︎︎︎



ON THE CORNER OR TO SEE WHAT’S LEFT 


A Score 


by Carolin von den Benken









SSSSS
( I AM A BREATHING BODY)



Prelude

my thoughts occupied with your
absence
sense
that i don't need to name
things with you –

i'm not in a rush with you
i don't have to distract myself
i have no interest in privileging the visible

i want to afford to be
the negative space around your shoulders






the body is an ever recurring topos until becoming incorporeal light again. in a pandemic mode of cybernetic post-capitalism inc. and bio-hacking etc. space-time can be experienced as a transient fragment, serving collapsed temporalities in that our body is a hybrid and our skin no longer a boundary marker, where meaning is ambiguous, seaweed. hyper-fluidity is a liminal experience itself. how can the liminal within the liminal bring back some sense of calm and emotional coherence?





1. rokoko hair

i run into you on the corner and you want me to go for a walk with you and i want to go for a walk with you and the next day in the morning we meet because the air is sharp and the birds sign the air with their sound and it sounds nice

some quiet path to walk, setting foot, step a line (a-lign) to organize yourself in space,
cobblestones like serpents, illegal harmonies of rational thought coming from sensual intuition
make me smile

you remind me of how i prefer to be speaking 

you say i had rokoko hair —












the act of speaking leads thought to be transferred into language: to become significant, moulding itself into code.

one can queer the general principles that govern how words are assembled to sentences. one can take it as a pre-worldly challenge to have one’s lust for play satisfied, indulging in the allure of what is forbidden by reason to make sense of non-sense, to give oneself to unknown insight. a reconfiguration of reason is the prerequisite to withdraw from rash categories, those hasty judgements that are laying claim to know instead of embracing the literacy of experience. the immediacy of playing with speech makes the production of meaning a process similar to drawing, where you can spatially map out and bridge across supposedly unrelated thought.


























what do you do in the mornings
asking for A rhythm
apples for break fast
A mad piece of grammar

find me some quiet path

give me some new myth
take me (back for) to A new (paradise)

what do i know

what
those bendings of my body
mean
that full flex
what do i know

what kissing means










2. showing me these close fields (chessboard)

we go along windows being either mirrors or opening worlds or both, over there a woman playing the piano, just sometimes

a lane of trees giving perspective to some brick building at the streets horizon (lap), there is something inherently erotic about letting landscape pass through you,
mild waving of trees, oscillations like sines (signs) and vice versa
the weight of our encounter

cadmium red bricks stacked one over another with oversized glass windows breaking up the expectation of continuity, edged with an iron cast fence, wrought iron railing with ornaments in the form of spirals

you ask me what i kept in my house
(nothing) i like (but) chessboards, i say, and vases —
















space is the condition for a multitude of things to be existing next to each other while at the same time being separate from each other vs. non-existent at all. space seems to be like a vessel to these things, however, things themselves entail expansion and spatiality. matter is space filled with substance – substance attunes itself to form until it matters. space is representation a priori, the faculty by which we represent. it‘s the form to our sensuality.
































do forms have a life of their own?

scaling up the grid
take a brick and relate it to another brick

be my unit
phantom decimal
whole mind
whole body
cross-section sensation
be my self-sufficient interior


expanded territory

i am a breathing body

walking there listening
listening is ahead of signification
how to become comfortable in the unknowable



3. etc. is a body

we fold around each other magnetically, no hesitant moment

i like to think of our skin as membranes being permeable,
you’re a hyperlink bae, through poetry at me
in favor of a curling motion
cruising beyond

a shared sense
of f reference and pace
we refrain from thinking into doing
you are, an imprint to my body

– my hand’s invisible guidance
knowledge of my hands when i touch you
i am, a

fantasy talking
rather implicitly explicit —












the body as an A-bsolute, an embodied fragment of space, knowledge embodied. the body as a finite phenomenon of the infinite, giving it a form, a phenomenal form. the body made of flesh is characterized by its change of position making for the flowing movement of time. to move one’s body is to devote one-self to some-thing, it is to allow oneself to long. desire gives a configuration to the body in directing it.





















