WEBVTT

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(suspenseful music)

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- I think so, but what does done mean?

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(laughs)
- Yeah.

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- Text has this illusion
of comprehensiveness.

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(paper flipping)

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Even if you've read something once,

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it doesn't mean that you understand it.

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So I sort of like to play with language

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and making something
either very, very legible

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or making something very, very opaque.

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And encouraging people to do
the work of understanding it,

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it's really an invitation,

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come think with me.

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(paper rustling)
- Oh yeah.

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Of all the family members,

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I'm the most organizationally inclined.

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So I have taken, whenever I go home,

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steal a few more photos each time.

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So my dad was converted to
Islam in the early 1980s.

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He basically was learning Islam
by typewriting these notes.

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(typewriter keyboard thumping)

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He would photocopy pieces
of religious texts,

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and he would then paste
them on a sheet of paper,

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and they he would annotate them.

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He came to make sense
of things through this

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repeated reading and rereading process.

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I thought this was so lovely
because I was thinking

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about this idea of talking back to a text.

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A text itself is never finished,

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each time we read something new,

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we're either annotating on the page

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or annotating in our brain,

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and we're creating what
literally are new texts.

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This active collaboration between
the reader and the writer,

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the text is there not to
offer us a final meaning,

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but it's actually there as an invitation

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for us to actively engage with it.

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(papers rustling)

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If you look at (laughs)
my dad and I's notes,

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what he did as a study tool
is basically my art practice.

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(suspenseful music building)

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(papers rustling)

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Huh, that's literally exactly what I do
now, I read a lot and do arts. (laughs)

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Feel like our young selves
know exactly what we wanna do.

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(bright electronic music)

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There's nothing that I've done in my life

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that hasn't been focused on text.

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I'm really interested
in what words convey,

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but also how they appear on the page,

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on walls,

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and public space.

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What might it mean to see this

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every Tuesday when you walk by?

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What it means to sort
of engage with the text

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over and over and over?

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Rereading as this ritual.

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I'm really interested in
the concept of the word

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and what it carries,

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as well it's actually trying to say or do.

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(papers rustling)

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When I'm looking for texts,

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I'm usually not looking
for a particular sentence.

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I'm looking for a
particular shape of a letter

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or a shape of a word.

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So I'll flip through any
texts on my bookshelf

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looking for the perfect
A or the perfect B.

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In a lot of ways I'm trying to figure out

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the individual letter and
then start piecing letters

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and words together from there.

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(suspenseful music)

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So the one that I'm writing
now from all these pieces

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is "Should they be circling the echo mouth

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that's sloped upward?"

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Do I know what that means
at this particular moment?

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No, but there is something
interesting to me

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about the idea of circling an echo.

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How do I take something that could be said

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very, very plainly, and
code it or use cryptography

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to make it harder to understand?

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We circle ambulate the
affiliate's solution.

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Sort of inviting people to go slow

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instead of trying to
rush to understanding.

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If you read a sentence that
immediately doesn't make sense,

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you have two options, right?

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You can ignore the sentence and move on,

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or you can spend a bit
of time unpacking it.

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(gentle music)

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It's almost a proxy for thinking

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about how we can move through other ways

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of reading the world with a
bit more care and slowness.

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Would ask that we spend a
bit more time with things

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that are confusing instead
of writing them off.

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I think a lot about what it actually means

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to make myself legible, invisible.

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When am I being intentionally opaque

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and ensuring that not everyone can get in,

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and when am I being very open and wanting

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for more people to have access?

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How you present yourself
to the world that's legible

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and appeasing to people,

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versus I'm not gonna make
myself known until I'm ready?

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(gentle music)