darren spirk

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)frottage(


installation view, )frottage(, mixed media installation, 2023
untitled #1 and #2, framed archival inkjet prints, 36x24”, 2023
untitled #3 and #4, framed archival inkjet prints, 36x24”, 2023
installation view, )frottage( , mixed media installation, 2023
still from single channel video with stereo channel sound (featuring poetry written by the artist), 4 mins, played on loop, 2023 [see excerpt]




what does it mean to relate against the grain of relation?

this installation enacts a methodology based on 
keguro macharia's theory of frottage: rather than use 
relationality to tell complete narratives around a 
reparative kinship or universal humanity, frottage 
confronts the frictional zone where bodies, forms, and 
concepts brush against one another in tenuous, 
ephemeral, and perhaps even violent ways. 

calling on two contrasting moments of intimacy that 
emerged toward the end of the six years that my 
partner and i lived together in egypt, conditioned 
within the ongoing reverberations of state violence, 
this multisensory installation unthreads a range of 
frictional sensations which work in counterpoint to 
one another, asking how the queer intimate can 
produce an alternative, deliberately abrasive 
relationship to sensuality, the sensory, and sense-
making more broadly.










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