CLARA T LPEZ MENNDEZ....the public project of war...

4-9
EMMA ELEONORASDOTTER.........Between warriors..........17
HANNA GUSTAVSSON.........................................
Kea Tawanas ark, New Jersey 1987...............front+back
..............AUDRE.....................................3
JESS ARNDT.........The Warrior......................10-15
JESSIKA EKLUND................RESISTANCE............30-33
JOHANNA GUSTAVSSON AND KATARINA NITSCH...................
.........................THE WOMAN ON THE ROOF......34-39
LENA SRAPHIN.........Running Away and Home.........40-41
MALENE DAM......How are we at war?..................26-29
PIA SANDSTRM.... /we_are_all_cyborgs now/from_back_
to_front/(posteroanterior)/X-ray/a_new_frontier/inner_
space+mind+matter/tick-tock/who_is_warrior?.........42-43
TIA-SIMONE GARDNER... Eulogy for Living Wannabees...44-47
ULRIKA GOMM.......3wordpoem.........................18-25

THE WARRIOR, November 2014

the public project of war

by Clara t Lpez Menndez

the public project of war / weight of black leather

warrior \ wr \ n : from Middle English: from Old Northern French werreior, variant of Old
French guerreior, from guerreier make war, from guerre war. The one who wages war to
another identied as an other, not same, therefore enemy, detached, dangerous and
dispensable. The ruler of a system of violence that imposes itself over another, or struggles to
break with the rule of the violent. A person engaged in the experience of warfare.

The gym where fencing class took place was called the Pool because when it was projected
it was meant to be a swimming pool. Then the money ran out midway-through construction
and all they had achieved so far was the hole: a 40 meter long, 20 meter wide and around 4
meter deep hole in the ground. They covered it up with wooden planks, slats that transformed
that rectangular negative of a swimming pool into a sort of fancy and slightly claustrophobic
basketball court. The Pool was the students favorite spot, with its estrange shape and new
feeling. It wasnt decaying and fading like the rest of the schools athletic premises, always
pointing towards a better past their short lives were never part of. The Pool was still cool,
without a doubt the best space to have a sports class.

Anyways, fencing. Fencing class occurred in the Pool twice a week during lunch time, one of
the many extracurricular activities Blue was part of. Basketball, judo, fencing, swimming, piano

and guitar lessons populated almost every empty spot that wasnt already occupied by school
during Blues weekdays.

I was fairly good at all of those things but also not particularly outstanding. Bored by
competition but interested in the craft of agility and the apparent ease with which her body
could speak the language of movement and the dierent codes of these sports.

!

!

- You are too strong to be a girl.

Fencing was the one she liked the most in what could be called an abstract way: she loved
the idea of it and its feeling in her hands. She did it only for herself, almost a solipsistic gesture
she didnt want to sully with external considerations or tournaments. She was disappointed
with the instructors lack of rigor during the lessons: always a bit too short, or not intense
enough, a bit too informative of a skill so fascinating. However those lessons did still entail
one and a half hour of battling swords...How cool could that be? Blue had been obsessed with
swordsmen and swashbucklers, musketeers and pirates since she was even younger than she
was then.

However modern swordsmanship was far from those romantic models that had inspired her to
join the class. Fencing had rules: strict norms of posture and footwork one had to learn.

In fencing the point of the ght is to reach certain sections of the opponents body with specic
parts of the sword. Dierent kinds of weapons target dierent body parts, being this game of
reciprocity the basic score that shapes each swords movements and technique. Body and
blade move according to what and how one is targeting the opponent.

!
I was learning to fence pe. In fencing, there are three types of swords:

!
sabre

foil

pe

Sabre was only for male fencers in that class. The sabre has a larger, semicircular handle that
surrounds the fencing hand. It is a larger sword that targets the entire body above the waist
except the arm that carries the weapon. Its movements are rougher and when dueling the
action is not halted if one of the fencers reaches with the sabre an o-targeted body part.

Foil was both male and female but no guy in the class wanted to fence foil. The foil is small and
has an intricate handle. Its technique is a more delicate code; it only counts when the
opponent is reached by the tip of the sword and the action halts every time the blade touches
some part thats not the chest, the groin or the neck. Foil was gay of course, and nobody
wanted to fence foil.

pe is a bit of both. It is the only fencing weapon where the whole body can be the target,
making its technique much more strategic, almost acrobatic. Smaller in size than the sabre, the

pe is nevertheless the heavier of the three. The bell guard that protects the battling hand is
very similar to the foil but its handle still has the straightforwardness of the sabre. pe can be
fenced by male and female fencers. Its movements are also a bit of a hybrid between the other
two (fast and dirty like the sabre but one can only score with the tip of the blade, like the foil)
which tended to make it less attractive to people.

!
pe was Blues type of weapon.
!

My type of weapon.

Students didnt own their own swords, they were brought in by the fencing teacher. Every
Wednesday and Friday he arrived with a huge due bag lled with sabres, three very unused
foils and one pe, plus the masks and jackets that constitute the fencers drag. All these
swords were fencing swords, made for practice and competition: softened edges, lack of sharp
or cutting ends. Still big pieces of metal designed to be waged against an other, the numbed
relatives of deadly weapons handled by pre-teens in the belly of the Pool twice a week.

!
Blue was the youngest in the class. And the only girl.

!

