Fall 2021 Issue of SoFA
Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor
Touch the Things, Make the Sounds
They Call Me 'The Mayor' at Riis Beach
Uncomfortable Conversations: Money
Immigration, community, and a play about war / Імміграція, спільнота та п’єса про війну
A Love Letter to Brown and Black MFA Seedlings
Be in the Play That You're In
I’m Curious About You?
Living Language
On Grief, Storytelling, and Building Little Altars Everywhere
The Art We Value
Healing in Practice
Process, Pop, and A/Temporality
The Tapes, Conversation I
We Did This
I Went Back in Time and Everybody Else Was Moving Forward
Credits
Letter from the Editor
December 12, 2021
Text by Becca Kauffman
A transcribed conversation isn’t always deeply revelatory, but it can be. In the participatory field of social practice, we honor the potency of dialogue and combined perspectives. If our art projects don’t take place in solitude, why should our research and creative inquiry? It’s only natural that conversation be a primary method; sometimes it’s even the artwork itself. For the socially engaged artist, conversation can be a hinge, a connector, a keystone, a debrief, a record. No matter what, it’s always a material.
In the Fall 2021 edition of Conversations on Everything for Social Forms of Art Journal, we share conversations using a traditional interview format, and approach the co-authored publication assignment as what I might call social practice praxis. As students in the PSU Art + Social Practice MFA program, we each come from different creative backgrounds and training, including: photography, design, dance, illustration, textiles, set design, publishing, curation, theater, herbalism, and cultural organizing. We find our way here because we’re drawn to the social component of our various disciplines, and we’re interested in spotlighting the parts of our artform that necessitate people, interactions, and collaborative contributions. We shift the focus from the picture (or the book or the play) to the process by which those things are made, and the people who work together to make them.
As a result of this shift, conversations become a significant and intentional medium for us all. “Social practice frames potentially ordinary or common actions such as dialogue and conversation,” first year student Luz Blumenfeld reflects. “It’s really helpful to understand that the things I do in my everyday life are a part of my work.”
That’s because a part of social practice praxis is formalizing what we’ve already been doing. Third year Shelbie Loomis offers, “Conversations and interviewing have been in the depths of my practice (existing in different forms, in different lives), but only recently, through reframing how I look at the act of conversation, did I realize how much…interviewing feeds my artform and practice.”
I relate to this as well. For years, I recorded conversations I had with friends and strangers, capturing the collectively-generated musings, theories, aimless chit chat, and impromptu laughs ping ponging between us to make sure they didn’t evaporate forever. The impulse was similar to taking a picture, and the result became an audio snapshot, which I could transcribe for my own amusement and/or re-perform as a script. Mostly, I put them on an obscure tumblr no one read, and assembled a semi-private album of memories that encapsulated the inherent value of people talking to each other. Many moons later, it’s thrilling to now have a framework to understand my instinct, integrate it into my art practice, and have the opportunity to channel it into a formal publication.
It led me to wonder how the practice of conversations and interviews is actively informing the broader work of my classmates. How has the practice of interviewing influenced their art making/thinking? In what ways are conversations valuable to their practice/s right now? How do they integrate the art of interviewing into their art practice? What did my colleagues find valuable in the process of conducting interviews for this issue?
For third year student Rebecca Copper, “an interview can open up space for exchange, to lean into an inquiry, to uncover, and to potentially understand. It’s a basis for questioning— questioning for curiosity.” That joint act of digging deeper together resonates with third year Mo Geiger, as well. “It’s a way of relating. Conversing is a trippy way to excavate something with another person.” Second year Laura Glazer agrees: “Having a conversation helps us figure out what we can do/make/explore together, and find shared points of curiosity and excitement.”
This exchange has the effect of expanding our practice and giving it artistic definition. “If conversation can be interview, material, medium,” Luz concludes, “it can also be research. And since I’m finding a lot of my practice to be research-based, it’s really helpful to understand that the things I do in my everyday life are a part of my work.”
For second year student Caryn Aasness, the interview gives structure to a familiar routine: “I think I’m always interviewing people, so it’s nice to formalize it. I always want to know what everyone is thinking and I love to try to convince them to think out loud. Or to work through on the spot something they have never really thought through before. Being sent into the world with ‘interview’ as an assignment really parallels the way I already thrust myself into the world with ‘interview’ as the imperative.”
The assemblage of these perspectives illuminates the utility of conversation as a tool for investigation, not only into our own subjects of interest, but into the importance of human-to-human exchange. In this issue, we hear from a scientist on his far reaching approach to mycology, a jazz professor on healing, a neighbor on her domestic art collection, a Ukranian immigrant on his transition to Portland, Oregon, the Bing Crosby Fan Club president on what it means to be invested, a librarian with a vision for collaborative learning, and much more. We hope you enjoy the material.
-Becca Kauffman, Editor
with contributions from Caryn Aasness, Luz Blumenfeld, Rebecca Copper, Mo Geiger, Laura Glazer, and Shelbie Loomis
Touch the Things, Make the Sounds
December 12, 2021
Text by Laura Glazer with Elsa Loftis
“I would love to have that integration of classroom space, studio space, and library space all in one. And that might be like a completely difficult thing to realize, but I think that I always want the library everywhere.”
ELSA LOFTIS
During my first year in the MFA program, I tried using an art studio on campus. I filled it with my favorite supplies, inspiring books, and uncluttered surfaces. But when I was there, it did not feel vital to my practice. I relocated it to another room with a huge window, hoping that it would be invigorating to see activity outside. Instead, the studio remained quiet and lonely, with few opportunities to respond to the place.
When Elsa and I talked for this interview, I was captivated by her vision of including spaces for art studios in the library, and I imagined relocating my under-utilized studio there. But even in my daydream, it still wasn’t a place I wanted to go. So, I started constructing a version of what a studio in the library might look like for me as a socially engaged artist: no walls, doors, or desks. Instead, there is a large table near the existing library study carrels and stools on wheels tucked under it. Nice paper and pens are available for free, and a special stapler for making zines is nearby. And anyone using the library is invited to sit down and work there. When we need inspiration or have questions, we can explore the books in the stacks and collaborate with Elsa.
This vision of a public art studio reveals an evolution of my creative practice, going from creating a private space that didn’t feel right, to envisioning a public space like the library as a studio space, and shaping it to respond to that site. This ideal place is not a space where I work in isolation. Rather, it is a large desk with space for me and other people to work, study, and create together; it is a place to be social in public.
Laura Glazer: I was trying to figure out a good place to start and what came to mind was how I’m haunted by something you said in our conversation last August. I have this really clear vision of what you described at OCAC(1), where you would have a pot of coffee and students would come in all the time. But at PSU, you were saying it doesn’t work at this scale. And you said, “I need help inserting myself into their practices.” Where are you with thinking about that?
Elsa Loftis: You know, I always feel re-invigorated when I’m able to do the instruction sessions because that’s when I start to get contacted by students. You know, when I get in front of them, and I do my little dog and pony show: here are the databases and this is why they’re so useful and look at all of the fun things you can look for and find. And then I will get emails after that from students who say, “oh, you visited my class and I’m doing this.” Then I get excited about the actual connection between working with people who are seeking information and hopefully assisting. And that’s the person-to-person stuff that I really enjoy. And that’s difficult because I’m waiting for people to kinda come to me. Whereas I would like to just sort of be out wandering around and saying, “Oh,” you know, “how are you today?”
I think very much about the library as place. The library is symbolic in many ways of a place for information. It’s a place to have solace and quiet and reflection, but there’s also kind of this element of, it’s a place to be. It’s a brick and mortar building and that is more or less important now than it ever has been.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, the library is definitely more than just what’s inside the four walls, it’s absolutely more than that. Not only because of our electronic resources and things of that matter, but it’s also kind of a headspace. It’s sort of a way to think, reflect, and work. But it’s also just the actual challenges of the proximity of where I am; in my past lives in other libraries, my office was sort of right out there where students were running around. So, if someone had a confused look on their face, I could just intercept them at their point of need. And where I am now, my office is in the cataloging and acquisitions space, which is behind locked doors so I have to actually physically leave my office to go look for students.
So that’s just a way that the space is elemental. And just having the energy of the people around me when they’re in their seeking phase of their research.
Laura: What does it mean to be an academic librarian?
Elsa: It’s a good question. It just means I’m a librarian in an academic setting. I’ve worked as a public librarian before, so that was a different experience. I mean, it’s not that different in a lot of ways. It’s a service orientation and you’re a public servant, you are meeting different needs in different spaces so you adjust your pedagogy or your workflow. You certainly are dealing with different kinds of collections. The range of people that you meet is certainly a little more narrowly defined in an academic library setting. Although most of the time we’re open to the public. Although we aren’t currently open to the public because of the pandemic. But we do offer spaces for the public to come in and share our resources and share our space. The PSU motto is “Let knowledge serve the city,” so we take that very seriously. We have that as an important role that we play, to offer information and services to people that are beyond our community.
And we also are a government document repository library. People need access to their government information and we provide that.
Laura: Where is the ideal space for you to work in? And it can be in a magical world!
Elsa: I think that in my magical world, the library is in the center of campus, in the heart of the physical space that students inhabit. I would love for there to be studio space in the library. In fact, I used to experiment with some of that.
I would try to put small little pop-up library collections in the studio spaces so that people could have reference resources while they’re throwing pots or welding things. [Laughs!] And when we did that, it was difficult to gauge the engagement with the resources, because a lot of times there’s no way to really track usage if it was just sort of like, Here’s some stuff you could look at it, you know, go nuts.
When you’re trying to work with students and getting folks to get engaged with your materials, you just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. We used to do those little pop-up libraries—these little mini curated things—and I thought that was really nice; I wanted people to be able to have access where they were. Not have to be like, Now I’d like to venture over to the library and look at some different examples of what I might be thinking about doing right now as I’m sitting here in the studio.
I would love to have that integration of classroom, studio, and library space all in one. And that might be a completely difficult thing to realize but I think that I always want the library everywhere. [Laughs]
Laura: That is a beautiful quote! “I want the library everywhere all the time.”
Elsa: Well, because I want people to feel like they own it. I think that libraries can be daunting spaces. When I talk about the library as “place,” that’s often very loaded, I think, for some people. I think of libraries as sanctuaries and places to explore and places to go on these adventures. And I think that maybe not everybody feels that way. I think that sometimes they can be sort of vaunted spaces. They’re sort of cold and quiet and maybe you don’t feel like you belong. If there’s one thing I want is for students to have agency over their library, because it is their library.
This is a flexible study area with furniture and rolling whiteboards that encourages collaboration and can be moved to fit various study needs on the third floor of the PSU library. Portland, OR. November 2021. Photo by Laura Glazer.
Elsa continued: We’re not here for any other reasons; we’re here for service. You want to humanize it, familiarize it and make it feel like their workspace, not as some sort of museum or a place where they aren’t supposed to touch the things or make sounds. That can be loaded in a way because I think the library as place is very important and I think that research can be done in so many different environments and formats. You can do a lot of research online; people are very good at doing research online. We’ve spent a lot of time here creating a lot of learning objects(2)(3) and ways that you can access materials virtually, and you don’t have to be in the library, but I also think that the space is important.
And again, that really depends on what kind of learner you are and how you like to interface with things. But I think one of the nice things, and especially for art students and art practice students, is that element of research that’s that really kind of almost haptic practice of research, like you get in there and you’re engaging with physical materials.
For some learners that’s really a big element for their practice, for their understanding: how you process things—physically and mentally—and work that into your creative practice.
And then there’s also that kind of iterative feeling of being in the lobby. You start… it’s like you search and you research, there’s this cycle. It’s not just searching, it’s re-searching. You keep coming back, you keep doing it again. And for some makers, it’s that kind of repetition.t’s that iterative process of research and it being a discipline, you approach it in a disciplined way. And that’s evidenced in a lot of different, physical practices of making art, too.
That’s what I also like to relate to people, is that the parts of the brain that you’re using when you’re doing research are creative parts of your brain. It’s part of art practice, too. You’re using those same kinds of problem solving connectors, the same little parts of your brain light up when you’re doing research as when you’re creating things. And I think that that’s a really useful way to look at it because it’s creative problem solving, just like you’re doing when you’re making work.
Laura: Where do you land on reframing the concept of research for a studio artist and a non-studio artist like myself?
Elsa: Well, it’s a really good question and it’s a really important issue. I think that all over the academy, not just in the arts, we are asking ourselves these questions and mostly from the library’s perspective: what do we collect and what voices are being centered; what voices are being left out; who is considered an expert in their field; what’s considered scholarship?
There are a lot of silenced voices in that narrow definition of what constitutes scholarly research and those definitions are opening up. We see this now and it’s our job as the library to be on the front lines of that and leading that, and collecting and valuing and centering—I don’t want to say alternative research, or maybe just non-traditional resources, I suppose—narrative things and people with learned experience and lived experiences, being thought of as experts, not necessarily attaining some sort of degree that makes them all of a sudden worthy to hear and listen to.
So, for a studio artist and a non-studio artist, I think that those paths are somewhat parallel. But it’s also difficult to wedge that into a traditional expression of scholarship. If you were doing a research essay and you needed five peer reviewed sources or X amount of primary sources versus secondary sources, and this is how you format your bibliography, it can be a little bit daunting to put this sort of non-traditional research into a traditional kind of scholarly product. I think that our instructors are more open than ever to that. You could speak to that better than I could. Do you feel that that is something that’s encouraged or at least tolerated?
Laura: I don’t know yet. I’m really taking my first class outside of the School of Art and Design this term in the History Department where I’m taking a class on museums and memory. We have to write a research paper, which I haven’t done since the nineties. [Laughs] So I am looking at the list of requirements, like six primary, secondary sources and thinking, huh, how can I bring the lens that’s relevant to me as an artistic researcher to this requirement? And I’m in a pretty good dialogue with the instructor. I want to be careful not to push her too far because I think she’s more traditional in how she approaches research papers and so are my classmates, but that doesn’t really work for me cause that’s not what I want to produce. I guess in undergrad, it was very traditional, very structured and I just didn’t do it.
Elsa: Well, you’re not alone in that. I think that we hear that a lot more and I think that that’s becoming more accepted. It’s not like, Oh, well, this student just doesn’t want to produce what I want them to produce. Even my son—he’s nine years old—his teachers are talking about, Okay, maybe you could make a video, maybe you could do a presentation rather than a paper or something like that, just being more inclusive to people with different learning styles or different storytelling. That’s been really central to a lot of more evolving scholarship, talking about things in terms of storytelling.
Laura: Definitely, which I’m always excited by and that’s the route I’m taking for my museums and memory research paper.
Would it make sense for a student to think of a librarian as a collaborator?
Elsa: Oh, yes. I hope so! [Laughs] Yes, because that’s how I think of myself. I think about myself as playing a supporting role. I love the idea of the librarian as a collaborator, yes. What that looks like in practice is a very interesting question, it can take a lot of forms. We’re in these roles as faculty, but we can do research together.
One of the things that I’m always trying to get to the root of is, how is that being engaged with, or is it being engaged with? And what can I do to better my pedagogy and my skills to share these research methods and these research resources and how can I do that better? I’m always, in a way, collaborating with students, whether they know it or not, to see how that’s going. Whether or not it’s a measurable outcome depends on how it’s being measured, I suppose. There’s traditional metrics of, We could give a pre-test and a post-test, or I can analyze people’s bibliographies to see if they found great sources or things like that, which is not really an active collaboration.
So, I’ve done things in the past where I’ve done focus groups with students, had them come to the library, tell me about what their needs are that we’re not meeting. What are we doing well? What could be improved? And again, trying to lend the agency to the students so that they have an active hand in creating their space, their library.
I’d love to collaborate with students on their independent projects, I think that would be wonderful. But mostly from my side, I am interested in collaborating with students to create a better library for them and a better learning experience for them. But I think it could happen on both sides.
Laura: When you say create a better library… I’ll tell you the vision that is in my head and it’s narrow: I think, Oh, get different books, more books.
Elsa: Okay.
Laura: Tell me what it means to you?
Elsa: It means community. I think it means an inclusive place where people feel welcome and where they feel productive. New books are nice but it’s also about active space and active engagement. There’s a few different ways to think about it.
More books, beautiful environments. Certainly, it’s nice if the chairs are comfortable and the colors are pleasing to the eye. But yeah, obviously the resources, the best possible resources that reflect our students’ needs and their interests, really inspire them and encourage their own growth.
Sure, the best possible library would be: you walk to a shelf and the thing that you were hoping for just pops right out. But what also is even better is that that thing didn’t pop out, but you got this other idea because the thing that was shelved next to it was sort of interesting. And so you pulled that out, and then you started walking around, you know what I mean? I love the serendipitous browsing, which is why we kind of create these cataloging systems where everything’s co-located.(4) So if you’re on the right track, you’re kind of on the right track. Sometimes that’s not true. Sometimes you gotta go to a whole different floor of the library if you want painting, but now you’re interested in aesthetics where you have to go down to the basement.
But that’s just the nature of the size of the collection, which is wonderful. You want a big, rich collection with lots of different formats and things kind of jump out at you in different ways. If you have the special collections, zines or ephemera or things like that, it’s just fun to kind of go through that stuff and get ideas. And then if you’re in the stacks, you’re kind of looking through the physical spines of the books and sort of getting the smell and all the physical and psychological cues that go with just sort of roaming around the stacks and having those kinds of serendipitous experiences. That would be the perfect library, I suppose.
And then you’d have a relaxing place to be, or where you were stimulated by all the cool stuff that was going on around you, where people were discussing great ideas. And then you’d have your studio right there and you could just go in and start working. That’d be pretty nice. Coffee wouldn’t hurt! [Laughs]
Laura: As a sidebar, I recently had that serendipitous experience at the downtown Multnomah County library and it was so special. I had to work for it, had to really pay attention to my inner voice, leading me around. It was triumphant and it changed my research path.
Elsa: Wow.
Laura: I’ve had that happen a little bit at the PSU library. It’s only been open for a little while, so I’m still finding my bearings there. So as you’re describing this magical library experience, the perfect library experience, I’m thinking of the different elements: in one way, you’re describing (in my mind), like a coffee shop and sometimes there’s a lot of activity and sometimes it’s really chill, without a lot of activity. And then I’m imagining a research lab for a scientist, like things bubbling over. It’s a really dynamic space, what you just described.
Elsa: I think the best libraries are, and it fits with our mission. But I also think that part of our other mission, just as important, is to collect and preserve. I mean it’s really important that we are keeping the human record, right? And that’s what we do. I think that a lot of what we do that is important, is curating a collection that is valuable and instructive to our students and also to the community at large.
And so we need to be very intentional about how we use our resources to provide those things. Resources are limited and not just in terms of budgets, but also in terms of space and our priorities and what we can provide. And that’s where librarians come in and use their expertise to get the best, most relevant information in front of a searcher– a researcher.
Laura: What’s informing you as a librarian, right now?
Elsa: In terms of what to collect or in terms of just how I’m spending my time?
Laura: Referring to how you collect, because you were just talking about that, the intentionality of a librarian. So that leads me to wonder: well, what’s informing your intentionality?
Elsa: We need to be responsive to the needs of our departmental faculty. So, of course instructors and professors will be telling us what they need to support their curriculum.
Another good indicator for me is when new courses come up, we are asked to write a statement of support from the library, so I get to see syllabi and make sure that our collections can support the teaching and learning endeavors of the new classes that are starting. So, that’s really wonderful for me because then I can see what’s being assigned. Certainly, I’m looking at making sure that we can support the assigned reading lists, but also just kind of getting a sense of where things are going in the departments. And so that is really informative to me.
It’s also informative to me when I’m in my instruction sessions, because I have an idea of what the assignments are, the research projects, working with students, finding out what they’re interested in and then that leads me to kind of explore. And maybe we don’t have everything that they might need and that’s when I go and I find it.
I also read a lot of academic book reviews, new things coming out by certain publishers that I really value or appreciate, but I’m also still looking for things that aren’t as well represented in our collection. We need to have a sense of where the gaps in our collection are, what might be overrepresented or underrepresented. Do we need another book about Renaissance painting, or are we more interested in collecting a new exhibition catalog about yarn bombing? I don’t know. [Laughs] It doesn’t mean that the other one isn’t useful and necessary. But where do we fit in the conversation and are we representing what’s going on currently in our students’ practice mostly and what’s being taught in the curriculum.
The other consideration we have is we are part of this wonderful big consortium. We have 37 other libraries from universities and colleges in our area that also have their collections and we share that catalog. So, we call that cooperative collections development.
While I might not need to buy everything… I can’t buy everything. But the University of Washington might have one and Portland Community College might have one. Reed College might have one. Willamette University just acquired PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art) and now their library collection is part of our catalog. They have some really amazing parts of their collection that might not be represented in the PSU collection, but I can get it.
So those are other things that are kind of informing my collection development and what I see as a need for our library. As wonderful as it is to have all the things on the shelves in the library space, where you’re looking and searching and having those serendipitous shelf moments, there’s no way that we can have everything on the shelf right in front of you. So that can be a frustration. People like to just go and browse and that’s awesome, I get that. But there’s so much more to our collections. They’re all over the region, they’re all over the world, and they’re in the online environment. And so some of those things do get missed when you have a researcher who just really likes to browse the shelves.
Laura: I read your article, The More Things Change: The Collaborative Art Library, and I’m a huge fan of the inclusion of “collaboration” in the keyword list. But I want to back up a little bit and ask you, does PSU have an art library and actually what is an art library?
Elsa: Ah, that’s a really good question. We have our central library; we don’t have any sort of satellite library. Some departments have their own collections, but they aren’t under the purview of the library.
But an art library you are basically focused on art but it’s not to the exclusion of everything else. I’ve worked in art libraries and it’s mostly to support a specific kind of learning activity, the study of art in this case. Museum libraries are much the same, they’re there to support the research of the curators or visiting researchers who come in and would exemplify a kind of collection focus that a museum has. The Museum of Modern Craft, when it was around, had its own library and those had obviously a very specific scope and focus.
At the OCAC library, we definitely built our collection around what was being taught in school, so the different kinds of craft concentrations, but also art history. And there was a lot of social history too, you know? Libraries take many forms and many shapes and the art library is not a monolith of one kind, but you would certainly find more art books in it. [Laughs]
Laura: Thinking about the art library: so PSU’s collection isn’t considered an art library?
Elsa: Well, it would be the art section of the library. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Laura: Okay. Got it. Cause as I was reading the article, I was like: oh no, are we not included?
Elsa: Oh my gosh, no, no, of course not. We have wonderful, wonderful art in our library. And I mean, an art library can be conflated to mean so many things. It could be a library of art, it could be a bunch of paintings lined up. A library is terminology that can mean any kind of collection, I suppose, as long as it’s organized and preserved in some way.
We use the Library of Congress classification system so most of our art books are in the Ns and they’re sort of located in a way that’s find-able and together. But other parts of “art” are not in the Ns necessarily. They might be in more technology-related things. So like photography will be in the Ts and aesthetics and the study of beauty and things like that are going to be in the Bs, which is more in the philosophy area.
That’s what’s wonderful about the multi-disciplinary part of that, and you can look all over the collection and that can inform your art practice, certainly.
Exploring a section of art books on the third floor during a tour of the PSU library with Elsa. Portland, OR. November 2021. Photo by Laura Glazer.
Laura: When you think about yourself as a collaborator with a student researcher, what do you make together and what do you wish you could make together? We talked about maybe a bibliography, but what are some other things? I’m trying to really wrap my head around what that collaboration is like with you as a librarian or even with the library as space?
Elsa: Well, I think that one thing that was fun that I’ve done in the past with students at the Oregon College of Art and Craft Library has been for a guest student to curate a book display which was always really fun. We have had students do that in the past where they go with the theme and find things that they’ve connected with and arrange it in a way that’s pleasing or just accessible for people.
We’ve had people do art shows in the library, certainly utilizing not only the space, but also elements of the stacks and the books themselves. One example of that is, I had a student that made all of these really delicate ceramic books and he would kind of inner-shelve them in the space and it was really neat. We had students take over the space in a lot of different ways with their physical work.
Then rearranging the library space to facilitate other kinds of making and doing and even if it’s something as simple as having a knitting circle going on in the library and we would pick topics to talk about as we were doing that, readings that we all might have done, or just sharing favorite stories or something like that. I suppose you could mean a collaboration in that way. Students collaborating with the librarian themselves or with the space or just the different ideas of use.
We had one student one time who was exploring repetitive practice stuff and she put a big trampoline outside the library and she would go and be on the trampoline for at least two hours a day, not jumping necessarily, but she would be sitting out there or just being in that little space. That was outside of the library and certainly everybody else was welcome to use it, [laughs] and it was just kind of this fixture. It wasn’t necessarily anything that I was doing or collaborating with myself or even the space of the library, but it did take on a form of its own because it was this sort of feature that was happening and people would talk about it and she would start to try to help generate those conversations, too, because that was part of her inquiry.
