Thirza Cuthland, from Less Lethal Fetishes, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
Fusing self-representation with philosophy and critical theory, autotheory moves between “theory” and “practice.” It is critical and it is creative; it is experiential and experimental; it is scholarly and it is popular. It brings theory to life and life to theory. It plays with personal polemic, positing a speaking self in the act of writing “I,” and then, self-reflectively and self-reflexively, it deconstructs itself. Autotheory’s genealogies spring from the institutions it seeks to critique. It privileges thinking with over thinking against; its politics of citation unveil its relations. From social media technologies to the publishing industry, from live performance to visual art, autotheory’s escalating ubiquity in cultural production serves as a provocation: why autotheory and why now? What motivates the methodological melding of an autobiographical “I” with academic scholarship? What implications does theorizing the self have for the politics of knowledge production?
A digital companion to the special issue of ASAP/Journal, this cluster animates the autotheoretical intersections of art and art writing in time-based media. Transmedial in form and provocative by design, these works appear accompanied by autotheory’s telltale synthesis of critical-creative writing. The cluster includes film and video by Maider Fortune, Annie Macdonell, and Ree Botts; performance for the camera and documentation of live performances by Ceylan Öztürk, Calla Durose-Moya, lo bil, and Mel Keiser; web-based work, including memes, by Simon Evnine and Piper Curtis; other moving-images, including GIFs, by Migueltzinta C. Solis, and sound-based work by Arezu Salamzadeh. Off the page and on the screen, these autotheories invite as much as they imagine, contest as much as they contrive, and exude as much as they include.
— Lauren Fournier and Alex Brostoff
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Rolls Rice
Love Ballads
Rolls Rice is a messy, luxury automobile cheung fun cruising down an open desert road, dripping in a sweet soy sauce.
She is my fever dream project, a product of pining, of being constantly in love. She is the manifestation of every white girl I’ve been torn between being in love with and wanting to be. She holds the hurt and crushes it under the weight of a four-wheel drive, glistening in an eternal sunshine.
She is bound to no singular sexuality, falling in deep and chaotic love with men and women and nb folks alike, but never more than dim sum or the open road. Gender-morphing, mild sexual arousal when short denim shorts push up against her pussy in the perfect way, frolicking in clay, deep satisfaction at a well-fitting, sturdy cowboy boot and a belly full of beer, and an authority complex.
She is a work-in-progress who can be followed on Instagram, @rollsriceontheroad.
Her tracks, consisting of karaoke instrumentals accompanied by original lyrics, can be found on the internet at soundcloud.com/rollsrice.
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Lyrics: Strings of Love
(Stop Dragging My Heart Around)
Baby you were haunting my waking sleep
See your face on every New York street
Bawled my eyes out on the Uptown C
Locked up every drawing you had made for me
Baby I wish I could cut them with a knife
The strings of love that I will carry my whole life
Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me
One more time
I know I wrecked us over and over
But when we worked babe we worked out well
It’ll take a lifetime to recover
From our very own signature hell
I know you wanted me to be your wife
I’ll never fuck around with graphic design
Baby I wish I could cut them with a knife
Those strings of love that I will carry my whole life
Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me
One more time
Do you remember what you used to call me?
I was the canary, and you were the brontosaurus because of your long neck.
I would perch in your mouth in exchange for the best possible view of the world.
And the best view must have been so easy with your white family in your cute house that looked like it leapt off of a David Hockney painting. The strings of love hang out of me and I need a haircut.
I remember those Connecticut beaches
And shopping at your local Whole Foods
Those ain’t the places that my mama would take me
There was no football team at my high school
I know you wanted me to be your wife
I’ll never fuck around with graphic design
Baby I wish I could cut them with a knife
Those strings of love that I will carry my whole life
Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me? Can you hurt me
One more time
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Lyrics: I Wanna Be (In The Studio)
I get no kick from Foucault
Your contrived scrawl doesn’t move me at all
So tell me why should I read Rousseau?
I wanna be in the studio
Some like to read Jacques Lacan
I’m sure that if I gazed at one more page,
it would bore me with nowhere to go
I wanna be in the studio
I shake my head every time you assign to me more theory
By more white men
I think I’ll TRY TO LEAVE
if you want me to read Deleuze and Guattari
Some like to read Simone de Beauvoir
Joining some plain school with a fancy name
is a place I never thought I would go
Oh I wanna be in the studio
Some like to read Adorno
Why not prescribe some fun poem or rhyme
It would make me feel less low
Oh I wanna be
Oh let me be
Oh I wanna be in the studio, oh
I wanna be
Oh let me be
Oh I wanna be in the studio
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Lyrics: In My Dreams (Celos/Jealous)
Jealous of you even though I know I’m better looking, Yeah I’m jealous, jealous
Jealous of the way you won’t embrace me when in public, Yeah I’m jealous, jealous
Why don’t you video call me, You said we’d go somewhere sunny
I see you liking their pic, Yeah I feel jealous I feel jealous
You come with me to a show at the Whitney
But when I have to move you won’t come see me
I understand wanting to stay in New York City, But we
were living the dream, you know what I mean, love like a dream like a dream like a dream like my dreams like my dreams like my
Jealous of the way you keep me locked up like a secret, Yeah I’m jealous, jealous
Jealous cause I know that if I find me something better I won’t keep it, keep it
Sometimes you video call me, Honestly you look so pretty
“What is it with me and graphic designers”, Yeah I feel jealous, I feel jealous
You kiss me in front of a Brancusi
But when I have to move you won’t come see me
I understand wanting to stay in New York City, But we
could love like a dream, love like a dream, love like my dreams in my dreams in my dreams in my dreams in my
Jealous of the briefness of the time we spend together, Yea I’m jealous, jealous
Jealous of the times you said we’d be in love forever, Yeah I’m jealous, jealous
Sometimes you video call me, Honestly you look so pretty
“I took a whole typesetting class for you”, Yeah I feel jealous I feel jealous
“Hoy quiero bailar solo contigo
Hoy quiero soñar que tú eres mío
Hoy te daré todo mi amor en un abrazo
Y tú prometerás que nunca más
Me harás sentir, nunca más, nunca más, nunca más, nunca”
— Daniela Romo
It’s like anyone can take a photo of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos beside an orchid and say they have a photography from the School of Visual Arts now, huh. Maurizio Cattelan, Petra Collins, so much irony it hurts, it’s all the damn same. I think of all the insignificant people and things we bickered about and how strange it is to me now that we wasted time on small blemishes in the face of the most beautiful love the world has ever seen.
Suspended in bliss,
ALL CLOCKS BREAK WHEN I LOOK INTO YOUR EYES
I’m sorry for what I said at the beginning about being better-looking. The truth is sometimes I hallucinate you out of the corner of my eye and my heart stops so hard I could crash my car. I feel angry at the world all the time because my body took me away from you. We were so young and I was so scared that I would die, or worse. But I say your name in a mantra every night before I go to bed.
I can’t cross the border but my heart’s in Arizona baby. What I wouldn’t give to be eating bandeja paisa with you right now, even if that means being in New Jersey.
How about a house in the Appalachians? Three kids, two cats, one creative studio.
I can see that you’re online. It’s ok for you to read my messages and then take your time.
Just drop me a line?
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This is one of twelve contributions from the ASAP/J cluster of Transmedial Autotheory. Read the other pieces here.
Read the Autotheory special issue (6.2) of the print journal ASAP/Journal here.
Arezu Salamzadeh
