atmosphere-generating juxtaposition

Beatriz Monteavaro, Tonight, We Can Be As One Tonight.

Under the Bridge.
12425 NE 13th Ave, North Miami, 33161.


The kinds of proximity that matter here are made by practices of attention not defined by dissensus or agonism but technically, by atmosphere-generating juxtaposition. This proximity dilutes what we called structural by shifting the force of the normative infrastructures from the state and commodity capitalism into the ordinary that also includes local plural intimacies and the associations that make life sticky and interesting.

Berlant

011222165~2 or cuffed primly


She laughed and leaned back in her chair. Crossed her legs at the ankles. Her trim dark jeans were cuffed primly back over brown wool socks. She had on half boots, all scuffed worn leather. Her jean jacket had a shearling fringe, mottled white and green.

Colonial Conditions, Brandon Taylor (The Yale Review)

The Aesthetics of Resistance. Peter Weiss. “The three volumes of the novel were originally published in 1975, 1978 and 1981. English translations of the three volumes have been published by Duke University Press, in 2005, 2020 and 2025.”

The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume I
Translator: Joachim Neugroschl
Foreward: A Monument to Radical Instants / Fredric Jameson

Rather glass that’s taught by patient labor


What is poetry? Is it a mosaic 
Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought 
Into a pattern? Rather glass that’s taught 
By patient labor any hue to take 
And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make 
Beauty a thing of awe;
where sunbeams caught, 
Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught 
With storied meaning for religion’s sake. 

Fragment, Amy Lowell


We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d, Walt Whitman

Melvin Edwards

Tomorrow’s Wind, 1991. Public Art Fund — Doris C. Freedman Plaza, February 17 – May 31, 1991.
Thomas Jefferson Park. Materialism.nyc.


Before Words,” 1990. Public Art Fund — Brighter Days at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, June 1, 2022 – April 30, 2023.

Melvin Edwards, Before Words
Public Art Fund at City Hall Park, New York City, May 4 to November 28, 2021.
Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Melvin Edwards, Ausstellungsansicht Kunsthalle Bern, 2025. Foto: Cedric Mussano

but this was not

You are a
land I can’t
stand leaving
and can’t not.
My party ship
is pulling out.
We all have
hats. I try to
toot some notes
you’ll understand
but this was not
our instrument
or plan.

Party Ship, Kay Ryan



New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art*, Josh Kline. October (2026) (195): 91–109. https://doi.org/10.1162/OCTO.a.539

Isn’t X Beautiful!, Odette Elix England (The Ice Plant)