I prefer the ones where the space is being used, reused, and remixed and the collection is part of that. And anything that people are using to connect. That’s what I hope for when I collaborate with students or have them collaborate with the space or the collection.
Elsa saved the poster advertising an artist talk about the trampoline at the OCAC library project and hung it up in her office at the PSU Library. Portland, OR. November 2021. Photo by Laura Glazer.
Laura: Anything being used to connect ideas? People?
Elsa: Yeah.
Laura: What are you meaning with that connection?
Elsa: I mean specifically people. Again, having ownership of the library, having agency, and feeling like they belong there and that the library can change to support them rather than the other way around, if that makes sense. Because when you come into the library space, you have to kind of conform to it in a way, right? You need to position yourself where you need to find the things and there are rules: you have to go to the circulation desk, you have a checkout period, you have a loan period. So there’s sort of these other things. But I think that the library can also transform and be a space that can be used and enjoyed and people can connect.
A really great example of our collaboration was with that subject guide that we created.
Laura: Yes!
Elsa: That can be a work in progress and it can be molded and shaped. That kind of learning object is really wonderful because I think that it fits a need and it wasn’t a need that I knew about until you told me.
That was a great example of a collaboration. It’s a positive step that now exists and it’s something that can continue to change and be added to. There’s a lot more things like that that we can do, I think, that I’d love to see students engage with and make it their own, in a way. I can’t exactly let everybody edit that guide, but I can garner all kinds of input and feedback about it and adapt and change and be agile enough to create new things out of it.
Laura: You mentioned including things in the collection that maybe aren’t in the traditional way we think of a collection being developed. And one example that comes to mind is publications by artists. How do you see those fitting into an academic library?
Elsa: You don’t mean like a monograph, you mean like kind of ephemera or like zines or…cause that can take so many different shapes.
Laura: I think zines are a good example. I’m also thinking about small press publications, things published that aren’t easy for an institution to buy.
Elsa: Right, right. Absolutely. Well, it gets challenging. We have the usual constraints of where to get it and how to collect it comprehensively, I suppose. And so it’s helpful if you wanted to have a concentration of some kind, like artists from Portland, for example, or an artist working in a specific kind of thematic area or medium or something like that. I suppose if we were to kind of pinpoint that sort of thing then it’s a little bit more scoped rather than just like, oh, you know, kind of anything we come across, we get.
Our special collection is a good place for some of this stuff, especially when the formats are a little unstable. Case in point, with a zine, I couldn’t really throw that on the shelf, it would get kind of destroyed, right? There needs to be a special place. And digitization of that kind of thing. Then that can go in our institutional repository, like PDXScholar, if it was somebody from our community, that would make a lot of sense. So there’s room for that and it tends to be kind of in what we think of as our special collections. Just for its own kind of protection, just physically, so it doesn’t fall apart.
Some libraries have very specific collections based on that. You know, ephemera collections, and postcard collections, for goodness sake! The New York Public Library has an amazing historical menus collection and things like that, it’s wonderful. It goes library by library and a lot of that has to do with the institution that it’s supporting.
Laura: I saw there was a faculty announcement that you are an associate professor.
Elsa: Oh no, I’m an assistant professor assistant. I haven’t gotten tenure yet.
Laura: Sorry, I mix them up. Do you teach classes?
Elsa: Librarians have faculty status at Portland State, or they can. We have faculty status and so we do teach, but teaching is defined as provision of library services. So our kind of pedagogy is providing information. We do teach, I teach instruction sessions. It’s kind of defined as, provision of library services is what teaching is, which means that we are providing the ability to do the research; that is our process.
Well, how is this going to look? What is the theme of this journal?
Laura: There is no theme for this issue. I bring the theme. For me, my practice is about books, collections of knowledge, selecting pieces of knowledge, libraries as spaces, people as collaborators. When we talked in August, I was like: oh, Elsa is a great resource. I need to understand more about what you do.
There’s a woman in Montana who does a traveling bookstore. And she goes all over the country and she comes to Portland. So I’m thinking about interviewing her in the winter. Kind of along this theme of books as spreaders of knowledge and trying to figure out where do I fit? Why is that a part of my practice? So, that’s why I’m talking with you. I’m like, why am I so drawn to the library, books, and collecting?
Elsa: I love that idea of the traveling bookseller, that’s really neat.
I had a colleague at OCAC, she’s at Reed now, she’s a book artist, Barbara Tetenbaum. And she was doing this really cool project where it was called The Slow Read and she was using Willa Cather’s book My Ántonia and she had these display monitors up in various places, and in different cities, too.
It would be just a display of one page of the book. And so people could kind of come and read that page. And then the next day there would be a new page. The idea was sort of like this community read, but also really slowly.
Laura: At the library?
Elsa: We had one of the monitors up at the library. But she went out all over the place and it was centered in Nebraska, because that’s where the author was from.
Laura: And she’s at Reed College now?
Elsa: Yeah. She and I used to teach together and she’s wonderful.
Laura: I’m looking at the website right now.
Elsa: Oh yeah, you got it? Okay, great. That puts me in mind of what you’re talking about, right?
Laura: Yes!
Elsa: Yeah. Pretty neat, huh?
Laura: Oh, my goodness. Where did you teach with her?
Elsa: At OCAC. She was the chair of the Book Arts department. Yeah, and then she and I co-taught a student success class for incoming freshmen. It was basically like a college skills class. I think we called it College Skills or something like that. But it was me teaching research and then also just how to be a student and how to succeed in school and even like financial literacy and stuff like that.
So she and I became good friends because we designed the whole course together and she was in the middle of this whole project in the last year that I was there and I was so blown away. You know, talk about collaborative and text as experience, right?
Laura: Oh my gosh. Text as experience. Did you just make that up?
Elsa: I just made that up and I don’t know, [laughs] maybe it flew in from somewhere. She’s one of those people that’s really quite amazing.
Laura: I’m going to have to spend some time with this. See, I already benefited from talking with you! I would not have known, oh my gosh!
This issue of SOFA Journal won’t come out until mid December, I think. And I will keep you in the loop. And just so you know, I personally publish it as a printed zine. And lucky you, you’ll be a lifetime subscriber. So you’ll get a copy of every one that I do in the next year and a half. And then I’ll also send you the back issues.
Elsa: Well, they’re beautiful. I’ve been looking at them on PDXScholar. I’ve never seen a physical one, but I’ve been enjoying looking at them, they’re so rich and pictorial.
Laura: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Elsa: Have a wonderful weekend!
Laura: Thank you! Bye!
They Call Me ‘The Mayor’ at Riis Beach
December 12, 2021
Text by Gilian Rappaport with Ralph Hopkins
“I wanted something for you to see that you hadn’t seen before. And to have a good time, and feel that you’re part of it.”
RALPH HOPKINS
Riis Beach, known for its history as a gay destination for sunbathing, swimming, and community, is a short walk from my apartment on the Rockaway peninsula, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in Queens, New York. For this issue of Social Forms of Art Journal, I interviewed Ralph Hopkins, who they call The Mayor at Riis Beach. Ralph is a 73 year old native New Yorker, former chef, gold medalist for the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, and a US army veteran. An elegant man filled with pizzazz, he described the beach parties and interactive fashion shows that he threw at Riis Beach in the ’90s, as well as his personal history marked by six decades immersed in the scene at Riis. We discussed art making at the beach, creativity with the queer community, and fashion shows as a socially engaged form of art.
While living in Rockaway, I have been on a quest to learn more about my dwelling place. As a native New Yorker, my connection to Rockaway dates back to my ancestry, with visits by my grandmother, Gilda Selby, in the early twentieth century. As a queer artist and herbalist, I have been researching queer ecologies and geographies, focusing on beaches. I have been engaging the intersections of nature, play, stories, and sensory experiences to explore queer possibilities.
Ralph, his work, and the history that his life expresses has been a great gift.
The following conversation took place on November 2, 2021.
“Ralph’s White Oasis Beach Party” at Riis Park, Queens, NY. 1994. Flyer by Ralph Hopkins. Printed by Calvin Clark.
“Ralph’s Blue Ice Beach Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. Flyer by Ralph Hopkins. Models unknown. Printed by Calvin Clark.
Gilian Rappaport: Will you tell me a little about yourself? Where are you from?
Ralph Hopkins: I grew up in Greenwich Village in Manhattan… A lot of my friends don’t know, but I went to art schools in Newark [New Jersey]. When I was younger, I thought I was going to be a commercial artist. Come to find out, my mother and I end up having a little restaurant in Newark. It was called Bernice’s Snack Bar. So I worked there as a cook.
Gilian: Was your family in the restaurant business?
Ralph: No. Prior to [opening the restaurant], my mother was a beautician. My grandmother was a beautician, my cousin was a beautician. The beauty parlor was in my grandmother’s house that she owned, on the ground floor. My mother got tired of it, so she decided to open up a restaurant.
Gilian: When did you start throwing parties at Riis Beach?
Ralph: In about 1994, I was on Riis Beach with my friends, and we were saying maybe we should have a little party or something. Just as friends— everybody brings a drink, food, or something like that. Everybody will come in white. That would be pretty on the beach. So I thought, Okay, let me get to work. From then on, it was always the third Sunday in August.
“Ralph’s White Oasis Beach Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. 1994. Photo by Ralph Hopkins.
Gilian: Will you tell me about the decorations? Did you do them yourself?
Ralph: Yes. I said, I have to do something to make it nice for everybody. I’d like to make the party look as nice as possible. I knew this area [in Manhattan] where they sell these discount toys, things like that, down the street from Macy’s. I went there and I bought like two dozen hula hoops. Then I looked up a balloon rental place on the East Side of Manhattan. I rented the balloons with the machine that blows them up. So the day of the party, I brought the hula hoops [and] I buried them halfway in the sand, so only half would stick out. And I tied the white balloons to each hula hoop so they would float in the air. To make it look pretty. And we brought food, and I cooked a little food. My friends bought drinks and food also, it was a little small table. And I brought my little boombox, and we had some music. We had a nice time, and everybody said, Wow… Other friends around saw and wanted to join. They said, Oh, well next year we’ve got to do another one. We had so much fun.
The next year was a white party again. Only I did it much bigger. The second party was at least, I would say 75 people. Then beach people started to notice. At the beach, they said, “What kind of party is this here?” To make it sound nice, I said, “This is my birthday,” so they would be more lenient. Any drinks, we kind of hid in the cooler. A couple of friends started to put my parties on the internet. I said, Oh my god. I was getting a little nervous. I said, I didn’t know it would get big like this. So I said, I got to up my game with the decorations.
So I had to get into my art mood… I went to the lumber place, and I picked up six 10-foot poles. They could barely get in my living room, so I tilted them in [there]. And I went to the fabric store and I got yards of fabric. It was only a dollar a yard at that time. I would have the fabric from the top of the poles come all the way down right into the sand as decorations. And I also had this ribbon that I got at this warehouse that a friend of mine worked at, luckily. Everything was like falling into place. And this warehouse, as I walked in, I felt like I was walking into a wonderland. All these treasures, everything is in this place. He said, Go take what you need, what do you want? It was stuff that companies would donate, they didn’t use anymore– restaurants, and whatever.
“Ralph’s Red Hot Beach Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. 1997. Photo by Ralph Hopkins.
So I found my runway, it was a mylar fabric that coiled. It looked like you’re walking on water. Which I still have, the runway. I found this glitter ribbon, which shined like diamonds in the sun, like real diamonds. You could see it from across the bridge coming to the beach, that’s how they shine. So I added those to the top of the poles as decorations. Then I had to rent some tents. For the first party, we made our own tents. Through the years, it got bigger and bigger. I had to get three more tents– real tents– for the models to change. And I had to get a permit, because I had a DJ– music, the DJ, and I had a generator, everything.
Gilian: So the parties would happen once a summer?
Ralph: Always the third Sunday in August.
Gilian: And did you have a name for them?
Ralph: Well, it was “Ralph’s Beach Party.” And then every time I had to get the permit, they said I had to give a company name. I can’t remember what I said at the time. And they said, “Okay your name.” I paid them, it was $50 for the permit to have these big tents on Riis. They told me “If you have music, speakers, or a DJ, you have to have a permit.” Luckily, I was really friendly with the guy who was the head of the permits. He said, “Okay, Ralph.” Every other year.
Gilian: Did you have any fears when making these parties?
Ralph: The main thing that made me nervous was the weather— I couldn’t cancel the party and reschedule if it rained because I was working! And the food was already cooked, and I couldn’t do that again. Luckily it never rained at any of my parties!
“Ralph’s Red Hot Beach Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. 1997. Model unknown. Fashion by Everett Clarke. Photo by Ralph Hopkins.
Gilian: Where did the clothes come from?
Ralph: I found friends of mine who were students at FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology]. So I said, “Would you like to be one of my models?” And they said, “It’s fine, sure.” One friend of mine worked at FIT, and he said, “I can get more models for you if you need,” and he’d bring me the clothes. I said, “You never know if somebody will buy your things, you never know who’s in the crowd.” So they donated their time and knew other students that had their own clothing lines, so they donated their time too. I had like four or five different designers. Through the years, it got bigger and bigger. The main designer was my friend Everett Clarke. There were other friends of his, students at FIT. They would design outfits you had never seen before.
Another designer was named Wa Renee. That was the name everyone knew him as. He died years ago. Like a male Grace Jones. Very out there, very futuristic clothes he used to wear. Very famous in the community.
Gilian: Would you say it was mostly the same community who was hanging out at Riis Beach at that time? Or was it other people from the city who were coming there?
Ralph: Basically, people would come out to Riis, every week, every day of the week. But then after the word got out on the internet, they were coming from DC, upstate New York, and other places that are out of New York. And the Bronx. People were bringing me gifts because they thought it was my birthday party. People were coming up to me and saying, “Oh, happy birthday Ralph, happy birthday.” I said, “It’s not my birthday, my birthday is in May.” Memorial Day, May 30th. But I would tell them, I’d say, “Okay, nobody can say I can’t have my birthday party months later. So this is my birthday party.” So that’s what I did. I never even met these people that would bring me… I mean really nice gifts and stuff: bracelets, vases– which I still have. And some gave me some money, which shocked me.
Gilian: Because they wanted to thank you for throwing the party?
Ralph: They would come up to me and say, “Thank you so much.” Even up to this day they would say, “You know, I met my girlfriend, I met my boyfriend at your party.” “Your parties were so good, I had so much fun.” Everybody was nice. I never had any fights. Everybody was really nice.
Gilian: What was a typical run-of-show like on the day of a party?
Ralph: My DJ would come, the show started at three o’clock. Sometimes he would come a little late, like 3:30 or 4:00. When he came and set the music, he started playing as we’re putting down the runway. The models were in the tents getting ready, I’m getting ready too, because I opened. At the first parties I would close the fashion show too, with a show that I would do.
“Ralph’s Red Hot Beach Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. 1997. Photo of and by Ralph Hopkins.
Gilian: What was your show? Were you dancing, or walking?
Ralph: I walked. I did Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey. She’s one of my favorite singers and I’m a James Bond fanatic, and I love Goldfinger. So I came out in all gold. Complete sequin gold. I was in a sequin gold bikini, my body was gold dust all over me, gold mask. I had six guys that I wrapped in gold mesh. They came out before me, like as the music started. And they would have in the fist of their hands, gold dust, which I still have some of that. And I told them, “Hold it in your fist to the very end. You will spray the gold dust all over everybody in the crowd.” I would come out in the middle of them, and I would touch each one of my dancers, while the music’s playing Goldfinger, because I’m Goldfinger. Another one, I came out as a… I was like a pimp. And that was to the music, “Money, Money, Money.” [singing] Money, money, money, money. And it was a coat with a long train. And I had a pimp hat on. And I had a fist full of fake money and real money. And I would throw the money into the crowd. And they were scrambling for the money, you know. It’s for fun. And I had six other dancers in that one. They would come out before me and I wrapped them in green mesh. And connected to the mesh was dollar bills all over the body. They would go out and I told them to face the crowd. They would just hand out the fake money, the fake dollar bills to the people in the crowd until I came out.
Gilian: Why was this at the beach, as opposed to somewhere else?
Ralph: Like I said, the first party, I just said to myself, You know, I want to have a party out here. And I wanted to have it in August, the end of the summer. At the end of the summer everybody will have their deepest tans. And your body will look really pretty. So I said, “Everybody come in white.” With your nice golden tan on your body, with the white bathing suits, and the girls bathing suits, the guys will look really pretty. White balloons and everything. And when they said, “Do you want to have another one?” I said, “Okay, one more, we’ve got to change the color.” That’s why we moved to red, blue, and neon.
Gilian: But always one color?
Ralph: That was the thing. I called it the color code. If the color code was blue, it was shades of blue. And we had another that was called Circus by the Sea. I had my friend, he’s a very good designer. I would say, “I need a ringmaster’s hat.” So he knew how to make that, he made the hat. He made a big ringmaster’s red coat. We had to make that in my hallway because it’s so big. With a long train.
At a fashion show you want to see really exotic, beautiful things that you’ve never seen before. I wanted you to know that I knew you were coming. I wanted something for you to see that you hadn’t seen before. And to have a good time, and feel that you’re part of it.
Gilian: Why is that important?
Ralph: It makes people want to come back for more, they want to see more. See something you have never seen before. You know? I’ve always liked dressing up, even when I was small. I love fashion. People who know me now, the clothes that I wear, you don’t see that with regular guys. The way I put it together. I don’t do it to show off. This is me, that’s just how I am. I like different things. People see me and ask me how old I am. No one can ever believe I’m 73.
Gilian: Did you realize that we are both wearing fleece today?
Ralph: Oh! I didn’t even notice that we matched.
Gilian: It seems like you were born with a sort of innately radiant sense of style. WIll you talk a little about style in your everyday life?
Ralph: When I sit on the beach, they walk up to me, [and they] notice my necklaces, my stones. I get a lot of compliments there. I wear it because it makes me feel good and has good energy. I’ve been doing this for many years with stones. People know me for my stones.(1)
Gilian: What is your setup like at the beach on a regular day?
Ralph: I only have my king-sized white sheets. I’m the only one. Been doing it for years.
Gilian: The beauty of a simple white sheet.
Ralph: I feel confined in a chair. I like to stretch out, and I can have guests come. I have room, I have a king-size sheet. For my friends I say, “No, sit down. I got room.” I’ve always been like this. I know so many people on the beach. They call me The Mayor at Riis Beach.
Gilian: And where on the beach do you usually sit?
Ralph: It’s the end of the beach where most of the gays sit. Mixed people sit, which I call “the Village.” Years ago, they used to be numbered back then. That was bay one. Back in the late ’60s. That was mostly African Americans, Latinos, and a few whites. Through the years it started changing, different people started coming to that area. And you had a mixed group of people who would start coming here. But it has always been nice, no fights.
Gilian: Tell me about the younger Ralph. Did you ever feel threatened in any way when you first started going to Riis?
Ralph: You know, when I started to experience tension— or even have any conflict that was highlighted— it was mostly when the beach was nude. It was nude twice over the years. The first time it was nude was the mid ’60s. One girl I knew saw a guy had a camera hidden inside of a boombox. She went up to him. She pulled out a knife, she’s like, “Give me that film.” Everybody was watching. He got nervous and he opened up the boombox and the camera was in there. He had to pull out the film. She took the film and she stretched it out. And everybody started clapping! But now, most people are half nude anyway. You know, g-strings, the girls are topless. Nobody’s bothering anybody. For me, it comes down to fun.
Gilian: How does it feel for you now to be there? We’re going through this pandemic, and more disconnected in a way from each other. How does the community at Riis feel now – compared with how it felt then in the ’60s?
Ralph: Well comparing the beach now with the way it used to be back then, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s: it was a more “up” feeling, and more fun. The different outfits, people would just come out with robes on. And different girls who had different fabulous bikinis that you would see in Bergdorf Goodman or Saks Fifth Avenue. Stuff like that. Some models used to come out there back then. You would catch a famous model sitting in the area. It was just more fun back then. The atmosphere was more fun.
Gilian: More playful?
Ralph: Yeah. And on the boardwalk area there were more places where you could eat restaurant seafood. Game rooms. It was just more fun back then. Things to do. And you didn’t feel threatened with all of it, you could go to the boardwalk, nobody would bother me. Things like that. Today, now you have a younger crowd coming in the Village area. The new kids are now there. They’re nice, they’re really nice. They’re in their own little groups. It’s just different. But it’s still very nice. Now we are getting a lot of people from Manhattan coming here now. A lot of the people from Staten Island are coming in here now, because now they have ferry boats that come from Manhattan, Lower Manhattan. The crowd at Riis, you don’t see at Fire Island or Coney Island. With the kind of clothes and dresses… it’s just more fun at Riis.
I just recently had a girl tell me that the big building… I call it The Big House, it’s a big brick building on the boardwalk.(2) They’re going to make it a hotel.
Gilian: Oh yea. I heard that too. What do you think of that?
Ralph: Personally, I think it could make the beach look nicer. Hopefully it could bring Riis back to where it should be: more glamorous, more fun, fix up the roads [and] the boardwalk. I don’t think it will necessarily make us move the Village area. How could they do that? Well, it’s public, but it’s a federal beach. They have their own rules.
Gilian: That’s an interesting perspective. Some organizers I know believe it could displace the Village area.
Ralph: I don’t think so.
Gilian: Would you like to get back to the parties? What made the shows feel so different than what you would see in an average fashion show?
Ralph: People would ask me, they would [say they’d] like to help me with things. I said, “No, I didn’t need the help. I know what to do in my mind.” They didn’t realize, where I come from— my background in design, fashion, and stuff like that— that I knew how to do all this by myself. I know exactly how… I know how I want the tents; what direction I want the speakers to angle the water, so the sound goes over the water— not down the beach to bother anybody, things like that; where to put my tables for the food. I want the poles lined up around the host area, so everybody will be inside the ten foot poles, because everybody will sit along the runway. My designers would design outfits you believe you had never seen before. Things like something Grace Jones would come out with, stuff like that.
Gilian: How about the participatory aspect of the shows?
Ralph: I would snatch people out of the crowd. If the design needed another model, I would go out of the tent and I’d say, I need a girl size 10, or whatever size, and I would just grab any person in the crowd that’d like to come in, because the fashion show was for anybody who wanted to be in it. I mean my friends who wanted to be models, I’d tell them, Go in the tent, put on the clothes and walk the runway! So it involved people in the crowd also to make them more part of it. And then, they had more fun.”(3)
Gilian: Were there other parties like that going on at Riis, besides yours?
Ralph: While I was having mine, another group of black guys who called themselves The Black Pride started to have a dance party out there. Their party was three weeks before mine. There were four or five of them, and they put a little money together. They had big tents, a dance floor, and a performance later. They had more connections than I did. The main thing, after their party was finished, they would leave garbage and trash– dirty– all over the beach. A real mess. The beach people hired a cleanup crew to clean up their mess, and they tried to present the bill to them. I heard that The Black Pride guys said, “We’re not going to pay that.” So the beach people said, “Oh, you’re not going to pay for it!? Okay, no more parties for nobody on the beach anymore.” So that one messed me up. That’s why my parties stopped. That’s why I couldn’t have mine. And I had nothing to do with them. I didn’t even know them, these people. So since then, up to now, that’s why I haven’t had my parties. Maybe now, I probably could get a permit.
“The Neon Party” at Riis Beach, Queens, NY. August 18, 1996. Model unknown. Fashion by Wa Renee. Photo by Ralph Hopkins.
Gilian: Did it matter that your fashion shows happened around so much nature, close to the ocean, with the sun coming through, and all the dunes there? I’m thinking about the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, the rose bushes, dolphins swimming…
Ralph: Having this kind of fashion show on the beach made it a little more exotic. The audience felt relaxed in the hot sun; being basically half naked, with no clothes on, watching the show. Seeing the people come with beautiful colors— in all red against the white sand, or all blue. The outfits everybody would come in. All because I would say the color for that year. I said, Let’s have a neon party. Could you imagine the neon colors that came on that beach? Over 200 people in neon colors, and overhead, neon fabric comes from ten foot poles. That was the most pretty, out of all the parties.
Gilian: Did you ever feel like the stories you wanted to tell through the parties were about the ocean, or about the dunes, or the dolphins that are sometimes out there?
Ralph: Occasionally we saw dolphins out there, which is very surprising. I think the first time I started seeing dolphins out there was the early ’70s. We saw them jumping, we couldn’t believe it in this water. Everything was just so beautiful at the time. Even now, it still has this magic to it.
Gilian: Did you know that jumping is sometimes a way they communicate with a mate or another pod?
Ralph: Jumping has this magic to it, it’s beautiful!
Gilian: They’re pushing off the water and meeting the air on all sides! It’s so open and light, and also so present. Communities want to fly, windmilling around, and also want to feel at home. Right here, but also free completely.
Ralph: Even now a lot of people still don’t know where Riis Beach is. In Manhattan, they ask, “What beach do you go to?” I say, “Riis.” They say “So where is that?” I’m not surprised that people still don’t know. It is kind of nice, because it kind of makes it a more private beach for us. I’ve been a beach person all my life. Riis Beach, from day one, I loved it right away… I used to go every weekend by train or by bus. It was just, you felt more at ease at Riis. It fits my personality, I would say. It’s more fun.
