DEAD LETTERZ / INVISIBLE INK

KWENTO (a.k.a. INVISIBLE INK)
o c t o b e r  2000 — o c t o b e r  2004

Starting in October 2000, I began a project of distributing email pieces to various friends, relatives, and other unknown parties, under the name of "kwento" (a.k.a. Invisible Ink). This alias originated as a stage name for my persona in some of the digital fotonovela work of artist Harry Gamboa, Jr., with whom I had recently initiated a dialogue.

By October 2004, the project had generated 55 email pieces of written text, which comprise works of prose, poetry, political diatribe, information dissemination, and various combinations of each. The text pieces, unsigned and distributed to a hidden "Bcc" list of recipients, were mailed without any regularity. Some pieces were distributed to hundrds of recipients; others were sent to only one.

Included here are a little less than half of the pieces distributed, arranged by date of original publication. The rest of the kwento/invisible ink document exists in an ephemeral archive spread over various personal computers, email server folders, and the odd printed page here and there, I imagine.

LINK:
KWENTO (a.k.a. INVISIBLE INK)
o c t o b e r  2000 — o c t o b e r  2004

notes from mictlan blog
s e p t e m b e r  2006 — j u n e  2008

The digital text becomes trace archive, documentation as anti-archive.

The constant threat of erasure at any moment. A reminder of the tenuous, elusive nature of memory, the impermanence of material form.

All forms of documentation degrade. Even the digital requires materials that are subject to entropy.

Is the digital itself entropic? Is memory also subject to decay?

Contact point: Sensory apparatus and screen interface. Digital and memory interact, mutate in both directions.

Entropy still reigns.

LINK:
notes from mictlan blog
s e p t e m b e r  2006 — j u n e  2008

AKADEMIX
“Like the diverse knowledge claims that we have seen coming from Indigenous and Afro-American communities and histories in the Caribbean and Latin America, the theoretical production by Chicanos/as and Latinos/as in the United States contests not only the content but the very principles of knowledge production that shape academic trends, disciplinary foundations, and entire social fabric. For, if Latinos/as (as any other subaltern community) cannot think on their own, they will be dependent on the supremacy of disciplinary formation and institutional regimes.”

—Walter Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (135)

LINK:
AKADEMIX