Surfacing is a new choreographic work by Ivey Wawn
with Ivan Cheng, Eugene Choi, Daniel Jenatsch and Taree Sansbury.


Thursday May 9, 2019

She is a surface, a vehicle for appearances; reflections.
Concealed in her commodity form are the social relations that go into constructing her;
relations that are obscured by the smooth, reflective surface of her face; dispersed and confused
in her ability to project back representations of what is presented to her.

Commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects in partnership with Carriageworks for Project 34. Asad Raza Absorption


text

hahahaha hahahaha


each laugh I make is a countdown.

in a few minutes, i will begin juggling.

look at my hands, they bear scars

from juggling flaming torches, juggling chain saws,

juggling steak knives yes steak knives,

like a salesman selling you more


/ here’s my pitch,

a careless add-on sales manoeuvre,

an easy punchline which thoughtlessly reveals my value or values.

steak knife for carving a slab of meat flying though the air like a juggling ball,

I’m mercenary, a stake knifing through the air to eviscerate a vampire, a werewolf


hahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha

four fully fully loaded. passing, passing as what it is, nothing strange here,

trans human, trans humans looking human enough and passing, limit reaching.

I am dressed as a vampire, I am dressed as a werewolf, I am dressed as I am,

I am passing as myself. interiority / discharge / hourglass

turning, and turning, infringing in turn.


here i am, standing in the drive, you are sitting in the driveway.

this is rubbish in a way, I’m not really driving, just depending on disbelief.

the sun is driving I mean dragging me down.


You are a bowl of discharge, you are too, you are a bowl of discharge,

and discharge is anti memoir. anti-memoir is not a matter of disclosure

– disclosure is memoir. anti-memoir notes the pathologies of memory,

constructing non-chronological narratives, refusing progress and closure.


does the sand remember or does it fall


open hourglass

there’s sand on the street


we’re at a tributary

I am a causeway,

I am the peninsula, this is the link

I am not sure what it means to own land.
 what does it mean to be a landowner?

and who powers the tectonic shift? disasters come as surprises to most

note that Ivan has been driving the golf cart and we are further away now.

I wanted to drive a friend who would read poems while we drove past you.


( though you can still hear my voice the same way.

the devices of formal or physical transmission have been removed;

here am I, so direct, so dull. )


In Ivan’s directions, my body is not addressed, as though I could

almost be without a body, an avatar. Technology forms my phrase,

perceive me always as fragment.


climate controlled hourglass, sustainable dunes,

you’re only leaving footprints.


I might be my name but I can be another body too,

I was a tall glass of water, two bottles of wine poured into each other.

and I am close to being Ivan.

two whines dripped into one sack.

some sand poured into a bag, heaving and straining


remember this ;

Anti-memoir considers the pathologies of memory,

constructing non-chronological narratives, refusing progress and closure.


what do you remember, and is it a sand, grit?


Citation as an effective form of reproduction. I reproduce the words of Sara Ahmed, quote –

Citing; reciting; an endless retrospective. White men as a well-trodden path; the more we tread that way the more we go that way. To move forward you follow the traces left behind of those who came before.

If to cite is to wipe out your history, what then? Citations are academic bricks; and bricks become walls. You point out structure; they hear you as talking about identity. They think you are just concerned with being missing yourself; that you are making this about yourself. I have no wish to be a phenomenologist who inherits and reproduces this tradition. My aim is to queer the line that leads from one body to another. I want to be wonky; to get things wrong, even. not to accept history as a good enough reason for your own reproduction.

It takes conscious willed and willful effort not to reproduce an inheritance.

end quote.


standing in the street.

stopping the flow.

I could be a street performer, I am passing as myself

I could be in relation to an audience.

I could be following my passion


I could be some depiction of the streets, rendered onto screens,

I could be notably a flag falling down on the road,


grand prix, I’m too fast, I’m too furious,

I’m every sequel to myself at once.

stop traffic.


golf cart speaking 


I am a game of golf moving over links 


I am two people talking.


I am the transmission


I, the irrigation shuddering and shuttering bore water

I am that notable flag falling down on the road, a curtain sweeping across the turf


hahahahahaha hahahahahaha



images by Jacqui Manning