Let’s Face it, I’m Held: On Water
Let’s Face it I’m Held: On Water
dispersed holdings (Sal Randolph and David Richardson)
Jeff Dolven
Emma Wipperman
May 7, 4-6PM
EFA Project Space
323 W 39th St,New York, NY
on the boat, let's face it i'm held. in its waves, its vagueness, in its water. i see only water. water doesn't answer. no land ahead. just water. /eileen myles, the importance of being iceland
...and under them the earth
sank with its grosser portions; and the water,
lowest of all, held up, held in, the land. /ovid, metamorphoses, book one, lines 30-2
the water is opaque. it is comforting to imagine that you are in it. you won't be visible any longer… relief from the unending demands of simple sight. /roni horn, saying water
water receives you, affirms you, shows you who you are, and all the neat, imperceptible qualities that are water tease you with their ambiguity, tease you and extend you out into the world. /roni horn, saying water
May 7, dispersed holdings will perform meditations on water with words and sound, joined by poets Jeff Dolven and Emma Wipperman, in conjunction with Sal Randolph’s installation, Slowing Time.
Bios
dispersed holdings is an artist-run platform for publishing and experimental listening practices founded in 2015 by Sal Randolph and David Richardson. For two years (2016–18), dispersed was sited in the former Bowery apartment of the artist Eva Hesse. Since leaving that space, dispersed holdings has published three books: Speed of Resin (2019), a meditation on impermanence and an homage to Hesse; Reading Room (2020), a document of the "Ambient Reading Spectacular" residency series and an exploration of the practice of reading; and Reading Now (2021), a follow-up to Reading Room that considers reading practices amid lockdown. On occasion, dispersed holdings is also a band.
Jeff Dolven teaches poetry and poetics at Princeton University, where he was founding director of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities. A collection of his poems, A New English Grammar, is forthcoming from dispersed holdings.
David Richardson writes fiction and essays. Since 2015, he has co-directed the publishing project dispersed holdings, with whom he edited Reading Room (2020) and Speed of Resin (co-published with Cooperative Editions, 2019), and co-edited Reading Now (2021). He holds an MFA in fiction from UMass Poets & Writers, and he teaches in the Bard Language and Thinking Program, the Bard Prison Initiative, and the UMass Writing Program.
Sal Randolph is an artist working between language and action. Her current work addresses the intersection of attention, time, feeling, capital, and crisis through performance, experimental publishing, and the creation of social spaces. She is co-founder of dispersed holdings, originally a listening and publication space in New York sited in the former apartment of sculptor Eva Hesse, continuing now as a publishing project and, from time to time, a band. She is a member of the research consortium ESTAR(SER) and is currently a teaching fellow at Bennington College. She is also a Zen practitioner and senior student of Roshi Enkyo O’Hara at the Village Zendo.
Emma Wippermann is a poet based in New York. Her closet drama Joan of Arkansas is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse later this year. She has an MFA from Brown University and has published work in jubilat, Omniverse, Second Factory, No, Dear, Oversound, Temporary Art Review, and elsewhere.