Triple Slash: ///, the True, Multimedia Account of Two Queer Artists’ Cross-Genre Collaboration Is Available Now Ahead of Pride

Triple Slash: /// is a multimedia project by American poet, Cody Laplante, and Canadian visual artist, Nigel Nolan. The project’s free online wide-release is set for Pride Weekend, on Friday, June 28, 2024. Triple Slash: /// launch events will feature readings and projections exhibiting the piece’s interactive nature at IDFK gallery in Toronto, as well as Wrong Brain in Dover, New Hampshire.

Readers meet Cody and Nigel mid-conversation, like jumping onto an already moving train, then scroll forward in the piece and backwards in time to where they met. The true-life account of two queer artists’ cross-genre collaboration starts in Buenos Aires and spans across years and nations.

With an estimated continuous scroll time of two and a half hours, Triple Slash: /// combines paintings, poems, videos, chat-logs, emails, and even legal paperwork into a tightly-woven narrative. The vertical interface makes a friend of the viewer, pulling them into the reality of an ever-deepening relationship.

Strong themes emerge as Cody and Nigel find common ground between addiction and anorexia, sex and fear, romance and antipathy. Cody uses, shares too much, and backs off. Nigel provokes, then captures the fallout with fidelity. They skirt the edges of heartbreak as they grip onto an intimacy only possible in the 21st century.

“This could be a new start for us,” Nigel texts from London. It’s the optimism of someone who’s never been addicted to heroin, as if simply running out could end it. “promise me that if you want to pull out of this collaboration you will tell me directly instead of just letting it fizzle out, ok?” Cody writes from his hometown in a late-night email

“I promise,” Nigel replies.

“Through this absorbing record of a queer friendship, Nolan invites us to witness creative collaboration become what it will become. A staggeringly intimate multi-genre memorial that honors the meaningfulness of contact, Triple Slash: /// is like nothing else I’ve read,” says writer and critic, Megan Milks.