Art historian, writer and researcher Asia Bazdyrieva explores what happens when both place and people are rendered as components of material exchange. In the sixth and final instalment of Oscillations, Bazdyrieva weaves a short, poetic narrative in which the binaries of witness and protagonist, subject and viewer — the spaces between voice, void and matter — remain in flux.

As I open my eyes I see a face of a woman
in a room lit with surgical light
I feel the urge to tell her
I am in pain
but I cannot make my lips move
and I try harder, and again,
and she comes closer and bends over to my face
and she says
It is now over.

I liked when matter took place
I liked learning without taking things apart,
reaching my nadir,
for some chose to be cruel, rather than honest.

Not trying to make a point, still
speaking in a language that is not mine, not yours.
It reveals the perimeters we could not cross
the demarcations of spaces:
skewed lines
resonances
roaming frequencies
relays

Seeing into the present
She said
was vision of a different kind,
an eye for the formless.

To grasp pauses and slight hitches.
To create pauses and slight hitches.
To become a pause and a slight hitch.
To grasp — without interpretation.

Confidence is a less deliberate choice of words.
The pause before collapse is also a kind of form.
Make sure to never end your statement with a question.