from one side to the other, I’ve dreamed that too. —

Modeled loosely after a suicide prevention line, from one side to the other, I’ve dreamed that too. offers callers a moment of solace, or tools for active resistance against the monolithic tide of conservative signification that defines this holiday season, in all forms.

323 Projects exists to provide a dispersed, peripatetic, and constantly accessible venue for artists of all kinds who seek to explore issues important to their respective practices. Exhibitions at 323 Projects can be reached by dialing (323) 843-4652. Once the caller connects, they hear an audio recording by a featured artist.

Considering Eve Sedgwick’s brilliant essay Queer and Now as a model for thinking critically about the winter holidays, 17 artists were invited to present work which addresses Christmastime as not necessarily a season for rejoicing, but as a defined period of struggle and resistance.

In her essay, Sedgwick makes a brilliant analysis of Christmas, and why it can be a particularly difficult time for queer folks to suffer through. To paraphrase, it is the one time in the year where nearly every institution in the US lines up in unison to reinforce the same definition of family, religion, and tradition; definitions that define queer subjects as “other.”

Some of the artists in this project have addressed the concept head on, others prefer a more oblique strategy. Some of the work doesn’t necessarily address Christmas, or queerness specifically, but may target other events and meanings associated with December and the New Year.

Waking from violence: the surgeon’s probe left in the foot

paralyzing the body from the waist down.
Dark before dawn: wrapped in a shawl, to walk the house
the Drinking Gourd slung in the northwest,
half-slice of moon to the south
through dark panes. A time to speak to you.

What are you going through? she said, is the great question.
Philosopher of oppression, theorist
of the victories of force.

We write from the marrow of our bones. What she did not
ask, or tell: how victims save their own lives.

The crawl along the ledge, then the ravelling span of fibre
strung
from one side to the other, I’ve dreamed that too.
Waking, not sure we made it. Relief, appallment, of waking.
Consciousness. O, no. To sleep again.
O to sleep without dreaming.

How day breaks, when it breaks, how clear and light the moon
melting into moon-colored air
moist and sweet, here on the western edge.
Love for the world, and we are part of it.
How the poppies break from their sealed envelopes
she did not tell.

What are you going through, there on the other edge?

footnote:
“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?”
– Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 115