https://ruckus.cargo.site Ruckus Thu, 18 Jan 2024 02:14:20 +0000 https://ruckus.cargo.site en https://ruckus.cargo.site/Home Sat, 03 Feb 2018 03:07:34 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Home <img width="1697" height="478" width_o="1697" height_o="478" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/55a91673736c39d17f279ed29132c67d72cd559b7239915eda8a969b7ac3df2e/digital-01.png" data-mid="49244246" border="0" data-scale="56" alt="The Ruckus logo: a curvy, bold lined text of the same name. The typeface is called &quot;Lust&quot; which feels appropriate." data-caption="The Ruckus logo: a curvy, bold lined text of the same name. The typeface is called &quot;Lust&quot; which feels appropriate." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/55a91673736c39d17f279ed29132c67d72cd559b7239915eda8a969b7ac3df2e/digital-01.png" />An independent journal based in Louisville, KY, engaging art in the American South and Midwest.&nbsp;All / 2023 /&nbsp;2022 /&nbsp;2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / Essays / Inquiries / Profile / Q&amp;A’s / Reviews / Announcements / Events / Podcast / Video / https://ruckus.cargo.site/Aesthetics-of-Care-and-Radical-Filmmaking Thu, 18 Jan 2024 02:14:20 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Aesthetics-of-Care-and-Radical-Filmmaking <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="202085348" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8459b5a74a0ab5145a7ec48d105d7eb05f7629331e590c1c4399a660cc79519c/Picture-Proof_Still4.jpg" data-mid="202086011" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8459b5a74a0ab5145a7ec48d105d7eb05f7629331e590c1c4399a660cc79519c/Picture-Proof_Still4.jpg" />Still from Picture Proof, Jena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner ︎ Muhammad Ali Center Aesthetics of Care and Radical Filmmaking EssayJena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner Content warning: This article discusses substance use disorder, sobriety, and loss. If you or someone you know is living with substance use disorder, recovery is possible. Call 1-800-662-4357 for confidential and free help. This piece is coauthored by Jena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner; sometimes “I” is used to capture specific moments, but it is not important to us to distinguish between the two authors. On July 13th, 2023, we sit together in a dark auditorium at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Text appears on the screen: To every mother who has a child with the disease known as addiction. To every mother who drives back around a block thinking “is that her?” To every mother who leaves their daughter filled with heroin just waiting for the call or the knock on the door… I see you. I feel you. I am you. –Debi Ellis My hand reaches over to the seat next to me to grab Debi’s arm. The white letters against a black screen softly illuminate us and an audience of friends, colleagues, advocates, community leaders, and strangers. Debi’s words prepare us for something no one can be prepared for. I hold on tighter to Debi. Reaching, grabbing, and holding can be, and often is, a gesture of love, but it’s also an act of desperation: sometimes holding is the only thing we have left. We wait, readying our bodies for this viewing of Picture Proof. In the summer of 2018, we (Tijah and Jena) began filming for the feature-length documentary Picture Proof. At the time, Debi and her daughter Ashley were sharing the responsibility of caring for Ashley’s two-year-old daughter, Piper. Ashley was going on two years of sobriety after completing a year of treatment at the Healing Place in Louisville, and she was working full-time at a recovery center in Huntington, West Virginia. We were bright-eyed and immediately drawn to both Ashley and Debi. They were radiant: Ashley with her long golden hair and Debi with her distinctive pink highlights framing her face. And they were generous: they welcomed us into their lives with kindness and humor. Both women believed that by sharing their story of Ashley’s struggle with substance use, it might help save someone else’s life. In the summer light, we knew we wanted to be near Ashley, Debi, and Piper and that we wanted to make a film about these three generations of women. We set out to document the subtle, ordinary, and material ways that substance use disorder and recovery shape life, family, and community. Over the course of filming, we began to see mothering as a force that pushed and motivated Debi and Ashley: Debi mothers Ashley, her grandchildren—first Piper and then Ashley’s second child, Asher—and her dogs Harry and Booboo Eyes; Ashley mothers Piper, then Asher, and her dog Sponsor; and we even saw Piper mothering her baby dolls and her new baby brother Asher. The fear of relapse and the uncertainty of recovery extended, intensified, and accentuated the vital role of mothering in Ashley and Debi’s lives. From the outset, we approached the project and filming as a joint effort between all of us (Debi, Ashley, Tijah, and Jena). We were not interested in getting specific shots or directing what would happen or what was said. We wanted to be with them and document from a space of co-presence, not to speak for them but to speak from a position nearby them in the lineage of Trinh T. Minh-ha.1 For us, this didn’t mean actively entering the story, nor did it mean completely erasing our presence. In the final version of the film, Ashley references Tijah by name, serving as a subtle reminder of the construction of the film and that we’re the ones behind the camera. More powerfully, though, our extended presence with Debi and Ashley provided the opportunity to capture footage that’s intimate and fluid. Filming became an act of giving that we hoped could measure up to what Ashley and Debi gave to us. A kind of companionship was born from the slowness that was entailed in giving and being with. Rather than an extractive approach that emphasized efficiency, profitability, and appeal, we embraced people. This meant that we didn’t prioritize a production timeline or a narrative arc, and, in the process, we resisted the expectation that everything be explained neatly. On the ground, filming involved much more than cinematography; it included arranging to film when it was convenient for Debi and Ashley, explaining our equipment to them, and being accountable for why we wanted to film something and responsive if they didn’t want us to film it. Sometimes filming included bringing iced tea and energy drinks, playing with Piper, and showing up even when no filming could happen. For us, pursuing a reciprocal approach became more than an ethical imperative; it became a practice of care, and that care was the only way to make a film like this. I remember getting a call from Debi while I was in the middle of a faculty meeting. At the time, Ashley had been missing, and Debi said that she had just seen Ashley’s fiancé Brandon walking down the street with Ashley’s purse. I left the meeting and rushed to join Debi as she searched the streets of Huntington for her daughter. This was the first of many trips Debi and I would take together over the summer of 2020. I only filmed twice—once of Debi in her car and once during one of the times we found Ashley. Often, I would not bring my camera on our drives through the city; I wasn’t there to film. When I did finally film, it was after Debi and I had built a strange car routine and after I had seen Ashley in a physical and mental state that I never imagined her being in. I did not have it in my mind that I would eventually choose to film this part of their lives, but because of the time Debi and I spent searching the streets, our brief, visceral encounters with Ashley, and Debi’s insistence that this, too, needed to be documented, I filmed parts of it. To bear witness involves both privilege and responsibility. In thinking about the contract that is embedded in photography, but can also be extended to film, Ariella Azoulay asserts that “every photograph of others bears the traces of the meeting between the photographed persons and the photographer, neither of whom can, on their own, determine how this meeting will be inscribed in the resulting image.”2 Over three years of filming, we witnessed ecstatic joy, utter sorrow, and a multitude of gradations in-between. Often, pain and devastation take precedent in stories about addiction, but there is also joy, humor, softness, and potential. One of the beautiful things that happened because of when we started filming was that we were present for moments in Ashley’s life that were full of love and possibility, including moving into a new house with Piper and boyfriend Brandon, her pregnancy with her second child, and her engagement to Brandon. Ashley reflects on the idea of potential when she says in the film, “before when I would get sober, I didn’t have anything… Now I’ve got this whole crazy life... Is this really my life?” One scene in the film that shows our desire to hold both a space for sorrow and for joy is the gender reveal party. The scene begins with Ashley getting ready in the bathroom before the party and is abruptly interrupted when she learns that a friend has died from an overdose. The scene transitions to the party and ends with Brandon’s proposal. The editing of this scene was key for holding onto moments of joy and sorrow without eclipsing either. Joy is thereby made more powerful and sorrowful, which comes closer to people’s lived experiences, especially when they’re living with the uncertainty that often accompanies recovery. In the film, Nisey, one of Ashley’s close friends from her time at the Healing Place, responds to Ashley’s questioning of whether Brandon will stay sober with, “You don’t even know if you’re [gonna stay sober] … I don’t even know if I’m gonna stay sober.” Ashley did not make it, and in the sequence of the film, this ordinary exchange between two friends is a haunting moment foreshadowing what is to come but also highlighting the fragility of sobriety and the endless labor of recovery. Care is involved; care means getting involved. It is messy, vulnerable, and incites misery, but it is also love. It is not creating change but being open to ways that, through caring, you will be changed. It is probably not sustainable. In addition to the non-individualistic aspects of care and its anticapitalistic potential, this is what makes caring, and making through care, radical. As a result of the capitalistic pressures that we all feel, Jenny Odell states, “we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive.”3 Engaging in an aesthetic of care means giving over to others and the project in ways that require openness, release of ownership, and exhaustion. People sometimes think of exhaustion as something to avoid, to ward off, or to protect against, but being worn out can be a marker of care. We may not be able to sustain caring at this level, and we may not be asked, but making through means accepting extended timelines, living with uncertainty about decisions, balancing more than you can handle, and knowing that the return, whatever it might be, will never be equal to the practice and the people that we care for. In the spirit of care, Picture Proof was brought to the Muhammad Ali Center and made available to the public free of charge because of the hard work and dedication of Kungu Njuguna. Njuguna is a Louisville attorney and policy strategist at the ACLU of Kentucky. In addition to getting the ACLU of Kentucky to sponsor the event, he organized the screening and invited the Kentucky Harm Reduction Coalition to offer resources on site at the screening. In the auditorium, after the final scene showing Debi, Ashley, Piper, and Asher leaving a recovery event, an inscription appears on the screen: “In loving memory of Ashley Elizabeth Ellis, February 10, 1987–November 6, 2021,” and then another block of text: Dear Ashley, How I miss you. This documentary is both a showing of love and an experience of grief at the loss of a beautiful soul to the disease of addiction. You didn’t make it. One shot of heroin and you’re gone. No more smiles, laughter, trips to Anthropologie, playing make-up with her Piper. I love you more more. –mom We are enveloped by the weeping of others; we are weeping. This screening is special because of Ashley and Debi’s connection to Louisville and how many of their friends fill the auditorium. It is a strange feeling to be rendered so deeply affected, speechless, and helpless in connection to something you helped create. This film is not ours, and, in reality, it never was. In the darkness, at the end, we reach for each other, and “in holding on to one another—lies the very essence of sociality.”4 This film is our way of reaching toward and holding Debi, and we hope that Picture Proof can reach, grab, and hold others struggling with substance use disorder, the ones who are fighting for them, and those who are living with the memory of the loved ones they lost. - Notes: Balsom, Erika. “‘There Is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha.” Frieze, 1 Nov. 2018, www.frieze.com/article/there-no-such-thing-documentary-interview-trinh-t-minh-ha. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. Zone Books, 2018.Odell, Jenny. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Melville House, 2021.&nbsp;Ingold, Tim.