Art Metropole

#13286

Orgazing

Artist

Maryse Larivière

Date

2017

Publisher

Untitled Art Society

Format

Literary

ISBN

978-1-7751019-0-1

Size

13 × 18 × 0.5 cm

Length

64 pp

Genre

Creative Writing , Fiction

Description

By the time we talk face to face again in the city of fog and spasm, feminine sovereignty will be on the table, next to my pen and ashtray. I better rush over, just in case the passage that connects us curtains off. The passage looks like a futuristic set for a Beckett play—an observation the dead playwright would almost certainly reject. Failing in the eyes of a Master can only be a good thing, you might say.

In a matter of hours, I awaken, still slightly sedated, trapped in a cinder-block cell surrounded by my work. “I am here to write and fall into his arms,” I say to myself cautiously. Minutes later, I am on the inner phone with you. “I’m gonna lick French all over you and make your freckly skin iridescent.” You purr. “Wamp wamp wamp,” tremble my feelers. There is a knock at the door…

Orgazing is an epistolary novella set on the remote Scottish island of Staffa. A woman, held captive in an institution built atop Fingal’s Cave, addresses her beloved about their failed revolution, her attempt to transform writing into telepathic singing, and her effort to develop this mode of communication while incarcerated. Shifting between prose and poetry, word and birdsong, Orgazing explores the limits of body and voice, articulating an unsettled longing for metamorphosis.

Orgazing, along with an installation, sound, and film work, is part of Larivière’s project Under the Cave of Winds, recently on view at Untitled Contemporary Art Calgary.

Maryse Larivière is an artist, writer and scholar whose work re-imagines how we engage with the textual, visual and social through bodily and emotional encounters. Her practice crosses art, literature and theory, taking the form of text, performance, sculpture, and collage. Her books of poetry include Orgazing (2017), Hummzinger (2016) and Where Wild Flowers Grow (2015). Lariviere was the 2016/17 writer-in-residence at Gallery 44, and has contributed experimental writings to a variety of platforms including C Magazine, Esse Art+Opinions and Organism for Poetic Research. Recent projects include Garden Gossip with Tiziana La Melia (Walter Philips Gallery, 2017), Under the Cave of Winds, (Untitled Contemporary Art, Calgary, 2017) and L’image intérieure (Gallery 44, Toronto, 2016/17).

Softcover, perfect-bound, b/w

First edition of 500

1.