The Future of Now : What's Seeding in the Spring of 2022

Friends, Lichen, Mushrooms, Hello.

It’s February 21, 2022 and I signed on to Substack with the intention of beginning, in earnest, to do documentation, newsletters, Speculative Solidarities, a Patreon, a whole thing… in August of last year…? Yep. That’s about right. Time…sigh.

But today I’m here because there’s so much to share, so much coming up to invite you to be part of and join me for, and there’s nothing I want to do more than to have a direct channel to the people who are interested in listening, receiving, sharing tools and systems with me as we move forward in this prismatic and challenging timeline.

So! let’s do this thing. Imaginal Disco was envisioned sometime in 2020 by me as a production company of sorts, for all the projects of mine and others I can help to make real. Its name comes from the imaginal discs that are present in the cells of the caterpillar that can only be accessed once one submits entirely to the goo state of letting go of everything you were before, being literally digested by your own insides.
Also, DISCO, so that’s a good time.

I do love a good pun, whenever possible, you’ll notice this about me.

So, here’s a little update, just to start. Imaginal Disco exists because it has been made real in my mind as another infrastructure for building possibility, so it’s been pupating since it was first born as concept. Underground, and now, a bright green shoot says HELLO! on this springlike day in New York.

For now: these exciting events are coming up! Online and/or in person! Please come.

• 2/28 @ 7pm EST: INTERLOCUTOR: WRITING + STUDIO PRACTICE {zoom} - I’ll be moderating this conversation with Chloë Bass and Peter Rostovsky at this online inaugural event for a new annual series sponsored by the Pratt Studio Writing program. Eventbrite / more info here // direct zoom registration here.
  

• 3/3 @ pm EST : Opening Party for LIZ LIGUORI | LIGHT OF HAND at La Mama Galleria {in person} - It’s been a great pleasure to curate this solo show featuring the work of brilliant artist Liz Liguori’s electromagnetograms. Register for tix at Eventbrite.
  

• 3/15 @ 8pm EST {online} : Launch celebration for Ashna Ali’s The Relativity of Living Well, details to come! (host / emcee) more on this project here

• 4/2 @ 4pm EST : LIGHT OF HAND Curator Conversation / Gallery Talk with Liz Liguori at La Mama Galleria. Details and register for tix here!
  

I’ll also be giving a presentation at the NorthEast Modern Languages Association on autonomous mechanics / becoming plural : plant and fungal thinking towards a sympo(i)etics, on March 10th — technically in Baltimore, but likely online.

And, there’s so much more! Follow the work of the new, related Autonomous Mechanics “Year-Book” Cohort over at the OS Medium, where I’m one of 17 artists participating in an exciting new experiment using the OS ecosystem / infrastructure.

The below are some of my works from a show of Book Arts selections currently on display for a Faculty show in the Pratt Library — which may be open to the public as campus conditions change? More on that (the books, not Pratt campus conditions) soon.

I’ll be cross posting my thinking from the Field Notes series here, and eventually on Patreon, but here’s the first, from a little bit ago: From the Field | Mark-Making, part 1. It’s small potatoes. You’ll see what I mean.

I hope you’ll join me for some of these upcoming adventures in pushing against the possible, for any of these events, for conversation, in the muck and joy and rigor.

I love you.