Transformation is at the core of Conrad’s practice. As a generous and
beloved teacher, their (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals are legendary, as is
their love of crystals, which they often form into a crystal power grid
in their pursuit of transformation. They assemble sites of the possible
and create “laboratories of the future of wild unleashing,” to quote “Chocolate Crack on a Stick,” their ecstatic essay on liberation, love, and the imagination.
I think of CAConrad’s art and ways of being as interventions, creative
acts that aim to restore conditions for regaining presence. You could
say that CAConrad’s practice is a form of magical studies, a practice in
dialogue with the ineffable. As a poet, they enact the role of the
Magician and High Priestess at once. As Damian Rogers
writes of these cards: Magician, a “pan-dimensional change agent,” and
High Priestess, a “vibratory communion.” These were the representational
figures Conrad drew in a tarot reading I gave them as they embarked on
writing While Standing in Line for Death (2017), a book they
wrote when they turned to writing and ritual to cure their depression
after the murder of their boyfriend Earth.
CAConrad composes symbolic and mental landscapes that offer us a glimpse
of what exceeds the reach of language. Their art is that of ritualized
structures that make meaning out of rage and hopelessness; it shapes and
transforms emptiness into meaningful correspondence.
“Mine is a poetics
of uncooperation for all the brutal strategies built to sustain capital
gain,” Conrad once said.
Against the dehumanizing conditions of the
factory in all its forms, CAConrad invents ritual concerning places and
creatures, politics and events, the dead here too, rallying cries. What I
love most is that CAConrad makes possible a vision of the cosmos, in
acts of transcreation, where words, sounds, and images might acquire the
ability to remain open to action and insight, to shape new realities.
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