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The “genotype” is her genetic constitution.

The “phenotype” is the observable expression of the genotype as structural and bio-chemical traits.

Genetic disease is extreme genetic change, against a background of normal vari-ability.

Within the conventional unit we call subjectivity due to individual particulars, what is happening?

She believes she is herself, which isn’t complete madness, it’s belief.

The problem is not to turn the subject, the effect of the genes, into an entity. Between her and the displaced gene is another relation, the effect of meaning.

The meaning she’s conscious of is contingent, a surface of water in an uninhabited world, existing as our eyes and ears.

You wouldn’t think of her form by thinking about water. You can go in, if you don’t encounter anything.

Though we call heavy sense impressions stress, all impression creates limitation. I believe opaque inheritance accounts for the limits of her memory.

The mental impulse is a thought and a molecule tied together, like sides of a coin.

A girl says sweetly, it’s time you begin to look after me, so I may seem lovable to myself.

She’s inspired to change the genotype, because the cell’s memory outlives the cell. It’s a memory that builds some matter around itself, like time.

–from The Four Year Old Girl, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

The pairing of this poem and this image can be found in Heads and Tales by Heide Hatry. Images of Hatry’s sculptures are coupled with pieces by writers like Bersssenbrugge, Thalia Field and Joanna Howard.

Creating Life

The portraits in Heads and Tales are photographic documentations of sculptures I made out of animal skin and body parts, intended to provide springboards for stories, reminiscences or meditations on the lives of women. I asked a number of writers I admire to select the image of one of my women and create a life for her. As the work addresses issues of violence, death and gender identity, the writing reflects similar concerns as they are specific to women, not necessarily from an obviously politically fraught or polemical perspective, but more typically resorting to fantasy, satire, irony, and other subversive modes of presentation to disrupt the hegemony of the everyday and release the power of its horror.

–from Hatry’s artist statement.

Read and view more at Trickhouse.