23 Sep

Shake, shake! Twist, twist! | Artist talk by Taylor Le Melle

Monstrous Futurities (Sandberg Instituut) and Image & Language (Rietveld Academie) are pleased to invite you to a cross-curricular artist talk as part of the student introductory days at Sandberg Instituut. This is a public talk and all are welcome to attend.

Shake, shake! Twist, twist! I do not believe in the mind/body split! If it was a manifesto, it would argue that writing must be treated as a physical discipline before it can be a cognitive one. If it was a research paper it would argue that repercussions of the violent mechanisms of extractive capitalism are found at the level of the so-called individual body, which anyway is not limited to the boundary of the skin. If it was unsolicited advice from a biohacker it would suggest that eating breakfast is the least (or most?!) a Western European art student can do to FREE anybody. Hmph. If it came from a spiritually oriented mystic, it might say something like working with transgenerational phenomena living inside the nervous system is a pre-condition for any other concrete or relational concerns.

Taylor Le Melle (@taylor.le.melle) is a writer based in Amsterdam and in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Trained as an art historian and curator, she eventually came to her senses and has thus turned to writing. They Set up Parliament in Hell is her most recent novella published by Vleeshal, NL (2026). Other writing includes "Rigour, Not Bound up with Mastery" in Tai Shani's monograph Cosmic Caesious... (2026);  "A Wooden Sculpture in Sylvia Wynter's Hills of Hebron" in Vol. 10 of Artes Mundi Journal; “100 Winner.” in Anthea Hamilton's monograph Mash Up (2023); and “Mary Ellen Pleasant: Black Capitalist” a script for Episode 15 of Drapetomaniax: Unshackled History directed by Micheal Harriot (2023). She has published art criticism regularly for Tangents.art, Flash Art and ArtMonthly. Le Melle has been a Sandberg Instituut Research Fellow (2021-2022) and a Guest Resident at Rijksakademie van Beeldende en Kunsten (2023-2025). Her show Harlem Jazz Standard airs on Radio WORM every 2nd Thursday from September 10 at 4pm CEST.