all the organs of my atoms need rest is a lecture-performance that explores (un)diagnosability in relation to the colonial gaze of neuroimaging and the phenomenological concepts of lived space and pure depth. Its structure is that of a rehearsed improvisation tethered to the refrain of Nicki Minaj's question "You see right thru me (how do you do that shit?)"

all the organs of my atoms needs rest was premiered at la Rencontre interuniversitaire de performance actuelle in Montreal in June 2021.

Below lies a transcript of the performance along with its accompanying visual documentation.

*Installation shots courtesy of alignements.

Kara Keeling, in their book Queer Times, Black Futures, says:
"As in music, the refrain offers an anchor to which we return after any improvisation"

The following performance, though meticulously prepared, is an improvisation.
It is the piecemeal tune of a body without, and in need.
An intuited melody hummed by those whose pain and fatigue lies in the fugitive realm, forever lurking below thresholds of detection;
a subclinical anaesthetics of illness
which never really happens,
only always is.

But not for everyone.

Not for the doctor.
Not for the bloodwork.
Not for the CT Scan, or the MRI, or the colonoscopy, or the DSM, or the American Association of Rheumatology, or the therapist, or the guidance counsellor, or the psychoanalyst, or the colonizer, or the strong, or the abled, or the disabled, or the diagnosed, or the evidence—which is always lacking—which is itself a lack—a lack of lack—agnosognosia, but for whom?

This improvisation is the improvisation of the undiagnosed—and the undiagnosable.

And the refrain which grounds it, tethers it, gives it the confidence to venture on phantom limbs and discuss debility without proof, illness without lesion, suffering without receipt, and the humanity of the always already dehumanized is gifted to us by none other than Nicki Minaj, when she repeatedly asks:

You see right thru me
(how do you do that shit?)

I had this idea for a gallery piece.
I would drag an MRI machine into a white cube
while "Right Thru Me" played in loop.

I figured this would be expensive.

And so I had another idea.
I would convince an MRI technician to play Right Thru Me
in loop,
as the song patients heard
through their headphones
while undergoing their MRI
while wondering MIRite
for an entire day
week
month
or year.

I wrote this idea down next to the other ideas I've been too tired to improvise

You see right thru me
(how do you do that shit?)

Sang Fanon
in The North African Syndrome.
Recognizing that the pain of the colonized eluded even the most powerfully tuned device:
Western reason.
A reason wounding without a lesion.
A disloyal wound, without allegiance.
Or perhaps a wound which is faithful only to those lesions which are undetectable (read: unreal), continuously reproduced by the same colonial system which seeks them. These wounds are the always already absent lesions of the North African, the ones which debilitate without disability, make suffer without making sick. In Fanon's words:

"Nous pensons organes et lésions focales quand il faudrait penser fonctions et désintégrations. Notre optique médicale est spatiale alors qu’elle devrait de plus en plus se temporaliser”

And of couse Fanon's right
but I am tired
and of course I am
of a space which is geometric,
my space is lived,
my space is tired.
It is this thick chunk of room I occupy at all times—
I imbue it with fatigue
if you ask me
where to find me
my reply is weary
my reply is:

"I"

I is where you'll find me.

I is thick space
the depth of which
cannot be seen thru
(how dare you do that shit?)
when I is my mother's sofa
when I is my grandmother's armchair
when I is the body which follows me
harbinger of night time and opacity
where even the most
well-meaning photon
gets lost
and sleepy
and spun into rest:

All the organs
of my atoms
need rest.

All the organs
of my body
were tired
yet still sang
in organopsychic harmony:

You see right thru me
(how do you do that shit?)

When they saw the peer-reviewed article published by Obermeyer and al. this past winter in Nature's Journal of Medicine.

Rumi says:
If you desire healing
Let yourself fall ill
Let yourself fall ill

Except, as Obermeyer demonstrates, falling ill is more difficult for some than others. And though he uses the term 'underserved' in his writing to herd the disenfranchized of the United States in a single sweeping demographic gesture, he sometimes reminds us that his is really a study of Black people, their pained knees, and a diagnostic blind spot manifesting as a right to opacity.

In other words, what Obermeyer is saying is that the pain gap due to knee osteoarthritis cannot be accounted for by empirically graded objective X-ray severity scores derived from the study of white male coal miners in Lancashire England in 1957. In less othering words, what Obermeyer demonstrates is that wounded Black knees hurt more but show less on X-rays when compared to white knees.

It's a silly science that states what we already knew yet needed to prove:

X rays do not see Black pain in Black knees.
X rays will not see Black pain in Black knees.
X rays cannot see Black pain in Black knees.

Karen Barad asks us:
What defines scale in the void?
What is the metric of emptiness?
What is the measure of nothingness?

I am not sure
but I know
my grandmother
is researching
(the) matter
as she
counts
her beads
in a sacred science
while the rest
of us rest
our weary eyes
in the refrain.

*cue music