print run no. 001 · duotone: ink + fluor 021 · continuous edition
open calls, sieved.
in register▼ turn the roller — scroll
sheet 2/3 — now printing…
the procedure.
capture
Screenshots taken at 2 a.m., newsletters you swore you would read, 136 sources nobody should read in full. Everything falls into the same funnel, unjudged.
sieve
Every day at 07:00, a machine reads what you were never going to read. What does not fit, falls through. What fits arrives with the why written down: criteria without reasons are just opinions.
draft
The application drafted in your voice, in the language of the call, gaps marked, with the exact list of what is missing. You review, you sign; the machine takes no credit.
pass 1: black ink · pass 2: fluorescent orange
the method
a sieve holds no opinions; it holds criteria.
move the mouse to shake · scroll to sift
step 01 — the noise
hundreds of open calls, every week.
Most are not for you, and none of them will say so to your face. Someone has to read them all; we decided it should not be you.
step 02 — the sifting
let fall what must fall.
Expired: out. Off-profile: out. Pay-to-play: flagged with the mark it deserves. Every discard carries its written reason, in case you ever want to argue with us.
what survives sorts itself.
why .fail
« Try again. Fail again. Fail better. »
Samuel Beckett — Worstward Ho, 1983
The statistics of open calls are stubborn: nearly everything is a no. We put failure in the domain name out of honesty — and out of method. There are two ways to fail: late, expensively and blind; or early, cheaply and knowing why. sdz.fail is the second one.
access by application — like an open call, but with a reply
request access.
sdz opens slowly: every new profile is a sieve that has to be tuned by hand. Tell us who you are and what you do. A person will read it; the only automatic reply in this house is the acknowledgement of receipt.