House Letters: Build and Dismantle by houseletters

House Letters

III: Build and Dismantle

A note While lockdown has resulted in social and spatial lives in the UK momentarily shrinking, working on the third issue of House Letters has again opened up new connections globally. And as we enter a new phase of the pandemic, House Letters continues to evolve as a collaborative space in which to respond to it. Issue 3 contains 25 contributors, chosen from an open call of over 80 submissions for their inventiveness and critical engagement. Interdisciplinary in tone and format, this issue includes artists and writers experimenting in all mediums and genres, responding to topics that intersect with the chosen theme of build and dismantle, and the sociopolitical context. With this issue, I wanted to bring together explorations of what and how to build and dismantle. Though these binary opposites relate literally to construction and deconstruction, the following contributions explore the relevance of the two terms to theoretical overhauls. Humanity faces a pivotal moment: not only the next stage of living with Covid-19, but tackling the deep-rooted societal divisions that the virus continues to bring to light. In the space between to build and to dismantle is change, alternative, salvage, transformation. Such notions unite these binary opposites, inviting one to dismantle the frameworks that brought us to this moment of social, economic and environmental crisis, while building on the strengths of the resilient communities and movements attempting to reconstruct it. Historically, zines have been an inexpensive way to disseminate ideas and unite voices. Structural changes will not be instantaneous but are part of a process that we must be committed to for the long run. This publication is but one small intervention. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Bethany Holmes, Editor

Contents 10 Untitled (May 2nd, 11:23) Alessandro Cugola Alessandro is an architect based in Brussels, with a propensity for exhibition and installation design. His work develops through dialogue with artists and designers, allowing to test an interdisciplinary approach. alessandrocugola.com IG @compensato 14 Zeitlupe Rita De Almeida Rita lives in Berlin. Her practice focuses on language, whether visually or linguistically. She uses moving images, still images and text in order to create a fluid space of communication for the unsayable and/or the unsaid. IG @3_ao_meio 18 The Symphony Behind the Fabric Qianwen Yu Qianwen is a multimedia artist based in Chicago. She works with video, installation, sound, weaving and animation, combining traditional techniques, such as weaving and drawing, with modern approaches. qianwenyuyu.com IG @qianwenyuyu

20 Apart, Within, No Giles Goodland Giles is a London-based poet who has worked extensively in linguistic research. His last books were from Shearsman and Salt. 23 Talis Est Sensu Mary Bobson Mary is an aspiring artist from Russia and a Doctor of Economics. Her practice involves textural abstract painting. marybobson.com IG @mary_bobson_art 24 Tapada AfrolimeĂąa Jaime Enrique Prada Jaime is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited in Peru, Argentina and Brazil. They explore the relationship between gender and society, challenging hegemonic structures with an introspective look. jaimeenriqueprada.com IG @jaimeeprada

30 Two Rascals and a Whole Lot of Behind Michael Ho and Chiyan Ho Michael and Chiyan are an artist duo currently living and working in London. As second-generation immigrants from China, their work responds to the notions of cultural mismatch and, subsequently, cultural (re)discovery, identity and sexuality. cargocollective.com/ michaelandchiyanho IG @2hos1bucket

38 The Fog Has Lifted Slightly and I Can Think Clearer Marie Smith Marie is a visual artist, photographer and writer. She lives and works in London. Her practice incorporates text as a form of visual language that addresses identity in relation to memory, death and environment; in particular, how the geographies and spaces she inhabits shape her perspective. marieesmith.com IG @marie_elaina_

32 Socio-Parasitology Manifesto 42 Sabrina Mumtaz Hasan Letter to 2020 (and White Tears) Sabrina works within the mediums of Marisa Luana Quartin scripted text, performance and audio. Marisa is a British artist with Her practice is stimulated by her ancestry in Angola, Portugal and writings on materialising the positive Trinidad. She focuses heavily on aspects of a parasite, in favour of showing the beauty of Black faces catalysing social change. and bodies in her art. A portrait and sabrinamumtazhasan.co.uk figurative painter, she creates artwork IG @sabrinamumtazhasan that conveys emotion, utilising earthy base tones. Painting is a way to 36 express her identity and activism. Unmonument (I, II) mlqart.squarespace.com Liz Blum IG @mlq.art Liz is a multi-disciplinary artist and collaborative researcher based in 44 Boston. She adapts her work to public Me, Every Day and environmental issues, driven by a Emily Roach process of collecting data, research, Emily is a Cardiff-based queer and information to interpret as visual illustrator and fine artist, who and digital imagery or performative combines digital and traditional events. processes. Her illustrative work lizcooperblum.com is narrative based and character IG @blum.liz2 driven, with a particular emphasis on LGBTQIA+ experiences. Through her art she relates her personal observations to a broader, universal audience. IG @ejr.draws

46 An Expanding Bookshelf Lily Abram Lily is a designer and imagemaker from Sheffield. She recently graduated from MA Graphic Communication Design, Central Saint Martins. Experimenting with photographic techniques, she aims to make discoveries within the medium. These discoveries communicate conceptual, thematic messages. lilyabram.co.uk IG @lily.abram

52 Story of the Bamboo Grave Ayane Tominaga Ayane is based in Tokyo. Her practice includes soundscape installation, writing and collage. She focuses on the theme of human and nature relationships, questioning anthropocentrism in favour of a perspective that accounts for the presence of diverse beings that make up an interweaved world. ayanetominaga.com IG @nenepoooooo

50 In an Alternate Universe Where I Am a Contestant on The Bachelor Raina Greifer Raina is a writer based in Bath, UK. She has performed as a featured poet for events across Bath, including Raise the Bar. Her work explores femininity, sex and consent. She has been published by the Awakenings Foundation and Constellations magazine. IG @raina.greifer

