Undocumentaries

Author: Rosa Alcalá

Publisher: Shearsman Books (2010)

"If poetic episodes can act as gauges of social role-playing and role-disruption, what might lie 'outside' the roles 'we' 'inhabit?' What remains undocumented, but hardly silent? What are the sensed and projected traces of 'identity' that are ideologically eviscerated, and minimally verifiable? Rosa Alcalá calls up a most magical theater when exploring these quandaries. The tipping (flash) points she constructs continuously build up toward the (touched, handled, engaged) experiential moment, all the while resisting an object-status art. This is a poetics that's prologue + epilogue to incidence, and never the 'it' itself. Sweet tin on tawny brass, flesh-toned, radio-worthy."

–Rodrigo Toscano