The "I" that Thinks
A Collaborative Writing Project
The “I” that Thinks is a collaborative writing project. The idea is that we dissolve the singularity of authorship, in keeping with the Triennale theme of The Imperceptible Self.
Authors were invited to add a sentence to a text that we wrote together in the span of twelve days between Friday June 3 - Friday June 15 in response to the following text:
She/He travels feverishly, constantly and inevitably between the "I think" concept and the "it thinks" of the body. So fast she/he moves between the two, that she/he can not gather all of her/him Self before leaving for the other shore. And so it is that she/he dissolves. Yet something remains. What is it?
*
People go to the Lake to smoke. I have never joined them, but today I take off my shoes (as I’ve watched them do) and pick over the rocks barefooted, making little mock gasps of pain (as I’ve heard them do). And then I realize, I will do what I want. I pick up a rock, slightly larger than a ball, run my thumb over its one uneven ridge. I draw back my arm and with a half turn release the rock into the air. There it stopped; as if no force was affecting anymore its existence and have become free. I stood there, looked at the stone. It appeared as if it had held some childhood memory of mine. I could not put my finger on it, but it had me mesmerized and I could not move for some minutes. I layed on my back waiting for the stone to fall down; a stone will break the water. As time dilates, I dissolve. As I dissolve, memories of mine are connecting with the surroundings transforming into something greater. I become the lake, the trajectory of the rock, the crackle of the red leaves under the children’s bare feet, the worm in the raven’s beak, the shadow of the pines.
When did all of these happen; can one understand an event that cannot be measured, and if not, how could one build a relation with that event. In my memory, the rock is still traveling, never hitting the water, as if this ungraspable fragment of event kept on being rewinded. I heard them say that in those tiny holes I will perceive when putting my eyes just in front of its dark and rough surface, deep inside the stone, just in there they have enough space to live. I couldn’t stop myself of being somewhere else. That somewhere matters.
My brain was overstimulated and I was feeling useless in the face of data; the speed of its multiple flows was making impossible to fully understand what was happening.
The noise is really high. Every inch of skin rejects the sound of my surroundings until the craving stops. I ‘come to my senses’, abandon myself to the present, to a state of non-memory, observing the raucous behaviour of all the impish ‘I’s within me. I drowned. Now I can see the lake sitting on the sofa in my living room.
Contributing writers:
Alma Gačanin, Anne Lesley Selcer, Cătălina Gubandru, Dan Allon, Francesca da Rimini, Giulia Crispiani, Ladan Yalzadeh, Luanda Casella, Marie Dann, Monica McFawn, Robyn Thomas, Sarah Bushra, Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
About the Contributors: This is a project in association with Zones of Sensitivity, Curated by Ladan Yalzadeh for the Transart Triennale, 2016.