From Postcard to Music


Art Kitchen Exhibition — Tuscaloosa, Alabama (2012)

In February 2012, a recycled mail‑art postcard by This Window was exhibited at The Alabama Art Kitchen, an artist‑run collective based at 2626 University Blvd., Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The piece originally served as promotional artwork for the 2009 digital release Cassette Culture, and features a photograph of Marni De Much, drummer on the limited‑edition Morgue Studio Demos CDR.

The Alabama Art Kitchen operated throughout the early 2010s as a volunteer‑driven space offering studios, workshops, exhibitions, and community arts events. Although the physical venue is no longer active in its original form, many of the artists involved continue to contribute to Tuscaloosa’s independent creative scene through pop‑up shows and collaborative projects that grew out of the collective.

Recycled Artwork and the Extractivism Series

The postcard exhibited in Alabama was later reused as the visual anchor for the Extractivism series on Bandcamp — an ongoing archival project that draws together rediscovered recordings, new digital work, remixes, and recontextualised material from the wider This Window catalogue.

Listen to Extractivism

 
The series explores themes central to the project’s long history: reuse, recovery, cultural recycling, and the transformation of existing material into new forms.

Each volume extends the documentary thread of This Window’s practice:

  • Extractivism (Vol. 1) introduced the concept, blending early experiments with new digital textures.

  • Extractivism 2 expanded the archive with deeper finds, alternate mixes, and previously unheard material.

  • Subsequent volumes continue to build a layered record of the project’s evolution, echoing the long-running use of recycled postcards, photocopy textures, and mail‑art aesthetics.

Location: Europe

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Think I Can Make It

Image
A fractured transmission across sound and image Don't Think I Can Make It by This Window is a sonic and visual meditation on disconnection, delay, and the quiet collapse of communication. This track appears on The Sampler #05 (CD). The track pulses with electronic textures that drift in and out of clarity—like signal interference on a long-distance call—while a thumping drum line anchors the listener in a bodily rhythm, a heartbeat beneath the static. Free Download The vocal narrative is not sung but spoken, dissected fragments from a voicemail. Phrases such as "Hope all is well" , "We'll try to connect later" , "I don't think I can make it" , and finally, "Ciao" —are delivered with clinical detachment, yet they carry the emotional weight of absence. These lines also appear in the track Ciao Again by This Window, suggesting a thematic echo or recursive loop in the artist’s work which was released on The Sampler #05 (CD). The accomp...
Read more

Dance This Way

Image
The death of romance "Dance this Way" is a short, searing piece of emotional reportage. In just a handful of lines, it captures the humiliation of being treated as an accessory rather than a partner. The narrator’s repeated “I hate you, I really hate you” is not melodrama but the blunt edge of betrayal — the kind that happens not in grand betrayals, but in the small, public moments where someone you love makes you feel invisible. The scene is painfully familiar: a couple arrives together at a favourite bar to see a favourite band — a shared ritual. But instead of sharing the night, the man abandons his partner to socialise with his friends. When he does return, it’s not to reconnect, but to issue a command: “dance this way.” The woman is reduced to a performer, summoned at will, her emotional state irrelevant. When she cries, he laughs. The dream — of romance, of mutual respect — collapses in that instant. Objectification The man’s behaviour treats th...
Read more

Crash '87

Image
Crash '87 - Discogs Release Information Track: Crash ’87 Artist: This Window   Release: Appears on the cassette Extraction (1989, EE Tapes, Belgium) 1 Format: C40 Chrome Cassette, experimental/industrial/abstract Compilation Context: The track is part of a body of work that merges sound collage, dark ambient textures, and conceptual art. The cassette itself is a curated sequence where tracks bleed into one another, resisting discrete consumption and instead demanding immersion. Crash ’87 is not a standalone single but embedded in a larger experimental release that foregrounds fragmentation, layering, and the instability of recorded media. The accompanying video, shows a mouse in the palm of hands and links to The Genetics of Art and the National Mouse Club 2 . The mouse becomes both a literal and symbolic subject: a fragile, living creature held in human hands, and simultaneously a metaphor for control, breeding, and manipulation. In the context of Crash ’87 , the mouse ima...
Read more