Stories & Ideas
Noema Magazine
Moiré Archive worked with Noema Magazine, commissioning interdisciplinary artist WASEI to respond to three essays through calculated abstraction.
Noema Magazine
Publishing
Los Angeles, USA
Editorial Illustration, Artistic Direction
The Commissions
What If Money Expired? Written by Jacob Baynham
Silvio Gesell's theory that money should be a perishable good: designed to decay, to eliminate hoarding and predatory interest. WASEI's response renders the world's 163 currencies and emerging digital assets in a state of terminal dissolution. Value made unstable. Permanence interrogated.
Not My Problem Written by Tim Maughan
A work of speculative fiction envisioning the collapse of the gallery system under AI-generated content, and the emergence of organic art as a luxury for the elite. WASEI's response is an abstract study of artificial nostalgia and the environmental decay that follows when human engagement is automated. What remains when authorship is no longer necessary.
Deep Time Sickness Written by Lachlan Summers
An examination of tocado, a condition documented in Mexico City where individuals feel physically ill from the geological trauma of earthquakes. The body registering ground instability as a form of grief. WASEI renders geological time as an intrusive everyday presence. The earth as something that unsettles from below rather than supports from beneath.
Credits
Rowland Reyes Martinez
Amara Higuera
YOUTH OF THE BEAST →
THE CHAWAN PROJECT →
MEET YOUR FUTURE →