starting from the middle, with Liv Moriarty, 2022

We start to stutter: words are elastic and odd, but language brings things into existence. A map predicts the future, a drain is a portal and so is a phone. A photo is in a million places at once but you can't convey how it felt to be there. We daydream as we drive the usual way, and appear home as if by magic, but take the wrong turn and we are shot into outer-space. Any answer is clumsy and codependent, proving itself wrong and cancelling itself out.

Anything can be explained away or left up for interpretation; try to take a photo of the moon and end up with a blur across the screen. Words run at the usual frame rate, the stutters are too small to see as the system speeds the information over the gaps, until the connection is dropped and starts to buffer, and the stutters become visible.

Speculative language amalgamates itself into our perception of the world, leaning into implications– we amalgamate experience, trains-of-thought and interpretation to see where we land.

emma nicole berry