What are you doing now?
Not doing. Noticing. That silence, for example, between those trees.
What about it?
It appears to be speeding up.
Um. Is this an exercise in magical thinking?
With an emphasis on ritual. Here, drink this.
Now what?
Sometimes I notice the sounds of birds. And it feels like they are coming out of me.
I know what you mean!
Do you?
So, you’re an artist?
Un-artist. I teach in the free pop-up art school. It has no walls.
Hm. Do they have podiums, or is it more like round tables?
Hollow altars. With headphones.
What are you teaching now?
It’s like this. Here is an arm, and here is a map of Antilles. Now combine them.
How?
On a large-scale print, like this. Big as the front wall of a mansion. Then you drape it over the façade, in front of the door.
I’m not sure I follow.
You might say it doesn’t make any sense––
No, it’s just––
But you have to see it.
Yeah, probably then it would.
Not exactly. It will make the kind of sense you can’t say.
***
Inspired by the playful seriousness of manuel arturo abreu, profiled in the Fall issue of BOMB. This conversation is an extension of that play, and while it borrows some phrases of abreu’s as featured in the article, it is not intended to be an accurate rendering of their sensibilities.