X as touch

(deine finger auf meinem rippenkäfig,
ein ebenbild zeichnend)

it takes time to measure a body

body of organs, without organs, being a dancing body, being some body being no body, being desiring body, being desired body, being gendered, being socialized, being dancing body. what is the particular spectrum of possibilities to be the only now you can get


expanded territory

i am a breathing body

being there listening
existing is ahead of signification
how to become comfortable in the unknowable



4. the church

we go along the church
i had dissolved a little while we were together and it was really ok to not feel one

touching skin on a pile of gravestones,
concert of our bodies
some messiah's hallelujah,
piercing sound, black sun
names inscribed, black marble
bodies resting geometricized
in stone

my soul the extension to your voice
after having lived casted in the shadows
i stop being scared of death —













“power is not a substance, it is a type of relation,” they say.

the church is made of bricks, it is cross-shaped, it has nine fractions, five domes. architectural embodiment of redemption, a “picturesque” representation of death. the spell of the sovereign, here to promise you reconciliation in the name of obedience, to re-establish your p-u-r-i-t-y.




























is it against the body that all utopias came into being?

a dream state (hidden desires)

hot anthropomorphism s
shift in
soft ruin gardens
expanded territory

i am a breathing body

lying there listening
feeling is ahead of signification

how to become comfortable in the unknowable



5. voice

saying good-bye,
forever until next time

i like to think of space-time as a membrane being permeable
your home next to my home

before we let go you ask me
what i’d do before i go to sleep
i see what's left, i say

shooting star sentences, reverberating
echo in A rhythm —












gravitational pull is assumed to be the basic force for the acceleration of material bodies towards their mutual centre and fundamental for the cohesion of the components of a compound body. this force of attraction causes earthly bodies to accelerate downwards, towards the centre of the earth, i.e. falling, and on the other hand puts the planets into orbit around the sun through compensating the centrifugal force.

always striving for A new, it is in love where we fall into place.





























expanded territory

i am a breathing body

dreaming there listening
dreaming is ahead of signification

how to become comfortable in the unknowable





everything seems to be somewhat lucid. i can sense a swell, the borderline excitement of the about to happen, and then pure pleasure kickin in. the eeriness of a bold pulse. i count 10-9-8-7… and reverse it. 1 to 10 and 10 to 1, feeling how space is made in the area of the abdominal cavity. i drop into that base, sipping that air letting it run down the throat along the spine like sharp ether i can feel my heart's soft edges. my organs falling into place. imaginary plenitude, from a place behind the eyes i am conjuring up a perfect picture, (the two 3456 7.8 of us), fuck up my whole life.

i want to blend into the trees, brick walls, cobblestones, i want to be complementary (nature) rather than binary, i want nature to be given and manipulated, i want to be a-n-on-site piece, i want to be wide awake while sleeping. what really matters is to understand the permanence of impermanence.

we are / will be / were inevitably heading towards a crescendo, slipping towards a dissolution of light and into the shape of full silence. sssss

intuition reflects the continuity of the river
moving beyond




expanded territory:

i am a breathing body
the gap in between
2 vertebras
2 minds
2 thoughts
2 words
2 grids
2 hands
2 reclaim
2 redefine
2 regain
2 combine

to become comfortable
in speaking through listening

to become comfortable

in standing on the corner





Epilogue

(aporia of the unconditional)

breathing is the act of inhaling and exhaling consecutively, drawing oxygen from the air into the lungs.

on the corner, where the inhale welcomes the fresh air, where feet meet the ground. just like one can feel the space within the open plane of the street, one can feel the space within the layers of breath. consider the volume of the human body as a passage, navel in the middle, arms and legs stretching in all directions, tracing the forms of a circle and a square. a channel-like volume, for the spine elongates with every inhale as a guidance into presence, in order to experience. cross section, intersection, transection, transaction. running into somebody on the corner can transfix you.

(the unconditional might
be found
some where between
being and non-being
its within the gaps
the space inbetween where
(stillness) takes place
stillness in motion
as a movement sssss is for
an ethical logic that reflects
a vital persistence within our capacity
to experience one A-nother
asking for delicacy for balance demanding
(no) identification
but a collective

sense


somewhere close to the abdomen setting a pace, one can feel that there are three or four and sometimes more dimensions, one can feel that numbers are sensible, sensory, sensational qualities, that perception is infinite, + dimensions are p-h-y-s-i-c-a-l. there where the heart sits is the place that gives the unconditional its ground. the space of the heart is our most valuable resource.


Carolin von den Benken is an artist who writes. Her works have been exhibited at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Shoot the Lobster New York and M.I./mi1glissé in Berlin. She is engaged in different forms of collaborative practice.



Journal der Freien
Universität Berlin

Berlin 2023