Project Type: cycle 7

started on October 1, 2024
Unlike in previous cycles, there are 2 months to complete the task.
List of participants:
Roberto Balò (Prato, Italy), Stephanie Barber (Philadelphia), Erica Baum (NYC), Marie Buck (NYC), Felipe Cussen (Santiago, Chile), Robert Fitterman (NYC), ETHAN FORTUNA (NYC), Sophia Le Fraga (LA), Kristen Gallagher (NYC), Sanja Grozdanic (NYC), Aurelia Guo (London, UK), Sabine Herrmann (Berlin, Germany), Elijah Jackson (NYC), Josef Kaplan (Philadelphia), Klaus Killisch (Berlin, Germany), Matt Longabucco (NYC), Kristin Lucas (Austin, Texas), Monica McClure (NYC), Yedda Morrison (Bay Area CA), Joseph Mosconi (LA), Michael Prado (Lima, Peru), Kim Rosenfield (NYC), Jeff Shapiro (Siena, Italy), Ed Steck (Pittsburgh), Georgina Torello (Montevideo, Uruguay), Mónica de la Torre (NYC), Sam Winston (London, UK)

task 04 / 7

Start date: October 1, 2024.

List of participants:
Alexis Almeida (New York City), Amir Akram (Baghdad), Roberto Balò (Prato), Stephanie Barber (Philadelphia), Erica Baum (New York City), Elisa Biagini (Florence), Laura Boggia (Genoa), Marie Buck (New York City), Courtney Bush (New York City), Alessandra Capodacqua (Florence), Felipe Cussen (Santiago), Mónica de la Torre (New York City), Claire DeVoogd (New York City), Robert Fitterman (New York City), Ethan Fortuna (New York City), Sophia Le Fraga (LA), Kristen Gallagher (New York City), Sanja Grozdanic (New York City), Aurelia Guo (London), Sabine Herrmann (Berlin), Elijah Jackson (New York City), Atef Al Jaffal (Baghdad), Josef Kaplan (Philadelphia), Klaus Killisch (Berlin), Tyler Little (New York City), Matt Longabucco (New York City), Kristin Lucas (Austin), Monica McClure (New York City), Holly Melgard (New York City), Hella Mewis (Baghdad), Cole Modell (Pittsburgh), Yedda Morrison (San Francisco), Joseph Mosconi (Los Angeles), Michael Prado (Lima), Kim Rosenfield (New York City), Zaid Saad (Baghdad), Jeff Shapiro (Siena), Ed Steck (Pittsburgh), Luke Stettner (Columbus), Sam Winston (London), Joey Yearous-Algozin (New York City)

Open
Ethan Fortuna

In the Random House unabridged dictionary, there are eighty-two entries under the word ‘open’ that could be set on separate lines, as in a poem. For me those entries are most beautiful. Robert Motherwell

RESPONSES

Courtney Bush

1. Rilke says animals can see into The Open. That people who die become it.

2. My landlord wants to try to trim the tree from inside my bedroom by hanging his body out the open window with a set of shears even though I told him I tried to do the same thing and cut branches with kitchen scissors and found it to be very dangerous and a bee tried to fly into my apartment and so did a green bug and I only had the window open for about five minutes.

3. FILM JOINED TO LAY OPEN THE LOGIC OF A PERSON’S THOUGHT, Tarkovsky said that, about something.

4. I saw Peter and Julia’s show Open Mic Night, which was truly beautiful. In the show, Julia said the first thing Peter ever said to her was, “I can’t wait to make you laugh but I can’t do it right now.”

5. My mom called the Mardi Gras store that is only open six months out of the year a multi-million dollar juggernaut.

6. One of the little girls opens the bags of mango for the other little girls because she’s good at opening the tricky bags.

7. A24 needs to take a note from Saving Silverman for once and open a movie with Steve Zahn talking directly to camera, narrating footage of his mother going into labor.

8. Does anyone know why I bought this hard-boiled egg and gouda box from Starbucks and then why I opened it on an airplane?

9. Peter Falk in Opening Night. Someone who died and became it.

10. Anyway, the landlord did come and trim the trees by hanging out my fifth-floor window that can only open one foot and I’m pretty sure he stole a book while he was here. (My Struggle by Karl Ove Knaussgard)

Cole Modell

Michael Prado

Ed Steck

task 03 / 7

Start date: October 1, 2024.

The experience of saying
Tyler Little

RESPONSES

Roberto Balò

Stephanie Barber

Erica Baum

Elisa Biagini

Robert Fitterman
Klaus Killisch

I, too, am sad and lonely
Klaus Killisch & ambientfunk: music, visuals
Robert Fitterman: words, voice

I, too, am sad and lonely
you told me that you are too
my ticket reads: sad and lonely
what do you expect us to do?

I, too, am giving up
you say you gave up long ago
giving up on every day
it’s a feeling I know you know

I, too, am looking down on
this world we left behind
got a suitcase full of sad—
got a world that’s so unkind

CHORUS:

You ought to know that your sadness just might be mine.
You’ve already said what I wanted to say every time
The world that’s forgotten about me
has forgotten about you too.
I, too, am sad and lonely.
and I know that you are sad and lonely too.

I, too, am sad and lonely
you told me that you wrote that too
too many of us feel too empty
too many days feeling blue

I, too, am sad and lonely
I’m sad when you go away
and if you’ll allow me this honesty
I’m sad when you’re here to stay.

I got a ticket to sad and lonely
the seat next to me is free
you thought the same thought I just thought—
we’re not who we thought we’d be

REPEAT CHORUS

Sophia Le Fraga

“I Believe;” acrylic and ink on found library card, 3”x5”, 2025

Ethan Fortuna

Kristen Gallagher

Endicott, Ronald P., “Inner speech,” Frontiers in Psychology, Sec. Theoretical and Philosophical, Psychology, Volume 15, 20 March 2024

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1360699

Sanja Grozdanic

In honor of Rosa Luxemburg’s birthday today, I’ve been reading her prison letters to Sophie Liebknecht. Frequently she draws attention to the sound of birds (or to birds, and living creatures generally—in one particularly moving letter, to buffaloes from Romania –“Poor wretch, I am as powerless, as dumb, as yourself; I am at one with you in my pain, my weakness, and my longing.”). Examples below.

May 2nd, 1917: “… Do you remember how, in April last year, I called you up on the telephone at ten in the morning to come at once to the Botanical Gardens and listen to the nightingale which was giving a regular concert there? We hid ourselves in a thick shrubbery, and sat on the stones beside a trickling streamlet. When the nightingale had ceased singing, there suddenly came a plaintive, monotonous cry that sounded something like “Gligligligligliglick!” I said I thought it must be some kind of marsh bird, and Karl agreed; but we never learned exactly what bird it was.”

May 23, 1917: “Will you believe me, Sonyusha, when I tell you that a little snatch of bird song can be so full of meaning, can move me so profoundly. My mother, who considered that Schiller and the Bible were the supreme sources of wisdom, was firmly convinced that King Solomon understood the language of birds. In the pride of my fourteen years and my training in natural science I used to smile at my mother’s simplicity. But now I have myself grown to be like King Solomon; I too can understand the language of birds and beasts. Not, of course, as if they were using articulate speech, but I understand the most varied shades of meaning and of feeling conveyed by their tones. Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent, does the song of a bird seem always the same. Those who love birds and beasts, those who have a sympathetic understanding, can perceive great diversity of expression, and can recognise a complete language.”

May 12, 1918: “For my part, however, my interest in organic nature is almost morbid in its intensity. A pair of crested larks here have one young bird – no doubt the other three have come to a bad end. This little one can already run. You may have noticed the quaint way in which crested larks run. They trip along with short, hasty steps, not like the sparrow which hops on both feet. This young lark can fly quite well by now, but is not yet able to find its own food (insects, grubs, etc.) at any rate while the weather is still so cold. Every evening in the court beneath my window, it utters its sharp, plaintive pipe. The old birds promptly put in an appearance, answering with a soft and anxious “hweet, hweet”, and they bustle about to hunt up some food in the chill evening twilight. As soon as they find anything, it is stuffed down the throat of the clamorous youngster.”

…

Rosa Luxemburg’s last written words are available to read here. ““Order prevails in Warsaw!” “Order prevails in Paris!” “Order prevails in Berlin!” Every half-century that is what the bulletins from the guardians of “order” proclaim from one center of the world-historic struggle to the next. And the jubilant “victors” fail to notice that any “order” that needs to be regularly maintained through bloody slaughter heads inexorably toward its historic destiny; its own demise.”

Aurelia Guo

Atef Al Jaffa

Monica McClure