From ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings’

Abstract

Inscribing what Levinas might call ‘espace vital’ (the space we can survive), ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings’, (written/composed by Adeena Karasick and visualized/designed by Warren Lehrer), is an ecstatically wrought, never quite post-COVID-19 celebration/exploration of openings. It tracks the pain of openings read through socio-economic, geographic and bodily space. Employing fragmentation, layered language and sonic wordplay, these excerpts explore a range of intralingual etymologies of the word ‘opening’, laced with post-consumerist ironic and erotic language, theoretical discourse, philosophical and Kabbalistic aphorisms, ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings’ foregrounds language as a material, physical organism of hope – highlighting the concept of opening as an ever-swirling palimpsest of spectral voices, textures, whispers and codes transporting us through passion, politics and pleasure as we negotiate loss and light. The full volume is forthcoming from Lavender Ink Press, Spring 2023.