Jul 14th 2019

“(but was it promises that the ante scriptum made? Predictions, announcements, engagements? And who did they bind? In breaking them, what were you perpetrating? An imposture, a crime, a swindle?)” —Anne Garréta, Not One Day

An ante scriptum is the pre- to the confessions of P.S., the shivering with antici…pation, the queer potentiality of what is yet to come, what we expect of ourselves and others. Before the writing: what marks are already on the page? On the body? What assumptions and projections surface up? And what of the promises made on a whim, broken in an instance?

Our expectations might still be disrupted—and probably will be. Don’t hold me to it. How can our textual experiments surprise us? I want to make a promise to you—that my work will be [x, y, z]. “In this paper, I will prove beyond reasonable doubt…” —but what happens when we write into what we don’t know?

Turns out there’s a little bit of loosey-goosiness around delivering on a creative project. It’s unpredictable at best. The flash of an idea pulls us into experiments and everything opens up, there’s so much it could be! The premise of the whole story sweeps us up and we’re excited to sit down and start writing. But then life happens and oh my, I’m questioning the commitments I made, I accept it’s going to have to change. So much about writing is an organic process full of disrupted desires, impulses, and habits. Being messy is a creative experience: we’re processing our transitions as we go, whether we want to or not, as it all flows through us.

Ante Scriptum celebrates first drafts, scribbles, half-baked plots, undelivered dreams, broken promises, sideways growth, turnabouts and digressions.

Readings/performances by Stefania Gomez, T. Fleischmann, Maya Nguyen, Yarrow Woods, Duriel E. Harris, Laaura Goldstein, Sasha Tycko, and Jared Brown.

Visual art by Jared Brown, Fred Sasaki, Julietta Cheung, and Jasmin Liang.

Curated by Noa/h Fields and Arianna Hess.

Readings/performances will begin at 7:30PM.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,