Inside this box is a book that holds thirteen letters written between 2019 and 2022 by the artist Yamine Elmelegy to the sculptor and industrialist Fathy Mahmoud (1918-1982). Yasmine never met Fathy Mahmoud but started writing these letters shortly after she discovered that a cup she has at home is signed by him. This happened only days after she learnt that Fathy Mahmoud was responsible for a series of iconic public statues in Cairo and Alexandria. The letters show Yasmine’s search for what is left from Fathy Mahmoud’s artworks, the porcelain plates and cups he produced, the factories he founded and the history he left behind about the relationship between art and industry.
Becky posed this question in her piece, which speaks to a lot of what we’re trying to capture here in Drown, Good Drown.
In their own way, the writers expressed consciousness and subconsciousness immersed in empathy, stories with sentiment and hints of humor, sadness, and joy. These writings and drawings were made by us ArtCenter College of Design students in the summer of 2022.
Actually, Megan hates summer. As Megan says, “summer’s role is to forever choke and steal what life came after winter.”
She thinks June is okay.
Rachael gave us a downpour of thoughts, an imagistic stream of consciousness straight to our souls, and Sophia spoke in a tender melodic tone provoking a sense of coziness and the tension of intimacy.
While Ibrahim imagined life undersea as a telepathic realm of shadow twins.
Along with Constant’s honesty and vulnerability, we also got to share his quiet but bold humor reflected in his story.
We almost named the publication Esther Williams because of Natalia’s misfit mermaid tale, which inspired us to be who we really are.
My story of reminiscing leads to the end of the book leaving softhearted fragrances of nostalgia.
Me. Cringe.
Drown, Good Drown, I think, is most importantly a collaboration. We’re all so different. You’ll see. But our different perspectives are reflected in drawings and stories. We mish and mash our creative minds for a submersive experience for the reader more than any of us could accomplish on our own.
So we invite you to pour yourself a cool water on the rocks, snorkel through our creative minds, and drown in the world of our stories.
Trust me; it will be a good drown.
– The Editor
* Type+Authorship is a multi-disciplinary class taught at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. We conjure, discuss, and immediately write our way into a book of collective thematic interest and function within an aggregate studio environment where we design and produce a publication.
Contributors: Alexia Achilleos, Zach Blas, Frances A. Chiu, Ami Clarke, Régine Debatty, Mary Flanagan, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Srecko Horvat, Salvatore Iaconesi, Olga Kopenkina, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Shu Lea Cheang, Gretta Louw, Joana Moll, Laura Netz, Eryk Salvaggio, Devon Schiller, Guido Segni, Gregory Sholette, Karolina Sobecka, Alan Sondheim, Michael Szpakowski, Eugenio Tisselli, Ruben Verwaal, Paul Vanouse.
Frankenstein Reanimated is a book for our strange times. Bang up to date it includes essays and artworks that engage with the Covid-19 pandemic, through to weird new imaginings of humanmachine hybrids. A striking cover with flaps displays a tryptich by artist Carla Gannis, a bespoke narrow format, and over 100 illustrations inside make this an attractive book for a wide range of audiences.
Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror and science fiction novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has inspired millions since it was published in 1818. Today, we are witness to many different horrors and phantoms of our own creation. Chronic wealth and health inequalities, climate change, democratic collapse, and the spectre of nuclear apocalypse are among the diffuse, monstrous products of our “advanced” technological moment. Frankenstein Reanimated presents a dynamic collection of artworks, essays, and conversations, addressing surveillance, biohacking, viruses, colonialism, digital culture, and more. It retraces and contextualises three international art exhibitions exploring themes within Frankenstein, and speculates on what Mary Shelley would think about the world today. Collectively, the book offers a lens through which to look at our current situation, and how art practices shape, and are shaped by, contemporary society.
“This collection shines a light on artists as critically engaged citizens providing a kaleidoscopic view on our unevenly distributed future. These are the Frankensteins we need!” — Felix Stalder, Zurich, University of the Arts
“Frankenstein Reanimated is an important record of some incredible artists working today, who both dismantle and rebuild our contemporary technological systems, profoundly reimagining everything from facial recognition to AI, 3D printing to virtual gaming environments.” — Sarah Cook, University of Glasgow
Accounting for approximately 10 % of the land mass of Planet Earth, the Antarctic is a Global Commons we collectively neglect. Far from being a pristine natural landscape, the continent is a contested territory which conceals resources that might prove irresistible in a world with an ever-increasing population. The 26 quadrillion tons of ice accumulated on its bedrock, equivalent to around 70 % of the fresh water on our planet, represent the most significant repository of scientific data available. It provides crucial information for future environmental policies, and, at the same time, is the greatest possible menace to global coastal settlements when sea levels rise because of global warming.
