What shapes waking dreams while sheltering in place? Since many of us are staying home these days, Bel Ami asked some friends to send in their ruminations and guidelines as PDFs for online enjoyment.
Click on the contributor name/title to open/download their PDF.
Click here to download all of the documents compiled into a single PDF.
Clémentine Adou, Happy, run, run, digital photograph taken on April 7 2020 at 7:55 pm before the news from the current advertisement for a bank
Rosa Aiello, Counting
Kelly Akashi, Newspaper Recomposition, 8Apr2020
Lindsay August-Salazar, As The Unrooted Root
Zoe Barcza
Scott Benzel, Modified cowrie shells, AWS-600 Digital Scale; Lucky Hand root (Salep), wire, Asahi Pentax K1000 camera body, Rollei/AGFA Infared 400 negative film
Jakob Brugge
Milano Chow, Cities, Intimacy, Scale: Film stills from Taipei Story, a Shiseido ad, and ads by Guy Bourdin
Fiona Connor
Michael Kennedy Costa, Spring Cuts
Sam Davis, Mindful.CA.GOV
Joel Dean, Why is the Second Hand Red? (Selects)
Verretete Eisenmann, Leviticus 13:2-59
Olivia Erlanger, 1:30 PM April 15 2020
Gabriele Garavaglia, Paradiso Città
Liam Gillick
Cherisse Gray, How to Hospital Corners
Justin John Greene, Anomie, Exit (for Duke)
Lina Viste Grønli, Robert Smithson in Flintstones Font
James Harrison, we are all alive together
Brennan Hill, Lamp and Saw
Michael Ned Holte, Music of Auspicious Clouds: one month of anxious listening, to whole albums, from March 6 to April 6, 2020, in alphabetical order, by artist
David Horvitz, 20th Century Alienation (excerpts)
Hanna Hur, Double Moon
Parker Ito, exercise
Dean Kissick, The Garden of Love
Thomas Lawson, Thoughtlessness 2
Miriam Laura Leonardi, Sick on top
Matthieu Manche, 福島県のゆるキャラ
Orion Martin, Midday Lucy
Christina Catherine Martinez, Get Your MFA Online
Nour Mobarak, Portrait of my Mother
Julien Monnerie, Œuf en gelée
David Muenzer, How to Compete
Carter Mull, a142:2020:Sch002
Becket MWN, The line goes up up up but where is the threshold of my patience where the line of my sense?
Alexandra Noel
D’ette Nogle, Meditation When There’s No Hospital
Laura Owens, _D.O.N._
Chadwick Rantanen, MEETING FRIENDS LIVING LIFE BETTER / THERE IS GOOD NEWS
Sean Raspet
Benjamin Reiss, Two Slices Slicing (with Methods)
Mark Roeder, The Shape of 5 Stories by Vonnegut, and One Empty Line Graph
Paul Salveson, Seen it used once at a distance
Louise Sartor, Selection from toilet paper collection
Kathryn Scanlan, Design for a Carpet
Asha Schechter, Notes from Reiki session with Laura
Jesse Stecklow
Sabrina Tarasoff, Something to Consider Before Committing to the Grand Gesture
Torey Thornton, Things I Imagined Ophelia Reversal
(Saw things I imagined
Soothe me
When I look at it it is cold.
I saw things I imagined
make my thoughts go
You have to heat it a little so that it starts to light up like hot metal does.
I saw things I imagined
i saw you
When I begin to mold it, only then do I feel that it has been in the mouth of countless others, that it is slipping from mouth to mouth as language does to stay alive.
I saw things I imagined
looked somber
It enters me like ink in the water:
I saw things I imagined
you touched me
It fills the space with the echoes that ride upon the coattails of words. These echoes: the din of it rises gradually in my mind like the racket of insects after the rain; first one, and then countless contributions.
Things I imagined
and i forgot time
You have to teach yourself how to listen to it.
Things I imagined
feels so good
By using English, I have let out many violent spirits. Words that I trusted would in English fling themselves against the wall: more often than not I chose not to speak it.
Things I imagined
i dive in
Like a redirected ray the immigrant mind turns inward as if an enormous mirror comes down the moment you arrive.
Saw things I imagined
to you
It drops like a giant rodent trap–– and forever divides time. In this way, you cannot lose what you had.
You live forever within it and through its walls you see everything beyond––
I saw things I imagined
i lose myself in you i do it’s true
As the words fell before me in a motion much like dominos falling and the picture that English painted became larger and larger and larger, I realized there was a mania to it, that I needed to be very careful with the people, who may be suffering due to the very same thing that will one day cause the language to collapse.
I saw things I imagined
can’t say why i’m crying
Even in my thoughts, I must be vigilant about the words I’m using.
I saw things I imagined
may it be the moon
People are visibly lying to themselves and each other. So I see that no one really tells the story of English:
I saw things I imagined
calls from my siren
When it is released from the belly of the squid and it blinds you in the
water you have to give it to English: and its unctuous dark wealth.
Things I imagined
draw me to the blue
You step onto it, and it is like a rope bridge, with the fog so thick that there is no top or bottom, beginning or end, and you coax yourself on, thinking at some point you may reach the other side––
Things I imagined
can’t feel my body
that is this language–– whose shape is still morphing, becoming at once more beautiful in its own eyes
and more and more horrifying.
Things I imagined
i dive in
At some point it will collapse, but right now English is the host of
something people are just learning to fear.
Taking on, taking on the lie
to you
But I can see that violence has rolled down these hills like the morning dew.
Taking on, taking on the lie
to you
I can see that there is a reversal coming.
Taking on the lie
to you
I have come because it is my job to announce it.)
Mona Varichon, The woods near Treignac
Eric Veit
Cain West
Andrew Norman Wilson, Special Economic Zone
Eel Yolef
