On November 9, 2016, a portal opened to a new age of uncertainty on Turtle Island. That morning, my ancestors called me to consider marvelous ways in which various tendencies of early 20th century avant-garde art movements signaled a European awakening to ancient wisdom. For example: chaos, anti-art, and being nonlinear, often cited as modern traits, are all enshrined in ancient traditions. This web of kinship has become for me a practice that is at once spiritual, intellectual, healing, and connective. I’ve spent the past decade learning, creating, and exploring this rich vein.
Experimental Chaos Fiction (ExChaFic) is an imaginative, collaborative process I developed for the channeling of illustrated novellas. It emerged from my creative research, activity, and teaching around connections between 20th century avant-garde art movements, futurisms, and ancient wisdom, including that of my Indigenous Hopi-Tewa and Coahuiltecan ancestors.
It includes creating photomontage illustrations from materials across time and space and then channeling those images into a written novella. I assemble this material, editing lightly and honoring chaos all the while. These novellas often embody the gentler, even playful aspects of chaos, experimentation, dream wisdom, and nonlinear ways of being and making. Live musical accompaniment, a community-centered short course on what the avant-garde shares with the ancients, and connective games provide expansive dimensionality.
People of all ages and levels of creative in/experience are encouraged to participate in the channeling of the fourth ExChaFic novella. Everyone who participates receives free copies of the completed novella. Additional copies are archived and mailed to museums and veterinary clinics to be read to the art and puppies.
Here you can view a little digital recreation of the fourth Experimental Chaos Fiction novella, which was channeled on June 11, 2025 by several dozen beautiful humans in a couple of different parks on the land they're calling Portland, Oregon these days. This event was part of Bike Summer, a wonderful thing indeed. Up above these words there's a video about the thing you just read about.
