During the research phase of Searching for Sebald, we developed a number of technics that have been easily adapted to other ICI projects. One of the most playful takes the visual material of the project at hand and refashions it into a deck of cards. Born out of necessity when the search for Sebald’s images frequently turned into a frustrating excursion through his 4 prose fictions, we quickly imagined other uses for our pile of images.
Our favorite activity is one we call shuffling. Our goal is not only to reposition images next to unlikely neighbors but to encourage acts of leakage from the shuffling act itself. The visual magma that falls out from the boundaries of cards falling through space is often too nebulous to recognize at first ‘hand,’ but its overall effect is not unlike a well placed comma in an array of poetic text; it shows us a metaphor stalking a description, but also the shadow from where it first escaped.