“Cosmeage: A Study,” is the first artifact of Otzkö Kazo, released on Metalabel. The name, "Cosmeage," is a portmanteau of cosmos and lineage. This work expands our understanding of memory as moments beyond our own lifetime, but also inherited trans-generationally -- spanning a lineage as far as the cosmic. Through dance and sound, the latent memories stored in the subconscious are surfaced. Cosmeage translates this ancestral affection into a study on aesthetics. This work materializes Ari Melenciano's research and inquiries on Black cultural gesture, as she uses it to expand the theory of "Embodied Mathematics."

Originally experienced as a film, Cosmeage has traveled from NYC's MoMA to Los Angeles's The Music Center. The film explores Black cultural gestures through embodied sensorial memory, and pan-African diasporic sound, all while situated within surrealist architecture.  This release translates the film into a tactile form of nearly 200 cinematic stills and process images. Each have been printed and placed into individual pockets within a booklet, encouraging a slower and non-linear still-cinematic experience, with a deliberate study of the body.

And, a set of postcards extend this archive further. Each function as single frames recalling moments from the film.

Limited run of 12 editions 💫

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Ari J. Melenciano is an artist and cultural researcher working with perception, time, consciousness, and cybernetics as materials. Over the past few years, she has converged these inquiries into Otzkö Kazo, an emergent post-cultural ecology.

She has taught courses in new media technologies, design, critical theory, and culture at institutions including New York University, Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and Parsons School of Design. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai.

Melenciano is also the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution dedicated to cultivating and Black imagination and culture while at the intersection of art, design, and technology.