- Why do you wanna learn how to fence? Thats not girls stu

When the teacher threw the due bag on the oor there was always a little ght to get the
sabres that were nicer, newer, in better shape. Blues sword was red: red handle, still new
despite being old. When Blue started she wanted to fence sabre, but that wasnt possible, like
so many other things, like peeing while standing, like escaping the instant of denition, like not
having to listen to all those absurdly ubiquitous questions. But then I started loving the pe,
the only lonely pe always waiting for me at the bottom of the bag, whose arcane craft was
even foreign to the teacher.

En garde. Advance. Attack. Parry. Lunge! Back. Spread yourselves in couples and practice
some dueling.

When dueling with someone, Blue always had mixed battles, as there was no other pe in the
group and she had to irrevocably fence with a sabre, whose moves were not the answers her
pe was meant to reply. It worked tho. I was good enough, a challenging opponent even for
the oldest, most annoying members of the class: confused pre-teenagers in the midst of that
hormoned-fueled age of permanent insecurity disguised as rude irreverence. Even for White,
who was the oldest, the one who had been fencing the longest, the most oensive, the verbal
bully and the teacher's favorite. Even White, who was four years older and several inches taller,
had a hard time beating Blues sword.

!

!

- Do you think that by doing all these sports you are gonna become more of a guy?

The weight of the black pe. That was the rst thing I remember. Its shiny beauty. White
brought that sword, which he had got as a present from his family or I dont know, I cant
remember. Blue forgot where it came from. I know it was Whites though. Showing it to the
class, showing it o. Black leather handle, shiny skinny blade, triangular power-lled base.

How did she desired to use it, to touch the pe that was forbidden for it was Whites and he
was the self proclaimed, unwanted enemy. And he didnt even use it, he wanted his sabre, his
gender-rearming weapon that reinforced his surely fragile identity. The pe, the beautiful,
black pe then just lying down there, on the side of the Pool, on the bench, at the bottom of
the due bag, idle. Every time I would go to the bag I would look at the red sword and then at
its prettier new sister and would desire her so intensely, knowing that I couldnt even hold it as
it was out of bounds, knowing that White would ip and give me endless shit for it.

!

!

- You are only an ugly tomboy. You are never gonna be a boy. You know that, right?

White and Blue together said the instructor. Again having to concentrate over his mumbled,
uninterrupted rant of insults. The nerves already spiking, blood pressure rising, his stupid
sadistic grin, holding the mask under his armpit.

I cant even imagine what a pain in the ass you must be for your parents. I mean, look
at you. They must be always embarrassed by you pretending to be a boy, having to explain
you to everyone.

I kneeled down to pick her weapon. We hadnt even started, taken positions. I stared at the
bottom of the sword bag.

- Blank blank blank blank

(for she couldnt remember what he was saying)

!
I grabbed the soft, black handle, still inside the bags canvas.

!

- Blank blank blank stupid hurting shit blank

Blue rose up and turned around, dropped the mask, the jacket still untied between our legs.
Her face felt red although it was white, my eyes were brown but they were black. The sword,
his pe in my right hand. And his mouth nally shut.

She raised the sword and forgot all history. I ran toward him with the pe above my head,
ready to beat the shit out of him, with the side, with the tip, with his own steel. Ready to hurt
him.

!
And he ran.

I saw his eyes shrink through panic, turn around and run. And Blue run behind him. Up the
stairs of the Pool, up and down the grandstands that surrounded it. The rest of the class was
cheering indiscernible chants, the teacher too shocked to react.

I wielded the black pe, his stupid heavy sword, from side to side, trying to reach his back,
but his four year older complexion was only fast enough for that not to happen. By a slim
interval. A fortunate one though.

We trotted down the stairs again and crossed the basketball eld when the teacher nally
awoke from his stupor to grab me from behind.

- Calm down!

She heard tears of anger over a silent face. Panting under the teacher arms that were still
holding me back. White bent down over his knees, coughing his breath. He didnt look into my
direction.

The black pe turned sword dropped with a loud clang onto the Pools wooden oor.

!

!

- Get out. Its enough for today.

Blue doesnt remember what happened after that, or how is it that I wasnt expelled from
school, not even the class. I blanked. Blue blanked. Just that the next Wednesday we went
back to fencing class, Blue and White too. The sword was never there again. We never dueled
again. And White never mumbled his bullshit on us either.

The Warrior
by Jess Arndt

My girlfriend and I have been out in the

Mojave
desert
watching
battle
movies.
Hollywood blockbusters with Mel Gibson and
Russell Crowe. For instance: Gladiator has
no sex in it, barely any women at all, and
that
makes
us
wonder
if
its
more
authentically a battle movie. But then
theres Russell Crowes body all split open
how for the whole 2 plus hours were so
aware
of
his
draining
flesh,
the
impossibility of his invincibility.

10

This makes Gladiator a battle movie but also

a kind of sneaky feminist movie where the
woman (Crowe) is the hero, or at least if
nothing else, it makes it a female body
movie.
That just makes it a movie, my girlfriend
says.
We are newly what we would call girlfriends.
Its a tongue-twister the plural girl
where I am not sure what I am. That and I
have had such a persistently hard time with
girlfriends. When I was in my twenties I
even worked a terrible job for something
called Girlfriends magazine. It had gossip
columns, sex advice for lesbians in the
lifestyle.
No matter what else, never
lifestyle, my thesis adviser
said. But here I was.

call it a
in college

With Girlfriends magazine I was assistant to

the marketing director, a butch top heavily
affiliated w BDSM. To my nave 22 yr old
mind, it added a small surge of danger to
the work environment. Regardless I was
always hours late to my job hungover from
nightshifts, bartending.
Do you think you can come in today? My boss
would
call
to
say,
in
neutral
but
contractual tones, from our office up the
street. She was good at these tones because
this is how she and her sex partners
negotiated beatings, how they made them
safe. We discussed the sex over our lunch
burritos, my boss miming slings or floggings
with her hands and tortilla chips.

