https://theadorawalsh.com Theadora Walsh Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:31:26 +0000 https://theadorawalsh.com en https://theadorawalsh.com/About Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:31:26 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/About &nbsp; I am a writer and video artist who makes moving texts, essays, and fragments. I am interested in working with the physicality of language and the tension between speech and its documentation. My writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Coast, sfmoma’s Open Space, Apogee, Vol 1 Brooklyn, and Unbag. Criticism in Artforum, KQED arts, Art Papers, BOMB, Electronic Book Review, and Afterimage, and elsewhere. Currently, in collaboration with Gabriel Garza, I run a curatorial project in San Francisco called In Concert. A book of poetry, The Almond is forthcoming from 1080 press and I Love Repair, my MFA thesis at Brown University, won the 2019 Francis-Mason Harris ‘26 Prize for a book length manuscript. At the moment I work part-time at Small Press Traffic, a Bay Area publishing project and produce a semi-annual newsprint that celebrates remediation.Email me at theadora.walsh@gmail.com to get in touch! I am open to collaborating on copywriting, manuscript consultations, and technical editing. <img width="1786" height="1362" width_o="1786" height_o="1362" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f6e2c256da65b3d7086d3391ff11fbdc0a6491f38fc8e1dda5d00639d98d7df3/Screen-Shot-2023-07-09-at-11.40.23-AM.png" data-mid="184572355" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f6e2c256da65b3d7086d3391ff11fbdc0a6491f38fc8e1dda5d00639d98d7df3/Screen-Shot-2023-07-09-at-11.40.23-AM.png" /> https://theadorawalsh.com/WRITING Fri, 03 May 2019 16:10:57 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/WRITING “An astonishing and accomplished manuscript that combines memoir and fiction -- both written in a poetic/associative mode -- as well as a number of interspersed registers: humor, research, dialogue, history, meditation. The subject is a complex excavation based on a grandmother's diary, but the themes extend far into global affairs, especially in Poland, and the aftermath of WW2 -- its silences, diasporas, and the experience of many different people who had their lives invaded, overturned, ended. The manuscript is both entertaining and very poignant, and a fluid and unique work. ” 2019 Winner of the Frances Mason Harris Manuscript Prize <img width="1200" height="1200" width_o="1200" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d06f7f337d587a4d93b3a075d363487f39545026f8f10e7bcda4768ca7f68e88/amelia-s-picture.png" data-mid="42140293" border="0" data-scale="94" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d06f7f337d587a4d93b3a075d363487f39545026f8f10e7bcda4768ca7f68e88/amelia-s-picture.png" /> I Love Repair is a completed manuscript searching for a publisher. https://theadorawalsh.com/Art-Criticism Wed, 02 Mar 2022 19:19:33 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Art-Criticism mellifluously trading concerns about commodification and market forces on a marble bench, in the shadow of a Greco-Roman statue “FOX and His Friends” for e-flux To be constantly disarmed is one way to inure great sensitivity Madeline Gins: Infinite Systems for The Brooklyn Rail combined nursery, kitchen, bedroom, kennel and junk store The Other Leonora Carrington for Artreview This almost reads like an obituary. Forgive that. A Fond Farewell to Ratio 3 for KQED Arts Animals in repose are disturbed by passages of mottled hues that refuse to settle into familiar, nameable shades. Daisy May Sheff’s Hid it Well in the Walnut Shell for Artforum at once innocuous and chilling, the viewer learns that an image can be split from its cultural position. A symbol’s authenticity can be interrupted, shaken loose by new association. Christy Chan: Who’s Coming to Save You, an Exhibition Text for Chan’s solo show at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art the distorted film stock undulates through colors and levels of opacity, sometimes so damaged by time that the picture is nothing more than varying densities of light Talking Back: Zineb Sedira’s Voice-Over for Art Papers Breast milk in a sardine can, breast milk colored by a saturated tea bag, breast milk next to a crumpled paper napkinAll the Strings that Bind: Patty Chang at Friends Indeed and Cushion Works, for Variable West Solar Cry, is heard by feeling, like a hand gently resting on someone’s throat that understands meaning not by language but by way of a trembling in the neck. Lydia Ourahmane’s صرخة شمسية Solar Cry, for Art Papers Finger paintings swirl in an aura of anti-staleness. The hand movements of toddlers, fossilized in pigment, graph their own vocabularyIn Rhoda Kellogg’s World Every Child is an Artist, for KQED arts Not unlike the aesthetic and linguistic immediacy of a graphic T-shirt gone rogueGene Berry’s New Mythic Visualizations at Cushionworks, for Artforum With tenderness and a phenomenologist’s sensitivity, Cogan portrays gently sloped streets and frequented neighborhood stores Kim Cogan’s Evergreen at Hashimoto Contemporary, for Artforum While both artists' work