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About: _ ¼
Underscore Quarterly

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Issues
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_ Quarterly Issue 10: Illusions

≠ Issue 10 Within the United States, the accepted notions of private and public have melded into one singular definition laced with authoritarian control. State-mandated boundaries in the forms of public parks, neighborhoods, no-fly zones, and constant streams of surveillance, maintain a precarious balance between the illusions of freedom and safety.

These physio/ideo-spatial interventions bring with them violent divisions of class: who belongs and who is criminal, who can and who can't.

Contributors Justin SloaneJesse HleboEric HuDena Yago



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_ Quarterly Issue 9: Administrative Comments from the Chicago Office

≠ Issue 9 is an investigation of three revolutionary-based groups united at their essence in a fight against governmental and societal oppression. The institutions in question are specifically targeted due to their treatment and relationship with minority and non-upperclass citizens in the United States of America.

Administrative Comments from the Chicago Office, contains content acquired from original communiques from, and FBI files on, both the Weather Underground and The Black Panther Party. Content is also derived from the Occupy Wall Street Twitter, blog, and newspaper, as well as the NYPD's Twitter and YouTube accounts of the mass arrests during Occupy Wall Streets first month of existence in Lower Manhattan. Administrative Comments from the Chicago Office is an edition whose historically based content is both changing as it is solidifying, while it concurrently interprets the perceivably solidified.

Contributors Justin SloaneJesse Hlebo



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_ Quarterly Issue 8: No Kind of Music Is Swing

≠ Utilizing research as the medium for creation, rather than the basis, No Music Is Swing culls all of its content from music publications prior to 1950: the first five issues of Downbeat magazine, The Academician, and texts on fictional composers. All of the texts are modified in some way, whether structurally, contextually, or formally, to create the final work. No Music Is Swing creates an abstracted taste of what rhythm might be able to achieve, yet, in theory, rhythm can never swing, at least as a musical form.


Contributors Justin SloaneJesse Hlebo


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_ Quarterly Issue 7: Peace*

≠ Made completely on 9/3/11 during Hurricane Irene in Brooklyn, NY, _ Quarterly Issue 7: Peace* is comprised of work culled almost exclusively from the internet. From Twitter hashtags to NY1 broadcasts of Mayor Bloomberg to stream-of-consciousness Google searches, Peace* conveys the experience of being locked in a studio with the computer screen as your only means of 'seeing'.

_ Quarterly Issue 7: Peace* will only be available at the NY Art Book Fair and the issue release at Printed Matter on October 20th, 2011.

Contributors Justin SloaneJesse Hlebo


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_ Quarterly Issue 5/6: Aural Marks

≠ Utilizing the structural removal of architecture from its native three-dimensional environment into a two-dimensional representation, similarly relates to the structural displacement of music and notation. These foundational points of reference were the basis for the artists involved in _ Quarterly 6. The removal of experience through documentation, and the form in which that documentation takes as a result, is a fascinating ground in which to envision the concurrent relationships of physical and aural, flat and dimensional. I provided images of an empty gallery space taken at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts as a reference point for the artists. This series of four, spot color offset printed, newsprint posters was commissioned in collaboration with Showpaper, with the intention that throughout the upcoming exhibition, the printed pieces would be re-united with their original space; and in so doing create a form of 'music', in the sense of a contained set of sounds.
— Jesse Hlebo, 11/3/10

Said exhibition was entitled Short-Term Deviation and ran from September 23rd-October 23rd, 2010 at the EFA Project Space located at 323 W39th St in New York City.

Contributors Lewis KopenhaferJason DiamondJustin SloaneJesse HleboJoe Ahearn


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_ Quarterly Issue 4: Sea

≠ There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or, The Whale

The fourth issue of _ Quarterly revolves around the idea of the Sea. Each artist presents works focusing around ideas of vastness, mystery, nostalgia, and nautical exploration. Paired with classic literature, this issue compares and contrasts the many notions of the sea; ranging from literal interpretations to more abstract representations of the ideas surrounding large expanses of water.

Contributors Grant Willing (guest editor) Ruth van Beek Noel Sinclair - Boyt Daniel Gustav Cramer Mårten Lange David Schoerner


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_ Quarterly Issue 3: Luxury of Violence

≠ When we get to thinking about everything in terms of survival and profit, the scratches on the floor cease to have their magic
— Alan Watts

Contributors Bryan KruegerCallie BarlowLeigha MasonJesse HleboSebastian Mylnarski


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_ Quarterly Issue 2: Superconsciousness

≠ In the realm of the small: compound vibrations form units of infinite novelty, which emerge to create the fabric of existence. Where novelty occurs, complication of the novel forms follows in a fractal fashion. The complex units then further complicate, forming a network of symbiotic associations.

The mind exists similarly, except the basic units are of phenomena.

