with: ayo sato, spencer lai, katherine botten, katerina capel, natilie briggs, red herring performed live on the 19th of august at lebowskis

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spencer lai

And it may be of importance, a sort of gestured courtesy, to set the record straight and present this opening scene to materialise in your thoughts: an unwelcome and brazen: “Thank you for understanding but I’m not interested in you’’ falls out of the mouth of a gorgeous dullard; their body wrapped in a boiled wool overcoat, covered in spittle of yester-evening’s sordid gathering. This figure lies on the floor of an open clearing, littered with low-lying daisies and ladybirds dozing sweetly on their buoyant petals.

The figure lying on the ground is your partner.

You are drunk with quite frankly, an embarrassing adoration for this person. This person, to summarise, is a lexicon of PROMISE and DESIGN. Other descriptors of the relationship dynamic could be said such as TACITURN, NON-RESPONSIVE, A ONE-WAY STREET — and so you are separated and you bid this asshole farewell.

As you tend to your broken heart, you learn from benevolent well-wishers at the squalid dive bar that “It takes two to tango”. Pearls to a pig, such benign wisdom is offered to you by slow-witted morons!– You’d rather smoke Marlboroughs and dance to The Bangles. With a loud foul voice reeking of red wine, you shake your head in denial, “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE” seems to be all you can offer in quiet disdain, eyes cast downward, tearing a piece of paper to smaller pieces, littered on your lap.

A clapper at the center of a church bell takes time to settle into stillness after tolled, as does my reverberating former love for you.

And so, picture: etchings on tempered glass; a poisoned body of water; the process of petrification as explained to a large crowd in a climate controlled lecture hall.

A sullen song is churned out, with clockwork-charm, playing over large speakers facing an unmarked mass grave. Many people are engaging in parkour activities and I ask myself aloud, just why is it their deaths are anticipated, as palms of the viewer of a viral video become moist with sweat? “Underdeveloped fear receptors in the brain structure of these fallen daredevils, it appears,” was a half-hearted explanation offered to me by a work colleague of mine at the time as we looked over the large field-grave together, their hand resting like a slow, dull animal on my shoulder.

And so without resistance, tears fall from the ducts of my eyes. A saline liquid accompanies a sort of gut-shredding trembling adoration and I can safely proclaim: you are without a heart.

Yes, that’s correct: cold, with malice, no title, grounded for months in a dormant bedroom, I am left to face the standing and deafening ovation of a non-plussed ambivalence of your Skype silence. Your ambivalence is not necessarily wayward integrity (a meandering monarch butterfly in Springtime as you so describe such inaction), but rather I view your being as an entire negation of succinct and snappy decision making. And without direction, the center cannot hold, as professors in uncomfortable crew necks have repeated with listless intonation on sun-filled campus grounds, many near-failed semesters ago.

Tacit disapproval is all over your face as the edges of your mouth curl downwards, like tendrils of a cartoon cockroach antennae; and so I will admit that I have also been her kind, you know, a sort of smouldering vaudeville seamstress tip-toeing between university frat houses at ungodly hours, sleeping with alpha-enemies, listening exclusively to auto-tuned pop music from the early noughties as a measure of secret self-sabotage, a no-so ‘guilty pleasure’ that I attest to at parties with a sad smile, speaking to no one in particular.

But please understand this idea: that it would take an eternity to calibrate your erroneous auratic discourse, being the callous village loser that you are. Such a timeline could be imagined: a child being reprimanded for their behaviour. The child then learns to contort their mouth form-shapes, the child pushes air from their stomach through their esophagus, with tongue contorting and extruding to form VOWELS and CONSONANTS, and thus the child learns to speak, and to speak with passion.

With these words, entire sentences are exchanged between two persons who do not love one another. Images of Terrazzo flooring, mid-Century Italian furnaces, stemless wine goblets and other obvious trappings of privilege and beautiful design sensibilities are projected onto the back of my eyelids, as I become dizzy with unending choices. As I open my eyes, the pattern of the Terrazzo flooring projects onto my immediate surroundings (lamp, floor, partner, bedspread, accented wall). Such nausea is wholeheartedly annoying, and for this I must leave my office.

