Invasions

Jun’22 – Sep’24
Performance, Book, Exhibition

Kickstarter

Book

San Francisco, Los Angeles, CDMX, Santa Barbara, Ojai

Invasions is a collection comprising poems I wrote in response to scammer and robot texts during the pandemic. The book evolved into a performance series that spanned the East Coast and blended theater and computational poetry. I also trained a foundational model on both the texts and my poetic replies which lead to Whomp, an AI simulacrum.

Book
Each Invasions poem is an exit strategy in a time of entrapment. In a pandemical time where language became the axis of our collective overwhelm and the conduit for the colonization of our psyches, poetry – which voids language of its utilitarian obsession with meaning – was a re/spelling of liberation. Notifications from our budgeting app informing us the category “eating out” is in the red, and tabloid headlines trumpeting celebrity missteps, are forms of language harnessed as loose weapons to derail attention. As a corollary, spaces that eschew the languaging of reality – poetry but also nature and visual art – become playgrounds for improvisation precisely because they lack a distraction agenda.

There was a time when my inboxes were a source of joy and anticipation. My first emails felt like Christmas; they meant I wasn’t alone. When the majority of the informational deluge in our most intimate digital spaces becomes either transactional or predatory, the inner child who once marveled at the magic of technology feels betrayed. Thus, to reply to these intrusions with poetry is to reclaim, rekindle and, in turn, seize hold of the wonder in our lives. We are not the spectators of a magic show, we are the makers, the pioneers of enchantment, and agents in a conversation designed to rob us of agency. Even if the recipient ignores the verses, the message finds its resolution in expression.

Performance

The word Invasions is a combination of the latin words "in" and "vadere" ie. "walk in". Identitary, Collective or Intimate, Invasions are events that muscle into our lives. They force a conversation we often hadn't asked for. This performance was an attempt to reverse-invade the things that try to subdue us. I performed Invasions in San Francisco, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ojai and CDMX in Mexico.

Silo Gallery, Santa Barbara

Silo Gallery, Santa Barbara

Counterpulse, San Francisco

The Marsh, San Francisco

Los Feliz, Los Angeles

Greater Goods, Light & Space, Ojai

Exhibition
Invasions shaped into a solo visual exhibition and art show at Silo Gallery in Santa Barbara. Dozens of scam texts and poetic replies were printed in their original colors and pinned to gallery walls. These scam texts often assume familiarity eg. « Where have you been? », « did you go without looking? », « did aliens take you? lol ». They pry on some of the collective’s basest fantasies: dreams of luxury (parties, yachts, bowling and golf gatherings) and the hypersexualization of Asian women. They paint a world where wealth, desire and friendship are readily granted. Friends have suggested I get so many of these texts because I often reply to them. I’ve fantasized about being on a scammer black list – a dangerous poet! The reality, however, is most likely that my number has been leaked more often than others in recent data breaches, and that my replies are filed as lunacy, ignored because the senders are unlikely to succeed in manipulating so unhinged a victim.

However, what matters is not whether the scammers take my replies seriously. It's that I take their messages seriously, that these poems regard them as important, resist their dismissal, and acknowledge them as part of the fabric of reality rather than perceive them as nuisances. What if this were incredibly serious? Worthy of attention, precisely when it is not? What potentiality lies in that inversion? What if these grammatically botched phishing attempts were as urgent as a health emergency or a mortgage payment? What if the vexing, the bothersome, the aggravating were precious, worthy of marvel and pause. Because fear feeds on anonymity, I give my senders names (Fatima, Leila, Sullivan, Memphis). I name them to slow the conversation and as a form of resistance to the growing narrative we are being assailed by a diffuse swarm of invisible enemies. I craft my lines with care, break the poem lines against the soft edges of text bubbles. I send vulnerable, raw missives drawn from my realities. I bare myself, perhaps because I know it won’t matter or because dismissal grants me an empowering form of anonymity.

Halim Madi حليم ماضي