Kathryn Cornelius is seeking proposals for her Take it to the Bridge performance at Corcoran, taking place on Saturday, August 11, 2012.  ”Save the Date is a performance by Kathryn Cornelius that explores the life cycle of marriage and divorce and the wedding ceremony’s complex mix of private emotion, public spectacle, social expectation, and state power.” From her tumblr, click for more.

I submit to her piece, my proposal::

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is “I desire you,” and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. ” -Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments

Kathryn, I don’t know you. But, I do want to marry you. Here we are, meeting over language. And I am supposed to convince you that I’m a worthwhile performance-suitor. The best that I can do is to be honest. I quote above because I rely primarily on external references to talk about what I don’t know how to talk about, and hopefully to show off my literary knowledge-base and art-historical foundation in a way that impresses you. For some time, I’ve been following your work digitally. I have this little blog wherein I try to document performance art in DC, and have had every intention to attend your multiple weddings. Kathryn, I know I missed your deadline, and I apologize. To be honest, I was feeling too shy to propose to you before- but today I received a prompt from a friend, encouraging me to go for it despite, and I give in to peer pressure easily. So Kathryn, I admit that I am hesitant, nervous, skeptical. Regardless of the duration of our hypothetical actual marriage, my participation in even sending this proposal is something of a commitment. But here I am, sending anyway. I admit that a serious motive in my wanting to engage (literally) comes from my desire to document, to promulgate performance in the area especially through personal account. So you should know that I honestly want to marry you, but I have very human and selfish desires as well- I’m sorry. Yet, I’m not sorry, I’m trying to be honest as I hope you will be with me in our hour if you accept this proposal. Kathryn, I want to get to know you. Honestly, I want to know you and your piece intimately, and the closest I can get is deep in it, wedding you. I want to share in your innermost desires and intentions, and totally complicate my objectivity in documenting Save the Date by getting in on one of those dates. So Kathryn, if I need to apologize for lacking in romance, I’m not sorry, I’m not really that kind of a girl. The best that I can do is appropriate a sexy quote on linguistics with hopes that somehow it describes my personality and objectives.

xo,

Eames Armstrong