Care(fully) Following the Salt Traces

How to follow salt traces without the map... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~....................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~........................................................................................................................................................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~.......................... ................................................................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~......................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~......................~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ You can follow a recipe. You can follow directions. You can follow a map from A to B, arriving precisely where you meant to go, and still having missed everything in between... Salt Traces doesn't offer you a map. Instead, it offers you a unfolding path of stories— extended, living, unhurried, and deliberately unfinished. With a pinch of salt, like it is noted in grandmother's recipe.

This is meant to be a curatorial text, an announcement of the show. But instead—we keep it to be an open invitation. This online show lives on Studio106 as a long scroll (not mindless, but viscerally inviting to be present)— a form that refuses the click, the chapter, the tidy resolution. Storylines here arrive in fragments. Memories overlap and unfold in visual garments. A coastline appears, then a kitchen, then a copybook in a handwriting you almost recognise. The Caspian Sea — recurring, brackish, half-imagined —holds it all together the way salt holds a dish: invisibly, essentially. Nourishing us.

The online show gathers material from Salt Traces sessions, workshops, and the people who joined them, temporarily and tenderly, unfolding as something collective happening sometime ago. Stories submitted by participants, featured in a newsletter, sit alongside the collective's own practices. Neither is the centre. Neither is a footnote.

What's in it REALLY?

memories of water inherited recipes (missing pages welcome) imagined realities Caspian Sea Community gathered and dispersed alphabets in transition —forming stories that last things learned from water things learned from land things learned from grandmothers no final answer

an ongoing unfolding

The show is also, as mentioned, quietly—an invitation. Salt Traces works in asynchronous ways, but also through participatory formats —workshops, reading sessions, writing circles, where the boundary between audience and author tends to dissolve. If the online show leaves a residue, follow it. Find it alive, somewhere on Substack. Type Salt Traces.

How to move through it

— Begin anywhere. The path has no correct starting point— Let storylines cross without resolving. That's intentional.— If something reminds you of something, that's the work doing its work.— You don't need to finish it. Salt Traces rarely does — it continues in its workshops, in its letters, in its next session with whoever arrives. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Collective: Salt Traces Platform: Studio106 Format: Online long-scroll storyline— participatory and unfolding