On the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, Antarctic Resolution offers a high-resolution image of this hyper-surveilled yet neglected continent. In contrast to the fragmented view offered by Big Data companies, the book is a holistic study of the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. A transnational network of multidisciplinary polar experts – represented in the form of authored texts, photographic essays, and data-based visual portfolios – reveals the intricate web of growing economic and strategic interests, tensions, and international rivalries, which are normally enveloped in darkness, as is the continent for six months of the year.
With contributions by Doaa Abdel-Motaal, Conrad Anker, Ryan Ashworth, Francesco Bandarin, Carlo Barbante, James N. Barnes, Thomas Barningham, Carlo Baroni, Susan Barr, Elisa Bergami, Marcelo Bernal, Anne-Marie Brady, Ralf Brauner, Cassandra M. Brooks, Shaun T. Brooks, Hugh Broughton, Bert Bücking, David Burrows, Sol Camacho, Sanjay Chaturverdi, Swadheet Chaturvedi, Christy Collis, Peter Convey, Geoff Cooper, Gabriele Coppi, Ilaria Corsi, Lino Dainese, Klaus Dodds, Julian Dowdeswell, Juan Du, Graeme Eagles, Tess Egan, Alexey Ekaykin, Fausto Ferraccioli, Joe Ferraro, James Rodger Fleming, Adrian Fox, William Fox, Bob Frame, Peter Fretwell, Jacopo Gabrielli, Hartwig Gernandt, Andrew Gerrard, Neil Gilbert, Karsten Gohl, Francis Halzen, Kael Hanson, Ursula Harris, Judith Hauck, Robert Headland, Beth Healey, Alan D. Hemmings, Adrian Howkins, Kevin A. Hughes, Andrew T. Hynous, Julia Jabour, Stéphanie Jenouvrier, Solan Jensen, Andrea Kavanaugh, Daniel Kiss, Georg Kleinschmidt, Alexander Klepikov, Peter Landschützer, Louis John Lanzerotti, Elizabeth Leane, Sang-Lem Lee, Inti Ligabue, Daniela Liggett, Bryan Lintott, Vladimir Y. Lipenkov, Cornelia Lüdecke, Arturo Lyon, James Madsen, Craig McCormack, Tony McGlory, Hans-Jürgen Meyer, Christel Misund-Domaas, Nicholas de Monchaux, Chiara Montanari, Michael Morrison, Teasel Muir-Harmony, John Nelson, Camilla Nichol, Miranda Nieboer, Anne Noble, Dirk Notz, Shaun O’Boyle, Madeleine O’Keefe, Nouschka Očenášek, Lawrence A. Palinkas, Scott Parazynski, Carolina Passos, Michael Pearson, Francesco Pellegrino, Rick Petersen, Katherina Petrou, Andrea Piñones, Jean-Yves Pirlot, Ceisha Poirot, Jean de Pomereu, Alexandre Ponomarev, Brian Rauch, Ron Roberts, Donald R. Rothwell, Juan Francisco Salazar, Jean-Baptiste Sallée, Sir Philippe Samyn, Bojan Šavrič, Mirko Scheinert, Didier Schmitt, Thomas Schramm, Daniel Schubert, Karen Nadine Scott, Cara Seitchek, Maria Ximena Senatore, Jonathan Shanklin, Yuri Shibaev, Tim Stephens, Pavel G. Talalay, Steve Theno, Paul Thur, Philip Trathan, David Vaughan, Emerson Vidigal, Claudio Willams, Gary Wilson and Angela Wright.
The Dynamic Archive 01 (thedynamicarchive.net) has been an online platform since 2018. The Version Room as physical gallery space is known as The Dynamic Archive 02.
