https://gabriellewelsh.com gabi welsh Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:36:40 +0000 https://gabriellewelsh.com en https://gabriellewelsh.com/Selected-Writings Tue, 19 Nov 2019 22:17:43 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Selected-Writings Not For Resale Issue #1: My Summer of Dianne Seuss Word Hunters: Johanna Hedva In Conversation with Gabrielle Welsh Editorial Letter, ON Journal 3 The Master and Form | An Interview with Brendan Fernandes Against the Biennale The Endless Work of Labor in the Age of Global Production A Contemporary Approach to Religious Symbols Glimmer and Shine: Otobong Nkanga at the MCA Chicago https://gabriellewelsh.com/Contact Tue, 19 Nov 2019 21:56:08 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Contact gabi.welsh@gmail.com https://gabriellewelsh.com/Nothing-to-See-Here Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:14:44 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Nothing-to-See-Here Coming Soon! :~) (nothing to see here) https://gabriellewelsh.com/The-Endless-Work-of-Labor Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:05:35 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/The-Endless-Work-of-Labor Published in Hyperallergic November 19, 2019.&nbsp;︎ The Endless Work of Labor in the Age of Global Production A tech worker recently told me, “In ten years, I bet grocery stores will not even have checkout lines.” His guess hints that the rapidly changing nature of work. Depending upon one’s status, changes caused by technology and expansion may be worrying or profitable. Re:Working Labor, a surprisingly global exhibition presented in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)’s Sullivan Galleries, attempts to interrogate these shifts.The exhibition is presented as a linear path, with the first several gallery spaces presenting filmic renderings of the monotony of modern work. Nine collaborative films hang from the ceiling, at eye-level, in Antje Ehmann, Harun Farocki, and Eva Stotz’s Labour in A Single Shot (2011). Labour invites participants to respond to working characteristics of their respective cities with short films. Within RE:WORKING LABOR, the screening program Image Employment (curated Aily Nash and Andrew Norman Wilson) demands attentive viewing of recent moving image works, with its loop beginning daily with the gallery’s opening. The films move from the offices of an international accounting firm (Pilvi Takala’s The Trainee) to a quick-paced Chinese factory (Cao Fei’s 11:11) to the planning of a weekly lesbian party in LA (Leilah Weinraub’s SHAKEDOWN). The program&nbsp; ends promptly at 6PM, a workday in itself. Tucked within its own darkened theater, viewers are invited to sit on stoops fabricated by artist John Preus with Chicago Public School (CPS) students, with materials solemnly sourced from closed CPS buildings.Several works in Re:Working Labor reflect artists’ personal experiences of labor through installation. Ibrahim Mahama built the “library of kąrî’kạchä seid’ou,” as an homage to seid’ou, a renowned professor in the Fine Arts Department at K.N.U.S.T Kumasi. The library is built of reclaimed shipping containers stained by years of transport; books focusing on labor theories, art, and revolutionary pedagogy sit upon the discolored wooden shelves. “Ballad of the Uprooted” (2019), an installation by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero, presents archival materials that explore migrant crop workers’ narratives — an inseparable display of parafictional and actual accounts. An accompanying take-away zine includes Ledezma’s reflection on research trips she took with Rios, as well as an interview with her father, who worked at a pecan orchard and guest ranch. In “The Meeting Game (in progress),” Caroline Woolard places stress ball-like anonymous objects around a mundane conference table, giving imagined white-collar workers something to do with their hands. Broadly speaking, Re:Working Labor asks us to locate our respective places in the global labor chain. Through a wide range of artist projects and programs, it attempts to answer this question with the school’s students, educators, laborers, and artists. While the exhibition asks many questions about what labor is and its future, unasked questions loom: Are different forms of labor comparable? What can art do about it? Will we live like this forever? <img width="1460" height="1095" width_o="1460" height_o="1095" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e972e4a1a468b806e33d4a2140ceab5048e1a9fd1b41b795196665a70130b481/2_RWL_Mierle-Laderman-Ukeles-scaled-e1574172671192.jpg" data-mid="55073682" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e972e4a1a468b806e33d4a2140ceab5048e1a9fd1b41b795196665a70130b481/2_RWL_Mierle-Laderman-Ukeles-scaled-e1574172671192.jpg" /> <img width="1460" height="1095" width_o="1460" height_o="1095" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5b6e86f3432a638c07296568f4c4bef27e071c78498162a1843ad97f8e378f2f/3_RWL_Image-Employment-with-Preus-scaled-e1574172920432.jpg" data-mid="55073683" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5b6e86f3432a638c07296568f4c4bef27e071c78498162a1843ad97f8e378f2f/3_RWL_Image-Employment-with-Preus-scaled-e1574172920432.jpg" /> <img width="1460" height="1028" width_o="1460" height_o="1028" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b5173c4f22be8f030cd6c131c110cac100c5d19a70666a6bcadcbeb508f08566/4_RWL_Ibrahim-Mahama-scaled-e1574173014633.jpg" data-mid="55073684" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b5173c4f22be8f030cd6c131c110cac100c5d19a70666a6bcadcbeb508f08566/4_RWL_Ibrahim-Mahama-scaled-e1574173014633.jpg" /> <img width="720" height="936" width_o="720" height_o="936" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/abf32cae76b9b307025028c0a5c41125f4b3bc71df5789c81b4dc40cb2cd3233/6_RWL_Caroline-Woolard-720x936.jpg" data-mid="55073686" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/720/i/abf32cae76b9b307025028c0a5c41125f4b3bc71df5789c81b4dc40cb2cd3233/6_RWL_Caroline-Woolard-720x936.jpg" /> All images courtesy of Sullivan Galleries https://gabriellewelsh.com/Against-the-Biennale Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:26:40 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Against-the-Biennale Published in THE SEEN Issue 07,&nbsp;Fall 2018.&nbsp;︎ Notes1 Ncobo, Gabi and Mutumba, Yvette. 10. Berlin Biennale Für Zeitgenössische Kunst. DISTANZ Verlag, 2018.2 “Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.” E-flux. Accessed September 06, 2018.3 Ncobo, Gabi and Mutumba, Yvette. 10. Berlin Biennale Für Zeitgenössische Kunst. DISTANZ Verlag, 2018. p 40.4 “Federal Criminal Police Office Warns of Xenophobic Violence” Deutsche Welle. October 22, 2015. Accessed September 06, 2018. Against the Biennale In late July, I stumbled my way into the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, in search of the press entry into the tenth edition of the Berlin Biennale without a press badge or any official credentials, but with a student ID (useless) and a vague professional email I had forgotten to respond to from a press representative of the exhibition (useful). I had never intended to attend an international contemporary art biennial—much less write on, or be granted free entry, into one. I was working three jobs in New York City (two arts institutions, one service), and happened to be dating the cousin of an international flight attendant. The stars aligned, offering myself and my partner a round trip to Europe for $100, and a chance to attend an organized event that I—a seemingly aware “arts” patron—was entirely unaware existed. Thus, I had accidentally found myself assigned to write a review on the beautifully titled We Don’t Need Another Hero: The 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. As it is known, the structure of a biennale presents a challenge to any curator attempting to humanize a viewing experience: these unnatural (find a ‘natural’ viewing experience of contemporary art) products of globalized art and capital necessitate wealthy donors and patrons, with the “common viewer,” either nowhere to be found or snuck into a tokenized group. With extreme hesitation, I approached this piece and every aspect of it—attending a biennale, giving up a couple of my much-needed vacation days to view art, enjoying something in my mind that was so corrupted—and was surprised. Incredibly surprised. First, let us start with this title. The phrase “We don’t need another hero” comes from the Tina Turner song of the same name, released in 1985 as a single from the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. In an annotated page within the Biennale catalogue, curator Gabi Ngcobo has written over the lyrics to this song, which eerily echo a contemporary crisis: “Can’t make the same mistakes this time / We are children, the last generation / We are the ones they left behind / And I wonder when we are ever gonna change?” Of course, We Don’t Need Another Hero was released to echo the plotline of the film—as does its accompanying music video—but this correlation does not take away from the fact that Turner was writing and singing this ballad in a similar era of uncertainty. Though I