IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST.
ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE

Hold we to the centre of remembrance
that forgets the never that severs
word from the source
and never forgets the witness
of broken utterances that passed before
and now breaks the culture of silence
in the ordeal of testimony;
in the history of circles
each point lies along the circumference
diameter or radius
each word creates a centre
circumscribed by memory... and history
waits at rest always
still at the centre

Excerpt from M. NourbeSe Philip “She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks”

Suppose we are “participants in the future of our languages,” as the poet Ocean Vuong argues. Can we find procedures for optimising our communication to aid the creation of networks that can parasitize to proliferate and develop liberating practices?

The project IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE reflects on the parasitic nature of language [1] and its potential to facilitate the suitable climate and conditions for subversive feminist, anti-racist and de-colonial practices within art and publishing. We are interested in how that parasite can be transmitted through interactions that can also take place without our influence and how a subversive language can provoke laughter as joy and disavowal. 

IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE is a living curatorial endeavour that, through a series of exercises, research, exhibitions, and public programmes, will evolve, expand and build upon this exhibition. You are cordially invited to join us on this journey’s next step: an INVOCATIONS programme deliberating on the parasitic nature of language together and in exchange with poets and performers, journalists and DJs, scholars and musicians, activists and writers.