‘No abyss is as familiar as one’s mouth; the unheimlich mouth. An internalized abyss which we presume to control, but which always exceeds such tidy precepts. The mouth is the meeting place of the sacred and the profane; sacred texts are salivated by the mouth’s viscosity; the Word is born in a cavity that tears, chews, licks, spits. The mouth negotiates numerous ways into and out of itself; it is the conduit for air, voice, food, fluids. The collision of these disparate elements constitute the noise of the mouth, purity is rendered impossible in such a contaminated corporeality.’ (67)
‘mouth is not only an articulating engine that cites, that voices language, but also an organ that is present as site.’
There are a lot of passages from this book I found exciting. One of them is Adrian Piper’s Catalysis IV (1971).
‘Mouth agape, but gap cannot be seen because mouth is full, filled to overflowing, stuffed with towel, attempt to dry mouth out, to muffle speech, to
suffocate breath, to starve out. This Piper, at the particular instant of Catalysis
iv, is mute and muted.’
‘She towels dry her liquid
state, or at least keeps it contained. Like the intemperate, even inclement,
Artaud we shall investigate in the next section, Adrian Piper’s “a wave which
hesitates between gas and water.” She is hesitant water. And she is torrential.
We drown dry. Imagine Piper as vapor, as outer layer, as median between.’
This is Christopher Migone’s interpretation and I have found no such claims from Piper herself. She does not seem to dissect this series of works making it a point for them to simply exist between her in the moment of the performance and the public present.
‘her mutism is exteriorized, it is a silent discharge which presents a visual cue for somatized silence’