was, admittedly, not alive (nor even a concept) in 1985, the uncertainty of Raegan-era policy changes and globalization marked a turning point in existence for everyone who was poised to compose my generation. Echoing this later in the catalogue, Ngcobo states, “For me, a hero is a question of power… A hero is also a question of history, of time and space. In recent years we have seen how certain ‘heroes’ are betrayed by the passage of time and others do not cross borders neatly. This is why we are still protesting against street names, institutions, and monuments celebrating historical figures whose legacies are controversial…”1 The title of this tenth exhibition frames the structure of the Biennale as a whole: contemporary saviors will not save the masses from the wreckage of the past and the currents that flow through the present. A complete rejection of the hero and an attitude towards reframing the future—but mostly the now—structure all the curatorial decisions made by Nccobo and her team of four. The venues weave together this assertion—the Biennale does not give the ‘typical’ German contemporary art audience what they want. Moreover, it is reminiscent of German artist Hito Steyerl’s 2010 essay “A Thing Like You and Me,” published by e-flux, in which Steyerl reflects on the dead hero, or rather, the end of heroism that occurs within the mass-production and globalization of things and objects. The text points to the similar circling arts circle within which biennials, curators, and the like exist. In a certain press release, the Biennale is described as “…a collective dialogue and a space that holds a historical process already in motion, in Berlin as in many parts of the world. The work of undoing and reconfiguring centuries of repressed vocabularies and their complexities is an undertaking that has thrown us into states of disarray.”2 The sheer scale of the Biennale is impressive; spread across four venues (Akademie der Künste, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Volksbühne Pavilion, and ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics), the exhibition includes fifty contemporary artists whose work was both commissioned and selected for exhibition. So, in an attempt to draw away from its undeniable subject as an international art venue, the radical approach of this exhibition to curation was refreshing. Yet, the question remained: what was the merit to working with these institutions, as opposed to against them? The pieces that I found myself returning to followed a certain Freirean pedagogical criticality that focuses on a de-hierarchization of knowledge and the importance of community education. This brings into conversation the idea that the artist should not have the responsibility to “teach” the masses—the entire notion that it is the ‘job’ of the colonized to educate the colonizers is a tactic of oppression, and is often utilized within institutions of contemporary art. As the curators made explicitly clear, We Don’t Need Another Hero is against the institutionalization of the tokenized educator. Within a published conversation, curatorial team member Yvette Mutumba explains, “…If you always serve this need by explaining why the other person is wrong and what they have to do to become a proper decolonized white person, that is the easiest way for that person. But true change cannot happen when you just tell someone what to do. They have to figure it out themselves. That’s why I think it’s not interesting to always serve this demand.”3 Walking into the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and into the first floor, immediately one is hit with a massive installation: Dineo Seshee Bopape’s Untitled (Of Occult Instability) [Feelings] (2016–18). Bopape’s piece takes over the bottom floor of the KW and contains multiple pieces within itself— Jabu Arnell’s Discoball X (2018), Lachell Workman’s Justice for _____ (2014), and Robert Rhee’s EEEERRRRGGHHHH and ZOUNDS (2015). The installation includes bricks, light, sounds, videos, and more, changing the exhibition space into a collapsed pile of rubble—the room is a deep orange, piles of material lay strewn across the floor next to high definition video screens, and water drips from the ceiling into buckets. Examining the relationship between mental illness (insanity) and the colonized body, Bopape has created a space of uncertainty and confusion. In the back corner, a small screen plays Nina Simone’s 1972 performance of Feelings, though her voice is heard throughout the space, slightly out of sync with her lips. The experience is odd, and lays the foundation for the rest of the Biennale—the viewer is not given an out-right explanation of what to do with this information, but instead must face the wreckage. Grada Kilomba’s work, entitled ILLUSIONS Vol. II, OEDIPUS (2018), tucked away in a corner of the KW, proves to be one of the most important pieces within the Biennale. The Berlin-based artist has been working on their ongoing ILLUSIONS series since 2016, with this iteration commissioned specifically for the exhibition. The films visualize and narrate episodes in Greek mythology, all the while teaching lessons of decolonization and oppression. ILLUSIONS Vol. II, OEDIPUS retells the story of Oedipus; with two screens facing each other, the artist cements her place as storyteller on one, while actors follow along on the larger projection opposite. In many instances, the pairs face each other, or Kilomba joins the cast in the story, playing secondary characters in the tragedy she retells. The cast of actors illustrate the tragedy of Oedipus with a warm-hearted knowing—you get the sense that these actors are comfortable with each other, as moments of pure joy envelop the screen. The genius of the work is one that remolds a Classical treasure into a comprehensible lesson, with Kilomba appearing at the end to spell out the exact metaphor she wishes to make. For once, an artist’s intention cannot be questioned or debated, as she tells you (the viewer) that this story can (and is being) interpreted as a story of father/son rivalry, one that is elevated within black communities. Again, the viewer given neither a call to action, nor anything to do with the information, but instead there exists the work, as a space for reflection that is open. Fast- forward to another venue at the Akademie der Künste. Though it was Summer, and quieted from any students, the Akademie hosted a significantly sized portion of the exhibition. As one of the main exhibition venues, the Akademie contains perhaps the best example of mixing alternative modes of pedagogy and art that I have ever encountered, in line with Ngcobo’s vision of We Don’t Need Another Hero as being a space for learning, community, and ultimately, of collectivity. Mario Pfeifer’s film, Again / Noch einmal (2018) was an experience not easily forgotten—within the work, the Berlin-based artist recreates a well-known media story in Germany, in which a young man was dragged out of a grocery store in Eastern Germany by a “vigilante group” after he was reportedly threatening customers. The man, an Iraqi migrant seeking medical attention in Germany, was then tied to a tree, and left for police to deal with. In a country where xenophobia has exponentially4 increased, the story garnered both national outcry and support, with many blaming the victim. As the trial date neared, the man was unable to testify, as he was found dead in the woods—frozen to death and suffering from physical and mental illness (which is then explored further in the film). The film that Pfeifer stages brings together a jury of German citizens to reenact the infamous scene within a studio grocery store. The small group looks on, as actors and narrators recreate all the available visual information in the viral video of the incident. However, the narrators constantly pause the proceedings, educating the jury not only on the backstory of the victim and the four men, but also of the ways in which conflict resolution and bystander intervention could have stopped this scene from ever unfolding. Again / Noch einmal reimagines what an art film can be, and thus, what it can do. In a poorly-paraphrased moment that so well echoes the anti-hero feeling of the biennale, Angela Merkel is mentioned in the film—perhaps her opinion on the matter or general policy that could be enacted—and the “cashier” says, “Frau Merkel? I have never met her, have you?” The general feeling throughout the Biennale was one of contempt towards art and its histories, while simultaneously existing within its same institutional spaces. Perhaps We Don’t Need Another Hero illustrates some of the ways this can be attempted, but it is hard not to forget the massive state and corporate funding that went into the inception and production of the exhibition. Would it make sense if I told you that I, perhaps felt this sense of collectivity that the curatorial staff was most trying to achieve once I was outside of the Biennale, reflecting on what I saw, heard, participated in? Would it make sense that I felt this collectivity—this against the “Thunderdome”— when I was dancing in a queer club to an American DJ remixing Tina Turner while young Germans clad in leather danced all