Book Signing for OK, NO RESPONSE

In the spring of 2020, while experiencing the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic and global shutdown, Aaron Stern and Lucy Helton began exchanging images via a thermal fax machine, in an attempt to navigate isolation by engaging in virtual conversation. 

As the pandemic continued throughout 2020 and into 2021 – two strange years marked by separation and loss, brutal displays of power, injustices challenged by protest, and disturbing digital disembodiment – they began inviting other artists to submit work to the fax machine. 

OK, NO RESPONSE presents 140 of the resulting facsimiles drawn from the work of twenty contributing artists. The transmission of these photographs reduced them to their most basic forms, introducing errors, static, and random glitches in the process. While the source images were diverse, their translation, transmission, and recomposition as thermal prints on paper unified them in surprising ways. What began as an impulse to connect during a time of isolation became an unexpected visual manifestation of our interconnectedness. Featuring faxed photographs from Juan Brenner, Antony Cairns, Madeline Cass, Jerald Cooper, Jeremy Everett, Christian Filardo, Fryd Frydendahl, Matthew Genitempo, Lucy Helton, Anthony Hernandez, Kovi Konowiecki, Gabby Laurent, Pixy Liao, Susan Lipper, Mark Mattock, Christian Patterson, Aaron Schuman, Bryan Schutmaat, Nick Sethi, and Aaron Stern.