hi!

i’m an experimental A/V artist preoccupied with body, tech, (para)text, and spatial magik/rituals. My speculative multi-lingual~multi-lore practice is bookended by an evolving philosophy of slow working~slow living~𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝓊𝓇𝑒.

i make work under a primary alias d duàn.

as a migrant settler, i live and play on what always was and always will be the land of the Boonwurrung and Woiworung people of the Kulin nation. Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded.

ou must enjoy the process / we cannot be satisfied with the recognition generated by the very system that denies our ability to find each other / you generate your own magic / the act of living intentionally is a creative process in itself / shame is not sustainable / y
scroll down for a selection of my recent works. click each to unfold.


maxim of the day:
1.you are what you eat
2.time is not linear
3.过犹不及
looking for more?
my entire catalogue is live and can be found here, the archive.

or click here to instantly ascend.
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derrick.duan.322@gmail.com
3 as in our celestial entropy wants to reimagine a framework for participatory oracles. I also want to write you a poems and a spell for vivid dreams.

... and it all began with a dream. A couple months ago I came across Sandra Gilbert’s poem the Fog Dream. I became obsessed with the idea of quotidian oracles that dissipated as unexpectedly as it materialised: news from a phone call / a conversation with a stranger in the city / waking to the murmur of a southerly wind...

I wondered if there were more room for these unanswered 'slow feathers' to take place in our collective consciousness. I wondered if we are all looking for the same thing all along. So I reappropriated a commercial receipt printer as an oracle machine, dressed up an altar made out of wood and concrete, and trained a language model and a text-to-image model to print you spells as you ground some herbs and spices. The oracle machine generated unique poems and images on a scroll with each interaction, interpreting the cadence of your motion of grinding with the mortal + pestle. Afterwards, you could put the scroll in a mesh sachet along with your selection of ground scent, and take it home with you. ~~Place under your pillow for a vivid dream~~

Over the course of the exhibition, a total of 103 poems and 84 images were generated; oracles were delivered; people texted me over the ether to tell me their dreams. It was such a beautiful experience to design, learn and make something so deeply communal yet personal, profound yet strange.
Interactive installation,
w/ thermal receipt print + paper, heat, dried herbs (mugwort, nutmeg, chamomile, lavender, roasted dandelion), mortar + pestle, polyester mesh sachets, spell_gen.toe, spells.py.

No Vacancy Gallery.
Concept, programming and design by me.