Unto Dust

Clovis Bataille, Dora Budor, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, François Durel, Cyprien Gaillard, Jasmine Gregory, Matthias Groebel, Sarah Ksieska, Klara Lidén, Patricio Lima Quintana, Jacopo Mazzetti, Alexandra Metcalf, Donald Moffett, David Moser, Jill Mulleady, Juan Antonio Olivares, Henrik Olesen, Berenice Olmedo, Josephine Pryde, Erin Calla Watson, Angharad Williams, Jordan Wolfson

"Une ville finit par être une personne."

—Victor Hugo

Trudging alone through the heated city, backwards over concrete, dispelled, disheveled, dissolved, and disarray. Sirens surround me. In a panic.

Spit out and pitted, like an olive I was stirring, in a flash, transplanted. A cosmic explosion unroots my toes from this cement tundra.

A jump too high propels me to the sun, staying too low sucks me down. Fear pulls me deeper.

It's perpetual. Peeling open the wound as liquid chrome pours out of the crevasse. Tripping over heaps of ash, shattered beneath the pavement.

Asphalt acts as ideal landing. Imploding cells provide a pad for entry. Inner organs harden, soften. Mucous membranes melt into metal. Plastic protects me.

Subterranean layers steal my frenzied pulse. Catacombs, plagued by rats, circumference an eternal shell. Stillness keeps them haunted.

Twitching eyelids stagger sight, blurring earthly matter. Craniums combust, exposing cracks in the network. Circuits break and systems shatter. Counting seconds left on terra.

The underground makes a final lap around the metropole.

Sanguine, I remain. Cellular connection terminated.

Unto Dust was realized during the ongoing protests against government reforms in France, and is guided by similar forces of exhaustion and resilience.