around me? Would it make sense, that perhaps the best way to feel this collective joy, a community, is to feel it in a real space? And not a biennale? <img width="1338" height="752" width_o="1338" height_o="752" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/65baa88cbe33a146458daf034d3fe0fd4e1939fd14a2e74d3d338543e8f57cfa/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.46.09-PM.png" data-mid="55226611" border="0" alt="Mario Pfeifer, Again / Noch einmal, 2018, 4K video transferred to HD, 2-channel installation, color, 5.1 Surround, 23&prime;, video still, courtesy Mario Pfeifer; KOW, Berlin, &copy; 2018 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn" data-caption="Mario Pfeifer, Again / Noch einmal, 2018, 4K video transferred to HD, 2-channel installation, color, 5.1 Surround, 23′, video still, courtesy Mario Pfeifer; KOW, Berlin, © 2018 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/65baa88cbe33a146458daf034d3fe0fd4e1939fd14a2e74d3d338543e8f57cfa/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.46.09-PM.png" /> <img width="890" height="978" width_o="890" height_o="978" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a86ee6f408e3e4d68abbbe63202605321376d2d198373a462ad9a2d37c8be641/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.41.06-PM.png" data-mid="55226609" border="0" alt="Grada Kilomba, ILLUSIONS, Vol. II, OEDIPUS, 2018, courtesy Grada Kilomba, photo: Kathleen Kunath" data-caption="Grada Kilomba, ILLUSIONS, Vol. II, OEDIPUS, 2018, courtesy Grada Kilomba, photo: Kathleen Kunath" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/890/i/a86ee6f408e3e4d68abbbe63202605321376d2d198373a462ad9a2d37c8be641/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.41.06-PM.png" /> <img width="1338" height="976" width_o="1338" height_o="976" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/29d69027730676b0fbbb8bfc594fc76014d5f95b3dd373afb419b36630f05a82/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.44.00-PM.png" data-mid="55226610" border="0" alt="Grada Kilomba, ILLUSIONS Vol. II, OEDIPUS, 2018, 2-channel video, color, sound, 32&prime;, Installation view, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, courtesy Grada Kilomba; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg/Cape Town, Photo: Timo Ohler." data-caption="Grada Kilomba, ILLUSIONS Vol. II, OEDIPUS, 2018, 2-channel video, color, sound, 32′, Installation view, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, courtesy Grada Kilomba; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg/Cape Town, Photo: Timo Ohler." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/29d69027730676b0fbbb8bfc594fc76014d5f95b3dd373afb419b36630f05a82/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-2.44.00-PM.png" /> https://gabriellewelsh.com/Glimmer-and-Shine Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:36:40 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Glimmer-and-Shine Published in THE SEEN, May 2018︎ Thank you to Otobong for sitting down with me to chat about the show. Notes1 Tom Holert, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle Editorial: Politics of Shine (e-flux), Online, 1.2 Taken from an interview conducted by the author with Nkanaga at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago on March 30, 2018.3 Tom Holert, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle, Editorial: Politics of Shine, (e-flux) 1.4 Omar Kholeif, Otobong Nkanga: To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again, (Munich, Prestel, 2018) 76.5 Previously mentioned interview6 Hito Steyerl, “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy” The Wretched of the Screen. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012). Glimmer and ShineWe are a carbon-based life form, as the scientists say, but how a human body could turn to diamond I do not know, unless through some spiritual factor, perhaps the result of genuinely endless suffering.&nbsp; —Ursala K. Le Guin, The Island of ImmortalsDiamonds—like most precious minerals—are brought to the surface of the Earth quietly, yet (their process of extraction and sale) are boomingly loud. In the communities affected by global mineral excavation and trade, ruins of the land and aftershocks of colonial rule remain. Amongst those wearing the diamonds, walking through the gates of the lustered buildings, the sounds of afar are unheard. These invisible connections, and topographic mappings, of the shiny material economy are the foundation of the Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga’s first exhibition in the United States, entitled To Dig A Hole That Collapses Again, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. “Shine and luster tend to block the view of things, while at the same time inviting fetishistic adherence,” writes the editorial team at e—flux.1 This notion of shine and its ability to distract, while simultaneously embodying the unseen labor that produces this quality, is flipped within Nkanga’s show; the labor is exposed, but the glimmer still gleams. In Pursuit of Bling (2014) centers itself, conceptually tying the show and physically being the first piece to encounter as one walks through the exhibition doors. Small tables that act as pedestals carry images and minerals—specifically the mineral mica—surrounding a tapestry. Mica, etymologically closely related to the Latin micare, meaning to glitter, is a closely related group of minerals found in a plethora of consumer products. When ground and wet, mica gleams: it is added to the paint used on cars, the dye in latex balloons, and the blush applied on cheeks. In Pursuit of Bling places mica in a holy position: floating in its pure elemental form, or otherwise embedded in commercial resting places (cement, makeup). Two large tapestries hang back-to-back in the middle of the tables: The Discovery (2014) and The Transformation (2014). In The Discovery, what is presumably a diamond situates itself in the middle of the canvas, surrounded by topographic-esque lines; element signals float through the layers of lines. In The Transformation, the legs of two figures are seen, but their torsos have been chopped off by molecular structures. In both works, the diamond simultaneously pierces the body, and becomes it. “[In] different shows I have done…I was finding ways within exhibition structures to expand deeper and farther in that notion of shine. There, we see that notion that comes with shine, but also with material, with landscape. Here, I think about colonial spaces—which I think all spaces are anyways—and the relationship we have with material and our body.”2 Glimmer, throughout Nkanga’s practices, physically reflects the traces left on bodies—both of the land and the human inhabitants. Within In Pursuit of Bling (2014) lies a film, Reflections of the Raw Green Crown, (2014) embedded within one of the small tables. Nkanga wears a malachite crown, speaking for the materials stolen from other parts of the world, and placed upon rooftops of Berlin. By embodying the raw malachite, Nkanga traces the connections of global trade and the goods economy, giving the element—if only for a second—autonomy. “Indeed, it is the particular materiality of declarative shininess that we now recognize as a clear sign of paradox, as it is so often used to mediate decay and divert attention away from oncoming collapse,” continues the e—flux editorial.3 Again, this notion of shine leads us through a slow collapse, made visible in Solid Maneuvers (2015). The sculpture presents a monument to the holes made in the earth through material and mineral excavation, presenting the question: why are architectural feats measured on how tall they can be, and the holes they create are not given the opposite attention? Are these tall buildings not symbols of the present anthropic crisis? The ever-present topographic lines appear again in the sculpture, yet this time, they are made three-dimensional: not quite resembling actual earth or open-pits, as they are much too rigid, too manmade. Composed of various metals and tar, the crevices hold makeup and salt that selectively shine the metal’s surface depending on where you—the viewer—situate yourself. Manilow Senior Curator and Director of Global Initiatives Omar Kholeif writes of Nkanga’s work, “Earth serves as a form of skin constantly open to rupture…”4 This is seen profoundly in the exhibition’s landmark piece, Anamnesis (2018), which occupies the center of the room; a wall of common imports that the viewer can smell. Resembling the shape of a mapped and drawn river, the line of changing and melding imports circles its way around the double-sided installation wall—creating a slow and shifting dance that an exhibition viewer must partake in, if they want to smell the tobacco and coffee. The wall has literally ruptured in order to bring us (the viewers, the humans, the colonizers, etc.) the sweet pleasure of various products commonly brought to the Chicago-area. This line, a visual mapping, brings to the walled sections of Nkanga’s show: the various paintings and drawings that serve to map and connect human bodies, non-human bodies, and the various relationships we enact upon one another. As the artist outlines, “in some of the drawings, like