Footnotes:
(1) That day, he was wearing a beautiful black fleece and an onyx necklace from Brazil.
(2) The abandoned Neponsit Beach Hospital, known as the Neponsit Children’s Hospital. It once served as a tuberculosis sanatorium and operated from 1915 to 1955. Neponsit Beach Hospital mostly treated children, but by World War II, began to also treat military veterans until the hospital’s closure. The hospital was later converted into a Home for the Aged, a city-run nursing home that closed in 1998.
(3) I was reminded of Vogue’s article “2016 Was the Year Real People Took Over the Runways”, which cited luminaries like Hood By Air, Eckhaus Latta, and Chromat as pioneering this tactic of placing real people on runways.
Gilian Rappaport (she/they) is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and herbalist based in Rockaway Beach, Queens. She was born and raised in New York between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. A descendant of Russian and Polish migrants, she is a gatherer, and seeks to engage the intersections of nature, play, stories, and sensory experience to explore queer possibilities. She is also known for her design and research work, supporting the vision for regenerative projects that are renewing, restoring, and nurturing our world. For updates on upcoming projects, sign up for her newsletter and follow @gilnotjill.
Ralph Hopkins (he/him) is a 73 year old native New Yorker residing in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Known as The Mayor at Riis Beach, he threw participatory beach parties there in the ‘90s involving fashion shows, DJs, and food, and has been a consistent presence for the past six decades. He is also a former chef, and in the ‘70s, became a five-time gold medalist — and one bronze — at the Madison Square Garden Harvest Moon Ball for the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug. He is also a US army veteran. To get in touch, contact Ralph on Facebook.
Uncomfortable Conversations: Money
December 12, 2021
Text by Marina Lopez with Caroline Woolard
“It’s related to being able to be more present and less controlling. Which also relates to controlling money, being constipated, having a tight clenched jaw. So many things with white supremacy. So to me, there’s a connection between shitting and money.”
CAROLINE WOOLARD
In the last five years we have found ourselves in a cultural moment of reckoning, in which survivors are being listened to and supported and perpetrators are being held accountable more than before. However, what emerged is also a culture in which any infraction results in the call-out and cancellation of the individual in question. I believe that this kind of tipping of the scales in the opposite direction serves as an usher of transformation, but that it is not a sustainable or regenerative space to remain in. To create a culture that embodies values of cooperation, pluralism, and collective and democratic stewardship (like a Solidarity Economy(1)), we must be able to acknowledge the histories and experiences we come from in a generative way. And yet, we find ourselves in this moment where people are afraid to learn because the fear of getting it “wrong” is more powerful than the fear of their own ignorance.
Informed by my experiences as a biracial Mexican American woman, bodyworker/somatic educator, dancer, and cultural organizer working within the Solidarity Economy, I am observing a need to cultivate the skills to navigate conversations around topics and realities like race, white supremacy, gender, money, and any and all subjects that surface discomfort. I am engaged in an effort to use my personal forms of knowledge as strategies to help develop this as a cultural practice. It is a series of intimate meetings I’m calling, Uncomfortable Conversations.
Uncomfortable Conversations explores discomfort as a place of discourse and connection. Both verbal and non-verbal dialogue serves as the medium that traces back pathways to locate the roots and home of discomfort that reside within us as individuals, and form our social and cultural sinew. And then there are the bodies— our bodies— that have navigated these systems of oppression and have both delivered and endured violence across generations. Bodies that are doing the work of abolition and liberation. How do we bring them into all that we do in a way that acknowledges their labor, and understands them as places of discourse?
In Uncomfortable Conversations, we are invited to observe what our bodies are telling us. In this conversation, artist and cultural organizer, Caroline Woolard, who I met through our work together for Art.Coop’s Study-into-Action(2), beautifully mapped her somatic responses (see diagram below) as memories surfaced. Her sensations served as a dialogical partner as we explored the stories and lineage around the word ‘money.’
Uncomfortable Conversations places equal value on the topics and words we discuss, the somatic responses that emerge, and the skills that we cultivate to navigate discomfort with curiosity and resiliency. It is my hope that as these conversations continue to happen, that instead of the isolation that is felt from exiling discomfort from our ‘selves’ and society, we can embrace and understand that discomfort as a place of shared belonging.
Caroline is an artist, organizer, and thinker whose work offers a reframing around economies and exchange that is collaborative and disrupts the status quo of who defines ‘economy’ and how we participate in economic exchange. I want to acknowledge and honor the trust that Caroline placed in me by agreeing to have this conversation together and share it with each of you.
*Caroline and I have never met in person as she is currently in Berlin, Germany and I am in Northern California, U.S. Our conversation was conducted over zoom.
Marina Lopez, Cartography of Discomfort (Caroline and Marina), 2021
Drawing from moments and sensations in our conversation, these images begin the process of mapping the somatics of our dialogical exploration around money. The images function as a way to create a visible bridge between the intellectual experiences and how those surface in our bodies.
Marina Lopez: So I’ll share with you some of the guiding questions because they’ve been helping me ground a little bit in this work:
How can we learn to become better stewards of vulnerability?
When, in the history of humankind, did emotional vulnerability begin to register in our brains as a threat and therefore our bodies?
What does it feel like to listen/hear, and to guide/follow with curiosity?
Caroline Woolard: Yeah. Cool.
Marina: Do you have any questions or comments?
Caroline: Yeah. Thank you! It’s so beautiful to hear this other side of you. It’s vulnerable for both of us to be and share this creative side and practice. So that’s nice. Yeah, it’s really exciting!
Marina: Yeah, thank you [giggles]. It feels special and sweet to share this first conversation in the project with you.
Caroline: I’m excited. So tell me, where do we go? [Both laugh]
Marina: So I’d love to start with this experience we had while we were co-organizing Art.Coop’s Study-into-Action. We were wrapping the seven-week series and making sure all of the artists and facilitators had been paid or knew how to submit an invoice. One of the artists invoiced for a lot higher than what we had thought we were paying them. We went back into our correspondence to check in about what the agreement had been. You, me, and Nati had this exchange internally about how to proceed because the invoiced amount was actually higher than what we had agreed to. I thought it was interesting how we all had different inclinations for how to handle the experience. What stuck out to me about it was that you had said something like, I don’t like having conversations around money. Or, I don’t want to have that conversation. So I became really curious about that. One, because I’m still getting to know you as a person so it was interesting for me to learn that about you. And also I found it interesting because your work has been so much about exchange and economics. And then Study-into-Action specifically was bringing together this money world and creative world so I was really like, Huh, I want to explore that a little more with you. Like, what’s that about? So do you want to share anything about that experience?
Caroline: Yeah. The part I’m remembering is that the artist thought she was getting paid $500 per session and we had thought it was $500 for the whole thing, four sessions. We thought it was $100 a session rather than $500 a session, so it was so much less. So maybe what I meant to say is, I’m uncomfortable talking about money and paying people less. And the convo around, we actually want to pay you $500 rather than $2000— it’s that gap that makes me so uncomfortable: it’s the conversation around someone’s value with dollars. That’s the part that triggers so much rage and a sense of being controlled. Speaking of the body, this somatic feeling, like a tightness; feeling like I’m trapped. The way exploitation feels. I feel like it’s deep in my eye sockets. A feeling of hot tears welling up. [Hands are scrunched together beneath eyes] Or in my throat or in my chest. A tightness. [Hands in loose fists at center of sternum]. It just feels SO wrong that people can’t have what they need in order to survive. And so a lot of the work that I’ve done is not about money, it’s like, how do we not use money, even though of course we have to. So it’s about, how do we engage in exchange or barter or mutual aid or gift giving, or share our resources abundantly. Like I have a place in Berlin where people can come and stay here. I can help with this, I can help with that. But when it comes down to, maybe she [the artist] thought that she was going to pay rent with that, I just go into fear. Total fear. Like what you were saying about, when did vulnerability make us as a human species feel that we were being threatened and go into a space of fear, or fight or flight?
Marina: Yeah.
Caroline: Yeah, it feels like that. I guess there’s also this feeling about feeling let down around it [money] in particular. Like expecting something and not receiving it and having a sense of unclarity. And yeah it just brings up a whole family history going back for so long, where you thought you were going to have whatever. Like my grandfather thought he was going to have a job on this tobacco farm but he didn’t get it. That’s why he tried to rob a bank. That’s why he failed and changed his last name. And why my dad was born with a fake last name and didn’t know that he had family. And then came back to the farm when he was 10 and was raised in this very abusive family. And then my dad fled, and managed to go to college and make money, randomly, which is a long story, which we could get into. But he wanted to be a philosopher. He was drafted into Vietnam, all these things happened. He eventually became a doctor and actually made money and then raised me in this world that he didn’t feel comfortable in.
But then also my parents got divorced when I was 18, and they were so emotionally devastated with each other that they basically abandoned me. So then when I was in college, I had an expectation that I would be taken care of, like also financially, because I was raised totally owning class. [I] had money growing up from my dad and he wanted me to be comfortable in this world of owning class people. He put me in private school and was like, you’re gonna learn this world that I didn’t learn. But then when I was 18— he supported me a little bit and also I went to Cooper Union, which was free— but then once I was 22, he was like, No you’re done, which I had not expected at all. And emotionally he was also like, I can’t even think about you, because I’m so depressed. And so it brings up all this feeling of expectation and love and care. Like I just feel it in my throat [brings hands to throat]. It’s like [snaps fingers quickly across face] and then the rug gets ripped out from you. And so [these kinds of conversations about money as it relates to someone’s value] has this feeling that triggers all of that in me.
And I think that’s generational too. Like, Oh, you thought you’d have a family and a farm and help your mom on the farm. But no. And then my dad was, I don’t know what he thought. I think he just wanted to get out from the youngest age, and that sentiment echoed from his dad.
And then for me, I thought everything was amazing. I’m just living this fancy life. Everything’s going to be easy. And I kind of knew it was a fancy life ‘cause my dad had always told me how he hadn’t had running water. And reminded me that, You’ve got this fancy thing, or, I’m going to give you everything.
And then it was like, just kidding, good luck. You’re in the arts now, there’s no money. And you live in a warehouse that’s dangerous with rats [laughs] and drugs. There were so many things that were just very unsafe and I was very unsafe. So yeah, it brings up all of that. Like how to survive and not knowing. Also, because it brings in so much around class, race, and coming from a background that was so comfortable being white, and being so much more likely to be able to access resources.
So that’s all also coming up. And also that we’re doing a Solidarity Economy program, but then being like, Actually there’s no abundance. And so I feel like I can learn so much from you. Like, yes, all of these things are true and we can hold that emotionally in an embodied way [brings palms to chest] and talk about what’s possible on the material plane in this moment.
I just don’t know. How do you stay in the material? Or hold all of them: the emotional, material, and the vulnerability that you’re talking about? And especially at that moment, I felt so maxed out with all the other things we were doing. That was a lesson in expecting that there will be a need for spaciousness. And I didn’t feel emotionally, or even just literally, schedule-wise, like, how would we hold a good conversation with the artist? And you did some amount of that, absolutely. How did it feel for you?
Marina: Thank you so much for sharing all that. I mean that’s deep. That’s deep lineage, generational wounding. And it’s really fascinating to me how each of us responds and holds that differently. Like I have my own experiences around money and class and race that are different and have made me uncomfortable talking about money, having money, not having money. So it’s interesting to think about how my own experiences influenced my desire to have that conversation with the artist, and then how we had that conversation. I was definitely aware of the dynamics of race within that conversation, for sure. And that’s something that I’ve struggled with in myself as well, being biracial and growing up in an upper middle class white environment where I was like the most diverse person in the room, which says a lot.
Like my mom telling me, I didn’t even think about you as being Mexican. So it was like this weird space where I was both fetishized and shunned for being other, for being Mexican and living in these two worlds. So I was definitely cognizant of my position within the conversation with the artist in regards to race. And then also in regards to the power dynamics of who’s holding the money and who needs the money.
[Pausing to think] I don’t think I went into the conversation with an expectation of, she’s going to say this, or I need her to say this. I think I wanted to know what her needs were. I wanted the opportunity to express what Art.Coop’s needs were and to find a way to advocate for both. And that’s how I approach conversations in my own bodywork practice with clients around money. Asking, what are your needs in terms of your body? What are your economic needs? Is receiving this work going to threaten your ability to survive? And if it is, then I don’t want to participate in that, so how can we figure out what works for both of us? And that’s, I think, the place where I always come to in that conversation, is this question of, what works for both of us? Because I think I’ve had experiences where people take advantage of or exploit that generosity. Because there’s this scarcity and fear around there not being enough, and money being a big trigger for scarcity. So if someone gives them the opportunity to like, not have to pay for something, it’s like, you’re getting a deal. And because there’s a scarcity, everybody wants a deal. And that has felt really yucky to me because then I don’t feel valued.
Caroline: Yeah. That’s so interesting. I recently was on this call with someone who said, I run this print shop and I no longer do sliding scale because the only people who ask for the low end of the sliding scale are people who don’t need it. Mainly white people. And he also said that for a lot of people, there’s a dignity in paying the full price. So how do you navigate that in the conversation? Like who also is comfortable being real with you? How do you do that?
Marina: Yeah. Well, when I came back to work in late 2020 after things were locked down because of COVID-19, I did away with my sliding scale for the first time since I’d started my practice in 2010. I just stopped offering it from the get-go. Because that is also what I found: I would have clients who would tell me about how, oh, they used to own a private plane and they’d fly to LA or Europe for weekend trips. And I was baffled. Why are you paying me at the lowest end of the scale then? It felt gross and weird. And it bred a lot of resentment toward them that I didn’t want present in the treatment room. So what I do now is I offer a really gentle invitation into the conversation about payment by saying, I don’t want this to compromise your ability to provide for yourself or your family. I also offer that at this point in my life, I’m financially stable enough where offering you a session at a price that works for you isn’t going to threaten my safety or security. And I also have clients who pay me more than my rate, so that allows me to be able to offer sessions like this. So I think that when people know that your wellbeing isn’t going to be threatened, it makes them feel a little bit safer to consider their actual needs.
I do have a few clients who are like, well, I could pay $50. Or I can pay $25, but I also made some sauerkraut and some ghee this week for you. And I also love opportunities to barter or trade. Like I trade with my mechanic, and our contractor and I trade with other bodyworkers. I’m very curious about what that barter system could look like if more of us participated in it.
Caroline: Wow. Yeah. I have so much to learn from the way you approach it. I think also energetically.
Marina: That’s where I think the discomfort piece has come in for me. There’s so many pieces to that: there’s discomfort around my own self worth and value and not feeling like I belonged in any world, which resulted in me not feeling like I had value in a space. So working through that deep shit and finding and recognizing my own value has helped give me confidence navigating discomfort around conversations about money and payment. Because when I believe in my own worth and then others try to question it, I know that their behavior is not a reflection of my value, but rather has more to do with their own experiences. And I think that realization was a big one in regards to my relationship to discomfort around money.
Caroline: Yes. Yeah that’s amazing!
Marina: I love thinking about these things and how other people think about them. I really appreciated the way that you mapped what you were experiencing in your body. Because that’s also part of what I want to create with this work is our cartography of discomfort. To create this body map to physically/materially visualize it. Because I think that that’s a really interesting piece to this. Like when I used to be stressed about money, it always presented in the same place in my upper shoulders [brings hand to upper shoulder and neck]. I came to know what it felt like in my body, even before I was conscious of it in my mind.
So I really appreciated that you were naming those places as you were also naming the experiences and emotions that correlated with them. It’s a really beautiful quality and awareness to have.
The word ‘expectation’ came up a lot in what you said, and I’m just curious about your relationship with expectation. You shared a little bit about your childhood and your father, and you having this expectation of being cared for and loved and then feeling abandoned. Would you talk a little bit about expectation and abandonment?
Caroline: Uggh. Marina. Ooof.
Yeah I have to think about it. I’m like, oh, it’s such a season of unmet expectations and unmet needs, like in a familial way. Like ugh! Leigh Claire [Caroline’s Wife] and I were just crying about that last night. So, in a way I’ve cried it out. So maybe I can share and it’s less welled up. ‘Cause it definitely was coming out all yesterday. Also in terms of you doing this work, and the dialogical versus the safety of not sharing, it’s very interesting. This is a whole world that I also am curious about.
Marina: Oh, that’s so hard. The holidays bring up so much too, because there’s so much expectation. And then all those dynamics that are present, but never really talked about or reconciled. They don’t just go away. You just have to step back into them.
Caroline: Yeah.
[Both laugh]
Marina: Yeah. I’m so curious. This is like a very personal question. You don’t have to answer, but I’m curious too, because of my own experiences of expectation, caretaking, and abandonment, for so many years I never wanted to be a mother or a parent. I was like, nope, not interested in taking care of anybody else. Like I have been there, done it. Don’t want to do it again. I’m curious if you had any of that come up for you?
Caroline: I just need to breathe and probably cry, but okay. [inhales deeply and brings the tops of hands across her face to cover eyes] I think, like normally I [voice starts to quiver]… Well, maybe I will do the somatic. As if I were working with Alta Starr from generative somatics(3), which is where I learned the talking and the somatic at the same time— which is amazing. You talk and you have space and you like, feel it.
I feel this welling up in my chest [brings finger tips to chest] and I don’t know, in my jaw. Just like a quivering. I think it’s also, the season is so sensitive. I feel so much expectation or hope, ridiculously, to be cared for. And it became very important to me, somatically. Especially when I had this revelation that it’s been three generations of running. Of cutting off. Of canceling. Not reconciling. No transformative justice. No healing.
And it was just normal to me. I thought, that’s just what parents do. And so when I decided to become a parent and I was pregnant, I prepared. I had a whole somatic centering that I would do every day that was welcoming Lion to come through me. I would say, “I can love my messy self, my needy self, and also that we can transform the pain in community. And we can ask for our needs with love, through love.” I had a whole thing that I would say every single day.
It’s so intense. And to me, this cutting off [that my family has enacted] is how you keep it raw. But it also is hard for me because I really want to shift somatically and go toward the conflict. So that’s why I’m also very interested in your invitation or request to go into the money story and do it with all of this reality.
Marina: Yeah. Interesting. And I think that this space for me, the way I’ve come to understand it, at least for now, is that there may not be any answers. There may not be resolution. But, what if we became really literate in discomfort? What if we knew what that felt like? And like you did, really beautifully, name what you were feeling in your body, where it was, what was coming up for you and it helped you through the story and helped you through your memories. It helped you through that pain. That’s part of what I want this space to offer— awareness and skills that so many of us don’t know how to or need practice finding and being in.
I think about the brain as well and how all of these experiences that we have create these pathways in our brain that are then associated with these belief systems: I’m not worthy of love. Or, I am worthy of love, but only if I show up in this way. Only if I caretake. Only if I’m the good girl. Then I can be worthy of love. So we then seek to affirm those belief systems in our relationships, in our work environments. So how do we create new beliefs about ourselves? And then how do we practice those beliefs? It’s about practicing. It’s not necessarily about finding a definitive answer or a right way. I appreciate you sharing so openly. And there’s so many pieces there that I really resonate with as well.
Caroline: I’m so curious— I’m like, I know in 10 minutes, we’re going to end and like, I have to do other things. In generative somatic language, I’m an ‘away’. They have three types. One is a ‘toward,’ which tends to be people who do healing work [chuckles] and also domestic workers because it’s a survival strategy. So when they’re organizing with the Domestic Workers Alliance, they’re talking about these different shapes.
A ‘toward’ is like, oh, there’s a problem, let me move into that. And then there is a fight one. They’re interested in the tension, but I think they kind of clash with it, that’s their way. And then mine is [an away], I already left. Like I’m ready. I already cried, I’m ready, boop, boop, boop. That’s the Capricorn robot.
Marina: Yeah. But it’s like that kind of compartmentalization. How has it served you?
Caroline: I mean, that’s how I have a career, I think. And these are the different parts. And I think the people who really know me, who collaborate with me, they know the really introverted, vulnerable Caroline that’s like, What?! How are there all these people who know who I am, or follow me on Instagram or who want to meet with me? Or they are liking these photos or think they know me? And then there’s the compartmentalized Capricorn, that’s just like, I am very organized, efficient, and loved. I showed up in all the right ways and I did all the grants. And I wrote all the emails and I’m always on time. And in my next meeting, I won’t even seem like I cried. And they need to fuse. I think that’s my hope with you, is that we can create space for more wholeness to be held between us as humans and colleagues. So that there is more integration between our whole selves and the work we are doing together in those spaces.
And then we can make a culture like that. Like you’re talking about. That’s the work. So there doesn’t have to be this fear there, where I think I’ll only get invited or loved or whatever, if I don’t cry, have my shit together, sound smart, answer the email, do more than you thought I was going to do.
Marina: Yes, yes. All the expectations! I feel that so deeply.
So I presented on this project in class this week and a big part of that presentation was mapping all the different parts of myself and then being like, this might not seem relevant, but it’s a hundred percent relevant because I have never been allowed to show up wholly in any space. And always had to isolate and choose who I got to be. Or not choose, but have to be only one piece of myself. And so I think what you just said is so beautiful. How can we create more places where we can be authentic and show up with all the parts of ourselves? And I think that’s where I see the connection with the Solidarity Economy work.
Because in the Solidarity Economy, each piece is intrinsic to the whole. So if we don’t bring in all the pieces, it doesn’t work. I think that that’s where I’m seeing the connection here with this kind of explorative, truth-seeking wholeness and how it fits into this economy that we’re working so hard to create, visualize, and explain, teach, and learn, because we’re doing that work with the bodies and the selves and we want to invite that fullness into those spaces.
I think that’s part of why I’m so curious about choosing this one word or subject because this conversation came out of the word “money.” There’s so much there. And that’s part of it too— I’ve found in my bodywork practice with clients that, you think you have a pain in your neck [points to right side of neck where it meets the shoulder], but really there are ten stories that are your mother, that are your father, that is your childhood best friend, that’s your boss, and it’s living here. And so, let’s explore what that is, so that you can understand it and then talk to it and move through it.
Caroline: Yeah. Wow. Alta Starr from generative somatics said something like, “The pain will move through you if you let yourself feel it.” [laughs] I was like, Oh God. [both laugh]
Marina: But it’s true, right? Like you have real emotional releases because finally, you can’t not. It doesn’t matter how many meetings you have scheduled or work things, it comes through at some point. And you’ve just got to do it.
Caroline: Wow. Well, I’m excited to talk. I’m like, in my ‘away.’ I’m like four minutes until my next meeting… [both laugh]
Marina: Yeah. Can we do a little bit of movement?
Caroline: Yeah, that sounds great.
Marina: Okay, cool. And you’re welcome to go off camera or keep it on. It’s totally up to you. And then whatever feels good if you want to stay seated or if you want to sit down. I think I’m going to stand up.
[Both remain on camera. Both stand up and rearrange their spaces.]
If you would like to join in the movement that Caroline and Marina shared to integrate all the stories, memories, and sensations that we experienced and expressed, please follow along below.
If you have space, begin by standing up. Slowly start to rotate your torso from side to side, allow your arms to move freely as you do this.
Feel what that twisting movement feels like all along your spine. From your neck all the way down into your tailbone.
Notice how your hips respond. Are they moving? Still? Where in your body is the rotation being initiated from?
The movement of your arms across the front and back of your body, touching opposites sides of your body acts as a bridge between the left and right hemispheres of your brain.: connecting to the emotional, the intellectual, the spiritual; integrating the words and sensations with your memories and associations.
When you feel ready, bring you breath into your movement in a conscious way. Notice where your breath begins. Notice the quality and texture. Places where it feels easeful and places it sticks.
Then as you’re swinging your arms, start to bring one hand to the opposite shoulder maintaining your motion. Feeling the fullness of your palm as it makes contact across your pecs underneath your clavicle.
Start to slow down your movement, until it’s just your hips rotating. Coming to a pause.
Still standing, place one hand on your lower belly, right below your belly button. Place the other hand, right above your belly button where your rib cage meets your sternum here. And at that point where the rib cage meets the sternum, there’s this really tender spot of ligament.
Gently find a little pressure there. Then a little circular motion with the palm of your hand pressing into that area. Start to broaden that movement to cover a bigger surface. Keeping a circular massaging motion around your belly. Palpating the softness. And places where it feels a little hard and stuck.
Then letting that movement go.
With your hands still on your abdomen, slowly with soft knees, begin to bounce and let your hands move freely on your belly. Feeling the weight of your body, moving into your heels, going back down into the earth, feeling your hands across your belly, generating heat, reinvigorating your Qi, your life force, your energy, your stories, your identities.
Inhale. Exhale through your mouth with a sound.
Good and keeping that bouncing movement, taking your hands off of your belly and letting them just shake.
Breathing in and exhaling “shhh” through your mouth.
Slow your movement until you find a pause.
Clap your hands together in front of your face. Rub your palms together quickly back and forth until they are hot. Place your palms over your eyes.
