are all tired false- hoods. as affects, they so often lack
settler-colonial state’s worst imperialist violences being made so plain every day. there’s nothing new about irony discourse, and yet... i’m curious about how the past year has revitalized horrified sarcasm as a kind of sincerity. this may not be a novel form of relating but it’s not lacking in affective potential the false dichotomy (happy gemini szn!) of intimacy and ironic distance interests me on this june 17th first quarter moon in virgo (the most self-critical of the moons) for much more than self-crit but rather, what it might suggest about the group workout , about the mediations possible in a complex arena, about exercises and circles and disparate flows that can be accrete new capacities and better directions, always, of course, with style and while some artists obfuscate their intentions through abstraction, there’s little abstract about a muscle up. regarding gymnastics, Lizzie Feidelson writes, “Bodies in a state of exertion are only ever earnest.” the sport’s physical feats are so literal and yet , it’s the choreographed and codified wristy flourishes—so campy, so borderline ironic—that epitomize the sport’s movement vocabulary for me. like art, sports may be pay to play, and it’s still a kind of job. there are laborers, their labor, and an office. but it’s the seemingly small gestures, the signature moves that reveal a sector’s people and the work that can happen in an environment. sure, you can watch my muscle up on loop but what a wholly different treat it would be to experience how i dance between sets, my flitting, fleeting little flourishes whose spar- kle dissolves any office ! benedict nguyễn is a dancer, writer, and curator based on occupied Lenape and Wappinger lands (South Bronx, NY). Their criticism has appeared in Vanity Fair , Into , Brooklyn Rail , Shondaland , and the Establishment , among others; their poetry, in AAWW’s the Margins , Flypaper , and PANK . They’ve performed in DapperQ Fashion week and in recent works by Sally Silvers, José Rivera, Jr., Monstah Black, and more. As the 2019 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at ISSUE Project Room, they created the multidisciplinary performance platform “soft bodies in hard places.” They publish the newsletter “ first quar- ter moon slush ,” and when not online @xbennyboo , are working on their second novel. benedict-nguyen.com
style, texture, or any interest at all. sure, i needed some base amount of strength to manage the feat, but ultimately, it was coordination and flow that vaulted me up. over this process, it was the friction of exertion that gives vitality and verve, rough edges making for a smooth flex.
and you could read this slushee as a weird flex, but okay. with other histories of my body not shared here, it’s a flex i’m shocked i can make at all. you could read this slushee as a celebration of work– by which, i mean the physics kind and the self-help kind, but of course, the capitalism kind has an obvious investment in maximizing my capacity. the etymology of how they got called the same thing feels obvious and i’m not optimizing the body to do labor. among other concerns, i think often about self-defense, about being the brawn (no, i’m serious ) where such a capacity is useful. it will not always exist at this scale but while it’s here, i invite you to read this slushee through this demonic emoji pairing that i selected just for y’all the flex emoji as flashy brag; the halo emoji as a flex of such sweet innocence. the ironic distance required to use either of these symbols is long but to use them together requires great remove from the self as well as an earnest self-embrace to employ it with cheek, all without possibly provoking disdain from you, sweet reader
but self-awareness should be the lowest bar to clear at this stage of the panorama, this stage of the US
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in dance SUMMER 2021 42
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