11

In Braveheart and Gladiator, nothing is

safe but still the heroes do live for what
seems like an extra long time. Braveheart
takes 3 hours and Mel Gibson doesnt die
until the penultimate scene. Even then the
death, though gory, is incomplete; his last
word Freedom! reverberates past him, on
and on.
A warrior is more
unaffiliated fighter,
be saying. A warrior
From viscera and hair
demands everything.

than a soldier or
these movies seem to
is a total identity.
follicles forth it

The Warrior is also a 1984 song by Scandal

and Patty Smythe, not to be confused with
the other Patti Smith, the one with downtown
cred. Also not to be confused with the
iconic movie The Warriors, where gangs of
kids battle for breathing room and selfidentity via Coney Island turf and NYC
subway stations and dress in ways that 30
years later we are still trying to perfect,
a kind of always unreachable cool.
The Scandal song, sung by the other Patty
Smythe, has lines like: shooting at the
walls of heartache, bang bang, I am the
Warrior, and love is the kill, your
hearts still wild.
I last listened to this song, as in really
listened to it, in Oakland, CA 2003.
An ex-girlfriend and I were on acid at her
older sisters boyfriends house. Wed been
fighting constantly. But that was how we
were huge blowouts over groceries or piles
of desk junk or rides to work or empty weed
bags that then grew to eclipse all else:

12

they were the relationship. The pitch on

which we sailed blunt axes at each other
until one of us bled out: exhausted, emptied
of tactics, suddenly meek.
The party was maybe a bad choice, we
realized, after about half an hour. We had
dutifully taken dropper-fuls of liquid LSD
but now it seemed like no one else was
coming over except the 5 pasty housemates
who were already there, one of whom was
wearing what looked like size fourteen green
The Grinch Who Stole Xmas slippers.
Watch them dance, he said brightly.
We made desperate eyes at each other but our
faces were starting to look beautifully
pasty
too.
We
huddled
in
a
corner,
strategizing. It felt fantastic to be joined
together against a common enemy.
Whos the hunter, whos the game? went
the stereo.
I feel the beat call your
name. I hold you close, in victory As it
turns out someone named Holly Knight wrote
the song, the same person who also wrote Pat
Benatars Love is a Battlefield. The song
felt all the way right.
I dont wanna tame your animal style, you
wont be caged in the call of the wild!
We lay down on a pile of acid-y blankets in
a semi-dark room. Not that they were coated
in acid, but the kind of blankets that LSD
houses own. My heart was wobbling like a
boiling lobster pot. I was pulsing with
sudden beatific love, couldnt we just stay
this high on acid forever?

13

heart
to
heart
youll
win,
if
you
survive, it must have been on repeat. The
Warrior
The vertigo from feeling so miraculously
good when I usually felt embattled made me
weepy. I dont even own my body, I thought.

The Warrior.
The Warrior.
The Warrior.
While working for Girlfriends magazine, we
got to take a road trip from San Francisco
to Palm Springs. This was the same era as
the acid. Also the same era as many other
things including massive protests and a new
war in Iraq.
We drove down I-5 with a huge pile of
magazines. Girlfriends and On Our Backs a
feminist porno. Then spent the weekend
wasted,
miserable,
poolside,
hawking
magazines to drunk dykes in bikinis who
could only wear white it was a white
party.
I went to a semi-formal in a tie and was
kicked out: wrong gender.
The desert is blank, throwaway everything
seemed to be saying.
Out here now, 10 years later. My girlfriend,
an aries warrior sign, drives back to LA. It
is very dark. Coyotes glimmer, meth heads
circle, spiders stretch and yawn. Military
hummers pad quietly up and down the dirt
tracks near Twentynine Palms base.

14

How am I so late to learn about the local

mouts
(Military
operations
in
Urban
Terrain) nearby combat training sites that
are almost exact replicas of villages in
Afghanistan and Iraq?
In town, I look at the pickup trucks and
gunless racks, the Welcome Home Troops
murals, the Tokyo massage parlors that my
friend says are all prostitute joints. Is it
wrong that I feel somehow safer here, teamed
up even, part of some kind of ugly but
effective joint body with all of these
soldiers around?
Lonely,
I
watch
Restrepo

a
2010
documentary about the Korangal Valley in
northern Afghanistan dubbed the deadliest
valley in the world.
It must be a battle movie. The guys are
fighting all the time. Multiple times a day
even. We look at their bodies abdomens,
tattoos, stretch marks a lot. When they
arent fighting theyre playing video games.
In the movie, some guys
battalion up the valley die.

from

another

Ill give you a minute to mourn, the

Captain says, addressing his own battalion.
But then we gotta get back to kicking ass,
to doing our job.
Worse, they often survive.
A guy stares at the camera, a jagged hill
behind him: back home in the US theyre
hiring people, he says, just to figure out
what to do with us.