Last big inhale and exhale when you’re ready.
Last brushing movements or anything you want to do before we come back.
Caroline: Wow. Mmm, thank you. Yeah, I think luckily I’ve been doing like seven years of therapy… Once you know that thing and you let it move through, it’s like you feel it, but not in the same way. It’s like, Oh, it’s that wound.
Marina: Yeah. Absolutely. Any last thoughts? Questions?
Caroline: Um, yeah. I’d love to interview you or just have these storytelling moments more in our integrated selves practice.
Marina: I love that. Let’s do it. I imagine this project as ongoing conversations.
Caroline: One thing I was thinking before I go that maybe is interesting for this is, I don’t know if I ever said to you, “I don’t want to be a tightwad bitch.” Did I ever use that term? Very specific and very somatic for me. And it’s completely related to this whole history. And when you texted me about intimacy at first, I thought, Oh God, I don’t want to talk about sexual assault.
That’s the first thing that comes up. And then I was like, Okay, what else would I want to share? And then I was like, Oh, giving birth is literally like shitting in public, which is my biggest fear. And I had to do it. And for me, in order to give birth, all the somatic people I worked with were like, it’s about opening your sphincters; your throat [moves hands to throat], your colon, everything, your body. And that is what felt like a liberation. And it also is related to being able to be more in the present and be less controlling. Which is also related to controlling money, being constipated, having a tight clenched jaw. So many things with white supremacy. So I think to me, there’s a connection between shitting and money.
Marina: I love it. I’m so here for that!
Caroline: But yeah, I was like, I need to tell you that, because it was my first thought and it’s very somatic. Yeah. We can talk about the sphincters.
[Both laugh]
Footnotes:
(1) The New Economy Coalition defines the solidarity economy as “a global movement to build a just and sustainable economy where we prioritize people and the planet over endless profit and growth. Growing out of social movements in Latin America and the Global South, the solidarity economy provides real alternatives to capitalism, where communities govern themselves through participatory democracy, cooperative and public ownership, and a culture of solidarity and respect for the earth.” See Neweconomy.net for more information.
(2) A seven week series in the fall of 2021 that connected over 100 cultural innovators from grantmaking institutions, to artists and organizers working within the Solidarity Economy. Together we socialized, studied, and collectively dreamt so that we could build the cultural economy we want.
(3) generative somatics is an organization whose mission is to “support social and climate justice movements in achieving their visions of a radically transformed society. We do this by bringing somatic transformation to movement leaders, organizations, and alliances. Our programs engage the body (emotions, sensations, physiology), in order to align our actions with values and vision, and heal from the impacts of trauma and oppression. We aim to advance loving and rigorous movements that possess the creativity, resilience, and liberatory power needed to transform society” (“About Us,” Generative Somatics).
Marina Lopez (she/her) is a Mexican American performing artist and aspiring social practice artist, massage therapist/somatic educator, and cultural organizer. Her experience as a bodyworker is essential to her practice as an artist because we can’t separate the art from the body that makes it. Care work is culture work. As an artist, her work is an interdisciplinary weaving of many voices that links to history, social movements, and tradition. She is a co-coordinator and creative collaborator with Art.Coop and co-coordinates a national Arts, Culture, Care and Solidarity Economy working group. Marina seeks to create work that articulates and provides an embodied cognition of the ways in which art, culture, and care are foundational within a thriving society and brings these undervalued, but essential elements into relationship within a public sphere that creates access to embodiment as an experience, but also as discourse. Her work challenges the status quo of who we as a society uplift as expert voices, and inspires curiosity, collaboration, and solidarity. @connectivesomatics
Caroline Woolard (she/her) is a tall Capricorn who makes sculptures, platforms, and events to imagine and enact relationships of mutual aid. Right now, she is creating Stones that Hold Water and organizing Art.Coop with Marina Lopez and Nati Linares to grow the solidarity economy movement in the United States. She is also the Director of Research and Programs at Open Collective, a collectively-owned tech platform that enables a network of 600+ nonprofits and co-ops to support 7000+ groups to legally raise and spend $30M+ each year. While making clothing, furniture, and sculptures, Woolard has co-founded a number of initiatives, including TradeSchool.coop (barter skillshare), StudyCollaboration.com (collaborative methods), BFAMFAPhD (cultural equity in education), and MakingandBeing (collaborative pedagogy). Woolard’s art and systems-change work has been featured at MoMA, in a monograph, and on New York Close Up, a digital film series broadcast on PBS. Caroline is currently learning to use her type-A skills when asked and to slow down to be present for the pains and pleasures of interdependence. She aims to say “yes” as her 1.5 year old Lion and her wife Leigh Claire La Berge invite her to transform, daily. www.carolinewoolard.com
Immigration, community, and a play about war / Імміграція, спільнота та п’єса про війну
December 12, 2021
Text by Illia Yakovenko with Elvin Rzaev / Илья Яковенко и Эльвин Рзаев
Illia Yakovenko with Elvin Rzaev / Илья Яковенко и Эльвин Рзаев
Elvin Rzaev at Victoria Bar, Portland, OR, 2021. Photo by cc.00f
/ Эльвин Рзаев в Виктория баре, г. Портланд, Орегон, 2021. Фото cc.00f
English (1)
Immigration, community, and a play about war
“I miss sardelki and selyodka.”
ELVIN RZAEV
I’ve been living in Portland for the past couple of years, and during this time I learned that a large number of immigrants from the former Soviet countries live in the Pacific Northwest. The majority of them immigrated here as refugees persecuted for their religious beliefs after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have always been interested in what is going on in the local immigrant community, but in reality, I haven’t been in touch with folks much. Folks whom I sporadically encountered in Portland reminded me of the cultural and political context that we come from. Our interactions triggered in me both the collective trauma our societies have been going through and my individual traumas of growing up in eastern Ukraine during the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some interactions brought up more recent political conflicts that were especially painful to be reminded of, because the wounds are still fresh and bleeding. I’ve also noticed how some local organizations attempt to tap into folks’ religious beliefs and values with the purpose of converting them into political support of a conservative political agenda in the United States.
At the same time, I came across a publication on the Slavic community in Multnomah County(2), published in 2014 by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University. This report brings attention to the numerous challenges that the community faces, such as economic difficulties and access to jobs, housing, education, and culturally-specific services that have taken up a systemic form. The report emphasizes that “the experiences of the Slavic community are best understood through a lens of racism” and that the community experience has much solidarity with other communities of color.
Based on the information provided in this report, in my opinion, the reinforcement of the ideologies and institutions of settler colonialism and white supremacy offered by the advocates of the conservative political agenda doesn’t benefit the community or bring that promised salvation from economic hardship. Rather, it exacerbates the systemic inequality experienced by the Slavic immigrant community, and further polarizes U.S. society. I see the path of solidarity with BIPOC communities and common action toward equity and social justice as a better long-term solution for the community.
This year, I founded the Center for Art and Human Cooperation (CAHC), an artist-initiated institution committed to supporting mutual understanding and solidarity through art and culture at the cross-communal, cross-cultural, and international level. In Portland, Oregon, CAHC plans to support and create opportunities for learning and exchange among diverse Portland communities, and bringing attention to the diverse experiences and values of immigrants from the former Soviet countries. CAHC has recently launched art tours in Ukrainian and Russian languages with a focus on cultural events organized by BIPOC artists, creators, and organizations. Other programs include the International Acquisition Committee, an art-centered education program at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), and occasional food-based events.
In the framework of the CAHC’s Ukrainian and Russian-speaking community outreach program in Portland, I talked with Elvin Rzaev, a Ukrainian playwright and sous-chef, about his experience of immigration to the United States and his life in Portland, Oregon. With Elvin’s permission, I am also sharing here an excerpt from his play, ‘ATO. Monologue of a Military Psychologist,’ which was written using the verbatim technique: based on an interview with a real military psychologist who went through the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Illia Yakovenko: Hi! How long have you been living in Portland? What do you do here?
Elvin Rzaev: September marked five years since I have been living in Portland. Currently, I work as a sous-chef at the Victoria Bar.
Illia: What made you move to the United States and how did you end up in Portland?
Elvin: My aunt, uncle, and two cousins live in Portland. This is why I came here. I got a green card because they have lived here for a long time. I visited the U.S. every summer break, and after I graduated from college I realized that I feel myself limited in Ukraine, and so I decided to move to the U.S..
Illia: We are going to publish an excerpt from your play, but for some reason you have introduced yourself as a chef at a bar rather than a playwright or a writer. How do you identify yourself professionally?
Elvin: I was trained as an actor in college and I can say that I’m a playwright. But right now my occupations are Chef and Manager. But nothing prevents me from doing all of these professional activities at once.
Illia: Why did you decide to become a playwright?
Elvin: I started to write plays the same year I got accepted to the acting department at Kyiv Karpenko-Kary National Theatre, Cinema, and Television University. I was annoyed by the lack of new plays at my college. They had only Kaidashev’s Family.(3) During my studies I didn’t fit well into the format of my program. I was different because I didn’t like this antiquated system and school. I was more interested in new texts and a new vision of theater.
Illia: How has your move to the U.S. affected your opportunities for creative professional development?
Elvin: It hasn’t had any impact. I was able to creatively develop in Ukraine. But now I’m not an actor. I don’t work as an actor. And nothing prevents me from working as a playwright here, or in Ukraine, or elsewhere because people read and perform my plays everywhere.
Illia: Before you moved to the U.S. you had been immersed into the Ukrainian reality and you had been writing plays which resonate with that reality. Were you able to find topics for yourself that resonate here in the U.S.?
Elvin: Yes, my plays are more in tune with Ukraine, it’s true. But my last play will resonate with Ukraine and with other places such as the [United] States, Europe, and I don’t know… Because it’s a global issue. In the States my plays haven’t been performed yet, but I just sent one of my plays to an American film director in Portland. Let’s see where it may get me.
Illia: What topics did you explore in Ukraine?
Elvin: In Ukraine, my play, Diary of Maidan,(4) resonated a lot. I’m one of its playwrights. And I’m a playwright of the play, ATO.(5) Monologue of a Military Psychologist. And it had a resonance in Ukraine and Europe and with current events that keep happening. And I also wrote mundane plays, so to say, about everyday hard life in Ukraine and beyond.
Illia: What is your last play about and why do you think it is relevant everywhere?
Elvin: Because I bring up themes such as drugs, sex; transgender, gay, and lesbian [identity]; breast implants, etc. I think these days it’s going to resonate everywhere.
Illia: Do you feel connected to Ukraine while in Portland?
Elvin: It is a difficult question. I think I feel connected to my family from Ukraine who stayed in Ukraine. But with Ukraine itself, probably not anymore.
Illia: Do you feel yourself connected to Portland’s community of immigrants from Ukraine or from the former Soviet countries in a broader sense?
Elvin: No [laughing]. No. And once again: NO! And please don’t cut it out, publish it the way I said it. It is a matter of principle. I’m allowed to speak the truth, right? When I moved to the U.S. I decided that I won’t interact with the so-called community because of a number of different reasons, which I won’t tell.
Illia: Do you consider yourself a part of some other community in Portland?
Elvin: I do not associate myself with any community.
Illia: What difficulties have you encountered after moving here from Ukraine?
Elvin: Health insurance, which annoys me, and closed gay communities. It seems like things should be more open, but a few closed gay circles or communities have formed in Portland that never take new people in. They are very isolated in relation to one another.
Illia: Turns out you interact and are in touch with Portland’s gay community.
Elvin: I’m in touch with people from this closed gay community. Sometimes. When I just moved, I tried to enter one of these closed circles and realize that I do not belong there, because people see me as fresh prey. Because I’m so new in this town, no one knows me, and everyone wants to get close with me.
Illia: Do you have any favorite places in Portland that are in some way connected to Ukrainian culture or culture from the former Soviet Union and your experience of growing up in Ukraine?
Elvin: Russian grocery store. I buy sardelki and selyodka [sausage links and pickled herring]. I miss sardelki and selyodka.
Illia: What advice would you give to immigrants from former Soviet countries based on your experience of immigration?
Elvin: Stop being limited with who you interact with. Stop going only to Russian grocery stores. Learn to go to other stores, go to different places, communicate with different people outside of the community. Communicate with Americans. Because we live in the United States and we moved to the United States, not to stay among ourselves and get green bills. This is my advice and experience. Maybe it will, to some extent, answer your previous question of why I don’t keep in touch with the community.
Illia: Where can folks go to expand their experience of interaction with other people, where exchange can take place?
Elvin: It depends on a person and their age and what they are interested in. Younger people may go downtown and get some beer in a bar and meet a million new friends and start hanging out with them. Go and buy coffee, not from babushka Valya, but from Claudia Schiffer. Just leave the house and meet people.
Excerpt of ATO. A MONOLOGUE OF A MILITARY PSYCHOLOGIST
Written by Elvin Rzaev, Andrei Mai
translated by Illia Yakovenko. Italicized words are cities in Ukraine
[…]
(NO CHANGES AT THE EASTERN FRONT.
HOW LONG CAN IT STAY WITHOUT CHANGES?
IRON GETS HOT BEFORE DEATH.
AND PEOPLE IT TOUCHES GET COLD.
DON’T TELL ME ABOUT SOME LUHANSK.
IT TURNED INTO HANSK LONG AGO.
LU– GOT LEVELED DOWN INTO RED ASPHALT.
ME FRIENDS ARE HOSTAGES BUT DO—not able to get to—NETSK TO GET
THEM OUT OF THE BASEMENTS AND FROM UNDER THE BASEMENTS AND DEBRIS.
YOU WRITE POEMS AS BEAUTIFUL AS VYSHYVANKAS.(6)
YOU WRITE POEMS WHICH ARE PERFECTLY SMOOTH.
HIGH POETRY, GOLDEN.
NO POETRY POSSIBLE ABOUT WAR.
ABOUT WAR ONLY FRAGMENTATION EXISTS.
ONLY LETTERS AND ALL OF THEM ARE RRRRRR.
PERVOMAYSK GOT BOMBED TO PERVO AND MAYSK.
YOU CONSTANTLY WORRIED, AS IF IT’S THE FIRST TIME.
WAR HAS ENDED THERE AGAIN.
BUT PEACE HAS NEVER BEGUN.
AND WHERE IS [DE]BALTSEVE?
WHERE IS MY [DE]BALTSEVE?
SOSURA(8) WILL NEVER GET BORN THERE.
NO PEOPLE ARE GONNA GET BORN.
I’M LOOKING AT THE COLOR HORIZON.
IT’S TRIANGULAR. TRIANGULAR.
AND THE FIELD OF SUNFLOWERS TURNED DOWN THEIR HEADS.
THEY’VE BECOME BLACK AND DRY.
SAME AS ME, TERRIBLY OLD.
AND I’M LUBA NO LONGER, ONLY BA.)
After my last trip. About two weeks ago. I was on my way to Debaltsevo and…toooooooo… the areas that are near Debaltsevo. Hmmm… curious why? Because psychological work is carried out before the military action, during the military action, and after the military action.
And there I had my first… emmm… experience of psychological support during the military action. Hmmmm… and very, very interesting, and… emmmm… I was there… emmm… about twelve days and in these twelve days… emmm… I had experienced many emotions and I felt that a whole year had passed. Emmmm… because our mind remembers only the most vivid moments and the ending. It doesn’t remember the rest in the form of a coherent story. And down there everything was happening in vivid moments.
I more or less knew where I’m going, and that I’m going. And, by the way, until then I had never used an assault rifle… emmm… and never rode an armored vehicle. Because we haven’t had such things before. At all. Even in the army. So. And down there… emmm… we got equipped with everything necessary thanks to volunteers. Warm clothes. Because if I had waited for stuff from the military… emmm… I would have gotten frozen to death. [Drinks something]. They gave us a bulletproof vest, a helmet…aaaand… I headed off.
Emmmm… What I find interesting? There I realized that I need to wear contacts. Because… emmm… of the strong wind, when you’re moving on top of the armored vehicle, the wind blows right into your eyes. So you should wear a balaclava. But the vapor from the balaklava flows up to your glasses and you get completely blinded. Aaaaah… and you have to constantly be looking out for people with grenade launchers who try to shoot at you.
Emmm… Some houses are standing destroyed by artillery. Stepped outside, someone made a shot and that’s it. A sniper. They can shoot from… emmm… the distance of two and a half kilometers… A sniper… A shot… That’s it… I worked with a division. Aaaaah, we got to the command center. It is located right in Debaltsevo. And then we headed up to the area where the military confrontation had been taking place. Area where we were was also an area of military confrontation, but we headed further up to the first line of defense.
If you look at the anti-terrorist operation map… emmmm… you’ll notice that the line somewhat goes straight, and then there is an area that stands out and then it continues straight. That area is Debaltsevo and its suburbs. So we went straight there, eeemmm, to the frontline. When… Wait. I’ll tell you what I was doing there. But first. After I got back. I didn’t pay attention at first. I thought that everything was alright. But my friend told me that some of my hair turned gray.
I got prescribed tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Because at first I didn’t sleep well. It was bad. We got hit by artillery seventeen or twenty times a day out there. Aaaaand… out there, you get used to the noise somehow.
But back here, when you get back… aaaaah… go to bed, the silence is very scary. And this is the reason why… you’re in Kyiv, you’re running errands all over the city, then you go to bed and dream about Chechens who torture…. Emmm… arms torn off and things like that. Emmm… And it’s curious how I learned to distinguish the sounds…. Distinguish if an incoming shell was launched from a Grad rocket launcher, a self-propelled artillery, or something else.
What were the main challenges out there? We got to a battalion. Its command center was located in an abandoned coal mine. What was good about that? Because it was a bomb shelter. You could react in six seconds and try to run down to the shelter. And the divisions of the battalion are like checkpoints on the terrain on the ground… They call it a valve. Meaning, those who let in and out. First, in a kilometer or two there was a valve that belonged to the separatists. When we got there, everyone was surprised that we wanted to stay with them.
Because since they got stationed there two month ago no one from the military came to visit them. One commander came, saw an incoming shell, said “Hang in, fellas!,’ and took off. They were completely separated from everyone. In terms of armed vehicles…emmmm… I’ll keep stressing it out, it is the frontest line of defence! You couldn’t go any further than that. The battalion had only one armored vehicle. And it was broken. Their wifes were looking for missing parts at street markets in the Volyns’ka Oblast and then tried to pass them along with volunteers to the frontline, so they could somehow fix this armored vehicle. Technical supply— NONE.
The temperatures dropped below -20°C degrees Celsius (-4F). Normally it was about -10°C, -12°C (10F). We had to take a bath in the river. Hilly terrain, constant blow of wind. So you took a bath in the river… aaaand… you get immediately blown all over your body with the wind. So I realized what I need to feel happy.
One time someone gifted me valenki(8), and I realized that I’m the happiest person in the world. Because in order to…. to communicate with people, I had to spend time with them at the outposts and I had to fight back during the attacks, when… emmm… the fire was coming in from the side of the adversary. Aaand… to coordinate the movements, to look where snipers were shooting,,, emmm…. But the most difficult part was to spend the whole night at the outpost, when it is so cold, and you realize that you’re not different from anyone else there. When I got valenki, I realized that I’m the happiest person in the world. Aaand… later I realized, when they once took us for a half an hour to the main control center, and we had an opportunity to take a shower. I took it two times. And that’s it. Now everytime I go to bed, I aaaam grateful, I’m a religious person. I thank god for the opportunity to keep my feet warm and to take a hot shower regularly.
Emmm… a significant problem with the local population. They can’t get their salaries or retirement payments for 4-6 months in a row, and children have to walk for 40-50 minutes to get to the nearest checkpoint where they might get some food that volunteers bring to soldiers. So they won’t starve, because there is no bread in villages. Someone must take care of these people. They didn’t have electricity for three months.
The military came and fixed the electricity. What else? More interesting memories. We lived in trenches, in a dugout. The dugout was dug… emmmm… by people and thus…. Emm… it was very narrow and… emmm… was for the most part only able to protect from the wind. It was a meter and seventy five centimeters (5’9”) deep, and I’m a meter and eighty five centimeters (6’1”) tall. The width: a meter and fifty centimeters (5’) and the length: two and a half meters (8’). And there are two of us inside. We had a makeshift bunk bed. We lived there. I occupied the top one. I had 25cm (10in) from the ceiling or the logs that served as our ceiling. Every time I turned from one side to another I touched the ceiling with one of my arms.
Emmm… After getting back I found out that my lungs are messed up. Because we had a bad potbelly stove to keep us warm. The fumes were getting out. And so we had a choice to either freeze or breathe the fumes. This is why I always slept wearing a buff to avoid suffocation.
What else is interesting about that? The warm air was rising up and all the smoke was rising up as well. This lieutenant colonel—who occupied the bottom bed—he is… emmm… a larger person and there was no way he could climb onto the top bed. So I was the person who was inhaling the fumes… emmmm… but another interesting thing is that we had no protection from the artillery. If only we had had a bomb shelter… The only place we could hide was the dugout. But we already were inside the dugout… And if a shell lands in… a shall lended in 200 meters (650ft) from us, or from me, because… emmmmm… where it landed the fragments ripped off… emmmm… part of the head… emmm… of one of my colleagues, and the second lost his legs.
Emmm…. This is why when we heard rattling… emmmm… Your first reaction is that you should run somewhere and hide… emmm… but you already were in a most protected place out there and so there was no need to run anywhere. But if you get hit by a… you understand that you’ll… emmm… get smashed under the debris or… eeeemmmm… if it’s a direct hit… but it’s better to get a direct hit… you’ll get instantly killed then. If it is not a direct hit you’ll get stuck under the collapsed dugout and will be dying painfully and slowly. Or you’ll get a disability or something else… This is why… emmm… the value of life in and of itself… emmm…. It increased in value. Because you can’t plan your life even for the next 5 or 10 minutes… emmmmm… The artillery is constantly firing… constantly…
[…]
Footnotes:
(1) The interview was conducted in Russian. The play, excerpted after the interview, includes both Russian and Ukrainian. Translated by Illia Yakovenko.
(2) Curry-Stevens, A. & Coalition of Communities of Color (2014). The Slavic Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile. Portland, OR: Portland State University.
(3) a 19th century play
(4) Maidan is one of Ukraine’s main public squares where the revolutionary events of 2013-14 took place
(5) Anti-Terrorist Operation abbreviated
(6) a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt
(7) a prominent Ukrainian poet
(8) felt boots
Illia Yakovenko (he/him) is an artist from Ukraine, the founder of the Center for Art and Human Cooperation (CAHC), and a Fulbright MFA Candidate in Art + Social Practice at Portland State University. Illia grew up in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, and spent a major part of his life there. Illia’s family still lives in his hometown, so he has kept strong ties to the region and cares about its well-being. Unfortunately, Illia’s home is currently going through war. In his art practice, Illia explores ways of creatively addressing conflicts and supporting cross-communal, cross-cultural, and international mutual understanding and solidarity by means of participatory and socially-engaged art making. His goal is to support and create spaces for collectively imagining and enacting a just, equitable, and peaceful present(s) and future(s). https://illia.cf/
Center for Art and Human Cooperation: https://www.instagram.com/cahc.art/
Elvin Rzaev (he/him) was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and currently lives in Portland, OR. Elvin’s parents met at a shashlyki (a culturally-specific barbecue), which, in his opinion, makes complete sense for an Azerbaijano-Ukrainian family. Since then, his life has been unfolding in the southern steppes of Khersonshchyna, on the Baku seaside, and in the Portland mountains of North America. After graduating from the specialized School #91 and performing his first theater play at the Young Spectator’s Theatre, Elvin continued his education in a theater college. In 2012, Elvin got involved in the movement called the New Ukrainian Drama and started to write plays. Soon his play, ATO. A Monologue of a Military Psychologist (directed by Andrei Mai; written by Elvin Rzaev and Andrei Mai), was staged in Moscow in an underground fashion to bypass censorship. Since then, the play has been performed in Austria, Slovakia, Northern Macedonia, and Ukraine.
Continue Reading: Lillyanne Pham with Aram Han Sifuentes
Українська / Русский
«Я скучаю за сардельками и селедкой»
Эльвин Рзаев
Я живу в Портленде на протяжении последних двух лет. За время моего пребывания тут я узнал, что в этом регионе живет довольно значительное количество иммигрантов из пост-советского пространства. В основном это люди иммигрировавшие после распада Советского Союза в статусе беженцев преследуемых за свои религиозные убеждения. Мне всегда было любопытно узнать, что происходит в сообществе, но в реальности, я не был особо в контакте с ним. Люди, с которыми я сталкивался в Портленде, напоминали мне о культурном и политическом контексте тех мест, откуда мы родом. Наше общение триггерило во мне коллективную травму, через которую прошли наши общества, и мои личные травмы взросления на востоке Украины в годы после распада Советского Союза. В некоторых случаях в разговорах затрагивались текущие политические конфликты, и это было особенно болезненно, потому что конфликты по прежнему не разрешены и приносят боль. Еще я обратил внимание на то, что некоторые местные организации пытаются обращаться к ценностям и религиозным убеждениям сообщества с целью их конвертации в политическую поддержку консервативной политической повестки в США.
