SERPAS, Ser
Carman

“i cant lay down
the spoken word
show seats are
uncivilized
discounted
remember much
long it takes
to be or not be
going back and
uncapitalizing insipid
characters
subversive member
autocorrect dommed
my life and capacity […]”

Carman is based on chronological iPhone notes that Ser Serpas wrote during her undergraduate studies, from July 2013 to July 2017. The title Carman not only evokes Carmen, Georges Bizet’s famous opera of love and seduction; it is also the name of Serpas’s freshman-year dormitory at Columbia, where she majored in the fine arts and urban studies. These poems were integral in the development of her solo exhibition “You were created to be so young (self-harm and exercise),” held in the summer of 2018 at Luma Westbau, Zürich.

Serpas’s experience in community work and the fashion industry fed into the exploitation of her own and others’ detritus. As Hannah Black notes in “Becoming Trash,” (somewhat alluding to Adrian Piper) Serpa’s poetry in Carman is a "mythic account of her development as an artist." [publisher's note]

Edited by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen. With forewords by Hannah Black and Tess Edmonson. 

Published by Koenig Books, 2018
Design by Teo Schifferli
Artists' Writings / Poetry / Performance / Politics