The nymph fucks the willing viewer in the eye in order to live, however ‘diminished’ her reward…images/nymphs are always ‘threatened and in the process of taking on a spectral form’…images that never reach their destination.

…animation reminds us of the promissory nature of images of girlhood…What if the Pathosformel of the nymph is a reanimation that looks forward instead of back. What if the encounter between nymph and viewer results not in reproductive sex, love, enslavement, death and always already afterlife, but in the nymph’s taunts, flirtations, and threats of suicide always never-to-be fulfilled. What if the vitality of the nymph is not in her curling tresses, her dynamic pose, or the consummation of her ‘amorous search,’ but in our group investment in her metamorphoses through time and space.

       - Heather Warren-Crow, Girlhood and the Plastic Image

Lover Discourse is a reading event organized in conjunction with Erin Calla Watson's solo exhibition Nymph. The speakers have selected readings in response to the exhibition, including themes such as YA literature, fan-fiction, lover/friend relationships, and the connections felt towards the 'City'.

Readers:
Francesca Lia Block
Juliana Halpert
Christina Catherine Martinez
Jack Skelley