AMÉRICA | Francisco Mallmann
Figure 1. Francisco Mallmann, AMÉRICA (2018). Image courtesy the artist.
this text was created out loud
to be read out loud
to be printed out loud
to be published out loud
to be shared out loud
to be silenced out loud
to be forgotten out loud
to my sisters
lost in history
this is not a declaration of love
it is a declaration of war
of a war not declared by me
of a war that was already there when I arrived
I looked at myself and I was in a war not declared by me and
because for me land is something else a very different thing
and because this war is first endless battles
against you and against the images you have of me
when I draw on the fiction about purity
you are systematically presenting to me
this war is also against my own image
a faggot at war
I don't want to and won't be what
you want me to be
I am a stain
a bloody and enormous stain
a stain that spreads along your way
this blood will be impossible to clean
this blood is in your history in your art in your hands
my blood is yours
américa
when you imagine the hands of an unknown man
you inevitably think of hands you already know
even though you are not sure of whom they are
they are hands that stayed inside an image
of a man who seems
unknown
when you are asked to imagine the hands of a man
unknown
you need to know that you may find
your own hands
mixed in with this pitch-red image
and you will soon know which
are yours because
they are not the same as the
hands of an unknown man
they are your hands
when the hands of an unknown man
approach and you don't have time
to look and register in detail
the hands of an unknown man
you must not fill the slits of the
image with your
own hands just because they are
the closest hands you
know
from inside redness it’s necessary
to sort the fleshes and never
mistake them
in what language my cry
in what language my shout
in what language my name
my tongue what language
my mother what tongue
what language was this that now I can't speak
in what language would my tongue know how to speak itself
in the dead language who died
when the hands of an unknown man
tear your skin
it is necessary not to wonder
where are your hands
what did they do to stop it
if they are any good
before the hands
of an unknown man
how to use them to stay alive
if tortured hands
can also torture
the question was
if tortured hands
can also torture
the question was
if hands that torture
learn to say
torture before or
after they use their hands
when the hands of an unknown man
touch you it is necessary not to assume that
your own hands know how to move
it is necessary not to answer for the hands
of an unknown man
not to think that
the hands hurt you because yours don’t
know how to hurt
not to think that if you were also a killer
there would be less blood
on this ground
when you imagine the hands of a man
unknown you have to make an effort
not to wish that your hands look like
his
that your hands are also
quick and violent to the blows
of an unknown man
you have to know that they are very different hands
reinforce that these are yours and those
are his and that you devote yourselves to different
gestures
that the exercises are of infinitely different
orders
producing opposite natures
and what I am who will
answer
and what I am who dares
to say
what name is given
what is the name that is given
you're gonna have to prove
to me
you're gonna have to prove
what I am
the hands that wash hands
hand-deliver
are good hands
you are in good
hands
in joined hands
they joined
from here I do not pass
I died in the middle of oncoming traffic
getting in the way of the tropic
cancer of capricorn
when you are asked to imagine the hands of an
unknown man and an unknown man
has already torn your skin
you have to imagine them
without your hands entering the image
without your hands being part of the image
of an unknown man
even if by allusion
comparison or
proximity
the fiction of the neutral image does not exist
for those who can never interpret it
and an unknown man
will follow that man
with bloody hands
what hands can make
a body disappear
there is no missing
body
and there is
and there are
missing bodies
américa
when you imagine the hands of an unknown man
you have to keep yourself disentangled
from the hands of an unknown man
you have to say
these are my hands and they haven’t killed
nobody
yet
formulate a discourse
wait for the word
in the meantime
tear with my teeth
the words that I know
the words that I was taught
the words that destine me
the words that were destined to me
destining me
I grab destiny with my hand
I put destiny in my mouth
I chew destiny
and spit destiny out
here on this
ground
where I was born
and died
(afterwards
the unknown man
appeared to you dying in a nightmare
and you wished that it was
your hands to
kill him)
sometimes hands are not enough
to tell if it is a man
or a woman or even
not man and not woman
sometimes the words man
woman come without hands
sometimes
hands need to say
what they are
sometimes they don’t
when you are asked to imagine the hands of an unknown man
you have to give back to him all the
responsibility of the hands because you never asked
the hands to touch you
to transverse you
to mark you
to exterminate you
in order to
not be killed
first it is necessary
not to be dead
in order to kill yourself
first it is necessary
that no one has ever
killed you
in order to kill yourself
first it is necessary
not to be dead
nor have died
in order to be dead
first it is necessary
not to have killed yourself
nor have died
in order to die
one must still
not to have died
nor have been killed
before
perhaps your image is that of a body lying in a dark street
an open and bloody body
maybe someone will take a picture of your hands
your fingers entwining your fingers
maybe this will be the picture in the news
the text featuring only your name in it
for the unknown man will remain
unknown
when an unknown man has already ripped your skin off
and you imagine the hands of an unknown man
you need to know that the world
still owes you
other images and
other hands
you need to charge the world
other images and other hands
reserving space for the shadow of a talking-faggot
creating in shards an
almost inaccessible geography
reserving yourself the right of a thinking-faggot
to recollection despite it all
producing cavity manufacturing the body
inside of where the eyes of the death
the word so machine
that in it also cannot reach you
resides having time to formulate oneself
what cannot be said when one is not
in front of the enemy destined to be
delivering the speech a very strange thing and only
unfinished allowing yourself a narrative
occupying the bottom destined to
of a space where be failure and ruin
the ruling order increasing
does not yearn to test the failure and ruin
the limits of exoticism inhabiting the mystery
when to you it is
denied
- especially there
being the mystery
YOU OWN ME A HISTORY, AMÉRICA.
américa premiered on march 28, 2019 at selva - mostra de artes degeneradas da casa selvática at tuc - teatro universitário de curitiba, during the curitiba theater festival.
production: selvática ações artísticas
dramaturgy and performance: francisco mallmann
light creation: semy monastier
sound dramaturgy: luciano faccini
in 2020, américa was published as a book of poetry by urutau press. the publication has paratexts by: miro spinelli, júlia raiz and thalita sejanes.