The Meltionary is a growing experimental directory that investigates different materials, metaphors and modes of melting. The term Meltionary is a linguistic play on the English word dictionary; based on dictionary entries, it consists of Meltries, each beginning with a letter. The Meltries are playful instructions to unnerve definitions, videos of melting processes, photo series of how materials witness change, reports on failure, experimental instructions for generating chemical reactions, circuits for DIY measuring devices, and theoretical-poetic texts.
MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr) study and experiment with shape-shifting processes as they meet technologies, sensory media and pedagogies in a warming world. Meltionary (derived from "dictionary"), is a growing collection of arts-design-research engagements that cooks up questions around material transformations alongside impulses from trans* feminism and disability justice. Melting as a kaleidoscope like phenomena touches upon multiple topics at once: climate change, the potential for political reformulations, change over time and material transformation. MELT shares work in the forms of videos, installations, websites, lectures, workshops and courses.
Reach out to us by sending an email to MAIL@MELTIONARY.COM
Find us on Instagram at @meltionary
Find us on Twitter at @unstablematters
fellowship: Predicting Backwards Computer, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, NL
fellowship: Counting Feelings, MedienWerk NRW Media Art Fellows, University of Cologne, DE
workshop: SET! Scripted Emergent Togethernesses: Collecting our everyday lives towards trans* and disabled presents”, part of Feeling Machines with Control Shift, 30.10.2022 with a slow burn until April 2023, Bristol, UK + online
writing: "The Meltionary", in More Posthuman Glossary, edited by Goda Klumbytė, Emily Jones and Rosie Braidotti, Bloomsbury Academic, UK
lecture: ‘Intersectional Accessibility: Meet the Access Server’, RINGVORLESUNG: Fehlende Inklusion in der Wissenschaft? Invited by Dr. Maureen Maisha Auma and Dr. Mark Terkessidis, in conversation with Robel Afeworki Abay, Humboldt University, 07.11.2022, Berlin, DE
workshop: “Predicting Backwards: Generating Hirstories” in the conference ‘Any One Day the Future has died. The Impossible Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence’, organised by Katrin Köppert, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Francesca Schmidt and Pınar Tuzcu, HBG Leipzig, DE
lecture: “the future is not a point we meet but a trouble we travel”, Symposium ‘Leaving Traces’, Sonic Acts Biennale, Amsterdam, NL
workshop and group exhibition: “Presence-Past, Presence-Presence, Presence-Future: Trans* and Disabled Timelines”, Sonic Acts Biennale ‘one sun after another’, curated by Margarita Oispian, W139, Amsterdam, NL
group exhibition: in Commoning, with the work ”Non-Disposable Timelines: Zeitgebers against the clock”, The New Alphabet School, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE
workshop: “Clocks built of sand: Moving time-times”, Training for the Future: We Demand A Million More Years, curated by Florian Malzacher and Jonas Staal, Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo, Turin, IT
solo exhibition & workshop series: “Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities” within the series: Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid, TIER - The Institute for Endotic Research, Berlin, DE
stipend: NEUSTART KULTUR, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn, DE
Hackers and Designers Summer Academy: "Connecting Otherwise", 16.07.2022 - 20.07.2022 from 10:00 - 16.30CET (including a daily 1 hour lunch break). Register via Hackers and Designers
workshop: “Shapeshifting Dreams: Practicing Towards Accessible Institutions”, with Feminist Hack Meetings, Varia, Rotterdam, NL
Aliens are temporary — a mutating tale. Mutation 1, Group Show curated by Sonia Fernández Pan, Sylvia Sadzinski & Anaïs Senli, with Patching Concrete: Sites of Heat, 09.04.2022 - 06.06.2022, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Berlin
Aliens are temporary — a mutating tale. Mutation 4, Group Show curated by Sonia Fernández Pan, Sylvia Sadzinski & Anaïs Senli, with Heating Matters / Change Flux, 07.05.2022 - 24.07.2022, Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch Berlin
workshop: "Rest Assured", 30.04.2022 and 14.05.2022, Sonic Acts, online
panel: "Oracles and Rituals. How to deal with the failure of antidiscrimination policies in institutions", May 10th 14.30 - 16 CET, Series "Doing Access", HU Berlin, online
writing: Release of PreCog Magazine with our contribution "Meltionary: Melting as a Shapeshifting Figuration"
video screening: "U-Archiving the Unstable", 28 January 2022 - 17:50, Transmediale, Berlin, DE
associate fellowship workshop: "Coalition Data Center: Assembling Data Points for Trans* and Autistic Justice", February 24th, 2022, 11:00 - 13:30 EST / 17:00 - 19:30 CET, DCI ischool - University of Toronto, CA. Register via DCI.
