To our friends,
It’s been some time since our last newsletter posting, and it’s good to speak with you again. We hope you were able to spend the holidays with your loved ones, even though the quarantine separated many of us from our families. Last we posted here we were just easing out of the New York winter and squeezing into the New York grift from our grateful perch at NEW INC. Quite a lot has happened since! We got to do some websites for the nicest of clients, a remote residency, a highly embroidered fashion collaboration and we all taught a bit. We learned a lot!
Alas, true to our name, all four of us have now had to depart from U.S. soil for now: Kalli and Sam are in Toronto, while Agnes and Gary are in London. We hope there will be a return to NYC, but for now, while our visas and personal circumstances keep us apart, we are truly grateful to the friends, collaborators and chosen nemeses we had the opportunity to eat, drink and conspire with.
In true year-in-review style, here are a few things we’ve been up to, lately:
Back in April we released our Mozilla Creative Award project, Bot or Not, which also screened in the “Arcade” section of this year’s Open City Documentary Festival. Read all about it with Mozilla here.
A redesign of wordsinspace.net the website of the inimitable Shannon Mattern, with delightful curatorial support for librarian Sal Hamerman.
Who Feels At Home in the Visible World, an online exhibition for our friends in Cambridge, MA.
And an interview with Alex Westfall over at Killscreen, which you can read here! (Thanks for the transatlantic photoshoots Zach and Abiola, we’ll be hiding behind these for years)
Not to mention, coming soon (some long pandemic-delayed endeavours):
The online exhibition resulting from our digital residency at Bard Graduate Center, which digs into the evolving social politics of the (smart) kitchen.
Our collaboration with fashion designer Eliza Collin for Bell Labs E.A.T., NEW INC and Rhizome, which explores the minor histories of software and interface design in the depths of the Bell AT&T archive.
As we turn imminently to the cool side of the pillow, we hope that 2021 brings you all the warmth, comradeship and sense of purpose you need to see the year through. Pass the time well, friends, and happy new year!
Speak soon,
Foreign Objects LLC
*With particular thanks to Dan Taeyoung, Toby Shorin, Laurel Schwulst, Melanie Hoff, Alex Bodkin, Sarah Gunawan, Lucy Siyao Liu, Austin Wade Smith, Mindy Seu, Billy Tang, E Roon Kang, Sal Hamerman, David Hecht, Devora Najjar, Kevin McLellan, Lauren Wong, Kelsa Trom and the whole NEW INC family.