Tuesday March 16th

Hi Rosemary!

Thank you!! I too have been totally revelling in all of this season's events.

And thank you for sending this video! I love the series of questions at the end, I think it's a really thoughtful reflection on imagination, consent, and taboo. I'm pretty sure we can just embed it on our website directly from your vimeo, so we should be all set for posting!

I was wondering if you would be down to think with me about the possibility of a content note? I ask because, when I sent out that post-meeting survey, one person expressed to us that it would have been meaningful to know in advance that some discussion would include a description of sex with an animal. So I was thinking we could put something relatively simple for this like “Content note: this video piece includes description of a sexual encounter with an animal.”

What do you think? I know that your video does not at all ellide the question of consent, but instead conveys a lot of critical reflection and care around these questions. But I also want to honor the feedback we received from that survey as we continue to work towards safer spaces in our events, classrooms, and publishing platforms.

Thank you so much for thinking about this with me, and for the opportunity to spend time with your work!

Yours,
Laura

Hi Laura,

I appreciate this dialogue with you.

I'm wondering if the content flag can go at the top of the page. Something about how this work is in dialogue with smut so you can expect to encounter vulgar or uncomfortable depictions of sexuality.

That is the definition of smut, right?

I am interested in this dialogue and who is being protected as we seek to make safer spaces for everyone. For example, many of us hold identities and cultural values that could cause harm and require content flags without us even knowing it. If I were going to be honest about my content flag, then I would need to name that my work is made by a white colonizer, so inherently embodies a competitive violent methodology and may contain unacknowledged forms of dominance and suppression. The work also contains potential triggers around gender and is ableist - despite of course all of my attempts at mitigating this. I'm wondering if the other pieces will also go through a process like this - naming triggers. For example: Content flag, contains penises, contains white anger, heterosexual sex, feces, cisgendered sex, childhood sexuality, eggplant imojis, sex between mothers, etc.

For example, for me a major trigger is depictions of women as victims. I wonder if that were a content flag, if artists would even know how to recognize it and flag it. Something like sex with animals is easy to recognize becaue the state and church forbid it. Depicting women as victims is permissible culturally and institutionally so we don't flag it, but for me it is triggering. This leads me to question the process of flagging certain content as potentially harmful and not other content. Or if having content warnings is beginning to feel like a cultural value or norm, how can it be part of every artist's process in the submission process?

Thoughts? I really value this dialogue, our artistic community, and your work

Rosemary

Hi Rosemary!

So sorry for the delay, it's been an extra-busy week at the Project. Sometimes the way our calendar works out, we end up with four big events all in one week, and this week happened to be of that variety.

I am really so grateful for your reflections, which mirror so much of my thinking as well. When I first read the feedback from the survey, and was trying to determine how the Project could responsibly address it in regards to your video, in considering adding a content note, I wondered what that would mean for all of the other pieces in the issue. How I would approach going through them all and disentangling what should be noted, what doesn't need to be noted? I'm not saying there isn't an answer to that question, but that I was struck by the complexity. And so I considered the possibility of adding a content note for the whole issue, but then worried that it would suggest the whole space of smut requires a disclaimer, that poems about sex and sexuality are categorically apart from poems that don't directly address sex, which struck me as out of sync with the spirit of the Dis/Course, where I feel like we were invited to challenge the the normative sequestering of sex from the rest of the social world. And then I wondered if the title was actually already doing enough in declaring the focus of the publication on smut, but by this point I was just in a circle of thinking and I thought I should just reach out to you and have a conversation instead.

The other important piece is that we make decisions collectively at The Poetry Project, so it isn't finally for me to say if and where there should be a content note. And so to that end, I was wondering if you would be open to me sharing your reflections with another person on staff?

Thank you again for all your care and patience! I'm so appreciative of this chance to think and talk through these nuances together, which feels like such a central part of the work of being in artistic (or any!) community.

Yours,
Laura

Thank you for this email and your reflections, Laura. I can really relate to the cycle of thoughts you have laid out.

Please feel free to share my email with other staff.

Best,
Rosemary

Hi Rosemary!

Hope you are doing well today. I can see a cardinal out my window at the moment, so that's very exciting.

Following our correspondence, and conversation with others on staff, I went back through and reread all of the pieces in this issue of Footnotes, thinking about the many ways content can fall outside of what is recognizably harmful within a more normative frame of permission and taboo, remembering your example of women represented as victims. After spending this time with the work, I felt more grateful than ever for this Dis/Course meeting, as I found all the pieces, including your own, to share a deep commitment to a kind of safety and liberation where consent is always central. Considering this, and some of the themes of the meeting around dismantling strict divisions that keep sex and sexuality as purely private, hidden from the rest of life, I hesitate to add a content note to the whole issue, sequestering it in this way from our other publications.

We wondered if instead of including a content note for your piece, you might consider including an author's note? It could be a space to share some of the truly insightful reflections you shared with me, on the harm embodied in the position of the white colonizer, on the relative ease of siloing sex with animals because of standards enforced by church and state. It could also perhaps bring to the front some of the really thoughtful questions that come at the end of the video. Is that something you would be open to? We do want to find a way that honors the feedback we got from the survey, while also honoring all the work and care evident in your piece.

I'm so appreciative of your time and energy in thinking and talking through all this with me. Please do let me know if you have any other questions or thoughts!

Yours,
Laura

Hi Laura,

Please excuse the delay. I've been navigating an injury which had me resting quite a bit last week and numerous deadlines. I have been thinking quite a bit about content notes, as I included one in a piece I showed at Movement Research last week. I received some interesting feedback which was that the content note at the beginning of my piece was only disturbing or potentially “triggering” part of the piece. This reflects my experience with content notes as well. They cause me to feel alarmed and anxious and remind me of the censorship we live in and the rampant violence we accept uncensored as a culture.

That being said, I have added a note to my piece that flags the work.

I'd love to include an author's note following the video essay (or below the video essay) and I propose this dialogue we have been having via email as perfect for that. It shows the real-time processing of our ideas. I would chronologically order our emails if you agree, which I hope you do!

Stay well and be in touch :)

Rosemary