Artists Space

I heard she was sick that night, which I didn’t remember at first. Now we’re in this position of having to redo what we already gained over and over, having to redo the same fight. I heard a lot of fear. And anger. We have changed our habits and expectations of each day, observing the news and almost being surprised when there isn’t something shocking happening. I heard it was also related to their past living under a dictatorship and the sense of a lack of control over who is governing. They weren’t surprised, and they felt burnt out because they were already tired from the campaign. And then it meant that we were going to have to talk about this for longer. I heard them say that they felt it was important to continue doing their work. Because their work felt relevant to the things that are happening right now.

We began with personal narratives. We worked to remove those stories from ourselves by relating them to other stories. In newly entangled form, we puzzled them together.

We’ve listened to one another while checking the impulse to respond; we’ve tried to remember what we’ve heard; it’s theater, where the same thing is performed in the same place each night.

I heard a student ask his friends, “is there a word in English for building your happiness on top of someone else’s?”

Everyone was excited to be closer together a little bit despite the circumstances.

You Should Wake Up Earlier is organized by No Total with thanks to Artists Space for their generous support.

The group No Total is a contemplation, growing without anticipation of arriving. We take position. We meet with one another, read, discuss, and sometimes write. We are curious about what happens surrounding knowledge and production. We surround.

We meet to share and change where, when, and how we work. There is a kind of work we want to do – the work of caring for one another, our practices, ourselves. This work is quite different from the work we need to do for subsistence, to provide the resources to take care of ourselves and others. We have day jobs and night jobs. We are thinking about these things.

We are implicated and escaping. We are in the know. We are partially funded, sharing spaces, and in need. We are parts. We are Ensemble. Our liminal bodies in the queered sphere are not lack.

We use our common senses to navigate a commons.

No Total is invitational.