LA MARRE, Rebecca
Love is the language that sex speaks

There is a scene in Pier Paulo Pasolini’s Decameron in which a crowd mourns the death of a saint. The performance of their grief is guided by local religious custom. While they are transported into an encounter with the sublime, pick-pockets steal their wallets. This image is a point of departure for this book, its text gathered by recording whatever thoughts were of enough substance to be noted. Much of the material is of uncertain authorship, derived from overheard conversations, the utterances of others, and passages from books, articles, films, and images. Over four years La Marre collected phrases as if physical material, assembling an argument for what a secular approach to grieving may look like.

‘Through this accumulation of fleeting thoughts, given by the simple act of daily writing a body that can feel love and pain, Rebecca La Marre attempts to “imagine a positive encounter” with various others—positive in the sense of both the vague promise of happiness and the ethically indifferent electric charge of relating.’
-> Hannah Black


Rebecca La Marre is a Canadian artist with a writing, research, and performance practice. Her work investigates how technologies shape bodies, and what that contributes to an experience of being a person. Her performances are driven by what she reads, using materials that include the human voice, text, and clay.
Her work is exhibited and published internationally. Venues include the Serpentine Gallery, London, MOMA PS1, and the Darling Foundry. Her writing has been published in journals and periodicals including the Organism for Poetic Research, Poetry is Dead,  and Through Europe.

[publisher's note]

Published by Ma Bibliothèque, 2018
Literature