&nbsp;The Life of Lines. Routledge, 2015. <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6bbc172b2eedd60f70948b7d88221e3c53f5553d355d454a0626645f293bf5dc/Picture-Proof_Debi-Ellis-and-Kungu-Njuguna_Ali-Center-Screening_Louisville--KY_July-2023_Photo-by-Tijah-Bumgarner.jpeg" data-mid="202086015" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6bbc172b2eedd60f70948b7d88221e3c53f5553d355d454a0626645f293bf5dc/Picture-Proof_Debi-Ellis-and-Kungu-Njuguna_Ali-Center-Screening_Louisville--KY_July-2023_Photo-by-Tijah-Bumgarner.jpeg" /> Debi Ellis and Kungu Njunga at the July 13, 2023 screening of Picture Proof at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky. <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e4655cd7421526289cfb39f7c36db19ef1f6f7c70dc05b79633a20aa43e5c10b/Picture-Proof_Still1.jpg" data-mid="202086014" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e4655cd7421526289cfb39f7c36db19ef1f6f7c70dc05b79633a20aa43e5c10b/Picture-Proof_Still1.jpg" /> Still from Picture Proof, Jena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba7b25d6be8c4eb53c88b1102c58883adcd57e092dcc6dbfb4d3427b3ea19598/Picture-Proof_Still3.jpg" data-mid="202086012" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ba7b25d6be8c4eb53c88b1102c58883adcd57e092dcc6dbfb4d3427b3ea19598/Picture-Proof_Still3.jpg" /> Still from Picture Proof, Jena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b0ad764f17237484b785f4d9c7faed656203c8b0621b5af2bcf27389075353f9/Picture-Proof_Still2.jpg" data-mid="202086013" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b0ad764f17237484b785f4d9c7faed656203c8b0621b5af2bcf27389075353f9/Picture-Proof_Still2.jpg" /> Still from Picture Proof, Jena Seiler and Tijah Bumgarner - 1.18.24 Tijah Bumgarner (she/her) is a filmmaker, scholar, and professor. Bumgarner holds a BFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Media Studies from West Virginia State University. As a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, her dissertation, “Examining the Ground: Shifting Narratives in Post-Coal Appalachia,” explores how extraction is narrativized. She currently teaches narrative and documentary video production at Marshall University. Since writing and directing her first feature film, Meadow Bridge, in 2017, she has co-directed and starred in the experimental short Becoming Annette (2020); co-created the web series Quarantine Life (2020); co-wrote, directed, and produced the pilot episode of Her Hope Haven (2021); co-directed the short documentary Patchwork (2022); co-directed the feature documentary Picture Proof (2022); and served as a cinematographer for The Quiet Zone (expected: 2023) directed by Katie Dellamaggiore. Jena Seiler (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator. Seiler holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts, an MFA in Painting, and a BFA in Studio Art. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky. Working across a variety of media has allowed her to develop a research-based practice, collaborate with other artists, and participate in galleries as well as other kinds of venues. She co-edited the feature film, Meadow Bridge (2017); created an immersive art installation, Submerging (2018); co-directed and edited the experimental short Becoming Annette (2020); co-created and directed the experimental short documentary Jane (2020); served as a producer on the pilot episode of Her Hope Haven (2021); co-created the experimental video piece edge waves (2022); co-directed the short documentary Patchwork (2022); and co-directed the feature documentary Picture Proof (2022). https://ruckus.cargo.site/Farewell-Announcement Mon, 04 Dec 2023 14:34:20 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Farewell-Announcement <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="198532141" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /> An Announcement To the readers, writers, and supporters of Ruckus, It is with heavy hearts that the staff and board of Ruckus have decided to cease its operations at the end of 2023. Our story is likely one you already know: we began as a fledgling and experimental project in Louisville, Kentucky over six years ago. During the intervening time, Ruckus evolved rapidly into a state-wide, then region-wide publication that not only fought fiercely for the recognition of art and artists in the Midwest and Midsouth but also championed a voice and metric of success unique to these places. We dreamed—and still do dream—of an art landscape that is not defined by our nation’s larger and wealthier cities, but more simply by the people you live near, wherever you are. A large part of this advocacy, we felt, was ensuring that writers from our region were paid fairly for their work. Ruckus was lucky enough to secure funding for our writers early on in our history and we always tried to make this compensation as competitive as possible—a fact we remain very proud of. Thank you to our sponsors, whose contributions over the course of this project helped make our intentions a reality: The Carnegie, Fund for the Arts, Great Meadows Foundation, KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville Visual Art, Queer Kentucky, Snowy Owl Foundation, TAUNT, and WheelHouse Art. Despite our success with program funding, we were never meaningfully able to fundraise for basic operations costs (a structural dysfunction shared by many new nonprofits) which might have helped projects like ours transition from using volunteer labor for our administration to hiring of proper staffing. Our team is now ready for a much-deserved break and the opportunity to put their energy towards new dreams. Still, the force that carried Ruckus through the last six years was the readership and support of individuals across our region—those who shared our content, subscribed to our Patreon, attended our events, and otherwise thought favorably of our world’s smaller fries. We started this project as outsiders to art writing and stumbled our way into building a new community of art writers, learning much along the way. Imperfect and incomplete as Ruckus is, we are very grateful for your generosity, attention, and care during this time. The Ruckus staff is currently busy closing things down: posting our writers’ final essays, and working to identify a long-term archival solution to the over 200 works of writing, video, and audio we have published since 2018. Stay tuned for updates on what that will look like. In the meantime, look around you for the next wave of thinkers who want more for art and artists, who want to hold art institutions accountable to the people they serve, and who want to continue questioning what art can be and who art is really for. With gratitude, The Staff of Ruckus Anna Blake Mary Clore L Autumn Gnadinger Gervais Marsh https://ruckus.cargo.site/Don-t-mind-if-I-do Wed, 20 Dec 2023 18:33:10 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Don-t-mind-if-I-do <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="199854440" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="2000" height="1125" width_o="2000" height_o="1125" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/43676e15812e9273bc2afdac7731463e74a0cdeef3c1ca3e1c157343c06960df/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_10.jpg" data-mid="199885108" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/43676e15812e9273bc2afdac7731463e74a0cdeef3c1ca3e1c157343c06960df/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_10.jpg" />ABOVE: Don't mind if I do installation view at moCa Cleveland, 2023. All photos by Jacob Koestler. ︎&nbsp;Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland Don’t mind if I do ReviewChristina Nafziger I’m going to start this review in the same way the exhibition Don’t mind if I do begins: with delight, invitation, and blissful dreaming. Setting a tone is vital when navigating an exhibition (or review), and perhaps it is especially crucial when the topic explored is disability and accessibility. Walking into the exhibition space at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (masks required and provided at the door), I am quite literally greeted with the joyful words of Finnegan Shannon: “Welcome to my access fantasy!!” Shannon, a project-based artist who experiments with forms of access that intervene in ableist structures, co-organized the exhibition with the intention and dream of not only exhibiting alongside artists that “nourish my life and practice,” but also to create an environment that is comfortable, safe, and deliberately designed with those in mind who have specific accessibility needs. What truly sets this exhibition apart is the way it is designed and how it functions. In the space, most of the artworks sit on a moving conveyor belt, not unlike a rotary sushi bar. Visitors are invited to sit on comfortable seating around the conveyor belt, which moves artworks around in an oval so that visitors need not move around the space physically to see each piece. They can simply sit, relax, get comfortable, and let the artworks come to them. For Shannon, who is disabled and needs to sit, this element of the exhibition was incredibly important in centering those who have similar needs. On the blue and white conveyor belt are works by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Pelenakeke Brown, Sky Cubacub, Emilie L. Gossiaux, Felicia Griffin, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Jeff Kasper, and Finnegan Shannon. The works by each artist are wildly different, but are all textural, three-dimensional, and inviting to the senses. By including this clever and fun structure, Finnegan “destabilizes rigid ableist and exclusionary museum ‘best practices’ like sparse seating, untouchable objects, dense wall labels, and guards who protect rather than invite engagement.” Unlike most museum shows, visitors can touch and pick up the artworks, which conjured an entirely different experience than one might expect—myself included. I am a tactile person, and I loved having the opportunity to pick up, feel, and inspect works like Sky Cubacub’s piece Violet, Purple, and Gunmetal Chainmaille Packer, a hard, intricate metal sculpture satisfying to touch, or Felicia Griffin’s Pom-Pom, a soft, textural fabric-based piece that begged to be held like a stuffed animal. There were several pieces that connected to the lived experiences of the artists, such as Verbena's Apothecary by Joselia Rebekah Hughes, which consisted of different-colored pill bottles with phrases such as, “READ IF IT HURTS DEEP DOWN, BEYOND MEASURE.” Other objects in the room nodded at experiences of those with disabilities and who are and have been especially at risk during the COVID pandemic. In corners around the gallery space are DIY air purifiers, bright and colorful with neon yellows and vivid blues, which at first look like a fun cardboard craft before realizing what the reality would be for those at risk if they did not have access to this purifier. The aesthetics as a whole are bright and playful, but with a gravity of reality that those with specific needs don’t have the luxury of ignoring. When sitting down and witnessing each artwork moving around the room in front of me, something unexpected happened. I began to feel anxiety from the artworks moving faster than I would prefer. I took a piece off the conveyor belt, but then I wasn’t sure how to navigate putting it back. It took me a minute to assess the space, process how the conveyor belt was functioning, and construct a plan of how I would approach engaging with each object and the exhibition as a whole. What I realized in that moment is: this experience may be noteworthy to me, but it is certainly not to others. The mental labor that is required when assessing a space (and whether or not you will be able to find safety, comfort, and accessibility within it) is something that those with disabilities do everyday without end. It is not an uncommon experience—our culture just does not give it priority. I am an able-bodied person and, unfortunately, most exhibition spaces are designed for this type of body in mind. In Don’t mind if I do, perhaps I wasn’t the assumed visitor this time. I am aware that I am in a position of privilege every time I enter an exhibition that requires any stairs, but this exhibition revealed much, much more. These different points of access, the multiple ways of engaging with the space and work, and the physical function of the design of the show intentionally required a change in how I process space and my awareness of other bodies within that space. This beautiful shift that the exhibition opened up should not just be a learning opportunity for myself, but also for others building exhibitions. Curators, museum educators, and other museum workers that have a say in the design of their institution’s exhibitions could learn a lot from Finnegan’s design, which addresses and recognizes multiple types of accessibility needs. Although there are certainly museum workers in the field working hard to create accessible exhibitions, the overwhelming majority of institutions do not address the accessibility needs of the Disabled community, or just meet the bare minimum required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. For example, think back to the last time you went to an art museum—how many benches did you see? How many stairs with handrails and/or elevators? How large were the fonts of the wall labels and how many included braille?&nbsp; The beauty and brilliance of this exhibition lies not only within the artworks themselves, but in the navigating and understanding of the function of the space. Imagine the possibilities and creative potential if accessibility was centered in more spaces. What would it look like for all exhibitions to be designed with accessibility in mind? How would and could visitors interact and engage with art in a gallery or museum setting if folks with disabilities were centered and/or involved in creating the exhibition? Don’t mind if I do demonstrates that the possibilities could be endless. - Don’t mind if I do is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland through January 7, 2024. <img width="2000" height="1125" width_o="2000" height_o="1125" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/09fe246c6c46d7f22c0d941c8457cbd35a2eadc5264e4acf22ce406ab6111ed1/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_08.jpg" data-mid="199885447" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/09fe246c6c46d7f22c0d941c8457cbd35a2eadc5264e4acf22ce406ab6111ed1/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_08.jpg" />Don't mind if I do installation view at moCa Cleveland, 2023. <img width="1600" height="2000" width_o="1600" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ac6985782557c4419d85db5085ac408e59ae55accc5b082049169c43caa8e9a8/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_27.jpg" data-mid="199885129" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ac6985782557c4419d85db5085ac408e59ae55accc5b082049169c43caa8e9a8/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_27.jpg" />Sky Cubacub, Violet, Purple, and Gunmetal Chainmaille Packer, 2023. Chainmaille, Full Persian weave-anodized aluminum jump rings. Courtesy of Rebirth Garments. <img width="1600" height="2000" width_o="1600" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d2b52e5ff3b9f3c1ebb1ea76321ad90e6e4d1a5cfaa60902bfda048f0861d3c9/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_34.jpg" data-mid="199885141" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d2b52e5ff3b9f3c1ebb1ea76321ad90e6e4d1a5cfaa60902bfda048f0861d3c9/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_34.jpg" />Felicia Griffin, Pom-Pom, 2020. Yarn.