В тоже самое время, я наткнулся на публикацию «The Slavic community in Multnomah County», опубликованную в 2014 году the Coalition of Communities of Color и Portland State University. Этот отчет уделяет внимание многим проблемам, с которыми сталкивается коммьюнити, таким как экономические трудности, доступ к работе, жилью, образованию и специфическим культурным сервисам и указывает на то, что эти проблемы обрели систематический характер. В отчете отмечено, что опыт сообщества лучше всего можно понять через призму расизма и что этот опыт сопоставим с опытом других communities of color.
Исходя из информации в этом отчете, на мой взгляд, усиление идеологий и институтов колониализма и белого превосходства, которые предлагаются адвокатами консервативной политической повестки, не улучшает условия жизни сообщества и не приносит обещанного спасения от экономических трудностей. Напротив, оно только усиливает системное неравенство, которому подвергаются иммигранты из постсоветских стран и глубже разделяет американское общество. Путь солидарности с другими BIPOC сообществами и совместная борьба за социальную справедливость мне видится более эффективной альтернативой.
В этом году, я создал Центр мистецтва та людської взаємодії (CAHC) — само-инициированную институцию, которая средствами искусства поддерживает взаимопонимание и солидарность между сообществами и на интернациональном и межкультурном уровнях выстраивая фундамент для совместного действия и социальной справедливости. В Портленде CAHC планирует поддержку и создание возможностей для обмена между разнообразными портландскими сообществами и привлечение внимание к различному опыту и ценностям иммигрантов из постсоветского пространства. CAHC недавно запустил художественные туры на украинском и русском языках с фокусом на культурных событиях организованных BIPOC художниками и организациями. Другие программы включают в себя Комітет міжнародних придбань, художественная образовательная программа в Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), и спорадические события с едой.
В рамках программы Центра мистецтва та людської взаємодії по сотрудничеству с украино- и русскоговорящим сообществом Портленда, я поговорил с украинским драматургом и су-шефом Эльвином Рзаевым о его опыте иммиграции в Америку и жизни в Портленде. С его согласия я также публикую отрывок из его пьесы «АТО. Монолог военного психолога», которая была написана в 2015 году в технике вербатим, на основе интервью с реальным военным психологом прошедшим через войну на востоке Украины.
Илья Яковенко: Привет! Как давно ты живешь в Портленде и чем ты тут занимаешься?
Эльвин Рзаев: В сентябре было пять лет как живу в Портленде. Сейчас я работаю cу-шефом в Виктория бар.
Илья: Как ты переехал в Америку и оказался в Портленде?
Эльвин: В Портленде у меня живут тетя, дядя, две двоюродные сестры, поэтому я оказался тут. Из-за того что они живут здесь долгое время у меня есть гринкарта. Я приезжал каждый год в Америку на летние каникулы, а когда закончил университет, то понял, что мне стало тесно в Украине и я решил переехать в Америку.
Илья: Мы собираемся опубликовать отрывок из твоей пьесы, но ты почему-то представился шефом в баре, а не драматургом и писателем. Как ты себя идентифицируешь в профессиональном плане?
Эльвин: Я по образованию актер и могу сказать что драматург. Но сейчас я по профессии повар и менеджер. Но это не мешает соединять мне две эти деятельности вместе.
Илья: Почему ты решил стать драматургом?
Эльвин: Когда я поступил в Карпенко Карого [Київський національний університет театру, кіно і телебачення імені І. К. Карпенка-Карого] на актерский факультет то в этот же год я начал писать пьесы для театра. Меня раздражало отсутствие новых текстов в университете. Там была только «Кайдашева сім’я». Когда я учился я не сильно попадал в формат моего курса. Я отличался тем, что мне не нравилась эта старая система и старая школа. Меня больше интересовали новые тексты и новое видение в театре.
Илья: Как твой переезд в Штаты повлиял на твою возможность творчески реализовываться?
Эльвин: Никак не повлиял. Я творчески реализовывался в Украине. Но я сейчас не актер — я не работаю актером. А драматургом мне ничего не мешает работать здесь, либо в Украине, либо еще где-нибудь, потому что мои тексты читают и ставят в разных местах.
Илья: До переезда ты был погружен в Украинскую действительность и писал пьесы, которые с ней резонировали. Нащупал ли ты для себя темы, которые бы резонировали здесь — в Америке?
Эльвин: Да, мои тексты конечно больше резонируют с Украиной, это правда. Но последний мой текст должен резонировать и с Украиной и с разными местами: и со штатами, и с европой, и не знаю… Потому что это такая более глобальная история. В штатах мои пьесы пока не ставились, но я отправил один мой текст одному американскому кинорежиссеру в Портленде. Посмотрим что будет.
Илья: С какими темами ты работал в Украине?
Эльвин: В Украине резонировала пьеса «Щоденники Майдану». Я один из ее драматургов. И я драматург пьесы «АТО. Монолог военного психолога». И она резонировала в Украине и в европе и с нынешними событиями, которые продолжаются. А также у меня были более, так сказать, обыденные пьесы про более обыденную суровую жизнь в Украине и не только.
Илья: О чем твоя последняя пьеса и почему ты считаешь, что она актуальна глобально?
Эльвин: Потому что поднято несколько вопросов, такие как наркотики, секс, трансгендерность, геи, лесбиянки, искусственная грудь, много всего… Мне кажется она в нынешнее время резонирует везде.
Илья: Ты чувствуешь связь с Украиной находясь в Портленде?
Эльвин: Сложный вопрос. Больше наверно я чувствую связь со своей семьей из Украины, которая живет в Украине. А с Украиной, наверно, уже нет.
Илья: Чувствуешь ли ты при этом связь с портландским комьюнити иммигрантов из Украины или в более широком смысле иммигрантов из постсоветского пространства?
Эльвин: Нет (смеется). Нет. И еще раз нет! И это пожалуйста не вырезайте и опубликуйте именно так. Чисто принципиально. Можно же правду говорить, правда? Я когда переехал жить в америку я чисто принципиально сказал что я не буду контактировать с так называемым коммьюнити по разным причинам, которые я не скажу.
Илья: Частью какого коммьюнити в Портленде ты себя считаешь в таком случае?
Эльвин: Я ни с каким коммьюнити не ассоциирую себя.
Илья: С какими проблемами ты столкнулся после того как переехал из Украины сюда?
Эльвин: Медицинская страховка, которая меня безумно раздражает, и закрытые гей коммьюнити. Казалось бы все должно быть более открытым, но в Портленде образовалось несколько закрытых гей компаний или коммьюнити в коммьюнити, которые никогда не пускают новых людей. Они законсервированы между собой.
Илья: Получается ты все таки взаимодействуешь и в каком-то смысле соприкасаешься с портландским гей коммьюнити?
Эльвин: Я соприкасаюсь с людьми из этой закрытой гей коммьюнити. Иногда. Я когда переехал, я попробовал войти в одну из таких компаний и понял, что мне там не место, потому что на меня люди смотрят как на свежую жертву. Потому что я очень новый в этом городе и меня никто не знает и все хотят очень плотно познакомиться.
Илья: У тебя есть любимые места в Портленде, которые как-то связаны с украинской или постсоветской культурой и твоим опытом взросления и жизни в Украине?
Эльвин: Русский магазин. Я покупаю сардельки и селедку. Я скучаю за сардельками и селедкой.
Илья: Чтобы ты посоветовал иммигрантам из постсоветских стран основываясь на своем собственном опыте иммигранта?
Эльвин: Перестать быть законсервированными. Перестать ходить только в русский магазин. Научиться ходить в другие магазины, ездить в разные места, общаться с разными людьми не только из коммьюнити. Общаться с американцами, потому что как никак мы живем в Америке и переехали в Америку не для того чтобы жить среди своих и получать зеленые бумажки. Это мой совет и мой опыт. Наверно это в какой-то мере ответит на твой прошлый вопрос о том, почему я не общаюсь с коммьюнити.
Илья: Куда можно пойти чтобы расширить свой опыт общения с другими людьми и где мог бы возникнуть культурный обмен?
Эльвин: Это зависит от человека и от его возраста и чем человек интересуется. Молодым людям можно поехать в даунтаун выпить пива в баре и встретить миллиард новых друзей и начать с ними общаться. Пойти купить кофе где-то не у бабушки Вали, а у Клаудии Шифер. Просто выходить из дома и видеть людей.
Отрывок из пьесы «АТО. Монолог военного психолога»
<…>
(НА СХІДНОМУ ФРОНТІ, БЕЗ ЗМІН.
СКІЛЬКИ МОЖНА БЕЗ ЗМІН?
МЕТАЛ ПЕРЕД СМЕРТЬЮ СТАЄ ГАРЯЧИМ.
А ЛЮДІ ВІД НЬОГО, ХОЛОДНИМИ.
НЕ КАЖІТЬ МЕНІ ТАМ, ПРО ЯКИЙСЬ ЛУГАНСЬК.
ВІН ДАВНО УЖЕ ГАНСЬК.
ЛУ- ЗРІВНЯЛИ З АСФАЛЬТОМ ЧЕРВОНИМ.
МОЮ ДРУЗІ В ЗАРУЧНИКАХ І ДО НЕЦЬКА, МЕНІ НЕ ДІСТАТИСЯ. ЩОБ ВИТЯГТИ З ПІДВАЛІВ, ЗАВАЛІВ І З ПІД ПІДВАЛіВ .
А ВИ ПИШЕТЕ ВІРШІ КРАСИВІ ЯК ВИШИВАНКИ.
ВИ ПИШЕТЕ ВІРШІ, ІДЕАЛЬНО ГЛАДЕНЬКІ.
ВИСОКУ ПОЕЗІЮ, ЗОЛОТУ.
ПРО ВІЙНУ, НЕ БУВАЄ ПОЕЗІЇ.
ПРО ВІЙНУ Є ЛИШЕ РОЗКЛАДАННЯ.
ЛИШЕ ЛІТЕРИ І ВСІ ВОНИ РРРРРР.
ПЕРВОМАЙСЬК, РОЗБОМБИЛО НА ПЕРВО І МАЙСЬК.
БЕЗКІНЕЧНО МАЄТЕСЬ, НАЧЕ ВПЕРШЕ.
ЗНОВУ ТАМ СКІНЧИЛАСЬ ВІЙНА.
АЛЕ МИР, ТАК І НЕ ПОЧАВСЯ
А ДЕ БАЛЬЦЕВЕ?
ДЕ МОЄ БАЛЬЦЕВЕ?
ТИМ БІЛЬШЕ НЕ РОДИТЬСЯ СОСЮРА.
УЖЕ НІХТО ІЗ ЛЮДЕЙ НЕ РОДИТЬСЯ.
Я ДИВЛЮСЯ НА КОЛООБРІЙ.
ВІН ТРИКУТНИЙ. ТРИКУТНИЙ.
І ПОЛЕ СОНЯХІВ, ОПУСТИЛО ГОЛОВИ.
ВОНИ СТАЛИ ЧОРНІ І СУХІ
ЯК І Я, ВЖЕ СТРАШЕННО СТАРА.
І Я, БІЛЬШЕ НЕ ЛЮБА, ЛИШЕ БА).
После последней поездки, недели две назад. Ехал вввв Дебальцево и… ввв… районы, которые возле Дебальцева находятся. Эмм… интересно в чем? В том, что… ммм… психологическая работа, она идёт до боевых действий, во время боевых действий и после боевых действий.
И там у меня был первый… ммм… опыт психологической помощи во время боевых действий. Эмм… и очень такие, очень интересные, и… ммм… я там был… ммм… дней двенадцать и за эти двенадцать дней… эм… ну, было очень много эмоций и ощущение прожитого целого года. Эм… потому что ум, он у нас запоминает самые яркие моменты и конец. Всё остальное не запоминает в какой-то истории. А там этих самых ярких моментов, было очень много.
Я приблизительно представлял куда еду, что еду. Ну, причем я до этого момента, никогда с автомата не стрелял… эээ… на БТРе тоже не ездил. Потому что не было у нас как-то такого. Ну, вообще в армии. Вот. А там… эээ… спасибо волонтёрам – снарядили всем, чем надо. Одеждой теплой. Потому что, что от армии, я б там… эээ… замерз. (что-то пьет) Дали бронежилет, каску… иии… поехал.
Эм… В чем интересно было? В том, что… (молчит) я понял, что мне надо ездить в линзах. Потому что… эээ… сильный ветер, когда ты едешь сверху на броне, постоянно задувает в глаза и поэтому ты должен все время быть в балаклаве. А с балаклавы поднимается пар в очки и ты слепой. Ааааа… ты должен максимально следить, чтоб никто не выставился с гранатометом и не стрелял в тебя.
Эээ… ну какой-то дом стоит разбомбленный. Вышел, стрельнул и всё. Или снайпер. За два с половиной километра… эээ… могут стрелять… Снайперская… Выстрел. Вот. Работал с подразделением. Аааа… приехали мы в штаб. Он находится непосредственно в Дебальцево. И поехали потом уже в зону боевых, ну там тоже зона боевых действий, но поехали в первую линию обороны.
Если посмотреть на карту АТО… эм… от она идет, потом от такой аппендицит и идёт дальше. Вот этот аппендицит – это само Дебальцево и все в окрестности. Мы как раз были вот тут вот в самом… эээ… передку. На самом передке. Када…. ну сейчас я расскажу, чем я там занимался. Когда я приехал. Я за собой не сильно заметил. Думал, всё нормально, но мне друг сказал, что у меня тут де-то шесть или семь волос поседело.
Выписали транквилизаторы мне и снотворное. Потому что первое время было, был очень плохой сон. Там нас по семнадцать-двадцать раз в день бомбили. Ииии… там, ты как-то привык к грохоту.
А тут ты, когда приезжаешь… ааааааа… ложися спать, очень страшная тишина. И поэтому…. или вроде в Киеве вроде, вроде везде бегаешь, ложишься спать, а тебе снятся как чеченцы пытают… эмммм… руки оторваны и всё остальное. Эмм…
И причем интересно, что… нууу… начался уже различать звук. Это град летит, это саул, это еще что-то.
Эммм… какие проблемы там основные были? Мы пришли в батальон, штаб которого находился в заброшенной шахте, и плюс в чем? Что там было бомбоубежище. Там хотя бы за шесть секунд можно среагировать… иии… эээ… и попытаться добежать до бомбоубежища. И подразделения батальона – это как блокпосты только просто местность и на месте… Это они называют клапан. То есть, кто пускает и выпускает. Находилось восемь клапанов. Первое, ну через километр два километра было уже, был клапан сепаратистов. И что, я не думал что, ну так, когда мы приехали туда, они очень удивились, что остаёмся вместе с ними.
Потому что за всё время, там два месяца уже подразделения находится, ни один начальник…ни один не приехал, увидел что летит снаряд, Сказал, «Хлопці, тримайтесь!» и уехал. То есть полностью оторваны от всех. Из бронетехники… эммм… ещё раз – я буду и дальше подчёркивать – это самая первая линия обороны. Ну, первее уже некуда. В батальоне только один БТР. Который не едет. Жёны с Волынской области, ходят по рынкам, ищут детали и как-то стараются передать волонтёрами на передовую, чтобы они как-то починили этот БТР. Техническое обеспечение – никакое.
Была температура минус девятнадцать зафиксирована. Ну, в основном гуляла минус десять и девятнадцать. Мылись в речке. Ну и причем были на возвышенности, постоянный ветер. То есть, ты помылся в речке… иии… сразу тебя обдувает. Поэтому я понял, что мне надо для счастья.
Один раз мне там подарили валенки и я понял, что я самый счастливый человек на свете Потому что для того, чтобы… ну… был контакт с людьми, мне нада было с ними стоять на постах и нада было отбиваться с ними же от атак, когда… эээ… эмм… был огонь со стороны противника. И стрелять мне нада было с ними в сторону противника. Ииии… координировать движения, куда летят снайперские наряды… эээ… Ну больше всего это ночь выстоять на посту, когда холодно, и ты понимаешь, что ты такой же как и он. Вот.
Когда подарили валенки, я понял что я самый счастливый человек на земле. Иии… потом я ещё понял, нас нуу один раз отвезли на полчаса в штаб, и там была возможность помыться. Я помылся два раза. И всё. И я щяс каждый раз ложусь спать, яяяяяя благодарю, я ну яяяяяя верующий человек. Благодарю бога за то, что у меня есть возможность… эээ… держать в тепле ноги и каждый раз мыться в горячей воде.
Эмм… очень большая проблема, с местным населением. Которое по 4-6 месяцев не получают зарплаты/пенсии и дети ходят на… эмм… блокпосты по 40-50 минут. Для того чтоб им дали волонтерские, волонтерскую еду, которую передают военным, для того, чтобы они не умерли с голода, потому что даже нет хлеба. В селе. Этими людьми тоже должен кто-то заниматься. То есть они три месяца жили без света.
Приехали военные и провели свет. Что ещё? Ещё интересные рефлексии были. Мы жили в блиндаже. Блиндаж был вырыт… эээ… людьми и поэтому… ну… он максимально тесный и максимально… ну… только от ветра спасал. Метр семьдесят пять в глубину, а я метр восемьдесят пять, ростом. Ширина, метр пятьдесят и длина – два с половиной метра. И мы там вдвоём. Первая и вторая полочка была. Жили. Я жил на второй. От потолка, то есть от брёвен, было 25 сантиметров. То есть каждый раз, когда я поворачивался, я чиркал… ну… одной или второй рукой.
Эммм… еще была у меня проблема с лёгкими, когда вернулся. Потому что была плохая буржуйка для того, чтобы топить и шёл угарный газ. И тут выбор: или ты мерзнешь, или ты дышишь угарным газом. Поэтому я спал… эээ… всегда в бафе для того, чтобы не задохнуться.
В чём ещё интерес, в том, что всё тепло поднимается наверх и весь дым тоже поднимается наверх. Тот подполковник – он был со мной внизу – ну он более… эээ… крупногабаритный был чем я и на вторую полку ему залазить не вариант был. Я всем этим дышал… эээ… но не так са….. но интересно было, что нам не было возможности защититься от ударов. Если там хотя бы было бомбоубежище….. Единственное, куда мы могли спрятаться, это был блиндаж. Так как мы были уже в блиндаже, а он, если метров от нас, ну метров двести падал от нас снаряд, а точнее не от нас, а от меня, потому что… эээ… там, где упал, осколки разорвали… эээ… полголовы… эм… одному коллеге, а второму оторвало ноги. Вот.
Эммм… и поэтому когда гремело… эээ… Ну по сути надо как-то быстро собираться и бежать, а ты находишься… ну… ввв… месте, ну максимально который ограждает от опасности эм и потом даже выбегать никуда не надо. Ну еси попадёт то просто ты понимаешь, что тебе раз… эммм… завалит или… эээ… ну если прямой снаряд…. но лучше чтобы прямой был – тя сразу убьет. Если непрямой – тя завалит, ты будешь умирать длительно и долго. Если не прибегут. Ну или останеся инвалидом или ещё что-то. Поэтому… эммм… как таковая ценность жизни… эээээм… поднялась в такие разы. Потому что ты не можешь спланировать свою деятельность на 5 на 10 минут… эммм. Постоянно гремит ии ии ии постоянно…Так.
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Эльвин Рзаев (он/его): «Родился в Киеве, живу в Портленде. Мои родители встретились на шашлыках, что было вполне логично для азербайджано-украинской семьи. С тех пор моя жизнь идет в южных степях Херсонщины, на бакинском взморье и в портлендских горах Северной Америки. Получив образование в специализированной школе №91 и сыграв свой первый спектакль на сцене профессионального театра ТЮЗ (Театр Юного Зрителя), я продолжил обучение в театральном университете. В 2012 году я познакомился с движением «украинской новой драмы» и начал писать тексты. Вскоре в Москве прошел «партизанский» показ спектакля «АТО. Монолог военного психолога» (режиссер Андрей Май. Драматург Эльвин Рзаев, Андрей Май). После этого спектакль показывался в Австрии, Словакии, Македонии, Украине.»
Ілля Яковенко (він/його): Я художник из Украины, основатель Центра мистецтва та людської взаємодії (CAHC), и стипендиат Фулбрайт на магистерской программе Art + Social Practice в Portland State University. Я вырос на востоке Украины, в Мариуполе, и провел там значительную часть своей жизни. Моя семья по прежнему живет там и поэтому меня волнует благополучие региона. К сожалению, теперь у меня дома идет война. В своей художественной практике я занимаюсь поиском творческих путей разрешения конфликтов и поддержки взаимопонимания и солидарности средствами социально-вовлеченного искусства на межкультурном, международном уровнях и между сообществами.
Вебсайт: https://illia.cf/
Центр мистецтва та людської взаємодії: https://www.instagram.com/cahc.art/
A Love Letter to Brown and Black MFA Seedlings
December 12, 2021
Text by Lillyanne Pham with Aram Han Sifuentes
“Just centering ourselves, it ends up being a statement against whiteness. Because that just tells us what kind of society we live in.“
ARAM HAN SIFUENTES
In my first three months of being in the Art and Social Practice MFA program, I had many intimate conversations that made me feel held by my communities. One particularly honest and funny conversation was with writer, educator, and fiber and social practice artist, Aram Han Sifuentes. It reminded me of my time spent between and after classes at Reed College’s Multicultural Resource Center during my undergraduate experience which ended last year. Here, I exchanged tears, rage, and juice with BIPOC peers and staff about being in YT spaces. It was a means of catharsis for me.
Since then, I have found it grounding to recreate similar sacred spaces, for further intimate conversations with my communities; it has guided my practice as an artist and organizer who works with youth of color in Portland, Oregon. I often think about how to support them if they choose to enter the art world. One way has been revisiting the complicated questions that I’ve encountered the past three months: What does my socially engaged artwork look like in a white space? How do I take care of my rage? Another way is suggesting that you all listen to Aram’s song recommendation, “달라달라 DALLA DALLA” by ITZY.
Aram Han Sifuentes: When I read transcripts, I realized I like to start a sentence without finishing it. I say, “you know.” My classic California comes out: “like,” “you know,” “yeah,” “right.” So I feel sorry for you. You have to listen to it and transcribe it.
Lillyanne Pham: No, it’s totally okay. I very much like an interview that sounds like an actual conversation versus like something we just emailed over. I’m excited.
Aram: I’m on my headphones. Does it sound okay? I know it’s sort of windy where I’m at.
“Fuck Good Intentions” Protest Banner, Aram Han Sifuentes. Part of an ongoing series, “Protest Banner Lending Library,” 2016-present. Chicago. Photo by Aram Han Sifuentes.
Lillyanne: Yeah, I think it sounds okay. It’s picking up the sound. We originally met at the Mural Arts of Philly(1) training, where you showed us how to make our own protest banners. I mentioned how my grandma had a garment sewing factory in Vietnam. And when my mother became a refugee, she sewed our neighbor’s clothes to make extra money. As a kid watching my mom create something so pretty, I was inspired to create my own clothing line. And I came home one day to find all my work thrown in the trash. I disappointed her, but it wasn’t about creating something. She had her reasons. And when I mentioned this to you, I felt that you had a really good response in terms of how to navigate that relationship with my mother and then also connecting it to my practice. I was wondering if you wanted to say more about that.
Aram: Yeah, I relate to that story, definitely. Because my mom was an artist in Korea, and an art educator. She had a hard time in Korea, so she did not want me to be an artist. She didn’t teach me how to do the sort of painting and calligraphy that she is master of, right.
And so when we came to the United States, my parents started working in dry cleaning. And my mom started to do all the sewing because she had already known how to sew before. She had always made her own clothes, and things like that. And so she actually taught me how to sew at a young age because, you know, it was just, I think, sort of practical. And I would help, right, with the seam ripper, rip out the zippers that didn’t work anymore, things like that, even though I was very little.
And when I started, when I told her I wanted to be an artist, she was really upset by that, right. Because she knows how hard it is. And she wanted my life to be more sustainable. Right. And then, when I started incorporating sewing into my art practice, she was really sort of heartbroken about that. Because she told me she spent her whole life sewing, so that I didn’t have to do that. And so seeing that I was doing that for my art practice, just really hit her in a really hard way, you know? So, I can relate to that. Like, your mom not wanting you to do that.
Lillyanne: Yeah. Oh, sorry for interrupting. I was going to mention that I feel like when I do tell people— like outsiders— about this kind of story that I feel like they think of the tiger mom narrative. Right.
Aram: Right, right. My mom and my parents are actually very cool and very progressive. And, you know, I think they gave me a lot of freedom to find what I was what I want to do, and gave me a lot of support, even though, you know, I think, when I chose to be an artist, it was sort of like, the most challenging thing for them to sort of learn how to support me through that.
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s really hard work. To sew, it takes a really long time. Like, your mom’s story, to be able to sew is such a skill, right. I think, particularly women of color, immigrant women, who have learned that growing up, when they do that type of work here, it really is like, I don’t know, I guess I’m sort of tripping on my words, but it provides financial stability to some extent, right.
