The Brooklyn Rail

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WHO IM FINNA TEACH WITH THEORY HOW NOT TO KILL ME?! [2022]
[An excerpt]¹

CARRY.

I am tired of this. The weight of being a threat who also must protect herself.

Horrific and yet strangely beautiful. I’m interested in showing what the results are. This is what it looks like. This is what preparation for self-defense looks like. If you want to be good at this, this is what the data is. This is what my data is, to show you all that I’m good at this. It’s not just about a bull’s-eye; I’m giving you information about my emotional state and my composure. This emotional state varies depending on the image that I’m facing. My aim is better because I practice without the bullet, I practice without this inherent puncture, which allows me to see myself first.

I have learned how to read a new language, to show precision and aim in a very different way, so that when I get to the range and there is the puncture, I am aware of what is at stake. It’s a terrifying position, but it’s also a space of preparedness that I am invested in.

I utilize four different guns in this project. An AR-15, a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson, a 9-millimeter Glock 48, and a 22-millimeter Walther. Each has its own signature and difficulty based on the weight, the way it draws and handles, the way that it works with my body. And there is a certain kind of knowledge that I have developed and produced, and it’s inherently mine.

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Training to failure is overloading your weights over a significant period of time to create a forced neurological break from the physical body during your reps. This can generate two outcomes: a surprising display of strength, what they call a “good push,” or a complete and utter breakdown in which you simply cannot bypass the neurological break. What happens after is a period of recovery, overnight and across a couple of days, that allows the muscles breaking down to rebuild, creating what we know as muscle gain—extreme extrusions of internal scars.

Alongside this work, I have been training to failure through a weight-lifting practice. I have been measuring my own gains in the physicality of holding each gun and measuring the advancements of my shots over time.

Training to failure can also be understood in relationship to this process of unmasking that I am undergoing as an autistic person. To mask as an autistic person is a form of psychological training to failure. I can push myself to forgo physical and psychological pain and discomfort and am constantly trying to force a break between the mind and the body, so that I can appear neurotypical or what is read as normal behaving. The gains are always false and temporary.

When you train to shoot, you are looking for gains in precision that, if too extreme, touch up against a sociopathic engagement with the device. The less you acknowledge your physical pain, which can occur if you shoot too much, is similar. The desire for the push comes forward. Sweat is present; physical ache is present because of the kickback, depending on the pistol.

You’re my thrilllllll. . . . DRILLLLLL.

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Walking. Suffocating. Precision.

The form removes itself and falls back into this malleable material. This is degradation. The figure, as an invasive entity, evades itself or collapses back into itself. In a sense, there is loss. There’s generational loss as each thing evades itself. And there’s something that can’t be recovered. And in this case, there’s the basicness of the elasticity that annihilates itself to allow itself to be formed again, and again.

I track my walking in my studio. It’s the safest place for this. The data reads as an elegant trace, this archival trace, that is in real-time and shows what I carry with my gait. Depending on the gun, the pressure against my hip, against my crotch, is comforting. Is this what having a hard dick feels like? If so, it’s uncompromising. I develop a sense of loss without it when I travel beyond state lines. To think about what is needed to execute a good shot is about a lack of fear, a lack of affect, and a precise sharpness that borders into a sociopathic-type mind state.

What Black data has meant to this country has been something very specific that has a lot to do with dire needs. The data that I’m rendering is of an individual. This is just me. And it’s also excellence. It’s not something that is of a particular void. I’m actually exploiting the data of what it means to be a good shooter or what it means to be good at this particular thing that is causing me trouble. It’s a hard thing.

There is statistic and data training and trying to get a certain kind of marksmanship, but then there’s the reality of awareness of life that’s in front of you.

In fifteen seconds, I can identify the device that makes the gun work and remove it, leaving it without function. I practice this in ten-minute intervals per gun.

At the end of the day, this is what I do. I learn how to do things in order to take them apart.

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END

1. Artist Statement from MASK/CONCEAL/CARRY exhibition at 52 Walker
   MASK/CONCEAL/CARRY Tiona Nekkia McClodden published by CLARION in October 2023.