PAN-ic, AMNESIA & CHEAT by Karolina Kucia

Hello! Honestly… I wasn’t sure wheater there is anything that makes sense to propose to you from this distance. I don’t know how are you doing? I am ok. I am reading a bit more those days, although something else than I should be reading. Writing a bit more, although something else than I should be writing. I am in a state of illusion that this simplified state of living/working could lead to some clarity in thinking, or that this clarity in thinking would be needed more than ever. The future looks scary. Or it doesn’t look at all. Wouldn’t it be great to be somehow prepared? I wish it would be possible to make sense of this situation collectively. But it is not possible, and it doesn’t seem to work to connect either. I believe it is better to work alone now, acknowledge this impossibility, not try too hard. Perhaps just to remember, there might be someone, besides. On your side. And on the side of you. Para-site in the sense of not being the same and neither them nor you being the one. Ever. Accompanied by someone, something, you don’t know what… is it in your favour or not…? This is an exercise in writing, writing alone, writing at the same time, no one writing and co-writing. This exercise contains invitations to text three monsters, three little helpers: PAN-ic, AMNESIA & CHEAT: the sense of panic, a state of amnesia and guilt of imposter. The entrance is here.

We need to pretend that we do not do this for food.*

What can we do here for food?

Do you feel like you are cheating sometimes? Like you are not a real academic, maybe not even a real artist. Fake it until you make it. But you know, even then, one is sometimes afraid, what if they will one day find out?

Even if we do not share the same reason to feel like we are cheats, even though there is always a power structure, even in cheating, there is something we share. It is a sense that this large body we chat and steal from will not feed us entirely. That is why I cheat, to remember my way out.

You know, I shouldn't be here. It is a historical paradox. Well… it wasn't. But it is now.

I shouldn't be here because I come from peasants. No matter how much I read and think, some kind of hollow place remains ever in me.**

The common never was. It is only coming, stolen and cheated, shared like a crime, this way or another.

*from The University and the Undercommons:

Seven Theses by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

** paraphrase of a line from the amazing novel "Chevengur" by Andrey Platonov

Now.
Then.
Let's write.

This is what I propose. Start your sentence as following:

I forgot….

milk on the stove...
I am forgetting…

I will forget… that...

I am afraid…
I panicked… It was moment of unthinking....

I stole...

But …

I pretended that

I am a marxist, but I have a very bourgeois cat so it came to remind me…

I cheat…
I will fabricate…

I shouldn't be here...

I should not be here because…

...play, write what is, what could be but is not, what never was, what is but we pretend isn't

but sure you can play....

And if you wish.
We can share something of it....

it won't be easy…

ready?

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