Like, if you know how to sew, you could hem people’s clothes, for, you know, $10 here or there. $20 here, there. And that adds up, you know, and I think like, it actually is such an amazing skill that a lot of our mothers, grandmothers, and our aunties have and hold.
Speaking for myself, my parents didn’t want me to do that. Because they wanted me to, you know, have a different kind of stability, or maybe, like, a white collar job, or, you know, I think that’s what they’ve been working for. So that I don’t have to do the sort of demanding hand work that they do. Which is really hard, right? My parents work six days a week. They’re at the shop, at least 12 hours a day. And then my mom brings extra work with her to sew at home. So it’s crazy hours. I think my mom really just didn’t want that for me. You know?
Lillyanne: I also was wondering how you would advise other children of immigrants and refugees to essentially come out saying that you want to be an artist or pursue an MFA. When I first applied for my MFA, folks asked me what my family thought about my decision to apply. And I’m thinking, “Why would I tell my family that I’m applying to an MFA when I haven’t even gotten into the program?” After I got in, people just kept asking me, “What does your family think?” And I was like, “Oh, I really don’t tell my family about these certain things.” So I was just wondering how your process went?
Aram: Yeah, that sounds a little bit like … So I think for me, the advice I give is that— I mean, there’s a lot of advice, but I think the one thing I would say is, I think it definitely comes from a place from our parents and our family, not knowing what options there are to be an artist. They just automatically think we’re gonna become starving artists, right.
Lillyanne: Yeah.
Aram: And suffer from financial insecurity our whole life. Right. And to some extent, like, it’s difficult being an artist, because our income isn’t so stable, or so regular, like, you know, being a doctor, or these sorts of things that our parents understand— what those jobs and what that financial security means. But I think like, just letting your parents know that there is financial stability to being an artist.
Lillyanne: Yeah.
Aram: There are opportunities for artists. There’s many career paths that we can take as artists. So I think like, having those conversations and sort of opening that up for our parents, or our family or communities to understand that becoming an artist doesn’t mean that we’re going to be starving, you know. I think that’s like one of the steps.
And also letting them know that it isn’t so clear of a path. You know, it isn’t like, we study pre-med, then we get into med school, and then we do medical residency, and then we become a doctor. It’s not like that; we have to be creative. And piece things together here and there, or this sort of contract or that sort of grant or whatnot, but that it’s totally doable, you know? So I think that is a big thing. And then I think we have stories to tell.
Lillyanne: Yes.
Aram: Rather than letting other people tell our stories, or us being absent, you know. In a way, we’re never absent, but, you know, we have stories to tell. I think becoming an artist is so exciting because this is my opportunity to use those skills that my mom has taught me, like sewing and looking at our story as immigrants in this country, and using art to tell my own story is so important. It’s really rewarding and exciting, and necessary. And so, I think, you know, as best we can, we have those conversations with our community.
Lillyanne: Yeah, so I recently had my mom find one of my poems that was published about my experience, growing up with domestic violence, but then also weaving with Asian fetishization in the U.S. And she was super embarrassed. And then I got into this kind of debacle where it was like, you know, I didn’t ask for her consent to talk about an experience that is hers, yet also mine.
I’m also going to bring in some ideas that you wrote in your article, “How Internalized White Supremacy Manifests for My BIPOC Students in Art School.(2)” You mentioned how folks are criticised for their work being too personal. “‘It’s art therapy, not art.’”
It’s a balancing of sharing your personal, lived experiences, and then tackling that within your own family. I feel like I talk a lot about my story to folks outside of my family, because I need to connect. And I feel like I didn’t get that connection within my family. And it’s helped me process my relationships in my family, too. But at the same time, I definitely feel like me and my mom should probably talk about this. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this. I don’t know if that made any sense.
Aram: Yeah, I mean, it’s delicate. And it’s definitely complicated. Right. I think, my family too, we tend to be very … quiet … about our family matters. We don’t want to expose the dysfunction, the sort of trauma, the pain that happens within our own families, in our experiences. I think it’s such a delicate balance. And, I don’t have a correct answer, I don’t really have a right answer for it. But, I think you’re doing the right thing, in terms of like, telling your own story, through your own perspective, you’re not telling it for your mother. But, it obviously has to do with her personal life as well. Right. But, having those conversations with her as well about how important this is for you.
And it’s really unfortunate, you know, that in the art world and in art education, that it’s so shunned upon to make really personal work, you know. I think that’s so essential, to actually even make personal work. Because why would we make something or say something or tell a story that doesn’t have a connection with our personal life? I think it’s absolutely necessary to tell our own stories from our own perspective, and from our own lived experiences. It’s absolutely crucial, you know. I don’t believe in making something that’s too personal or making something that’s art therapy and not art. I don’t think that exists. And I think, again, those are sort of these categories and terms that white supremacy puts on to us telling our own stories and suppressing that right. I think it’s so important that we do more of that.
Lillyanne: I was wondering how you felt after completing My Mother’s First Exhibition(3)?
“Younghye Han: “My Mother’s First Exhibition,” 2016. Photo by Aram Han Sifuentes.
Aram: That was really emotional artwork for me, for sure. Because I had an opportunity to have a solo show. And I had just given birth to my child. And my mom started drawing and painting again after 24 years. And it was so amazing to see, and so exciting.
So I asked her during that time, “Do you want to show your work for this solo exhibition opportunity that I have, so that it’s your solo exhibition?” At first, she was really sort of nervous and upset about it actually. [laughs]
She got sort of nervous about the pressure because she was like, “I’m just doing this for fun and now you’re making me do an entire exhibition on it.” [Lillyanne laughs] She sort of freaked out that way. And I was like, “Okay, just think about it. I’m not pressuring you.”
And then it was so funny because she sent me a photo of the next painting that she made and I called her. I was like, “Oh, nice. That’s a really nice one Mom. Wow, you’re just cranking these out.” She’s like, “Yes, it’s for my solo show.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” That was my answer right there. [Aram and Lillyanne laugh together]
And so it was really exciting because then she created all these works. And it was the new works that she was making after 24 years of not making the work. It was so beautiful. I think, thinking about an art practice when you’re an artist, like for my mom, when I was talking to her about it, she’s like, “I love art. I always knew I loved art. It was such an important part of me.” And coming to the United States, like not being able to practice art, because she had no free time. And it was so pressing to make a living for the family, right. She sort of let that go.
And she was telling me that she thought for a while that it had left forever, that she would never make art ever again. It sort of came by surprise. And I think it sort of surprised everyone in the family and even herself, and all of a sudden, with the birth of my kid, and then my parents hired one more person at the cleaners to help them. She had a little bit more time. Then she started setting up her own painting studio, next to her sewing station at work, because they spent so much more time at work than at home. Then she just started making and it was just so beautiful to see that. And, when she walked into the exhibition, the pride that she took, and she was going around, saying hi to everyone, explaining to people how she made the works. And it was just… it was just so exciting to see that.
“Younghye Han: “My Mother’s First Exhibition,” 2016. Photo by Aram Han Sifuentes.
Lillyanne: Do you feel like it influenced your practice for your later works?
Aram: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really been important for me that we know that there’s so many artists and creative people within our communities, particularly in immigrant and refugee communities, right. There’s so many artists and creators. A lot of them are still creative in some kind of way, or making in some kind of way. And, if we sort of open our eyes to seeing that, it’s actually everywhere. I’ve been really excited to sort of dig into that and ask those questions.
There’s a sort of corner store here in Chicago called Kim’s Corner Food and Thomas Kong(4). He’s a Korean American immigrant. I think he immigrated here a very long time ago. He’s in his 70s. And he does all this collage in his store and covers every surface with all these collages that he makes.
There was a cafe here, not far from me, a few blocks from my house. And it was owned by Korean American immigrants. The guy that was running the store was building these Soju sculptures, like in the backyard, on the patio of his cafe. Just seeing this, I was like, “There’s so much art in our community. We’re just sort of not calling it art, or we’re not really paying attention.” So that’s been really important for me to think about. Access, right. To art. Who gets to call themselves artists, on what terms? And so, sort of trying to rupture. That is something I’m interested in doing more and more.
Lillyanne: Yeah, that’s also something I’ve been thinking about, as I’m only in my third month in my MFA, like, do I need to continue? And, on the other hand, I’m like, “Wow, being someone who is brown and getting an MFA.” That’s something that’s great to complete or something I’d want to achieve. But, at the same time, it’s like getting an MFA in social practice, when in fact, everyone I know in my communities are technically socially engaged artists. They just don’t have an MFA. It’s just really hard to process that.
Aram: Totally. Yeah, I mean, I think it is… You’re totally right. It’s like –– like I said, there’s so much art and creating within our communities… Like yeah… social practice … [Aram laughing] Exactly. Right. So many people are doing social practice. They just don’t know that that’s what it’s called, or they don’t call it that, or they don’t call themselves artists. And I think that’s hard to navigate. But I think, as an artist in the art world, it’s been exciting to then open those doors. Or not necessarily open those doors, but it’s like, whenever I get an opportunity, I bring other people with me.
Lillyanne: YASSS.
Aram: Using my ability to go through those doors, like using my privilege, in order to bring people with me. I think that that’s something that’s pretty important to do. When you are able to access those PWIs (Predominately White Institutions) and get those degrees. You know.
Racist Blotter, a documentation tool for racist/biased incidents that happened to BIPOC at Reed College. Part of Receipts Journal Vol 3, 2018, a monthly journal for and by students of color, faculty, staff, and alumni of color at Reed College. Co-Founders: Lucy X., Lillyanne P., Santi V., and Gerardo V.
Lillyanne: Mhmmmmmm. So I was wondering, how have you navigated using whiteness as a character within your work? I think for example, Messages from my Ancestors to Our Colonizers, and then the Taking Receipts project, the Citizenship Test Sampler, and then the Official Unofficial Voting Station. Using art to activate a topic around white supremacy and giving people of color agency and their voice, I was wondering, how has the role of whiteness changed in each of those projects? And where do you hope to go further with it?
Aram: What I’m always trying to do is center immigrants, center people of color, center who I am and my needs and my communities’ needs. Maybe it isn’t the first thought that I have, to fight whiteness. I think the first impulse I have is to center my communities. Just centering ourselves, it ends up being a statement against whiteness. Because that just tells us what kind of society we live in. In a lot of ways, it’s just about centering ourselves, telling our stories, and creating opportunities for us to connect with each other through art.
I think in a lot of ways each project sort of focused on different parts of it. So, I think the part where I am directly thinking about fighting against whiteness and white supremacy is Taking Receipts. The Cute Rage Press is a project in collaboration between Ishita Dharap and I. We started creating these stickers and books. Really silly, silly, sort of… it’s a silly project, right. Because how it started was like… Ishita is from India. And we’re both these sort of bubbly, cute, Asian American femmes. You know? We often talk about our cuteness as our weapon. So, we could call out more things, we could get away with more things because of our cuteness. We were thinking about this with the discrimination we were facing. I was like, “You know, I need a log all of this because ultimately, if I ever need to like file a complaint or go file a lawsuit or anything, I need like a meticulous log of all this discrimination I’m facing in my workplace. And that’s how the idea came about for the Taking Receipts book. It was book for us to log our incidents of discrimination so that we are armed with the tools to protect ourselves if we need to. You know?
Part of a project “The Cute Rage Press, Put it on Blast! Sticker Sheet,” 2016-present. Photo by Ishita Dharap.
Aram continued: And then the cute Put it on Blast! label-it stickers came from an also similar conversation where it was just like… There’s so much BS around me. I wish you just had stickers that said, like, “you’re racist,” “you’re sexist,” and “I hate you.” And I just wish I had these stickers. So, I could just label everything around me and give them to people. That’s how these stickers came about. That one, I think, is a direct response to the discrimination and just the bullshit we have to face as people who are marginalized by society.
But the other projects, in a lot of ways, I talked about them as rupturing dominant narrative. And sort of turning it on its head. With the Official Unofficial Voting Station, voting for all the people who really can’t, you know, this rhetoric around voting is that like, “We all can vote, we all have to change the world by voting.” Which is… true. But, we never have that conversation that talks about the fact that more than 28% of the population can’t legally vote.
Lillyanne: Yes.
Aram: Right. And so when we keep talking about, Voting is for everybody. Voting should be for everybody, then let’s do that. And I did that in my art project. Sometimes it’s rupturing that Western liberal language that makes a lot of people invisible, and sort of making it true, or putting it on its head to be like, this is actually not true at all. And this is actually… You know… democracy is always meant to keep certain people—people of color, right— it’s always meant to exploit… and it’s always to exploit us to keep us invisible. You know.
Lillyanne: You mentioned at the end of your article, “How Internalized White Supremacy Manifests for My BIPOC Students in Art School,” that we need a chance to be able to call out each other. You use the word… I think it was nice — no, not nice! I don’t use the word “nice.” But it was like… gently, gently calling someone out during class, and treating everyone with respect. And then I was wondering how… When I get mad, I get mad. And I want to say whatever I want out of my mouth. And you do mention that for some of your students, it’s clumsy and muddy. But the balance of taking care… like BIPOC students taking care of themselves in an MFA program.
While white students be like, “Don’t do call out culture! Don’t cancel us.” And then, you know, like as one of the only brown students, It’s like – no. You can’t use those words. Those words aren’t for you. And it just makes me frustrated.
So I was just wondering how to balance the two in an MFA program, like gently calling someone out, but then also taking care of your rage. And then also a comment on when white people use, “Don’t cancel us.”
Aram: Yeah, yeah. I wrote in that article that white culture is really good… Like, they’re really, really good at appropriating the things, like the critiques that are against them, and using it against us without any self-awareness. Right? And so I think that is definitely what’s happening. People who are always complaining about ‘cancel culture’ just don’t understand what that means. You know. [laughs]
Lillyanne: Uh.. YEAH.
Aram: It’s like, so devoid of context. Right. And so I think that definitely happens.
I think it’s really difficult, for sure, what you’re talking about, because I think in your situation and in a lot of people’s situation, it’s not on you to create that environment. You can’t create that environment, that safe environment by yourself. Right.
So if you don’t trust the people in the room around you, of course, you’re just going to be angry and you’re not going to call them out gently and trust that that will be taken as with love and care. Cause I think, you know, being Korean American, being Asian American, calling each other out is definitely an act of love.
Lillyanne: YES. [ laughs]
Aram: Right.
Lillyanne: YES. OH MY GOD. [Aram laughs]
Aram: My mom does that. My dad does that. My aunties do that. Like everybody does that. You know. And its cultural. You know?
Lillyanne: YES. IT IS.
Aram: Sometimes it goes far.
Lillyanne: Oh, no, I’ve cried a few times. But, at the end, it’s like “you know we love you.” And I’m like… [Lillyanne and Aram laughs]
Aram: So, there needs to be a balance there. [Aram laughing] But I do think it’s really important that we can tell each other when we’re doing something wrong. We can, you know… And I try to enforce that, of course. Like, my parents hate that you know… when you do something wrong, I’m not going to just wash it over, you’re gonna face those consequences. But, it’s like an act of love to make my child face those consequences with support.
Lillyanne: Yes.
Aram: I think it’s really hard to create that environment. And I think, as a teacher, I’m able to do that in my classroom. Because I’m creating this small bubble. I’m hoping that this small bubble will have an impact that goes outside of the small bubble. Right. And I think that’s why I’m a teacher. That’s why I love being an educator. I can model that. I could create support for students of color, for students who are marginalized, I can provide that support, you know, for all students, right. And if people get it wrong–– not to, not to jump to, you know, being aggressive or hurtful towards them, but also letting them see that this is an opportunity to learn, you know.
Lillyanne: Mhmm.
Aram: And so I think in that way, it’s difficult because that environment and that culture needs to be there, where people can call each other out, and feel safe doing it. I think we need to talk about that more in terms of, just as a culture, to talk about it more, like calling each other out, telling each other we’re doing something wrong. It’s actually really an act of care.
Lillyanne: Yeah, I feel like caring about wanting to make this space better for yourself, and then also for the future BIPOC students who come in the space. I definitely agree. And, those are my main questions. And I think the final questions would be, where are you going now with all this work? And what is your current work? Anything that you would like to say to end? And any guiding questions that you have for? Or love? Letters of love? Or a sentence of love? For BIPOC students?
Aram: Where do I start? [laughs] I am walking my dog, Bubble Tea Sifuentes (B.T.S. for short). [laughs] Today’s my studio day. I have two upcoming solo exhibitions, early 2022. So, I’ve been really busy working on that.
Aram Han Sifuentes. Photo by Virginia Harold.
Aram continued: One body of work I’ve been diving into that sort of really exciting for me is … it comes from the Protest Banner Lending Library.(9) It’s where I’m working with different makers and designers and artists. And we’re creating protest garments. So it’s called a Protest Garment Lab.(10) And thinking about safety, right. I wanted to create these garments that had secret pockets that you could open up and appendages that you can open up, then they turn into these protest banners. And it’s been exciting, because yeah, when it opens up, it highlights this moment of transformation. And then it really emboldens the wear, you know, and then you could put it back away and it becomes discrete again. So, I’ve been working on that at the moment. It’s been really fun.
And I think that’s something that’s so important that I tell young people is that sometimes we get sort of bogged down, or, not bogged down, but we have this sense of responsibility that we have to tell these very serious stories, because what we address is very serious.
But never forget that we also come from, you know, joy and play and, you know, even! even! In our most hardest moments, I think, as people, we always come together and find ways to have fun. I think that’s been really exciting for me, to have so much fun making this new body of work.
I think the sort of advice and love letter I have for BIPOC students is that the art world needs you. [ laughs] You! You! We need you so badly, and it’s so important that you’re making the work that you do by telling your own stories, connecting to your communities. Just don’t forget that. Cause a lot of times being in a PWI… It’s hard and you are constantly negotiating, Should I even be here? But, we need you, you should be here. I need you!
And I’ve been trying to get my child who is six years old to listen to this one K-pop song just cause it’s so affirming. And so I think you guys should listen to that. It’s awesome. It’s called 달라달라 DALLA DALLA by Itzy. But it’s just the best. The main chorus is like, “I love myself, and I’m a little different, different.” I just love that song and I was playing it for my child all morning.
Lillyanne: Yeah, I get to design the webpage for the article. So I’ll definitely put the video as the first hyperlink.
Aram: I know! Isn’t it so cute that there’s like this K-Pop song that just talks about how I love myself because I’m unique and I’m different. This is so cute. This is the future. This is what I need.
Lillyanne: Yes! [Lillyanne and Aram laugh] Well, thank you so much for your time.
Aram: Yeah, thank you. Let’s be in touch. Let me know what you’re up to. Send me updates, add me to your newsletter and things like that.
Lillyanne: I’ll start a newsletter just for that. [Lillyanne and Aram laugh] Well, have a great day. Bye bye.
Footnotes:
(1) Mural Arts of Philly’s Public Art & Civic Engagement Capacity Building Initiative 2020-2023.
(2) Aram’s “How Internalized White Supremacy Manifests for My BIPOC Students in Art School,” Art Journal Open, 2021.
(3) Younghye Han: “My Mother’s First Exhibition, 2016.
(4) About Thomas Kong.
(5) Messages from my Ancestors to Our Colonizers, 2016.
(6) The Cute Rage Press: Taking Receipts and Put it on Blast!, 2016-present.
(7) Citizenship Test Sampler, 2012-present.
(8) Official Unofficial Voting Station 2020 and Official Unofficial Voting Station 2016.
(9) Protest Banner Lending Library, 2016-present.
(10) Protest Garment Lab, 2021-present.
Lillyanne Phạm (LP) (they/bạn/she/em/chị) was raised by Việt refugees in a trailer park near cornfields and suburbs (b. 1997). LP is a multimedia storyteller, placekeeping artist, social media scholar, and cultural worker. LP grounds their work in ancestral knowledge, the world wide web, and community-powered safety/sanctuary. Since graduating from Reed College in 2020, LP and their work has been rooted in East Portland exploring the power of BIPOC youth decision making. LP also builds community as a member of Metro’s Equity Advisory Committee (EAC), the Contingent’s SINE and ELI network, 2022 Atabey Medicine Apprenticeship, and the O82 Art Crew. You can follow LP’s work on IG: @lillyannepham or website: lillyannepham.com
Aram Han Sifuentes (she/they) is a fiber and social practice artist, writer, and educator who works to center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. Her works have been exhibited at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), MCA Denver (Denver), and Moody Center for the Arts (Houston). Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at moCa Cleveland (Cleveland) in January 2022, and Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles) in April 2022. Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Award and 2021 3Arts Next Level Awardee, and 2020 Map Fund Grantee. Her project Protest Banner Lending Library was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum (London, UK) in 2016. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an associate professor, adjunct, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://www.aramhansifuentes.com/
Be in the Play That You’re In
December 12, 2021
Text by Becca Kauffman with Jibz Cameron
“…Art is for moving you through feelings or concepts or thoughts that can’t really be expressed through language in the same way… Anything that makes you think about anything differently is valuable, I think.”
JIBZ CAMERON
What does it mean to be of service as a performer?
The pandemic dovetailed with my first year in the Art + Social Practice program, and by the time I began school, I felt worlds away from my former life and priorities as a performer. I was sure I’d be hanging up my showman hat forever, in order to do something that was actually useful. New age composer Kay Gardner’s words— “May the work that I do be used for the greatest good”— became my motto. I didn’t perform for the next ten months. By the summer of 2021, though, New York nightlife had resuscitated, and suddenly I was being asked to play one show after another. I said yes to them all— there’s nothing like an opportunity to flex what you know how to do. August, September, October, November— I was back, baby.
But was I useful? As I enter year two of my MFA pursuit, I remain uncertain as to how I can be of service as a performer. Those of us trained to flourish in the spotlight sometimes get a bad rap for being self-interested, and as you’ll read below, we are often caged into a restrictive, fame-driven notion of success. But in fact, a performance is a practiced offering; it gives us a reason to gather, a sight around which to congregate, a collective experience that leaves us changed. Performance is its own form of dialogue with a public. It’s a mutually beneficial transaction. So, then, can entertaining be an act of hospitality?
Turns out Jibz Cameron, the Los Angeles-based performing artist I interviewed for this issue of SoFA, has had similar questions on her mind as of late: “What is it that you’re actually doing? Why does it matter? What is it for? Who cares?,” she asked emphatically over our video call. It is simultaneously relieving and disconcerting that Jibz, a longtime professional artiste and recipient of impressive art grants aplenty, still experiences existential crises such as these. If anything, it underscores the timeless utility of creative reflection.
Best known for her prolific 20-year output as Dynasty Handbag (the disheveled lesbian madwoman who functions as her performance vessel), Jibz’s work as a performer, actor, and visual artist spans comical live solo shows, multimedia performances, musical green screen videos, pervy drawings (see: Untitled Orgy #3), and a forever in-progress cable television show. In the midst of all this, Jibz also hosts and produces a wildly popular monthly variety show called Dynasty Handbag’s Weirdo Night at LA music venue Zebulon. Weirdo Night was initiated to fill a void in the Los Angeles scene, which was notably lacking in support for cross-genre artistry. This stitching together of comedy, music, video, and performance art resonated with locals and forged a community of devoted attendees.
An iconic solo performer, I was curious how Jibz’s outlook on performance might have been reshaped by her experience as a host in support of other wacky artists doing their thing. Spoiler alert: it did. We talked about performance as a service and a collaboration; and we talked about letting go of ambition and the importance, as a host, of creating a unified space for the performers and the audience.
Still from Weirdo Night (The Movie). Filmed in Los Angeles, CA. 2021. Courtesy of Jibz Cameron.
Becca Kauffman: I was curious to know what a day in the life looks like for you, as a working artist. I’m just asking in terms of isolation, because I spend all day alone. I work from home, I live alone, and I zoom into grad school from thousands of miles away. I feel like, bizarrely, as a performer, my life is highly solitary considering that my work necessitates the presence of other people.
Jibz Cameron: Can I just say what you just said? Except for I don’t live alone, but yeah, it’s very isolating. But it’s interesting, because it’s different now. I guess I’m wondering, is this COVID or not COVID? Like, just regularness? I [live a] pretty standard, not very exciting lesbian life, you know? I take pretty good care of myself, though, I have to say. A lot of my life is about regulating my mania, and my workaholism. So I have to temper that a lot. I have to exercise a lot, I have to talk to a lot of people on the phone and check in. I’m sober, and in recovery. So I do a lot of maintenance. A lot of maintenance.
Becca: It’s a responsibility to do that. I also have a lot of self-help and self-healing practices in my daily life that sometimes I ask, is this really indulgent or selfish?
Jibz: It can be if you don’t have a goal— the point is so that you can be of service, that’s kind of where I’m at right now. Like, I have to view everything as service now. Not in a people-pleasing kind of way, just more a way of like, if this is going to benefit me being able to do my job better, being able to be a better friend, a better person, or not even better, I don’t even want to use that word, just like, more at peace— useful. And some of that includes like, a lot of napping, sometimes it’s really intense work. But I’m always trying to balance it, you know, because I have a tendency to go one way or the other. It’s all nap, or all work.