56 Untitled Devis Bergantin Devis is a multidisciplinary artist based in Italy. Always swinging amongst extremes: truth and artifice, control and liberation, strong affective attachment to the work and abandonment, irrationality and rationality. dbergantin.tumblr.com IG @devisbergantin 57 Distort Holly Foskett Holly is an artist based in Belfast. She mainly works with photography and explores relationships, nostalgia and the fragility of memory, as well as photography as an object. hollyjay2001.wixsite.com/ hfoskettphotography IG @hollyfoskettphoto

51 Battersea, London InĂŞs Miguel Oliveira InĂŞs is a Portuguese artist, currently living and working in London. Her works are fragments of the mundane, collecting objects and thoughts. cargocollective.com/ inesmigueloliveira IG @inesmoliv

58 Itinerant Self Scott Castner Scott is a photographer and performance artist from Portland, Oregon. Their work seeks to challenge assumptions about identity, particularly how our physical bodies relate to our non-physical selves. scottcastner.com IG @scott.castner

64 The Bridge Emerald Liu Emerald is a writer based in Belgium. She draws inspiration from different cultural elements to form an open dialogue within each piece. Her writing has appeared in The Millions and Greyscape, while her poetry has been selected for group exhibitions in Antwerp and New York City.

60 These Narrative Environments Darshana Vora Darshana is a London-based conceptual artist with a multidisciplinary practice in sitespecific, moving image and digital art genres. She has exhibited widely. darshanavora.portfoliobox.net

66 Memories from the Beach Irene Febry and Irene Insan Irene and Irene are based in Bali. Irene Insan is a photographer; her passion is to document memories and create timeless photographs. Irene Febry is a mixed media artist; she creates art out of mundane objects. IG @irenefebry @ireneinsan

61 New Forms of Agency (I/II/III) Cora Marin Cora lives and works between Berlin, Athens and Barcelona. She is an artist, art educator, writer and researcher, working in analogue formats with dissent-loaded purposes. coramarin.com IG @and_cora_said

68 Blue is a Feeling Ashkin Bin Ayub Ashkin is a transdisciplinary cinematographer, artist and producer based in Dhaka. He focuses on the body and the relationship between body and identity politics, particularly gender identity and the sociocultural concerns that relate to gender practice of men in heteronormative societies. IG @ashkin_ayub

62 Through the Lens of a Stone Charbel Samuel Aoun Charbel is from Lebanon. He combines his education as an architect and his passion for nature, experimenting with materials and creating a system that examines social and environmental realities. charbelsamuelaoun.com IG @charbelsamuelaoun

Untitled (May 2nd, 11:23) When all days are exchangeable, all time becomes repeatable. There, space stays suspended, as every yesterday and every tomorrow remain our today, in a cyclical comeback that helps me fall asleep. In this ambiguity, you say there is nothing to miss out, as it is something we cannot understand nor define. So, I force myself to stay at peace, yet still measuring this ambiguity through the metre of my body, in an abstraction that vaults from when I dream, to when we talk. Yet sometimes an adjustment occurs. And when it does, often at the moment I like the most, time gets placid, and our conversation becomes dense of words but empty of anything else. There end my definitions and, without question, I start reproducing, without naming nor measuring. And when you say there is not much to add, I say that what we are looking at is what we should add: we are staring at another moment passing by, and the moment we look at it is also the moment we decide to look away.

Untitled (May 2nd, 11:23), 2020 Alessandro Cugola Short text, and digitally edited paper collage; 84.5 x 60 cm This work reflects on the meanings and cyclical digestions that make up the building profession, where ideas are constructed and set aside, producing a number of unreal spaces originally made to showcase or test an idea.

Zeitlupe When looking into a mirror the object and the subject are the same – the spectator becomes and is the observed object simultaneously. The Mirror Stage: human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body – reflected – produces a response that gives rise to the mental representation of an ‘I’. The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant’s emerging perceptions of selfhood. The reflective surface is a projection of a physical interior. The viewer discovers an inseparability from the outside in which the inside comes through. When Narcissus looked upon the lake. Ego as fundamentally dependent upon external visual Objects, on anOther image. You are just building yourself up, buttercup. Wave at the mirror and the mirror waves back. The image exists in an Imagination placement, behind a glass partition. Confront the world absences without the subject. Withdrawal of reality experienced. Nausea of a world running without the spectator, insists on playing at a living behind a glass partition. Of another substance, separate, severed from the one who watches. Can I touch it? Narcissus drowned in his own image. The mirror as an instrument of human perception, as a symbol of possibility

for communication directly between viewer and the viewer’s perception. The spectator in a silent dialogue with his understanding of the world. A division: Depicted Object/Subject, where the subject holds a supreme rationality position, allowing them to scrutinise the world and reveal the unquestionable truth of the world. Wave at the mirror and the mirror waves back. Have my eyes always been this wide? Reflection as a captive and restorative medium that has been evading conscious reality. But impermanence is a glimpse easily forgotten; it becomes an Imagination exercise. Engrave light and shadow, engrave an idea.[1] Take a picture it lasts longer. Fixated mirror. The camera as an instrument of human perception, as a symbol of possibility for communication directly between viewer and the viewer’s perception. A supplementary image of human vision introduced through an objective intermediate medium – it makes accessible to the human perceptive system something that escapes it intrinsically.[2] Know the world still enough to know yourself. The way the subtraction of Time takes place allows for an exploration of Imaginative capabilities, fundamental to propose future constructions. Bi-dimensional concussion: agglomerate of light, shadows, lines and occasionally, if you are lucky, colours. The viewer’s own thoughts inflate bi-dimensionality. Meaning resides on the subject’s side of the mirror. Ilford Multigrade IV Resin Coated Deluxe paper offers you the best reflection. Of the same substance, as much as, its meaning resides outside of the Other

