Evolution

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[L. evolvere unroll, unfold, unrolling and reading of papyrus roll]

Most insects are promiscuous. There is competition not only before mating but also after mating occurs. Females develop the capacity to store sperm of more than one male, and males develop spines and hairs on their penises for scraping out the sperm of previous males.The action of evolutionary selection leads to females with more and more complicated reproductive tracts; males with more and more barbed penises.There is a tendency to understand evolution as a progression toward higher beings, to ally it to a metahistorical guiding force. Biologically this is nonsense. Selection operates without foresight, and solely upon the single stage of ordinary generation. There is no incline to evolution.There is endless modification upon the horizontal plane; a scroll without narrative unrolling indefatigably.

This evolution project is a chain of writers and visual artists.The idea came from Jim Gladstone. A text was sent to an artist who produced a piece.This piece was then sent to a writer who produced a text, which went to a visual artist who produced a piece, which went to a writer who produced a text…and so on.The chain is nine long so ultimately the text is fed into a modification process and a different text emerges, but the evolution is by no means complete. It is a section from an endless evolutionary scroll. Participating artists were all chosen from different cities and artistic circles, and operated in complete ignorance both of each other and of their position in the chain.They saw only the piece directly preceding their own, which they received by email.The only rule was that the piece they produced was produced having seen the preceding piece, and that it was quick: seven days for visual artists, four for writers. I was interested more in surface combinations and connections than a sequence of finished independent pieces.

When the two gases [oxygen and sulphur dioxide] are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid…The mind of the poet is this shred of platinum…is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
—T. S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’

Jim Gladstone (writer) TO
Francis DiFronzo (painter) TO
Jonny Diamond (writer) TO
Teri Muroff (sculptor) TO
John Fuller (poet) TO
Sergej Jensen (painter) TO
Dennis Cooper (writer) TO
Vanessa Able (artist) TO
CD Wright (poet)