15

16

Between warriors
Open letter to Nina Bjrk

Whats a warrior supposed to do if she has to choose between identity politics and class struggle? Lets say she is black, lesbian
and lack money. Whys class-first opinions always fore fronted by
white, heterosexual representatives for other classes than working
class? Also Marx was hyper bourgeoisie.
Identity politics being dismissed by class strugglers that speak
for a class community they can never represent. Isnt that too
identity politics? It is having the same liberalist micro politic
problems that anti racist, anti sexist, lgbtq and other political debators are accused to resort to, on a personal level for the
middle or upper class class struggler. Socialist theory can give
ammunition to many wars, one is the construction of a space to be
heard through media. A personal carrier. A desk to write at. A
chair to ponder in.
This might seem like a critical or even divisive judgement of the
white heterosexual middle and upper class representatives that engages in justice for the working class. It is never the less much
appreciated that you are engaging in this war. I am happy to see
anyone fight capitalism, but I must inform you that we that lack
class privileges very often lack other privileges as well. And
our struggles have to be fought on a multi level basis for there
to be any position to fight from at all. So, if you dont want to
keep the fight for yourself, (that I know is important to you and
your symbolic capital but you must imagine we would all be there
with you if theory goes into practice), do it together with us and
recognise all our differences.
Thank you.
/Emma Eleonorasdotter

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

How are we at war?1

by Malene Dam

I am angry at you. I am angry at myself. I am angry at the idea

that these are individual feelings. They are not. I am angry the
rhetoric worked.
I am left in the middle. We have moved into normalcy. This is
how we are at war.
I

I sit in a room surrounded by art, artists and colleagues.

You say you are nervous. You talk about your film, still in
process, and screen a few of its chapters. Drones, the
Californian desert, PTSD.
I now know the shorthand for posttraumatic stress disorder.
Before the War on Terror, I didnt. Insisting on using the term
War on Terror, I remind myself of the beginning.
We dont currently use that term to talk about the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The wars followed my coming of age. I was in Gymnasium and 20,
organizing the only anti-war demonstrations in my hometown a
traditionally right-wing town in the middle of Jutland, Denmark.
This is 11 years ago now.
Denmark entered the Iraq war with a minimal majority. This was
the first time ever that Denmark entered a war without the full
support of parliament.
I feel a responsibility of being a citizen of a country that was
a part of the coalition in the War on Terror.
We demonstrated. We demonstrated.
Can we draw a link between the War on Terror and how drones have
become part of ongoing warfare? Part of U.S. military strategy?
I

You present your series, We Will Not Fail. You hand-cut TIME
Magazine pages into Islamic geometric patterns.
TIME Magazine, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11. The narrative seemed so
simple; it had a perfect dramatic curve to it, in those first
weeks and months after 9/11. I am angry at how simple it seems.
And at how nostalgic it becomes. And yet how quickly we can all
1

The question and title is borrowed from Ashley Hunts essay Wes of War, from
the publication Metta World Peace The Work of War in Times of Art, Spring 2012.

26

recall that time period. At how we talk about the urgency we

felt of going to weekly anti-war demonstrations. It seems so
long ago. It is not over. Remember drones, PTSD. Remember.
I

I read the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, in bed. He wants

to hold on to a sense of humanity in the face of rockets and
shells. He wants to drink his morning coffee and read the
newspaper. He writes about the June 1967 war and the ongoing war
in Lebanon. You pulled the title of the show from his book, The
Memory for Forgetfulness. I bought the book to feel close to
you. But I am far away. From you, the wars, and I think about
the eleven years. How everything changed. I think about how at
different moments within these eleven years, I have moved in and
out of thinking about the War on Terror. From that first
demonstration, to art making, curating and writing. For eleven
years, I have been with you.
I

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
The us-them rhetoric. I feel sick. I feel angry. I drink my
morning coffee reminded that we are at war, differently.
Geographically, mentally, temporally. The geography produced an
us-them. Politics produced an us-them. Time produced normalcy.
This makes me angry.
This summer, I returned to Denmark after having lived in the
U.S. for four years. At their summer convention, one of the two
major parties in Denmark launched their political program. The
capital of Norway was facing a terror threat, and Oslo held its
breath. This Danish political party felt this to be the perfect
media moment to launch the immigration section of the program,
dividing incoming immigrants into categories after regions. The
map looked suspiciously similar to a world map color-coded by
dominant religious practice. Muslims are not welcome, theyre
unable to assimilate. This was their selling point. This is
what they thought would win the coming election. Bushs us-them
rhetoric. It had moved into normalcy.
I want to ask again, how are we at war?
I

You screen a video from 2005 titled Letter to my father

(standing by the fence); its connected to your photographic
work in the show.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists crash two hijacked planes
into the towers murdering 2792 people.
Here, buildings fell. Here, a nation rose.
The fence separates.
Intercut between different voices you talk about your mothers
death.

27

I see above all a huge hole in the ground.

