PORTCULLIS SLAM, Suzanne Gold covers a mindset
PORTCULLIS SLAM, a risograph print embellished with digital text, has been featured in the Winter 2017 issue of COVER literary magazine !
I've been thinking of the image of the portcullis as a metaphor for that feeling when your own brain shuts up like a little pill bug in the face of something new or terrifying. A lot of minds are closed to a lot of good ideas these days, so with this image + text experiment, I attempt to engage with those mindsets, try to understand what it is about a new idea that can cause so many people to clam up and lock the doors of their minds. Like when Igor Stravinsky premiered the Rite of Spring to Vaslav Nijinsky's new ballet for the Ballet Russes in 1913. Within moments of hearing the opening bars, the crowd erupted into riot. Never had they experienced something so different, so un-melodious. The portcullis of their minds slammed shut and they rolled up the drawbridge. Better to sit in ignorance than to open their minds to something new.
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