lecture: “Meltionary: heat, encounter or another friction”, 12.02.2022 12:00 in Kansas City and 19:00 CET, Kansas City Art Institute, KCAI: Kansas City, KS, USA
exhibition: “Meltionary: heat, encounter or another friction”, November 11 2021 - February 27 2022, Kansas City Art Institute, KCAI: Kansas City, KS, USA - Plan your visit with eventbrite.
fellowship, October 2021 - March 2022: "ACCESS SERVER" at Het Nieuwe Instituut
performative lecture: "Messing with <>, practicing for <>, refiguring of <>", 16:30 - 18:00, 24 March 2022, Digital Gender: Ethics, Power and (Gender) Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence Conference, DHMD, Dresden, DE.
talk: Research Infrastructures: On Public and Collective Research Practices, 31 March 2022, Het Nieuwe Instituut, NL
associate fellowship, October 2021 - Feburary 2022: "Data for…?" at Digital Curation Institute, University of Toronto
infrastructure residency: "ACCESS SERVER Videos", Intersectional Feminists affiliated with Systerserver, Anarchaserver and Lever Burns, February 2022
talk: "Untitled", within series: Metabolic streams for arts and knowledge, SMENA Gallery, Kazan, RU
residency, October - December 2021: "Sensing / Consenting", Spectral Desires Path residency with Fuzzy Binaires, with Constant, Sensolus and Urban Species, Brussels, BE
workshop: "Computing Instability Notational States of Matter in H20", Humboldt-University, Digital Media and Computation, invited by Shintaro Miyazaki, Berlin, DE.
article: "Con(fuse)ing and Re(fusing) Barriers", in Research Refusal, A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, Vol. 10 No. 1 (2021)
newspaper article and poster: "Rituals Against Barriers", Research Refusal, Transmediale, Berlin, DE
talk: “Animorphosis: ICE”, Animorphosis Lecture Series, DiVAversity of Arts, an initiative of the UdK Women's Representative Office, invited by Anita Jóri, Berlin University of the Arts, DE
talk: “fusing access, oozing barriers: trans*crip worlding as praxis”, Critical Futures: Possible Procedures, invited by Konstanze Schütze, University of Cologne, Cologne, DE
workshop: “Rituals Against Barriers”, Critical Futures: Possible Procedures, curated by Olga Holzschuh, Nada Schroer and Konstanze Schütze, University of Cologne, Cologne, DE
workshop: “Read and Repair”, Varia: Collective for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, NL
residency, June-August 2021: “Archiving the Unstable”, Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2021, Transmediale, Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin, DE
residency, May 2021: OVEREXPOSED residency at SONIC ACTS
talk: “Other Sensing Possibilities: Permeability, Leaking”, with Johanna Schaffer, CAIS Center for Advanced Internet Studies: (In)Visibility in the Digital Age, Bochum, DE
workshop: “Heating Matters/Change Flux writing workshop”, Vorspiel: Transmediale, curated by Sylvia Sadzinski, alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin, DE
conference presentation: “Hacking Concrete”, at “New Materialist Informatics”, Kassel University, DE, Online
writing: “N.N. (Nomen Nomiandum)”, in Doing Research, edited by Sandra Hofhues and Konstanze Schütze, Transcript-Verlag, DE
text/meltry: Printed Circuit Boards towards Non-Binary Computation. In collaboration with Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania and their program: Post-Pandemic Futures
input: Crumbling, Churning, Dissolving [Black Boxes]: Towards ending (bureaucratic) Oppression Bureaucracksy Programme by Constant Brussels, BE
talk: Bug Report: Binary Logic at Gender, Media, Affect. Amplified Asymmetries Berlin, DE
workshop & curation: Bug Report: Tuning to trans*feminist Xystem.Crash at Zitadelle Berlin Berlin, DE
text: Warming Up for the Unknown with David Scarantino published by COVEN Berlin
workshop: MIAU ID at Control Shift Bristol, UK
talk: On Meltionary, PreCog Time Episode 16, New York, US
talk: Meltionary: Heating Matters / Change Flux & workshop: Subtle Shifts: Instability Story Hour, Goldsmiths University of London, Class: Digital Arts Computing, London, UK
workshop: MELT DOWN: Climate CRYsis. DGTL FMNSM, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, DE
talk: persisting flux : softening matter : heating for radical social change & workshop: Disperse! Dissolve! Disintegrate! Cooking up flux., Karlsruhe University of Art & Design, Class: Women in Computing, Karlsruhe, DE
workshop: Code, Layers, Infrastructures, in collaboration with Jörn Röder & Kamran Behrouz with The New Alphabet School, Invited by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin & The Common Room, New Delhi, IN
2019
talk: Making Trans*lucent: En/Countering Categorization. DGTL FMNSM, Hellerau Festspielhaus, Dresden, DE