&nbsp;Courtesy of the artist and NIAD Art Center. <img width="1600" height="2000" width_o="1600" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/35ded2f8e7204d197c5dacf29eb110e23f90d90a198f747c444cf8c993410044/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_51.jpg" data-mid="199885149" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/35ded2f8e7204d197c5dacf29eb110e23f90d90a198f747c444cf8c993410044/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_51.jpg" />Finnegan Shannon, House that I modified to be stair-free and planted lavender in the garden for us, 2023. Modified vintage tissue box cover kit. <img width="2000" height="1125" width_o="2000" height_o="1125" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/992785c41bee87a67c0add6571d3a567983f697165e27707172338f5c7263a36/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_53.jpg" data-mid="199886130" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/992785c41bee87a67c0add6571d3a567983f697165e27707172338f5c7263a36/2023_MOCA-Cleveland_Don_t-mind-if-I-do_53.jpg" /> Don't mind if I do installation view at moCa Cleveland, 2023. - 12.21.23 Christina Nafziger (she/her) is a Chicago-based arts writer and editor who is interested in artists with research-based practices, the effect archiving has on memory and identity, and the ways in which archiving can alter and edit future histories. https://ruckus.cargo.site/Tiffany-Calvert-Q-A Tue, 19 Dec 2023 21:24:07 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Tiffany-Calvert-Q-A <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="199779843" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /> Tiffany Calvert Q&amp;A Megan Bickel Tiffany Calvert’s work considers a dense weave of historical material. Her practice “connects painting’s history to our current visual culture, which is shaped in often confusing [and concealed] ways by algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and blurred boundaries between real and virtual. Using image-generating machine learning models trained on Dutch and Flemish still life paintings to create new invented images, she then prints and utilizes stencils to protect parts of the printed images she paints upon. These masks create hard edges where the paint meets reproduction.”1 The milieu of digital popularism infiltrating Western culture is beginning to catch up to Calvert’s process, her work becoming more timely as awareness of AI becomes heightened with further integration. Over the past year, she has added several processes to her approach to painting that integrate the oscillation between the static 2D surface of painting with the multiplicities and calculated renderings of responsive interfaces such as digital screens. These interfaces appear as paintings physically layered on top of monitors displaying videos of ‘latent space’ generations2 or projecting those same videos onto paintings. By utilizing transparencies that are secured upon live screens or using projectors that have been shielded from her audience, Calvert leans into examining abstraction as a painterly truism that was as incidentally present during the height of the Dutch still life as it is now. Here we discuss how that exploration of abstraction as a practice in painting works within her practice, and how it appears throughout myriad points in history–primarily during the height of the Flemish Still Life, to Cubism, to Post-Digital Painting. In this interview, Tiffany and I started by discussing the myth of Painting’s “death”3 that John Yau had considered in Calvert’s work in “Painting’s Divided Legacy,” published in Hyperallergic in 2020.4 This evolved into discussing her most recent research focus and a walkthrough of her methodology. Tiffany Calvert: I feel like, in terms of the death and rebirth in painting, I have a thousand answers, and it also doesn't concern me because it's obviously not dead. Megan Bickel: The argument just becomes a theoretical one? TC: It does, but it also becomes a way of talking about how painting responds. Not that it would actually die, but that it would talk apocryphally. Then you get to pretend for a second, right? Ask why would that matter, which is a perfectly fine mental exercise. Some art historians discuss painters as if [painters] are thinking theoretically. But most of the time [when I’m painting], I’m just thinking about the painting. For me and many painters I talk to, there is much about why we paint that can't be articulated—which is, in fact, the point. It's a type of intellectual pursuit only expressed as painterly engagement. I don’t want to categorize painters as some kind of idiot savant, either. "Painterly knowledge" can be reduced to a type of gut or primal "instinct" about paint. But [instinct and theory] coexist—they're different, but you need both. MB: Are theory and practice divorced, for you, or are they just separate languages? TC: You could talk about paintings as objects divorced from the artist, which many people want to do. Maybe rightfully so. [I’ve been in an ongoing conversation with] my colleague, Zirwat Chowdury, where she and I discussed this Constable painting. She's developing some ideas around landscape painting to control the landscape. The way is expressed through these paintings of sluices5 holding back water—the paint is literally pushed around earth. My argument to her was that the sky in this painting deliberately gained its highlights both from added whites in the clouds and the white of the ground [the layer of paint under the visible layer], which was revealed by painting with a hog brush on a wet surface which picked back up and erased out paint to reveal the ground. [A] writer, whose name I cannot recall, had expressed it as a mistake to paint on too wet a surface, and I disagreed. The larger argument was that all painters are abstract painters that, despite having to remain within pictorial conventions of representation, are always just painting, with abstract concerns in their mind, exactly the way I paint now with all permission to be abstract. In some ways all of that theorizing seems very disconnected from painting itself. We're not going to stop anybody from painting; it's literally the most fundamental way to make an artwork. I’ve been thinking about shifting perceptions a lot. I think it's why [I gravitate towards literature about] Manet, and Painting, and Cezanne. . . as well as media theory.6 I’m developing a paper that proposes [some evolutions in how contemporary painters depict space]. To start, there have been three conditions of artistic space: perspectival or illusionistic space, which uses [rules of] perspective. Second, Modernist space, thinking about flatness and geometry, and I think now—desktop space. Desktop space is so different from Modernist space because we ‘live’ in this flat world all the time now. It’s not quite flat because it's both translucent and shallow. Our imaginary desktops are supposed to be a picture of this [references a physical desktop surface]. However, we view them vertically to our bodies, like looking out at a landscape. The research that is necessary for the remaining hypothesis actually appears in my [recent] paintings. Still, I’m working on finding a cluster of painters who I think are using a different approach to space-making that appears to be impacted by the digital screen but who aren’t actively thinking about desktop space. This would mean not looking at people like Charline Von Heyl, who is thinking about, and also appears to be thinking about digital flatness. Or Trudy Benson, who is clearly thinking about digitality. Not them, because they use a visual vocabulary that reads of digital anachronisms, right? They can make you think of Mac Paint and web pages. MB: Are you thinking about painters who consider digital space tactically versus people who are thinking about the visual language of digital space? TC: We have a way of discussing painting in terms of semiotics, right? Brushstrokes have a language, and their meaning has been built over time. I think that is where Trudy Benson or Laura Owens fit in. I don't mean tactically digital because that would be deliberate. [Instead] I believe the field of painting, and how space is currently depicted in it, is impacted by desktops and the constant habitation within desktop space, but not necessarily intentionally about that [as a subject]. The problem is that it becomes a process of elimination when considering artists for this study, right?&nbsp; You can get caught up very quickly in what ‘desktop space’ refers to. Is it digital light? Visually altered images? Or even cinematic space? None of that's what I mean. I’m [strictly referring to] planes of Modernist space. But again, I'm still trying to figure out where I see it. I’m kind of figuring it out by painting. At this point, I can only clearly define the problem and what it's not. In my work, I've been trying to find ways to make [painting] contend with [the digital] equally. So for this show I recently had in Nashville, as an example, two pieces are offered. One is, you know, a large format print with paint on it the way I normally do and then a [looping] one-minute video projection onto it. It’s a projection of the Runway’s7 output, compiled into frames and projected as a video. It’s all these frames morphing into one another. MB: Can you speak to your process for creating images? Particularly how you generate images? TC: Yes. I want people to play with [these tools]. Artists often use new tools for disruption; the fact that they're new makes them good tools for disruption. More of that disruption and artist deployment in the larger conversation is super important; and selfishly, I just want to talk to more people about it. I use Runway ML, and I accessed that in its beta stage. My first suggestion for new users is to go back and look at the code provided and try to piece together what [lines of code] are causing what [action].8,9 In Runway, they have a tool called ‘latent space walks.’10 They compile all the frames between where it had stopped and produced an image. While running this video, the software allows you to pan around, and it doesn't quite work right, it creates a lot of glitches when you move faster than the frame rate because it has to generate the images. It’s amazing to watch. MB: As if you’re observing the computation? TC: Yeah, it's also like exploring outer space. It’s like, “Oh, what's over here? Nothing. Until we get there.” At Tinney Contemporary, I had paintings [that used a print from] a frame that I extracted. In fact, four of the paintings in the show are frames from the one [latent space] video. Then, for those four, I have this projection of that video of the images generated onto them. And for each painting, there is a moment when the video is projected on it, aligning with the printed image I’ve painted. The idea was to have the projection and the painting be equal. It's dimly lit so none of the three things: the painting, the print, or the projection, dominates. You can still see the painting, but the video morphs on the surface. A lucky thing happened, which I wanted to happen but wasn’t confident it would: some people believe the projection to come from behind the painting, which is awesome. For them, the projection looks as if it is inside the painting. I consider Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue (2013) when I consider desktop space and these overlapping themes. It's a video of all these panes open, and there are all these still and moving images. I think about that piece all the time and how much it says about codes and systems and how we live with them. MB: And the digital overwhelm. TC: Yeah! Everybody's desktop looks like that. And in it, there are still and moving images. This is what I like about my new pieces paired with the projection. Together, they are good examples of that tiny drop shadow space, but it’s still moveable. MB: Can you tell us a bit about your process of designing shapes to paint within for these surfaces? They never appear to be fully connected to the composition, the connection is made through camouflaging of the paint and print, meaning the shapes are formed through a mimicking of color provided by the inkjet print. TC: You know how they say that the Cubists were painting all of these different points of still life, and in doing so, they were thinking about space and time? There are all of these different spaces and times coalescing and living in the same space simultaneously while not moving, and you are moving around them. There is an intense tie between how we talk about Cubism and how we talk about desktop space. Many of the shapes I design onto the vinyls and remove [and fill in with paint] are all inspired by Cubism. Vectors feel like [Adobe] Illustrator Cubism. MB: [laughs] Yeah, like Vector Cubism. TC: You can just go crazy on the page and then delete the shapes created by the crossovers. It's such a recognizable digital gesture drawing. Still, when you do that, that deletion has a relationship to Cubism, and they look just like a Picasso or just like a Juan Gris collage. All those shapes only touch at their points, and they don't overlap. It becomes all about representation. This then connects really nicely to something that I think about regularly: this idea from Norman Bryson’s Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. He proposes that floral still