The transcendence of thought is in becoming physical, and therefore media is made. Spirit and substance revolve. In the realm of possibility, the aether duplicates itself in matter and forms the physical world. The world we know is an imitation of reality, a disguise to shield us from the totality. Through mimesis, spirit and substance exchange for each other. The transcendence of the world is in becoming spirit, and therefore liberation is achieved. The transcendence of thought is in becoming physical, and therefore media is made.

Humanity has a keen 'skill' for mimicry. Our 'superiority' amongst animals is founded upon our ability to communicate, and to learn through communication. These talents are based on our capability to approximately mediate our thoughts through a kind of mimesis called language. In this case though, our superiority is our downfall. Language is wildly inadequate in its attempts to imitate thought. The mediated mind is incongruous, and ultimately, it lies, steals, and confuses far more than it clarifies. Imagination [infinite] has been suffocated by the limitations of language [finite].

Until this point in history, our finite languages have had only the capability of mediating thoughts of an individual. But there is another realm of thought that has escaped its measure. Through the means of shared experience and electrical brainwave emissions, conscious beings subconsciously generate a higher form of psychic group-thought called the superconsciousness, the metamind, the nervous system of the superorganism that is humanity. We have not, until now, with electronic communication's capability for rapid, simultaneous group-mediation, been capable of expressing our superconsciousness tangibly.

We have reached the end of intuition, the end of the psychic group-mind communion. Just as the languages of individual expression have limited our individual imagination, we will now limit our psychic communication and the incorporeal force that ties our communities emotionally. The effects of this are already being witnessed, and as the metamind continues to materialize and integrate into our world, we shall soon understand the hidden function of the network language.
— Michael Ray - Von The End of Intuition

Contributors Justin SloaneIan BartholomewMichael Ray - Von


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_ Quarterly Issue 1: Adaptation

≠ Almost every human activity or 'accomplishment', whether eating or building a house, is a form of adaptation; while it is especially prevalent amongst things of necessity, adaptation is also found amongst recreation and expression. The approximately 2,000 year old activity of surfing is an archetypal example of humans adapting to their environment, not modifying the environment to suit their needs but instead to conform themselves to its pre-existing structure; the ability to look at the rolling of water over the great vastness of the sea and interpret it into a canvas for personal movement is an exceptionally deep thought process not to be taken as a mere act of recreation. Further on in time, the unrestrained boom of civilization brought with it an expanse of fabricated surfaces, an attempt to cover up the natural surfaces with a controlled substance: concrete. The relation between water and concrete may seem to have little or no similarities at all, yet, when viewed from the eye of a surfer, there is an essential commonality between the two: a surface that, while not intended for the purpose, is perfectly capable of becoming a vessel to express ones self; the paintbrush of this concrete canvas is none other than a skateboard.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that skateboarding is essentially just a mindset. It's the appreciation for what's there, it's the balance of creation and destruction, it's the masochistic act of engaging in something you know you'll be hurt in, it's the expression of personal style, it's the combination of introspective meditation and camaraderie with others, it's the lack of requirements other than your own, and it's the elevation of seemingly banal and vernacular things into objects of value and worth. These factors place skateboarding into a category that is more akin to fine art than a recreational activity or a sport, as it has been labeled by countless forms of media, mostly due to its athletic component which is hardly the primary thrust of skateboarding. Sports require a structure that one must adhere to and almost entirely rely on others: the team and the coaches (who are the only ones allowed to be 'creative'), these factors coupled with the need to be athletically superior are the essential components of a majority of sports. Concurrently skateboarding, at its forefront, holds self-creativity to be its pinnacle. It has none of the objective requirements like sports do, it lives in a world of subjectivity; there is no good or bad, only satisfied or not. What only matters is you, not the judging of others.

The fact that skateboarding has been taken into an arena, into video games, into reality shows, into the world of advertising and appropriated by such menial things as Snakeboards and other such derogatory skateboard modifications (see: skateboardingsucks.com) is really quite a sad state. The feeling one gets when landing a trick is a rush like nothing else, it's a feeling of satisfaction that, because of factors internal and external, you landed something that had a sense of worth. It's redeeming to accomplish something you try to do. The mindset is something that cannot be truly commodified, no matter how hard individuals may attempt to do so; there is an inherent contradiction in the attempt to sell things not able to be sold, you can't package up the feeling, only the tool in which to gain that feeling. What they're selling you is not actually skateboarding, it's the attempt at a symbol of skateboarding. Skateboarding has become a fraud, but what hasn't? Everything that at one time seemed to have some sense of honesty and truth has since been exposed, from religion to government to art to skateboarding. Perhaps humans have gone too far in their quest for 'progress' and have instead found themselves in a place where they can no longer adapt. Imagine that, no more adaptation.
— Jesse Hlebo

Contributors ⇒ Cascade Wilhelm ⇔ Christian MorinGrant WillingJesse HleboJustin SloaneLemuel BarbourMia Chamasmany
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