suggests intensive studies of the natural, there is also a brutality to the way each prunes away unwanted wildnessTadaaki Kuwayama and Rakuko Naito at Adrian Rosenfeld, for Artforum “Cooler-than-you” girl talk and a recollection shaped by the kinds of excisions trauma imposes.Lydia Ourahmane’s low relief, for Artforum https://theadorawalsh.com/Prose Mon, 13 May 2019 17:53:25 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Prose “I’m accumulating a pile of wheat facts,” I tell a friend / They say, “That would be a good art.” / “What?” / “A pile of wheat.” it's just a list of feelings about wheat that revolve around three locations 1. a grain factory in West Oakland 2. my great uncle's house in Central Germany 3. the New York stock exchange, for Sublunary Press Experiencing sexual desire for the first or second time in a dysfunctional post office.TOUCH GUIDE TO A WAR STORY, VIDA The boys invited me to weed the squash field. We pretended it was harder than it really was. Romanticized the mixing of our labor with the land. &nbsp; Deep Springs College, Gulf Coast Summer/Fall 2019 (available in print only) The idea of fire being used by prehistoric men fills me with hate. It’s not the men, or their stage in the evolutionary process, it’s fire being contained to a pit, enclosed in a perimeter of hairy hands. Early Men Make Fire, Vol 1 Brooklyn Like death, but not quite. I want something animalistic and attuned. Jellyfish Mind, Cosmonaut Avenue sometimes we die of consumption On May Day I Remember a Quote by Karl Marx, “the analogy lies not in language but in the foreign quality or strangeness (Fremdheit) of language.”,&nbsp;Apogee https://theadorawalsh.com/Essays Mon, 13 May 2019 17:52:20 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Essays I’ve never felt especially good while living here, even before the second tech boom came and took away all the affordable spaces. It’s been okay, there are good friends, and all sorts of existential dread colors the days. The view’s still beautiful. Lost and Found, for Small Press Traffic The concrete poem, they suggest, “is an object in and by itself […] a material word.” The idea of “a material word,” an object capable of speaking, may have been theoretical for these architects — but it fit well with contemporaneous definitions of the subjugated woman’s body. Endless Constellations: On “Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–1979”, for Los Angeles Review of Books As social distancing requires unprecedented reliance on the internet, and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests bring people’s attention to the importance of digital security, we must remember that technology is never neutral Artist-Made Tools Resist Algorithmic Racism and Empower Communities, for KQED Arts Ágota Kristóf’s The Notebook is a pleading text. It’s a series of physical gestures. It stutters out a humanity while competing narratives shoot holes in shared experience. READING THE NOTEBOOK, for Triangle House Review Art is about encounter. A digital platform that insists on that, even during extreme physical isolation, is the most hopeful thing for the art world that I can think of. The Wattis Institute’s New Digital Library is an Antidote to Online Exhibitions, for KQED Arts The Luggage Store became a community space... It didn’t offer much money or institutional recognition, but it gave young people, just starting out, a first real moment of recognition As San Francisco Art Institute Faces Likely Closure, This Gallery Is a Time Capsule, for Hyperallergic Demonstrating how a geographic underpinning defines the way people create and occupy spaceA BAMPFA Show Empowers Student Curators to Share Their View of California, for KQED arts Through a 3D scan of self-taught artist Loy Bowlin’s bejeweled home, between doilies and around the word “foramen.” Text as Texture: Judd Morrissey and Abraham Avnisan Interviewed by Theadora Walsh, for BOMB Magazine Like the most erudite and well-researched Wikipedia page to have ever been committed to permanent form Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry’s Ontological Implications, Electronic Book Review&nbsp; Market-tested blue pig-tails wrap around her holographic thighs “The Mathematical Movement of Girl Clusters”: How Fandom Manifests Physical Intimacy in the Digital Age, Presented at the Electronic Literature Organization’s 2018 conference (available upon request) Before the C-Section is performed, some of these online games let the player give the pregnant disney princess a face mask or make-over The Pregnant Avatar: Seeing Oneself in C-Sections, Surrogates and Sonograms, After Image Press, Vol 44 https://theadorawalsh.com/VIDEO-WRITING Sat, 04 May 2019 02:49:01 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/VIDEO-WRITING <img width="943" height="1200" width_o="943" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5e46bc964f24e3ebc611fefaee0c7b1c896e4634a726aaa0a905260461fd8c0a/EEEE.gif" data-mid="42143004" border="0" data-scale="88" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/943/i/5e46bc964f24e3ebc611fefaee0c7b1c896e4634a726aaa0a905260461fd8c0a/EEEE.gif" /> https://theadorawalsh.com/AAAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD