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the androgynborg was formed with the aim of asking: At a time when there is a such a social, cultural, and professional emphasis on creativity, why do ‘the arts’ seem more institutionalised than ever? What does it mean to ‘make art’ today? By directing creativity towards the service of social and financial capital, everyone is encouraged to contribute to what we call 'design culture.' Maker festivals, paint lounges, image filters, sketching apps, and curated feeds point to ways in which we are constantly ‘empowered’ to design for the sake of commodification, but never ‘merely’ to create for the sake of art. In demonstrating the possessive individualism symptomatic of capitalism, design culture has thoroughly coopted creativity, it is imagination rendered as innovation, the commodification of creative processes in all forms.

Art, on the other hand, creates affect—familiar experiences at the outskirts of capital. Art is a process, an aesthetic performance, a flow of non- repeatable signs. This does not mean that art is un-commodifiable—it means the experience of art is un-commodifiable. While design corresponds to the aesthetic considerations of the object, art corresponds to the considerations of process, the outcome of which is not material productivity, but affect.

Everyone is convinced they can’t create—we all cling desperately to products that claim to simplify and repackage the creative process. Following from politico-aesthetic performances of Dadaism, Surrealism, the Situationists, Orange Alternative and others, the androgynborg seeks to reel against a prevelent design culture which demands beauty in a filter, gratification in an instant. As an open, post-art collectivity, the androgynborg attempts to liberate art from the possessive ego of capitalist individuation, from the repressive desire to create only when it is appealing. When engaging the processes of simultaneous creation and subversive performance using a variety of mediums, there are no set criteria, nothing has to appeal, nothing has to ‘make sense.' We reject our 'state names,' and in performing entirely as an anonymised collectivity, the androgynborg operates with the aim of reiterating the revolutionary political potentials of art by pulling on what is provocative and incendiary in a design culture doused in capitalist-chic, where even subversiveness has become mainstream. About the book:

Containing over 150 typewritten poems, short essays, and original artworks exploring four interconnected themes which are central to our project:

de-nihilism

schizo-aesthetics

ontological-anarchism

meta-materialism

...this book (assuming, with your help, that we can muster the funds to format, print, and distribute it) is the culmination of years of creative explosions—a philosophical glimpse into an ongoing project probing the revolutionary political potentials that stem from the collective liberation of affect, emotion, and viserality from the anxiety of life within capitalism.

Unfortunately, public spaces for facilitating these sorts of experiences are virtually non-existant. As a result, any and all sales from this book will go directly towards both material costs and maintaining the space for this particular kind of project to continue.

What the money goes to:

The printing costs for a book of over 200 pages of typewritten poems and full colour paintings is pretty high. We want this book to highlight the visceral experience of aesthetico-political collaboration. As such, all of the money we raise will go towards the formatting of the ebook, and the printing and binding of our first run (approximately 100 copies).

We thank you all sincerely for any support that you can afford to give to this project. We are always looking for interested 'individuals' to share ideas or to join our collective as a fellow uncurator. If you ever find 'youself' in the GTA and are interested in some simultaneous creation, please get in touch with us via email. We'll be around, at work pushing the aesthetico-political terrain as far as it can possibly go. And then, even further still.