Emma Cocker, Field Proposals 2010, for Department of Micro-Poetics, AC Institute, New York

Kai Fierle Hedrick

EXCHANGE VALUE #3; 01 October 2010
+ With thanks to Emma Cocker and Anonymous

What gaps in a language worried by love –
or like

zones of conversation.

I body their truth and causal
exchanges of naïveté –
the swagger-hip, swagger-hip.

Censorship is a technique of remembrance.

Scratchings on wood brittle
our felt betweens.

This is a strategy.

And, a heap of negotiation, I kiss you.

The absence of text is a question of position.

A slick of sweat behind my knees:

unstable truths and ethical possession.

Cost is the backbone of each speech-act.

Social assemblage.

You exit left, vanished, a relationship
neither to history nor without it.

Object action object

I am against a chair and still in it.
Ragged edges and gloss.

Repeat, repeat

I am at a loss for what’s left to describe.
The draft goes like caution and

the marks are doors

where the language stuck us. I push
this heart through what’s left.

Rachel Zolf

Satisfactions are gaps in desire
(for what’s left)

Pass the object around and share its story
A placebo made of velvet, filled with sawdust and spores
A cluster of fruit flies in the heat of my chest
I trusted you with the bases pointing inward

Has the heart of shame grinned?
This is a portrait of a pale straight list if I say so
Two past lovers and a boss
Where I used to scratch to go out or in

Tough, hard and rigid produced in high-gloss colours
We do most of our thinking with our vocal cords
The composition must react to the edges
I didn’t mean to say anything about “docile”

Create a gap between the two parts of the logo
The solvent of the native gum and then the epiphany
When machines shift context the needless detail emerges
I never felt stupid before I took this test

Utilize proprioceptive surplus against the firm numb organ
No longer a procedure of heroization
In fact there was a blanket of hills, it saturates relief 
Confusing or genuine magic pixel amazes me

Either way, this is a valuable purchase
Everyone must write a book called house
Assigning zones of immaterial sensibility to the various collectors
Forms and scales of high-creep-resistant “freedom”

Language is a part of orgasm and no paperwork is overwhelming
To preach anything is to give it away
Doing this experiment felt more like a translation
The plane is also emphasized and nearly single

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

The above work by Kai Fierle-Hedrick and Rachel Zolf  was the outcome of their residency in the DEPARTMENT OF MICRO POETICS at the AC Institute, New York City on Oct 1 2010.  Kai and Rachel describe the project as follows:

Rachel Zolf and Kai Fierle-Hedrick will collaborate – via an on-site/off-site residency at the AC Institute – to write a sequence of poems responding to the exhibition EXCHANGE VALUE. Fierle-Hedrick will write on-site at the gallery, and at the end of each session will forward an ekphrastic poem to Zolf. 

Responding via The Tolerance Project – a collaborative MFA in Creative Writing rooted in an online archive of “poetic DNA” traces donated by 86 writers, artists and thinkers – Zolf will identify a set of search terms in Fierle-Hedrick’s poem and use these to generate a new response from within The Tolerance Project’s archive. 

Zolf’s poetic permutation will then serve as the starting point for Fierle-Hedrick’s next session in the gallery, and so on. The residency explores a variety of exchanges – ekphrastic, dialogic, technological – in addition to embodying some of the challenges and creative loopholes of distance collaboration.

Poems from EXCHANGE VALUE  1 (17 Sep)  can be seen here. Poems from EXCHANGE VALUE 2 (24th September) can be seen here.