Becca: I totally resonate with your idea of service. That’s how I’ve started to think of my approach to performance in the last two years, as well. For me, there are parts of performing that are personal, process-oriented expressions and expulsions that need to happen, but at the same time, I can tell that there’s also a benefit for the other people who partake in those experiences. So how can I refocus my energy toward being of service to the people that come into the orbit of an idea or project that I have? Did your idea of service start to develop more because of the pandemic, or was it fermenting before that?
Jibz: Well, it’s been fermenting for a while. I think part of that was developing Weirdo Night and having to go through a process of giving it away and being like, this isn’t really even mine anymore. Because I would get on a lot of ego trip stuff, a lot of fear, and, Oh, now it’s really popular, so it has to be amazing all the time. I would just stop remembering that it’s for the people that are there; that it’s one show at a time, and people are there because they want to be, not because they’re like, Let’s see what you got. Maybe there’s one or two of those people, but who gives a shit?
Coming back into [performance after the pandemic], I was like, Okay, some shit has to be different now. Because I really wear myself out and overdo it, overwork. And I was like, that needs to stop. Because it’s not even possible anymore. Like, physically, I’ve slowed down— just the regular COVID shit, we’re like, Oh my god, this is hard. But also just mentally, it’s, who cares? Like, it’s fine. Just letting go of ambition and striving. I just want shit to feel good.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this too, where you thought a lot about what performance is, and what the relationship is, like what is it that you’re actually doing? Why does it matter? What is it for? Who cares? Because everybody was questioning what their place on Earth was, you know? A lot of like, Does my art matter, blah blah. I think it’s this weird symbiosis between, nothing matters because we’re all like, going down— the apocalypse is happening. It’s not like, not going to happen. So [art is] really important, but then it’s also not important at all. So it’s like these two things kind of converging in the middle. I think it’s important for the Now. But the future of it doesn’t matter. Your future doesn’t matter. Your success doesn’t matter. Whatever you deem matters in the future, doesn’t matter. And so that helps me a lot, thinking about putting Weirdo Night on again, which is what I just did for the first time. I had to keep that in mind a lot. You know, instead of this larger scope of like, The show is back! What’s it going to be like, how am I going to navigate the world? Who knows, maybe we’ll go into another lockdown in a month. There’s no planning anymore. There’s like, vague goals.
Becca: It’s like a reframing of ambition, because meaning and purpose is all chopped and screwed. The future is truncated, or like, what happens later, or after, or in some distance ahead of time, basically becomes irrelevant because we’re in this chaos soup with no bowl.
Jibz: Yeah, no bowl for the soup. And all those cliches of like, “Be here now” and “Love the one you’re with”— it’s like, Oh, right. That’s what that means. It just means like, your side of the street, taking care of your community, your neighbor, your stuff. Like what is in your hula hoop first, you know?
When the ‘plandemic(1)’ first started, I was about to make this little TV show. And we turned in our scripts, and then the next week was lockdown. And we haven’t heard back since. And that was what I thought my life was going to be. But I kind of just don’t even care. I’m like, I don’t know, what business do I have knowing what I’m supposed to be doing?
Becca: I had a similar crisis during the pandemic, where I was like, Fuck, I literally only have soft skills. How am I supposed to make myself useful during this time? I decided emotional catharsis is one way— trying to make sense of things by using your body and your psyche as some kind of vessel, being thoroughly explorative internally and then willing to fish it out and dredge it up for sharing. That’s a form of offering that also justifies taking care of yourself, tending to your well being and making sure that you have tools to find clarity within yourself so you can communicate or create some kind of collective experience that allows people to realize emotions they are having that they might not have been able to access before.
Jibz: Generally what art is for: moving you through feelings or concepts or thoughts that can’t really be expressed through language in the same way, or written. Anything that makes you think about anything differently is valuable, I think. That’s why I’m kind of like— maybe this is just a lame excuse, but— not really having a gauge or an interest in high or low art and just being like, anything that makes me see something different is totally valuable. And if it propels me in any way, and it’s not boring, I’m there for it. And I think it’s useful. Like trash TV, or whatever it is.
Jibz Cameron, aka Dynasty Handbag, 2018. Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Indra Dunis.
Becca: You’ve talked about your impetus to start Weirdo Night being the creation of this kind of between space, a container for genres that didn’t really have a meeting point in Los Angeles. Providing a place where people can go, belong, and feel included in a new genre.
Jibz: I personally have never really understood where my place in any genre was. I really don’t still. And I like that, that’s the cool thing about being an artist, is that you can do whatever the fuck you want. I sort of thought I wanted to be a theater actor. I went to art school and then I went to theater school. But it’s too small. It’s too narrow. It’s too one-thing for me.
One of the things I always think about is, a really great time for me was in San Francisco in the late 90s and early 2000s. Even though I always kind of hated living there because it’s really haunted and creepy, and I kind of just wound up there. But there was a moment there where I felt like, everybody was doing stuff, you could afford to live there, and there was no question of whether or not you were going to get famous by what you did or make any money. It was already accepted that it was never going to happen, especially there. And then when I moved to New York, I was like, Oh, everyone here is looking to be discovered. Because you can be discovered in New York, but you could not be discovered [in San Francisco]. There’s no one there to discover you. So I think that’s part of it, is just that age old stupid thing of like, art for art’s sake, just cause you want to.
Dynasty Handbag hosting Weirdo Night, Los Angeles, CA. 2018. Video still by Mariah Garnett.
Becca: So a blissful time in your creative past was a period in which there was no spectre of, interest in, or ambition towards fame and recognition, being discovered. But then you moved to New York, and after that you moved to LA. I feel like part of a narrative I’ve picked up from you over the years, through jokes and asides that you’ve told, is you trying to “make it in Hollywood;” and this failed TV show, which sort of tidily folds into the essence of Dynasty Handbag’s schtick: being a mess. I’m curious about the relationship that you now have to fame and ambition. You had the 90s in San Francisco, where those things weren’t on the table, and now post-pandemic, where it’s also not really on the table— maybe it is, but we’re not thinking that far ahead. Where does ambition lie for you? When you’re workaholic-ing, what are you working for, in your mind?
Jibz: So the workaholic-ing, it doesn’t really have ambition behind it. It has getting-high-off-of-anxiety behind it, which is something that I had to figure out: that I was like, I feel like I’m really ambitious, but I’m actually just an addict who wants to feel like I’m on drugs all the time. When I am in a creative place and I’m making work that I like, I don’t feel like that, I just feel happy and in the zone, and energized in a regular way. But when I’m manic— it’s really the “-aholism” that’s important about it. Like, working isn’t bad, working hard isn’t bad. It’s just the intention. So I have to calm myself down a lot to make work that is not fueled by mania. I think this goes back to what we were talking about before: I’m gonna have these projects and do my thing, but I’m not gonna grip onto them as though I know this is gonna be the thing. There’s no thing.
Becca: So you’re not looking for a thing anymore?
Jibz: No, not really. I just want my projects to be fun and to be with other people. And to have energy and maybe get folks paid, maybe get myself paid. But I don’t really know what that is and I don’t really care anymore. I have things I want to do, for sure. Like I would love to make a TV show because I think it’s great and I love all the people I was working with. But my writing partner Amanda Verwey and I have a pact that, if it started to be not fun, we would stop doing it. Because there’s a lot of miserable people in LA trying to get their TV shows made… I don’t know what’s best for me, is all I’m saying, success-wise.
Becca: I think as a performer, especially, there’s a singular expectation of what you want, or what you should want, and what other people want for you— for everyone to recognize your greatness— which means, become famous. It’s a huge burden because it makes it challenging to just enjoy small accomplishments; they’re never big enough or good enough.
Jibz: And they never will be, Becca, they never will be! Because I’ve reached every single milestone that I thought I wanted. I’ve literally done above and beyond what I ever thought was possible for me. And I’m still fucking shit for brains crazy. And I still have the same hang ups.
Becca: Okay, so I’ve been thinking about hospitality as an aspect of performance, especially in the role of a host.
Jibz: You are the fucking master stewardess of the universe.
Becca: Ah, haha. Thank you. I was wondering if the idea of hospitality, being hospitable as a performer, sets off any sparks in your mind in terms of how you approach being on stage, and creating an environment and a culture inside of your shows?
Jibz: I’ve seen a lot of drag queens in my day. I really think that model of hosting is where I get my inspiration from. I think the main thing about hosting is acknowledging the space that you’re in; acknowledging the reality of what’s going on. And helping people to feel like there’s someone in charge. I mean, with Dynasty Handbag, the fun part is that she’s in charge, but, do you really want that? It could go totally awry. But that’s the fun part. Because if you go to my shows, you know that it’s not going to go totally off the rails. It’ll go off the rails enough to keep it fun, but I’m not going to let anyone get hurt or say anything super fucked up— I’m not gonna make chaos for no reason, or make anyone feel bad. So that’s the main thing, is acknowledging what’s happening. Like, Oh, welcome to the show. So glad to be at Zebulon. I see we have blah, blah, blah, here. Watching drag queens is like that and then taking a piss on the whole thing, especially if it’s in any kind of a low brow situation.
It’s all these departure points of like, Oh, we’re all together. I like to talk about, Can everybody see? Oh, you can’t? Well, that’s too bad, because we’re in a class system. And the people who are more advanced got here earlier, and they’re in the front. So, just making it so that it’s like, the things that are awkward or uncomfortable about it are acknowledged. And I think it’s the same thing with hospitality in terms of when you go to a restaurant. I worked as a waitress for a really long time. All you need to do is smile at someone and say, Hello, I see you. I know you’re there. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. And then they calm down. If you go to a restaurant, and no one looks at you and you’re standing around, the person’s going to be angry in like, one minute. It’s just like, I see you. I see you’re here, I see you made the effort to get here. I like to acknowledge the fact that [Weirdo Night is] a gay space, queer space. You’re harming me if you’re heterosexual, and you’re here. But, you know, you can make it up to me by giving me your firstborn child. Because there’s always straight people that come to the show, and sometimes I know they feel weird. Because they’re like, Oh I’m in a queer space, am I allowed to be here? And I’m like, Yes, you’re allowed. And everyone’s a target, so we’re all on the same level. But I make myself the biggest target, so it can calm things down.
[At Weirdo Night] the tone changes a lot; you’ll have a really serious kind of thing that you don’t know if you’re supposed to take seriously, and then a comedian that you know you’re supposed to laugh at. My job is to weave it all together and make it okay; [so] that the experience is, We’re just here, checking things out. Like we’re really here just to support people that have a weird thing they do. And be entertained, and be in a live space that’s entertaining.
Flyers for Weirdo Night at Zebulon, 2020. Designed by Jibz Cameron.
Flyers for Weirdo Night at Zebulon, 2020. Designed by Jibz Cameron.
Becca: You’re reminding me of the eclecticism of Weirdo Night, and how prescriptive so many other spaces that performance takes place in can be. Like if you go to a music venue, your expectations are set to just see some bands play. And if you go to a comedy club, you’re primed to laugh, no matter what. So your job at Weirdo Night, because it’s beyond genre– like genre transcendent– is to keep holding that space of open-ended experimentation, and to create this lens where people don’t have a script of how they’re supposed to behave or respond to what’s happening.
Jibz: They don’t have a script. Exactly.
Becca: What’s the difference between how you approach your work on stage as the host of Weirdo Night versus when you’re doing a solo performance as Dynasty Handbag?
Jibz: It’s a pretty different thing. Weirdo Night is like, I’m thinking about this big macro thing that’s happening. Sometimes I forget to even plan what I’m going to actually do. I’m just thinking about putting the show together, collecting all the videos– you know, people walk in and there are videos playing, and that’s one of my favorite things to do, is find weird videos to play. I think about that too much. And then figuring out what I’m going to talk about, how I’m going to open the show. It is like a [late-]night show, like on TV, because I always reference things that are happening in a particular way. It’s like what you were saying, hospitality: Welcome to the space. I’m gonna guide you, here’s what’s going on, here’s the reality that I’m creating. And when I’m doing a solo thing, I can just go up with my laptop and just do whatever the fuck I want. You’re at a Dynasty Handbag show. But [Weirdo Night] is way more about the audience. Like at my own solo shows, I don’t care about the audience. [Laughs]
Becca: You did have everyone rearrange themselves according to height at the show I saw last week.
Jibz: I did. That’s true. Because that’s just basic, annoying shit, for people. And I really don’t like it when I can’t see the stage. It sucks. It’s like, you all paid the same amount of money.
Becca: I’m obsessed with trying to impart spatial awareness to a crowd of people whose attention you have. I did this show the other night, and I borrowed that request of yours. I said, Okay, you have one minute to arrange yourself according to height, shortest to tallest, oriented towards the stage. Go. And they all did it. It was very satisfying.
Jibz: Oh, I’m gonna steal that. Just as, like, a performance. You’re all in a performance now. Go! Quickly!
Becca: That’s what I’m trying to do— I was talking to you about this after your recent show at Union Pool in New York. I’ve been researching larp (live action role play) as a way to rethink what I’m doing onstage as less of a performance and more of a structured improvisation through character. Eventually I’m trying to rope everyone else into it, too, and decenter myself somehow. Not in an annoying, like, Can I get a volunteer from the audience, kind of way. Because I hate that.
Jibz: I should be like, Can I get a volunteer from the audience to leave? Because it’s real crowded in here. Someone needs to give up their seat. Can you take a later flight, please?
Becca: You can give them a voucher.
What does Dynasty Handbag mean as a character? Is it a character? Or is it just a formal name to you now, for when you’re operating in a performance state of mind?
Jibz: I think it’s that [just a formal name]. I mean, I do think it’s changed a lot since I started hosting, because when you’re hosting, you have to acknowledge reality. Even if it’s skewed, and you’re making things up. It would be disrespectful for me to not say who was coming on the stage and just make something up. I need to frame it for people that are there. I need to be respectful of the artists. I can’t just live in Dynasty Handbag’s reality. So they’ve definitely melded a lot more, because I have to be in whatever this reality is. And if I’m just doing my solo thing, I don’t have to do that, really. Like I don’t have to engage in anything that isn’t conceptual. Unless I’m like, Can I get something in the monitor? You know, like those moments. But as Dynasty Handbag, I have to incorporate that reality and sort of filter it through her, and make it funny. So that’s how it sort of ends up coming out.
One time, there was a kitten that [accidentally] came onstage at Weirdo Night. And that was… For real, Dynasty Handbag left the room. I became like, lesbian Jibz— animal rescuer, vegetarian nerd took over. I did not know what to do, it was so weird. There’s an alleyway [below the venue] and the kitten was living down there. Somehow it got upstairs and got on stage. And I was completely derailed.
Becca: I mean, I don’t know you very well, but I feel like when I’ve seen you perform, I’ve been watching you and Dynasty in dialogue. I gather there’s a lot of improvisational moments and responsive decision making, and that sometimes I’m witnessing, as an audience member, a discovery that you’re making about what you chose to do as Dynasty. So I don’t feel like you’re absent. And also people have their own kind of wrapped-in-plastic idea of the person in the spotlight; everything and anything you do is generally accepted and understood as a purposeful, in-character move. The idea of you feeling like you broke character to take care of the cat— a lot of people might not have even seen that you stepped into full Jibz in that moment.
Jibz: I don’t think they did, but my body did. I left that consciousness. And usually when I’m on stage, I don’t leave the consciousness. Even if something kind of throws me a little bit, I can quickly make a decision that it’s Dynasty Handbag, like exactly what you said. I can stay in character, what have you. I can method act my way through moments, you know. So if there’s a real thing happening that needs to be dealt with, I can deal with it as this person. I can make that happen pretty quickly. It’s cool to hear it reflected that you observe decision making, but that’s what improv is, is just watching someone decide things and you’re like, What? How did that come out?
Becca: My favorite part of that process, as a witness, is seeing an actor surprise themself, or notice what they did and react to it. It’s like a live laboratory.
Jibz: Like when you’re watching SNL and you know someone’s improvising and their scene partner is like, losing it.
Becca: Yes.
Jibz: It’s the best moment— you know they’re just being like, You are so fucking funny I can’t stand it.
Becca: Yeah, exactly. It’s like a hyper presence, too, because you’re riding the line of reality and the fictitious world that you’re inventing in real time. It’s magic.
My own performance persona, Jennifer Vanilla, is for me an imprint of influences that I need to purge somehow through my own interpretation.
Jibz: Purge and celebrate. It’s the same with me. Even Weirdo Night, my dream is to have that as a series, like make more of the films, but then have a set, too. It would be like all the stuff that I was totally hypnotized by as a kid, The Muppets, Soul Train Solid Gold, all the variety shows I loved, like Carol Burnett. I was so into that stuff. That stuff kind of saved me. And it’s all in there. I didn’t know what I was even laughing at, but I knew that women who were exaggeratedly feminine and ridiculous were funny. I didn’t know what that was, but I knew it was funny. And I knew that I identified with it. I know what it is now, because gender is ridiculous… I didn’t feel like a woman in the right way. I never have. I always felt repulsed by any kind of femininity that was subscribed, you know? I just didn’t get it. So I feel like Dynasty Handbag is a lot of that. And also my mom was kind of a hippie. She came from Vermont and she was from a farming family. So she was very sturdy. She never wore makeup. She was not a “together” woman. She never looked feminine, she didn’t really know how to put that all together, really. She was also pretty mentally ill. So there’s also that part of it. She’s definitely in Dynasty Handbag, in that way— a reality that no one else is experiencing around you.
Becca: You grew up in a commune kind of scenario, is that right?
Jibz: Commune adjacent. To be fair, the commune wasn’t dysfunctional. It was really my particular set of parents. I mean, there was dysfunction there, of course, but they weren’t abusive, or culty, or freaky. They were just like hippie-activist-clown people.
Becca: There’s something about growing up outside of the mainstream in that way, in terms of a family arrangement. I have my own version of that— I have lesbian parents and a gay dad, and I was very consciously brought into this world via turkey baster in 1984. There’s this plasticity that your work and my work share: the interpretation of the human condition, the complicating and operating outside of gender norms. Neither of my moms or the women that they eventually got involved with after they split, are decidedly femme or butch. They don’t express their queerness in fixed, cookie cutter terms. There was no one feminine in my family, and no one really particularly masculine either. I wonder what the effects are, just hearing about your background too, of growing up with nothing nearby to rebel against or be repelled by.
Jibz: Yeah, the thing that I’m repelled by, are hippies. [Laughs] But I’ve thought a lot about my mom, because I get this sort of label of “failure of a woman,” putting it all together wrong, and stuff. And I think that’s part of it, is that I never had that modeled… Most of the women models in my life were really scrappy. You know?
Becca: Yeah. And is that okay?
Jibz: Like there was no makeup in my house, or heels, or like blow dryers. Do you know what I mean?
Becca: Yeah. Were you drawn to any of that? Did you bring it in?
Jibz: I was drawn to it. But in this very weird way. I had this obsession with— I loved it, but I knew that it was sort of theatrical; it was always a play thing— my friend and I had this thing where we would play hookers. We didn’t know what hookers were, but we knew that they smoked cigarettes, and we knew that they wore pumps. Because it was the ’80s, so every ’80s woman looked like that, right? So it was this thing of like, dragging, that I grew up with. I didn’t have any real model for that, so it was all TV and films. I didn’t know any women like that. It always seemed like just something that was only on TV, you know?
Dynasty Handbag, 2012. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein.
Becca: Do you think that growing up outside of and far away from mainstream norms make them seem exotic, glamorous even, because the only way we accessed them is through the media?
Jibz: [My] first introduction to art was crazy hippie clowns who were being activists and getting run out of town because of their antics. That was what [I] grew up with. I grew up with political lampooning. And so I was really drawn to that stuff, the glamour and all that stuff, but I knew that there was something inherently not good about it. That it was all a sham. And, you know, that the government lied, and all that stuff. This commune that I grew up around, they started a summer camp for kids for performing arts and circus arts, and my parents both worked at it. I went there from the age of six to age 12 or 13. And it was by far the best thing about growing up, it was so much fun. It was Wavy Gravy’s camp, the emcee of Woodstock, the hippie clown. So he was my improv teacher. And everything was, you know, making fun of the Man, it was all beatnik humor. But underneath it is very earnest… weirdos, like weird people. Not like peace and love hippies with patchouli, like weird people.
Becca: It’s like a consciousness that you were imbued with from a young age, a commentary or an outside perspective where people poked holes in structures and systems. Maybe that’s how you learned to do it. And it’s sort of been the perspective that you operate from ever since?
Jibz: But I’ve always been that way. I know that just from things that my parents have told me about what I was like. I was always sort of… I was disruptive and disrespectful of authority and systems. I didn’t buy it, or something, like even before I knew what it was. I don’t know why I was like that. I was always suspicious. That’s not entirely true— I remember being in school when I was really little and enjoying it and stuff. But once that crack in the psyche comes at like, 11, 12, forget it. I was like, No, this is all wrong. I’m getting out of here.
Becca: What purpose does music serve for you in your performances?
Jibz: I think more than any other medium, I’m inspired and moved by music. I love to listen to music. It sounds stupid. It’s like when people say, I love comedy. It’s like, of course! Who doesn’t love music? Duh. But I’m very compelled physically by music. I cannot-not dance if there’s music playing that I like. I’m really a dork in that way. I’m one of those people that, I hear a song, I want to hear it a million times, I memorize all the lyrics. The timing is really important to me too. I think about song structure and I like thinking about, like, what goes into music and how difficult it is, and how it’s like this magic thing that happens. It makes me happy, I’m moved by it. I have to listen to music every day, I like to listen to music really loud. It can make me have feelings, if I need to have a feeling. I can listen to a song and, you know, lay on the floor and cry or whatever. How it works for me now is to help a narrative or a story, or help me move. A sound can help me move on stage.
Most of the time, what I want to do is like, a cover of a song that’s really fucked up. Like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song or something. I really love working with the familiarity of something, something that everybody knows. And then you’re like, What is Dynasty Handbag gonna do with this? And what is this interpretation? That’s what I’m good at. Nobody wants to see me actually play a cover of that— who cares? So I have to think a lot about, What do I need to get this thing across that I’m trying to do? And am I working too hard at it? And is it actually funnier and more interesting to just have like, a stupid reference to this thing instead of actually build a background or make a fancy costume or make a set? It has to really serve Dynasty Handbag, and most of the time she doesn’t really need that much.
Becca: Performing a song that produces a collective recognition in the crowd, like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, creates an instant release in that moment. It just made me think, that’s kind of what your persona, and sometimes a persona in general, does: draw in and interpret a set of disparate-but-familiar references to produce this trippy experience where little glimpses of recognition come through for people at different times. That’s like the meat of it.
Do you have a goal for your live performances? How do you conceive of your role and purpose as an entertainer, when you go out to do a show? Let’s say, specifically a solo show?
Jibz: I mean, besides just making people laugh, and maybe we’ll have a good time. Freaking people out? I think that’s internal, but I don’t actually think about that before I go out. I don’t think about it in terms of a goal. I do sometimes have to tell myself, These people are here because they want to be here. They’re not your enemy. I don’t have to prove anything. I’ve already got the job. I can stop auditioning, I can stop applying for the job that I already have. So just do your job. That’s kind of what it is. And sometimes I’m scared and I’m not in the zone. But as you know as a performer, you get there. You have little things you can do onstage to refocus or, sometimes I close my eyes if I’m just like, Okay, I’m not connecting with the audience. I need to go inside, to connect to something. And then that’ll come out, and I’ll get connected. Or I have to totally dissociate and go into an imaginary place. Did I do that thing at Union Pool where I’m like, in the woods?
Becca: With the guided voiceover? Yeah, I’m obsessed with that.
Jibz: When I’m doing that stuff, I really am, like, in the woods, like I’m there. I’m thinking about everything that that voice is saying. I’m basically just being in a play. So I guess the goal would just be, to be in the play. Be in the play that you’re in. That I wrote. Or that’s being written by me and the audience in the moment. Be in that place. And that’s really what people want to see, too, is you just experiencing something, and, what you said, filtering it out and embodying it and stuff. And now that I have enough of an audience, there’s this other relationship in place where, if I’m performing for an audience that I know doesn’t know me, my shit is a little bit different. And if I’m performing for my audience, you know, there’s a language there already set up. Not everybody’s like that. Some people just get up and they do what they do. And that’s what they do. And that’s also totally rad.
Becca: But there’s something cool about making adjustments, being aware of who you’re engaging with and making choices to help people who aren’t familiar with your work access it, and get the gist of it all. Also, it helps you have a more successful show and feel understood.
Jibz: Yeah, you’ve got to comfort yourself, too, you gotta familiarize yourself with it. Making a joke about the space you’re in is always a great entryway. Like, you know, Does anybody smell a fart? Whatever it is. Or did anybody get intimidated by the person who took your ticket? Anybody feel like they don’t belong? Anybody scared? Bringing my own vulnerability first.
