REVS magazine positions itself as “a platform that nurtures the collective spirit—bringing together diverse voices, artists, and creatives to foster a shared vision.” Printed in a larger-than-life format, its pages feature stunning models adorned in artistic garments, engulfed in vibrant whirlwinds of motion blur, shallow depth of field, and bold, eccentric patterns. But don’t be fooled—“This is not a fashion magazine,” it boldly declares on its opening page. “This is you and me talking.”
The Autozine collective—Christina Chu, Satoru Teshima, and myself—joined the conversation in the Fall/Winter 2016/2017: The Gamut Issue with An experiment through color, a surrealist exploration of illustrated automatic writing. Created under the influence of colours, it came to life in a pitch-black room, through red glasses, or while lying in a blue bath.
- Collaborators: Christina Chu, Satoru Teshima
- Type: Commissioned
- Year: 2019
Binary redrum
It’s just a normal beach day. The socks are retro and bleach is applied on everyone’s ellipsis. In the pure boolean tradition, the crypt is there to provide humbleness and honey-coated peanuts. Suddenly it is not a small visa stamp that all the soulful kids are going on about, it’s a terrestrial syncope of wool and leggings, all arranged in a particular fashion.
It’s all still binary, a left-handed ambidextrous moron would be out of place in this solar panel infused drama. Six out of ten of them have less than 36 watercolour pencils. The big bang is drawing to a close. Is it two to twelve already? Simon has found his bohemian ale at least, can we rewrite history with a kilo of butter and thirteen single-use dandruffs? We all hope so. After all, everything comes in kit, so it’s only natural that organs do too.
It’s like a mini vortex, rocky on both sides but with a softly tied umbilical cord inside that makes all the landladies curious. “Will you rent my skull?” they always persistently ask, but the munster is not mature yet so they let the geniuses and fools fight for it. At the end, all we will hear is the echo of redrum, redrum.
Indebtedness liquor
Game over. Will they spare a castle of the same slang for an old crumpet’s voice? The guts are plausible, stuttering crude words in the air, curling is your nude-minded platypus again. Can you hear the poodles crop a photograph for hundred times, to put ski slopes into a peacock’s nest? Certainly not, and unanimously she bursts out repayments for their wishes out of endless demons and they share a vernacular babble of buckets.
Oh not frantic yet, catch it with soliloquy to only show frost at dawn, he will not reinvent “mortgage whiskey” for a smoother lump of lead, moon dust is their newly toppled dummy. The peasant, the compass or the clouds are alike, absurdly they scream “sip your pea, squeeze ink to ponder, his crimson violin is not soiled”.
Here I am again, Lech Wałęsa has spoken. The same new hobby to chase the polish friends with but, it’s riddled with your national anthem. Love thy landing of veneer but no sheet of lures to snatch.
Process
Indebtedness Liquor began as a handwritten text on fluorescent yellow paper. It was then cut into pieces and rearranged into an entirely new composition that, dare I say, makes as much sense as the original.
Binary Redrum was written with a red pencil, while wearing my glasses with red filters, rendering me literally colour blind and unable to see what I had written or was writing. It was like writing with invisible ink, which made it easier to let go of any meaning in my writing—the essence of automatic writing.