Liberty stands for protection, unity means division.
You talk about the strangeness of seeing your video again, so
many years later. You ask why she included such an old work in
the show.
How, and at what point, did your work move from current to past,
from urgent to dated? I am moved by it. I am reminded that I am
still angry. And I am still sad. Still. What is the time of the
event? I wonder about ongoingness.
I never went to Ground Zero in those two years I lived in New
York. My classmate wore a pen on her jacket. It read: 9/11: I
will never forgive. We never had a conversation about it, never
talked about 9/11, Bush, or the War on Terror.
I

I sit in the studio room at the Camera Club. We begin, we speak,

you leave. I wonder about your frustration. It is different than
mine. I always get frustrated about a lack of language; an
inability to talk about how we are at war, what the War on
Terror did and continues to do. I suspect your restlessness and
impatience about our conversation is fueled by how you might
feel we should be talking about our current political situation
instead. My frustration, on the other hand, has to do with the
fact that I feel unable to talk about how we moved into
normalcy. How it all is connected, and how the rhetoric worked.
I am able to say it worked, and yet I am not able to speak or
have conversation about this fact. The language is unavailable.
Foreclosed.
I

Little by little, fundamental juridical rights were taken away

in the name of terror and fear. The ongoingness of the War on
Terror provided an opening for these laws to be the rule, and
the not the exception.
Now we all know that our data is being recorded and analyzed.
How people are affected differentiates along very political,
geographical, classist and racist lines.
To name consequences doesnt begin to explain the constitution
of this normalcy.
I

You screen a video from 2002 about how the responses to 9/11
within the American Prison Industrial Complex affect communities
of color. This was at a time when the American prison population
had just reached 2 million people. The expansion continues.
You ask us to look inside the prison, inside the notion of
private prisons and government contracts, inside how an us-them

28

rhetoric might affect the growing prison population. You look at

the structures and the capital behind warfare. You draw links.
I

I sit with this uncanny feeling of time-lapse. I am deeply

affected. We all do work to create language and to have
conversations. I look at you, on the floor drawing and making
notes. I look to my right and see my brother. Its his first
visit to the U.S. He has been a cohort and friend forever. We
walked side by side at the anti-war demonstrations in our
hometown, organizing together. We watch Democracy Now over
Skype, me here, him there. This is the final round of a long
conversation. I feel the nervousness in his voice as he begins
to speak. He starts off saying that to him, all of these
attempts at creating a language visual, audible, affective
through art, attest to the importance of resistance, of
thinking, of collectivity.
I

Im back in Denmark. Yesterday a new political party was

announced, holding their first press conference. The National
Party has the Danish flag embedded in their logo.
The cofounder of this new political party, a young Danish man with
Pakistani roots, stood in front of the logo, speaking to a
Danish public about the importance of tolerance, solidarity and
equality. Values that had met his parents when they immigrated
to Denmark in the 70s. He says these values are now hard to
find.
I

I look for an opening where we can build

language. And ask again, how are we at war?

and

share

new

This text was initially written for

the publication of the show i see
in the sea nothing except the sea
at the Camera Club of New York,
April 19 May 17 2014. It is a
response to a public conversation
held at the shows opening.
Gratitude to Heather M. OBrien for
organizing the opportunity to share
the
space
and
have
this
conversation, and to everybody who
participated.

29

RESISTANCE
by Jessika Eklund

Yesterday I put two children to bed. One of them found it difficult

coming to rest.
I was rocking monotonously, singing, placing the head close to my heart.
After half an hour the weeping faded, eyes slowly closing and the little
body was soft and heavy.
It hit me that I know this so well.
That I have done it so many times before.
Not only with children. Also as a child.
Moms head covering my lap as a big, heavy, weeping ball.
I remember it so clearly. It was a regular routine.
My body knows what will happen. Steel flows automatically over it.
The thing that connects brain with body turns off.
The heart is kept intact by flowing through the body to somewhere in the
midst where it is out of reach.
Children are flexible creatures.
And very aware, although with small frames of reference.
First the sounds from the kitchen preceding the comforting.
Screaming. Beating.
The sound of objects landing after flying through the air.
I place myself silently in front of the TV. In the living room. On the
couch.
I know that I must wait here. Mom will come to me later.
The wallpaper is bright red with a pattern of stylized dark red roses. I
like it.
The couch is blue as Legos and made of a solid fabric which is a little
bit uncomfortable to sit on.
My legs are not that tall yet, feet not reaching the front edge of the
sofa.
Nothing in the room fits with the other. Nothing in the whole house is
allowed to harmonize.
But I dont take in anything of this. I am unseeing, and nothing moves
through steel.
Everything stands still except for what is happening in the kitchen.

30

My ears are the only active part of the body. I need to hear if something
goes extra wrong. I need to keep an ear on the situation.
When the sounds are fading I know its time.
I feel a great relief when mom comes in to me. Pressing down on me.
Now I can do something. And its over for now.
The heart is slowly poring back in its place. And it bleeds in regular
pulses with moms crying.
I stroke her hair. Keeping as close as I can. Speaking quietly to her.
Eventually the crying and the tense twitches subside.
Steel also finally flow off.
Now I am taking a break writing. Something has happened with my body.
Breath is short and tense. My mouth is dry. I have an exploding headache.
It aches around the shoulders, jaw, eyes, ears.
The electrical beating that every day goes through my bones makes itself
felt.
Mostly in hands and feet.
The heart beats hard.
The body has a better memory than the rest of what is me has.
My memory is hobbled.
I have delegated so much to muscles, tendons, nerves, mucous membranes
and bones.
The memory bank is overloaded in each cell.
As I got older I realized that it was possible to scare daddy.
A childs presence could press the button of shame that undeniably
existed there somewhere behind the unbridled rage.
I became braver and braver.
Now the heart was there. In the right place in the body.
Both the brain and body in perfect harmony. The complete presence.
I used to walk in with the biggest steps I could accomplish and scream as
much as I could.
Swearing and threatening as he did.
It was an indescribable victory every time when he lost the thread.
And an essential experience which has helped me many times in life.
The belief in making resistance.
That there is an unexpected relief in daring to meet even the most
difficult and frightening situations.
Over and over again.
Time after time.
A new attempt.
This is the only obligation you have.

