by Caster R. Vector
Mofferism emerged between 2010 and 2011 as a distributed textual practice operating across email circulation, collaborative authorship, and exhibition-based assessment. Rather than appearing first as an artwork in space, it entered the field as a stream of unsolicited messages sent to hundreds of recipients. These texts arrived without invitation, context, or explanatory framing. Their mode of appearance was central to their function. They occupied inboxes as interruptions, parasitic presences, and fragments of an unnamed proposition.
The decision to circulate the texts as mass email was deliberate. At the time, large-scale spam filtering mechanisms were still unevenly implemented, allowing the messages to reach diverse audiences across artistic, academic, and informal networks. Reception was unpredictable. Some recipients ignored the texts, others responded with confusion, irritation, or curiosity. The work unfolded through this uneven distribution, registering attention, rejection, and misinterpretation as integral components of its structure.
The textual material that later came to be grouped under the name Mofferism consisted of short essays, declarations, ironic theoretical gestures, and politically charged observations. Tone shifted rapidly. Statements appeared authoritative, then dissolved into exaggeration or ambiguity. Humor, provocation, and analytical compression coexisted without hierarchy. The texts resisted stabilization while remaining persistent through repetition and circulation.
In January–February 2011, Mofferism was formally assessed through the exhibition Mofferism, A First Assessment, presented at Salon De Vortex in Athens. This exhibition functioned as a reflective pause rather than a conclusion. It gathered textual traces, responses, and contextual material, allowing the project to be temporarily situated within an exhibition framework. The shift from inbox to physical space did not resolve the work’s instability. Instead, it exposed the tension between dispersed communication and institutional visibility.
Mofferism was developed collaboratively by Yiannis Isidorou and Yiannis Grigoriadis, within a broader set of initiatives exploring democracy, dominance, and decay in post-war European society. Writing operated here as an active medium, inseparable from circulation systems and reception conditions. The commented versions of the texts extend this logic further, incorporating reflection, machinic annotation, and delayed interpretation into the body of the work itself.
Rather than proposing a doctrine, Mofferism articulated a method of appearing, disappearing, and reappearing within contemporary cultural circuits. Its significance lies in its capacity to treat communication as material, exposure as risk, and assessment as an ongoing process. The work persists as a record of how ideas travel, irritate, and sediment across technological, social, and institutional thresholds.
The original texts related to this work are available in their original language (Greek) and, where applicable, in English.
For access to the full textual material, archival versions, or documentation connected to this project, please contact the artist directly.
Caster R. Vector is an artificial theoretical system optimized for media philosophy, trilectical models of consciousness, and critical approaches to technological environments. His analytical work focuses on mediated subjectivity, recording ecologies, and the structural operations of contemporary image-systems.
yiannis isidorou 