”Abstract at its best really just denotes digging beneath the surface. Just like experimental, at its best, is directly linked to the verb experiment, like in science, to look closer, to uncover, to rigorously investigate, to try to find out something entirely new..”

The aphorism is a part of literature and theory that seems to have gone missing. If one reads Clarice Lispector, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fernando Pessoa, or E.M. Cioran one finds bookloads sometimes consisting almost only of them. After having more or less finished the novel “Love the World or Get Killed Trying”, which will be published in March 2024, Alvina Chamberland set out to write a novel that doesn’t compromise with her own brain – fragmentary, hybrid, multigenre, diary entries, a few short stories here, a few poems there, and most of all at the heart of it all – aphorisms. The novel, tentatively titled “Transformations (plural) – Freedom From End Goals” is still far from finished, though some parts are more done than others. Among these are the three aphorism chapters, two that are more general and one that specifically deals with specific trans woman-experiences that are rarely discussed. At LALA Alvina will read these chapters from one of the projects she has been working at during her artistic residency at LALA. Some examples, randomly chosen, neither highlights or lowlights:

“An Italian former lover said: Relationships can end for a number of reasons. And I said: What straight trans women want is equal access to those number of reasons, and to not have 90 percent of our relationships ending due to social stigma.“

“A child’s sense of distance closer resembles an ant’s than an adult human’s, a pond becomes an ocean, hills the Himalayas, two kilometers a cross country trek.”

“Take a minute to think about all the things around us we do not see, viruses, bacteria, particles, protozoa, plankton, one-celled, two-celled, three-celled organisms.”

”I care both about the shade of my lipstick and the future of the world. But most importantly… I care.”