You have to be gentle and firm all at the same time is an ongoing body of work to be read live, comprised of found texts. These texts have various sources, tones, and voices, but all are essentially reference material, the purpose of which is descriptive and instructive, to be referred back to. In their written manifestations, this body of texts could be described as an archive. 

My use of these texts may be an act of appropriation, but I am more interested in transformation. In the translation from written text to the liveness of spoken text, the use value of this archive is emptied out and the texts become narrative, their language lyrical. While the form of the work is the spoken word, I would describe these works as sculptural props. 

Documentation of a May 9, 2020 live performance, organized by Apparatus Projects, can be found here: https://youtu.be/zQE5RkXh2Ow