Zip’s File: A Romance of Silence explores the longings and limits of bodies oriented to wacky shared futures—of language, of social formations, of gene editing—with the heart of a surrealist, the obsession of a medievalist, and the erotic frankness of a riot grrl, the narrative impulse of a web-surfer, and the anarchic glee of a futurist. From the Egyptian Pyramid texts to Heldris de Cornuälle?s thirteenth century Le Roman de Silence, to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World to Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les mamelles de Tirésias to Roland Barthes’ A Lover?s Discourse: Fragements, and many besides, past texts are wryly ripped, rubbed, and reimagined—all in the species-bending mad-cap adventures of Zip/Zoe and their ornithologist partner, Desiree Gordon.

This is an epic romance told in fragments of journals, performance texts, interviews, short prose, imagist inspired poetry and other documents.