Haiku with Reflection on 2021 Global Sisterhood Camp by Bhanu Kapil

Haiku with Reflection on 2021 Global Sisterhood Camp by Bhanu Kapil

Place the photograph*

In the stainless steel sink.

Light a match.

*I’m thinking of the last question we held: “What is the lineage of an image?”  Is there a way that art-making or writing practice is a way of stepping out of toxic lineage, as much as it is a braiding or weaving of water and light?  Perhaps what I really want to know is this: what is this photograph of?  The photograph you’re about to burn.  Of course, this is an era of imprints and memories and faces that crystallize and smile deep in our mobile phones, so perhaps there’s a pre-stage of going to a Walgreens and printing one out! How will you get there? Perhaps it’s not easy to think of navigating the store, or getting to it in the first place.  Perhaps your sink is made of chipped porcelain.  I wanted to write “river,” but didn’t want to add poisons to a water source. In fact, I am not sure if this ritual of water and fire is explicable as a stage between performing and doing. I’m not even sure if this is a haiku.  A poem: two instructions displayed in three lines.  Nevertheless, what’s in this photograph, and why are you burning it?  Perhaps you drop it in the sink, run the tap, then discard it, the photograph, once it’s ruined. Illegible portrait, now you’re ash or smear: a void. Yes, begin there. With a fingertip, make a smudge on the nude page. With a pencil or pen, or without words, how will you caption what you’ve made?  Yes, I prefer this art to the kind that is put up, as Cixous wrote, in a frame and sold for a stinking fortune. Light the match.