asdfasdfasdfcollective.com
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asdf
(yes, like the keys on the left-hand side of your keyboard.)
What seems random at first holds a context of dexterity, labor, tactility, materiality.
Why is the keyboard organised the way it is? How is the path of least resistance laid out for us?
Manufacturers of the modern keyboard, in the 1870s, organised the current paradigm at your fingertips through a series of mechanical compromises: avoiding jams, responding to use, and arranging the machine around the limits of its own parts. HIC CONDITA EST QWERTY (and from there, asdf!). Tactile necessity created the language of the system, its symbolic ordering.
For Nathalia Bertazi and JJ Hellerman, this inherited arrangement becomes a model for exhibition-making: not a fixed format imposed from above, but a structure which emerges through available tools, shared pressure, and collective use. Founded on a principle of open calls, the pair seeks to explore notions of material and structural emergence alongside other artists. Bertazi and Hellerman employ the exhibition as both medium and outcome of research. They are interested in moments which combine the fixed with the serendipitous, in the meeting of motion/notion/emotion.
Our Team.
asdf was founded by J.J. Hellerman and Nathalia Bertazi in 2024, and continues to grow through new connections and co-creation.
Nathalia Bertazi
Brazilian artist and curator investigating image-making through the lens of inherited knowledge, memory, and erasure. She holds a BA in Languages and Literature, a PG in Curating and Arts of Social Engagement from Chelsea College of Arts, and an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art.
J.J. Hellerman
Artist and researcher exploring how mythologies and technologies shape institutional structures and individual identities. Hellerman holds a BA in Classics and Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art.
Anais Öst
Peruvian-Swedish interdisciplinary artist who weaves together light, sound, texture, time, and materiality through sculpture and installation. She holds a BA in Contemporary Music studies from The New School, and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art.