Melanie Flood Projects is proud to present, 𝕸𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝕻𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖑 𝕲𝖆𝖘𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊 𝕾𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖐, a solo exhibition of new works in sculpture, video, and sound by Ido Radon. An in-person opening reception will take place on Saturday, July 10 from 5-7pm and the gallery will be open to the public by appointment through August 7, 2021. This will be Radon’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Eleanor Ford will perform at the opening at 6:30pm.

The exhibition includes four hyperlinks, one to Fawkes, a free anti-facial-recognition image cloaking software tool developed at University of Chicago, and three links to archived issues in Spanish and English of the zine Hack Back by Phineas Fisher aka Subcowmandante Marcos.
Learn more about Fawkes and download it here.
Hack Back: A DIY Guide for those without the patience to wait for whistleblowers.
Hack Back: A DIY guide to rob banks (and the original version in Spanish)

𝕸𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝕻𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖑 𝕲𝖆𝖘𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊 𝕾𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖐

Sit foramen in proelium.

"At this stage of the march one must interrupt the calculations and begin again at zero.” Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

The future has folded in on us. This is a commonplace at this point, but the urgencies of this fact may help illuminate an aspect of the spawn point for Mother of Pearl Gasoline Slick: a cypherfeminist insistence on the possibilities inhering in laminations of speculative futures folded into and through deprecated, occulted, and reclaimed knowledges.

One point of departure: let’s not pretend 2020 didn’t happen.

Another point of departure: Hack Back, a two-issue how-to zine in .txt file format by anarchist hacker Phineas Fisher who’s a legend for hacking two companies that provide surveillance tools to authoritarian governments (and presumably anyone who pays). Hack Back is one part step-by-step guide to hacking and one part critique of capitalism, defense of expropriation, and call to action. Writing in Spanish, Fisher quotes bell hooks and Assata Shakur, refers to American anarchist Lucy Parsons, Indigenous Aymara insurrection leader Tupac, and Zapatista spokesperson Subcommandante Marcos, as well as quoting song lyrics including a contemporary icaro. "…behind the balaclava, I'm just a girl,” she writes. “We are all wild children. We just have to place a star in the beds in our hearts."

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Transmission line. Power surge. Spark. Lightning strike. Black out. A slender thread plucked from the present weave. A sharp tug at an angle. The slightest opening rent in the meshworks. There is a productive zone in the slippage of one word to its slant synonym. Thus it is possible to find resonances, points of intensity between, for example, energy, electricity, power. Moving electrons with our fingertips. Moving electrons with our fingertips. All of us, electric beings, sinoatrial node triggering the next contraction of the organ that propels our salted bloods.

The research leading to this body of work considers the material and operational implications of the networked nature of things and beings. Its tools and propositions reflect an ongoing commitment to a pragmatic approach and the honing of a sharpened zone of operations.

𝔐𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔣 𝔓𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔊𝔞𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔢 𝔖𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔨 is part of an ongoing project that imagines the writing of a “code for the numbers to come” in opposition to hegemonic narratives of domination and operating in the cracks in systems of oppression/control.

Let us take seriously the drawing of contours of a concept of a magic materialism proposed by Claire Fontaine (in Human Strike) under the battle flag of Silvia Federici’s finely drawn diagnosis of the origins of capitalism and the consolidation of the patriarchy in Caliban and the Witch.

The cypher. Le chiffre. The cipher in mathematics increases or decreases the value of other figures around it according to its position. It’s nothing, or is it? Something that appears to be one thing but is or is also something else. A steganographic move. Or/and after its Sanskrit etymological origin, “the empty.” Chiffre may also be translated from French into English as figure and, among other things, sum.

Still:

We carry with us what we need.
We find what we need wherever we are.

"They say everything must begin over again. They say that a great wind is sweeping the earth. They say that the sun is about to rise.” Wittig

Water takes stone.

- Ido Radon

Radon would like to thank interlocutors and collaborators Eleanor Ford, Chiara Giovando, Oskar Radon, Molly Radon-Kimball, Neville Kimball, and Flint Jamison. Thanks are also due to Linda Radon, Leif Anderson, and Durran Champie at Free Geek. This exhibition is supported by a grant from the Regional Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Ido Radon prototypes technologies and protocols via laminations of futures and pasts, translations (the carrying across of realms), cypherfeminist speculations, and deprecated tools and methods including applied material folk knowledges. Her research takes forms including sculptures, writings, sound, digital works, video, and publications. She’s had solo exhibitions at Artspeak (Vancouver, B.C), Ditch Projects (Springfield, OR), Et al. (San Francisco), Jupiter Woods (London), Pied-à-terre (San Francisco), and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as part of TBA, and shown work at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), RONGWRONG (Amsterdam), BFA/Castiglioni (São Paolo), and Titanik (Turku, Finland). Her most recent book, Age of Sand (2019), was an eco-cyberfeminist mystic speculative fiction. Radon was born on Ohlone Rumsen land and currently travels between Cowlitz/Clackamas land, Coast Salish/Duwamish/Suquamish land, and Musqueam/Coast Salish/Tsleil-Waututh land. All Computers Are Beautiful.