Hello again to witnesses of audio-visual.journal, the internet component of my art practice, where I share my work in the digital public. This journal exists across the virtual void, documenting personal processes of research on audiovisual culture and aesthetics.
I have been on break since August 2024. I decided to share about that in a set of journal entries that allow you to join me in The Break. These entries are an experimental re-visioning of audio-visual.journal as an immersive and participatory space. It documents my recent experience of intentionally stopping public practice, while offering a way for others to self-navigate learning about what a break has to offer. Clicking around, reading, and listening are ways to move through and beyond each entry. You can enter this semi-linear narrative through the entries page of the journal, and in this newsletter I’m sharing a bit of guidance around what you’d discover.
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“I don’t know what a break for audio-visual.journal looks like. So, I’m planning to play with that idea...” - Me, in the newsletter “Note 2 Self / On Break”
“...when the block is happening, it presents an opportunity for another kind of encounter, another kind of beauty, and another kind of intimacy.” - JJJJJerome Ellis
Entry 001 invites you into a moment of clarity: the initial moment I transitioned toward a break in public practice. Leading up to this, I encountered the concept of Slow Archival mentioned in a presentation by Atlanta-based research group, Liquid Blackness. I used audio-visual.journal’s website and newsletter to publicly study this concept alongside ideas of digital world-building and folk indexing. I chose to index the contents of the journal after sharing one thing from my studio time, almost daily, for 7 months—a reasonable time to take a break.
Entry 002 describes my intial experience being on break. This entry inteprets the way listening remained a core principle in my art practice. As part of the ethos of ‘joining me’, it includes other artists/thinkers whose knowledge kept me company when thinking about breaks across musicality, blackness, and media studies, as well as songs I listened to that exemplify some version of a break.
Entry 003 is dedicated to movement. It documents the tools that I began experimenting with while integrating what I learned from the Slow Archival Series. Each of these tools helped deepen my understanding of movement, especially improvisation and spatial processing. This entry influences the entire project, particularly the desire to experiment with the creative form away from vertical, feed-style entries to a more page-turning, diagrammatic flow. The repetitive nature of Entry 003 is also what makes it an invitation—though a break from public practice may not seem so inviting, it’s precisely what gave way to this work.
If you decide to join me in The Break, feel free to let me know how the experience was and what you felt like you learned (you should be able to reply directly to this newsletter, or contact me via the main page of the journal). Hopefully, there is something for you to return to or that you’ll take with you for whenever you’re moving through a break of your own.
— Paris
P.S. My previous newsletter mentions some other break-induced activities, including updating other platforms with more of my research and video work. Check that out for some of what I’ve done before/beyond audio-visual.journal.
Thank you for sharing your time with my work in this corner of the virtual void. 🖤
There are various ways to support the practice of A-V.J, including generously offering one time or recurring financial contributions, and citing the newsletter when sharing something you learned from here.