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

40,000 ADThe
patron saint of atrophy and ruin; of
bog-land and greying skies drowning in still
tarns. The relics of whom including a single
desiccated coil of brain matter, housed
and amplified by an elaborate golden reliquary
in the form of an oversize (one presumes
oversize) representation of the saintly
brain, where each convolution of the sausages
of neural-network is angulated into
forty-five and ninety degree complications,
swerving in cuboid corkscrews to form, fiagopicted
as presence; though as an absence it
is also, of course, a presence, albeit thinned
to immeasurable, infinitesimal presence –
haunted by its own not inconsiderable exbulk.
Ex-movement. Ex-punches, ex-dismissals,
ex-woundings.
560 BCThe swollen relics of the patron saint of anthropocentrics
and undergraduates.
560 ADPermanent indentations in the sun-bleachedpale-pink
deep-shag carpet; dust-heavied
swathes of which surrounding islands of
intense, hidden colour and pattern – an archipelago
of absent objects. The deep tracks
made by the impatient dragging of heavy
wooden things with sharp feet – murdered
accomplices, expatriated bastards, entire
suits of armour, nail-rivened fetishes, blades.
Desire lines from bathroom to bed, kitchen
to settee, settee to toilet – scrubbed into the
wooden floor.