soulellis.com / teaching/urgencylab/interrupt
URGENCY LAB
A one-hour publishing workshop at Interrupt V
Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Studios 1 & 2
Brown University
Feb 8 2019
130P
Studio 1 at Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University
QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK is a collaborative project that asks us to consider what it means to reject normative narratives. It’s a loose assembling of queer methodologies, with a particular view towards network culture, failure, and withdrawal.
IN THIS PARTICIPATORY WORKSHOP, LET’S IMAGINE HOW THE FORCES OF LANGUAGE AND SPECULATION, BOTH VERBAL AND WRITTEN, MIGHT LOOSEN HEGEMONIC POWER.
QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 2 (1923 INTERNET ARCHIVE EDITION)
QUEER
It’s too easy to fall into cultural patterns that support heteronormative ideologies, like patriarchy and colonialism and capitalism. Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed give shape to this idea: Jack connects queerness to failure by writing that it’s about “ways of being and knowing that stand outside of conventional understandings of success. I argue that success in a heteronormative, capitalist society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation.”
In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed writes that “the reproduction of life itself, where life is conflated with a social ideal (‘life as we know it’) is often represented as threatened by the existence of others: immigrants, queers, and other others.”
The queer in QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK points to a different position—the positions of immigrants, queers, and other others. Let’s try to occupy this alternative political place, gathering ideas into position. This is an attempt to make friction and resistance in the face of political crisis.
NORA KHAN in QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 1 (2018)
ARCHIVE
QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK isn’t a conventional archive, but a place to gather ideas into contact with each other. For this I look to Sara again, who writes about the archive as a contact zone—
To name one’s archive is a perilous matter; it can suggest that these texts ‘belong’ together, and that the belonging is a mark of one’s own presence. What I offer is a model of the archive not as the conversion of self into a textual gathering, but as a ‘contact zone’. (Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004)
QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK is loose. Both issues are collections of printed pages assembled into different forms. They come together without glue or staples or tape. They co-mingle and entangle in this contact zone but are also available for re-interpretation, to be reordered or remixed as the reader sees fit. The various sizes allow some pieces to become the backdrop for others. They use enveloping and juxtaposition to gather ideas, rather than binding them in any fixed way.
UNITY PRESS in QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 1 (2018)
WORK
The word work is appropriate here because keeping the project active requires labor. It’s not about a fixed presentation of materials but an emphasis on movement, circulation, and an active reworking of ideas around and against each other. By bringing work to the surface the publication’s contributors are acknowledged as cultural producers, giving shape to this publication, and the work of the public that emerges from the circulation of a project like this. And today, our work together will enact these ideas as public discourse.
How might we work right now to extend QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK into a real-time publishing event, here at INTERRUPT V, in this studio, on these wood panels? This is where we will make our work public. We’ll scan this WOOD PANEL ZINE and post it online, but the ideas that we discuss today will be immediately public in physical space, seen right now, for the remainder of the conference.
1. Choose one or more sheets containing language that resonates for you
2. Using the language as your starting point, respond by writing, drawing, collaging, folding, cutting, and/or doing anything else to extend and expand the idea(s) on the sheets
3. You may choose to include your name (or not) on your sheet(s)
4. Work collectively to display your sheet(s) together on the wood panels
5. Use the paint sticks to draw and annotate on the panels, however you see fit
5. PS & AO will scan/photograph your collective WOOD PANEL ZINE and post it on this website; feel free to circulate your own images, too
Language by Nora N. Khan, Jack Halberstam, Demian DinéYazhi´, American Artist, Be Oakley, Nicole Killian, Somnath Bhatt, Paul Soulellis, Nate Pyper, shawné michaelain holloway, Unity Press, Sal Randolph, Allison Parrish, Sutton E. Griggs (1872–1933), Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986), Emma Goldman (1869–1940), and Jean Toomer (1894–1967) borrowed from QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK issues 1 & 2:
📄 That low-down, murky place where we store who we are.
📄 We’re stronger in contamination, with our hands in the clay.
📄 It is time to turn to the language of unmaking, unbuilding, undoing.
📄 TEAR IT ALL DOWN
📄 but do not forget their language
📄 an infected sunset
📄 a practice of refusal
📄 a radical softness
📄 You know I’m your best performer
📄 SUBMERGED IN THE BOTTOMLESS ABUNDANCE
📄 non linear
📄 RESIST LEGIBILITY
📄 compulsory unknowing
📄 Information is the easiest resource to lose
📄 A VIEW AT THE END OF THE WORLD
📄 queer kinship
📄 draw your reflection
📄 permission
📄 What is closeness
📄 nonlinearity birthed me
📄 to all of us who want to finish off life as an orgasm
📄 Queer text is personal: mouth to ear, mouth to body, body to speech.
📄 the undercommons is a kind of break, between locating ourselves and dislocating ourselves
📄 PROSTHETIC POWER
📄 the possibility of a field
📄 HONESTY THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN
📄 POSSESSION OF COURAGE
📄 A LOVE OF UNITY
📄 POSSESSION OF A SELF-CURATIVE CAPABILITY
📄 CURIOSITY THAT LEADS TO THE HABIT OF INQUIRY
📄 As an Anarchist, my place has ever been with the persecuted.