side of the mirror/camera/lens. Zoom. Action. To treat the viewer’s perception is to reflect upon the relationship between the Depicted Object and the viewer. Widen the aperture. This is becoming too short-sighted. Take a picture.[3] Negotiation. The viewer is not a passive Subject. Real is only real if, there is someone to attest that ‘that’ is indeed real. Right? Did you see that? This conception asks a double position from the viewer: that the subject has to put themselves in the position of the camera and at the same time in the Depicted Object. The double position structure of reflection and Imagination. Postpone the relative reality advent – the subject tries to link itself. Him, me, I is all he; I; we know. It keeps it lively as if part of a conversation that exists nowhere besides its own. The Object in the image is an insoluble riddle in which its reality depends on the spectator. Walter Benjamin on a photograph of young Kafka: I am standing there bareheaded, my left hand holding a giant sombrero which I dangle with studied grace. My right hand is occupied with a walking stick, whose curved handle can be seen in the foreground, while its tip remains hidden in a bunch of flowers spilling from a garden table.[4] The Depicted Object is to be known for its invisible opacity. What is not visible to the human eye – makes visible the invisible aspects of the viewer. Optic illusion of realities. Paper texture as glass partition; Standing there, I am knowing of my grace. Depicted Object as fundamentally dependent upon visual external Ego.

The Object is annulled under the volume of the viewer’s identity. It is themselves that the spectator perceives in the Depicted Object, not the Object itself. Narcissus drowned, for there was no reality beyond his reflection. Convey a denotative attentiveness to the imaginary links – a study of the immaterial supplements and the present absents. Which simultaneously complete and leave open the Object as conception. They render uncanny qualities in the Freudian sense – the known and the unknown clash together, what was once in the shadow of the back of the mind as mere subjective completions are brought into focus and the viewer is left by itself to be confronted with the multiplicity of his own evoked self. Illusion is understood as soon as one understands the mechanisms of perception. The truth of vision attached and controlled by the body is now understood as prone to mechanisms of manipulation and stimulation. Suffering reality as a power system. Divine, that the true site of originality and strength is not the object, but the silent dialogue between the spectator and the anonymity behind the camera. Pictures are worth a thousand words: Terrible haunting, an image doesn’t talk back. But merely Echoes.[5] When looking into an image the object and the subject are the same – the spectator becomes and is the depicted object simultaneously.

[1] Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image (London: Verso, 2007). [2] David Carrier, ‘Art and its Spectators’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 45, no. 1 (1986): 5-17. [3] Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990). [4] Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). The analogy is also made in A Short History of Photography. [5] You are just dismantling yourself up, buttercup.

Rita De Almeida Fragmented, the text is a hybrid between poetry and theory. An exploration of something I observed during the pandemic: as soon as the world is still enough to observe, the outer becomes the inner of the subject.

The Symphony Behind the Fabric, 2020 Qianwen Yu Woven fabric, synthesised image, video I lost access to essential weaving equipment during the quarantine. This project explores the woven fabric as a map, and a score; linking it through time, labour and sound to space. The music is created by the structure of woven fabric.

Apart A complex of emotions falls apart, in an abandoned spot. We walk to the grey school hand in hand and come apart under the light. It is this that shall maintain itself, apart from any past: a wound like a black flower, exquisite and irreparable, breaks apart the immortal in us, and you feel as if a mysterious stranger has slowly and lovingly pulled you apart. Select the bitmap image you want to break apart. Choose Modifyâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Break Apart to space the elements in the horizontal plane. Brass automaton Gage is in the desert picking apart a riddle, and the Lotus Kingdoms are at war. Observer and observed stand apart as the necessary poles of a substantiated being, the glue that keeps matter from falling apart. My father, who has not existed for 40 years, would be lonely with no one apart from me to remember him. Apart from that, how can I get to work, what are the connections? The rose spoils in a park that due to its uncertain location is never in fact visited by anyone apart from the park employees. A bureaucrat explains I have to stay apart. Stand back-to-back with feet apart. All of the blocks are divided into apartments apart from my attic room. Everyone does as they are told apart from one child who spills a can of Fanta over my carpet. What I say is taken apart by affiliated banks who use analysis windows to enforce affect control. Apart from that, she has swollen so much. For the first three days, we stay there and hardly leave apart from to walk out into administrative search space. The flea market on the train track consists of objects momentarily stilled from their inevitable blowing apart. The students find that when they attempt to fold the net into a pyramid, the pieces come apart. The easiest way to do this is to place three 2 inch blocks equal spaces apart on the level floor and let the monosyllabic crow take the work apart. He thumbs apart the slashed-through canvas of the bag. The suit torso covers the entire body apart from the head and adjustable snap-lock inseam. Have the children cut apart the abrasion-resistant polyester? The peach is split around the pit mark and the halves torn apart by a slight circular motion. We had drifted, broken, fallen apart, but on waking found our hands touching. A part of to be apart is to be a part. â&#x20AC;&#x192;

