notes.husk.org/likes images.

Top, Anouk Kruithof,  AHEAD (Version I), 2015, installation of the exhibition on view at FOUR A.M. until August 5, 2015. Via. Bottom, Tobias Madison, Dilemma 2, 2015, Neoprene, zipper, 63 x 115 x 7 cm. Via.

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Clearly the couple form as currently practiced is an ambivalent one—indeed, a form in decline say those census takers—and is there any great mystery why? On the one hand, the yearning for intimacy, on the other, the desire for autonomy; on the one hand, the comfort and security of routine, on the other, its soul-deadening predictability; on the one side, the pleasure of being deeply known (and deeply knowing another person), on the other, the straitjacketed roles that such familiarity predicates—the shtick of couple interactions; the repetition of the arguments; the boredom and the rigidities which aren’t about to be transcended in this or any other lifetime, and which harden into those all-too-familiar couple routines: the Stop Trying To Change Me routine and the Stop Blaming Me For Your Unhappiness routine. (Novelist Vince Passaro: “It is difficult to imagine a modern middle-class marriage not syncopated by rage.”) Not to mention theregression, because, after all, you’ve chosen your parent (or their opposite), or worse, you’ve become your parent, tormenting (or withdrawing from) the mate as the same-or-opposite-sex parent once did, replaying scenes you were once subjected to yourself as a helpless child—or some other variety of family repetition that will keep those therapists guessing for years. Given everything, a success rate of 50 percent seems about right (assuming that success means longevity).

Laura Kipnis, Against Love, 2003. Via.

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‘Well,’ I say, ‘any time you’re in Edinburgh …’ She shakes her head and looks away, then smiles gallantly for me and tips her head indicating. 'That’s your boat, Cameron.’ I just stand there, nodding like an idiot, wanting to say the one right thing that must exist for me to change all of this, make it good, make it all better, make it eventually happen happily for us, but know that that thing just doesn’t exist and there’s no point looking for it, and so just stand there nodding dumbly with my lips trapped compressed between my teeth, looking down, not able to look her in the eyes and knowing that’s it, the end, goodbye … until after those moments she puts me out of my misery and puts out her hand and gently says, 'Goodbye, Cameron.’ And I nod and shake her hand and after a while I get my mouth to work and it says, 'Goodbye.’ I hold her hand one last time, just for a moment.

Iain Banks, Complicity, 1996, p.286. Via.