Textual and visual ephemera along with performative documents stemming from a reading of Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man.

Sibyl’s Mouths is the most recent in a series of publications by Pure Fiction, a writing and performance group with shifting members active since 2011. Earlier this year, Pure Fiction presented an exhibition and performance program at the K lnischer Kunstverein in Cologne titled Shifting Theater- Sibyl’s Mouths. The starting point was a collective reading of Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man, in which the narrator discovers a collection of scribbled oak leaves scattered in a cave outside Naples. Alleged prophecies of the Cumean Sibyl, the textual fragments inscribed on the leaves foretell the story of an epidemic that ravages the globe in the 2100’s-a period where solitude, intimacy, and the perception of time is radically renegotiated.

Through a multiplicity of textual genres and writerly approaches, contributors will examine the questions and forms that emerge from prophecy- the role of the voice in text, writing and performance; fragmentary heterogeneous narratives. The mouth is consulted, not only as a mouthpiece or as a cavernous instrument for vocalization but as an essential part of the digestive tract. Processes in the gut, such as assimilation, excretion, and regurgitation involve multiple temporal directionalities, and may function as metaphorical gateways to intuitive truths.

Contributors Rosa Aiello, Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landstr m, Concha Mendez (tr. by Aislinn McNamara), Luzie Meyer, Vera Palme, Elif Saydam, Mark von Schlegell, Mikhail Wassmer