Mon, 13 May 2019 16:24:21 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/AAAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD <img width="900" height="1148" width_o="900" height_o="1148" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba40e20bca9db42899383b41d5f2c858e27b5b08fd203840e049cbe679e47ce5/compressed-D.gif" data-mid="66678378" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/ba40e20bca9db42899383b41d5f2c858e27b5b08fd203840e049cbe679e47ce5/compressed-D.gif" /> AAAA, BBBB, CCCC, and the rest are 26 GIF-poems which cycle, word by word, from one poem to an entirely different composition. The animated quality of the poems engages the word as an increment of language. Thinking of the concrete elements of a sentence (letters) as individual pictures, the piece further explores the unitary system of writing by taking that alphabet as an organizing principle. Each poem is experienced temporally, as a constantly shifting constellation of letters. Meaning becomes less important, and less legible, as the ever-shifting language makes reading for content difficult. So, language as form and as visual material collaborates with poetic devises, creating a new animated lyric. https://theadorawalsh.com/Subtitle-Drift Mon, 13 May 2019 16:33:12 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Subtitle-Drift <img width="2520" height="1378" width_o="2520" height_o="1378" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d95fbda9442b4780df554ba300a2a3533f0518e8b90e6042a4b83247fc6c8a3a/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.40.33-PM.png" data-mid="42345952" border="0" data-scale="91" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d95fbda9442b4780df554ba300a2a3533f0518e8b90e6042a4b83247fc6c8a3a/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.40.33-PM.png" /> The Subtitle Drift series are short pieces of creative fiction that subtitle recordings of walks. They were inspired by the intermedial status of text in subtitled foreign language films. You are supposed to read such text without integrating it into the visual plain of the film or the sound of the characters speaking. My pieces resond to this by directly subtitiling the non-language sound in recordings and using language to build an optic plane, rather than including documentary footage of the walks. <img width="1788" height="1374" width_o="1788" height_o="1374" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b28ec2dc50cb1b3646a9e138eee6777688f892f69866f8caf9f34033e11b29e/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.41.08-PM.png" data-mid="42345950" border="0" data-scale="79" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6b28ec2dc50cb1b3646a9e138eee6777688f892f69866f8caf9f34033e11b29e/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.41.08-PM.png" /> This work is published online by&nbsp; Unbag &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &lt;3 Inpatient Press &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;3 and Oral Pub &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;3 <img width="1634" height="1234" width_o="1634" height_o="1234" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/efa0d1828ef6d536a20ee024c2d425d5b246018a29616547f3bcaad84f0c3fac/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.52.30-PM.png" data-mid="42346388" border="0" data-scale="81" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/efa0d1828ef6d536a20ee024c2d425d5b246018a29616547f3bcaad84f0c3fac/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-4.52.30-PM.png" /> This work has been shown at&nbsp; Granoff Center for Contemporary Art, Providence RI David Bell Gallery, Juried Student Art Show, Providence RI Bandini, Mexico City Baby Castles, NYC https://theadorawalsh.com/Automatic-Essay-Film Wed, 15 May 2019 16:45:11 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Automatic-Essay-Film LIVE WORD PROCESSING 2019 <img width="662" height="870" width_o="662" height_o="870" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3b71a98fb6cef3e114f5ff384de7ee6131b8c9ed1b3edea6628c1d927728c38f/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.48-PM.png" data-mid="42360505" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/662/i/3b71a98fb6cef3e114f5ff384de7ee6131b8c9ed1b3edea6628c1d927728c38f/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.48-PM.png" /> <img width="810" height="986" width_o="810" height_o="986" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/358b94c2b80ea3eb4b03581f4d0ba7447b9f77184830118f7ddaeb7df5bc5fbc/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.34-PM.png" data-mid="42360504" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/810/i/358b94c2b80ea3eb4b03581f4d0ba7447b9f77184830118f7ddaeb7df5bc5fbc/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.34-PM.png" /> <img width="742" height="982" width_o="742" height_o="982" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/19d955ff096b112a0aa0d9be31eef4b25bd1e95e4ac412c8b3242f261448d830/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.42-PM.png" data-mid="42360506" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/742/i/19d955ff096b112a0aa0d9be31eef4b25bd1e95e4ac412c8b3242f261448d830/Screen-Shot-2019-05-15-at-8.55.42-PM.png" /> Live