A rotating display in the window of The Flow Chart Foundation, at 348 Warren Street in Hudson, NY.October 2024
Casted Keys
D. Sloan
Eight magic keys revolve interminably, conjuring up a thaumaturgical portal for the residents of Hudson, NY. In one corner lies the book, The Anatomy of Melancholy—its pages sometimes turning on their own.
This presentation by D. Sloan coincides with the latest issue of TRANSVERSALS, a print journal she designs and co-publishes.
“The project behind TRANSVERSALS is to create a self-generating space for the production and publication of experimental works, particularly long-form text (>1000 words) and mixed-media, with an ethos in keeping with Deleuze and Guattari’s call for minor art. Artistic creation is a struggle when meritocratic ideals place trend before rigor, flash before nuance, major before minor. We believe the struggle is worth the effort.”
TRANSVERSALS #5 / Dead Futures pays homage to Mark Fisher and the concept of hauntology. It includes a coin-casting system developed by Sloan (8-bit combinatorics: A beginner's cleromancy) and other contributions aimed at revivifying futures past never realized.
September 2024
Cake: (Archive)
Constance Doulcemer
Cake (Archive) is the most recent in an ongoing series of text/cake objects. Existential sculptures of a sort, the series repeatedly makes use of this format for customizable, decorative text to render phrases that are situated in the immediate moment, while also being somewhat perishable. This dynamic suggests the triumph and dissatisfaction—the short-lived stimulus—of cheap consumption. Each ephemeral cake/object text is determined directly in relation to the context in which it is presented. While the primary message is always “Now,” the secondary message arises from a sensitive consideration of the circumstance.
Designed specifically for the Flow Chart Foundation, Cake (Archive) is at play with the conditions of an archive. Archives, among other things, construct an indexical platform for understanding and building upon past knowledge systems, yet as a monument of many elements, the figure that is at its heart is more than the sum of its parts. Related to the way that reading a poem is like a schematic to rebuild a poetic world in each recitation, to follow a recipe materializes a sensorial reward that will ultimately disappear.
Like Robert Morris’ 1961 work, Box with the Sound of its Own Making, the cake is a text that articulates the process by which it has come to be. Speaking from the perspective of the public-facing platform of the Flow Chart foundation, it sits appropriately in the shadow of a poet who was said to have “constantly contextualized the momentary.”
— Constance Doulcemer
