America Metabolizes Me

Jun’19 – Jun’21
Computational Poetry, Book, Archival Art

As America Merabolizes Me is a multi-medium exploration of cultural assimilation and identity hybridization within American US society. The pandemic lead me to Santa Barbara. The absence of fellow migrants and queers made for fertile ground to confront my ability to “become part of” a new land and society.
Call me Felipe – Exhibition
During my time in Santa Barbara, I collected every cafe receipt in which the barista mispelled my name, Halim. Over a two year period, I became Helene, Halib, Felipe... The archival practice culminated in a triptych titled Call me Felipe.

Haleb

Hadid

Heidi

Helene

Jalin

Helum

Felipe

Jalini

Haline

I logged every receipt I got in a spreadsheet and and how my name was spelled in each. I built a metabolization index based on the count. The more often my name was spelled correctly the higher the index. The index leveled off at 20%.

Metabolization Index

I exhibited Call me Felipe during a solo show at Silo Gallery in Santa Barbara.

Call me Felipe triptych

Silo Gallery

Solo show opening night

In the Name of Scandal – Book
In the Name of Scandal started off as a kickstarter campaign, a collection of poems about sluthood, the immigrant identity, queerness and plants that make you see colors. The book was meant as a raft in a time of confusion. It saved me and made more capable of helping others. It was published in April 2020 and sold over 100 copies. You can purchase it online. To date it has a single review. The review gives it 5 stars.

Reader Rainbow pic #1

Illustrations

Picture with fangs

Cover explorations

Illustrations

Piecing In the Name of Scandal

Reader Rainbow pic #2

Personalized shipping envelopes

The poem as flesh
From In the Name of Scandal

Let me sugarcoat this for you. It seems science has now made it clear that our brain’s evolutionary hunger for faith has been hijacked by ideals meant to camouflage the existential void. Not only have we all been wearing the emperor’s new clothes in the midst of the iciest winter all along. There are no clothes. And we cannot shield against this cold.

Let me make this easier on your palate. The license you were given to produce the meaning of your own life - similar to the DIY Kombucha home brewing kit you were recommended in the section “people who bought this also bought” - is doubly false: First, this license can only be self-issued. Second, if you are to live in full integrity, you might as well burn the license and embrace cheerful despair.

Here’s the silver lining. I am not writing to tell you that you are not alone. You likely are. Or that you are loved. You might not be. I am not here to deliver hope. There might be none. The etymological infrastructure the American intellectual intelligentsia, otherwise known as Hollywood, has laid for the world, like an echo of its own existential despair is not solid enough to build on. “We’re in this together”, “there is always hope”, “justice triumphs”, “good is greater than evil” are prayers not truths.

Right about now, someone’s mind will appeal to the poet’s responsibility. They are not the child from the emperor's tale. Close what you opened. I am not the child who gets a kick out of spooking others. I am the one who covers the lower right side of each page with a doodle to play a story as they flip against my thumb. Who starts the telephone game in class. With the word “mangrove”. And gets “I love you” at the other end. Who adopts precisely the most co-opted word on the planet. And perverts it.

Love as the tiny muscle at the base of each hair follicle whose contraction causes the hair to stand on end. Love as goosebumps. A child’s game. A muscular reaction. Involuntary movement. Like birth. The sliding against a wall of flesh. In the direction of life. How skin precedes air. Touch precedes existence.

Love as muscle. Words as a reminder. Poetry as the last raft. As a handbook for survival. As the hand on your bare back. As flesh, when no other flesh is around. I hope this helps. I hope this helps.

Halim Madi حليم ماضي

America Metabolizes Me