This event was an invitation to embrace impermanence. Bringing together artists, writers, and curious visitors, we collectively authored and illustrated a limited-edition publication in real time. Pages were filled with collaborative imagery and personal ephemera brought by attendees—grocery lists, margins of notebooks, and transient reflections. We even gave it a title: Ask a punk.
Following a brief public viewing on site, participants and guests gathered to carry out the final phase of the project: the complete destruction of the publication through the action of microorganisms. From then on, the publication only exists as memory, since no distribution is possible, and no photo was taken of the content. Through this act, we questioned the necessity of permanence in art and celebrated the rare power of a single, vanishing moment.
What ephemera did you bring?
What do you archive?
What is a publication?
Does something that lasts longer mean more?
What do you wish you still had in your possession?
What are you archiving now and why?
How do you choose what to throw away, and where do you put it?
What do you wish would last longer?
What is better because it is so short-lived?
Why do you think we should keep certain pieces of text and drawings?
Do you trust your memory?
Do you trust archives?
What you write and draw today will join the compost. Choose wisely. Or carelessly. Choose with intention or through serendipity. Don’t think about it. Let it happen. The worms will pick up where you left off. Decomposition is a form of archiving.
Like data on a server, or pixels in a photo.
Rearranged and diluted.
In particles, as nutrients, sure.
Fragmented and dissipated, of course.
But in some form, your text will still exist.
We are star stuff, they say.
We’ll be earth stuff, we know.