Things we shouldn't talk about.

There is at least one person besides myself who will know what this picture is of. When we lived at 3525 SE Belmont, Kaitlin Gaffney and I were horrified to find that a rag that had been thrown down the laundry chute into the basement was growing long 3-4 inch long tendrils towards the small jaundiced window above the dryer. But then we let it grow bigger and took this picture to capture the freakish mold that Portland winters help cultivate. In my current San Francisco apartment, however, there have been recent mold sightings to give this furry little pile a run for its money. Our bathroom ceiling has been home to a constellation of malignant mold, stymied only by Erin and Susan's honorable attempts to bleach it out of existence. I am half-heartedly capturing these wild oscillations of mold/no-mold/mold with my camera.

I'm really interested in these moments where the domestic meets the organic-- stains, rips, residue of all sorts. In Queer Theory yesterday we talked briefly about how when we don't talk about things, we at some point become successful in erasing their memory. This is interesting to think about, especially in the urban landscape where a huge disparity exists between the people, families, buildings and neighborhoods that get attention and those that do not. I think that the intentional investigation of any sort of silence, divorced from any association with sexuality, is an inherently queer conversation. James confirmed this last week in our meeting when he looked at the towel I refabricated (see posting from last week) and said it was the queerest thing I had ever made. I thought about it over the weekend and decided that what he was saying was essentially this: queer art begins a conversation about how usefulness dictates value by questioning the scale of how value is measured, of objects, ideas, histories and people.