life paintings are [what he refers to as] shallowly diagrammatic. Diagrammatic because the painters are not trying to convince you of any three-dimensional space. They’d rather show you the perfect specimen of each flower. So they end up being diagrammatic, nearly built on a grid because they're all turned out and facing the viewer. When thinking about desktop space and its shallowness of space, and considering Cubism, I begin to see that all of these ideas incorporate time differently. Still lifes are always about time. That explanation of that research feels a little all over the place but I, like most artists, do not necessarily want to have a succinct conclusion. MB: You want to explore. What about your decals? Those are predesigned vinyl sheets, yes? TC: Yes. I've been using the masks. I stick the vinyl material on the painting. Then once it's stuck on, I just cut it and pull out all the negative shapes. Recently I’ve been doing it manually, making the cuts, I mean, because I felt like I was starting to get tight. It's nice because I needed [the change] because the newly printed images were becoming so concrete. I've been leaning on these pictures for so long and just needed some intuitive freedom. I prefer to stay in that exploratory zone, which makes it very difficult to package for grants and so forth. However, I think it's fair to acknowledge a caveat [in your research] noting that these connections are scant, unjustifiable, or confusing, and that’s entirely how I like it. MB: It’s also important to leave room. It develops a path for others to further that research. If you leave little pockets, little holes, it allows other artists space to think about the ideas in context with other ideas that may coalesce outside your realm of consideration. - Notes: Calvert, Tiffany. Artists Website. Accessed July 15th, 2023. http://www.tiffanycalvert.com/about Latent space is typically defined in computer science communities as a representation of compressed data, or hidden data. When Tiffany produces images using Runway ML, the AI generates many images that don’t end up becoming available for use. They stay in a latent space, because when an AI is attempting to create an image, or text response to a prompt, it creates many options before landing on final output. The data that doesn’t become output stays in a liminal space as they are mathematically less ‘probable’ than the images produced as output. However, Runway offers a ‘latent space video’ which compiles these ‘unprobable’ images into a video which appears as a sort of morphing still life, as is the case with Tiffany’s dataset.In approximately 1840, French painter Paul Delaroche is rumored to have taken one look at his first daguerreotype and declared then, “From today, painting is dead.” Beginning a debate on the necessity of painting for the incoming century. https://hyperallergic.com/546241/paintings-divided-legacy/A sliding gate, or other device for controlling the flow of water, especially one in a lock gate. Media theory focuses on the effects that can come from utilizing new media, often digital media, but more broadly it is applied to new textual experiences and new ways of representing the world. Runway ML (Runway Machine Learning) is an AI research company that offers tools in video editing and a generative AI tool that utilizes text, video, or image prompts to generate new material.Googling a line of code will often bring to a bundle of sites that will explain what is happening and how it’s happening.Another tip from Tiffany: “Also note that if you're looking at Runway, which uses StyleGAN and text-to-video editing, their models are different from, say, Stable Diffusion, and your output will display that.” StyleGAN is an extension of the adversarial generative network (GAN) model. A good place to read more is here. Stable Diffusion is a deep learning, text-to-image model released in 2022. It is primarily used to generate detailed images conditioned on text descriptions, though it can also be applied to other tasks such as inpainting, outpainting, and generating image-to-image translations guided by a text prompt.Latent space, when discussed within the context of machine learning, refers to a representation of compressed data. A fairly straight forward explanation of this process can be found in this article by Ekin Tiu - 12.19.23 Megan Bickel [she/they] (MFA, MA) is a trans-disciplinary artist, data analyst, writer, and educator working at the intersections of painting, new media, and data visualization. She is the founder and organizer of houseguest gallery in Louisville, Kentucky. ︎ Tinney Contemporary, Nashville <img width="500" height="607" width_o="500" height_o="607" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b042e43d871a319f75dcf3c0c5bab999898f140ccd3b82184b21e8c173bcabd/02_367.jpg" data-mid="199780431" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/6b042e43d871a319f75dcf3c0c5bab999898f140ccd3b82184b21e8c173bcabd/02_367.jpg" /> Tiffany Calvert, #367, 2020. Oil on water based latex print on canvas, 55 x 68 inches. All images courtesy of the artist. <img width="500" height="610" width_o="500" height_o="610" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1453824087f55969dc9e9bee1efad7bd01992b4b2d896cc3552a3bb82f9907d0/383-49x60-at-72ppi-from-Master-HiRes.jpg" data-mid="199780430" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/1453824087f55969dc9e9bee1efad7bd01992b4b2d896cc3552a3bb82f9907d0/383-49x60-at-72ppi-from-Master-HiRes.jpg" /> Tiffany Calvert, #383, 2022. Oil on water based latex print on canvas, 55 x 68 inches. <img width="500" height="558" width_o="500" height_o="558" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6ecdbca97be2270d0e4c93dff13f6d443cc6b3abc85c7571c1eec5c91a5e7628/_O7A4556.jpg" data-mid="199780432" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/6ecdbca97be2270d0e4c93dff13f6d443cc6b3abc85c7571c1eec5c91a5e7628/_O7A4556.jpg" />Tiffany Calvert,&nbsp;#397, 2022. Oil on inkjet print on canvas mounted to wood panel, 11 x 14 inches. <img width="500" height="607" width_o="500" height_o="607" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/707c545ddff0f94ae68eba84d4676d31ec76ef80ed67080e1d9ba87dd2d2e838/Calvert-419-Mindy-Best.jpg" data-mid="199780429" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/707c545ddff0f94ae68eba84d4676d31ec76ef80ed67080e1d9ba87dd2d2e838/Calvert-419-Mindy-Best.jpg" /> Tiffany Calvert, #419, 2023. Oil on water based latex print on canvas, 40 x 50 inches. https://ruckus.cargo.site/LaNia-Roberts-Q-A Tue, 12 Dec 2023 23:01:11 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/LaNia-Roberts-Q-A <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="199245051" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="2500" height="1932" width_o="2500" height_o="1932" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e315b52602081410bbad8ec7183b689dfa804d4c4b494f5e4bdbe4d3ad96b83a/IMG_1701.jpeg" data-mid="199604549" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e315b52602081410bbad8ec7183b689dfa804d4c4b494f5e4bdbe4d3ad96b83a/IMG_1701.jpeg" /> ABOVE: LaNia Roberts. All photos courtesy of the artist. ︎ LaNia Roberts LaNia Roberts Q&amp;A Kenneth Woods LaNia Roberts, an artist based in Louisville, Kentucky, channels her lived experiences into large-scale figure paintings inspired by cubism and fauvism. Her exploration of liberation through color involves painting vibrant, arbitrary hues on skin, collaging diverse perspectives into singular compositions that visually unravel the complexity of each model's identity. Holding a BFA in painting from Syracuse University, LaNia's global journey includes researching identity politics in Cape Town, South Africa and exploring multidisciplinary art in Florence, Italy. Awarded with grants like the Bill Fischer Award and a Great Meadows Foundation Travel Grant to go see the Venice Biennale. Collected by the 21c Museum and represented by Claire Oliver Gallery in NYC, LaNia extends her impact through an online-based social art practice, inspiring millions worldwide with messages of radical self-compassion, love, and acceptance across Instagram and TikTok, boasting nearly 300,000 followers. Kenneth Woods: Describe yourself as an artist and the style that you use. LaNia Roberts: I describe myself as a multimedia artist, but most of my recent focus has been on acrylic painting. As I’ve traveled, I’ve realized that every person has their own culture and experiences, but not a lot of people know about my culture in Louisville or that there were even Black people in Louisville. With my art, I want to bring awareness to that. I’m currently working on a series centered around my family’s kitchen. This is quite different from my previous work, which was centered around self portraiture. With those portraits, I explored how I am seen and my identity as a plus sized Black woman living in a marginalized body. With my new work, I am seeking to expand the conversation around my family and their bodies. KW: How has living in Louisville influenced your art? LR: The opportunities for artists in this city impacted me growing up. Attending visual arts classes in high school changed my life. The Louisville arts community is small, making it easy to become a big fish in a small pond. I think that’s led to a particular experience that's been helpful to my career. If you go out to an event and begin networking with folks, you’ll realize no one is really from Louisville anymore. If people are interested enough to move to my city, why am I not viewing Louisville through that lens? I’m very grateful for that shift in perspective. My experiences in Louisville have been both painful and beautiful and have filled me with cultural values and character traits that follow me wherever I go. KW: You’ve done quite a bit of traveling. What did you learn from traveling outside of the United States and how has that influenced your art? LR: I’ve learned a lot! I believe I have traveled to twelve countries on three continents. I’ve just returned from my sixth trip to Italy where I’ve been working with my art mentors who I started working with when I first studied abroad six years ago. I also lived in South Africa for three months, which was an incredible experience and I think it has impacted my art the most. Going to Italy for the first time impacted me because I wasn’t just Black, I was American. I was never aware of my nationality, but going over there you see a stark difference, unfortunately. I never thought I had privilege before, but going over there showed me that as an American I do have a certain amount of privilege. That experience made me think differently about how we speak about privilege here in America. When I went to South Africa, I got excited like, “Oh, I’m going to Africa, I’m going home!” It was so interesting, because I was at home until I opened my mouth. When my American accent came out, it was clear I didn’t fit in. I was told I talked like a white person, which made me feel more American than African. This caused me to become more curious about my culture and change my subject matter to my family and to share my experience, The Louisville experience, and the Black Louisville experience with the world. KW: You traveled on a Great Meadows Foundation Grant. How did that opportunity come about and why did you choose Italy? LR: That opportunity came up because I went to support fellow artist, Sandra Charles, at her solo exhibition at KMAC. I ran into the curator, Joey Yates, and he told me he had just come back from vacation in Italy. I told him I couldn’t wait to one day be able to afford to go there for the Venice Biennale. Joey told me, “You should go this year, you should apply for a Great Meadows Grant.” Once he said that, lightbulbs went off in my head and I rushed home to fill out the application. I received a $4500 grant to spend two weeks in Italy. I didn’t just go for the Venice Biennale, I also checked in on my mentors and I requested a trip to Rome. I saw some of the most amazing art, and it made me feel more connected to the art world than ever before. It boosted my confidence as an artist to be able to go to the center of the art world and say I was there. It was also amazing because the year I went, Simone Leigh was there representing the United States, which was the first time a Black woman represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale since its creation. That in itself inspired me and lit a fire under me. KW: You are also currently participating in an exhibit at the Muhammad Ali Center, We Don't Wither. You submitted three self portraits enveloped in water. Why those pieces and how do they speak to the theme of not withering? LR: I submitted three pieces, one of which has been collected, which is a self portrait of me looking back. The other two pieces are just of my body. During this time, I was painting water and researching feminine energy, as water is such a feminine element. I was looking into the art of surrender because in 2021 and early 2022 I realized that I did not have the life that I wanted. All I could do was surrender and the water is a representation of that. The largest piece in the exhibition is called I Don’t Simply Float, I Rise. This piece and time in my life were based on the poem “Still I Rise” by Dr. Maya Angelou. With this piece, I’m trying to portray a certain sense of resistance and resilience. Growing up, I was taught that being plus sized wasn’t desirable, so I set out to create something undeniably beautiful. I’m painting water, although it can be a dangerous thing, and I’m becoming one with it. I’m conquering this feminine energy in my own way. KW: As you grow in the curiosity and acceptance of your body, do you think these self portraits are a series you'll remain in for a while longer, or do you have other plans artistically? LR: I can’t say the self portraiture is taking a pause, but I can say this current series is very important to me. There are specific angles I can only get when I’m behind the camera, so my self portraits are on hold as I figure it out. Now, I’m taking the focus off of myself and putting it on what I see in the world. I’m taking