Slaked in curved light

after you die i trace my fingers along the rock in the garden breaking my stubby nails as i pick apart the granite in search of the ruby [1] Slaked in curved light is a reflection on the continual agency of the dead, tracing ways that they, in their own manner of being, “interfere in the lives of the living.” [2] An example often taken for granted is that “our very language, the words we use to communicate with one another, are the relics of the dead.” [3] With this type of acknowledgement in mind, the exhibition aims to create an ambience conducive to “narrowing the space” between us and those who have come before us. Ancient technologies intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife brush with the new in a weird (im)materialism, a queer archeology—from oil lamps to oil diffusers, from fire to LEDs, from the waters of the Loire river to clay gathered in the nearby Parco della Caffarella. Be they loved ones laid to rest or the remains of bygone eras, the formerly-living inform each artwork. Decisions, wishes, and offerings have been made for and with them. Light flickers in the mist. The exhibition is organized by Hunter Longe and derives from the workshop Desideri per le morte (Wishes for the Dead), an experience of collective grieving led by Clovis Maillet in Rome last fall, where the group of artists initially came together. On May 16th, 2025, there will be a public event programmed within the context of the exhibition. More information to follow. [1] Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Body to Mineral (Publication Studio Vancouver, 2016) [2] Vinciane Despret, Our Grateful Dead (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) [3] JF Martel, Weird Studies, Jan 18, 2023, episode #138 -- Infans infans without language. But a child cries in her attempt. Without your language which had become at once so personal and so public. They say we rely on pat phrases towards the end, the long end, years and years of fading without being able to name it as such. Clichés repeated at the tennis courts, running towards the net, unafraid expressions of aggression. The paradox of the self-projected self seems less important. The minor god comes down, a risky mission, and finally whispers in your ear and with a last hiccup something emerges, but it is without you. It doesn’t take machines to make feelings on their own. A child’s toy moos like a cow, a neon tube of acute notes whips through the air. A lifetime of learning the ins and outs but you’ve already disappeared. The mouth speaks only for itself, an organ. No eloquent speeches or heartfelt apologies to lovers won and lost to children sired and raised. There is a shadow smiling, Cheshire Cat bearer of nonsense from the limerick to the anagram. But those too would require much too much order, a pun like a hiccup to the frontal cortex. Years ago, a raspberry on the belly would have garnished such laughter but now only further sobs and cause for concern. Patients unable to perform other tasks can still thrust their tongues when observed, Doctor Rossi jots it down on her clipboard. What else then happens unobserved, what else are we all blind to. Like Morton Feldman wrote: Who but the dead know what it is to be alive? A cousin eating ice cream beside peaked toes out of a knit blanket wicked witch style slurps atop the gift to be immediately handed down. I say, I see they leave their laundry everywhere and cups and plates and peanut butter filled spoons that are always so hard to clean. It is both a churn and a clamoring tossing your head into a hamper with a gusty inhale. The flavors and the sensations on the tongue become a reminder of the way air travels so cold and burrowing through the body of course until it doesn’t. A prayer made in silence with the mouth moving while you were lying on the airport floor in the darkness of the predawn. Nothing could be more youthful or full of life. There are sensations that you will never feel again long before now or then or when time no longer has any value to you. To you but to us yes, still, it lingers here, relentless in its authority. I’m looking through a window at water and ships and bridges and thinking of all you’ve missed already in such a short time. The perennial scene makes the present feel even less possible. Rifling through drawers as the documents and polaroids of some past life it is too late to ask you directions to find. Sitting by the bed and scribbling my hand plays dead, too. Hypnagogia, the imagery that happens near sleep is our illusion of leaving.The images behind eyelids though come from the most living unconscious depths, the activity that cannot be restrained. The truth is an immense majority of us die as we were born— oblivious. Nurse Flavia washed her and put on her pink nightgown. Propped up her rail thin body in the big green chair and turned on the Teletubbies. And she laughed and laughed and laughed. Rember the vindication of, I’ll have the last laugh, muttered so many times at corporate meetings and mediations in glass towers and at her very late husband. This was her last night. In the dinosaur park I think of our bodies reconstructed bone by bone. It’s coming to this, some sooner some later. In 500,000 years, the excavations will be quicker but by no means less mysterious. We are leaving the house the hallway and she pulls me to the corner. When Franco died, she says Tom put a tape recorder in the casket, it was voice activated, one of those old analog kinds. The next morning, he took it out before the other mourners arrived, before the mortician did a last check. It was Franco’s voice, you know. And I don’t really believe in that stuff, I don’t but wouldn’t a poet. If the god comes to visit you once he will visit you twice. Farinus, so boyish and so Roman, with his same face his same silly jumper, warm in embrace, one office for the doing and the undoing. Like in the municipal building, there only to communicate the greatest occasions. Nietzsche reminds us we’re der und der when we die where is there where is that other there. It’s the same in writing it’s the same on the telephone. A whole life spent trying to be two in places at once will only leave you nowhere. Melly made a solemn pact that whichever of us should die first would endeavor to communicate with the other on the receiving end. I keep holding little seances by myself in the half hope half fear you’re making the call. —Allison Grimaldi Donahue