#christopherkardambikis

[raku---gaki]

@annasellheim hangs out behind the projector screen as @christopherkardambikis sets up a laptop for the @ourcomicsourselves  comics reading at @fantomcomics .

[subterraneaucsd]

christopher kardambikis

In 1665, Athanasius Kircher published Mundus Subterraneus, a two-volume illustrated treatise of both fact and speculation concerning the Earth’s interior. The work merged observations of volcanic activity and other geological and geographical data with an admixture of fantastical information about immense polar vortices, subterranean oceans, the living habits of underworld giants and an imagined system of fire pits.

Kircher was invested in the double meaning of the Latin word “mundus,” which denotes both “world” and “universe.” In the lineage of Kircher’s treatise, Christopher Kardambikis’ Mundus Subterraneus (2012) gives rise to an absurd, futuristic mythology of epic proportions. Kardambikis pulls from the history of book production itself as well as science fiction, myth and cosmology. The work also functions as an intimate atlas of artistic process, reflecting several key influences on Kardambikis’ practice. Reminiscent of Kircher’s play on the doubling of “mundus,” the visual information of Kardambikis’ book can be considered as both a series of two-page spreads or as a single 28-foot long image. In either case, one’s view is limited to a fragment or image of a larger schema. Like an atlas, an entire area is not viewed at once but rather is taken in as fractions of a whole. An atlas functions along both symbolic and temporal parameters—the symbolic in terms of its contents and the temporal with regard to the agglomeration of information page by page or one section at a time. In a similar manner, Kardambikis presents the viewer with sign systems of both the fantastic and the personal in an illustration that requires durational engagement. One must, quite literally, traverse the page.