The Heaviest Part To Move is the Word
Film Screenings and Readings
with Courtney Stephens, A Jamali Rad,
Tiziana La Melia, and SF Ho
Tuesday, March 18
Doors: 7:30pm
Event: 8pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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The Poetic Research Bureau invites you to a night of short film screenings and poetry and prose readings with Courtney Stephens, A Jamali Rad, Tiziana La Melia, and SF Ho.
Program Notes
Courtney Stephens will screen Everything I Receive (a collaboration with Lucy Ives, 2021) and other micro-short poem films
A Jamali Rad will read from their new book, No Signal No Noise (Talonbooks 2024)
Tiziana La Melia will read from her new book lettuce lettuce please go bad (Talonbooks 2024) and share excerpts of a new moving image work (Conditions 2024) and excerpts/loops from The Simple Life Uncut
SF Ho will read from Calyx (forthcoming) and George, the Parasite (SPEC/FIC 2021)
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Courtney Stephens is a writer/director of four feature films and numerous shorts. Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly, and Invention, a semi-fiction feature about an esoteric healing device, premiered at Locarno in 2024. In addition to co-curating the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, she has organized film screenings for The Getty, Flaherty NYC, Human Resources, and Museum of the Moving Image. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Film Comment, Cabinet, Filmmaker, and The New Inquiry.
A Jamali Rad is a text-forward artist based on the Traditional Territories of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and Lūnaapéewak Peoples. They have published three full-length books of poetry: for love and autonomy (Talonbooks, 2016), still (Talonbooks, 2021), and No Signal No Noise (Talonbooks, 2024), and their most recent chapbook is WHAT I WANT (Model Press, 2022). They have exhibited and presented work across Canada, in the US, Mexico, UK, and Turkey. Their most recent collaboration is the speculative pedagogies project Doom Studies with Claire Lyke.
Tiziana La Melia is currently playing, working, collaborating and learning on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples. She works across many media such as painting, poetry, sculpture, collaboration, collage and drawing. In her writing and art practice, Tiziana gleans the detritus of the everyday and transmutes it into material textures, and iterative shapes and symbols, which move through layers of diasporic time. La Melia has presented art and writing locally and internationally. They are the author The Eyelash and the Monochrome (Talon Books, 2018), lettuce lettuce please go bad (Talon Books, 2024) and the poetry album Kletic Kink (Tenderly, 2022) that features accompanying musical compositions by Ellis Sam. Current and recent exhibitions of work can be seen at: Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster, Or Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Town & Country: Narratives of Property and Capital, The Belkin (2025); we know nothing about people who don't cry, Romance, Pittsburgh (2025). She is the recipient of the 2014 RBC Painting Prize.
SF Ho is a porous object. They live on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples. Operating somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be, their work is informed by feminist methodologies, land-based practices, and grassroots community networks. Ho has presented their art and writing both regionally and internationally. They’ve published a book about love and aliens called George, the Parasite. They’re cultivating a practice of wary sociality, never finishing books, and being sort of boring.