Dear Volcano Visitors, Nearby Smokers, Archivers and Lovers,
A chance brought you here, and now this letter is for you.
In 1949, scientist George Gamow and his colleague Mário Schenberg were gambling at the Urca Casino in Rio de Janeiro. As both scientists were studying the cooling of white dwarf stars at the time, they joked that energy seemed to disappear through neutrino emission almost as quickly as money disappeared from their pockets at the roulette table. As jokes tend to become serious, the process was later named the Urca process in honour of the casino. To be fair, besides being very cool, even white dwarfs tend to lose something.
While walking near Urca myself, I rolled a die and it landed on number three. Since then, I have been thinking about how to conclude a trilogy of publications concerned with various forms of coincidence and disappearance (Lost Object, Samopal Books 2021; Lost Connection, Samopal Books 2024). To start this process, I decided it might be time to switch from losing and getting lost to finding and being found.
A casino therefore seemed like a reasonable solution.
A year later, across the Atlantic Ocean, a series of tiny joke-bank tickets issued during the Provisional School for Nothing (Alentejo, Portugal, 2025) slowly accumulated in my pockets. Over time, these tickets transformed into a deck of cards, and eventually into a publishing device.
At the core of the project, visitors are invited to pick one of the tickets and respond to the photograph on the other side with an image from their own archive. The photographs visitors interact with come from the book Artwork Outside the Gallery (Stolen Books, 2025).
To continue asking what might qualify as an artwork today, this publishing device is activated as a public experiment. While earlier publications from the Lost series worked with images found online, the editorial process this time shifts towards material contributed by others. The publication expected to emerge from the experiment remains unknown in advance, both to its participants and to the editor.
Unlike a traditional publication, where material is gathered before editing begins, Lost Volcano (https://lostvolcanoblowsomeserioussmoke.com) operates in reverse. The editorial structure is prepared first, while the material arrives later through participation. There is no hidden decision behind the outcome, as nobody can predict what it is going to become. Like a volcanic eruption, the future publication can only be described accurately after it happens. For now, there is only a forest of possibilities beneath the surface.
Inspired by the visual language of the Vulcan casino chain, once widespread throughout the post-Soviet internet and urban landscape, Xenia Strahl and I developed Lost Volcano not as a nostalgic response, but rather as a relief.
Two gorillas currently serve as casino consultants at Lost Volcano. They travelled here from a Google Maps review of a casino in Riga, Latvia. A photograph was stolen and the authorship got lost. I am deeply sorry for that.
The platform will remain online only while its hosting is supported through the circulation of Artwork Outside the Gallery and related editions. When that support ends, the volcano will most likely disappear beneath the surface once again. Until then, visitors are welcome to contribute to its smoke.
Last but not lost, be careful with the two joker cards hidden among the drawings. One joker depicts a garden spirit from Lyubertsy, Moscow Region, shared by a friend living nearby. The other features a street artist encountered in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, after a precious sequence of events. Being grateful to the friends who led me to these local legends, this text also serves as a thank-you note to the people, places, and accidental mythical creatures that continue to feed the volcano.
I am endlessly grateful to Xenia Strahl for developing this platform, and to the Wrong Wrong team for sharing it.
Seriously,
Alёna Koleso
