The First Contact

Kameelah Janan Rasheed premieres The First Contact, a new lecture performance that stages a speculative conversation between Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva, Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, and unfinished essays by the artist.  Each of the texts considers erotic experiences with reading and writing as corporeal and mystical encounters. In the performance, Rasheed will use Python, a programming language, to reorganize, or “braid,” individual sentences from each author into an algorithmically determined poetic composition. Admission is free with registration. 

The performance at REDCAT is followed by the launch of Rasheed’s limited edition artist book RUB, LICK, DRINK, EAT.