VIEW FROM A FOLDING CHAIR

Mónica de la Torre

Never decorative, it embodies a chair’s provisional character.

Utilitarian, never just there, called upon to serve.

Communal, egalitarian, leveling its occupants, gathered for an
occasion.

Rarely will it hold the sitter captive. Its precariousness invites
walkouts, even when the seat is secured by an admittance fee.

Repositionable, it favors assorted geometries of attention: the
frontal and single-focused, the shifting and radial.

Irreverent, whether in an institutional setting or not, signaling
reversible orders.

Possibly carnivalesque, displaying an upside-down world, as in:

a projection of the high-desert landscape and transit
surrounding an old ice plant in the desert
requiring no other technology but a lens and a dark room;
ironically inverted in this picture of a tiny fraction of the
planet—
with no search engine logo and copyright date camouflaged
to appear like a wisp of a stratus cloud—
is the electrical plant across the street
grids reversed, as is the soundtrack, extemporaneously
produced
by the cars and pickup trucks seen fleeting by from east to
west though by the sound we know they’re going west
to east, and vice versa;
 
a projection within a projection

these are moving images to experience, but not keep.

Unsung, stacked, piled against a wall, or hidden in closets,
folding chairs will be counted on again since, plastic palace
people, they’re both transience and ritual.

Welcome into the fold. Who cares what the future brings.

 

 

Excerpted from The Happy End / All Welcome, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017

Contents

AVAILABLE POSITIONS
Mónica de la Torre

Bojana Cvejić
Interviewed by Christina Schmid

Bodega Series
Drawings by Tschabalala Self

Gabrielle Civil, Mankwe Ndosi
In Conversation

VIEW FROM A FOLDING CHAIR
Mónica de la Torre

Full Bleed
Adam Milner

Patrick Staff
Interviewed by Sara Cluggish

Equiknoxx
Interviewed by Shawn Reed

Funky Transformation
Recipe by Ann Kim

VIEW FROM AN AERON CHAIR
Mónica de la Torre

Contributors

Image Credits

Issue 14

Issue 13

Issue 12

Issue 10

Issue 9

Issue 8

Issue 7

Issue 6

Issue 5

Issue 4

Issue 3

Issue 2

Issue 1