Army

Bett Butler, Joël Dilley, Janis Butler Holm, Kim Zumpfe

Volume 5, Issue 2

Artists’ Statement

Kim Zumpfe: “Army” started with an urge to steal a friend’s body part. Gina Osterloh’s now truncated and unruly arms (see her original here: https://positjournal.com/2021/05/11/janis-butler-holm-gina-osterloh/) fly madly through space alongside silicone cooking gloves. Rhythms of sound and image create a stage that includes cracks and fractures of the digital, while the fractions of anti-rhythms create an ocean of possibility. Play and absurdity work as a mode of refusal within the functioning politics, structures, and realities of civil society, The State, violence, and the tactical use of arms.

Janis Butler Holm: Kim Zumpfe’s “Army” immediately suggested America’s pressing need to restrain toxic hypermasculinity (think the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol). Sound poems offered the dual possibility of nonsense and critique.