Stockings & Sabotage
July 28, 2024, Glendale, Queens
Models
Ming Lin
Alex Tatarsky
RH Lossin
Serena Chang
Margaux Valengin
Constanza Valenzuela
Mila T Samdub
Dawa Bhuti
Anh Vo
Madjeen Isaac
Riga Shakya
Tianyi Sun
Photographer
The experience of embodiment by turns
Frustrating and invigorating.
I felt like a channel, a
Medium, a spirit.
My possession by this flotsam
Of globalized production
expressed through my comportment. A
slow, seeking gait for the moments
following my unboxing. An insistent
metronomic bell-ringing for the
rhythms of the factory floor and
mechanized production.The bell
mediating between the factory and
The temple, a sonic instrument
that’s both commanding and possessing
A frustrated pacing for the
meditation of my estrangement
from the labor that created me.
Marx gives us a way to think the
workers‘ alienation from what
they make but what of the
alienation of the goods themselves?
How to make sense of a
mass-produced pantyhoses alienation from
the hands that made it? Finally,
my own insignificance downs on me –
I am but one pantyhose among thousands, all packed away obediently
Awaiting their fates. Pacing up
And down between towering columns
Of pantyhose boxes – how to
Enact one’s insignificance? Any
Attempt to do so must
Invariably do so via signification. But
How to arrange something – boxes, limbs –
Such that it expresses nothing? The
Paradox of embodiment itself.
And in my final moments as a deadstock pantyhose this
Is the all encompassing question: how
To exit circulation by
Being nothing
— Mila T Samdub