self portraiture by painting the bodies of those I see myself reflected in, I’m giving them voice through my work. As an artist, I can make those who often go unseen feel more visible, and I can do it in a way that pays homage to them. I believe my sense of self portraiture has not been erased, rather, it has evolved. I’ve learned that I can’t run away from myself or my family. I know that I’ll show back up in these paintings, I just don’t know how or when. KW: What's one thing you want folks to walk away with after they've interacted with your art? LR: Judgment is something I wish to tackle in my work. I want people to have various perspectives and I want the bodies of either myself or family to be seen as beautiful, deserving, and human. I’m also seeking to address shame with this work, especially for Black folks. All of my works are of people looking directly at the viewer with no shame. I want people to walk around free of this burden, no matter who they are and where they come from. KW: Thank you so much for your time! What's something you would like to say to the younger version of you who is just getting started on their artistic journey? LR: I would tell the younger version of myself that it’s possible. The things I’m doing now were once visions I saw for myself but didn’t necessarily see reflected in my community. From having gallery representation to being a fulltime artist, these are things that were at one point merely dreams. I would tell myself to dream big and more importantly, get so good they can’t ignore you. You deserve to be seen out here. You have the talent and the skillset, just continue to hone your craft so you become undeniable. I would tell myself not to be so mean, because we can develop a mean inner voice and self-talk, depending on how we’re raised and where we grew up. I believe the nicer and gentler we are to ourselves, the quicker we’ll reach and achieve our goals. The last thing I’ll say is don’t be afraid to ask questions. Get you some mentors, even if you have to put yourself out there and risk annoying older people with your messages or your questions. Mentorship is important because the most important thing for your career isn’t knowing what to do, it’s knowing what not to do. <img width="2525" height="3808" width_o="2525" height_o="3808" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7de6e2f94ef46bbeecdbeefb50d0dd8ec8282d3208efddbf68af6366bdae460f/this-is-us.jpeg" data-mid="199604540" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7de6e2f94ef46bbeecdbeefb50d0dd8ec8282d3208efddbf68af6366bdae460f/this-is-us.jpeg" />LaNia Roberts, This is Us (2022). Acrylic and paper collaged on canvas. <img width="2596" height="3888" width_o="2596" height_o="3888" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b0c6a9779601cfec131c249990c03090498f722b81fbd711bd70936cf8a382f/we-hold-each-other-2.jpg" data-mid="199604775" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6b0c6a9779601cfec131c249990c03090498f722b81fbd711bd70936cf8a382f/we-hold-each-other-2.jpg" /> LaNia Roberts, We Hold Each Other Up (2023). Acrylic and paper collaged on canvas. - 12.17.23Kenneth L. Woods (he/him), AKA “KennyFresh,” is a spoken word artist, writer, poet and author. He’s been servicing both Indiana and Louisville, KY for the past decade. Kenneth partners with non-profit organizations, businesses, and individuals to use the gift of poetry and spoken word to help others creatively tell their stories. In his spare time, Kenneth enjoys reading, hanging out with his pet tarantula, listening to music, and photography. https://ruckus.cargo.site/Katherine-Simone-Reynolds-Q-A Tue, 12 Dec 2023 22:01:59 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Katherine-Simone-Reynolds-Q-A <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="199241049" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bda6d70663041d35278bdb7a2430d9c7ba36febecdb1a92a5e36a6bbe5cba9f1/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="3600" height="2400" width_o="3600" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8eb637bf8ef1e31a25bd58301ad8dc3d69ad92b440c78cca422d560a7dde00a2/GrahamFoundation_20230403_212.jpg" data-mid="199241627" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8eb637bf8ef1e31a25bd58301ad8dc3d69ad92b440c78cca422d560a7dde00a2/GrahamFoundation_20230403_212.jpg" /> ABOVE: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender (2023). Two-channel color video with sound. 39 mins, 28 secs. All photos by Nathan Keay, courtesy Graham Foundation. ︎ Graham Foundation Katherine Simóne Reynolds Q&amp;A Shawné Holloway Days before the opening of A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, I visited with Katherine Simóne Reynolds in her studio at the Graham Foundation in Chicago, Illinois as she created the last of the dozens of small clay swallow's nest sculptures that appear in the first floor of the Graham’s galleries. Back and forth we asked each other questions about how to construct and identify tools that enable us to heavily armor or hide ourselves in plain sight, how to uncover proximate structural violence that might be equally as evasive or allusive, and—perhaps most importantly—about the cartographies of vulnerability that are created by the vast networks of protective built and social architecture when, as Black femmes, we begin the process of seeking respite or repair. In this interview, I circle back with Reynolds to expand on our conversation now that the show has ended. By speaking with her at this point in the process—after months of studio visits, four public programs, and countless hours of reflection, we honor the ways dialogues about Black American life expand in tandem with community reflection. I speak to her in more detail about how these questions developed across the exhibition with careful consideration of how travel and healing situate her personal and filmographic narratives within the work. Reynolds’ exhibition not only does the work of contributing to the field of Black architectural practice through her analysis of space and presence, it expands the lexicon of contemporary Black performance practice to the built environment through her focus on futurity and the body’s natural, but critically emergent, protective responses. Shawné Holloway: Without using location information, can you tell me where you are right now? Katherine Simóne Reynolds: I am in a hummingbird paradise that is lush with glitter and adobe. SH: That sounds like a dream. Can you tell me about how this place you're in now might differ from the place that you were when you were creating this exhibition? KSR: I think my mental state is completely different. Like, I’m still coming at things from a point of grief. I still am grieving, but I think my relationship to how to express my grief has definitely morphed into something that is with me instead of across from me, or even something that I was pushing away, and scared to really acknowledge. The place I was in when I was making this work was like this weird survival mode—while also grieving—while also trying to understand what it meant to not have another chance to make something right. I was just feeling very unsettled. I felt like that unsettling was just going to be my forever. Now I'm in this hummingbird paradise and it still/also feels unsettled. I'm traveling a lot and I'm going to be traveling more. But, for once, it doesn't feel like something that I don't want to do. Now, I'm going to do what I want to do for real. SH: I’m hearing that right now you’re really engaged with a practice of wayfinding and placemaking. You visually expressed this kind of liminal practice in the video work A different kind of tender (2023) that you showed as a multichannel work in your exhibition. The sound design, to me, suggested that there is an ever-present search occurring for the character in the work and for us as viewers. I'm curious if you can say more about the ways in which that traveling happens in the work either by way of your personal placemaking, wayfinding or by way of your artistic process? KSR: I've always been traveling. I've always had to. I would travel for love, or to see my father, or to see family, things like that. My mother doesn’t like when I talk about us moving around quite often, but it's true. We moved a lot, and I think the way that people usually talk about moving a lot indicates that there was some type of turmoil or unrest that may have happened, but actually, it's just how my mom got bored with the places that we were living. Movement is bringing new life into your world, and I think that's how my mom thought about us moving a lot. With this work in particular, I had to travel between two cities quite a bit over the course of six months. That process is a part of this performance. It's documented through photography and videography. It was very grueling and taxing. I was also traveling for family from Chicago to Southern Illinois to St. Louis, and I was working on another project that kept bringing me from Chicago to St. Louis. So working between Brooklyn, Illinois, and Cairo, Illinois, those in-between travel spaces were my places of solace. I think that's common for people who travel a lot, those non-spaces being places of solace, or realizing how you feel about something while traveling alone in a car, with no music playing. It's like a saturation of self in those moments. Through that time, making this work, I had to struggle with and battle with what it means to always go it alone. It brought up feelings of being like, “Okay, I am actually really interested in going it with someone else or with other people,” in traveling with other people, trying to understand my relationship to other people in space. There are a lot of moments of just utter exhaustion, you know, just a depletion from worrying that I couldn't really do this. I never really had to face that before. Going into so many places that held so much significance for me and my work, that I couldn't really see through it. It was super opaque. SH: One of the words that I noticed you didn't say when thinking about what travel can give us was renewal. I’m curious about that, as it is an architecture word, and it is a word that references urbanization a lot of the time. I know that the character in the video work that you showed in the exhibition was called “The Queen,” but I also read this character as a bride. I might just be projecting as a person who is currently and profoundly brokenhearted, but I feel like “bride” isn’t too far away from the discourse around Black femininity and our roles as “useful, plot moving characters” such as queens and brides. If we look at dominant narratives around queens, it's often referring to the queen as a bride. The Bride-queen is historically positioned as a traveler, being married off to a far kingdom, into a strange world where there is a sense of forced renewal. So I'm curious, within this spectrum of visual culture and in respect to how you're speaking about travel, is renewal part of your vocabulary? KSR: That is a fantastic question. I saw renewal in the spaces I was navigating but I wasn't necessarily concerned with renewal. I also couldn't see it in my own life at the moment. So, I think the representation of the Queen is amazing. The connection you just made about the Queen and the bride having to travel, I didn't even think about that. In the film, the costuming is actually a homecoming dress, not a bridal dress. But still, when we think about homecoming, we think about adornment. These events are still preparatory acts for women to be brides or to see themselves as brides; there’s a Homecoming Queen, Homecoming King, those kinds of things. The Queen doesn't really have anyone else in these vignettes other than herself. So, there's no kingdom. She has these spaces, or she's navigating these spaces, but there's really no one else. There's residue, or I should say essence, of other people, or that there have been people there but she's mainly haunting these spaces and they are also haunting to her. She is a character based on this tombstone outside of Cairo, Illinois in this town called Charleston. The tombstone just says “The Queen” on it and doesn’t have anything else. It was put together by her husband and he always called her “The Queen.” It also didn’t have her birth date on it because she didn't want people to know how old she was. And he respected all of those things about her. So, there’s a love story that’s within this character, within this person I never would have known, and I’m trying to hold on to something that I want—like love. I love a love story. Maybe going back to your discussion about renewal, I don't think about renewal as much as I think about redemption. I think that there’s some kind of redemption I was trying to work out through this character and navigate these spaces of healing; healing buildings to find some form of a love story with the kind of redeeming quality love stories have. SH: Can you say more about how redemption and renewal are different? KSR: Renewal is something that a space or a person needs. Redemption is something that a person wants. SH: I'm gonna stop you there, because I'm curious about this difference between renewal and redemption and how different kinds of entities—particularly those who can’t communicate their needs in language—how they might feel or experience redemption and renewal. I'm thinking in particular about the works Keloids: 1-5 in reference to the scarring process. For instance, is a scar an indication of a redemption process or is it an inherently necessary piece of a renewal? Please say more about your conceptual framework for this piece. KSR: A keloid is hypertrophic scar tissue. Essentially, it's your skin cells healing on top of each other. This is from the words of Camille G. Bacon, a manic healing, which I thoroughly enjoy thinking about. It's like a constant need to repair something, but it's also trying to heal too much. That's what I think of as the keloidal landscape. In making the exhibition, I’ve compared it with the Black Midwestern landscape; a space that also people don't look at or want to see at times. People