Thought Residencies

This is Rhiannon with my sixth thought. Oh man oh god oh man oh GOD OH MAN OH GOD [ Video for reference : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KyBdPeKHg ] One night after I performed a one woman play about sexual assault (that I had written), a college bro came up to me and said "yeah, I really enjoyed your piece. I like to write about dark stuff too." I was crying and smoking a cigarette at the time so I just nodded. I was looking at my Facebook memories : two years ago I posted a video about drunken wax-wing finches in the Yukon. Three years ago I thought about failure. Six years ago I was on student council and had 10 ratty friendship bracelets tied to my wrist. Today I'm not quite sure what's up.

Good Morning this is Rhiannon with my 5th thought. The violet plant in my room started flowering even though its bud was pressed up against the cold glass of the window. I think I am afraid of theatricality. I've noticed a tendency to shy away from it in my writing, and cling to naturalism in my speech patterns. I think it's because theatricality makes me feel vulnerable as a writer. I worry about being too much. My new play is a gothic science-fiction x-file about abortion, and still, I worry about my dialogue being overly dramatic.

It's a crisp afternoon in Montreal and this is Rhiannon Collet here with my fourth thought. My friend had a bad fever last night & I sat with him in bed and wondered if I was going to start shivering too. I wondered if I was going to start freezing & burning at the same time. I also wondered if putting pink streaks in my hair will make me feel fun & new again. I hope so. Leonard Cohen died on Thursday & right after I found out I read my play to a room of poets. I wonder what the difference is between poetry and playwriting, and how both can exist in my mouth at one time.

Good morning - Rhiannon Collett here with my third thought. I've been thinking a lot about diversity in theatre this week & how diversity on stage breeds empathy. And by diversity on stage, I don't mean one black, indigenous or person of colour tokenized per season, per show. I'm talking about the people who make the artistic decisions. I am talking about directors and playwrights. Having an entirely white theatre season should be seen as nothing less than a failure. Having an entirely white theatre season is the upholding of white supremacy in our arts institutions. Call it like it is.

Rhiannon here with my second thought. A truly terrifying night last night. I fell asleep at midnight & woke up at 2:30 and it was over. I dreamt I was trying to direct my play, but my teeth kept falling out. I spat them into the sink and the front of my face caved inwards. I began to home hunt - I found apartments with beautiful skylights, but had to hide my teeth in my pockets. Had to spit them, soft, into my palms. I love you. Good morning.

It's 7:58 AM in Montreal Quebec on the day of 2016 American election & this is Rhiannon Collett with my first thought. 10 000 hours is approximately 13.6 months. How many abortions could you do via Coca Cola in 10 000 hours? Is 9,999 abortions a more horrific number? What would make you want to do that many abortions? What is the perfect abortion? How can you perfect that kind of death? 10 000 abortions are probably only… 10 minutes a piece when you're using Coca Cola. "I didn't want to do it coat hanger style, you know, I wanted it to be like Nair, for your womb." I am scared today.

Phone rings twice then voicemail recording "you've reached 647-280-66(static)leave a message after the tone (beep) Hi, David this is Milton Lim and this is my tenth thought residency going out to the consumers and to the future. Hi David Yee, this is Milton Lim this is my eleventh and final thought dedicated to the incomplete. I hope that the opening for your show at the Factory went smoothly, I wish I could've been there to support you in person. Today, I've been thinking about the preciousness of showing work. I've been following this artist called 'Beeple' for a couple years. His real name is Mike Winkleman and he's a graphic designer from Wisconsin. He's fairly well known for what he called his 'everydays' — basically, he publicly posts a work he has been completing from start to finish every day. It serves as a way for him to better his practice and to remove any inhibitions about sharing his pieces no matter how shitty he thinks it is. It's a process he's done for 3,472 consecutive days at the time of this recording and scrolling through his works, you really do see the improvement. Now, one of the things that I appreciate about your show "acquiesce" is that it's one of your earliest works, and that it was lost behind a filing cabinet for almost a decade. And I know it took some convincing to get you to say yes to having it produced. I think it takes courage to share something you know you wrote when you were younger, more naïve and less experienced. More than that, it reminds me that things are almost always incomplete, that each project is just part of the practice, and that sometimes it's best to share things before it's ready because otherwise, you might never ever share it. I even consider that mentorship is a process of transmitting the incomplete. I think there's a lot to see in the raw ideas. Perhaps more than the finished products.

My name is Milton Lim and this is my tenth thought residency going out to the consumers and to the future. I've been intrigued by a genre of electronic music called Vaporwave over the last year and a bit. It's a blend of synthesized 80s and 90s corporate mood music; it is often bright and cheery, modulated and slowed down, playing between the slightly familiar and the very familiar. It plays on retro culture aesthetics, so it's nostalgia-inducing and by muzak standards, I actually find it quite pleasing to the ear. Vaporwave potentially gets its name from Vaporware: technology that is introduced or announced by companies that never gets produced. The very idea is fleeting. I find the music so curious because it both suggests its anti-capitalist nature and yet it embraces its own hyper capitalism through its earnest use of material. It's ironic and sincere — pleasurable and numbing. It seems to both want to refuse and accept our very likely future. Sometimes I listen to this music and I think: this is where we're headed.

My name is Milton Lim and this is my ninth thought residency going out to your eyes and ears. I just finished watching season 2 of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. So, today I'm thinking about my relationship to technology, especially user interface and design for touch screens. I think about the gesture of swiping as a violent act. Even in definition swiping is suggested to be a strong sweeping blow. I think about the etymology of the word, suggesting that it was a variant of sweep, and I think about the connections of cleanliness: wiping, sweeping, clearing, but then there's swiping. For all of its utility, I wonder about these gestures and how it situates me in my experience of news, dating applications, social media, phone calls, people, systems, and notions of self-identity.

My name is Milton Lim and this is my eighth thought residency dedicated to the ugly. Last night I hosted a horror-themed video game night with my friends at the International Centre of Arts and Technology. We primarily played P.T., a demo of a cancelled game called Silent Hills by Hideo Kojima in collaboration with filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro. The game prioritizes horror instead of the game aspect. It takes place in one haunted L-shaped hallway that keep repeating over and over again — a simple gesture both effective and maddening. P.T. forces you to slow down and sit with your fear in order to progress and some of the puzzles are close to impossible. I keep thinking about the simplicity of the gesture, its iteration, and the tension of wanting and not wanting to continue. It's late and I'm having trouble sleeping.