∴Serial Music - Final Update∴

Launching Volume 01 of my 12 zine project

Over the course of 2024 I put together 12 photo booklets featuring pairs of images made here in Korea. I’m releasing one a month from the start of 2025. This project is called Serial Music.

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Two days shy of a year ago, I made my first Serial Music Update newsletter. It ended like this:

I’m always self-conscious writing about what I’m going to do, but I’m offering a free window seat to anyone who’s interested in making things with their photos. We can learn how and do it together. Or you can watch me crash and burn. Either way, what’s there (for you) to lose?

12 months later, I’m happy to say that while I’ve been severely humbled, I did not crash nor burn. Serial Music is ready to launch.

I started this project with a few caveats in mind:

• You’re making 12, so keep it simple

• Do everything in 2024 so you can coast in 2025

• No handmade anything

I’ve lived up to none of these.

I started Serial Music because I was inspired to learn how to make something with my photos. I realized a few years ago that no one was going to come along and make a great book out of my images for me. I’d have to do what I could myself, and that meant engaging with the discomfort and joy of DIY publication. I knew then, and I know now, that I’m not yet ready to produce a photo book I’d fully believe in, but I also knew that readiness demands some experience in production. A zine a month for a year seemed like pretty good experience to me.

I did not, however, bargain for the challenges a project like this would summon. When people talk about a long-term photo project, it typically conjures the idea of years spent on the photography itself, rather than the physical production. At least that was my sense, and perhaps it was a bit naive. Serial Music was photographed in a little over two years, and the production of the 12 zines, if I include the initial tinkering and play that ultimately lead to the project’s conception, is now entering year 3.

The joy of that first hot spark of inspiration is beautiful for you’re yet unable to know its shape. But with time, as the shape of it comes to be known, that heat concedes to a pang of insecurity. I think it’s here that so many projects arrive at a kind of limbo, not so much dead as unborn. I know now that this feeling is coming for me when I make something, so I’ve learned to head it off in a few ways. One is to announce publicly what my intentions are. Knowing that someone out there is expecting me to follow through is almost all I need to actually go ahead and follow through.

The other thing I do is make little extras.

In this case the extras are a set of turntable slipmats that will be released with each issue of Serial Music. There are 24 in all. I wanted something fun to accompany each release, and the twin circles, Venn in appearance and music by association, were in perfect keeping with the project’s themes.

Maybe the biggest lesson I’ve learned in all of this is to allow the thing you make to be impacted by the challenges you’ll meet. There’ll always be a difference between the idea of the project that lives in your head, and the actual, physical realization of it, and that’s because you can’t conceive beforehand what challenges will rise up to meet you, to heckle your confidence and threaten your resolve. But what makes your project unique is the way you respond to and overcome the challenges that will come your way. Creativity isn’t all that nebulous when bringing a project to life - it is simply the means with which you navigate every little frustration and problem that arises and demands you don’t proceed. This will change your project in so many little ways, and ultimately make it entirely yours.

Thank you to everyone on Substack who’s followed me throughout this process, given me advice and shared their kindness. I’m releasing Serial Music to you first, 3 days before the general release - buy Serial Music: Vol. 01 here. I’m touched by your involvement, it’s really meant the world to me.

There’s still a lot more to come from this project, but for now I’ve made my first finish line. Only 11 more to go.

Cheers,

Chris