Apprehensive about unnecessary travel, I decided to listen in to my fellow Suzana Milevska’s second event at the ongoing Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen Focus Weeks online from my apartment in Tramin. Instead of Monday, I would leave on Wednesday for Innsbruck, with enough time to prepare for my own event, scheduled for Friday, that I’ve named after the thesis I’m building—In the Name of the Mother. I was proud of myself for having completed a heavy day of work, responding to numerous emails, ideating conceptually, with the right amount of leisure time thrown in (I’d watched the 1987 film adaptation of Dorothy Sayers’ book, Gaudy Night, referenced as the first feminist detective novel) and had even managed to cook two nourishing meals for me and my partner.

He would return home later, on account of work, so I had dinner while watching the beginnings of Suzana’s presentation that was titled, Apologoscopes of Objects, Bodies and Memories: Materiality and institutionality of apology. Part II: Aesthetics of Colonial Apology. For this session, she had invited the researcher Seraphine Appel to speak about Canada as a settler colonialist nation and to explore, more critically, its history relating to its complicity in the erasure of indigenous pasts. Appel made her case so lucidly, drawing from her exposure to indigenous intellectual engagements on the subject. It was perhaps my favourite presentation thus far for its conceptual translucency. At some point, mid-way through, I wrapped up dinner, washed up, and settled myself in my favourite red armchair, placing my laptop on the table to its left, so I had unobstructed access, placing my headphones over my ear so my partner wouldn’t be disturbed when he returned.