Social Consequences II—Choices we make (2009), you have the lines that become mechanical structures, but at the same time connect all these ideas of projects that then connect to the body—which creates a pressure. And then the other body creates another pressure, and another. These kinds of lines can also be seen within the work, The Apparatus (2015), where you have lines that connect all these hands together and are thus connecting them to the landscape. They could work as a kind of psychological connection, affection. Or they could work as ways of looking at economies that intersect into other places. They could work as subterranean lines that do not make sense, yet do make sense. They could work as molecular structures, so there are many ways to use and think through these lines.”5 Thinking through these lines as various ways to connect bodies to the economy and back again wraps this show. Without these ever-present lines, the connections could be made conceptually but would lack the materiality and use of goods—may they be minerals, acrylic paint, or imported tobacco—that Nkanga has mastered. Though, one must add that the space of an institutional museum somewhat contradicts the critique being made within the work. As we all well know, contemporary art is a powerful economic institution, upholding the very destructive tendencies being illuminated within the work. The commodity object is not only the coffee being imported to Chicago, or the minerals being extracted that ravage towns far away, it is also the contemporary art “piece” being purchased by museums. The exhibition space recycles the critique that is being made of itself. Perhaps Hito Steyerl said it best when she said, “If contemporary art is the answer, the question is, how can capitalism be made more beautiful?”6 Using the visual quality of shine to discuss contemporary commodity-culture and the global connection of goods is fundamental in this exhibition—making capitalism a bit more beautiful. Drawing connections and presenting histories of both the earth’s and people’s similar destructions presents a conversation on the global body—one that must deal with the wreckage of the past, while simultaneously fueling these autocracies and benefiting from the trade of goods. So, as Le Guin so well suggested, the body—may it be our human bodies, or the crevices of the Earth—can shimmer like a diamond, or more often than not, like mica; they just must be built upon the quiet collapses elsewhere. <img width="1024" height="683" width_o="1024" height_o="683" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8b295754da92ffca085baeda49ce79e8f518e06f63b45ad3a51ff9970abfbdea/ON_PursuitBling-1024x683.jpg" data-mid="55226908" border="0" alt="Otobong Nkanga In Pursuit of Bling, 2014 Joint purchase of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Musem Arnhem, with the generous support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, thanks to its Titus Fonds, and he Mondriaan Fund Photo: Eva Broekema" data-caption="Otobong Nkanga In Pursuit of Bling, 2014 Joint purchase of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Musem Arnhem, with the generous support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, thanks to its Titus Fonds, and he Mondriaan Fund Photo: Eva Broekema" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8b295754da92ffca085baeda49ce79e8f518e06f63b45ad3a51ff9970abfbdea/ON_PursuitBling-1024x683.jpg" /> <img width="1024" height="731" width_o="1024" height_o="731" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a7472954bd3ad216127f8b949427e7c40a8ea0e4eb070cd30957db43b5d6dcf2/ON_Choices-1024x731.jpg" data-mid="55226907" border="0" alt="Otobong Nkanga, Social Consequences II&mdash;Choices we make, 2009 Courtesy of the artist Photo: courtesy of Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam and Galerie In Situ &ndash; Fabienne Leclerc, Paris." data-caption="Otobong Nkanga, Social Consequences II—Choices we make, 2009 Courtesy of the artist Photo: courtesy of Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam and Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc, Paris." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a7472954bd3ad216127f8b949427e7c40a8ea0e4eb070cd30957db43b5d6dcf2/ON_Choices-1024x731.jpg" /> https://gabriellewelsh.com/A-Contemporary-Approach-To-Religious-Symbols Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:19:02 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/A-Contemporary-Approach-To-Religious-Symbols Published in Hyperallergic September 25, 2019.&nbsp;︎ A Contemporary Approach to Religious Symbols CHICAGO — He suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell. He rose again from the dead… (paraphrased from Apostle’s Creed) Though the words and their languages differ, the song and dance is nearly the same — Christ suffered as do we. According to the universalizing Christian myth, Jesus is a martyr, representative of our collective suffering and trauma. Even as each successive generation is raised without firm religious groundings, images of Christ still make their way into contemporary art and media as artists cite the Biblical roots of the so-called Western cannon. Addressing often racialized violence, collective trauma, and ranging notions of faith — whether they be religious or spiritual — comprise the basis for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s small yet mighty exhibition, Fragments of a Crucifixion.The exhibition is small, tucked away behind central staircases leading to the Virgil Abloh show upstairs and a theater below. Perhaps due to its size (9 x 7’), Titus Kaphar’s 2016 painting, Ascension, is presented on the exhibition space’s outer wall. The hollowed silhouette of a basketball player mid-dunk is filled with a reimagining of Rogier van der Weyden’s The Descent from the Cross, one of the most well-recognized visual depictions of the crucifixion in (art) history. Placed on the opposite side of the wall from the exhibition’s namesake, Paul Pfeiffer’s 1999 video work Fragments of Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon), also features an image of a professional basketball player, crying out after, I assume, making a slam dunk. These two seconds are set on a silent endless loop, infinitely rewinding a moment of joyful outcry, scaled to only 3 inches wide via a tiny projection. Pfieifer, in an interview with curator Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol, notes the varied meaning: “the scream continues infinitely, so it becomes ambiguous as to whether it’s a scream of pleasure or a scream of pain.” In its endless loop and affective outburst, Pfeiffer’s work also points to the repetitive nature of religious and spiritual acts. Together, the two works explicitly highlight the grim irony of the Black body being both a profitable commodity in the realm of professional sports, and one of the most targeted by law enforcement and society — both dynamics of which leave the body in ruins. Images of Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 kneel come to mind, along with the financial and professional repercussions that followed. Across the way, four photographs from Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series are exhibited. The images, all untitled, depict shadowed traces and outlines of Mendieta’s body. In one, a hallowed and wooden figure — like a scarecrow with no stuffing — burns on an elevated stake. In another, an outline of a body has been dug into the earth, as if to fill with her body, but instead, the ‘grave’ has been filled with flowers and framed with greenery. Mendieta created these outlines of her own body with varied materials — paint, blood, flowers, branches, shells, sand — and often asked friends or fellow artists to aid in documenting these acts. Some images, like the fiery, engulfed form, are shocking in their blunt delivery and violent suggestions (though no explicitly violent images are captured). All point to something lost. In making this series, Mendieta drew inspiration from Indigenous goddess figures, and spiritual practices of both her native Cuba (specifically, Santería, or Regla de Ocha, which originated there) and those of Mexico where she made the majority of these works. In their original intent, these images of bodily traces are not references to the crucifixion, but put within this context, the shadows inevitably beg associations. Their inclusion here highlights the hybrid nature of Santeria and other religions prevalent throughout the Americas due to Spanish colonialism. This hybridity highlights the range of just who and what Christ’s crucifixion represents, and further, who may use these images. Explicit acts of violence, like those Mendieta alludes to, are also reflected across the way in Andres Serrano’s Untitled (Knifed to Death I and II), a massive diptych in which each photograph depicts the punctured forearms and hands of a stabbing victim lying in a temporary resting place; the artist was granted access to a morgue to photograph victims of violence on&nbsp; the condition that he keep their identities anonymous. The wounds, indentions on the wrists caked with dried blood, recall the wounds Jesus displayed to Doubting Thomas.We humans are known