Charlie Lee



    Production DesignEmile Is Missing

    Art and Performance


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    I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live, work, and create. I pay respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. Always was, Always will be Aboriginal Land. 
    Soft Creases → Oct ‘24

    Presented at the opening of Seventh Gallery’s Research Library



    What I would write about a library is vastly different at night

    It’s getting late, and I fear I’m seeping more than I intended

    Though even in the morning the library holds the same intimacy, 

    Flickering light and orange honey air

    It feels like it should only be open in twilight hours, when reality feels more flustered



    Inside these books is a different universe, and outside the library is the world

    Those who visit the library straddle the two

    A library means to fold



    Without shelves, we have piles of books, 

    Sorted unbiased, frameless

    And crawling on hands and knees, searching for kernels

    Indents and papercuts leave more than charged words. 

    Charged words in excess 

    Bruise and soften shins

    Sweat gathering at my lower back

    When I tumble it sticks to pages



    To be in a library is to sit in a crease                                                  

    Those nesting in this liminal space

    Swim in sweat glands behind knees

    Fold at the nape with hair tugged back



    The base of this fold isn’t a floor, but more a home, infinite and exponential.

    This non-space becomes a sanctuary to those who believe in it



    Every so often trolley wheels in the library grow hair, twisted hair braided, and pulled at 

    Should have stolen some for the cauldron and potions. 

    After all, I believe annotations can spell out spells.

    Where do rubber crumbs go when they’re swept off the table

    Brew them into tea and they’ll lay themselves out in the folds of a cup, image a future



    I want to believe in something so fully that the energy from thinking conjures a form

    Friction hot enough to melt wax, temperature play with a book

    Wax making pages hard, still soft enough to buckle at creases



    To eroticise an object is to enchant it with mystical power

    Perhaps in reading this aloud a ghost is conjured

    If i spoke these words into a microphone, would it enchant the cables

    If i put this microphone into my mouth would my spit be a potion

    Would the excess charge form a gentle kiss for the next reader



    It’s hard to take more than a shallow gasp when by chest is bound between worlds

    And my mouth must be wet enough to not stumble over my words



    Reading this and seeping

    Sweating onto pages 

    And tears softening margins

    Cracked spine

    Back arched

    Let me wring out all of these letters and tie them wide open



    Opening folds so the world we built in the crease seeps into reality, or fiction, 

    Or I suppose the distinction is irrelevant at this point



    Friction in the crease, making heat, surfaces blurring into eachother

    Coming into contact rubbing and rubbing. 

    What happens when a spine softens so much that it spreads open