OFLUXO

Site #284: Speculative Archeo-Cultural Assessment on the Aesthetics of Flatness among The Cult of the Seventh Face.

Fragments of an early Seventh Face cluster, identified by symbols inked into their burial bones, have been found inside the ruins of a Pre-Collapse estate. The nesting site has been located inside what was once the property’s central exhibition centre, although its precise nature is unclear. Excavation uncovered several archaeological traces that indicate an aesthetic study among the Seventh Face occupants, although their mode of expression presumes more of a conspiratorial obsession. It is our understanding that upon occupying the site (already in a state of abandonment and decay) the Seventh Face began to examine the objects found inside. They then proceeded to document their findings on the surface of the building from wall to floor in textual and diagrammatic engravings. While many of the inscriptions are illegible for us today, the recurrence of the descriptor ‘flatness’ remains apparent.

Many of the objects encountered by the Seventh Face were made from a rectangular piece of cloth stretched over the perimeter of a wooden frame. Some of these rectangular surfaces had been coated with a fluid, glossy substance depicting several smaller rectangles that sometimes morphed into squares. The Seventh Face fixated on the flatness of these precise shapes as they glowed with vivid colour and were said to pulsate if one gazed at them for too long. However, the study of another rectangular artefact arrived at the descriptor ‘flatness’ from an entirely different appearance. The impression upon its surface was described as “extremely muddled”, made from a strange substance presumed to be liquid but that was, in fact, dry to the touch. The Seventh Face compared its appearance to the spit that dribbled from their mouths, or the patterns created by their excrement. They wondered how so many layers of drips and splatters could appear so flat, far from the depth and dimension of their own optics. As they gazed at the stained, taught cloth they began to experience the disintegration of their surroundings in the flatness of the object.

The study becomes increasingly confused when the Seventh Face encountered a collection of bound texts, which we can only assume served some sort of culinary purpose as the terms good and bad ‘taste’ are repeatedly referred. There seems to be a link between this text and another series of marked surfaces found in the building. These images were described as faces, objects, and foodstuffs that the Seventh Face recognised from their travels across the abandoned plains, printed in harsh black and white lines. But some were also tinted with bright colours that made them flatter and more interesting than they remembered. Some were not physically flat at all, but three-dimensional objects that could be held and passed around. Others resembled items of furniture, although they were not very comfortable and often protruded at strange angles. While the found texts often degraded these objects, the Seventh Face were endeared to them as more hypnotically flat things. For while they did not fully understand the appetite of these mysterious authors, they were now well-read. Thus, for the cult of the Seventh Face, this disparate assortment of objects appeared to “flatten out” the remnants of a dead culture for their perusal.

From these findings, we can speculate that this gathering signifies an early development in the iconographic timeline of the Seventh Face cult, closer in proximity to that of the Old World. However, the date of the site remains unknown due to corrosion caused by a concentrated strain of N-AT Fungus, most probably dumped at the site during the radical stages of its experimentation.