Flotsomancy with Melissa Brown

November 4, 2024

Flotsomancy is a performance Melissa Brown and I started live-streaming on Instagram during the pandemic.

We take questions in the chat, then I find garbage along the shore and Melissa interprets it using a mix of symbolism from astrology and lithomancy, all adapted to fit contemporary materials like plastic.

Mostly, I think our ‘divinations’ are tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes they seem hauntingly accurate. Like the time we asked a silly question about partying during the pandemic and found, of all things, a velvet rope.

We went out the night of November 4th to try and answer the biggest question of 2024.

I know there have been countless analyses in hindsight about the election, and I dread contributing my own, but when I look back at the flotsomancy video I can see that the message was clear and we misinterpreted it.

The first question was, “What will happen on November 5th?” We found a circle of orange foam surrounding a Styrofoam cup.

In Melissa’s cosmology, foam symbolizes tough lessons, increased structure, father figures, discipline, and bones. For some reason we overlooked the evidence that night and turned away from the subject.

A little later, Melissa asked what would happen in Pennsylvania, then considered the decisive state for the election. I reached down and found a blue can. We were ecstatic, announcing that because it was blue, this was a good sign for Democrats to win Pennsylvania on election night.

But later that night, Ezra pointed out that Bud Light had recently become a polarizing flashpoint, politicized as a symbol of corporate pandering and cultural division.

Also, we were fixated on the color and ignored the material itself. Cans are made from a steel or aluminum alloy, which in Flotsomancy corresponds to the planet Mars, the god of war.

The strangest thing we noticed that night was how little garbage was in the water, and we kept saying that the oracle was silent.

Now, when I look back at what we found, I realize we weren’t listening to it carefully enough.

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