No Someone asked if the quiz had started yet. I said no and went to the bar, paying no attention to the wound area. No time was left for the connected study requisite for such elaborate discussions. No flesh creature here understood the measure of the orbits of heaven. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies. No sound of horse hoof, no electronic voice phenomena, auto-erotic or other. No philosophers darkened that country. I offered no obstruction to pine needles falling. My booted feet made no sound on the rich humus floor. The living had no way to speak to death. I could bear no manner of food; my head was no miles long. There was no such thing as classical space-time. When I turned on subtitles it said no subtitle service, but I had no issue with the default. There were no windows and waking up I had no eye for the underworld, but then I thought no, I have cancer, a headache with no nasal dripping, no cold or fever, no taste. No sound sleep, my waking life permitted no opportunity for introspection. The majority of colours were no more than the signs of these colours, constituting no literal translation to the visual system. I had written no ode, yet with my ears no longer controlled by unknowns I had no accusation, no despair, only the hypothetical murmur ah, no more. Yes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no. Yes, said Coyote, I am pretty hard to non-delimit though no doubt poetry is a means to no way. No: in the fullness of time, at the request of the gods, no tree here spreads its thick foliage. No, forever no; said she to him. I did not know what to offer, I had no food. Food had no taste, a particular aversion to meat. No sooner had she said this when a voice proceeded from no world and no man. No, said he. Shall I stand here? No, farther off, said the dwarf. Giving no sign of the steam tornadoes leaving their huge steel noses the spiritual engines streamed through me no longer. I received no more than thirty soft nose bullets and no sensory disturbance. If I clicked No, I got back a 9. No voids or gaps deplenished this field. I no longer wished to remember my dreams. No sewage was allowed to enter the chamber, the investigator knew this was no accident. The academy had no doors, no insides. The night had no answer. There were no relative clauses, I felt no tendencies to act, and woke a couple of times in the night, once at 2 a.m., then 4.30 a.m., both times thinking, no, that is too early, but then dreaming that the message specified the hour of my flight or death, no one was sure which. There was no rain or return, no rest for the dead and no rest for the rest. No doubt was possible.

Within Within an inch of your life within a corporate context within which portions of the map within limits imposed by commercial confidentiality within the plasma membrane see the moon within the window or the darkness within the dream within a long-forgotten grave change present within them within the first ten days within and across scenario comparisons and within four or five miles within what cave he sealed within the alloy housing within a contemporary space within the target area within me within the treestructured network topology or within the region within your local network within the massive spacecraft. Options within the app circle within circle: within the outlined areas within the film industry within the folds of his dark suit within the eastern chamber within a small-time interval within the next fourteen days within an open face within the vehicle can be searched within such message elements provide input into two processing channels within the visual system within a couple of inches of the ground, the teat within the mouth, wheel within or without.

(previous spread and above) Giles Goodland These poems have implications of destruction and restoration. I was interested in the function-words of English; how ‘invisible’ words without referents, which we tend to skip while reading, are as full of meaning as words we regard as having ‘content’.

(opposite page) Talis Est Sensu, 2020 Mary Bobson Acrylic, gesso, plaster, cotton on ecoMDF panels; 50 x 60 cm My painting reflects the complexity and simplicity of being, the connection and disintegration of the balance of the human soul, the inner destruction and revival of hopes for the future in the difficult time of the 2020 pandemic.

Tapada Afrolimeña (Covered Afrolima Woman) Afrolimeña(s): a term that does not restrict or segregate. It refers to people who share cultural practices common to the Afro culture that settled in Lima, Peru. In The Musical Traditions of Black People of the Peruvian Coast (2011), William Tompkins highlights how the incorporation of Afro-Peruvian cultural processions – such as those portrayed by Pancho Fierro, a 19th century Afro-Peruvian painter – took place. The Lima city council ordered the brotherhoods to take part in the processions. Thus, African slaves had the opportunity to perform their own dances publicly, which could give considerable impetus to the preservation of their musical traditions. Church officials apparently did not realize, at least initially, that these dances were a continuation of the practice of African ritual, camouflaged in the bombast and sensual atmosphere. Processions such as Corpus Christi included floats with representations of devils and immense images of characters such as ‘Papahuevos’, ‘Gigantes’ and ‘El Cabezudo’ that probably represented for the people of color reminiscences of the African totemic figures. In this atmosphere of incense, color and splendor, the blacks of the brotherhoods appeared in the processions according to their nations of origin, with their distinctive banners, their nobility and courts.[1] The cultural practices of Afro Peruvians were not seen positively by Lima society and were the subject of discriminatory criticism. Some dress up as Devils or feathered ones: others imitate bears with overlapping skins: others represent monsters with horns, hawk feathers, lion claws, and snake tails. All are armed with bows, arrows, clubs, and shields: their faces are dyed red or blue, depending on the use of their countries, and they accompany the procession with screams and gestures so atrocious, as if

they were actually attacking the enemy. The seriousness and fierce enthusiasm with which they represent all these scenes, give us an idea of the barbarity with which they will make their martial attacks.[2] In my body movements, I seek to channel these cultural practices, explore my identity as an Afro-Peruvian, homosexual, effeminate person and relate them to the archetypes of Fierroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings. I question the imagery of masculinity that surrounds Afro men, the movements with which Fierro represents them have erotic and feminine charge; they are body contortions that move away from the socially imposed virility. I try to fill a void that is not only historical but also palpable in the paintings of Fierro, in which the characters carry out activities without a surrounding context, thereby isolating them, perhaps protecting them from an adverse place.

