Reading by Kate Pickering for a materiality workshop run by Rowena Harris.
MARs Workshop Series on Materiality for Phd researchers, organised by artist and senior lecturer in the art department at Goldsmiths, Laura White. Studio A, Goldsmiths College
28th November 2017
Falling Gamer Silhouette by Nora Panda
(un)conscious falling
and now you pitch forward into the void
arms wind-milling wildly
your cavernous mouth forms a dark
O
your
falling body
is stunned by
sublime terror
imminent loss of
a belief that is rooted inside you
that inheres in the fibres of your being
in this moment
you are uncoupled from your grounding belief in
as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end
a crisis of faith
it vanishes in an instant
it is violent
there will be no time to grieve
the force of the fall now pins your limbs to your sides
it winds you
it knocks out all former thought right out into the ether
you have ceased to load
your loading wheel mind circles and then freezes
jagged lines cut across your vision
you are blank
blank
error
code
error
loading
operating
system
you unravel down
a yoyo that will not be retrieved
slicing through air that leaves a vortex trail in your wake
in the newness of the blank screen
the slate wiped clean
the falling lasts forever
years peel away
mistakes and failures are flayed off like
old skin
you are stripped of accretions
now you are nothing but a core
a code
time
elastic
stretches wildly out into a distance you cannot decipher
your clothes cling to a leaden body without sensation
you cannot tell where it begins and ends
it no longer seems to be yours
a hand appears before you
it’s fingers spread
are your eyes open or closed
you cannot recall
a stab of anxiety
you are awake
it is your hand
your hand is reaching down towards something but you cannot remember what
your eyes fail to focus
it is dark
as you peer into the dark
you begin
with fear
to comprehend that you are falling
but you are uncertain what you are falling in relation to
there seems to be no end to the falling
and no ground
you breathe thickly into dense air
there is something obstructing your vision
your jumper has ridden up and become stuck over your face
with great effort you inch
your clawed hand upwards
you struggle to peel it away
finding that your surroundings are still a dim blur
you catch sight of some disembodied legs
flapping wildly somewhere above you
one shoe missing
the laughter dies in your throat as you realise the legs belong to you
temporal strangeness mingles with a sense that you maybe floating after all
fuzzy headed
you suspend between dreaming and blankness
producing clear thought requires
an effort you cannot muster
thoughts are viscous
refusing to flow they cling stubbornly
won’t combine into coherence
you thickly perceive the ground you are falling towards
the darkness is lifting
a landscape
has separated into half tone pin pricks of colour
passing objects in the periphery of your vision pixellate into a slow blur of movement
dark objects spiral off
they mutate
dissolve
disperse
below
you begin to make out an object moving upwards
with increasing speed
towards you
threatening a collision
you are falling too fast to change trajectory
blobs of undifferentiated shapes and colours rapidly crystalise
a rectangular screen
lit up
wireless and devoid of hardware
it displays an image you cannot yet focus on
it looms into view below you at high speed
it depicts the landscape beneath as a weft of contoured lines which peak into hills towards you and spread out into valleys
you cannot comprehend this doubling
it rises to meet you
it blocks out all vision
you tense and shut your eyelids preparing
your
body
for
the
but it does not come
there is no pain
you have fallen in
fallen through past the skin
your skin is it’s skin
you are smooth
and trouble free
Kate Pickering