IV. ssssSssssssss
ssssssSssssss (13-s’s, 1 s arbitrarily capitalised) is a vibe between Ashkan Sepahvand and Virgil B/G Taylor. sssssssssSsss is a practice of sharing, studying, and strengthening within and through queer friendship. sSsssssssssss is usually casual, always undisciplined, and frequently invisible. sssSsssssssss takes intimacy as an occasion for exchanging with others, friends and friends of friends, what we call “minor publics.” sssssSsssssss is drawn towards subplots: the idiosyncratic, the esoteric, and the abstract. sssssssssssSs believes that we can’t make it alone, that we need to take care of each other, that we must train to get stronger, and that there is always something to learn.
For the public programme “A Children’s Tale, A Horror Story, A Libertine Tale: Tales of the Contemporary City” at Matadero Madrid on February 15, 2020, ssssSssssssss presented “spread (trainer)”. We reimagined, through digital and analog materials, the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu as Mesopotamian faggotry. We reembodied this ancient friendship through the live reading of original texts, the digital arrangement of research images into a spread, and the ritualised exchange of 100 white carnations translating the Afrinagan sofreh.
