An Other A, B, C is a digital, printable, and shareable open access publication on self-preservation, love, and resistance at home and beyond.
This pamphlet is made from a hand-picked gathering of unregulated conversations between Eole (2yo) and their parent melissandre varin (29yo) as they contribute to drafting and crafting counter-hegemonic worlds.
Intergenerational conversations grounded in racial, social, and environmental justice are essential to transform our realities by transmitting personal testimonies. Eole painted black and melissandre wrote words with black ink on white paper. The manifestation of their verbal and embodied conversation made of gaps infuses in this intervention. This short collection of conversations is not reserved for beings with children. This ABC is a unique home-made publication to engage in difficult conversations regardless of one’s age. Playing with words as worlds of the possible.
An Other A, B, C is a descendant of neta bomani’s zines, Freedom Soup by Tami Charles, memories of melissandre’s mother’s written correspondence with loved ones, Gavin Jantjes’ ‘A south African colouring book’, Elise Peterson’s illustrations in ‘How mamas love their babies’ - among others.
The pamphlet is inclusive of Black trans and queer beings - it is made by one.
melissandre reflects ‘This offering invites personal testimony, re-interpretation, and collective re-imagining. It is messy, it took me months to slowly draft this ever evolving “thing”.’
The process has been deviated by sticky questions such as:
What is a text?
How do we read, and why?
And most importantly, how can we transgress that?
Encouraged by our recent practice of collective Black art book reading. It appeared essential that the text i was assembling needed to lose colonial words and gain in gestures, attempts, and failures. Ultimately it was all about space making, making space for Eole, downloaders, users, collaborators, friends, and extending family to use/make this tool as a disobedient and revolutionary ABC in their own unique ways.’
Instructional guide/invitation to continue the collaboration:
we invite you to print ‘an Other A, B, C’ on recycled or colourful paper if possible.
This A, B, C is not in the ‘right’ order and we invite you to think about why the A, B, C is in such order.
i could think of 3 ways to play with this disobedient tool. Please get in touch if you can imagine or find other ways to expand the usage of this tool.
A Game:
A Folded Pamphlet/Zine:
A (Wavey) Poster
