Gracianne Kirsch

zine (presented here as a PDF)

 

This volume contains associated letters from "“Love Letters to Chuppet.”

In the devastation of Hiroshima, Raqs Media Collective’s “Nowhere and Elsewhere” describes a collective shift in universal perceptions of time. Raqs Media Collective argues that global existentialism prompted a reevaluation of the respective time that we as humans have to occupy this earth, resulting in a conceptual “winding down” (4) of reality. In the face of mass destruction, societal relationships with time were greatly altered. Time and destruction share an obvious tangible relationship of causality. The progressive flow of observable existence on earth demonstrates the destruction of material realities delivered in time: aging and successive dying. In time, most everything is destroyed. But human intervention complicates temporal destruction. Humans have the ability to increase the rate at which material reality is destroyed, even ironically in terms of our capacity to “auto-destruct” (Raqs Media Collective, 4), totally collapsing all sense of time through atomic desimation. Conversely, humans have the distinctive capacity to counteract destruction with the assistance of time. Gifted with sentient maneuverings of reality, humans are able to rebel against the natural progressions of time’s consumptive tendencies by restoring, rebuilding, recreating. In class conversations centering Chad Elias’ “Who’s Digital Heritage,” questions were raised of what is lost and what can be gained through the replication of art. I planned to further my exploration of the relationship between time and destruction, identifying nuanced intricacies in the process of creating my project. I was able to reverse time’s destructive tendencies by creating a piece of art that transcended that which had been destroyed by time. Through research and deep contemplation, I was able to uncover previously lost memories and replicate feelings experienced by a younger me through my writing. As opposed to replicating Chuppet, the actual artifact lost to time, I created a kind of emotional and conceptual replication of Chuppet by extracting sensational memories in my letters to Chuppet.