are constantly saying that they've never been to the Midwest or asking if St. Louis is the North or the South. They definitely don't know where Brooklyn or Cairo, Illinois are. Spaces that kind of want this healing or are trying to heal, but are completely forgotten about; but, for me, like keloids, it's hard to not see them. Keloids are usually like pretty large scars that people are trying to either cover up or get rid of, but you can't really. You can try to get rid of them, but they’re always there. So there's this consistent residue of that healing process, like how your body is trying to heal from something traumatic that happened to the skin. So for work, I made these molasses pieces that have costume jewelry inside of them. One has a church fan inside of it as well. In the sunlight, they are slightly transparent, but then and in shadow they become puddles. I wanted to work with molasses because of my mom who is always telling me, “you move as slow as molasses.” I like how molasses and sugar operate within Black culture. Also, you shouldn’t eat a lot of sugar if you're trying to heal scars in your body or just heal anything in general. It completely destroys the healing process each time that you ingest it. SH: I noticed that you had a lot of programming around this exhibition and I was curious about some of the questions or outcomes that you felt like came from the gatherings you had during the show? How have they changed your understanding of what you’ve produced? KSR: It was a huge pleasure to work with my dear friend, Regina Martinez. She's the sound designer for the film. She's able to think about sound so poetically. That friendship helped me to write the film. I'm really learning to understand diegetic, as well as non-diegetic sound. Then also having the program with Kelley Lemon and Alicia Ajayi was amazing because they just really were able to fully discuss the Black Midwestern landscape agriculturally. So, programming was an opportunity to bring more statistics and history/research into my own process. My collaborators rounded things out and had me really questioning the politics around working through and in these spaces I'm not from and even the ones that I am. I thought more about the intricacies and complications of that. SH: You mentioned earlier that there were questions that people had that maybe they didn’t ask. What do you think some of those questions were? KSR: I think a lot of people wanted to know what they were looking at. Clarity is always something that people strive for or always seem to want from my exhibitions. It's just not something I'm quite able to give, and it’s because I am also working through it. <img width="3600" height="2400" width_o="3600" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7ef2223c5c8d960aab1780f3aab59ed3ebb2c6b4f6904da8e4e75a0f8c655cc5/GrahamFoundation_20230403_108.jpg" data-mid="199241626" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7ef2223c5c8d960aab1780f3aab59ed3ebb2c6b4f6904da8e4e75a0f8c655cc5/GrahamFoundation_20230403_108.jpg" />Exhibition view: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, Graham Foundation, Chicago (25 March–10 June 2023). <img width="3600" height="2400" width_o="3600" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/18778d27df79199f7fb75592ccf474a0daaceb1e4b0ae5ff1054b3fca5b2cf27/GrahamFoundation_20230403_110.jpg" data-mid="199241839" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/18778d27df79199f7fb75592ccf474a0daaceb1e4b0ae5ff1054b3fca5b2cf27/GrahamFoundation_20230403_110.jpg" /> Exhibition view: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, Graham Foundation, Chicago (25 March–10 June 2023). <img width="3600" height="2400" width_o="3600" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/750c5f37bb4f0851610e6370fcc78143cda9ce62dcb7ded65cd7f7fb4827ff59/GrahamFoundation_20230403_198.jpg" data-mid="199241759" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/750c5f37bb4f0851610e6370fcc78143cda9ce62dcb7ded65cd7f7fb4827ff59/GrahamFoundation_20230403_198.jpg" /> Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender (2023). Two-channel color video with sound. 39 mins, 28 secs. Courtesy Graham Foundation. Photo: Nathan Keay. <img width="3600" height="2400" width_o="3600" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/28afa20e4b10fb227b1f271bd5f3e770a69bfcdf3d797d7b431a314aff60d2c1/GrahamFoundation_20230403_167.jpg" data-mid="199241726" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/28afa20e4b10fb227b1f271bd5f3e770a69bfcdf3d797d7b431a314aff60d2c1/GrahamFoundation_20230403_167.jpg" /> Exhibition view: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, Graham Foundation, Chicago (25 March–10 June 2023). <img width="3600" height="2454" width_o="3600" height_o="2454" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5c3c382244b9a9bf2f9e8056eda05a3f00072cdb662a12ebbff79a28d440a09b/GrahamFoundation_20230403_159.jpg" data-mid="199241725" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5c3c382244b9a9bf2f9e8056eda05a3f00072cdb662a12ebbff79a28d440a09b/GrahamFoundation_20230403_159.jpg" /> Exhibition view: Katherine Simóne Reynolds, A different kind of tender and the practice of overhealing, Graham Foundation, Chicago (25 March–10 June 2023). - 12.13.23Shawné Michaelain Holloway (she/her) is a Chicago-based new media artist and poet. Known for her noisy experimental electronics and performance practice, Holloway shapes the rhetorics of computer programming and sadomasochism into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally since 2012 in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), The Knockdown Center, and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. Shawné is currently Assistant Professor of Video/New Media in the Kinetic Imaging Department at Virginia Commonwealth University︎︎︎ and has served as the Digital Developer and Technology Manager with Black Lunch Table’s archives team from 2022-23. In addition to her work in the arts, she is an open source software advocate, 1/2 of electronics duo BONE LATTICE︎︎︎, and a bodybuilder. https://ruckus.cargo.site/Hajra-Waheed-A-Solo-Exhibition Fri, 17 Nov 2023 13:06:39 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Hajra-Waheed-A-Solo-Exhibition <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="197150260" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="6592" height="4395" width_o="6592" height_o="4395" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f0788ba9b4ddb580104f5220d30fe4a8d0f4064943c4d981859e91e18ae8431f/Hajra-Waheed_Hum_2020_3.jpg" data-mid="197150617" border="0" alt="Narrow black lamp lights hang down from the ceiling in a stark white gallery space. Three people are in the space, one laying down, one seated, and one walking. A pair of doors in the back seem to lead outside where it is green. " data-caption="Narrow black lamp lights hang down from the ceiling in a stark white gallery space. Three people are in the space, one laying down, one seated, and one walking. A pair of doors in the back seem to lead outside where it is green. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f0788ba9b4ddb580104f5220d30fe4a8d0f4064943c4d981859e91e18ae8431f/Hajra-Waheed_Hum_2020_3.jpg" /> Hajra Waheed, Hum (2020), multi-channel sound installation with custom speaker castings, 36 minutes, 17 seconds. Installation view, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Diana Pfammater ︎ Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis Hajra Waheed: A Solo Exhibition Review Annette LePique For artist Hajra Waheed, the distances between fact and fiction are not non-existent, rather the concepts of objective Truth and personal experience, naturally intermingle and weave together. One cannot exist without the other. It’s a resolutely humanistic view from an artist whose practice lives within the realm of ideas; but like fact and faction, Waheed knows that lives real and weighty are governed by the seemingly ephemeral structures of power. It’s a tension on full display in Waheed’s self-titled exhibition (Hajra Waheed: A Solo Exhibition) at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis. Waheed’s childhood was spent within the confines of Saudi ARAMCO (short for the Arabian American Oil Company) compound located in the city of Dhahran, in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province. Dhahran is an important city within the global oil industry as Saudi Arabia’s first commercially viable oil well was discovered there in 1938. While in Waheed’s telling the compound began as a rough and ready factory town, it had transformed into a bustling, yet insular, hub of company commerce by the time her parents had settled there for her father’s job as a ARAMCO geologist. It was growing up within the ARAMCO compound, going to ARAMCO funded schools, and consuming only an ARAMCO approved view of global relations during the heights of the Gulf War, which set in motion Waheed’s lifelong desire to uncover the hidden connective tissues between imperialism and global capitalism. While the exhibition centers the material expansiveness of her practice (the show includes works on paper with ink, paint, and her poetry) the heart of the show is the immersive sound installation: the 2020, Hum. To experience the piece, you step into a white corridor, carpeted white, blindingly white, and leave your shoes outside the space. Installation signage requests that visitors’ do not speak within the exhibition. A series of hanging black speakers further highlight the whiteness of the walls. The audio begins to echo from the speakers and deep humming begins, threads of various melodies, of different songs of freedom, merge together to form a unified whole. The silence the space requires of its visitors, the trancelike nature of the audio, and blankness of the walls, the floor, lends the installation an atmosphere of sanctity. There is something righteous, something holy in the act of coming together; of hearing and feeling that togetherness beyond the realm of the visual. Hum is a multi-channel sound installation. Waheed originally created the piece for the Lahore Biennale 02 in Pakistan. The act of humming upsets the boundary between one’s interiority and exteriority. A low reverberation, borne in deepest most secret recesses of your diaphragm, brings to life a sound, a new note, a type of music recognized by those who can put words to your melody, recognized by those who can sing along with you. In Waheed’s Hum, protest songs by Egyptian composer Imam Mohammad Ahmad Eissa, Pakistani poets Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, Sudanese singer Muhammad al-Makki Ibraheem, Rohingya songwriter Hamid Hussain, and Kurdish musician Nûdem Durak, meld together to form a landscape of sound, one that penetrates to your core. All six artists survived persecution in their home countries and so too their music survives. These are melodies that seem to take on a life of their own, it becomes difficult to tell where you begin and the humming ends. Such an experience is a way to share language in the spaces where language is often denied. It’s in systems that deny one’s own humanity and the humanity of others in which subterranean, subaltern modes of resistance and community can bloom. “Hum” not only functions as a descriptor of the audio in the installation, as when the word is translated into Urdu, it means “we.” Hum becomes an act, a name, and a way of being; it is a way to remember and celebrate what it means to move through the world together. In Hum II: Studies for a Sound Chamber (2023), the spiral takes shape through ink on paper. Hum II is austere, there’s an ascetic quality to the deep velvet tone of ink on the paper’s stark white. There’s a parallel to the experience of listening within Waheed’s white antechamber but movement exists differently on the page. Movement here doesn’t penetrate, rather it expands and consumes. You remain apart from the waves of ink lines that dominate the page. the curves of the spiral envelop, caress, and blanket the field of white. You stand and witness but there’s distance between you and this field of white. It is this very distance which allows for the space to think about the spiral in your own life: it’s grooves, it’s hidden connections, the patterns that govern the separations between you and the multitude of life that exists in your wake. The deep rumblings of song, their halos of notes and the curling aural ribbons of their melodies take on the form of the spiral; it is an image that impassively yet decisively winds throughout the exhibition. A bit like a god, a bit like a fate, the spiral in Waheed’s hands becomes fact: it’s a fact that calls to mind the paper chains children hang on mantel pieces, the metal links holding shipping containers to wharf, and the echoes that shimmer outward from a protestor’s megaphone. If Waheed’s spirals could speak, they would present the cacophony of voices that make up the disarray, the beauty, the violence, and the hidden links of modern life under global carceral capitalism. In Waheed’s hands, the spiral becomes the vehicle by which our intrinsic connection to one another is crystallized. Waheed’s video piece, Spiral (2019) functions as both a visual poem and treatise on what and how we see. Though the 7 minute video features images of a tropical canopy under evening stars, Waheed’s cyclical and dreamlike narrative applies the geometry of the spiral to this view in order to speak to humanity’s shared intimacies, complexities, and frictions within systems of oppression. Spiral asks viewers who they are and what they are fighting and living for in our interconnected, enmeshed mass of life.