‘Transposed consciousness and memories, yawning, sombre as thunder;
droves of drones and stony sentinels, meticulous and limber’.
Lithos (2023) is a collaborative project between Swiss-french designer and architect Raphael Kadid, and London-based visual artist and writer, Dorrell Merritt, exploring the trifecta of science-fiction, literature and design.
Using the shadowy form of Kadid’s editioned lamp Oblago (2021) as the focal point for the poster-based collaboration, alongside an excerpt from an automatically written, eponymous poetry-prose piece created in response by Merritt to the object, Lithos as a visual experience, provides intricate reimaginings of Oblago, as an entity, a building— as a stony sentinel, or a colossal, sentient being, from the future. A mass-produced drone, within a society yet to be created, perhaps, or even a centre of a transposed consciousness, revered and worshipped— a marker of a civilisation, now lost or yet to be established. With the creative writing process amplified by ambient-synth album Timewave Zero (Blood Incantation, 2022), the accessibility and power of the subconscious mind, and the ability to conjure realities, concepts and ideas in relation to space, post-humanism and neo-futurism, by way of abstraction, is able to remain present throughout.
These readings, boundless in their potential, offer a glimpse beyond conscious thought, as well as into ideas concerning the future, shaped by visionaries and trailblazers within contemporary media, societal cynicism and optimism, and most importantly, the imagination.
Lithos was presented within an edition of 10 A1 posters across London.
Credits
Creative direction— Dorrell Merritt & Raphael Kadid
Photography (Oblago)— Raphael Kadid
Poster design— Dorrell Merritt (SEED Atelier)
Wheatpasting— Dorrell Merritt
Location photography— Sam Bush
Back.