Tectonic assurance is fragile ground
Tectonic assurance is fragile ground
Referring to the poem by M. Astley
A script-poem conceived over two sessions at HASTAC by, Wendy Chun, Marika Cifor,
Kelly Dobson, Caelin Finnigan, Jace Harrison, Hannah Holtzclaw, Ioana Jucan, Alexandra Juhasz,
Brenda Longfellow, Sylvia Miller, and Karl Surkan, Daniel Temkin, Roopa Vasudevan
Narrator: Okay, there's one person standing alone on stage, we can see their activity on the
screen, and the way that they're represented on the screen is not what they actually look like.
There are ominous warnings flashing on screen that the power is about to go out.
Our character is tapping on the screen.
Person: Oh no! I heard about this happening in another place, is this real?
On-Screen: No, that's not real, that's just fake news, somebody trying to fool you. That never
really happens. “Do not be distracted from the truth of your own body.”
Person: Did you hear that?
On-Screen: What was that? I heard something too!
Narrator: Crashing sounds, the power cuts and the screen disappears, there is the sound of
feedback, then silence. .. the person is alone, they take off their headsets, they are
disheveled and disoriented.
Person: What just happened? Is this real?
On-Screen: “Tectonic assurance is fragile ground.”
Person: What happened to the network? They won't reboot it, what's going on?
Narrator: The voice-over actor comes on stage.
On-Screen/IRL: “The truth is the emptiness in the middle of the atom.”
Person: Who are you? Did you destroy my network? Are you some kid of terrorist?
On-Screen/IRL: “The truth is the impressionability of matter, of us, the truth is a space we fight to shape.”