&nbsp; In the beginning of the piece, Waheed states that “the spiral is much more than just a form.” Such a statement could veer into the realm of the esoteric or pat, but when coupled with Waheed’s images of nature, it incurs a trancelike, meditative quality. The boughs and fronds of a tree are veiled by gray shadows as Waheed traces the spiral’s mode with the lines “it expands and contracts, increase and decreases reveals even as it hides all the while offering back anew whatever it receives.” It’s these notes that could be considered a thesis for Waheed’s practice. As she traces the lineages of globalism, capital, and state sanctioned violences, these threads wind toward and away from one another. They curl, they coil, her lines of thinking both intersect and repel as do the lines of history and dislocation she traces across the globe. The spiral is also an iris and aura, an ouroboros winding ever tighter. In the watercolor Sound Studies 1-6 (2023) fields of rain-tamed and leaden colors, ochres, hunter greens, and oranges, radiate outward. The colors pulsate both in pleasure and pain, apparatuses that see both too much and too little all at once. The series itself, these delicate apparatuses, these soft machines that gaze back, is kin to the imagery commonly found in science fiction. Waheed’s area of study, the surreality of technology, security, privacy, and violence, are comfortable bedfellows with the intricacies of sci-fi for we live in a world formed by the tenuous and tremulous spaces between fact and fiction. This space, present in both Waheed’s visual and sound work, allows for fluctuations and frictions in viewer experience. Ink and notes radiate outward to ears, and eyes, but their meaning changes and transforms through each fragile interaction. Yet, these differences in interpretation ground a shared experience: we are listening, we are seeing, we are feeling, together. This notion of collectivity, typified through the push and pull of the spiral, lies at the heart of Waheed’s exhibition. What does it mean to dwell in these spaces, ones defined by their ambiguity, their absences, and silences? Waheed offers no easy answers to such questions as meanings can shift depending on where and how you’re looking at them. These reflections and refractions are reminders of how life under global capitalism is commonly parceled out and priced for the market. Wealth, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and location all play a role in shaping the spaces that you see. It is a lesson that Waheed remembers from her early teen years, when she first left the ARAMCO complex for a girl’s boarding school in the United States. Looking back, Waheed understands that journey forcefully encouraged by ARAMCO to be one of cultural and social re-assimilation. The company required the children raised on its land, the families that worked for it to have access to an idea of normalcy, in a way telling them “you can leave, what we taught you is the way of the world, what we taught you is everything. What we do here is normal. You will always come back.” But some do not look back, Waheed is one of those who left. She tells of her time at the school as her first contact with polarizing forms of “American” feminism. This political posture, formed through the privileges of race, class, and gender, accompanied numerous prescriptions from the adults who surrounded her about how she, a young woman of color, should be. Waheed however cites this time as integral in developing how she approaches her work: “from a specific subject-position that encompasses being a woman, a woman of colour with complex ties and relationships to North America, the Middle East and South Asia, born of Muslim immigrant parents.” What experiences inform your subjectivity? Where does your gaze fall? What exactly do you want to see? If you listen and look closely, you may be able to glean the hidden curls of the spiral. With care you might be able to see the connections that link us all. - 11.17.23 Annette LePique (she/her) is a freelance arts writer and staff editor at Sixty Inches From Center. Her writing has appeared in ArtReview, Chicago Artist Writers, Chicago Reader, Eaten Magazine, New Art Examiner, NewCity, Stillpoint Magazine, and many other publications. She is a 2023 recipient of the Rabkin Prize for art journalism. <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cfdd3bd572865076d60d6e694cea5265a1040bab5bbe540c88e74dfe69f373f9/HW_BioPic_2023_CAMSTLOUIS-3.jpg" data-mid="197150557" border="0" alt="Portrait of Hajra Waheed, who looks directly at the camera against a background of dense green leaves. " data-caption="Portrait of Hajra Waheed, who looks directly at the camera against a background of dense green leaves. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cfdd3bd572865076d60d6e694cea5265a1040bab5bbe540c88e74dfe69f373f9/HW_BioPic_2023_CAMSTLOUIS-3.jpg" />Hajra Waheed. Photo courtesy the artist. <img width="6000" height="4004" width_o="6000" height_o="4004" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1609c1959c9fcdd6a3dd3a6a75ad430efcbe17149bfd20b290ddea408bc253e6/Hajra-Waheed_Video-Installation-Project-1-10--20112013.jpg" data-mid="197150568" border="0" alt="A video projection showing a pool in a dark room with two cushioned seats. " data-caption="A video projection showing a pool in a dark room with two cushioned seats. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1609c1959c9fcdd6a3dd3a6a75ad430efcbe17149bfd20b290ddea408bc253e6/Hajra-Waheed_Video-Installation-Project-1-10--20112013.jpg" />Hajra Waheed, Video Installation Project 1-10 (2011-2013), video, 33 minutes, 14 seconds. Installation view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Paul Litherland. <img width="7608" height="5064" width_o="7608" height_o="5064" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/43736ab92d83cf3e3c0386dba6f16b68232fd3d7c3416e9b74761496c3d76cc9/Hajra-Waheed_The-Spiral_2019.jpg" data-mid="197150581" border="0" alt="Video projection in a dark room showing what seems like the shadows of narrow plant leaves. " data-caption="Video projection in a dark room showing what seems like the shadows of narrow plant leaves. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/43736ab92d83cf3e3c0386dba6f16b68232fd3d7c3416e9b74761496c3d76cc9/Hajra-Waheed_The-Spiral_2019.jpg" /> Hajra Waheed, The Spiral (2019), video with narration, 7 minutes, 10 seconds. Installation view, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Toni Hafkenshield.<img width="5616" height="3744" width_o="5616" height_o="3744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aaaf70465dc612c3d78b9a9f4c847013568b0dd7abcc81e67eb98bb3db7eed61/Hajra-Waheed_Our-Naufrage-1-10_2014.JPG" data-mid="197150605" border="0" alt="Sculptural artwork hung in a grid on an isolated white wall. " data-caption="Sculptural artwork hung in a grid on an isolated white wall. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aaaf70465dc612c3d78b9a9f4c847013568b0dd7abcc81e67eb98bb3db7eed61/Hajra-Waheed_Our-Naufrage-1-10_2014.JPG" />Hajra Waheed, Our Naufrage 1-10 (2014), gouache on masonite mounted in brass and wood, 14 x 17 cm each. Installation view, 57th Venice Biennale. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Francesco Galli. https://ruckus.cargo.site/Ellen-Siebers-dream-song Thu, 12 Oct 2023 22:18:40 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/Ellen-Siebers-dream-song <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="193545940" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /> Ellen Siebers’ dream song Review John Brooks︎ parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles In W.G. Sebald’s 2001 novel Austerlitz, the character Great-Uncle Alphonso is described as a naturalist who “spent most of his time out of doors” painting watercolors. “When he was thus engaged,” the depiction continues, “he generally wore glasses with gray silk tissue instead of lenses in the frames, so that the landscape appeared through a fine veil that muted its colors, and the weight of the world dissolved before your eyes.” Alphonso came to mind while at parrasch heijnen taking in Ellen Siebers’ dream song, the Hudson, NY-based artist’s first solo exhibition at the Boyle Heights gallery. Just as Alphonso’s deliberate veiling provided, paradoxically, a way of seeing and perceiving with greater clarity, Siebers’ gauzy perspective—evident in the fourteen paintings that comprise the show—offers a glimpse into a formless, evanescent realm laden with emotion, meaning, and the quiet, romantic wonder of experience. We live in a loud world, surrounded by the fizzle and clamor of the seemingly endless noises endemic to twenty-first century life. By its nature, the cloistered white space of a gallery—especially in rooms as splendid as those at parrasch heijnen—separates itself from the din beyond its walls, becoming a sanctuary where we might find respite and contemplation when in the presence of the right work. Siebers’ sublime paintings more than oblige. Denoted by a blithe, surprising and subtly saturated interplay of color and mark making, the works are small in scale yet occupy more visual space than their dimensions might suggest. Reminiscent of a Whistler nocturne, Late June projects deep blues outward, yet its abyssal depths beckon like a portal or a lacuna. Oblong jewel-toned blocks, stacked around Blue Sleep’s reclining figure, seem to stretch to infinity in all directions. Skillfully imbued with undeniable feeling, each painting commands attention, reminding us that despite having no physicality, feeling fills us, guides us, destroys us, revives us. Muddling the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, Siebers renders the what and where of her environs indiscernibly. There is only ambience, only aura. The viewer doesn’t suffer from this opacity; in fact, we benefit from it. Her diaphanous color and lyrical brushstrokes evoke—or perhaps conjure—a specific evening, or the complicated dynamics of a love affair, or even what seem like whole lives. The smoldering golden green and umber atmosphere of the Turneresque Double Red Sun poignantly records the drifting smoke from this past summer’s Canadian wildfires, unavoidably visible from the artist’s upstate home. Streamside’s margins are curtained in mostly rosy washes; the center houses a narrow vignette—a compositional device Siebers commonly uses— in which the vague shape of a small figure stands amidst what we can assume, given the painting’s title, is the greenery of a waterside grove. A scumbled mass of white and sky blue dots spills out below the figure; presumably these marks represent dappling light on the water’s surface, but because Siebers’ paintings lack narrative clarity, we aren’t quite certain. This doesn’t matter. Marks like these perfectly demonstrate the mysterious alchemy of painting; they are why paintings continue to be made and why we want to look at them. Often, it seems like everything and everyone is trying very hard to entertain us. Entertainment has its joys, but they’re often fleeting. What seems to last, what burrows into the psyche, is that which bewilders, that which enthralls, as Siebers’ work does. Gentle and melancholic, the paintings in dream song are not just poems, they are haiku: spare, sensile, devastating. They are just whispers, but even whispers can carry across great distances under the right conditions. -Ellen Siebers: dream song runs from August 26 - October 7, 2023 at parrasch heijnen, 1326 South Boyle Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90023 - 10.13.23 John Brooks is an artist, poet, and sometimes-curator based in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Action Spectacle, Golf Digest, The New York Review of Books, Good River Review, Assaracus, East by Northeast, and Plainsongs. He has written for Ruckus Journal, UnderMain, BOMB, and Strange Fire Collective. <img width="4511" height="5445" width_o="4511" height_o="5445" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f451fa1d0665ff24137fdbccb05d5ec852a05e5752617d932e121d77fac2d30f/ph_ESiebers_LateJune.jpg" data-mid="193546426" border="0" alt="A moody, abstract, deep blue painting that gives the feeling of looking at the moon under a thick fog, or that of a small flashlight in an impossibly large cave. " data-caption="A moody, abstract, deep blue painting that gives the feeling of looking at the moon under a thick fog, or that of a small flashlight in an impossibly large cave. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f451fa1d0665ff24137fdbccb05d5ec852a05e5752617d932e121d77fac2d30f/ph_ESiebers_LateJune.jpg" /> Late June, Ellen Siebers&nbsp; <img width="5701" height="5744" width_o="5701" height_o="5744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/72e2d5de7f8336784a18bdeecd791a1d15dd4752be47afe822cb589abcc0bb37/ph_ESiebers_ApplesInMay.jpg" data-mid="193546424" border="0" alt="An energetic and abstract painting of yellow, gold, rose, and blue, framed on a white wall. " data-caption="An energetic and abstract painting of yellow, gold, rose, and blue, framed on a white wall. