Absence is its own kind of presence. Uncertainty and breakdown of categorical delineation is a space of possibility.
-Ghost Paper Archives
The “After People” project is fascinating new collective mythological endeavor from a group called the Ghost Paper Archives. A kind of game played across different locations in which the reporters explore, photograph, characterize and react to each other’s strange urban discoveries, slowly revealing the traits of a new world called the “Nobody Zone”—the only rule is that there can be no people.
From Nathan Grover, one of the core participants:
“The idea formed in the first days of the pandemic, when the streets were eerily unpeopled. There were so many opportunities to take photos of places normally occupied by people, but were now empty and bereft.
The process is a little different depending on the material and who’s participating, but we start by producing a series of photos, whose only stricture is that they aren’t allowed to contain humans. Each photo responds to the one that came before it. Then we take turns writing segments of a report that connects one photo to the next, ideally writing from one’s own contributed photo to the other participant’s contributed photo.
The constraint of writing reports that contain no people has been interesting, sometimes challenging. Animism is the most common strategy. It’s also been nice, since we all live in different places to create a common ground. We all live within one or another annex of the Nobody Zone we’ve created. And I adore how places I see every day have developed new secret meanings. A decorative bauble in the park has become the cosmic egg of a reversible bird. A nearby tunnel has become a throat gone dry from lack of conversation.”
Although not an explicitly surrealist project, the affinities are immediately apparent, with the focus being on a kind of psychogeographic storytelling and full of wonderful images, anecdotes, extrapolations, and black humor. Definitely worth a look for anyone with an interest in surrealist play. The core players include Nate Dorr, Nathan Grover and S.D. Stewart.
Also not to be missed are some of the other excellent offerings on the Ghost Paper website, including some very humorous interviews with “entities” such as The Immaculate or The Four Jesters of the Apocalypse.
https://ghostpaperarchives.com
(Photo above from their post, After People, the Sleek Ones Quietly Arrive)