to make martyrs of our lost and harmed. In Adrian Piper’s 2013 Imagine [Trayvon Martin] — which features an image of a target imposed over Martin’s — and Jason Lazarus’s photograph, Standing at the Grave of Emmett Till, day of exhumation, June 1st, 2005 (Alsip, IL), associations to the collective (and familial) mourning of lost Black lives are inevitable and intentional. Presented in Chicago — where city Police Officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted earlier this year for the murder of Laquan McDonald, and where community activists continue rallying against the expansion of policing in Black and brown communities — the struggles against imposed state and societal violence immediately come to mind. Highlighting both the place of the martyr within contemporary discussions of collective mourning and the often prevalent searches for religious and spiritual guidance, Praepipatmongkol notes, “contemporary art is not so secular a realm that religious and spiritual narratives cannot penetrate it.” Or, more simply put, art mirrors the values of those who make it. The works in this exhibition highlight moments of mourning, but also thankfully, joyful moments of faith and collectivity that continue in the face of traumas. The importance of faith, both individually and commonly, remains visible in more ways than we expect. <img width="1460" height="1004" width_o="1460" height_o="1004" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7ac66e7aebf5e03af8240897064fee65f5ac747e620d54636334b66b2ca0d889/Mendieta_Silueta_2002_46_10-e1569433298396.jpg" data-mid="55225898" border="0" alt="Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973&ndash;77." data-caption="Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973–77." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7ac66e7aebf5e03af8240897064fee65f5ac747e620d54636334b66b2ca0d889/Mendieta_Silueta_2002_46_10-e1569433298396.jpg" /> <img width="1460" height="1095" width_o="1460" height_o="1095" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4386c1d3640ac8a5e67b6bb57e504c3a0505bc37ce323743d5bf4bd91e29195e/Pfeiffer_Fragment_02-e1569433434717.jpg" data-mid="55225900" border="0" alt="Paul Pfeiffer, &ldquo;Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon)&rdquo; (detail) (1999)" data-caption="Paul Pfeiffer, “Fragment of a Crucifixion (After Francis Bacon)” (detail) (1999)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4386c1d3640ac8a5e67b6bb57e504c3a0505bc37ce323743d5bf4bd91e29195e/Pfeiffer_Fragment_02-e1569433434717.jpg" /> <img width="1460" height="594" width_o="1460" height_o="594" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9a8174f887f9f813b96102a9999b5436e39bd716a8cff8dbb15e6c5f71a746da/Serrano_Knifed-e1569433089724.jpg" data-mid="55225947" border="0" alt="Andres Serrano, Untitled (Knifed to Death I and II), 1992 (all images courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago)" data-caption="Andres Serrano, Untitled (Knifed to Death I and II), 1992 (all images courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9a8174f887f9f813b96102a9999b5436e39bd716a8cff8dbb15e6c5f71a746da/Serrano_Knifed-e1569433089724.jpg" /> <img width="360" height="539" width_o="360" height_o="539" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/285b4701f69a746f335e35cc0ea2bdea3685556cd70fb436b9fb3135d904dee9/Kaphar_Ascension_detail_02-360x539.jpg" data-mid="55225897" border="0" alt="Titus Kaphar, &ldquo;Ascension&rdquo; (detail) (2016) oil on canvas with brass nails, 108 &times; 84 &times; 1 &frac12; in." data-caption="Titus Kaphar, “Ascension” (detail) (2016) oil on canvas with brass nails, 108 × 84 × 1 ½ in." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/360/i/285b4701f69a746f335e35cc0ea2bdea3685556cd70fb436b9fb3135d904dee9/Kaphar_Ascension_detail_02-360x539.jpg" /> https://gabriellewelsh.com/On-Editorial Thu, 21 Nov 2019 18:41:41 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/On-Editorial Published in ON / Rules. Fall 2019. ︎ Editor’s Letter This is a book about abstractions (rules) and following them and breaking them and writing about them and visualizing them and grinding them to dust. It is about consequences and the lack of them and who exactly is privy to them. It is about— I am having a hard time writing just on rules—as in, the Merriam Webster dictionary lists rule as a noun, meaning a prescribed guide for conduct or action and the exercise of authority or control and a usually valid generalization. When morphed into verbs these become modes of being, of ruling and liberating and following and measuring and organizing and and and. But you know that, which makes writing on this difficult—I am preaching to the choir. I am uninterested in collecting a list of rules and nailing them on the church door. Instead, I will discuss moments of breaking and bending and following and ordering that convinced me this was a good subject to revolve a book around. A variety of anecdotes floating in my noggin and desperately seeking a way out. Some validation. I.&nbsp;I am seated in a living room, one of mid-century grandeurs and with various bills strewn about, to discuss a book my grandfa-ther has written over the last forty-or-so years. Our conversation is stunted; as he once worked for the railroad, the decades of track-side maintenance have left him almost entirely deaf (he is much too stubborn to seek a hearing aid or learn asL), and he tends to be a one-sided talker. Presenting me with a decaying manila folder containing hundreds of documents, photographs, and yellowing handwritten notes, Bob asks me to publish his guidebook, so the children “may learn the rules of the game.” The written rules are repetitive and banal, akin to what a Little League coach would drill into the players’ five-year-old heads, such as the advice to drop the bat after you hit a ball. Easy stuff. Other quips are mind-boggling and overly blunt in their delivery, such s the irrefutable advice to develop habits by “just remembering to do them a few times.” &nbsp; &nbsp; It is the repetition of a rulebook that likely exists and was likely published by some sort of international baseball organization, though I will not look it up. I like to think my grandfather is the only human with the insight to write all these bits down. &nbsp; &nbsp; I agree to publish this book, an attempt at reconciling my child-hood resistance towards playing softball. He sends me back to Chicago with a gallon of potato salad and a drink koozie that reads, “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.” Every few months a letter arrives in the mail with a new sentence or drawing or photograph or song lyric (most recently, Take Me Out to the Ballgame) that absolutely needs to be in the book.&nbsp; II. I decide I need to begin watching films, even movies. Every day after work I find myself watching an episode of King of the Hill with a beer, and then journaling later that I feel my youth and life slipping away from me. This will solve my problems. &nbsp; &nbsp; I take a friend’s hBO login, I take a friend’s Criterion Collection login, I make a new email every month for a free Hulu account, I subscribe to the New York Times “What to Watch” weekly e-blast (which I am particularly ashamed of). I am bored at work and write down a list of films I have never seen, like Some Like It Hot and Cleo 9–5 and some old westerns because I might as well see what that is all about. John Wayne will pull me out of this creative rut. I pin the list to my wall and finish the twelfth season of King of the Hill. &nbsp; &nbsp; I tell myself months later that I need to stick to my list, that depression is not an excuse. I sit down one evening with The Trouble with Angels, which I pick for the Catholic school uniforms in the thumbnail movie poster. The Criterion Collection stream-ing service doesn’t let you just watch the movie, so they tell me all about the actors and the director, Ida Lupino. Lupino, according to IMDb, acted in 105 productions, directed 41, and produced two. The most prominent is Gilligan’s Island, which I often watched on rainy mornings at my neighbor’s home. 148 productions, in total, seems a bit excessive. The Trouble with Angels follows two teens, Mary and Rachel, as they are enrolled and spend their entire high school careers&nbsp;at the boarding school St. Francis Academy, which seems infinitely kinder and much more tolerable than any Catholic school I attended or heard my father lament. St. Francis is run by Mother Superior, who quite constantly wants to expel the girls, yet also wants to give them grace; she is a God-fearing woman. Over their years they play pranks and skip class and smoke so much weed in the church basement that the fire department is called. They poke fun at the nuns in a way that I—someone who endured extensive religious education—appreciate. The film has its audience. It ends with Rachel leaving on a train towards her ambivalent future and Mary deciding to become a nun—an odd twist. Mary is an orphan and has found her family in the sisterhood, and Rachel is quite mad that Mary will never be a real, sexually active person (which is, of course, for you to decide). The problem is that it made me cry a lot and appreciate the oddities of Catholicism and the ways in which this massive religious body functions as a business, one involved in so so so much corruption. &nbsp; &nbsp; How did she do that? Trigger some love of God or love of love? It’s the type of movie where you can tell a woman directed it. III.