MELT

As MELT, Loren Britton and Isabel Paehr are arts-design researchers who work with the potentials of heat, encounter and friction to set in motion transformative material-discursive processes. Boiling up insights from chemistry, crip technoscience and trans*feminism, they play with the methods of queer play, unlearning and leaking. Their work crumbles structures, unbounds materials, dissolves technology and makes collectivities. MELT is exploring how to make something but to keep it open to change, and is doing this through formats like video artworks, experiments with access, websites and workshops. MELT has been influenced by (melting) Ice, Freezers, Software, Signal, moving too fast/slow, Disability Justice, Digital Materialism, Decolonial thinking, Gifs, Climate Protests, Anti-Racism and Dancing. 

The Meltionary

The Meltionary is a growing experimental directory that investigates different materials, metaphors and modes of melting. The term Meltionary is a linguistic play on the English word dictionary; based on dictionary entries, it consists of Meltries, each beginning with a letter. The Meltries are playful instructions to unnerve definitions, videos of melting processes, photo series of how materials witness change, reports on failure, experimental instructions for generating chemical reactions, circuits for DIY measuring devices, and theoretical-poetic texts.

During the Fall 2021 semester MELT is engaging with KCAI students and conducting a virtual artist-in-residence at KCAI. This is a project of the Center for Contemporary Practice program at the KCAI Gallery. Sean Nash is the faculty organizer with support from the following programs at KCAI: Social Practice, Product Design, Graphic Design and the Jannes Library.