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32

Malala Phoolan Zapatista by Mafalda Ruiz

I am my warrior
I am my first warrior
Every time life beats me down I rise up stronger
I rise up as my second warrior, my third, my
seventh,
my thousandth warrior
Stronger every time
Ive been them all
I love them all
The warrior is the move, the step, the new action
I am the warrior
I am the action
Warrior
by Mira Strmquist

33

THE WOMAN ON THE ROOF

On the ground
There was nothing particular about that day, to begin with. It was a bit
windy, but when the sun showed up between the clouds it got warm.
We met the others at Slussen. The eight of us were situated in a voltage
field with our tentacles out. Everything else was as usual, an ordinary
Saturday in town.
We discussed which way to take. We saw police cars and police boats along
the way. We looked at each other in silent consent. We headed towards the
first barrier.
The police had created voids in the city center. They had not only drawn
a line between them and us the crush barriers created distance, borders
of air and street surface dividing us. It was a choreography collecting
us in separate pockets.
In

Kungstrdgrden

the

atmosphere

was

sprightly

and

calm.

Our

first

location was the square, then we registered the horses and moved we
were not safe there. We walked towards the jaunty folk musicians. We were
surrounded by people eating fruit and nuts. Some were dancing folk dance.
The samba drums jangled. We were thousands. We were tense. A couple of
police officers moved around us in heavy protecting suits. We thought:

Dont look at us that way, with heated gazes.

We looked around trying to detect police dressed up as protestors to
blend in to the crowd. We looked for neo-nazi-sympathizers. We scanned
the rooftops to see if the police had snipers up there and if there were
any cameras. There was police, and cameras, but also someone else. On one
of the corner stones on the roof of the Royal Opera house hung casually a
body. The head and face was covered by a hoody. We knew you were not

34

police or any authority. We knew that you where not supposed to be there.
You had talked about it for a long time. It was a fantasy you had to
make that picture for all of us to see. You told us that one day we would
see you in the sky and we would immediately know it was you. You were
exactly where you should be.
We dedicated ourselves to the demonstration. Bengal fire works popped. We
screamed NO RACISTS ON OUR STREETS. The posters were swinging. We had no
overview. We moved anxiously back and forth. We were unsure, and afraid,
to end up in the middle of a battle. We tried to send text messages but
there was no signal.

On the roof
We carry threats every day. We need horizons, we need stars at night,
perspectives and wind. We fear for our lives. We need to do what we can
to resist, to have our entire beings scream NO not in our name, in our
streets, to our bodies NEVER.
I knew I would climb a roof like that one day. I knew I could, and at
this point, I knew I had to. I didnt think about the consequences, I was
there, with you, and thats what was important. I had been imprisoned
before, and I had no wish to go back, nor to die or sacrifice myself to
anything. My drive is towards living, and my body is mine thats how I
feel it is mine, and we do with us as we please.
I dont understand how you dare, you say.
I dont think of courage, I only think of what I have to do, I reply.
Dont you feel fear?
I dont think about fear. And for that matter even fear contains
courage.
Okay, but anyway I dont understand, I would never have the courage
to do what you do.
Stop talking like that. We are here for reasons bigger than us. I
dont

like

when

you

diminish

and

magnify

things.

Distance

yourself.

35

Focus.

Okay.

(Thinking:

It

must

feel

similar

to

be

on

the

moon,

only

thousands of times more distant).

Now, lets sleep. You will safeguard first. Then I will safeguard.
When we have slept and wake up there is no time to philosophize, only to
focus, okay?
Okay, you say.
We slept and woke up before the city. We were there when they built the
barriers, when the buses arrived and when the protesters gathered. We sat
next to each other and observed the city like hawks.

On the ground again

It was four in the afternoon and we had been together since noon. Our
group of eight decided to leave Kungstrdgrden to walk south. We began
to criss cross our way back. Once in a while we turned and looked back
towards the square in front of the Royal Opera house, where the neo-nazis
were to gather. We could not see or hear them. The area was blocked and
police buses were parked in a row, one after the other.
On the other side of the house people had stopped and formed a crowd.
Something was going on. Tourists and flaneurs were watching.
There were more people on the roof now the emergency service, a number
of men; firemen and policemen. Some of them dressed in black, others wore
reflex vests. You had tied yourself to one of the corner stones with a
rope and sat yourself down on the ledge. Three policemen stood on the
roof and one was on the ledge next to you. Ropes dangled down the front
of the building. There was a ladder connecting one part of the roof with
another. The man beside you was leaning over you and tied ropes around
your body that was limp and heavy. It was hard to see, we lost contact
with you, but someone next to us was filming and through the lens we saw
the police trying to hook you up to a security line. She zoomed in with
her camera and we saw a badge on your jacket, the background in neon