&nbsp;My coworker, an accountant, complains endlessly about bills, money, cash flows, payroll. I ask him, “Don’t you ever think about capitalism ending? You wouldn’t have to worry about your bills.” He replies, “Nope, never thought of that.” IV.&nbsp;I learn of the fire—not fire of the small drop that holds itself above a candle or the blue gas of a stove, but real destructive, enveloping fire—when I am seven. A house near my parents’ burned to the ground without leaving a trace. The unfortunate result of two elementary schoolers home alone with a micro-wave. My father loads me in the car and drives to the site. “You see that?” he says, “If you ever leave a candle on or mess with the oven, this is what will happen. Our home will burn down with all of us inside. That’s just how it goes.” I live the next couple of years unhealthily afraid of fires or what looks like them; I am eight and begging for fire-escape ladders for Christmas. I am in the school library reading up on the properties of fire and combustion.&nbsp; &nbsp; Fast forward, and I have been obsessed with the image of burning—perhaps this was fueled by attending a screening of Fyre, or feeling so burnt-out that I couldn’t possibly give a shit about graduating or the ensuing job search, or the stark contrast between the images of the poppy super-bloom outside of Los Angeles and those simultaneous ones of the rest of the state burning down, as privately-funded firefighters saved “the rich and the famous,” and incarcerated people were forced to fight alongside for nearly no pay, or the image of Notre Dame and hundreds of small religious spaces around the world burning and the odd sadness it deposits despite rationally knowing the church should burn. This morning I awoke to sympathetic Americans posting their hashtags of solidarity with the Amazon, which is burning now too, while the other Amazon thrives and sends targeted ads my way, encouraging me to take a tour of their nearby factory (The conditions really aren’t that bad! Look!). But perhaps fire feels relevant as a means to describe the last four years of institutional learning, the last 22 years of living on this planet, or the last four-point-something billion years of Earth’s existence, because this place is literally on fire. I’m burning out. V.&nbsp; I begin working in an office full-time. I worry I am a sellout. I make barely minimum wage but “wow you’re salaried!” I threaten to quit. I get a raise and dental insurance for the first time. My teeth will sparkle. I’m definitely a sellout now. I pay off my debt. I grow old, weary. My mother gifts me a painted sign that reads, “Cubicle Sweet Cubicle.”I do not think I have any answers, which seems to be why I am the editor instead of the author. I am compiling reflections on rules in this book, which will likely not answer anything either, just muddle and expand. Expand! While sequencing this issue, all the pieces spread out in front of me, I realized just how impressive and good the work published here is, how many angles and mediums gathered. To illustrate—Daniel Brookman crafts a beautiful short story utilizing tropes of Sci-fi world-building: a machine, which makes machines, which makes machines, which makes machines... Josh Rios and Matt Joynt collaborate on a prose-filled essay across 14 sections, each one offering a unique analysis on the siren’s historical implemen-tation as a carceral tool. Guanyu Xu’s images, part of the series Temporarily Censored Home, meld installation and photography, as he reflects on his experiences as a gay man coming of age in a conservative home. Chloe Munkenbeck presents a visual essay—an unorthodox theatrical production—which details the inner workings of airport security technology; then, appropri-ately, Ali Tomek writes on her deep fear of flying. Poems, images, and essays are woven together into something that is somehow coherent and unruly (ha!). &nbsp; &nbsp; I have many people to thank, as many people sit by my side and listen to me lament deadlines and editing and working and other woes—I am dramatic. First, I thank Lucas and Austin of Shelf Shelf! Lucas, for both being one of my dearest friends and also designing and printing ON. Thank you for pressuring me to follow deadlines (if you did not, this book would not yet exist!). Austin, for your design work and humor and for coming up with this theme on a whim and for letting me steal it. Thank you to all the contributors and artists featured, who agreed to be a part of ON and letting us print your (in my humble opinion, amazing!) work. Thank you to my friends and loved ones who know that I love you, but I will not list due to fear of missing someone. Thank you to Row for sitting next to me as I write this. I hope you enjoy this issue. &nbsp; &nbsp; It’s our biggest and best one yet. I’d like to think it’s breaking our own rules.&nbsp; xoxo —G <img width="180" height="332" width_o="180" height_o="332" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a8e4cd0a33d2014683d5b34d6b71fb771106b995f2c4948961efd18b42bbd28/rulesim.jpg" data-mid="55225310" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/180/i/3a8e4cd0a33d2014683d5b34d6b71fb771106b995f2c4948961efd18b42bbd28/rulesim.jpg" /> <img width="861" height="869" width_o="861" height_o="869" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2a13f5abc0c29308d1b4ea4e4323c598d9dbf156ed66040d89dae753433e09ed/DlEFqTwVsAAs7a-.jpg" data-mid="55225308" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/861/i/2a13f5abc0c29308d1b4ea4e4323c598d9dbf156ed66040d89dae753433e09ed/DlEFqTwVsAAs7a-.jpg" /> <img width="458" height="541" width_o="458" height_o="541" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fba74f16d9609f987da21ab9490459b75fe2aa83722cfc611b665e614237afad/362f487137269381c41672418862b612.jpg" data-mid="55225305" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/458/i/fba74f16d9609f987da21ab9490459b75fe2aa83722cfc611b665e614237afad/362f487137269381c41672418862b612.jpg" /> <img width="1400" height="1072" width_o="1400" height_o="1072" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4ad64094e479ac3117e5db9fbdb7f6de6604118196875a21069c5323282d83c7/78a5af859d08ffbc0486be7cb57de710.png" data-mid="55225304" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4ad64094e479ac3117e5db9fbdb7f6de6604118196875a21069c5323282d83c7/78a5af859d08ffbc0486be7cb57de710.png" /> <img width="768" height="464" width_o="768" height_o="464" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/df7eee6386da47f16f0c4052e2751bf3c29816b6010e013267e41b8c5f6f75ab/OLeary-Cow-Chicago-Fire-litho-gty-2400-56a487f05f9b58b7d0d76e61.jpg" data-mid="55225309" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/768/i/df7eee6386da47f16f0c4052e2751bf3c29816b6010e013267e41b8c5f6f75ab/OLeary-Cow-Chicago-Fire-litho-gty-2400-56a487f05f9b58b7d0d76e61.jpg" /> https://gabriellewelsh.com/ON-JOURNAL Wed, 20 Nov 2019 02:13:51 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/ON-JOURNAL <img width="900" height="1200" width_o="900" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/53cf16c9077148084ceb67a9b2b76a5336eec9195c612430bf5ff1fcadfc01fa/rules.jpg" data-mid="55113874" border="0" alt="Rules (Iss. 3, Fall 2019)" data-caption="Rules (Iss. 3, Fall 2019)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/53cf16c9077148084ceb67a9b2b76a5336eec9195c612430bf5ff1fcadfc01fa/rules.jpg" /> <img width="900" height="1200" width_o="900" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c2a7907f5e778819ad5e400fc40bc0ef6ad805302e09f106aa79b5242649b382/being_read.jpg" data-mid="55113873" border="0" alt="Being Read (Iss. 2, Fall 2018)" data-caption="Being Read (Iss. 2, Fall 2018)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/c2a7907f5e778819ad5e400fc40bc0ef6ad805302e09f106aa79b5242649b382/being_read.jpg" /> <img width="900" height="1200" width_o="900" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/438d5736a38ea200dc69a1b1ef7149e56a31f77e3c9080481b65e89db6f47e8a/the_art_of_failure.jpg" data-mid="55113875" border="0" alt="The Art of Failure (Iss. 1, Spring 2018)" data-caption="The Art of Failure (Iss. 1, Spring 2018)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/i/438d5736a38ea200dc69a1b1ef7149e56a31f77e3c9080481b65e89db6f47e8a/the_art_of_failure.jpg" /> ON Journal ON Journal was and is an interdisciplinary publishing project based out of New York, NY. Each issue of the journal is produced as both a printed art book and a reading event. In this way, ON hopes to anthologize experimental arts and writing practices in multiple formats. ON Journal’s naming schema purposefully rejects a continuous description. That is, each new issue incorporates a new topic and a shifting array of contemporary artists and writers to address it. ON Journal is collaboratively produced by Gabi Welsh and Shelf Shelf. More information and PDFs of each issue may found at&nbsp;onjourn.al.