In Material Worlds

Text by Louisa Elderton All the dead malls across America. Burned to the ground. The internet’s pixels luminescent. The metal skeletons of buildings buckling and breaking. This is the weight of change. Panes of safety glass shattering. Concrete crumbling, neon flickering, bare bones, dogs licking. It’s a question of what is left. Of the remains after something has happened; after someone has gone missing; after they have somehow moved on. Even a hole can hold you. Even air is matter. Even words sound whole if uttered by a tongue that soothes half-formed letters. If you push your flesh up against mesh you bear a trace. You could be filled up yet. With bone and blood and debris. Sweeping the studio floor begets little piles of dust, studded with stars of granite. If you sow these as seeds, something else will grow. Shaping a new universe. Not everything can be stitched back together. A sweep of solvent corrodes as a gesture. The breaking point of decadence has come undone. And the grid as we know it is still waiting to expire. All that order, willing rebellion on. Still shotting, still smoking. And we cling on. Space. Goth. Pastel. A gravestone should leave an impression. With traces of letters as leftovers, once the years have worn away sentences. Time is a curious thing. As is memory. We tried to use words sparingly. Who knows if one day someone will cast the remnants of what we said about you. We all know bodies are vessels. The quality of grace infused with light. The Lord’s transmission. You have to let it flow through, she said. If it gets stuck, allow it to expand into every fold and wrinkle. Let it know you in full. We’ll extract it afterwards as fossilised truth. Everyone is a fading rainbow. Skin and hair and nails unstoppably dimmer. Yet everything is glossy on the screen. Even oily water, murky and distilled. And the sprinkling of spit that you laid over me shines with every colour in the spectrum once I am connected to the mains. The vestiges of youth. Of birthday cakes piped with purple cream that you leaned in to lick off. Of silicone that could still save you, if you let them inject it. Of the lines that marble the edges of you wanton mouth. Of the tiger that breathes beneath, which you say keeps you safe.