allographic translation
Enchanted Rock: The absence of documentation does not mean the absence of history

A collaborative project of Adrian Aguilera and Betelhem Makonnen

"The word “allography” comes from two Greek roots allos meaning “other” and graphos meaning “writing, or field of study”. The word itself is malleable. An allograph is a character. Like the a Z or 本 or € or æ. And the interpretation of a character can be extended almost anywhere. To photographs, to drawings, to songs, to stories. All things. All fields of study, allography. Thus anything becomes fair game. Any reading, any interpretation, any presentation. Fuck boundaries." – anonymous

Enchanted Rock is a granite formation from the Precambrian age and Texas’ largest mountain made of a single rock. It is among the oldest exposed rocks in North America. Enchanted Rock is a mute witness to the earliest eon of the earth’s history, over 750 million years. The term allographic comes from the Greek root for ‘other’ and refers to alternate forms of a letter of the alphabet, or of cases in typography. Graphe comes from graphikos which means writing or drawing. An allographic translation implies the most expansive variations of translations using an unlimited selection of media.

allographic translation: Enchanted Rock is not an interest to present missing volumes of History as evidence, in the vein of revisionist historians committed to going back and reinterpreting an overlooked fact or event. The works will instead activate an autonomy of interpretation, offering alternative possibilities to interact with the past, extending our perception beyond the limitations of responding to a fixed officialized account.

allographic translation: Enchanted Rock proposes a radical interaction with the past, liberated from the limitations of reliving and responding to a single narrative account of place and time, and instead exercises agency to become a creator of and actor in the realization of new histories that can propose evolved futures.