The Third Mutation was an ouroboric journey back to the invisible dimensions of the mind - after reading the manifesto,

certain advanced Human Hosts became Pages of the Living Comic Book,

and the dead tree started to remember what it was like to photosynthesize.

Manifesto

The Living Comic Book

Films are a collection of dead images given artificial insemination. The Living Comic Book is my current project. The goal is to animate my comic book, Behaviour, by having each page being worn by humans, interacting with each other in the wild.

Connection through mutual alienation

Art has always been a way for me to express private thoughts, as well as to connect with people in a way I found difficult but which seemed to come naturally to others. This has been a form of exposure therapy for me - I now realise that many others share my hopes and fears, but keep them secret for fear of being exposed as a deviant or defective in some essential way. Being my first creation that found any kind of audience outside of my inner-circle, writing Behaviour profoundly changed how I relate to others. Strangers who had read it talked openly to me about feelings of anxiety, despair, and alienation, under the assumption that I was comfortable connecting on that level. They completely skipped any tiresome introductions or small talk - that dreaded gauntlet of social tests I always manage to fuck up somehow.

Disturb the comfortable, comfort the disturbed

With each candid confession from a stranger, I found my psychic defences loosen their hold on me, until I was able to communicate with the kind of vulnerability I’d only ever known on late nights alone with pen and paper. I realised that there are many of us out there who find it easier and more meaningful to interact on this deeper, and often darker, level. Most of us live our lives behind carefully constructed masks of etiquette and socially acceptable charades. We can have an entire conversation with someone who shares our scars, but not even realise because all we see is another mass produced clone. When someone appears maskless before us, it permits us to reveal our own scars.

Nodus Tollens

Through the Living Comic Book, I hope to create this connection between strangers. By being a Living Page, you are sending out an invitation to dispense with the empty, routine politeness we all reluctantly force upon ourselves and others. If you find yourself meeting another Living Page, this is a person who is willing to deviate from the script, someone who is open to the surreal and the uncomfortable. Don’t ask them what they do for a living or where they’re from. Ask them who they’d address their suicide note to. Ask them if they’ve ever had a recurring nightmare or a psychotic episode. Ask them whether there’s any emotion they’ve forgotten how to feel. Ask if they’re keen for an acid trip. Treat every interaction as a draft for something you cannot yet fathom.

Hopefully, that way, the dead tree will remember what it was like to photosynthesise.

ᛞᚨᛏᚢᚱᚨᚲᚺᛁᛚᛞ.ᚲᛟᛗ/ᛗᚨᚾᛁᚠᛖᛋᛏᛟ