A child with no name: a newborn baby bears no language, it expresses, mutely, concepts of TRUTH and BEAUTY from inception. An infant has no answer or question and that is why some houses are adorned with cherubs, punctuated with ceramic cupids and knick-knacks on once-dusted shelves of deep mahogany. A pair of apparently infatuated infants are seated on a park bench, gazing into each others hand-painted soulless pupils – did the hand who painted such simple pupils forget the warmth of love? The touch of intimacy? Is the repetitive nature of warehouse line assembly production worth contemplating in a world on its way out? A shivering and dying world? The solemn and lifeless breath of Mother Nature blows a darkened wind over a planet riddled with many imperfections, many fires and such..? Does this hand present to you adorned with jewelry, with fine jewels, fabulous diamonds? So such… a simple band of silver on the marriage finger, yes, I can so see.

And so it is the hand-painted void, the pupils of this doldrum-object and at once infant, that I attest your cold yet bashful behaviours, and yes, I confirm this to be a truthful account.

Notes from end of July – start of August, 2018

Pt. 1

Katherine Botten

I don’t care what the youth have to say

Eventually i will stop watching youtube

Seduction is a fake friend

Fake news

FOMO all over me, bad girl in librarian secretary glasses

Secretary can only wear fluffy clothes, heels, and i give her a monthly hair care stipend

Ukrainian Catholic church, north melbourne

Places to take dates in the future, written down in my iphone notes and GPS pin dropped map screenshot saved.

Did my ex reckon with … it?

Jennifer lawrence gets drunk and takes her heels off, flirts curled up on couch on the late show with

Button up white shirts and designer bomber jackets like Fiona

Adaptation (film)

Antek (person)

Thin muscular arms

Self discipline

Toil the soil

Bratz dolls

Make something of…. All images from my phone, and desktop. Notes from my diary, research journal. for… Cancelled show.

Love what you do

Passion, seduction

Narcissistic BPD men come puppeteer me and I cum

Twilight (films)

Edward and Bella sexual tension, desperate to fuck, desperate to put the tip in

I miss personpersonperson

I miss sex

I miss love

I miss care

I was once young and thin.

—

To feel love, to create a family, to have deep courageous trust, to make babies together, to raise children, to be a family, To get married, to have commitment, to be together, to connect

I yearn for connection

All muddled up

I am in the wilderness/ you are in the music/ in the mans car next to me

Lara Pia Arrobio

She is stripping her skin’s natural barrier

Venice Beach, California

A fat stripper covered in body shimmer and pink netting, on all fours moving like a snake

Massage upwards. Up, Up, Up.

Inbetween labels

Inbetween galleries

Lego in shape of modernist house

Japanese stone teaware and plates, bowls

steak knife

Sculptural candle holders, centrepieces

Day trips in architect mentor-partner’s 70s convertible to the country to op shop, antique

interests of ALL KINDS! Deeply critical open mind.

Hal Hartley

Clerks

An honest man is always in trouble.

Loving an addict is painful.

Crunchy hair

Grey rock method

Filthy pig mouth

Cut your losses

Turtle dove ex

Pigeon flies off into the sky

Pig on the ground

Cum town reddit

My hopes/ my dreams/ they fade away

I’ll be ok, i will communicate who i am

Obscure finds core

Notes from end of July – start of August, 2018

Pt. 2

Katherine Botten

Corrections and clarifications page on abc news – media

Walking by rendered brick fences and dragging ur finger nails along it as urban nail file

36 year old cockatoo on a junkies shoulder on the 19 tram, “Willa”(?), the bird shook my hand- I shook the birds hand?

The sky went black

God forgot us

Micro or macro management?

Coledale vortex journals.

Valtrex

Stare at a candle flame for five minutes.

Burpie Cardio. Can be done anywhere.

To be held like an egg.

A stone stage on corner of Chapman street and abbotsford street, north melb.

A great reckoning.

Pharmacy with cafe inside, Bell St, Pascoe Vale South.

Who runs the drones? Girls.

Happy Tummy

Bieber and Hailey deeply in love chemicals meaningful eye-contact pap photos.

Love chemical oxytocin, tramadol, targin, chemical tidal wave swell and sexy chemical nang pop

Indie pedigree.

Now i only look for Tubzy

What is merch?

I love travel and festivals. Training for the base camp as replacement personality.

It happens when it doesn’t.

Scour

Fraught

Firework

Eggshell

Hinterland

Dreams of chaos, visions of order.

