DIALOGUE #8 PART 2 (OF 2) by Dave Donnelly
A5, 36 pages, Black & white printing, Saddle stitched, Softcover, 2024
If Basic Channel wrote a screenplay... or Hegel tried his hand at a thriller... perhaps even if a prime time cop show was transcribed via morse code... it might come out something like Dave Donnelly's 'Dialogue #8'. No Roof Only Sky 6 is the second half of Donnelly's unstaged play / discursive novelette / ambivalent polemic (first seen in No Roof Only Sky 4), concluding the fictionalised account of an interrogation between two characters (A and B) that features pure dialogue with no stage directions or other messaging. In Part 2, A and B continue to engage in "philosophy with a gun in its hand" via their discussion on the freshly-litigated punishment of "execution by suicide". Sparring over concepts of guilt, punishment, the state and resistance to it, their roles shift and tables turn as power is traded back and forth in a debate to the death. As with Part 1, the included soundtrack features another of Donnelly's live, one-take audio recordings, this time featuring off-kilter kalimba, droning synths and glacial vocal experimentations. Motifs once again drift across the stereo field, this time evoking the gradual ebb and flow of agency experienced by the protagonists, as their dialogue cryptically judders towards its arresting denouement.
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