A reading with Erica Dawn Lyle from her new book, KYANITE. How are we going to take care of each other?!? The urgent question I'd already been asking my friends for years, when put to the test by pandemic and uprising, quickly led to other questions: How will we get capitalism out of our bodies?!? How has fascism eroded from within the very meaning of the words and concepts we hope to use to fight back against it? What are we left with after an attempt at revolution that comes up short? Informed by these questions and more, Kyanite is a fevered conversation taking place in both body and mind – sometimes epistolary, and sometimes while dancing. Equal parts meditation on the terrible demands of utopia, a document of queer communards attempting to develop psychic powers during quarantine, and a hopeful consideration of the power of transgender desire to remake the world.

Erica Dawn Lyle is a writer, curator, experimental musician, and cultural instigator who lives in New York City and Florida. The former touring guitar player for Bikini Kill, as a solo performer, Lyle released musical collaborations with Kim Gordon, The Raincoats, Bernadette Mayer, Kathleen Hanna, Brontez Purcell, and many more. Lyle is the author of Streetopia (Brooklyn, 2015) and On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City (Soft Skull, 2008) and has written for Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, and NPR’s This American Life. Her most recent book is The Knight of Cups (Belladonna Press, 2023).