Edwin Torres & Stephen Vitiello

Edwin Torres' poetry collections include, The Animal's Perception of Earth (DoubleCross Press), XoeteoX: the infinite word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press), Yes Thing No Thing (Roof Books), In The Function of External Circumstances (Nightboat), and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). He has performed his bodylingo poetics worldwide and received fellowships from; The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The DIA Foundation, among others. Anthologies include, Fractured Ecologies, Who Will Speak For America, American Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, Kindergarde: Avant Garde Poems For Children, and Aloud: Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Café.

Stephen Vitiello is an electronic musician and media artist. CD, LP and digital releases have been published by New Albion, Sub Rosa, 12k, and Room 40. His sound installations and multi-channel works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon. Over the last 25 years, Vitiello has collaborated with such artists and musicians as Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Taylor Deupree, Joan Jonas, Tony Oursler, Steve Roden and Scanner. Vitiello has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for “Fine Arts,” a Creative Capital grant for “Emerging Fields” and an Alpert/Ucross Award for Music. Originally from New York, Vitiello is now based in Richmond, VA where he is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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: walking gesture 1 : Edwin Torres (improvised text) & Stephen Vitiello (improvised audio) :

bell plumb-lined

daggered fault line

find the branches that overlay

find the cell structures the neighborhoods over each other

find the eyesight the eyeballs the cranium

the bodies aligned over each other in the ship in the sleep

in the bunk bed find your brother

find the vehicles the traffic jam

find the structures that form where light

intercedes interlaps interover the where we are

I saw a guy walk down the street

and kept walking right by me no mask

I saw exactly who he was not hidden

I saw exactly where he was coming from no path

no past no moving

I saw where he might have been

if it had been me so I saw where I was going

where I went is where he was so what did I see

the decisions that become the incisions that's too easy

the decisions that we choose propelled behind by where

we were just

it's not alignment that pushes you

if it's not alignment

that pushes you than if

is what pushes you

I saw what I thought I was finding but

I wrote about that already so why write about it again

I saw this other guy walk by and he wore a mask

easily everyone could see

his mask

everyone has one I wore my precovid mask

walking down the street no one knew who I was

I prefer it that way

I saw what I was walking towards against what I was

and what I wore was what I needed so

funny how we look at our alignment

as what we need not what we have or are or were

don't use your cell phone while you're walking don't drive

don't drive don't drive while folding

watch your distractions control your distractions don't walk

without a mask that's too easy

it's a matter of bringing the everything into the one

the every perspective into the one vantage point

isn't that what we do when we walk a top bottom left right

all around our 360 is a continual paradigm the story I'm telling

is continually revolving around me as I'm talking as I'm saying it

its continually revolving what I'm seeing is what I'm walking in

continually revolving what I'm walking in the things I see

as I walk do not stop anytime

like the sign says

I saw a sign on the street

no stopping anytime

one way one way

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Torres photo by Jeffrey Pethybridge