Word Processing is a performance technique in which pieces of animated text and short videos are dragged into a word document in which the performer is actively writing out a prepared text before an audience. The microphone is on the keyboard, providing a rhythmic sound track, and the text is occasionally punctuated by gestures and facial expressions inspired by the physical vernacular of miming. Multiple compositions converge, as one poem takes up a spatial relationship to another. Two forms of writing are simultaneously conveyed—one spontaneous and improvised, the other premeditated and looped. The unstable basis underscores the subjective nature of language. Address as an implicit component of composition. The language shifts its address, operating outside the restrictions of the page to become something like a textual film. John Cayley, a theorist of experimental digital literature, characterizes the writing process as between image and language, a text caught in the act of appearing. Live Word Processing has been performed in New York as part of Baby Castle’s Wordhack installed, at Brown University’s Granoff Center and at the Electronic Literature Organization’s 2019 exhibit at the Glucksman gallery in Cork, Ireland. https://theadorawalsh.com/Aberration-of-the-Translator Mon, 13 May 2019 16:37:02 +0000 Theadora Walsh https://theadorawalsh.com/Aberration-of-the-Translator <img width="1000" height="882" width_o="1000" height_o="882" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/386b542f885588c547c2b95fc041f385d825fa612624654818df584bb4d0aecc/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.02.31-PM_1000.png" data-mid="42326918" border="0" data-scale="86" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/386b542f885588c547c2b95fc041f385d825fa612624654818df584bb4d0aecc/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.02.31-PM_1000.png" />Hypertext structure for immserive stereo 3D, four-wall, audiovisual environment The Aberration of the Translator considers virtual reality as a social space, one with its own rules of presentation and&nbsp;communication. Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild&nbsp;Tongue” is sampled and celebrated to create a microcosm &nbsp;of colliding languages that break and collide. In the CAVE&nbsp;virtual reality space, Two texts overlap, audio readings&nbsp;interrupt each other. As a personal translation of the found&nbsp;text, original audio and content was written in response&nbsp;to Anzaldua’s essay. These short responses serve as inspiration&nbsp;for the sonic and visual interventions to the physical&nbsp;structure of Anzaldua’s essay fragments. Meaning is shattered as languages are transported across culture and&nbsp;territory in an audiovisual environment. <img width="1000" height="875" width_o="1000" height_o="875" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5af5a454be7d1069ee1d7e1040d7905c47979f7cabe66547a5d958a2d245c4dd/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.03.32-PM_1000.png" data-mid="42327029" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5af5a454be7d1069ee1d7e1040d7905c47979f7cabe66547a5d958a2d245c4dd/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.03.32-PM_1000.png" /> <img width="1000" height="869" width_o="1000" height_o="869" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cbb837f891758c1775314855d5f8214c2773818a278952b154c300e84e5fcb84/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.03.43-PM_1000.png" data-mid="42327061" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cbb837f891758c1775314855d5f8214c2773818a278952b154c300e84e5fcb84/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.03.43-PM_1000.png" /> <img width="1000" height="878" width_o="1000" height_o="878" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b14a90f8a5d0a820f0dcdc5d3add810805dcbeacbcd78a5f8db2dccf648335f3/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.04.09-PM_1000.png" data-mid="42327074" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b14a90f8a5d0a820f0dcdc5d3add810805dcbeacbcd78a5f8db2dccf648335f3/Screen-Shot-2017-12-24-at-9.04.09-PM_1000.png" /> Every language is a foreign language, learned through&nbsp;memorized rules and societal agreements. In Walter Benjamin’s&nbsp;“The Task of the Translator,” fastening shards of a&nbsp;shattered vessel is compared to the act of translation; writing&nbsp;must be fragmented and then reassembled to traverse&nbsp;barriers of language. The Aberration of The Translator&nbsp;acknowledges this world that utilizes linguistic tools to order,&nbsp;colonize, and develop architectural space, specifically&nbsp;interrogating the act of codeswitching and the multilingual&nbsp;experience. The Aberration of the Translator questions&nbsp;where these tamed sets of language converge and break&nbsp;apart. Simultaneously, the environment asks: how can&nbsp;three-dimensional space articulate and challenge legibility?&nbsp;The piece makes visual a collage of the incomprehensible&nbsp;and the legible in order to render a place of bewilderment.What results is a new apparatus for reading across languages. Made in Collaboration with Lucas Baisch and Qianxun Chen