PERMUTATIONS OF A THEORIST, 2021
The conditions for solving a mathematical equation are within the equation itself. Such are the expectations of inherently logical yet contingent statements.
And so I trace my own disappearance. I track my movement from academia to art. I encounter myself. As I do, I discover that the academy did not need a capital ‘a’ after all; that the theorems imparted between its ivory walls, including its linguistic formalities, are as loose as the gossamers that surround my early morning musings by the river. I continue to track the fallacies like a good murder mystery, and with the fervor of a well-played conspiracy theorist. Yes, there is a performative element to the mycelial growth of my identity. I can’t take any of it too seriously, for if I do, I fall prey to the very metastatic needs of the academic institution. So I leave enough space to observe both the form and the provisionality of the moment. And to sustain my break from its enervating grip, I play the right music in the background. The likes of Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, Simone de Beauvoir, Maria Chavalan Sut, and leaves falling from a nearby sassafras are the counterpoints of my emerging rhythm.
Permutations of a Theorist is an ongoing series of blitz investigations into my own disappearance as an academic and reappearance as an artist. As I divest myself of the formal identity as academic, I map the lines that insist, desist and consist; the textures, movements and forms of critical unlearning and melodious becoming. What are the habits and narratives I had internalized from academia, that informed myopic ways of seeing the world? The racist, patriarchal and monochromatic that led to the excision of other, authentic parts of myself?
How do I experience my identity, as it shifts dogmatically and surreptitiously between object and idea? Between gas and solid; the epistemic and the ontological. Like a snake both anticipating and reactive as it slithers down new paths.