Poem-performances engage gleaning as sculpture and etymology as decomposition. Five artists of undoing share strategies of breakage and decay, exploring how rust and plastic function as both construction materials and metaphors for change over time. Accompanied by a streaming installation.

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Basie Allen + Cassandra Mayela / slow braised in yuck / with freaks

stone -- tire -- shells -- sponge -- nails -- brick -- garments -- painting as poem -- knots + untying

Rolando Politi / Trash is a weed… by nature I have always been a worshipper.

winter flowers -- packaging inferno -- throwaway society -- trash worship -- ceremony -- heaps

Kenya (Robinson) / AST ROT URF ING

privilege as plastic material -- enigma + identity -- nurture that muscle -- etymological tarot -- “woowoo” words

Sparrow / Happiness is like a weed we see but cannot identify

headless poems -- garbage pasted onto garbage -- earth as a muffin -- tentative brightening

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ROT TALKS is an experimental lecture series and decomposition class for the end times on the poetics of rot and the arts of breaking down. Guided by compost as metaphor and method, poet-artist-researchers of rot offer strategies to delight in ferment, heal a hurting earth, and exhibit a playful devotion to detritus and discard, at the level of land and of language.

Alexandra Tatarsky was just interview by Rachel James on The Politics of Rotbombmagazine.org/articles/dirt-clod-logic-and-the-politics-of-rot-alex-tatarsky-interviewed for BOMB Magazine

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Public Health Precautions

This is tentatively planned as a live outdoor event at St. Mark's Church. We are following (and exceeding) recommendations laid out by NY State for outdoor gatherings. These include: limiting the number of attendees to under 50; setting up seating with fixed and socially distant spacing; requiring and providing face masks, as well hand sanitizer stations. We will have 3 microphones on hand, and will be rotating / sanitizing these between readings. Attendees are required to register in advance, and contact information is collected at the point of registration in the event that we need to support any public health efforts around contact tracing. We are grateful to attendees for helping us maintain safety within our present public health context, and look forward to holding meaningful shared listening space together.