Post-Contact

Post-Contact is both a condition and a call to action. Post-, as the prefix meaning “after,” describes the current state of contact, or touch—specifically the lack thereof—due to a global effort of social distancing, quarantine, and isolation. Post, as the verb meaning “to publish,” commands an alternative means of contact, or communication—one that does not involve physical touch with another person.

Post-Contact is an attempt at providing a safer, alternative form of meaningful human-to-human connection through a public site for open, artistic commentary in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In the face of an invisible and growing mental health crisis facilitating community through creative relief is at the core of this project’s mission. Its methodologies center around elevating all participants; this includes supporting contributors by validating and empowering and amplifying their submissions, making them more visible and accessible, and giving them equal respect as forms of expression. It also includes passive viewers—particularly those around the site’s neighborhood—by involving them in the project wherever possible, and offering them something new and colorful and unusual to see in person on a regular basis.

Post-Contact is an emphasis of print as a medium to communicate on a more visceral level than that of screen-based work. It was specifically chosen to slow the material down for you to get a closer look. This particular form of print attempts to reflect the limited resources available as a result of the pandemic; this includes rejecting dominant norms of pre-coronavirus “good design” by embracing the imperfections of the physical site: the color, texture, level, smoothness, and lighting of the wall; the substrate of work: the tiled, wrinkled, misregistered, and crudely adhered paper; the process by which project components are published and updated: starting rough and in-progress, followed by many small, incremental improvements (very much like publishing software); and the output: a variety of content, authored by disparate voices, from diverse backgrounds—creative or otherwise.