Special Tears

“Notes from before” is an initial outpour from Special Tears, a project by Cassandre Greenberg and Christopher Kirubi. The project will examine the trope of crying in its various iterations: as an expression of sadness and grief; as a manipulative affective tool; as a (mis-)gendered response; as a signifier of authenticity etc. Tears – as software – are wetness capable of corrupting hardware but also a moment of affective singularity that is unable to be assimilated into algorithmic processes. We will look to first utilise current technologies available to us – be that modifying, instrumentalizing or even destroying – to understand this intuition.

The main motivation behind the project is a desire for the rethinking of femme identities beyond biological essentialism, and an unraveling of the narrative of the weak, hysterical femme body who cries because she is at the bottom, imagining instead the possibility of crying as a way of getting to the bottom of things.