The Archive of Global Instability at 1080

downstairs and upstairs at 1080 Wyckoff Avenue

online at www.perypatetik.org and www.transposing.net

The Emblems of Instability Transposed and the Improvised Archive of Instability Transposed are an examination of instability around the world. The authors and photographers are, for the most part, completely ordinary citizens. In the case of the writers, almost all of them either live in or come from the country they are writing about. This project is the current modest acme of our more theoretical and academic work on transposition and our more creative endeavors that we call pэrypatetik (constantly in motion or changing). Here, for the first time, we have managed to combine the two previously separate projects.

Our invented genre of transposition falls somewhere between translation and adaptation. Originally applied to literary fiction, the method of transposition involves retaining the form, i.e. the original sentence structure, of a foreign text, while shifting the content to the modern day, with the new context determining the configuration of this content. In the case of emblems, the form becomes a concept (e.g. instability), while the content is interpreted indirectly as something like “the means of living, coping, surviving,” which naturally differs from context to context.

Perypateticism has sought currently relevant knowledge independent of the material bias that is inherent in nearly all alleged truths. Based on a subjective interpretation of contemporary civilization, we have come to view modernity as a period strongly resembling the baroque epoch. Some of the defining traits of this epoch were instability, uncertainty, polarization, extremes, eschatological thinking – to name a few. Our experience, primarily in America, England, Germany and Russia, has led us to believe that the resemblance between these two epochs seems to be an international phenomenon.

In the quest to provide relevant knowledge we not only need information from the international community, but we need it from completely ordinary people whose opinions and thoughts are not filtered by a corporation, company, publishing house or media outlet with the goal of generating profits while providing useless or poor information informed primarily by a materialist agenda. For this reason, the texts have been composed by non-professional writers; the project is organized by independent freelance translators (no kickstarter campaign, no investors, no loans, no shareholders) and is being presented in an independent coffee shoppe run not by businessmen or –women, but rather two young women venturing into the unknown…

The synthesis and presentation of life against this backdrop will not only reveal what the emblems in combination with the photos demonstrate, namely, that even in the case of immense instability – and some of these countries are facing or have faced extreme turmoil in the past or recent past – you can enjoy a poetic life and create magnificent work. But that is not all. It will also clearly show in various forms and in various places that those of us who are less fortunate materially or less interested in material acquisition – we gain access to the most spectacular realm: the aesthetic or metaphysical. That is what we see time and again in any world of upheaval. It is what we find in absence. It is the origin of all literature, art, music chasing perfection in a harmonious age or imperfection in a disharmonious one.

The Archive of Instability Transposed is a work in progress. It will be peripatetic itself. What you see here is only the rough draft for the sake of collecting the old emblems. We hope, above all, that the project inspires you to create yourself. The easiest, best, most fulfilling activity is not consumption (be it of texts, movies, books, clothes, food, etc.), but rather living or creating. In living or creating you will experience transient moments of the sublime. Do not wish for them to remain. It would get boring. And your life or project will get better each time you leave and try to return.

Angelika Friedrich
Yuri Smirnov
Henry Whittlesey