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/72e2d5de7f8336784a18bdeecd791a1d15dd4752be47afe822cb589abcc0bb37/ph_ESiebers_ApplesInMay.jpg" /> Apples in May,&nbsp;Ellen Siebers <img width="5989" height="5157" width_o="5989" height_o="5157" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/45e805a94ccc2cd8020fc58564b4cbc17cb9f80309f3ba0d8127b884b31cff32/ph_ESiebers_DoubleRedSun.jpg" data-mid="193546425" border="0" alt="A moody and abstract painting that shows two deep reddish and orange circles facing each other in the center, on a field of blurry textured brown, like a haze. " data-caption="A moody and abstract painting that shows two deep reddish and orange circles facing each other in the center, on a field of blurry textured brown, like a haze. " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/45e805a94ccc2cd8020fc58564b4cbc17cb9f80309f3ba0d8127b884b31cff32/ph_ESiebers_DoubleRedSun.jpg" /> Double Red Sun, &nbsp;Ellen Siebers https://ruckus.cargo.site/That-s-the-Way-Love-Is-Review-of-Joss-Barton-s-The-Summer-I-Got-Bit Tue, 10 Oct 2023 00:16:40 +0000 Ruckus https://ruckus.cargo.site/That-s-the-Way-Love-Is-Review-of-Joss-Barton-s-The-Summer-I-Got-Bit <img width="3592" height="220" width_o="3592" height_o="220" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" data-mid="193209517" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/af472466bd2bf03827779be525936d2cb7721750d4300cf3ba01e8a4f754155e/New-Digital-Header-3.png" /><img width="4096" height="2731" width_o="4096" height_o="2731" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/755acef0368cb35b5b4e9d8695200645dc15cdb7c3b849badd1f28d37bc1bfab/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_1.jpg" data-mid="193211343" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/755acef0368cb35b5b4e9d8695200645dc15cdb7c3b849badd1f28d37bc1bfab/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_1.jpg" /> Joss Barton, The Summer I Got Bit (May 2022). Photo courtesy of Nanyamka Ewing, Mammoth Photography. ︎ Chicago That’s the Way Love Is: Review of Joss Barton’s The Summer I Got Bit Performance Review Eva Pensis “The mic has to be off, right?” she asked from the center of the stage. Behind her lay an altar, at its center a giant disco ball bordered with floral arrangements, winding garland, and humble offerings: bottles of water, champagne, and poppers. At various points throughout the performance, she would pause to inhale the fumes, a fitting ceremonial rite for the Midwest-based poet-prophetess’s “disco death dream farewell performance.” Joss Barton, a native of St. Louis, MO, was relocating to Chicago after over a decade of performing and organizing in St. Louis. The farewell was also a fare-thee-well community gathering in St. Louis where Barton performed her poem (self-published as a zine) The Summer I Got Bit at the close of May 2022. What began as a warm commemoration and celebration of Barton’s contribution to the DIY queer/trans brown and Black community of artists, performers, and creatives quickly escalated into a charged stalemate between Barton and the venue’s manager. The evening’s lineup of performances was running over its allotted time and the manager of the space—Aurora STL—was not having it. You could cut the tension in the air, as the saying goes, with a knife—although Barton’s stiletto pumps would have done the job just as well. Barton was reading from the epilogue of her poem when the manager interrupted her performance. Promptly at 10:00pm, the manager shut off the audio equipment, claiming that the noise from the show might disturb neighbors that, “if the cops were called,” would supposedly put the manager’s business license in jeopardy. Marketed as the newest pole dance studio in St. Louis, Aurora STL initially welcomed the experimental and multi-genre work that Barton had convened. Over the course of the event, it became clear that this support was conditional. Amid the standstill, the audience members, who lined Aurora’s interior at standing capacity, looked around anxiously, unsure whether the manager was going to further escalate the establishment’s measures to stop Barton mid-performance. Fortunately for the audience, Barton’s voice carries: hers is a voice you will hear, even if you don’t want to hear it—and that is precisely the point. As soon as the audio equipment was cut, the audience grew quieter as she delivered the final stanzas of her zine. Printed and self-published as DIY zine, Barton’s The Summer I Got Bit consists of nine poems and an epilogue that chronicle Barton falling in and out of a two-year love affair in St. Louis. The break-up is reflected in and bombarded by her everyday experiences as an immigrant trans woman of color during the early months of Trump’s regime. “This will be my last performance of The Summer I Got Bit,” Barton offered as preface. “You can only milk a break up story so much.” Before the venue manager tried to interrupt Joss’s performance, the evening had been filled with tender and timely offerings by some of Barton’s colleagues, artists and creatives who continue to shape St. Louis’s vibrant Black and brown queer DIY arts and performance scene. In the words of Maurice Tracy, one of the performers that evening, “the whole night honestly kind of reminded me of a revival night. On a good night, things tend to really flow, really sing, and by the time Joss got up, that’s what I was feeling, especially when it was clear that something was going on, and she was refusing to get off the stage.” Reverend Treasure Shields Redmond opened the event by welcoming the audience to the space with song. Alongside her intonation, Redmond meditated on space, kin, and the youthful boldness to be, simply and unapologetically. She observed and learned this boldness from her daughters—a boldness whose very attenuation is often conflated as the inevitable act of growing up. There was something deeply pedagogical about how Redmond conveyed the joy she witnessed between her daughters, simultaneously asking those of us in the audience to consider the ways that respectability and other social codes end up constricting ourselves, preventing us from both being together more freely and being more freely together. Tracy followed with a haunting lyrical essay that explored the contours and contingency of desire’s landmines in their experience dating and longing as a Blaqueer, nonbinary trans woman. Performance artist Janet Xmas closed out the first half of the night with a stage set that was as daring as it was indescribable, spicing things up quite literally by snorting lines of black pepper with audience members and following with a mournful performance that included rolling out a tarp across the stage, coating her body in butter, biting into raw onions, and cuddling two deceased catfish. All the while, an audio tape verged across in/audibilities in the background, airing out a muffled conflict between and about lovers, pregnancy, miscarriage, unraveling. &nbsp; The second act began as many of Barton’s performances begin, with her descending upon the stage with a lip sync rendition to Le Chic’s 1978 hit, “I Want Your Love.” Refracting her own experiences through the earworms of (trans femme) disco divas is part of Barton’s poetics. They frame and guide the audience’s experience of her work, and they offer a portal through which the audience and performer can share in the moment together. “Do you feel like you ever want to try my love and see how well it fits? Baby can’t you see, when you look at me I can’t kick this feelin’ when it hits” Descending upon the stage in a square-cut, lavender bodycon mini-dress with thigh-high burnt red stiletto boots, Joss transformed herself into a love-worn disco starlet, spotlighting her desire and longing through a lip sync performance for the audience to witness and really feel for themselves. Lip sync interludes bookended Barton’s verses, punctuating the longer performance with moments and glimpses of personal and collective memory that can only be stored in song. Drawing the audience together in through intimate, embodied ritual of self-possession, lip syncing enabled Joss to teleport the audience to a space and a feeling, paying homage both to the Black femme disco divas whose voices offered portals for Joss’s own self-realization growing up and to the trans women and trans femme (the street queens) who molted lip syncing into the near-ubiquitous performance practice we recognize it as today. Throughout the night, Barton’s lip sync interludes insisted on the promise of trans femme love as sensate, powerful, and worthy. At some point in our lives, most trans women and trans girls have to grapple with the gnawing insistence that, according to cisnormative and heteronational configurations of domestic and social reproduction we call “settling down,” we are not regarded as recipients of love—most often, figures of transsexual woman flank society’s “good life,” emerging obliquely as objects of fancy, fantasy, fetish, sexualization, and ceaseless projection of the shame and stigma. To seek love as a trans feminine person is to be casually reminded that desirability remains tethered to social disposability. Almost anyone (which is another way of saying nearly everyone) has at one point or another thought about fucking transsexual women; much rarer does any thought or care go into what love might mean and feel like for transsexual women and trans femmes. Barton’s lip syncs, intentionally curated throughout the longform performance, summoned the divine disco prophetesses to dramatize her holding on and letting go, transforming the break up into a bridge so that we might cross over it together. &nbsp; Barton insists on the power of love in her verse as well as she intoned, “maybe this won’t halt impending death and fascist necro-states, but it was something that was ours, a love that was real, mighty, mighty, real.” As a mourning ritual, The Summer I Got Bit is shot through with acts of service and care that unfold throughout the poem. Unflinching in its verbiage, the poem brims with idiomatic incantations, eulogies, balms, and aphorisms: mantras that emerge from the haze of experience to reshape the horizon of what is possible for us within our world this very moment. In “Eulogy for Hundreds of Billions of Life-forms Dead,” Barton plays with anaphora to transform the eulogy into edict: “Dance until america is dead” iterates into “Dance for america’s dead,” which slips into, “Dance america! Another dead!” and “Dance! america is dead,” before arriving at its final imperative, “Death to america’s dreams of death!” Through her verse, Barton transforms herself into an oracle for flashes of truth and idiom that exceed any official orders of the state to consign racially and sexually marginalized people to elision, erasure, nonexistence. The official language of the state that Barton writes against upholds ways of being and thinking that recruit xenophobia, erotophobia, desirability, and transphobia to form the ideal citizen and extinguish variance from the norm. Barton’s style of writing transmogrifies formal technique, bombarding the verse with vernacular images that her performance style amplifies viscerally and sonically. The rhetoric of the state is undercut by way of diacope. Barton’s truths pierce the atmosphere as much as her voice fills it up, bringing the audience as fully into the present moment with her orature. Which, if you happened to be in the audience of this farewell performance on the eve of the 28th, was the very moment that the manager was attempting to stop Barton’s performance mid-stanza and shut down the entire event. As the room filled with tenseness, it became clear that Barton was refusing to be pulled off stage at her own farewell show. Eyes darted between audience members to the manager, who made her way to stand furtively at the back of the stage and watch the audience as soon as she had cut Barton’s microphone off. In that moment, it seemed as though not even Barton speaking out (and back) against the systems of oppression that face Black and brown trans and queer communities would even deter someone in a position of power from stopping Barton in the middle of her sentence. After all, it was exceedingly unironic that Barton was halted by the manager while sharing a piece that grapples with the social reality that the majority of people feel enabled and emboldened to regard trans women and trans femmes as unworthy of respect, care, and the right to self-determination, especially when they are Black and brown. For a moment, the difficult truth of Barton’s performance had been upstaged by an encounter with it—a challenge to her value as an artist and organizer that literally played out the power asymmetries she painstakingly maps and critiques in The Summer I Got Bit. Sensing the potential for uproar and discontent among the audience, the manager eased off her demand a bit. Surrounded by colleagues, mentors, daughters, chosen family, lovers, fans, and supporters, Barton was ultimately allowed to conclude her performance. The compromise would be that she could continue without the mic, which also meant that her final lip sync act barely hovered above the decibel level of casual conversation and the audience’s cheering. Held up by her friends and chosen family, Barton finished the poem’s epilogue, leaving us where most lovers find themselves after a break-up—searching. Before and alongside the venue’s managerial flub, the poem’s pedagogical lesson struck me as how palpable and necessary it is to create space for trans women to grieve the loss of love in their lives, whether casual, intimate, filial, or queer. The difficult truth in The Summer I Got Bit is that love is something that trans women can’t afford to leave up to other people. Barton’s performance modeled how trans femmes hold one another, and our queer kin, in order to live with loss rather than melodramatically perishing from it. Immediately following the poem’s conclusion, momentary respite came by way of Barton’s final lip sync, performing “That’s the Way Love Is” by the inimitable Chicago-based band, Ten City: “but a young heart doesn’t stay sad long / another love soon comes along / that’s the way love is.” - 10.10.23 Eva Pensis (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar whose work explores the contours and legacies of transfeminine life within popular culture, nightlife economies, and entertainment industries. Her writing has been featured in e-Flux, Los Angeles Review of Books, SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. In the fall, she will serve as postdoctoral fellow with the Trans Oral History Project at the University of Pennsylvania. <img width="4096" height="2730" width_o="4096" height_o="2730" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aa46928d3d76020742acdd1bdaed48d8bd3b2f9f48c79cac7600baa2dea22a4b/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_2.jpg" data-mid="193211468" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aa46928d3d76020742acdd1bdaed48d8bd3b2f9f48c79cac7600baa2dea22a4b/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_2.jpg" /> Joss Barton, The Summer I Got Bit (May 2022). Photo courtesy of Nanyamka Ewing, Mammoth Photography. <img width="4096" height="2731" width_o="4096" height_o="2731" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e616750bb3ce5e868b7a4494092f1a04d063eba9f48877af2a84e483cacb9277/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_3.jpg" data-mid="193211469" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e616750bb3ce5e868b7a4494092f1a04d063eba9f48877af2a84e483cacb9277/Thats-the-Way-Love-Is_3.jpg" /> Joss Barton, The Summer I Got Bit (May 2022). Photo courtesy of Nanyamka Ewing, Mammoth Photography.