&nbsp;Anyone intersted in writing for or collaborting with ON Journal should email gabi.welsh@gmail.com. ON Journal is available for purchase in Chicago at Quimby’s and in New York City at Printed Matter, Artbook @ MoMA PS1,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Topos Bookstore. Copies may be purchased directly through the distributor, Shelf Shelf, as well. https://gabriellewelsh.com/Word-Hunters Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:05:36 +0000 gabi welsh https://gabriellewelsh.com/Word-Hunters Published in ON / Rules.&nbsp;Fall 2019. ︎ Scans from ON / Rules. Printed by Lucas Reif. <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eab20fabfe4407da73ad2fa1cc93626528f5665360c7ad334d3d66847046647d/hedva_5.jpeg" data-mid="55074427" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eab20fabfe4407da73ad2fa1cc93626528f5665360c7ad334d3d66847046647d/hedva_5.jpeg" /> <img width="1200" height="1200" width_o="1200" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/881d2131d9f354df001efc936132eb97ac00bba73b33c7b7198058dc5a6469ac/hedva_1.jpeg" data-mid="55074423" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/881d2131d9f354df001efc936132eb97ac00bba73b33c7b7198058dc5a6469ac/hedva_1.jpeg" /> <img width="1534" height="1534" width_o="1534" height_o="1534" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9d67170047b1602d17070bf7e61a5e06f4c543b8d9e0485d90b6b3e3c4aeacf3/hedva_4.jpeg" data-mid="55074426" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9d67170047b1602d17070bf7e61a5e06f4c543b8d9e0485d90b6b3e3c4aeacf3/hedva_4.jpeg" /> <img width="1600" height="1600" width_o="1600" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9e978539f8db86b6c67e8028c1a3a0df07791073e407bff288087e186946699c/hedva_2.jpeg" data-mid="55074424" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9e978539f8db86b6c67e8028c1a3a0df07791073e407bff288087e186946699c/hedva_2.jpeg" /> <img width="1600" height="1600" width_o="1600" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a51a7fe571b93e0faee3a92c1ff3e90880c5f4f17d871ee6642b299cfa52cfd7/hedva_3.jpeg" data-mid="55074425" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a51a7fe571b93e0faee3a92c1ff3e90880c5f4f17d871ee6642b299cfa52cfd7/hedva_3.jpeg" /> Word Hunters: Johanna Hedva In Conversation with Gabrielle Welsh I first encounter the work of Johanna Hedva far away from home and with staggering force: I turn the corner of an exhibition wall, startled by the experience due to my own recent retreat from ‘contemporary art,’ and a Text-to-Speech voice reads from a pink-screen, “Yow now listen Motherfuck if not nihilism what?”These are the opening lines to Hedva’s 2018 novel, On Hell, published by Sator Press, a whirlwind of interviews and run-ons with ex-con Rafael Luis Estrada Requena, conducted by the journalist, Motherfuck. Rafael is trying to fly, or rather, he is going to fly, and the interviews follow the process of bodily transformation as arms become wings, human becomes flight. He speaks against the prison industrialist complex and capitalist-flows that have broken him, his words running-on as ramblings dotted with insurrectionary ideas; he is a body deeply shocked by the state and begin-ning anew, but not fresh. In his recent release from prison, he is approached by Motherfuck, to whom he cautiously confesses: “I lost all the friends I had on and obviously obviously lost my convictions my resistance my quote unquote insurrectionary tendencies my fuck my father fuck all everything but losing the taste for choco-late I don’t know that did probably bigger damage in the way that’ll crush a bitch.” He still agrees to sit for several interviews. Ultimately, On Hell exemplifies that words are tools of power, pointing to histories (at least within the states) of speech and repression with a gleaming facade of freedom, “free speech.” As Rafael says, tripping over his own words, “The government they’re poets. They’re word hunters.”GABRIELLE WELSH: I haven’t really read any book like this before, mostly the structure—for lack of a better explanation—the rambling from Rafeal that picks up pace indefinitely and the rule-break-ing feel of it all. It’s the speediest 107 pages! Were you looking to any specific writers or pieces? Or influences outside of “art?” JOHANNA HEDVA: Thank you for saying that. The biggest compliment I’ve gotten about this book is that it’s a quick read. I feel very proud of that, because it really shouldn’t be. The language is dense and knotted and the sentences are very long, and it took me a hundred drafts (not exaggerating)to get the language right, to be not only readable but surging and alive and something that floods into your head really fast. &nbsp; &nbsp; Early on I made the decision not to use commas. Commas are a gesture of trust that the writer extends to their reader. They’re like a little check-in, where the writer pauses and reaches out their hand and says, “Hey, are you cool to keep going with this sentence? Are you with me? We can pause for a moment so you can catch up. You good now? Okay, let’s keep going.” I didn’t want that. I wanted my reader to feel like they were being taken to the end of the sentence, whether they wanted to go there or not. Like being in a truck with no brakes, barreling down a hill.&nbsp; &nbsp; For influences, my Gemini north node means that I have a wild constellation of random and disparate things swirling around me at all times. Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless is the most obvious influence, not just for the language but also the drawings. Cyberpunk movies from the 1990s—I’m a huge fan. I could spend this whole interview talking about Johnny Mnemonic and Tetsuo and Hackers and The Matrix. &nbsp; &nbsp; I’m also really into noise, and I wanted the overall effect of the book to be like seeing a really mythical live noise show, like Prurient or Merzbow, both of whom I love. Just like a huge, heavy blast that doesn’t relent but is swarming with nuance and shakes your whole body into the void.&nbsp; &nbsp; More than anything, though, were the documents surrounding Anonymous and “hacktiv-ism” in the 2000s. I read a lot of blog posts and threads from listservs about cyber secu-rity and “cypherpunks” and how to “hack the world” and shit like that. It felt very insurrec-tionary, those early years in the 21st century when activism collided with hacking, and I admit I have a nostalgia for it. My favorite was LulzSec. I was so taken with the language in their leaked chatroom logs, these streams of punctuation-less lines that were explod-ing with weird witticisms and the raunchy, giddy viscerality that only teenage boys can summon. Rafael is sort of based on Topiary, one of the members of LulzSec who was their “spokesman.” The way he writes and talks is just brilliant, and also very fast and whirli-gig-y. I started writing the book when the list of words the NSA flags in emails* was leaked, sometime in the summer of 2013. That list of words went around, and I was riveted by the fact the government spends a bazillion dollars to surveil people using words like “beef” and “package” in their emails. Returning to that list for its poetry was helpful throughout the writing process. GW: The two characters of your novel—Rafael and Motherfuck—have this professional yet friendly relationship, where there are bits of trust and intimacy, yet the two are always on the outskirts of each other’s lives, with Motherfuck inserting herself, right? Can you speak a little to their rela-tionship, or how you were using Motherfuck as an interviewer, or someone prodding?JH: It’s the literary device of the prison confessional. For narrative purposes, I needed a reason for Rafael to talk, and specifically, to talk out loud to someone, about who he is, and what he’s done, and why. I wanted his voice to be spoken—even performed—for the reader to be able to hear him.&nbsp; &nbsp; Motherfuck is a journalist, and she’s working at the time when “citizen journalism” was becoming a thing in the early 21st century, propelled by Wikileaks and the whistleblowing of Chelsea Manning and Snowden, which brought into question both what journalism is, in the age of the internet 2.0, and what it means to be a citizen in a digital world. (And it’s not a coincidence that this happened at the same time as “hacktivism” was becoming a thing.) I’m not a journalist, but I’m really curi-ous about it, because the nature of the rela-tionship between journalists and their sources and subjects seems so messy to me. Like, on a social or emotional level, the relationship is one of care, but also, not really. Or maybe it is, but in a different way than we think. To be so involved emotionally with someone so that you can tell their story, but how this is always irrevocably bound to your own story—the complicated sociality of that is a puzzle. Like, what are the social obligations there? What does a journalist owe her source? Even, what is a journalist to her source?GW: Now that you say that, I’m thinking back, Motherfuck isn’t rewriting or editing, right? It’s Rafael’s story in his own words, without the end piece published in the paper. Rather, you’re presenting us with her notes and transcriptions.JH: Yes, exactly. This is because Motherfuck does extend a kind of care to Rafael: She keeps his words intact, because he asks her to. He says to her, “do me