On The Ground

Exquisite Palimpsest was our interpretation of MIMESIS. An event where three isolated collaborative drawings would become layers in an artificial palimpsest - revealing new associations, new narratives and new images - all authorless, the product of a continuum of ideas and hands. All design, all creation, stands on the shoulders of those who came before. We remix, we remake, we mimic others when we forge into the unknown. All work is collaborative work, there is no such thing as author.

The three drawings developed for this issue were generated simultaneously but independently. As the event progressed, subcultures in drawing emerged influenced by each respective site. From the floor drawing emerged many traces of feet, from the pit drawing many sketches of faces. These were manifestations of mimesis, of cross pollination developing cultures of iteration and ideation. Visible collaboration was the ethos of the generative event.

By contrast, the final composite emerged as a product of unforeseen collaboration. Unintended dialogues between faces and feet became the subject of the work. The relationships between content developed by independent authors superseded the content itself. The tension between collaboration and competition forms the composition. The authors of this tension are untraceable and unknowable.

This document is but another layer in the continuum. The contents presented here are reflections of this ethos and of this composition. Reinterpretations, regenerations and reiterations of collective thought. And you, reader, are the next layer still, as you process and filter the words and lines on this page, you become a collaborator of the continuum of MIMESIS.