In the Zone, there is no beginning, middle, or end—they have been erased. But there is a before, during, and after—they are activated. Zone is the space between text and world that productively activates them.
—Introduction to reading from Zone: correlations (1973 2021), 15 March 2026
For my reading from Zone, I prepared a score made by randomly sampling and sequencing selections from across its twelve separate works, a continuous presentation without individual titles and with little or no comment, with the exception of an occasional nod to an audience member (George Lakoff, Brian Ang) mentioned or inferred in the text, and on one occasion to interact with loud street music coming from outside the gallery space. This is a strategy I have deployed on a number of occasions, and it suggests or “rhymes” with the modular construction of most if not all the works in Zone, each built up by differing versions of sampling and sequencing. Brian Ang noticed this strategy in a reading I gave at Kelly Writers House in 1999 (here). In dialogue with Ang’s account, I documented two readings from 2013, in Nuremberg and Amsterdam, for their sampling and sequencing strategies (Nuremberg here; Amsterdam here). … More