It compiles various margin notes and contexts related to the components of the online platform and the themes of collaborative work in the context of art, which were presented, performed or heard at certain points within the context of the artistic-scientific research project The Dynamic Archive, and are now the starting points for contributions to this book. The archive’s various framings are interrupted by numerous, very different Definitions of The Dynamic Archive written by invited artists, designers, and scientists who have had experiences with The Dynamic Archive, all of which demonstrate that The Dynamic Archive is a great many things simultaneously. Contributions range from artists who worked with us in our Artist in Residency programs, such as Ho Tzu Nyen and Antonia Baehr, to artists and designers who were invited to give a lecture like Susanne Kennedy, MPA, Emma Hedditch or Sven Jonke from Numen / For Use as well as many others who contributed with their components or within the program Version Room with The Dynamic Archive. This publication is as well an overview of how it has developed until now and a starting point for further thought on what The Dynamic Archive can be.
Contributions by: Florian Ackermann, Victor Artiga Rodriguez, Antonia Baehr, Ralf Baecker, Franziska Bauer, Heike Kati Barath, Harm Coordes, Jorn Ebner, Aria Farajnezhad, Ana Filipović, Elburuz Fidan, Anja Groten, Emma Hedditch, Lena Heins, Julian-Anthony Hespenheide, Iris Maria vom Hof, Pirkko Husemann, Moritz Ingwersen, Charlotte Jarvis, Susanne Kennedy, Irena Kukrić, Ingmar Lähnemann, Leon Lothschütz, Sebastian Lütgert, Mona Mahall, Katrin von Maltzahn, Johanna Mehl, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Eva Meyer-Keller, MPA, Numen / For Use, Henrik Nieratschker, Ho Tzu Nyen, Lucas Odahara, Dennis P. Paul, Luiza Prado, Marijana Radović, Iulia Radu, Guida Ribeiro, Emilia Schlosser, Asli Serbest, Pablo Somonte Ruano, Raphael Sbrzesny, Mona Schieren, Carmem Saito, Andrea Sick, Luiz Zanotello.
“In a house you wanted to intrude, searching for a narrative you’ve detected between a character, images and photographs. I remember bumping against a floor lamp, causing its glow to waver briefly. Trying to ascertain the transmissions while already standing in front of objects that demand to be looked at.”
‘At the window’, ‘out there on the street’, ‘here in the room’ are three perspectives from which two protagonists are portrayed on a stage in the format of one publication. Illuminated by the screen of its own projection, ‘About Jane Dickson and Maximilian Klawitter’, in 18 chapters, comprises image based as well as textual documentation of an encounter.
“If it is somehow identifiable as part of a referential system, we immediately understand the meaning of a line on a piece of paper. A horizontal line will be easily read as a minus, an em dash or a way on a map, no matter how sloppily it is written or drawn.”
‘Resisting Exactitude’, a short text by Yara Feghali and Iulia Nistor, leads the reader through cases where the line, transferred from the abstract to the physical, turns out to be different than intended, and can be both problematic or productive. Chapters include ‘City, plot, land demarcation’, ‘Room, wall, corner’, ‘Paper, hand, drawing’ and ‘Mind, thinking, definition’.
Gentrification is not a law of nature, it is a war against the low-income. It is planned for the long term and sustainably supported by political actors. Between 2008 and 2018, Ina Wudtke’s work focused on the de-housing of low-income households in city centres. The Fine Art of Living sheds light on the dark side of post-reunification policies that reorganised a debt-ridden household at the expense of low-income tenants through legal instruments such as modernisation and owner-occupancy claims, among others.
With contributions by Andrej Holm, Elke Krasny, Dieter Lesage, Ursula Maria Probst, Ina Wudtke and Florian Wüst.
“Our first issue of the year is an inquiry into intimacy in its many forms. We decided on this topic the last week of summer, the first time we sat down with our new editorial team. ‘We don’t share intimacy yet,’ said one of our editors, `intimacy needs time to grow.’ Yet, looking back, that first meeting was perhaps as intimate as it gets; nervous introductions, how-was-your-summer’s, testing waters, sharing ideas, enthusiasm, and doubts as well. ‘How do we define the intimate?’ Won’t it be too much like Simulacrum’s Love issue?’ What’s the difference between love and intimacy anyway?’ From these questions, ideas of intimacies started to take shape: those on the threshold between public and private, in languages between lovers, those differing from the hetero-and homonormative, the intimacies shared with oneself. Through touch and writing, poetry and myth, economic systems and modes of play, the subconscious and the attentive; the divergent approaches the eleven contributors of this issue have taken give us a glimpse of the endless ways in which the spectrum of intimate experience can be explored, exercised, and rethought.”