Reading the financial times and listening to D12 – Purple Pills

Like a smoothie with 25g of fake news

A flower is an ad

Meteorite says it isn’t going to hurt you

Puppy promises unconditional love and then develops a drug addiction

Sexy yoga

Penetration and clit stimulation

Shame spirals stop me from feeling erotic

Not all magazines

Spring onions are ads

This offer is not everywhere and not forever

Flat Earth Energy

Ground Floor Energy

Speak it in (to the History)

Love and grief feel different.

I choose to let it stew.

Ground truth

Space weather forecast

A pariah on both sides

Letting things happen and letting them go

Put every pussy in a body bag

I yearn for a friend to say “I know he wants to get back together, you should call him, he hasn’t been the same since it happened”.

Lords of Dogtown

Pink Floyd LA summer skating in an empty pool in the 70s warm sun youth possibility

I am honey mustard

My cats would be called fizzles Bubbles. Fluffy.

Exchange info and learn together from each other.

He says just put on lipgloss and fluff your hair

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Katerina Capel

smooth pussies of porn

cocoa butter sheen on legs

bikini line, no spillage

and a soft dive

my own short hairs stuck to the bathtub

it is perfectly ridiculous

to so surely insist

these things belong to women

alone

for some imagined man

I could never afford a boat but I have some fantastic friends

Katerina Capel

chocolate cake please

or no please

body turns away

I watch a jet ski sift

across the water

just over two hours in the car

on the way here, scenic

no music just talking

on the way over

we work things out

‘jump Jacob’

‘will I be in a wheelchair after this’

‘I dont wanna risk my life’

‘what are you waiting for’

the cliffs tumble towards the ocean

no sand only rock

and when I jump my bikini comes off

a year ago, two

who did I love

and who loved me

who I love

who loves me still

a yacht is a large boat

she says

our house could have a small boat

I say

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Katerina Capel

we could go out on the water

groups, four maybe five at a time

and i’d make sure I’m wanted there

i’d make sure I’m comfortable

‘you’re such a girl jacob’

he keeps yelling but he does good backflips

she teaches me to slow down

to slow dive

Two Bodies

natalie briggs

Three am in Melbourne. My body is nine am, or closer to early afternoon. Swiped across continents, I dreamt in sci-fi last night. Creatures from somewhere else told me I’m too attached to the idea of family and chronological time to understand how the universe works. I got into trouble for using the creatures blue trampoline, a precious resource. The trampoline was designed to light up if you were crazy. It did not light up when I bounced. The creatures already knew it wouldn’t, and were disappointed in me for trying. Jetlag. Is a beautiful word. I’ve eaten a mandarin and half an unripe banana. I’m drinking coffee. I try calling my new-old lover, no answer.

You ask what about vibrators attached to drones, and you can control the drone from far away? But I see two people in the same room with the drone, not far away from one another, very close to one another. What does proximity have to do with imagination? You don’t even have to be there, but what if you are there?

We’re sitting in your kitchen in Upstate New York. You tell me the house is haunted. I’m trying to be big for you because your mother just died, so later I’ll tell the bathroom mirror that no one is allowed to haunt you this week. I don’t care whose house it is, I tell the mirror, I’m so big I’m everyone’s house. At the kitchen table I tell you I wish I had two bodies. Maybe I say, I have two bodies. You push back on this possibility. You tell me your bodies are sliding into each other. I see a mechanism retracting. I’ve got two bodies but they don’t touch. They extract. My other body is standing next to the table, watching us talk. My other body never changes clothes. Black shorts and white t shirt, no shoes.

When I ask you to wrestle you look at me like no one has ever asked you before.  You place your head into my chest hesitantly, kneeling on your mattress. Small ram pushing. We each win a round, and I end up on my hands and knees. On all fours you realize I can’t be moved. It excites me that I can hold you on my back. I wanted to measure my strength against someone whose been taking testosterone for four months. Watching you rub the gel into your arms and belly in the morning. The last round is the longest, and you push me off the bed and along the floor, getting up immediately and leaving the room. I’m so competitive you say, not looking back.

You tell me later there were animals living in the house when you arrived. Snakes, spiders. Beetles. I picture a white fluffy dog barking on the driveway too, never not barking, even though there wasn’t one.  

line 1 was curated by ben sendy-smithers, ruben and daniel ward