If Only a Wave

UNCOUNTED (Performance 4)

Thursday, February 19, 7pm

Readings and performances prompted by excerpts from Roysdon’s essay UNCOUNTED.

Participants to be announced.

From January 11 – February 21, 2015, PARTICIPANT INC is very pleased to present Emily Roysdon, If Only a Wave. The first solo exhibition of Roysdon’s work in New York since 2011, it will feature new sculpture, photograms, screen prints, neon works, and performance.

3. Uncounted experience, unseen in time. If only a wave in proximity to other waves. If only a wave that made a texture of a surface of a top of the line. If only a wave expressing the contour of a bottom, its bottom, the under. If only a wave a rhythm. All potential to break. Crash. hit. rock. wander. If only a night wave, peaking. If only a wave never counted. Measured if a threat.

For the exhibition, Roysdon has created a new symbol for other kinds of time: a stylized motif of an upside down triangle, a row of waves lining its widest width. Broken down, built up, and reiterated throughout If Only a Wave, it forms an abstract lexicon for ways to think through – elliptically – relationships between time and queer activism, space and the body, writing and performance. Both a surface and a shape, Roysdon’s wave is manifest as clocks, photograms, and sculpture. These works are joined by a series of photogram “calendars” where a butt plug, used like a sundial in the darkroom, makes covert appearance as a light bulb. A neon constellation lights up the room with a diagram for movement. If Only a Wave also presents Roysdon’s new text UNCOUNTED. Proposed as both poetics and practice, the writing serves as a loose framework for the exhibition as a whole, asking questions about the unseen in time – alive time, authority, trespass – and develops Roysdon’s performative philosophy “to discompose.” Throughout the exhibition, UNCOUNTED is used as a script for live performance, both planned – on February 19 – and incidental; unannounced actions will happen while PARTICIPANT is open.