Superimpositions

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I spent last week in San Francisco at my workplace’s extremely big and fun design conference with my dreamy colleagues and 8,000 attendees from all over the world. In particular, it felt very wild to experience the dual forms of a very in-person and well-designed conference environment with the layer of virtual conversation on top. I’d sort-of forgotten what it was like to have these experiences overlaid: the embodied reality full of smiles, hugs, too-bright lighting, and being thirsty/hangry/overwhelmed paired with the surrounding digital chatter.

I felt these binaries — virtual or in-person, present or absent, being a part of it, or lurking — collapse for the first time in a long time.

Also, you know what I’ve been thinking about? The best thing: when two or three (or more) images are just perfect together. Diptychs, or collage. A video fading into another video. Little poetic transitions and juxtapositions. It’s something I obsess about in the graphic world. When the images are just right it’s magic. This is why I love Jason Fulford’s photo books so much: the image sequencing and storytelling is unreal, joyous and surprising.

I’ve seen some art lately that’s given me different juxtapositions and superimpositions to think about too. It’s all work that complicates the real and imagined in different ways, and feels like it gets at some of the hybridness I’ve been feeling.

FISK hosted Mindy Seu for a fabulous hybrid reading/performance mid-June. I’ve followed Mindy’s project, Cyberfeminism Index, for years and was blown away by her approach to the performance technically and creatively.

You can watch a version of it on YouTube, here:

She begins by demonstrating how to use the Index with an overhead camera pointed at the book and her hands. She jumps from section to section. Once she starts digging into the content, some AR-magic triggers digital overlays that expand the content into additional dimensions. What begin as printed screenshots in the book come alive into video.

I felt moved by the layers of technology here. Uncoated paper recorded and projected. A fingertip. Flipping pages. The weird high/low hybrid-ness of AR bringing archival video into the frame. So good.

I caught This is the Future on its last day at the Portland Art Museum. You enter the gallery and watch a piece, set in the future, about a woman who’s imprisoned and using machine-learning to create and cultivate majorly magical healing plants. Steyerl created the piece in 2019 and the visuals are all ML-generated, and have that sickening, morph-y quality that a lot of generative video (particularly of humans) still has. Everything feels ephemeral and in-motion. Bodies feel formless. Colors are garish and all too-red or too-green.

At the end of the video piece, there is a dramatic transition in which the projection disappears to reveal a back room filled with specimens of the flowers and plants, continuing to morph and shift on sparkling video channels.

They’re all set on these gorgeous glossy black armatures, and the ground’s covered in olivine. Screens display text that says things like:

These floral productions flourish in triumph, upon the ruins of digital disruption

and

Use the CO2 extract to poison your local autocrat

or

Drink the tea and give no fucks

Watch the video above if you’re curious to hear Steyerl’s hot takes on AI optimism. ;)

I can’t find any proper photographic documentation of Farah Al Qasimi’s show at SFMOMA. But if you’re in SF any time before December — see it!! For now my bad phone photos will have to do.

Al Qasimi’s installation incorporates gorgeous printed photographs, wallpaper, and single-channel videos. The work feels like it represents what I call ethereal weird beautiful trash world. She’s got it all: parakeets, dead fish, gurlies being hotties, vacant spaces, silk, and snails.

My colleague Chelsea noted that none of the images alone blow you away, but together and on top of one another they feel transcendent. The pairing of images and texture (dotty wallpaper, glossy frames) is next-level.

And snails. I really vibed with the snail content at this show! And in fact I just bought a photograph by Will Matsuda from Hi Books of a snail on a hand… what does it mean?!

I’ll be thinking about it.

Also:

• There’s something fishy going on with 303 Creative v. Elenis

• For the Tim Robinson fans (not me!!!)

That’s all for now. ♡