Torre

YES aha!!!

omg this world is so beautiful

Ayesha

hiiiii

wo0o0 made ittt

happy birthdaaay 

Torre

sorry im on your tentacle haha! my keyboard glitching out

thank you so much!

Ayesha

haha nice winnngs

im gonna ride this spider

how has your day been? of course you are a spring equinox baby!!

Torre

its been super cute, yeah very huge birthday energy cos its also on the cusp of pisces n aries

spent some time with friends cooking heaps of food n then we called our friend in thailand to compose a track over Skype haha

always de-centralized lol

Ayesha

cosmic and earthen alignments!

Torre

how was your de-install process yesterday?!

Ayesha

woah luv that! so u created music on ur birthday? i luvvv

what was the vibeee

the de-install was surpsirisngly easy! maddie, sophie and ash helped... it was a big de-entalgement... i was quite numb to it, but maybe wasnt ready to deinstall just yet tho :(

but happy to make space for all new creations!

Torre 

yeah i have been super curious about how that would feel, since there was such a balance of growth and destruction in the exhib --

Ayesha

like all the mushrooms were decayed... their spores sprayed all over the tiles

Torre

ahh thats amazing, i was thinking about how the trace microbes and stuff would probably never truly leave the space haha

just sort of be gradually absorbed into all of the other echoes and architectural quirks there

Ayesha

the sand had hardened onto the floor of the pool, like cement... it had to be chipped off! sophie said they felt like an archeologist! which is amazing because that is the the occupation of the main character of my opera, the spirit who hung above

the pool!

i think there will aslways be a trace of each artist in that space

Torre

absolutely, its a space that can't really be occupied casually i think, because it has so many peculiarities the artist sort of has to establish an intimacy with it

Ayesha

yes... performaing in there and letting my voice echo in it's catherdral like chambers has been really intimate

often the neighbors will respond, and play the piano, as if to drown me out... or maybe cos they were inspired?

Torre

yes!!!! even the sonic resonances, when you were singing your opera it felt like your voice was literally mapping the contours of the building

Ayesha

the decaying dilapidated building!

Torre

and imagining it floating out over the neighborhood, which is of course such a different vibe as soon as you step outside -- that imagining made me super happy haha

who ive just been scooped up by the spidahh -- i love how everything here is vibrating and pulsating w energy

Ayesha

yes u can ride them!!

mmm yes... and torre.. when are u coming to visit> we all wanna meet u IRL ! ur presence is v strong in the space even tho ur so far away

Torre

ahhh i wish i could teleport for real haha, it's so strange interesting being involved with a space i've never physically seen

in an entire city ive never actually been in lol -- i guess in a way that's quite close to the heart of everything in the Underground Flower project

Ayesha

id love to know more about how underground flower... blossomed?

Torre

finding ways to extend ourselves and identities in virtual space .....the irl / url binary never has totally made sense to me i think haha

Ayesha

honestly... burn the binary!

Torre

cos we're always somehow existing beyond the confines of our particular location, circumstance, flesh and bones -- there's always a virtuality at play

hahah for real, i had such a funny time making this avatar, its actually one i use collectively with my collaborator Rasheed, loathsomefop is the name of our music project.

when i was changing clothes for our meeting, IMVU kept throwing up errors at me like

WRONG GENDER FOR THIS ITEM ahaha, this projection of gender on garment and object lol

Ayesha

yes the gender binary on imvu needs to go! its been topic of convo in all my chats, i guess bc we all queer. in some ways the shop is super expansive in terms of the digital imagination of clothings and styles, but soo restrictive in its binary!!

Torre

yeah it was surprising to me to see it extended even to fantastical items like tails, wings etc

Ayesha

like having wings is literally sooo gender non conforming! anyone can have wings

Torre

exactlyyyy haha

Ayesha

also ur tails... i love@@ reminds me of the chinese myth

the fox with nine tals

the huli jing

they were shapeshifters!

Torre

yes!!! i super identify with shapeshifters of all kinds

hmm that ties into underground flower's birth story a bit haha, i guess it began as an experiment to synthesize and explore instabilties as creative potential.

Ayesha

mm creating within the confines and expanding outwards!

Torre

creating a platform where fluid identity, hydras, temporary alliances are embraced, and where as collaborators we're free to create and explore highly coded and symbolic meanings by relating to objects, spaces, and each other online

when it began i was living in a super itinerant way geographically, which didnt really facilitate access to the whole studio, gallery, exhib trajectory

but was sharing temporary spaces and experiences with so many friends and chosen family in diff places and pooling them online for our private enjoyment. we really just kind of opened that process outward to others at a certain point --

creating images as compressions of some ritual we quickly performed and documented, sharing those with others to see which vibes caught on and blossomed with the practises of strangers and new friends

Ayesha

it really feels like you have created such an international community of underground artists and creators, and your being, your avatar, your essence is kind of infused into it all! like seeing the work you do and the spaces u create online

feels like a portal into the space

Torre

yes!!! portalling, tunnelling, sharing new n ancient n invented technologies

i really love the way a network can function as a sort of resource-pool for material and psychic tools, stories, narratives that weave together through our projects and actions

and its been so extremely cool to have your projects also intertwine with this!

Ayesha

got u a birthday cake!!

got two of them actually

one is spraying sparkles into the sky!

Torre

omg thats beautiful! low-poly amethyst sweeeets i love it!