In his book In the Flow (2016), Boris Groys talks about activism in art, stating that: Aesthetizing the things of the present implies discovering their dysfunctional, absurd, unviable character, everything that makes them unusable, inefficient, obsolete. Aesthetizing the present implies turning it into a dead past. Art accepts the status quo, but accepts it as a corpse, as it transforms it into a mere representation.[3] The present I refer to is not just a current moment; there are forces of oppression towards Afro people that date long before the paintings of Pancho Fierro. Hypermasculinisation, hypersexualisation: Afro men are seen as objects of physical work and desire for penis size. Afro women are seen as service personnel who transcend to the sexual level. And it is not that Afro descendants are good at cooking and sports but rather these were the fields that opened up for them to develop. In addition, the majority of Afro Peruvians remain anonymous because the chroniclers of history did not take the time to register their names, says historian Maribel Arrelucea. The Black Lives Matter movement, which seeks freedom, liberation and justice for people of African descent, has had an impact on a global scale, questioning the discriminatory acts that society has normalised. Likewise, the Covid-19 pandemic has generated a ‘new normal’, in which the use of masks to protect oneself has become a necessity and obligation in many countries. Along with restrictive mobilisation measures, the way of moving is no longer the same. All these events have impacted on me; I was stranded in Brazil for several months, and this affected the way I perceive my relationship with Peru. In ‘Learning from the virus’ (2020) Paul Preciado remarks that the pandemic has intensified social gaps, and restrictive mobilisation measures have resulted in the space in which we develop becoming limited. Thus, the home becomes a place wherein everything happens. The exterior has penetrated our home, and it is this confinement that I also try to explore and represent. The covered Lima woman made the authorities suspect that the first cases of transvestism were taking place in the Viceroyalty. The cloak stops one from being recognised, it hides one’s identity, to protect one from something or someone. I connect with this character because, during my life, I have felt pressured to hide my femininity to try to fit into hetero-normative patterns and thus protect myself.

Therefore, the mask becomes a metaphor for white oppression, hiding identity and protection. The performance I do aestheticises the current reality of Afro-Peruvian people and, through this, I consider discrimination and fear dead and obsolete.

[1] William Tompkins, The Musical Traditions of Black People of the Peruvian coast (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles: 2011). [2] Peruvian Mercury of History, Literature and Public News, 1791: 112. [3] Boris Groys, In the Flow (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Verso, 2016).

Tapada AfrolimeĂąa, 2020 Jaime Enrique Prada Recorded performance; various lengths. Full project available via makingcontext. com/jaime-enrique-prada.com The performance seeks to generate new dialogues about Afro-Peruvian culture and the constant marginalisation it has suffered. The project was carried out in the social convulsions of Covid-19.

Two Rascals and a Whole Lot of Behind, 2020 Michael Ho and Chiyan Ho Oil on raw canvas; 115 x 150 cm This triptych examines the history of Chinese erotic art and the notions of sexuality, identity and political suppression by dismantling the traditional paintings through abstraction and building a new narrative via collage.

Socio-Parasitology Manifesto The Socio-Parasitology Manifesto, works towards social change. The parasite manifesto works against the pejorative perspective, and biological predator-prey and parasite-host domination. There is a focus on the fluctuating of hierarchical levels â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so to minimise the differences between parasite and host groups. Nothing is completed in isolation, all forms of contact are social. Materialising the positive aspects of a parasite, favours for catalysing social change. The focus is on the interruptive stage and the first act of contact made between a parasite and host coupling; as an activity which releases a productive change. The parasite manifesto specifies, that one interruption must be completed every hour. Human beings and species relate to each other via interruption and forming contacts. Each contact made with an external host environment or host species, will generate some form of productive change. The positive parasite can be located at the point of interruption from the parasite onto the host environment. You need to interrupt in order to have agency. You need to interrupt to become positive. You need to interrupt so you are parasitic. With socio-parasitology you can produce active work and be able to hold dialogue. Without socio-parasitology, there is no productivity and only separated groups of parasites and hosts. Being parasitic, should be celebrated and is inevitably part of human nature. Parasitic behaviour runs parallel to human behaviour. The parasite manifesto can be treated as a mental apparatus for the social and global hosting environment, which lack productivity. The parasite manifesto regulates micro social interactions and looks to diagrams as learned information. Parasitic social change is positive because it is productive. Parasitic social change is positive because it is productive.

Parasitic diagrams contain new methods for understanding problematic behaviour and solving problems. Social change arises from dialectical conversation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no work is produced in closed systems. There is a sense of urgency and a need for the body, to be in contact with the environment. There is a need for this parasite to form a connection with the external place, that the body is situated in. Physical contact forms multitudes of interruptions onto the host body and machine. There is nothing outside of the open system, all relations are parasitic, scenarios and hierarchical differences must be brought to the surface as inevitable and occurring without a meta position. CONTACT! There is no meta position when you are looking for behavioural development. There is no meta position away from parasite-host relationships. All parasites rest on to, and in hosts. All points of contact are interruptions into the next vessel. An interruption is the most important part of an interaction. The interruption is the part between a parasite wanting to cause an effect, and the distant host body. The interruption is the part which produces a change. All interruptions are changes. All changes are productive. All contacts are interruptions. All contacts are parasites. All interruptions are parasites. All interruptions are positive parasites. This is a functioning model which exists and is active in current society. You should agree with there being a need for acceleration in social groups. You should agree there needs to be social changes made. You should agree there needs to be an investment into parasite-host social diagrams. The overall prominence of external and internal positions, can be accessed to give weight and aim towards a possible solution. Both ectoparasitic and endoparasitic perspectives will give a possible resolution. Withdrawal from ecology and culture does not exist. Withdrawal from an open system does not exist. Withdrawal from transcendence exists. Withdrawal from sensation through unconsciousness does exist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but this is not a meta position. There is no exit and nothing other than communications and multitudes, relations between things, protagonists, communicating vessels and speciesinteractions. To think of this as a critique on the perspective of working alone, thinking autonomously and behaving in an autologous manner is integral â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as investing in reality and the environment we place ourselves in and migrate throughout; has a set of fluctuating hierarchies and attributes

