speaking from the I eye x loom literary journal launch

To celebrate the launch of their second issue, Loom Literary Journal presents a night of readings and screenings in collaboration with speaking from the I eye. A screening of Maya Deren’s film Meshes of the Afternoon, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Blue and Naghmeh Abbasi’s film Landscape Suspended is accompanied by newly commissioned readings from Autumn Royal, Wen-Juenn Lee and André Dao.

Loom is a new interdisciplinary literary journal that works in conversation with non-textual artistic mediums—both thematically, via longform visual art, music, film and theatre criticism; and formally, via the publication of experimental interdisciplinary literary work. Loom’s second issue, ‘Cut’, focuses on film and screen-based media. The launch will feature short films by Maya Deren, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Naghmeh Abbasi where attention is paid to interior and exterior landscapes, to questions of time, to dreams and to lingering spaces of light and shadow. Autumn Royal, Wen-Juenn Lee and André Dao will perform ekphrastic pieces written in response to these films.

Copies of Loom Issue One and Two as well as limited edition prints will be available to purchase.

Maya Deren was born Eleonora Derenkowsky in Kiev in 1917 and came to the United States in 1922. She was an experimental filmmaker, dancer, poet and writer. She is known as one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century. Meshes of the Afternoon was made in collaboration with her husband Alexander Hammid.

Autumn Royal reads and writes letters of notice.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul grew up in Khon Kaen in north-east Thailand and lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He began making film and video shorts in 1994. His works are characterised by their use of non-linear storytelling, often dealing with themes of memory, loss, identity, desire, and history. He is recognised as a major international filmmaker and visual artist and has won numerous prizes, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

Wen-Juenn Lee writes poetry on unceded Wurundjeri land. In her writing, she is interested in gaps, leaks and spillage. She was the Hyphenated Projects x Liminal Fellow, a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, and was awarded the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award. Her writing has been published in HEAT, Meanjin, Cordite and Going Down Swinging, among others.

Naghmeh Abbasi is an artist and filmmaker based in Tehran. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Film, Video and Integrated Media from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and an MA in Media Studies from The New School. Her work moves between experimental cinema and moving image practice, often attending to states of suspension, interiority, and constrained space.

André Dao is an author and researcher from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. His debut novel, Anam, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Voss Literary Award. In 2024, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist.