asli sevinc

Absurdables is a series of instructables that were created for the Rhizomes section of ISCO, in collaboration with Carolina Vallejo. For the series, we added two more (and coming) to the series: An absurdable on how to cry and another one for the recently deceased. Both followed the same aesthetic as our first one and paid homage to literary pieces; the former is by Cortazar and the latter by Bruno D’arcy.

This time, our absurdables didn’t receive as much attention as the our first one, since for one, it wasn’t picked up by the editors and featured. Secondly, it seemed like we hit a point where the series start running the risk of being less interesting and the novelty might very well wear off. I think for this project to be successful, we need to find new literature from various backgrounds, keep working on making them as absurdables, release new ones on a regular basis to keep the community connected and expecting. In my opinion, only after few more absurdables will we see better, consistent results. I think we are onto something here that needs development and effort, so we definitely want to continue working on absurdables together and take them to more absurd/interesting levels.

Instructions on how to cry.

Instructions for the recently deceased.

There was a big discussion in class about whether absurdables is a suitable name for the series or not. I think it fits perfectly, since the name suggests that we are not trying to deceive the average instructables user with this project. From the very beginning, the name shows that we have a clear intention of simply being absurd, nothing else. Therefore, we expect (or hope) to be taken with a grain of salt, and I think the name absurdable is an integral show of that intention.

Absurdables: How to climb a staircase is an instructable that was created for the Remix/Reframe section for ISCO, in collaboration with Carolina Vallejo. The piece is an attempt to revisit and remix a literary piece that gives instructions, in this case a short story by Julio Cortazar, and making it absurd by “literally” following the instructions, executing and documenting them and sharing the results with the instructables community. On top of paying homage to the author and his great short story on how to climb a staircase, our interest in this pieces was to use the existing framework of a community and remixing that framework by introducing new content, one that would also be a remix. The piece has pictures that we took with a DIY feel, our additional comments on each step and picture, and some minor changes to the original text to maintain the overall instructable language.

Here is our instructable/absurdable.

After we published our piece, it got featured by the editors, became popular soon after and got over fifty comments. The scale of the reaction and interest encouraged us to keep working on absurdables and create a series of them with works from different authors as a collaborative project, as well as for the Rhizomes assignment. Also at the beginning of the class, we handed out copies of the instructables to the class and made them work in pairs to follow the instructions step by step. This exercise, we think, was also a very exciting component of the project as it enhanced the absurdity of it.