#null set

What is a number

but a point on a line?

And a point on a line

isn’t much.

Sure, you can point

to three apples, or two

or six-hundred seventy-four.

And that might be a handful,

an armful, a bushel,

a shopping-cart, car-seat, or more.

But the number itself

is a point on a line,

not something you’re able to touch.

A point has no mass

or substance, or sound.

It weighs less than a drop of good ink.

Now, the Real Number Line,

it’s got heft, it’s got weight.

If you put it in water, it’d sink.

But it is made up

out of points on a line

and each point weights nothing at all.

And nothing times nothing

is exactly the same

as nothing plus nothing, which is

exactly the same

as infinity nothings;

it’s zero, it’s nothing, it’s fizz.

And all counting numbers,

infinity long,

can be crushed up

infinitely small.

And all of the numbers

you know and you love

can fit in a set

we call “null.”

You could subtract that set

from the Real Number line

and it wouldn’t get any less full.

And you may wonder,

how can this be so?

Or you might not believe 

that it’s true.

But what is a number?

Does anyone know?

I certainly don’t,

*

one room

two people

one chair

*

each as fatigued as the other

*

life having dealt them both

a less than winning hand

*

fundamental awareness

led one

to offer the seat to the other

*

fundamental myopia

led the other

to sit down & wonder

*

why the first one is ‘lagging’ on the job.

*

I could say the null set contains the predicate, “Elephants love the taste of human flesh.” It is vacuously true. An alternative predicate is, “All televisions in the room are turned off.” This is true if there are no televisions in the room simply because it is not false. My empty set of carnivorous elephants is true because you cannot find one in my empty set to prove me wrong. Because it is empty.

Null Set Magazine Call for Art & Writings Deadline Extended: December 1, 2018

Null Set and Slag Magazines are teaming up to publish a collaborative issue by and for rural artists. We’re seeking the anti-urban makers, the creators within the bucolic, the cultural organizers and activists of forgotten, ignored, or underrepresented places.

As print publications, we are open to a variety of creative formats like images, text, prose and photos. Web based projects are fine too but hopefully you might suggest a creative physical launch process?

SLAG is particularly interested in social practice, social + relational aesthetics, Arte Útil, and social sculpture projects occurring outside of urban or/and suburban spaces.

NULL SET explores sociopolitical art making and creative interventions and protests in rural and underrepresented spaces, psychosocial practices, performances, propaganda, culture jams, and collaborative happenings that provide inquiry into the disconnect between urban and rural and the communities and cultural capital that occupy these places.

Together, we hope to organize a diverse array of cultural laborers together to break the normalizing narrative that centers the arts into urban places.

Submit your work and proposals to [email protected] for potential inclusion in this cross-country collaboration and publication.

Please send submissions & questions: [email protected]  Please put RURAL in Subject Line SLAG MAG is Old Furnace Artist Residency’s quarterly publication. Each issue has its own theme and is collaboratively designed in digital and print versions. It is archived in Special Collections at James Madison University’s Carrier Library.

NULL SET is an open art collaborative that welcomes rural artists to participate in collective interventions and socially engaged multimedia projects. NULL SET is a proud partner of the Guest House Cultural Capital Residency, a visiting scholar program located in Richland, WA.

Here’s a preview of my contribution to the @nilesfanzine!