that explain there is only the possibility of living together and functioning collectively as a parasitic system that has no externalisation. The sense of agency is extended beyond the singular perspective, and can only be fully understood in couplings. If a circle meets itself and intersects, then the interaction is parasitic.* Interruptions come into contact with the second, and outwardly forms transformations that need maintenance to upkeep productivity, creating a new meaning through exchange. The positive parasite, is one which produces a space for productivity to happen, from the new change that is made. The parasite is a cyborg, a connector, a form of contact, an interruption, a noise, a mask and a transformation. In all instances, the positive parasite is one which intercepts a host and is in a state of mobility. It is through the positive model of the parasite, a contribution towards social change can occur. You need to interrupt in order to have agency. You need to interrupt to become positive. You need to interrupt so you are parasitic. An interruption is the most important part of an interaction. The interruption is the part between a parasite wanting to cause an effect, and the distant host body. The interruption is the part which produces a change. All interruptions are changes. All changes are productive. All contacts are interruptions. All contacts are parasites. All interruptions are parasites. All interruptions are positive parasites. This is a functioning model which exists and is active in current society. You should agree with there being a need for acceleration in social groups. You should agree there needs to be social changes made. You should agree there needs to be an investment into parasite-host social diagrams. Being parasitic, should be celebrated and is inevitably part of human nature. Parasitic behaviour runs parallel to human behaviour. The focus is on the interruptive stage and the first act of contact made between a parasite and host coupling; as an activity which releases a productive change. The Parasite Manifesto, works towards social change. The parasite manifesto works against the pejorative perspective. If a circle meets itself and intersects, then the interaction is parasitic. Interruptions come into contact with the second, and outwardly forms transformations that need maintenance to upkeep productivity, creating a new meaning through exchange.

Sabrina Mumtaz Hasan The Manifesto text discusses the positive parasite-host relationship as a means of exercising new methods aimed at finding social change. It reframes the current pejorative perspective of human bodies behaving parasitically towards each other and new hosting environments.

Unmonument (I, II), 2020 Liz Blum Digital composite; 96 x 65 cm, 96 x 71cm Influenced by the global support of Black Lives Matter and the protests towards controversial monuments of the past, the images present contemporary commentary in the form of graffiti inscribed upon historic structures within the trope of the classic landscape.

The Fog Has Lifted Slightly and I Can Think Clearer This extract documents how I have used photography and text as a form of visual language to understand and reframe how I engage with my mental health. It has been several months since my last posts. A lot has taken place within this time – it’s been a lot to process – and I feel overwhelmed most of the time, almost like I’m sinking and I can’t decide whether I want to sink or swim. I pivot between the two on most days. Exhausted and fed up some days, angry and disillusioned the next. People have died, many people have suffered, and the BAME community in the UK have suffered disproportionately due to Covid-19. Institutional racism has meant that Black women are dying at a higher rate of Covid-19 than their white counterparts. Reading about new mothers and pregnant Black women have been particularly poignant for me. I can see the trauma that racism creates continuing, as its persistent toxicity permeates a new generation. I am left feeling sad and worried about these children who have been left motherless. I wonder if my mother would have survived Covid-19 if she had contracted it; luckily, no one in my family has died, but I always think about Belly Mujinga. Belly Mujinga was reportedly spat at by a man who had tested positive for Covid-19, knowingly infecting her with the disease. Belly had an underlying health condition, and her employers did not support her adequately, as she had no Personal Protective Equipment while working in a role that involved being in contact with the general public. PPE could have saved her life if she has been wearing it at the time of her attack.

Seeing images of Belly’s grief-stricken husband wearing a t-shirt with her face on it at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in June brought me to tears. His strength and determination shone through, but so did his pain and grief. I kept sending letters to my MP, Transport for London and the Mayor of London to get answers – this brought no solace or responses. Nobody has been prosecuted for Belly’s death; no repercussions will be felt by the man who spat at her so violently that he transmitted a disease that killed another person. What is her life worth in the eyes of the institutions that govern us? Nothing? What is her life worth in the eyes of her family and friends? Everything.

From The Fog Has Lifted Slightly and I Can Think Clearer, 2019–20 Marie Smith Text extract, and analogue and digital photography; 20.32 x 25.4 cm This series documents the year I came off anti-depressant medication. I created a space to talk about what it means to be a Black woman who has spent most of her life living with mental illness.

Letter to 2020 (and White Tears), 2020 Marisa Luana Quartin Acrylic paint on natural linen canvas board; 30 x 30 cm, 24 x 30 cm In light of racial civil unrest, coupled with a pandemic that disproportionately affects Black people, Fannie Lou Hamer describes it best â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All my life I've been sick and tired, now I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

From Me, Every Day, 2020 Emily Roach Pencil on paper and collage; 25 x 29 cm, 22 x 29 cm. My sense of self is in a state of constant flux. It is deconstructed and reconstructed with the ebb and flow of our perceived success of controlling the pandemic. Through self-portraits, I try to materialise who I am that day.

An Expanding Bookshelf, 2020 Lily Abram Digital prints; dimensions variable This series explores the scanner as a generative, content-creating tool. Subverting the traditional relationship between books and scanners, I dismantle my library to build new content. Acting as a self-portrait, I use existing words to reflect on lockdown experiences.