Ayesha

mmm i love love love platform as portal, and this interconnectedness of international artists. i feel like ppl try to do international art collectives n they are kind of forced, but the way you curate folks with genuine threads that weave their work

feels like an ancient sci fi tapestry

Torre

that's such a super cool way to describe it! like a rag rug woven out of filaments ad wires

Ayesha

hows the project going with the work inspired by Bautau lake, the man made lake in inner mongolia where the iphone factories sludge their waste into ?

(im making a rag rug for a project RIGHT NOW!!

Torre

ah, Maman! this has been SO huge for me to realize, it's a project ive had in mind for ages and it finally came to fruition with the help of one of my fav collaborators, Ian, from Rhizome Parking Garage

we curated the artists together around the theme of the lake, conceiving of it as a sort of offering, a communion of artifice, meeting with its great shadow source

there's currently a feature film in the works directed by the group KOTZ, which remixes all of the individual artists' works into a semi-narrative

Ayesha

oh wow i love that, its like a remix of all the artist's tracks haha

Torre

churning, changing, eroding, shapeshifting

exactly!

Ayesha

and lake as offering! yes! because its so sad that this lake was created, yet we have all been the perpetrators, we all rely on this tech in some way, even to talk now, or to share and create our work online

so the show to me feels like some of the digital artists giving back to the lake spirits?

Torre

exactly, the sort of inevitable violence of participating in contemporary existence is something we really can't escape, especially when we're engaged in creative production

which is such an incredibly sobering topic, but yeah basically the project hopes to make space for each artist to reckon with that in their own way, to work it out through their works.....kind of to meet the inevitable damage of our world halfway

Ayesha

ooof that gives me tingles

yeah we have to take some sort of responsibility if we are gonna engage with these technologies.

lets not even start on the damage of NFTs on the planet rn... its been the topic of the month, i wonder what ur thoughts are?

Torre

right?! i feel like this space of inevitable damage is super important to my work in general -- starting from a place of rupture, a moment where we cant imagine going backwards or really "fixing" everything, but must somehow yet strive forwards

and hopefully to do so with as much compassion n awareness as possible -- i guess rupture is kind of a gift in that way, it makes the boundaries between things more porous, opening space for empathy

Ayesha

that kind of sounds like the manifesto for optimystic dystopia! the praxis i am expanding in all my work!!

accepting hte inevitable damage, and moving forward with awareness!!

Torre

i call mine ecstatic pessimism ahahah omg

Ayesha

omggg!!! we should compare notes! i love this

Torre

these are like the absolute semantic mirrors of each other?! thats amazing

Ayesha

mind blown !! aaakk !!

Torre

right hahah i feel like the pixel fireworks exploding thru the sky rn

(You performed Hi-5 with loathsomef0p)

Ayesha

makes a lot of sense as to how and why our art connected

through both digital and IRl pathways

Torre

definitely look forward to exploring these manifestos more n seeing where they meet n diverge n interconnect

yes absolutely!!! so many peripheral events and connections leading to this moment haha

Ayesha

i plan to write it all out properly so yes v excited to reading more on urrrrs!!!!

what other exciting things do u have on the horizon?

Torre

ACK sorry my keyboard was freezing up lol

currently i'm planning out an exhibit in Hong Kong with some friends in the group CorpseSimulacrum, involving fashion n the lateral economy of the street market

how about u?

Ayesha

mm that sounds amazing..i'm actually working on a film currently, some of which was shot in hong kong on my trip there! but up in the mountains.. so beautiful

its a 360 survival type film.. altho i really just letting the editing process guide me on this one

Torre

that sounds amazing, i cant wait to see it!!

Ayesha

me too tbh... ( im a bit behind haha!)

Torre

always a bit behind hahah

Ayesha

what is time rn antway

sophie and maddie just popped into my studio- they say hello!

Torre

i kind of love how running behind sched always leaves things a bit unfinished though haha -- it leaves room for material and ideas to mutate along into the next thing

its like 3 AM here haha -- omg!!! hello sophie n maddie!!!!

Ayesha

omggg i didnt realise it was so late there!

damn it isnt even ur bday any moreee??!?!

Torre

XD was so cool to pass into my next earth year of age in this beautiful world!

thank you so much for inviting me

Ayesha

yes agreed, its like that annoying phrase, diamonds are made under pressure. i do feel like my last minute creations often tend to be much more raw and in the moment, so more intuitive

it has been a PLEASURE to explore here with uuu!!

Torre

oh absolutely, we have to somehow shut off our calculative brains to really let it flow and theres nothing like a just-missed deadline to make that happen

intuitive n quick n dirty always

Ayesha

last Q: any wishes, plans, seeds to plant for this new new year?

Torre

oooh good one, i really have been getting into the potential of narrative and fictionalization for healing n presenting ones truth, so im hoping to explore that more throughout my projects!

lately i've been writing some collective texts with others and its been a super cathartic process

Ayesha

gorgeous! i admire your de-centralised core!

Torre

haaaa i just noticed i have literally been IMPALED by a huge crystal while speaking

there's my core! SHINING

Ayesha

omfg u are!!

irredescent

Torre

feeling super pure haha

Ayesha

ready 4 ur new solar cycle!

Torre

thank u so much for this beautiful chat xx big big love n i can't wait to talk again n combine some ideas

Ayesha

sleeep well torre~~~!!!

thank YOUUU for being amazing and being born and entering this world!

so excited for future infinite collaborations