A Response from Jade Lewis-Wells
I am just a small feral cat and so this will be a small response to Rhys Trimble’s performance for Spontaneous Combustion. Let me offer you a little further context for my comments … I enjoy watching videos of rescued and released seals in New England. Rhys as the seal was entangled, but managed to free himself with his own flipper. I found it quite pleasant watching the seal learn to perform feeding on fish. The fish are provided in the form of language on the scattered pages. The seal himself is small and yet game to catch and consume the fish thrown on the floor. He made some very strange noises as he swallowed. I suppose the seals in Wales speak a different language than I am used to hearing. There is less spontaneous hissing at humans. Or perhaps the echoes were his hissing with an accent? I liked the intent of the echoing a part of performance within itself; a sense of awareness that repetition is natural across all species. Let me contrast this with shark making the television repeat itself. The complementary nature of repeated action and repeated sound within composition are satisfying. I am coming to understand this kind of turbulent movement as essential to life. This itself echoes the sense of satiation as the seal performs the task of feeding and consumes the poem. The sound of the ocean inside a shell is only the blood in your ears echoing and Rhys Trimble makes me feel this is real.
SubPhonics
Fusion Redistribution, by mjb
These simultaneous paintings were created as a direct response to Rhys Trimble and Maja Jantar’s work. Their titles were taken from lines, or mishearings from the two performances.
Spontaneously Combusted Self-Depravation, by Veronica B.
…And the poetry kept rolling from Anne Waldman on a roof in Mexico City, to a beautiful wooden floored room, a stage, perhaps in London, or perhaps floating in the sounds, words, and movements of the performance couple montenegrofisher, somewhere between my computer screen, my bedroom and my feelings of amusement and enjoyment whilst I flew away immersed in what I was seeing and listening to, trying to forget it was a rainy miserable summer's day.
I never go to bed early, I never use my iPad in bed to watch anything because lying in bed when there's no sunset reminds me of long gone times, when darkness lived without hope, which never seemed to end.
What I experienced enlightened my dreams, moved the clouds away, made me float and rest forgetting the rain, avoiding the sounds of quiet empty nights where nothing but desperation could exist beyond the rigid limits of isolation which used to fuel my desolation.
All photos are by Suzi Corker.
Jade Lewis-Wells was born to the feral cat community on Nantucket, the island the Pequod set sail from in Moby Dick. She was caught by Cattrap and put up for adoption through Nantucket Island Safe Harbor for Animals.
mjb is a visual artist and poet.
Veronica B is an eclectic writer who finally has found her way developing virtual narratives.