In an Alternate Universe Where I Am a Contestant on The Bachelor There is a skinny girl curling her toes like a pigeon on her windowsill is singing her a love song and she just doesn’t know how to tell him I didn’t choose you. Hannah Brown fucked Peter in a windmill four times which makes me think I could fall in love on that show and still emerge as a human being. There are so many roses to give and so many attractive people to talk to. I have been dreaming about marrying a boy whose blood has its own morning sunrise and drips southern vowels off his tongue like molasses. I keep running into myself inside strangers’ bodies and waking up in random beds and complaining about needing clarity. Sometimes I am in love with the way the sun claws at my inner thighs. Like it has always understood longing for a liquid lover. When I arrive at the mansion Chris Harrison is acutely aware of the train moving around in my stomach. In an interview I tell a producer about how I am scared to look inside myself in the off chance there’s an eaten apple core sitting where my sternum should be. I am perfectly capable of crying in front of strangers. I am always a downer and complaining about how there aren’t enough moments where I can dance on tabletops. I miss wearing knit sweaters and not feeling cathartic about warmth. Before the body was a request. There is never any justice when you realise you don't trust beautiful people. Raina Greifer This poem explores the dismantling and rebuilding of my romantic and sexual identity after being sexually assaulted. It is inspired by my difficulty accepting a longing for romantic relationships while simultaneously finding them triggering.

Battersea, London, 2020 InĂŞs Miguel Oliveira Oil, coloured pencils and found objects on found closet board; 80 x 52 cm In the midst of a pandemic, I left my home and found another one. I dismantled a closet, from which I kept just one piece. In this one piece are other, smaller pieces that build a home.

The Story of the Bamboo Grove Until I was 12 years old, there was a small bamboo grove behind my house. Cool, moist air seeped into the grove even in the heat of summer. I liked going there to breathe, to feel the breeze. It was also a passage to my friend’s house, with whom I used to play tag. In spring, my grandma harvested bamboo sprouts in the grove and cooked takenoko no nimono for the family. In summer, we picked green tea leaves in the garden and sorted them in our garage by the bamboo grove. My grandad then took them to the local roaster and, a few weeks later, we would have home-grown green tea. My grandad grew vegetables and fruits in the garden adjacent to the grove, where he often showed me around. Once, while I was playing with a skipping rope, he appeared and showed me a little piece of rotten timber. I stared at it and noticed a tiny shiitake mushroom growing. I was surprised, and I remember he seemed happy to see me captivated by the mushroom. We also had a peach tree. One day, grandad took me to the garden and showed me the peaches, which he had wrapped in protective papers. ‘Look,’ I remember him saying. Trees, plants and foliage flourished in our garden. Yet I hardly remember what was there. I do remember we had a kumquat tree, which stood at the edge of the garden. Often, my dad picked fruit from the tree, but I disliked the bitter flavour. Still, the tree was special to me; it was always present. There was an old house, in which my grandparents used to live, standing between the grove and their new home. One day, my grandma took me to the old house to bathe together. The bath was an old-style, heating from beneath – something rarely seen today. She told me stories from the olden days.

There was an excitement in learning about the lives of those I had never experienced with my skin. However, I could never step into this old house on my own. It was abandoned, like a haunted house. Leftover belongings lay scattered on the floor, and a handful of family portraits hung in one corner of the room above. I had never met those pictured; they died before I was born. Memories of those I never knew filled the house, and so it was an intimidating place for me. Two years after my grandad passed away, my dad chose to fell the grove. I cannot remember the process: it became flattened before I knew it. The haunted house, garage and part of the garden were torn down simultaneously, along with the kumquat tree and the peach tree. I remember my grandma growing the soybean on the empty lot while they waited for an architectural survey to finish. I learned how soybeans grow from her.

After the architectural survey finished, it was not long before a block of flats was built atop of where the bamboo grove used to be. The place became a space of repetition where strangers came and went within short periods, while the land on which the old house, garage and garden had resided was paved with asphalt and became a car park. The history that had accumulated in the place became covered by black, solid carpets – a building material extracted from the bodies of dead animals. The area became another characterless neighbourhood. I once asked my dad and grandma why they decided to flatten the grove. ‘It was too troublesome to look after!’ They snarled. Owning land means you have a responsibility to look after it – it is alive – but it is costly to do so. If it were a century ago, the grove would have been a useful resource for my ancestors, who made a living through agriculture. Since we no longer use the resources produced by the bamboo grove, my family has lost its way of living, seeing no other option than to turn the space into something financially profitable. Now the bamboo grove has gone, the distinct boundaries between houses are visible. New houses and flats started cropping up in-between spaces, creating a new village occupied by those who are oblivious to the names and faces of each other. What does this new space bring, created from separating nature and the histories inscribed within it? Now, there is a fence between the flats and my grandparents’ new house. The appearance of the area has changed completely, but the bamboo grove lives on as fragments in my memory. However, the place from my childhood will never return, and I still feel that loss.

Ayane Tominaga This story is about my childhood memory of the bamboo grove at the back of my house. The homogenisation of space, caused by facile investment and separation with nature, is seen everywhere in Japan. Two photographs show the grove today.

Untitled In an adult darkness I see again my yard age silent or buzzing where I lost soul and legs the same pollen as in those days the small stolen stones from the garden nearby before which I knelt before I dissolve like the bug way under my blackened step like a rigged game in the shade of an absent labyrinth

Devis Bergantin With this poem I reflect on the dream's ability to artificially reconstruct my past, my childhood, and its dismantling in the present with the awakening.

From Distort, 2020 Holly Foskett Photographs and bleach; dimensions variable I physically manipulated and dismantled these photographs to heal and come to terms with happy memories that are now tainted and distorted. Doing this helped release emotions, while making something beautiful and haunting.

