getting high and getting wrecked
I don't wanna go to school
I just wanna break the rules
(Break the Rules, Charlie XCX)
Saudade, Ana Luisa Brito Ribeiro
And now, my darling, you must permit me to speak to you tenderly for a time. For I have had my fill of wild nights in the company of lunatics and now I long to submerge myself in memories of you.
I came to this place in search of release from the suffocating bindings of day-to-day life. I wished to find a space of freedom, and just breathe inside it for a few hours.
But alas, now I find I would re-wind those bindings even tighter if it would bring you back to me! There is no freedom of greater value than your presence, no sensual pleasure more thrilling than your honest laughter. I would follow you, even the memory of you, into the darkest prison of the soul if it meant holding you in my arms one more time.
Take it, bend it, or leave it when it comes to the rules, my dear, but please also remember this: The rules are often written that they might bring us together in peace.
By the end of the evening, the space had been transformed. Bread was…well, you must know by now that bread was everywhere. But more importantly, there was no longer a division between the guests and the artists. New pictures were hung, new rules written. Some of the works displayed on the walls were altered, but none destroyed. A playful richness was added to the space, but nothing taken away.
It didn’t have to go that way—of that I am quite aware. But it did. And I so wish you had been there to see it, my love.
Sending you my warmest affection,
xoxo
Special thanks to Eryfili Drakopoulou, Emily Welther, Anushka Nair, and Korina Kordova for the documentary videos and photography!