36

green and with text in sharp blue, it said: Mental health drives me

crazy. We laughed and wished for a moment that we were with you. We would
tell each other that in this state of society if this state of being is
normal then we are raging lunatics.
You had made your body into a piece of dead meat and it was hard for them
to handle you. You hung completely loose, making your body impossible to
handle. Unadaptable. Dense. Dazed. Closed. Encapsulated in itself. Your
body was pulled and tugged back and forth. From where we were standing
you didnt seem to mind. This was exactly what you had anticipated and
you

enjoyed

the

moment

of

revenge

that

was

in

this

passive

act

of

resistance. You kept your body as a protecting shelter between yourself

and the system of violence. We thought of your pulse. Did you manage to
keep your heartbeat from running? Did you manage to encapsulate yourself
in coolness?
We heard noise and we assumed it was from Kungstrdgrden. We looked
towards the right but the noise was not from the protesters. Our eyes
left your struggling body and seconds later they landed on a group of
neo-nazis marching towards us: white clothing, waving flags, surrounded
by police and police-cars. A small white-yellow-blue parade.
Our group was bigger now. We booed and shouted and rattled with our keys.
Our eyes went back to you as you were being hauled down the front of the
building. Your

body

levitating

between

moment

of

resistance

and

lifetime on the ground. We looked back towards the march approaching the
building from behind.
75 neo-nazis protected by hundreds of police.
Your body - a marker, a sign - making violence visible.
The neo-nazis arrived at the square on the other side of the void. A
policeman was standing in the space separating us and them. On top of the
padded body his small head was turning back and forth with a gaze that
watched us as if there was a surveillance camera behind his sunglasses.

37

Two men with crew cuts, black jackets and boots left the other side and
went into the void. They walked towards us with no hesitation. They had
bottles in their hands. From this distance we couldnt tell if it was
plastic or glass. They approached the policeman, whose job it was to
protect the void from us, it seemed. After a few minutes of negotiations,
the police opened the barrier and let the men out on our side. Our hearts
were beating in rage and fear. The fence was a border to keep us from
them, it was never meant to protect us. A group of young girls ran
screaming after the two neo-nazis. A group of policemen came running to
the neo-nazis rescue. We left.

On the roof again

We were focused. No hesitation. We moved over the surfaces of the roof,
between the different sides. The church bells raved. The slogans were
ringing. We saw the red smoke from the Bengal fire works and the neonazis in their white clothes, when they gathered and marched towards
Skeppsholmen. We saw the protesters in a never-ending crowd continuing in
all directions. We began to move so that they would see us. It was time
for our bodies to become the border, the shelter, our last resort the
only space for us to be, the only space for us to exist within our only
shelter and haven.

38

We want to direct our all to you. You who had nothing to loose but your
mind, and that had already been lost. You who put it all at stake.
With love,
in solidarity,
Johanna Gustavsson and Katarina Nitsch

39

Running Away and Home

by Lena Sraphin

40

I lost it. I lostthe note. But, this is how I remember grandmas words

I wasnt able to bid Lena farewell. I looked

at her through the open kitchen door. She was
sitting at the table crying over her dinner.
Please remember her favourite sweets for the
birthday. Grandpa searched in many shops for
them.

Later on, maybe after the party, my fourth

birthday, I found myself at a new kindergarten.
It was no good. So I ran away. First slowly
past the giant spruce, then skidding over the
rocky hill, down the dirt road, rushing over
the hard road covered in black, through the
gate, over the lawn, passing the apple trees
and to the stairs. Then a full stop. I waited
patiently for somebody to come home. I was told
not to run away again. The next day I repeated
it. I ran away.
Apparently my escape scared everybody and the
people at the kindergarten didnt want to have
small girls running away. But I was running
towards a better place and nothing could keep
me. So I did it again. And the better place did
happen, I was to move home.

41

/we_are_all_cyborgs now/from_back_to_front/(posteroanterior)/X-ray/
a_new_frontier/inner_space+mind+matter/tick-tock/who_is_warrior?
by
Pia Sandstrm

Eulogy for Living Wannabees

by Tia-Simone Gardner

This is a eulogy, a flaccid document dedicated to all those that

are broken hearted. To the apathetic, the pathetic, the politically
paralyzed, to the curators and creators, and to the
of the ugly and the stupid.
do not console us.

proud historians

Today, we the living mourn our loss, so

Let us weep, cry, moan, or otherwise act out our

discomfort.
For as much as it has pleased the Almighty God in His wise
providence, to take out of this world the Soul of the deceased, we
therefore commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust.
gazingstock:
abhorrence;

a person or thing gazed at with scorn or

an object of curiosity or contempt.

This is one of the first words you taught me.

Our relationship was brief, but I spent the better part of my
life looking for you.

I suppose this means I will now spend the worst

part of my life looking for a new proxy.

We were introduced years

ago, and I remember feeling intimidated, and full. Like a parasite? It

was a different time then. I needed a friend like that, someone
self-righteous and angry, but I couldnt approach you.

I remember

being there, standing directly in front/or behind you, waiting for you
to turn and address me.

You never did.

It was overwhelming, but I am

changed now, less desperate.

At one point you occupied all the space in my mind I used to used
for thinking.

44

I remember as I watched you then, that even as you

faced away from me, avoiding my awkward admiration, I felt transparent

to you.

Naked.

Exposed. Trapped in your bitter black shadow.

Turn around.
But, you shielded yourself.
have seemed useless to you.

That vulnerability I possessed must

Much more practical to be impenetrable

and opaque or just deceptive maybe.

She was a beautiful human.
Her, really?
surface.

Statuesque, brooding.

Did we know

Did we know her past her graceful, well composed

Did she want us to know her? A portion of my heart says,

no...She possessed a special magic that she would work, an old craft
that left one full and in need of sleep.
That was a special magic.

