jun _24
▲ highlights: fucked-up elections vibe // new art publication on the way // designing a handbook with Ideas Factory // Unsplash illustrations programme launched
⫷ audio intro
░ textual intro
Heya,
I’m writing this month’s letter in the shade of the recent elections across Europe. Besides the voting for the European Parliament's new members, there were also parliamentary elections in Bulgaria. These are the 5th elections since mid-2021! With every round things get darker and darker. Fewer and fewer people go to vote. More and more nationalistic, corrupt or just horrific parties get their seats on the table. In this whole global horror movie we’re living, I am trying to do my best: always voting for the best option available (even though they always need tons of improvement), trying to give a good example, and advocating for critical thinking with reasonable actions. I feel like a misfit in this global picture. How about you? Where do you stand in this mess or are you floating around? Are you hopeless or hopeful?
Of course, in order to preserve my mental health, I often focus on my work, on art, on books, and on keeping a safe distance from everyday news. But everything is indeed political - there is no way around it. If you leave it to others to pick or to chance (because somehow you might believe you make no difference, which is not true), it will always bounce back to you in the most unexpected way. History has proven many horror stories of how wrong things can go (or just watch some speculative scenarios in movies such as “The Handmaid's Tale” or “Extrapolations”). It can always happen, slowly, quickly, overnight, without you realising it. Thus, we cannot be ignorant. Not when the time for choosing a standing comes. Not choosing is also a choice.
“Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.”
- Aldous Huxley (2003). “Huxley and God: Essays on Religious Experience”, Crossroad 8 Avenue
But to end on a more positive note, I would like to invite you to speculate on your own potential future. What does it look like? Where do you live? What is your job and daily routine? How did the world change in 10-20-30 years after today? How do you feel about it? Bonus: maybe you can write me a letter about it :)
cheers,
ål // ≧◉◡◉≦
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// things to share »
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✏ <postcard from Cyprus/>
One of the most common natural textures around the island: limestone.
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● <new art publication on the way!/> I’m super thrilled that I have the opportunity to create another publication a year after I made my first mixed-media one: Sound Jams // Deluxe Edition. With the help of my friends Gersande and Chae who are co-producing it, How To Sound Jam is a collection of textual and visual prompts for anyone who would like to try a collective sound making session. I created these cards for the exhibition S.Å.T.E. - Sounds at the Exposure that took place in Groningen last November. Now they will have a second life!
Draft tryouts Gersande made at the Bookbinding workshop (Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam). She designed the card case which will hold all of the cards and make it possible to place them on your bookshelf.
“How To Sound Jam” will be ready by the end of June, so by my next art letter I will be able to already put it on the online shop and show here and there. Stay tuned!
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★ <Ideas Factory’s team releases a handbook about how to organise your own artistic residency in a village/> My long-year collaboration with the inspiring team of Ideas Factory reached a peak point during our work on bringing this book to life. Imagine, they summarised their 15+ years of experience facilitating bridges between the inhabitants of the desolating villages in Bulgaria and young artists from anywhere in a handbook that leads you step-by-step through how the whole process works.
Keep an eye on their website, insta or facebook for info about its distribution - an English version is also coming soon!
Photo by Goethe-Institut Bulgarien
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★ <Do you follow all the -Instagram-training-AI with artists’ works on their app- drama?/> I didn’t, but these days my feed is full of posts by artists who announce that they’re leaving Insta and/or deleting all of their works on their profiles. There’s always a newcomer in such a moment, this time in the face of Cara (an independently created app by enthusiasts who look like having all the best intentions but not the resources to maintain such a heavy load of new users). You can have a closer look at this case in this article.
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▲ <Unsplash launched an illustrator programme/> For more than 10 years, it’s still one of my go-to websites for visual supply. It started as a place where you can find quality free not-so-stock visuals and later added types of paid licenses to its services. A recent update is that they are working on building an illustrators community - and out of curiosity - I applied to it. And got accepted (so far there are 126 illustrators from all around the world in the programme)! The next step is to explore how to create quality illustrations for their briefs, having in mind they are focused on being practical, vector and in more trendy aesthetics. Let’s see, for now, I am still going through the steps they require to start submitting. :-)
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● <#tbt to an old artwork: keep our trees safe/> In the summer of 2021 I made an experimental illustration addressing the growing wildfires globally. The final result was an animated .gif that shows the same illustration in two different colour palettes: in the green one the trees have leaves, but in the orange one - they turn into flames. Here it is.
..Was thinking of this drawing recently while melting at the 40+C in Nicosia.
Details from both of the illustrations.
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∅ <Al Wiki Page random drop/> There is a fun button on the Media Wiki menu: Random page. You click on it and an unexpected page pops up. So I figured, why not push it every time I write this letter and share one page from my documentation space? This way you might discover something new. Or maybe I will (re)discover something xaxa!
↳ Random page: [Xpub3: freelance admin]
This might be only useful to a particular crowd: freelancers who are trying to run their small businesses in the Netherlands. On this page, I am collecting tips and links for how the admin part works. Still work-in-progress though, haven’t submitted my first annual report yet, which is quite a big deal :D Coming soon!
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