Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

IN Class Writing 11/6

1 Hannah Hoch The Beautiful Girl

I clock tick work round spin. I clock tick work round stop. Tires are another name for feet, feet tired tires spin round sounds clock tick work. Hair piece here piece round piece work spin paper rip rent fabric spin. Hip hip hypnotize spin one two one two. Clock gears grind gears here. Gears now hear, piles now simile wiped away to fight. Paper for awhile grinds pulp grinds eye grinds minds. Bump and grind bumped minds. Hair is in the mechanism clogs drains, drains slow brains. What if the circle was recycled? Legs are simple machines called levers. Apply pressure and see result, double your power through machines, simply divide and conquer. We can rebuild tired spin clip clop the clock machine lives or is broken or fights. Dip dot the landscape, marr make the landscape, hair flip landscape, iron wrinkle landscape, circle round the landscape.

2 How I fell in love with my prosthesis

Dear Pentax K100,
You are my eye. I could stare into your monocular lens for hours. We have made beautiful images together. Tripping your shutter makes me shudder, sliding back that curtain. Your mechanisms are a part of me.
Dear Pentax K100,
I find your 50mm lens stifling. I need someone with more range and versatility in my life right now. Goodbye
Dear Pentax K100,
I don’t understand this new plastic automated body. I want you back. I want back your metal body that is indestructible. Why did I ever leave you?
Dear Pentax K100,
You make me tense. The muscles in the back of my neck contract and I just can’t relax. I can’t see what I want out of you anymore. When I look into the mirror, the viewfinder, I see my face with your ugly eye attached to it. You removed me from my friends. You were a buffer so I didn’t have to interact with people but you left me empty with only images to live in. Open your eye/shutter all the way open to F2 if you must and look at me. What world are you living in? Now I am shaky, it is below 1/60 of a second and I can’t hold you anymore. It’s not you its me, its art.

3 The Hand set

I am a telephone handset. I span the distance between and ear and a mouth. And then I span the distance between two ears and two mouths. I am the reverse in my construction to the anatomy of the user, my mouth goes to their ear and my ear to their mouth, an ear to every mouth and a mouth to every ear. Talking is always met with listening. I conform to the shape of a hand. I have been squeezed in the middle (a small waist enforced and even corseted) and have bulbous ends. I have holes/orifices to regulate information in and out. I take in half as much as I put out, six to project info and three to take it in. I am half of a half, half of a set of phones and half of a human head. Divide in two and rotate, divide in two and rotate. I have what the other is lacking. The line is drawn between mouth and ear. The line is busy, try again.