Touch Piece
Performance and Poetry by:
GABRIELLE CIVIL
TOUCH PIECE
In the second segment of our Digital Performance Series we feature black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer Gabrielle Civil. Gabrielle’s 1-minute solo is set to the reading of her poem “Touch Piece.” The performance emerged from a quarantine Zoom dance experiment organized by Anya Cloud and Kristianne Salcines.
Touch Piece
for anya & kristiannein darkness, a bronze
hand erupts
a volcanic knee, a splay-
ed body, half submerged
still shocks us
keeps us
from turning away
*
a body trying to break
out break in break through
a body trying to break
out break in break through
a body trying to break
out break in break through
break out break in break through
*
walking across an overpass
lines of verse
shot through glass
etched into steel
suspended in air
a certain unlikeliness
my body,
striation
an epicenter of green
ache
and mystery
Follow Gabrielle:
Instagram: @gabrielle_civil
Web: gabriellecivilartist.com
Books:
EXPERIMENTS IN JOY
SWALLOW THE FISH
Experiments in Joy: a Workbook
Bio:
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit MI. She danced with Wild Beauty at Velocity in Seattle (2020) and has premiered fifty original performance art works around the world. Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019) and the forthcoming (ghost gestures) (2020), which won the 2019 Gold Line Nonfiction Chapbook contest. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches creative writing and critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts. She came of age as an artist in Minneapolis and demands justice for George Floyd. The aim of her work is to open up space.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EST 2020
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© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EST 2020
︎
© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED