Machines that Know Tarot Decks

Maritime legends with teeth

What if all pieces on a chessboard were to be replaced with Fassbinder-esque sailors, with a dash of post-apocalyptic steampunk thrown in for good measure? An idea out of nowhere that appeared cool and fun at first, only to prove a deeply challenging and thought provoking venture.

The creation of Machines that Know & Machines that Know Underground Tarot decks (December 2015-January 2016) ended up calling our acquired perceptions into question, literally overturning the realities we are culturally accustomed to identifying through observation.

The traditional Major Arcana figures are reinvented in a modern, often subversive manner, their symbolisms re(en)coded and expanded into a philosophical, sometimes humorous, macabre or even deliberately grotesque view of the standard Tarot emblems and connotations.

The strategic naming of each card after a particular chess piece, move or rule added one more exciting layer of references and undertones; the pawns practically became the players, each dictating its own position, properties and environment. Open sea and outer space, underwater and underground, innocence and desire, order and chaos, life and death, masculine and feminine blurred and blended in visual and conceptual echoes of surrealist art and poetry, weaving a darkly complex universe of dream - or nightmare.