You made us feel full, and loved, when

you hadn't offered us anything at all.

all of MY secrets with you.

You are gone.

And you took

You must know I was only pretending to

misunderstand you. In my stupid ugliness, I carried my imitations too

far.

I wanted to be solid and opaque, as you were.

knowledge bearer. I wanted to own

was.

I wanted to be a

it, to never let on to how deep I

But what has happened to our "us."

In the end, your refusal of

communion with me wasn't the self-righteous anger that I thought it

was was.

You became...coy and flirtatious,

better before.

cute even!

I loved you

Cute is not revolutionary. You didn't have to change

or reduce yourself for me.

You were well loved before,

But then again, it wasn't for me, was it?

but that wasn't enough.

You emptied

yourself of all your precious little things for just a little more
love, and a little more recognition.

But I couldnt recognize you now

if my death depended on it. I used to dream dreams about conjure, you

45

possessing me to satisfaction, now I wake up hanging on to nightmares

of your resurrection.

I need peace. Can we have peace with the death,

particularly those who died so violently?

Can I inhabit your space,

can I take on some pieces of your behavior? If so, what were the most
meaningful parts?

Can I

take on your ways of looking at the world.

Are we the living doomed to repeat the life history of the you, the
deceased?
Your passing is like a hole being dug in the earth, every strike
of the spade is felt like a deep strike in my own chest.

As though a

part of me has gone with you.

Please, Turn around.
Should we be happy you are gone?!

We never really knew you.

But

you taught US many things. You taught US patience, you taught US

courage, you taught US fear, and you taught US who we might become. So
we humbly thank you...for providing US time and space to be
self-reflective.

We...we want to thank you for restoring our voices,

our dignity, and collective memory.

US? Collective? Coalition? WE! What does any of that mean.
Werent you talking to me? [oops, I meant US]. Or was it only for you?
To exorcise your own anxieties?

Maybe I, [my bad, again I meant we]

never should have empathized with you.

It was a good approach, for a while. No one knew what you were
doing.
It is dangerous to think these things, and who am I to question
you.
Turn around, Please!

46

The days of caring master-teachers are gone.

humble, diligent, meek advocates for inclusion.
now?

GONE!

Gone are the

Where are our heroes

Drowned in the prosperity of the institutions they once

so scornfully critiqued.
And may your spirits walk beside us.

Amen.

But they dont walk beside us, not softly anyway.

on us in our dreams.
thoughts.

They sneak up

Just as we begin to image our own thoughts...new

Where is our WE now?

Who will speak for us?

I will, I will speak for us.

And then I will speak for them.

will be the spook-tyrant-drag version of my impenetrable, blank

antecedent.

Are we victims?

I AM a victim.

Are we accomplices?

AM an accomplice. Are we witnesses? Witnesses to some imaginary

transgression too traumatic and yet too insignificant to bear
repeating?

I plead the fifth.

Turn. A. Round.
We, the un-dead, sometimes sense that we are doomed to
repetition.
death.
you.

Perhaps because of feelings of responsibility for their

How long have they been gone.

Did I kill you. Did we kill

Did our desire have some part in your death?

I wont ask for forgiveness, but you should.
Your silence is in appropriate.

Are you scared of being

unforgiven?
This is an inappropriate time for silence.
Our proxys are dead.

Amen.

47

hi!
this is an invitation to participate in
DISRUPTIVE LAUGHTER.
disruptive laughter is a publication of 5 issues. each issue will be available both online, as a pdf
for downloading, and in a small edition printed version. there will be some sort of release event in
the end when all the issues are done. so each issue will be more like chapters in the whole, and the
release is an event of gathering those five chapters.
to loose a little bit of the hierarchical curatorial role my idea is to invite three women to participate in disruptive laughter, and those three women will invite two women each to the project.
all together we will be ten voices. this is also a way to hear and listen to voices that you have
not met before. for every issue it will be the same ten women dealing with those different voices
given for each issue. so over time and for each new issue we listen and speak and in the end there
will be a multitude of voices heard.
disruptive laughter:
#1 THE VISIONARY
#2 THE MOTHER
#3 THE DYKE
#4 THE POET
#5 THE WARRIOR
my idea is that the project will be going on for about a year, with start sometime during late summer 2013. every second or third month there will be a new issue published. the idea to give you the
titles for every issue from the beginning, is so each and everyone of the participants can dispose
their individual ideas and contributions to fit their own creative process. and for every issue all
these 10 voices will meet, a multitude of identities, thoughts, lived experiences, dreams, standpoints, complexities and voices.
each participant will have about 5 pages for each issue (more or less if needed). the format will be
A4, standing, b/w. the material can be images; photos, stills, drawings and/or text; essays, concrete poetry, articles, speeches and so on.. the layout will be very simple. all the body text will
have the same font, if there is not a specific layout idea for a specific text.
it is important, if you decide to be part of this project, that you will be part of it through all
the five issues. this project is formulated with inspiration from Audre Lordes life and work.
looking forward to hear from you! please dont hesitate to contact me if there is any questions or
thoughts!
all the best
/Ulrika Gomm
April 3 2013

DISRUPTIVE LAUGHTER
is supported by Lngmanska kulturfonden.
Font
PT MONO
was released in 2011 with an open user license. It was designed by Alexandra Korolkova, with participation of Isabella Chaeva, with
the purpose to support almost all minority and official languages of Russian Federation in the correspondence with electronic governments.

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