For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

sleeping, fucking, shitting, etc.) – and, accordingly, it takes
a while for the others to notice. Eventually, however, the
fluidity of the surrogate begins to be stymied by an inevitable
state-change into dry, cracked earth at one extreme, and
brown smoke at the other. These states are more conspicuous
in their difference to the original – the person, being, whatever.
Harder to cuddle, is how the hieroglyphs put it. This
leading, inevitably, to the sad ostracising of the subject [...]
Stepping back, its clear you’ve made a complete mess of Yul’s
head. Latex skin peeled back, split – hanging in obscene
sheets down his back – parcels of cabling (earth, live and
neutral) jutting stiff in
every direction. And that
beautiful mahoga-
ny edifice beneath,
shining with a
beeswax-lustre, the
intricate designs
of vines creeping
up and about the
wood in precise,
burnt gullies.
Not vines but
briar – densely
thorned. Leading
up to the cra-
nium and the
hieroglyphs whose
object, it seems clear
now, is that frighten-
ing deity of CGI’d fat
and flesh – a capsule of pulverised flesh, worshipped – or at
least beatified. A future food-stuff: genetically engineered
and grown (on the side of a fallen tree, accidentally discovered
by dog walkers some time in the twenty-second century)
– meat-spheres. One of which mutates, gains the power
of thought, rebels, enslaves, becomes a god, devours and
devours and devours everything till there’s no sustenance
left. Etc. [...] You go – I’ll clear this ungodly accident up.)
[...]