An exhibition about the spontaneous particulars of writing for your life when you’re dead.
Objects & Words: Jasmine Amussen
Sound Design: Alma Laprida & Bryce Hackford
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The title, The Vestal & The Fasces, comes from the book of the same name by Jeanne L. Schroeder. Using the polarities of the vestal virgins and the phallic fasces, she “reconceptualizes property—the legal relationship as well as its not necessarily material object—as a necessary moment in the human struggle for love and recognition.” Polarities and binaries dominate my existence, and I am attempting to write an instruction manual for the management of those dualities. My tangible and intangible property, my tangible and intangible desire, my tangible and intangible service to the State.
The objects, smells, and sounds present in this exhibition externalize that struggle, the struggle to be an actualized human being under a raciality and sexuality whose existence is still very much up for debate by experts and laymen alike; in a region of the State that is ecologically, politically, socially and culturally vilified and terrorized, despite it being the birthing mother to all of the ideas of the current State.
How can I express the radical possibility and potential of my legal, civic and social non existence? Is there a way to prove a negative without rape, marriage, lynching, children, pornography, incest or murder?
Perhaps one must be a schizophrenic to see these possibilities. Perhaps there is no reason to try when we live in hell.
But if this is hell, then we’re lucky.
The sound design comprises a two channel recording of two monophonic synthesizers in the space, played back over two placed speakers.
Jasmine Amussen (b. 1989, Eureka Springs, Arkansas) is a writer and critic. She is a member of the Board of Directors for AICA-USA, a MacDowell Calderwood Fellow of Journalism, and a MFA Candidate (Writing ‘25) at the Milton-Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. In 2018, she joined Burnaway magazine and departed as its Editor in 2023. Her writing has been featured in 032c, Art Papers, Dazed, Limbo, MOMUS and many other zines, catalogues and publications. She has lectured at University of Syracuse, University of Georgia, SCAD Atlanta, and presented at AICA-International (Kraków), Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta), EXPO & SAIC (Chicago), Verein_K (Vienna), among others.
In her master's thesis, she explores millennial eschatology, dissecting the foundational aspects of violence, utopia, terrorism, and the intertwined [bi]sexual/racial jurisprudence within the universe of Riverdale (the CW, 2017-2023). Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of writers and thinkers, including Raymond Carver, Virginie Despentes, Andrea Dworkin, Theodore Kaczynski, Yukio Mishima, Achille Mbembe, Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ruth Ann Robson, and Jeanne L. Schroeder, she seeks to reinvigorate the fallow field of creative queer legal theory thru critical examination. Grounded in Southern sensibilities, her thesis works to establish a robust framework for comprehending and advocating for bisexual and biracial binaries, championing their histories, aesthetics, and furious potential.
She currently works as a part-time librarian in Atlanta, Georgia.
Alma Laprida (b. 1985, San Miguel, Argentina) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative pursuits encompass composition, improvisation, performance, installation, and radiophonic pieces. She's an MFA candidate (Music/Sound '26) at the Milton-Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and has played, performed and exhibited installations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Italy, Mexico and the USA.
Bryce Hackford (b. 1984, Glen Cove, US) is an experimental artist, producer and collaborator. Recent projects include the CNS imprint and two albums of ensembles who can't hear each other. He has performed in galleries, clubs, venues and museums across N America, Europe, the UK and Georgia.