📄 I have slipped gay beads on it to hide the grey
📄 within this black hive to-night there swarm a million bees
A one-hour publishing workshop at Interrupt V
Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Studios 1 & 2
Brown University
Feb 8 2019
130P
Studio 1 at Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University
QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 2 (1923 INTERNET ARCHIVE EDITION)
QUEER
It’s too easy to fall into cultural patterns that support heteronormative ideologies, like patriarchy and colonialism and capitalism. Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed give shape to this idea: Jack connects queerness to failure by writing that it’s about “ways of being and knowing that stand outside of conventional understandings of success. I argue that success in a heteronormative, capitalist society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation.”
In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed writes that “the reproduction of life itself, where life is conflated with a social ideal (‘life as we know it’) is often represented as threatened by the existence of others: immigrants, queers, and other others.”
The queer in QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK points to a different position—the positions of immigrants, queers, and other others. Let’s try to occupy this alternative political place, gathering ideas into position. This is an attempt to make friction and resistance in the face of political crisis.
NORA KHAN in QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 1 (2018)
ARCHIVE
QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK isn’t a conventional archive, but a place to gather ideas into contact with each other. For this I look to Sara again, who writes about the archive as a contact zone—
To name one’s archive is a perilous matter; it can suggest that these texts ‘belong’ together, and that the belonging is a mark of one’s own presence. What I offer is a model of the archive not as the conversion of self into a textual gathering, but as a ‘contact zone’. (Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004)
QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK is loose. Both issues are collections of printed pages assembled into different forms. They come together without glue or staples or tape. They co-mingle and entangle in this contact zone but are also available for re-interpretation, to be reordered or remixed as the reader sees fit. The various sizes allow some pieces to become the backdrop for others. They use enveloping and juxtaposition to gather ideas, rather than binding them in any fixed way.
UNITY PRESS in QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 1 (2018)
WORK
The word work is appropriate here because keeping the project active requires labor. It’s not about a fixed presentation of materials but an emphasis on movement, circulation, and an active reworking of ideas around and against each other. By bringing work to the surface the publication’s contributors are acknowledged as cultural producers, giving shape to this publication, and the work of the public that emerges from the circulation of a project like this. And today, our work together will enact these ideas as public discourse.
How might we work right now to extend QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK into a real-time publishing event, here at INTERRUPT V, in this studio, on these wood panels? This is where we will make our work public. We’ll scan this WOOD PANEL ZINE and post it online, but the ideas that we discuss today will be immediately public in physical space, seen right now, for the remainder of the conference.
1. Choose one or more sheets containing language that resonates for you
2. Using the language as your starting point, respond by writing, drawing, collaging, folding, cutting, and/or doing anything else to extend and expand the idea(s) on the sheets
3. You may choose to include your name (or not) on your sheet(s)
4. Work collectively to display your sheet(s) together on the wood panels
5. Use the paint sticks to draw and annotate on the panels, however you see fit
5. PS & AO will scan/photograph your collective WOOD PANEL ZINE and post it on this website; feel free to circulate your own images, too
1. Choose one or more sheets containing language that resonates for you
2. Using the language as your starting point, respond by writing, drawing, collaging, folding, cutting, and/or doing anything else to extend and expand the idea(s) on the sheets
3. You may choose to include your name (or not) on your sheet(s)
4. Work collectively to display your sheet(s) together on the wood panels
5. Use the paint sticks to draw and annotate on the panels, however you see fit
5. PS & AO will scan/photograph your collective WOOD PANEL ZINE and post it on this website; feel free to circulate your own images, too
Language by Nora N. Khan, Jack Halberstam, Demian DinéYazhi´, American Artist, Be Oakley, Nicole Killian, Somnath Bhatt, Paul Soulellis, Nate Pyper, shawné michaelain holloway, Unity Press, Sal Randolph, Allison Parrish, Sutton E. Griggs (1872–1933), Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986), Emma Goldman (1869–1940), and Jean Toomer (1894–1967) borrowed from QUEER . ARCHIVE . WORK issues 1 & 2:
📄 That low-down, murky place where we store who we are.
📄 We’re stronger in contamination, with our hands in the clay.
📄 It is time to turn to the language of unmaking, unbuilding, undoing.
📄 TEAR IT ALL DOWN
📄 but do not forget their language
📄 an infected sunset
📄 a practice of refusal
📄 a radical softness
📄 You know I’m your best performer
📄 SUBMERGED IN THE BOTTOMLESS ABUNDANCE
📄 non linear
📄 RESIST LEGIBILITY
📄 compulsory unknowing
📄 Information is the easiest resource to lose
📄 A VIEW AT THE END OF THE WORLD
📄 queer kinship
📄 draw your reflection
📄 permission
📄 What is closeness
📄 nonlinearity birthed me
📄 to all of us who want to finish off life as an orgasm
📄 Queer text is personal: mouth to ear, mouth to body, body to speech.
📄 the undercommons is a kind of break, between locating ourselves and dislocating ourselves
📄 PROSTHETIC POWER
📄 the possibility of a field
📄 HONESTY THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN
📄 POSSESSION OF COURAGE
📄 A LOVE OF UNITY
📄 POSSESSION OF A SELF-CURATIVE CAPABILITY
📄 CURIOSITY THAT LEADS TO THE HABIT OF INQUIRY
📄 As an Anarchist, my place has ever been with the persecuted.
📄 I have slipped gay beads on it to hide the grey
📄 within this black hive to-night there swarm a million bees