Cirrus@Austlit

'After one year, 80 gigs and countless nights worrying, I finally told my parents I did stand-up comedy. As the daughter of first generation migrants from India, I’ve always felt like I’ve been living with a dual existence, especially while following and fostering a career in the arts. Like poetry, which I studied passionately at university, what I love about comedy is its ability to explore and express paradoxes, an art form which in itself carries irresolvable contradictions. I’ve been writing and performing stand-up for five years now and in this essay I outline three areas of comedy which include at the same time as they elude, binary thinking. While there is a disproportionate lack of academic writing on comedy (dating back to the Ancient Greeks), people have long been pondering the question of what makes us laugh. Speaking from my first-hand experience and research, I will explore this question with regard to the process of writing and performing comedy, navigating the politics of performing as a woman of colour, and ultimately co-creating each performance with a different audience.'  (Introduction)

'Welcome to the world of snackable content.

'Listen closely: like an ambient soundscape, its soft tides wash over you and you devour it quickly. Sometimes, it repeats an opinion you’ve already developed, affirming previously held beliefs. From afar this tone appears poetic but zoom in closer and you will see that they are generated to trigger particular affective feeling – what Sianne Ngai describes as ‘the aesthetic experience in which astonishment is paradoxically united with boredom’. Did SEO create this monster? Or was it the inner workings of the thing we now call capitalist realism? The answers lie inside your personal algorithm, an enigmatic void that soothes your soul with its mirrors.'  (Introduction)

'It’s a putting oneself into a space of deliberate uncertainty. Stepping into the unknown. A practicing in that space. Training. It’s about thinking provisionally. Speaking small. Not for all.

'It’s about languaging. Being attentive to words, to meaning. To the meaning that can be smuggled in however unwittingly.

'It’s about taking seriously – which might have nothing whatsoever to do with being serious.'  (Introduction)

'In February 2021 I interviewed Marion May Campbell as part of my ongoing research into contemporary feminist creative practice. This text is an amalgamation of the interview that also includes my poetic and critical reflections that emerged as I was transcribing. Many thanks to Marion for her generosity in being open to the interview and the resulting form of our exchanges.' (Introduction)

'π.ο. is a great poet. He was interviewed in Cordite Poetry Review in 2001, so 20 years later we are able to hear his enlivening words again. π.ο came to the attention of Debris Facility during the course of 2021 and his poetics provide a much-needed structure, formula and horizon from which to orient a practice unseparated from life. To forefront the anarchist politics within poetry is to invest in the liberatory potentiality within the agency of reading and writing. We had instantly been drawn to the power of his practice, its function and what information and meanings we were able to be transmitted through it. The collective modes of publishing π.ο. has committed to resonate with Debris Facility’s methods of multiple agencies and voices. We had bought the available back catalogue of π.ο.’s books, picking them up personally, and paying with cash. The material context of this is relevant, though not the most important. This interview was conducted over a week of emails, at the invitation of Autumn Royal. In acknowledgment of the shared work present, our fee will be divided evenly. This conversation is one step towards what is hoped to be a friendship, which accounts for overlapping and divergent practices, but grounded in solidarity.'  (Introduction)