-
Info
⚠️ Content Warning: The following article concerns topics related to suicide.
Project Proposal 2049-154: "Echoes"
Name: Lloyd Willis
Title: Echoes
Material Requirements:
- A small performance space, suited accordingly to the needs of the piece (already in my posession)
- A video camera capable of recording and broadcasting the performance (already in my posession)
- 4 meters of string (already in my posession)
- 8 carefully selected photographs, each from a different decade of my life (already in my posession)
- 8 sets of clips (already in my posession)
- A gas lighter (already in my posession)
- A syringe filled with the Washington Virion
Abstract: Echoes will be my final performance as an artist, and will consist of two parts.
In preparation, I will re-furnish my living room, clearing out everything save for the armchair in which my brother used to sit, placed in the far end of the room. I will then tie a continuous line of string, tying it to the hooks on the walls upon which paintings previously hang, until the whole area is covered by a single line. Upon the line, I will clip eight photographs, putting those depicting my earliest memories nearest to the room's doors, having them slowly lead towards the latest decade of my life as the string moves closer to the chair. I will place the video camera directly facing the chair, ensuring that it has a good view of the room.
The first part of the performance will begin when I enter the living room, turning the camera on. I will then walk towards the first photograph, the one located nearest the entry. I will proceed to put the photo to a steady flame with the gas lighter, letting it burn as I look at it silently. I will slowly make my way through each preceding decade of my life, making each photograph meet a similar fate to that of the first one. In total, this part is expected to take five minutes, during which I will not break my silence.
Upon reaching the final photograph, I will unclip it, pocket it and sit down in my brother's armchair. It is then that the second part of the piece will begin: taking out a previously-prepared syringe filled with the Washington Virion, I will carefully inject myself with the virus, ensuring that I am infected. Once I am certain of that, I will take out the pocketed photograph, looking at the image for one final time before also putting it to flames in my own hands. I will look at it as it burns. I will not react even if the fire burns my hands.
Once the photograph is gone, I will sit back in the chair, look directly at the camera, and close my eyes. It is imperative that I remain awake and not fall asleep — however, should I begin to feel exhausted, I am to consider rest a preferable alternative to opening my eyes again.
I will remain in that position for as long as the virus needs to come into effect, effectively neutralizing my body's ability to let my EVE-powered pacemaker continue its operation.
The performance will end once I inevitably perish.
Intent: In my 79 years, I have seen a lot of change. It is no small feat to have lived for nearly eight decades, especially considering what we've been through in the anart community. You'd be surprised how many times I came close to biting it; still, for better or for worse, I persisted. I persisted to see the world turn to a new era the moment the Veil fell. But despite all the change, and because of all the change I have seen, I have come to know one thing for certain: things stay the same, no matter how much they claim otherwise.
I remember a time when Bowe's lackeys at PENTAGRAM were rounding up anartists to create anti-socialist propaganda to be distributed in Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China. They almost got me and my brother back then, even though we were just newcomers to the anart scene. We retreated into our little holes: Backdoor SoHo, Three Portlands, Little Havana; we were little more than vermin to most, but we endured. I endured. Thanks to the support of my brother and our friends, we sat it out until the Berlin Wall fell and, at least according to Fukuyama, history "ended." After that, we were safe to exit our hovels. For a time.
I remember a time when a different Bowe's lackeys at PENTAGRAM started rounding up every vaguely thaumically-gifted individual when the Twin Towers fell. Having moved to the old continent, I avoided their guns; most of my friends weren't so lucky. I remember as they tried to make our art into weapons of war, in service to fighting their "terror" — a campaign against nobody but freedom. I remember how I sat next to a phone line, praying any of those I considered close friends would pick up. Now only backed by my brother I still persisted, but barely. It almost broke us, that decade. But this too came to an end eventually, and we were again safe. For a time.
Next came the Impasse, where we faced an existential crisis unlike no other. I looked as the death we tried to escape from when we left America came knocking on our doorstep. I saw the hollow streets of Esterberg. I saw the dried up corpses of kids, laying on the pavement next to frozen roads. I saw the life fading out of my brother. Though the official version has the Foundation and the Coalition behind the mess, I'm sure that some Bowe somehow had a hand in it all too.
And now, almost 30 years later, we face yet another existential crisis and see yet another Bowe behind it.
It seems every 20 years or so, another Bowe comes and another crisis targets me and those I care about; and now that the anomalous and regular worlds are one, the damage is bound to be catastrophic. I knew we would face backlash after the Impasse. I knew many would shun our talents. Given Crenshaw's landslide victory last year, I know that most of the world hates me and my kin still.
Echoes is meant to represent the echoes of violence me and my people have endured over my life. It represents the echoes of violence that will continue to reverberate far into the future, long after I am dead. It represents a single old man, driven into some hole by government lackeys that don't care if he dies or lives, left to die in an unfamiliar land and leave his brother in the world alone, stuck in his own ditch for months on end.
I remember that a lifetime ago, my brother said that there was no such thing as a gateway drug, not even in death. Maybe he was right. Maybe. I mostly can't find it in myself to care anymore, because dead is what I wish to be. Living in a world that hates me and my late kin is too much for me to bear. This isn't the world they fought to die in.
This isn't the world I lived to die in.
