Testament Goldsmiths CCA

21 Jan - 03 Apr 2022

There’s much to be said for – um – tearing, ripping, scraping, pulling, scrapping – and how tearing is also tearing like, seeping, blubbing, gulping, drooping, crying and uh, really just something bleary-eyed. Sometimes two things get muddled in my mind. I want to talk about how tearing is also tearing and how I went to the pub and we drank 3 wines, or / I drank wine they drank beer, quite fast, called something like full moon with a slice of lemon (possibly orange) and we sat on yellow plastic chairs that were also as bright as the sun even if it snowed that day the wine was also a kind of yellow green clear cold – you have to taste it, to have it in your mouth to… but it was all quite perfect, collective, divine. Earlier that day I watched a candle blown out by a small child and I don’t know why yellow seems so prominent not much yellow it was snowing that day except – what I mean is – a kind of lightness and that’s how it was when you arrived / Tearing is also tearing is also to rip it open to put it together in new ways and – hmm – The first thing is the text, downloaded onto your already out-of-date phone, nevertheless something to hold, to have it in your hand its own object and a kind of guide – so – hmm. There’s this, uh – publication green mint cover rather like spring rather like a certain kind of bathroom tile rather like the colour of the next pair of leggings you might want to buy – fumbled your fingers are cold and scrolling down the screen / too small / eyes / too wide / legs deciding their way down the stairs or left but you read a smidge and the something of it resonates in your mind. But that’s as far as you - like, the smell of those bricks took over and the stairs un-placeable without – or really just functional – or really just doing its – so you get to the bottom of the stairs and the fabricated smell just changed and you forget all about the publication because the materials are jumping into your, cresting the wave of it, like they are waving – well the lambs were jumping and tearing at your eyes. It was a sense of could be this / screens overwriting, and things appearing on their opposite side / hybrids to monuments, moments of pause with bits that flash past your eyes. jump fast. You have to side step there are so many people – closing tomorrow the buzz of the tail end of the last chance of / together / you share the saloon at the --- stand still and wait to slow down. Sometimes you don’t need to read the thing to understand and feel it and somehow you never make it back to the - although you loved the green – you just wanted to feel the

Textile, tile, scale, the angle of placards against the prefabricated wall this moment is behind us now we’re caught up post-time and / dropping drooping high to low or rather low to high - - - there was so much gravity and something else and – you lose the thread of it but legs everywhere and the – lots of text and a lot of it serious monumental and you really want to think about it but your hands just want to – backtrack slide right overstep your mind – a shirt over a chair – this pink worm slides you underground, frozen slithers up towards the sky. It was plastic-y and shiny and also soft and alive its breath is / The teeth of it trying to get into the teeth of it get your hands around the teeth of the tip of the cut your tongue on it reaching up to… More drooping and you missed some bits the pinks and the greens and the reds were guiding your eyes… It was macro and then micro body skirting into and around it and you couldn’t hold it all and you suppose testaments are like that (you’re back in the pub by this time) and – uh – there was this mix tape playing in the backdrop of cold air outside purple lighting inside hallowed air and salty breaths you lasted as long as you could seeking a small moment of quiet eyes resting blinking back, ears take in a – well – snippet of – uh – real-time. (That’s testament, folks!) Violet clutching fingers clutching metal plastic blocks of colour eggs in their fingers there are eggs in their fingers and you want to talk about the feeling of it, all matter slipping past us into our past and puffing out something different into our – together like or as the trees chipped in oak / horse chestnut / elm / cherry and (and) - there’s this moment you hear laughs and it’s like we’re together and we slip back into our testimonies and the stories how to store our stories an inflatable pub and wheelbarrow more text a pile of stones air bags piling up but you skipped it craving matter texture crumbly smooth gravelly papier-maché post punk party shiny silky pastiche vibe – and that’s the crux of it the yellow plastic chairs and the three wines as wishes and the night bus home and the tearing up and tearing up at the – grief and reverence and hope tearing/tearing and all of it condensing into these

two things muddled in your mind.