México & Kolam.codes open call

Hello friends,
Hope you are enjoying the summer despite the various heat waves. I’m writing to share a couple of things:

1. I will be in Puebla, México from Jul 28-Aug 2 and then CDMX from Aug 2 - Aug 7. If you are around, I’d love to see you!

In Puebla, I’ll be showing some artwork in the México iteration of the To Be — Named exhibition curated by Greta de León at Galería de Arte del Palacio Municipal de Puebla. As a side note, it is also an Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (where I work) sponsored project and so I have been working on To Be — Named as part of my job as well. For example, I worked on design and development for the main To Be — Named website & the online Sakha exhibition curated by Künnei Takaahai. It’s a project with a lot of moving parts and wonderful people. I’m proud to be a part of it!

2. I want to make a letterpress printed book of kolams and I want you to help me with it (if you want)! I’ve created an open call for kolams here: https://airtable.com/appwIa9xSmrnavi90/pagrkOITL2Da1T5Bk/form

More info at the form link and also excerpted below:

I have created a form of encrypting text into kolam (a.k.a. muggu in telugu) patterns (a traditional art form from South India involving intricate, looping patterns drawn on the ground with rice flour) using binary code as an intermediary translation step. I had first worked with this form of encryption for this project of mine that was a reclamation of a traditionally patriarchal mourning ritual, encrypting three generations of women's names into kolam patterns. I have since created an online tool that allows others to create their own kolam encryptions.

I have been thinking about the role of ciphers/encryption in relation to censorship (particularly with this letterpress kolam print I made for fundraising that says "from the river to the sea"). I am also inspired by the work and research of Amy Suo Wu.

I want to make a letterpress printed book about the things we can't always say directly whether it's because of surveillance, algorithmic and institutional censorship, or societal constraints. I am creating this open call to ask all of you to submit text for me to encrypt.

• Please note that non-latin characters will work and you can write in different languages and scripts.

• If answers result in kolams that are too large, I may need to either exclude the submission or break it into several kolams. And so I can't guarantee that your kolam will make it into the book.

• If you'd like, you can visit https://kolam.codes/

  to preview how your answer would look as a kolam.

• Please submit your text by August 31, 2024

• Try to keep your text short (if you can, less than ten words is ideal). But we can always break up the text into multiple kolams if needed.

• Because of utf-8 (binary) encoding for non-latin characters, text in non-latin scripts may need to be even shorter or otherwise broken up into several kolams.

• Feel free to email me (aarati.akkapeddi@gmail.com) if you are struggling to keep your text short and we can brainstorm solutions together.

As the sole developer on kolam.codes, I'm certain there are edge-cases that I haven't thought of. So if you run into a bug or issue, please feel free to reach out to me at aarati.akkapeddi@gmail.com. I appreciate the help. If you are curious to know how I am letterpress printing kolams, I am using 3d printed legos.

Submit here: https://airtable.com/appwIa9xSmrnavi90/pagrkOITL2Da1T5Bk/form

I hope to print this book in the fall.

As always, thank you for reading.

In gratitude,
Aarati