right, do me real.” So she does by quoting him at length, rather than paraphrasing, or doing any kind of editing. &nbsp; &nbsp; Of course, though, in the end, it is her story, not his, being told, because she is the one fram-ing it. So the question of who a story “belongs” to is there. These discussions at the moment, in the worlds of movies and literature, of “who is allowed” to tell whose stories are interest-ing to me, and obviously point to the greater issue of who’s allowed to be visible, and have agency about their visibility, in the public sphere at all. But I tend to find the conversa-tion of who is allowed or not allowed to tell a story frustrating because it often replicates the law of ownership, and I generally want to abolish all forms of ownership. Like, the point is that everyone is affected by these systems of oppression, that no one gets free of it, and it’s this invasion that needs to be accounted for. Experiences are embodied, certainly, and this is very important in terms of understanding whose bodies and voices are given platforms and power, but I think we have to account for how we understand certain stories to be the territory of certain people, by which I mean, we have to explode the very idea of territory, or of bodies, being own-able at all. If a body can be owned it can be owned by someone who is not in it, so the concept of ownership is not helping us. Also, it’s like, if we demarcate our territory of experience with the same laws we use to enforce private property, we start to talk about forms of embodiment in terms of wealth, or poverty. And, anyway, I just find there to be way more enmeshment, in terms of identity and subjectivity, than we are probably comfortable with, and this is what fiction, if nothing else, is about exploring. GW: I first ‘read’ bits of On Hell in an exhibition space, at the iCa in London. Did you have any intention for your written work to move from the page to the quote-un-quote white wall? Into this text-to-speech attention-grabbing robotic film?JH: Yes, definitely, and from the beginning. The best way I can explain why is that, for me, the definition of writing is that it’s language embodied. Which means that writing is always more than just words on a page. It’s material, it has a body, even if it’s just screaming in a room or dragging a hand through water. &nbsp; &nbsp; When I’m writing, I consider the sound and visuality of the language as much as I do the linguistic meaning. I often tape onto my wall pages from whatever text I’m working on, so I can see how it looks, how it exists as an image. I often read it aloud as I write, so I can hear the language being spoken with a voice, and I try to use different voices: whispering, shouting, etc. (Shouting On Hell, by the way, is fun af.) With On Hell, I always printed it on this pink paper, from the first time I printed the first draft. I wanted the page itself to feel like flesh—a little chunk of skinless flesh. &nbsp; &nbsp; And it’s not really a robotic film. The voice in the video is a speech-to-text software that is used for disability access, so it’s very familiar to the people who use it regularly. I made the video, slide by slide, by hand in InDesign, the spatiality of the text was wedded to its mean-ing. My undergrad is in design, and so the font and color and layout of both the book and the video are extremely important. Their mate-riality is as meaningful as any other element. &nbsp; &nbsp; I must take a moment to recognize my publisher, Ken Baumann of Sator Press, because he supported all of what I wanted for the book, in terms of these “extra-textual” things I’m talking about. It wasn’t just the text he would publish, but I was like, “It has to be printed on this particular shade of pink paper, here’s the Pantone swatch. And the font we use has to be designed by a woman and have a relationship to Los Angeles and to digitality. And we have to have a website with many sparkling cat gifs and leaked NSA documents!” I am so so so lucky that Ken’s response to all that was, “cool, let’s do it!” And that he found Sibylle Hagmann’s Cholla font, which she designed when she was a student at Art Center. It’s based on the Cholla cactus, which lives in Joshua Tree, where Motherfuck ends up.GW: One of my favorite aspects of the book is the accompanying website—I remember showing it to some friends and one immediately said, Can I please borrow this book? It feels like the visual (and state-based) chaos of On Hell. Do they func-tion in conversation, so to speak?JH: Haha, I love that. And yes, totally, the website is an important part of the book. It was made by my friend, the brilliant artist Sam Lavigne. I love his work, and he was the only person who could have made this website, and I’m lucky that he agreed to do it. My publisher and I had a meeting with him, and our entire design directive was basically, “a shitload of cat gifs.” &nbsp; &nbsp; In an early draft of the book, I had all the leaked NSA documents in the back as appendi-ces. They were cited by Motherfuck to corrob-orate what Rafael is talking about. But it made way more sense to have them exist online, in order to open up this other space for the book.&nbsp; &nbsp; There were a couple ideas I had—that the book would come with an encrypted USB drive with all the documents, or that we’d dump them somewhere online behind a password, and the reader had to maybe solve some puzzles to get access. But I wanted to have more aesthetic control, so the website was the best way to go. Also, I mean, the concept is that this is Rafael’s website. It was super fun to imagine what that would look like. Like, he’s definitely not on social media, so what’s his homepage about? Definitely a lot of cat gifs.GW: Rafeal is obsessed with flying, or at the very least floating off. Can you speak a little to the way this runs throughout the book, as maybe a metaphor?JH: It’s not a metaphor. gw: Fair enough. Perhaps an embodiment? I guess what I’m pointing to is gravity’s centrality in the narrative, not Rafael’s obsession with flying. I was looking at a previously published interview with Dan Bustillo, in which they speak of gravity in On Hell as a regime. JH: I mean, in the text itself, his wanting to fly is not a metaphor. Rafael is literally hacking into his body to get it literally to fly.&nbsp; &nbsp; It sounds like you’re asking what such an act points to, in terms of how it values the body, or what the body means when it is perceived as something to be physically transformed. &nbsp; &nbsp; To answer that, I have to foreground that this is a crip book, and to come at the body from a crip perspective is always going to radi-cally redefine what the body is, not just onto-logically, but also physically, materially, and the primary way this will happen is to disin-tegrate the discrete-ness of it. And although metaphors can be useful here—I think of how figures like the monster and the cyborg are so generative in crip theory—crip-ness is also something that de-metaphors, or un-meta-phors, the body, and instead, insists that we deal with its actual, material, painful, sweating, fragile, needing, decaying, living being-ness. Like, what is a body without the cushion of metaphor? And in that space, what does trans-formation look like?&nbsp; &nbsp; This is also what I mean when I talk about trying to get rid of the concept of ownership when we talk about bodies. In other words, it’s a reckoning with interdependency, how it feels and what it means to be so interdepen-dent, which is a much more accurate way to understand and think materiality than indi-viduality is. &nbsp; &nbsp; I think the notion that our bodies are our own—both in terms of ownership again, but also that there is, or ought to be, a “real” or “authentic” self—is a neoliberal white-person fantasy. I always think of what Fred Moten told me about the etymology of “privilege” being the same as “private,” both of which come from the Latin privus, which just means individual. Privilege is simply being able to understand oneself in terms of one’s individ-uality, rather than how one is interdependent, formed in relationship, and deeply intertwined with systems of power, which is to say, inter-twined with sociality and politics. And to be private about oneself, if we think in Arendtian terms, is not to have to be political. For a lot of us, we are only ever seen through the systems of identity and sociality ascribed to us—our race, class, gender, disability, etc—rather than who we are as “individuals.” &nbsp; &nbsp; So, it’s not a metaphor because Rafael can’t afford to be metaphorical. His body is literally the thing that is being incarcerated, though everyone pretends otherwise. He says, “to them I was totalmente nothing but a fucking symbol I wasn’t who I am they never saw me with two eyes and a sack of guts swimming in blood and pain and ambition and frus-trated exasperated dreamshit nah they saw me as brown and so quote unquote therefore.” It’s obvious to Rafael that to escape that, to find liberation, he’s going to have to start at the originary place of materiality that is untouched by metaphor. As he says, he must “hack that bitch to shit.”GW: Can you tell us where Rafael is going?JH: Lol fucking anywhere but here.