Itinerant Self, 2020 Scott Castner 35 mm film printed on silk organza; 36 x 12 cm These two fabric prints explore agency, transformation, self-revolution and shifting of identities. Through a painstaking process I slowly picked apart the second print, leaving behind a newer and more delicate material in its place.

From These Narrative Environments, 2020 Darshana Vora Digital image; dimensions variable. My newspaper collages connect altered quotidian experience in the pandemic to a larger discourse critiquing the role of news, information and interpretation in a world in flux. I use the Evening Standard editorials to sift, mutate and re-present a version of reality.

From New Forms of Agency, 2020 Cora Marin Mixed media on paper; 27.2 x 38.5 cm Inspired by the storytelling of ancient Islamic miniature paintings and illuminated manuscripts, this series illustrates how mankind started to perceive itself as different from nature, and the repercussions (and new forms of agency) that came with this.

Through the Lens of a Stone, 2020 Charbel Samuel Aoun Ink on paper; 17 x 30 cm 2020 dismantled social systems and constructed realities simultaneously. Facing these dysfunctionalities, my work shifted from socially engaged projects to simple forms of drawing and writing, reconsidering values and spaces of integration or even disintegration.

The Bridge

This drawing pictures the plan and elevation of the arched double tomb of the Brion couple by Carlo Scarpa. We can see the two tombs bent towards one another as if greeting. We see the arch overbridging the two sarcophagi, the circular space beneath the vault and the interconnecting marble bands running under the two tombs. This image reminded me immediately of the verses in the poem â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Bridgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Octavio Paz: Between now and now, between I am and you are, the word bridge. Entering it you enter yourself: the world connects and closes like a ring. From one bank to another, there is always a body stretched: a rainbow. I'll sleep beneath its arches.

As a writer, the start of a poem to me appears first as a symbiosis of certain words and images. Poetry emerges from a desire to express; it is a beginning, an attempt to articulate a flow of thoughts, images and sensations. Drawing lends a tangibility to this desire, connecting mind and matter by its kinetic quality. The tangibility of pen to paper. Both forms are a means to reach the tangent of expression. The ambiguity of language complementing and contrasting against the clarity of drawing while aiming to convey meaning. The dynamic quality in Scarpa’s drawing is evident in its details, the recurring ziggurat stepping articulation we see appearing on the buttresses, as well as the cantilevered extensions on the sarcophagi, guide the eye with saccadic movement. Each edge, vertex and corner captures our focal attention and eye fixation. We are drawn into a chasing game, a play of edges grasping our gaze. It sets off our ambient focal processing. A preconscious coordination of our senses as if composing a poem. Scarpa’s design for the final resting place of the Brion family is a beautiful representation of a union. It forms the perfect bridge between the mindhand-image pathway to articulate the sacredness of togetherness.

Emerald Liu This essay is about the Tomba Brion, by architect Carlo Scarpa, linking it to a poem by Octavio Paz. The essay links the bridge within the poem and the tomb, building a link between the art of writing and drawing and dismantling each component.

(image) Brion Cemetery San Vito di Altivole; 1969–77 Carlo Scarpa Plan and elevation for the family tomb; graphite and coloured pencil on paper MAXXI architecture collection

Blue is a Feeling Blue: an impossible colour. A colour rarely found in nature, it is a reflection, an illusion, a mere wavelength. Humans learned to make the blue hue, first naturally with indigo leaf, then chemically in laboratories, making it into one of the most recognisable colours. Blue is mysterious. Yet blue is home. There is a peculiarity in home, how it sneaks, leaks and slips, towards and away from us -- how we come to need people and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bear to be apart from them. What causes us to dive and subside into individuals and their touch, smell, tendencies? We fabricate entire homes within others. It astonishes me how individuals remain enchanted, even when the house is left empty for years, or the lights falter, or the affection runs out. As I witness a worldwide pandemic from inside my home, little activities appear as daily agendas and notes of care and concern. Slow change reconfigures non-attendance as an opening into a recharged present. In any case, I have been both helpless and powerful. I have breathed out and shown up into days that were worth appearing. In this customary dream, I live in Dhaka â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not radiant, glad Dhaka, but cold, wet Dhaka. I live with the clamour of traffic. I have looked at the Lalbagh Kella so often it resembles an enhancing masterpiece. I work in a bookshop and sit in bistros. I make my bed infrequently, the books stack up as a side table, and there is always tea. I grow house plants. The distant music coming from the local tong is a gift. In Portuguese, there is a beautiful term for longing: saudade. In Portuguese folk culture, it means a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or an absent thing.

My favourite definition of saudade is by Portuguese writer Manuel de Melo: ‘a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.’ I want to leave you with the hope that the longing you suffer presently will soon turn into the joy of belonging.

(previous spread) Memories from the Beach, 2020 Irene Febry and Irene Insan Digital image and mixed media This series documents objects we found and people we met on Bali’s beaches during the pandemic. Objects, as memories of the place, were documented with the local people whose lives depended on tourism and daily income.

(opposite page and above) Ashkin Bin Ayub In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, I create works in which the actual event still has to take place or has just ended: moments evocative of atmosphere and suspense that are not part of a narrative thread.

Bethany Holmes is a writer and editor from Merseyside, England, based in London. She studied BA English and History and MA Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She writes about theory, the arts and history, and how these subjects relate to urban space, activism and social justice. Bethany works in publishing, and her writing has been commissioned by Novara Media, Port, RA Magazine and Red Pepper, among others. She founded House Letters in April 2020. cargocollective.com/bethanyholmes IG and Twitter @bethjholmes

House Letters London United Kingdom Issue III published online in November 2020 houseletterszine@gmail.com IG @houseletters Twitter @house_letters