Alter / Altar Volume 1: Sigil Soma Score Salve

From the Introduction: This compilation is an outgrowth of the alter/altar II: sigil soma score salve workshop community facilitated by Elæ (Lynne DeSilva-Johnson). We gathered for 6 weeks at Poets House in New York City in the Fall of 2019 in a space dedicated to deconstructing the boundaries of poetics and began to explore to settle inside the vacillating space between representation of the self and of the observed. We attempted to develop work that reflected an ethical sense of narrative framing experimenting with mark typography image-making language(s) code(s) lists erasures citations collage and other creative measures. Our process imitated a palimpsest layered to reflect a body that living in/against a historic time and place. We considered and created works that challenged genre drawing on source texts and media ephemera detritus found language. We made lists we played with memoir and epistolary form--alongside somatic and social practice. We asked: can we make our work a powerful political act of radical self- and community-building? Of witness? Can it be an act of healing? YES.We created a community dedicated to object-making. We exploded the archaic idea that creating work is restricted to a strictly personal account. Instead we foraged we used algorithms and chance operations so the work created could be situated within/against/in juxtaposition to/ as alchemical space of transformation and/or as lense through which to evaluate (elevate) mark and/or transform. We created our own personal shot publications and/or zines alongside many other exciting interdisciplinary and archival projects. We have put our work together here a collaboration to design an alter/altar publication.Over our workshop we invited one another to rid ourselves of preciousness as well as a stable definition of what constitutes poetry. Together we invited a process of iterative learning by doing approaching our lives together with a documentarians attention. In the publication youll find this reflected in the multi-medium work: the PowerPoint presentations of Kinsey Cantrell the collages from Sherese Francis the chance operations of Marie Hinson Becca Erwins footnote-ridden pages Christine Scanlons use of color drawing and collage and Maddy Durantes collection of New Jersey turnpike pop ephemera. The result speaks to the collective work of of radical presence and approaching the daily world with equal dedication to documentation and transformation.Witness here our transformation as we fly out into a rage and sharpen [our] wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs...--Kinsey Cantrell Maddy Durante Becca Erwin Sherese Francis Marie Hinson Christine Scanlon