Becca: It seems like, potentially, now that we’ve gone through the pandemic, and as performers kind of bottomed out or felt sort of taken out of the equation for a while; now that we have audience back, and the opportunity to be inside of a real space with people, there’s even more of a desire to collaborate with the audience in real time, because it’s a fleeting moment, more pronounced than it was before. Is there a collaborative element between you and the audience?
Jibz: Yeah, always, that’s what a live performance is. It’s a collaboration. It’s not mine, it’s ours, in a lot of ways.
Footnotes:
(1) This came out of Jibz’ mouth as a hilarious and accurate flub of speech
Becca Kauffman (they/them) is a performance artist based in New York City with an interactive, genre fluid approach to their multidisciplinary solo work. Their self-guided career through art, music, comedy, theater, and dance converges in the cultivated pop persona, Jennifer Vanilla, a world-building fantasy vessel through which Becca creates original voice-oriented dance songs, choreographed stage shows, musical albums, radio shows, videos, and merchandise-as-conversation-pieces. Becca was a member of the experimental Brooklyn pop band Ava Luna for ten years, and is now a second year MFA candidate in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University, where they are working to incorporate socially engaged art strategies into their performance work. They are currently exploring the potential of live action role play to carve out new social and relational spaces and possibilities. A catalogue of projects past and present can be found on their website, and portal to all things Jennifer is @jennifervanilla.
Jibz Cameron (she/her) is a performer, visual artist and actor. Her multi-media performance work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag has spanned over 15 years and has been presented at arts venues such as The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, The Kitchen, BAM, Centre Pompidou among others. She has been heralded by the New York Times as “the funniest and most pitch perfect performance seen in years” and “outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative” by The New Yorker. She has written and produced numerous performance pieces, dozens of video works and 2 albums of original music. Jibz produces and hosts Weirdo Night, a monthly comedy and performance event in Los Angeles. She is a 2020 Creative Capital Grant awardee and a 2021 United States Artist Award recipient. She recently sold a short series to FX network titled Garbage Castle, which is on hold due to Covid. Her film Weirdo Night, directed by Mariah Garnett (a movie version of the live show) is a 2021 Sundance Film Festival selection. She lives in Los Angeles.
I’m Curious About You?
December 12, 2021
Text by Justin Maxon with Desire Grover and H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams PhD
“Racism is such a sham. It’s not what we naturally do. It’s what systems empower us to be able to do.”
DESIRE GROVER
“New Chester Postcards.” A series of new postcards from Chester, PA, made by Desire Grover. 2020. Courtesy of Desire Grover.
“Old Chester Postcards.” A series of historical postcards from Chester, PA. Circa 1910.
This interview, conducted over the phone, is a collaboration between H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams, Desire Grover, and me. During the Fall 2021 interview for SoFA, Desire asked me a question that we chose to leave unanswered until we had the space, but it certainly needed to be answered. This interview is a follow up on that previous conversation, where Desire gets the opportunity to interview me.
This series of interviews is a part of an ongoing dialogue and serves as an entry point into a project Williams, Grover, and myself have been developing since 2017: a collaborative book project titled Chester: Staring Down the White Gaze. At the epicenter of this critical collaboration are two sets of images: the work I completed as a photographer and journalist, covering the city of Chester, Pennsylvania from 2008-2016, and photographs from my childhood archives. Using the latter, we built a visual glossary of white racial tropes to unpack my relationship to whiteness. We use this framework to reconsider my work in Chester, along with other contemporary and historical local media coverage of the city, to elucidate the ways the white gaze reflects its own values when reflected off of the bodies of Black people.
Chester: Staring Down the White Gaze will be published as a collaborative book project of co-authors from the city who tell their own narratives: Desire Grover, illustrator; Wydeen Ringgold, citizen journalist; Leon Paterson, self-taught photographer; and Jonathan King, activist and educator. Throughout the pages of the book, the co-authors are in conversation with me about my images through handwritten text that analyzes, critiques, questions, contextualizes, and interprets the nature of the white gaze that is placed on their community.
Desire Grover: Actually, I’m curious about you. I’m curious what it is that you were looking for when you decided to come to Chester with your camera? Why couldn’t you just go in your own community? And have you gone into your own community with the same expectations? What were those expectations about Chester that are not the same for your own personal community, where you grew up?
Justin Maxon: I came to Chester for two main reasons: I honestly didn’t see myself as white as other white people, and I was seeking connection with my camera. Which is ironic because photography is all about control right? How can you have connection with an undercurrent of control? That’s how whiteness seeps into play. This contradiction was pressed upon me being a white son to a white father. I learned connection through my own historic trauma being a white person. My subconscious thought that the camera would lead me to connection. The reason I was looking for it in Chester ties into the fact that growing up, I never felt I had “my own” community growing up in Humboldt County, CA.
Desire: Hmm.
Justin: My father lived on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation my whole childhood, and my mother lived in Eureka, CA. My time was split between the two places. So, I never felt settled in one place. Growing up on the reservation as a person racialized as white, I was always reminded that I wasn’t part of this space. I wasn’t part of this community. Eventually, that became familiar. The things we seek out as adults in many ways are recreations of the dynamics at play in our childhood.
Desire: Not to throw you off or anything, but I’m kind of curious – in a nutshell, are you saying that pretty much you saw yourself as experiencing on some level what it meant to be other?
Justin: Yes, problematically so. It’s the cool white boy, right? He is the white boy who takes on the traits of BIPOC folks.
Desire: My man.
Justin: Exactly, they extract Black aesthetics from Black culture. When white people feel like they don’t belong in the fold of whiteness – when they’re on the fringes – we have the sensation of what it feels like to be the other. I never felt accepted. I didn’t grow up with family on both sides. It was me, my mother, and father. They both moved away from their families.
Desire: Did you interact with the community there?
Justin: Definitely. Just some context to my living conditions there: my father was extremely poor. We lived in abject poverty. He was disabled, obese, and had a serious mental illness. He slept all day, like he was literally in bed all day. And so, I just did whatever I wanted. I had a handful of friends that were my age that were indigenous and we just did whatever we wanted. They’re familial experiences were similar to mine. We didn’t have parental supervision growing up. My whiteness was reflected back on me. People saw me as the white kid that hung out with Carlie [my best friend growing up in Hoopa]. It just became accepted, like what happened in Chester.
Desire: For you, that seems familiar, you just gravitate to it. It’s your norm. It’s just water, yes?
Justin: Yes, exactly.
Desire: Yeah, it’s how we cope.
As social animals, what we do to accommodate our needs for acceptance and community engagement is nature. It’s not natural for anyone to not want to engage another human being. It’s deeply a part of what we are as humans. To me there are these little funny moments, where I feel like we’re not even talking as much about race as we’re talking about the need to be accepted, the need to have community. Certain cultural norms can either hinder that or help that.
Justin: That makes sense.
Desire: I believe that racism is a privilege. And the reason I refer to it as a privilege is because it is something someone can do when they think they can afford it.
Justin: That makes complete sense.
Desire: Right, for example, when you think about what happens to some of these bigots who go out in public and do crazy things right, and they start crying as soon as there’s backlash. They start falling apart. You just get blown away like, Wow, they were so full of arrogance just five minutes ago. That act of shunning is very powerful. Either they double down even harder because it’s hit them so hard or they completely flip the other way. To be shunned is not a simple thing; it’s not a little thing [for us] as human beings.
I noticed in my life so many people who have been bigoted that I’ve had to engage with, oftentimes would not give me eye contact.
Justin: The connection, they feel like they don’t need it?
Desire: Two things I feel like are happening. One, they don’t want me to be human, so they can’t look me in the eye. That would mean they might see humanity and then it makes them feel some kind of way. Or, secondly, the power of robbing me of that connection is what they’re utilizing in that moment. I can steal from you the acknowledgment of your humanity.
Justin: At the same time they’re robbing themselves of their own.
Desire: Right, right.
Justin: The reason why they can’t afford to do that is because they have this perception, right.
Desire: Yeah, they think they have this endless support system.
What happens when that same bigoted man is in Nigeria and is looking for someone to relate to? He hears my voice speaking with an American accent, and gets excited because someone speaks English in a way that is familiar [laugh].
Racism is such a sham. It’s not what we naturally do. It’s what systems empower us to be able to do. Even now, this whole lie about the election, they’re seeing there’s a power dynamic shifting, so they have to build up another foundation to keep things status quo. We’re not going to go by these rules anymore. You know how kids do in the sandbox? They play in a game, and then the one starts losing and then they destroy the whole game. Now nobody can play! That’s pretty much what is happening right before our eyes.
I insist that racism is a privilege and a lot of people who exercise racism wouldn’t dare if they were in that minority position.
Justin: Exactly. I think what we are talking about is more connected to conservative white America, who feels like they have that wealth of connection in their own white space, so they don’t need to acknowledge someone else’s humanity. Circling back to my own experience with racism, i.e. my desire for connection. For white liberals that grew up, such as me, disconnected from white spaces, they feel like they have to find connection to humanity in whatever space they are in. Because I had that proximity to a BIPOC space, I felt like some part of me belonged in a non-white space. That I could work in a BIPOC space as a professional. That I could operate with the mechanisms of power in a BIPOC space in a way that was useful. When I went into Chester, I honestly thought that I was being useful. Obviously, that screams white savior. Because the criticality of whiteness wasn’t part of my education, it wasn’t part of my parental upbringing, I was able to cause tremendous harm because of my comfortability within BIPOC spaces. Harm that conservative white America could never cause because of a lack of proximity. This is something I’ve read, that white liberal folks cause the most harm to the bodies of BIPOC folks on a daily basis.
Desire: I find it fascinating how often my liberal white friends, or acquaintances, more so, have a tendency to carry a lot of the same assumptions as the so-called conservative. But they’re not honest about it, they wait until they’re in crisis, and then it comes out. It can be very dangerous. [In my graduate program] we were just reading Audrey Lorde, Sister Outsider, and there’s a part where she’s talking to a fellow colleague, a white woman in the feminist movement, who uses her words without consent and within this bizarre context that puts Black women in this negative light. Well, long story short, we ended up having a discussion as to why Audrey would embarrass this woman in front of everyone – not initially, she tried to have a private conversation with her, but she didn’t get any real engagement from her colleague. I was the only Black person in class [laughs]. I was just like, Oh, here we go. It is not uncommon for white people who regard themselves as my friend, and so on, to end up failing when it counts. Black people are so used to that. Like when you were talking about [how] there’s a certain kind of social living that you were used to, and you kept trying to recreate that, right? There’s a certain level of low expectation that I must have or I will be devastated way too often. It’s to the point where certain scenarios have happened, and I’ve been able to predict the outcome. Oh, ok, this move they’re going to be this defensive, they’re going to stonewall me here, they’re going to do this number. It all plays out, because the truth is, it’s very difficult for folks to know who they are until they’re in crisis.
The work you’re doing to yourself is so exceptional, so uncommon, that on some level it kind of scares me.
Justin: It’s scary because of how elastic whiteness is. So, even in this context of me confronting myself, whiteness can still rise to the top. Best selling author Robin DiAngelo is a prime example. DiAngelo confronted herself and now she’s getting paid tens of thousands of dollars to go and lecture for an hour. So, this criticality is now a commodity good to be bought and sold.
Desire: Audrey Lorde talks about how there’s certain conversations that only white people can have with white people. I do think there is a certain level of conversation that I just can’t have. It is dangerous for me. People are rejecting your lived experience. Oftentimes, I don’t feel like I get to have the conversation I want to have and then that compounds the trauma. They’re responding to someone who is not like them in their minds. So, this conversation really is supposed to be between white people and white people.
Justin: Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation now?
Desire: [Laughs]
Justin: I was just trying to honor what you just said. Forcing you to have this conversation would be the last thing I wanted to do.
Desire: No, no, I totally agreed to it. I actually instigated the conversation because I wanted to finish it. I feel like we have conversations that I definitely want to have.
When it comes to the population at large and how white people respond, really there’s nothing that a non-white person, I think, can say or do, as powerful and dynamic as hearing it from another white person.
Justin: Which is unfortunate.
Desire: Is that unfortunate or is that just how humans respond? Like there’s certain conversations you can’t have with Black people, Justin. It’s just not happening. You can try and then end up with eggs and tomatoes. You could even say exactly the same things I’m saying, and they could be 100% true, but it’s coming from you. There are certain conversations I can have with evangelicals because I know stuff. I know what you’re thinking, I know what the manipulation buttons are. So, they can’t play me in the conversation like they might a Catholic person. We need to be open to the leverage we have in certain communities and just have to bear the brunt.
Justin: Yeah totally. I think just for me it’s relevant to look at DiAngelo as an example, in relation to who’s labor is fairly compensated within the context of conversations around critical race theory. After many conversations with Herukhuti, he has mentioned that while working within white spaces for decades, his time and energy has never been compensated fairly. So, for a person like Robin DiAngelo to be made a celebrity overnight, it’s bypassing the labor of BIPOC scholars and thinkers. This is certainly a trap of whiteness that I could see myself falling into. If I am gaining social capital from this work, how am I distributing that?
Desire: So, in what way is Robin on some levels substantively impacting the conversation of race beyond becoming a guru of some kind? Yeah, that’s always tricky business and I’ve heard this word “grifting” being used a lot more. Man, capitalism don’t give any fucks. It will manipulate anything, and nothing is sacred.
I used to be a very anti-platform person. I just hate the idea of being that front person. I grew up as a preacher’s kid, so giving praise to somebody just because of the position they are in is weird. I hate it, so I understand the aversion, but at the same time, there is a role that someone has to fill. If nobody’s filling that space we’re going to have compounded problems. We will reward someone to the point where they become useless. That’s how the platforms are; they try to over expose you so you’re the only voice they will tolerate.
Justin: Yeah, that’s it! That’s how whiteness slips through. If there’s only a singular voice allowed to speak, it doesn’t become something that’s on everybody’s tongue.
Desire: Exactly. These Messiahs they put out, oh, they’re allowed to dissent. They do that to comedians. We gotta laugh at all of it. Let’s laugh. Haha. They are so wise, let’s laugh with them. Then you just go home and do nothing with it, because you laughed it all out.
One of the tactics the police would do when we would do sit-ins, they wouldn’t come in with force. They have these police officers that are more well trained than the ones you have on the street. And they played little mind games with you. Say if you are in a group obstructing traffic, they’ll send police officers, but they don’t look like police officers and they don’t talk like police officers. They actually will listen to your concerns and go, “Ohhh, okay.” They’ll let you just talk it out, talk and talk it out and by the time people are done all their frustrations are down because they’ve had this conversation. And then they’re able to pick you off one by one, away from the line. Like, “We want to just talk to you, do you really think the others should be here? Because we can set up a meeting…” They do it more so in places like Harrisburg and [Washington] DC, the closer you are to the politicians. If you are out and on the block, they’re just gonna tear gas your face.
Oftentimes we are given these Messiahs that can talk about it, and because it’s being said, we think it is being taken care of.
Justin: That’s interesting psychology, I never even thought about that.
Desire: It’s a game. Human beings wanted an excuse not to do anything. Ah, I just want my latte. Cheeseburgers and fries right now, can we not deal with this? But now the Internet has made it dangerous. Now you have these weird wanna-be prophets everywhere. They’re in people’s heads all the time. On a loop. YouTube will loop the same video over if you let it.
I find it intriguing, where you, as a young white man, put yourself in the position of the other. I find that to be a fascinating thing, because most human beings don’t want to be the Other. They don’t want to be the odd one out. You know, they just want to fit in, be normal. I would be curious about that beyond just the issue of race? There has to be another narrative unfolding?
Justin: I was most certainly an outsider in any context I was in. I was disempowered my whole childhood. I was shunned deeply because of how I embodied my masculinity. My failure to meet the criteria of my outward appearing gender identity was dangerous for me. I grew up drowning in hypermasculinity. I was terrorized every day of my adolescence; I had ten bullies, and one was in my home. There was no escape. I never felt I could be myself. In subsequent years, I came to realize Oh, I’m not straight, and Oh, I can express my gender in a way that’s not so binary, and it’s acceptable.
But again, we are talking about proximity again, right? When you look at the intersection of power and privilege, I don’t think you can get any more dangerous than my childhood. As as white person, with a disempowered youth, who learned how to pass at being cis and straight to survive, even though I’m neither, I have forward access to the mechanisms of power. I caused harm without recognizing it because of this intersection within my identity.
Desire: What did it take for you to even realize you had power and why? You’re someone who was bullied, and I would imagine there was a period of your life where you didn’t feel you had power.
Justin: I think the camera. I started to come into my power when I had a camera in my hand regularly. I started to see myself as being worthy of my humanity. I still cling now to it, as an almost 40 year old man, the validation that comes through the things that I do with my camera. I rely on it more than the validation that comes from the human being I am. Becoming a photographer didn’t happen overnight. It took me many years before I could just go up to anyone and talk to them. Eventually when it became second nature, that’s when I was like Oh, I’m strong. I can go and put myself in any space that I have the courage to. That is extreme privilege. At the time, I saw it as more personal power; Oh look, I’m overcoming the limitations of my childhood. I’m overcoming the traumas of my adolescence.
Desire: The camera was a kind of a force field.
Justin: Exactly. It makes sense that it would be the thing that I would use to cause the greatest harm right. This makes me think about the way in which white people can cause harm; their greatest accomplishment causes the greatest harm.
Desire: The camera is a powerful tool. It brings a vulnerability out of perfect strangers and it gives context to why you are there. You’re the camera person.
Justin: What is so troubling is that I was there for that reason. People in Chester would call me up and I would photograph countless parties, birthdays, and weddings. I would print out the pictures for free. But, at the same time, I was working on my own “project,” for a white audience that wanted to hear what I had to say. So, on the one hand, there was this genuine generosity, which allowed me the access, but there was this deep harm that was also happening at the same time.
Desire: Because you were responding to what you thought that audience wanted to see? You weren’t going against the grain of their expectation.
Justin: The audience that I was speaking to were not interested in the snapshots of people’s lives. They wanted the drama.
Desire: The Black death.
Justin: Yes, exactly.
Desire: I wonder what else are we willing to let happen on camera?
Justin Maxon (he/him) is an award-winning visual journalist, arts educator, and aspiring social practice artist. His work takes an interdisciplinary approach that acknowledges the socio-historical context from which issues are born and incorporates multiple voices that texture stories. He seeks to understand how positionally plays out in his work as a storyteller. He has received numerous awards for his photography and video projects. He was a teaching artist in a US State Department-sponsored cultural exchange program between the United States and South Africa. He has worked on feature stories for publications such as TIME, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Mother Jones, and NPR.
Desire Grover (she/her) studied digital illustration & design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She’s been an illustrator for 18 years. She illustrated the four-book series called Hey L’il D by Bob Lanier. Over the years she has done art workshops for her community. She published her first children’s book, For the Love of Peanut Butter, and is currently working on a graphic novel called, The Fatherless Messiah.
H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams PhD (he/him), is the founder and chief erotics officer of the Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality. He is a playwright, stage director, documentary filmmaker, and performance artist. Dr. Herukhuti is the award-winning author of the experimental text, Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 and co-editor of the Lambda Literary Award nonfiction finalist anthology and Bisexual Book Awards nonfiction and anthology winner, Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men. Dr. Herukhuti is a core faculty member in the BFA in Socially Engaged Art, co-founder and core faculty member in the Sexuality Studies undergraduate concentration at Goddard College, and adjunct associate professor of Applied Theatre Research in the School of Professional studies at the City University of New York.
Living Language
December 12, 2021
Text by Mo Geiger with William Padilla-Brown
“I think that tools can be used to crush societies or build them. What I’m doing is in opposition to suffering. And that’s it… Suffering is anti-evolution.”
WILLIAM PADILLA-BROWN
We often discuss interdisciplinary communication and collaboration in the Art and Social Practice Program at Portland State University. Our classroom is populated by people from different backgrounds, which challenges us to find points of connection. The group’s composition changes every year and evolves with individuals’ new research, opening up space for unpredictable shared discoveries and debate. As a student in my third and final year in the program, I am now considering ways to maintain this kind of interaction beyond the classroom.
William Padilla-Brown is a self- and community-taught citizen scientist whose approach resists categorization. His constantly expanding work and research includes mycology, phycology, molecular biology, 3-D printing, writing, rapping, singing, foraging, and living. His Cordyceps Cultivation Handbook (Volumes 1 and 2) were the first books on the subject published in English. All of the images that accompany this interview appeared on his active social media accounts, and he has built an international following from his home base in Pennsylvania. Radical sustainability, skill-sharing, and cellular-level health are at the center of his work with permacultural approaches.
“Nothing is new” is a phrase that William states multiple times in the following interview. He says this not in defeat, but as a straightforward belief in infinite possibilities. This idea recognizes that all knowledge throughout time builds on iteration. I reached out to him because our work is related through core concepts, but not in direct practice, and neither one of us can explore these concepts in isolation. We both use a mixture of disciplines to investigate similar ideas, and I hoped his perspective could be a jolt of energy—helping me consider passed-down, embodied, material knowledge in a scientific context.
In my work as a skilled generalist moving between trades and mediums, I am informed by multiple perspectives gained through experience. This method of working is intentional, and it affects my existence in an economy that values specialization over generalization and independence over collaboration. As artist, educator, and advisor Sheetal Prajapati says of generalist practice, “you can be building skills for one identity by working toward another.” Her statement is a contemporary echo of others such as Buckminster Fuller, who advocated for humankind’s “comprehensive propensities” in his still-resonant Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth in 1969. Conversation between disciplines remains important, and it suggests that a path toward more advanced identities and relationships can be continuous knowledge exchange. In practice, interdisciplinary work expresses the multiplicity in an individual’s mind while at the same time reaching out from that sphere toward other people.
Since we live near each other, William and I met up at Borough Park in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania to talk about his work and the way it relates to art, science, and communication.
Mo Geiger: Looking at your work, from what I know—it’s action-based and accessible to people. Sharing information seems really important to you. Is that a fair statement?
William Padilla-Brown: Yes, it’s 100% super important to me. You know, we live in the first time ever where information is publicly accessible and free flowing. And I think it is imperative that everybody knows that.
Mo: Absolutely. I think to many people, it seems like everything’s being commodified. But when you really get down to it, there’s so much free access to information.
William: I mean, we can learn almost anything. And there’s not anything that’s ancient knowledge anymore, almost all ancient knowledge is accessible now. That’s the thing—once you start to learn again, you’ll get up to speed. And then if you’re actually inquisitive and passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll get to the point where you’re on the cutting edge of it. And that’s when you have to get through the pay gates: people that can afford the resources to experiment and learn. And the resources, like the actual tools to do those experiments, are millions of dollars. It’s like when computers were still a million dollars and took up a whole room to use. But then, when computers became publicly available, they advanced so fast. The human mind is rapidly advancing the technology to the point where we’re just so used to it—it doesn’t even faze us anymore.
William, in a music video still from “Paradise Dices,” a song by his music project, It’s Cosmic. The project uses audio and visual media to explore concepts that arise in his research. Music video directed and edited by Josh Nesmith. 2020. Available here on YouTube.
Mo: This contrast between ancient knowledge and rapidly advancing technology: how do you exist with it? How does new technology interact with the way you do research and share it?
William: Nothing is new, is the other thing. Like nothing is new. We’re all just re-learning everything. So utilizing the ancient is what brings me into the future. My connection to ancient technology is what connects me to the future. What people see as “futuristic”— the algae and the mushrooms—it’s all here. Yeah, it’s old. I guess it’s because it’s small and has evaded the human eye for so long. And we’re the first couple generations of humans to actually be looking at this stuff again.
Mo: It’s interesting having to explain. In thinking about these other ways of doing (that you’re describing)—and often in the artwork I do—the way that people see them is just old. It just feels so foreign sometimes in conversations with people who see history and that type of practice as “just being history.” And new technology, for some reason, is separate. You know what I mean?
William: People think that we’re so advanced and so smart now, but the humans who learned agriculture knew all of the plants in their ecosystems. They knew how to follow the animals, they knew how to mimic animal calls, they knew how to do things that we could only imagine. They were probably way more intellectually engaged in the environment, in the world, than we are right now.
Mo: When you think about doing a public art project, and about sharing the beauty of the thing that you do with a public that has all kinds of belief systems, access points, and different levels of knowledge—do you think about how understanding can slowly build up? Does that make sense?
William: Yeah. I think that putting out art pieces like that is a message to myself—it’s a message to a part of me who will see it in a different way. And I think that the best way to look at reality is with no impositions, and to just be as you are in it. And I think that some symbols just hold super strong, especially ones that aren’t familiar. If I put a mushroom out there, and you’ve never seen that before—it’s a natural symbol. Like, if I put a mushroom out there, and you’ve never seen that before, it’s a natural symbol. You don’t even have anything to relate it to. So, when I used to show people mushrooms at farmers markets, they’d be like, “it looks like an alien,” or “it looks like coral.” And both of those things are “aliens” to people: both of those things come from worlds that people have no point of reference to compare to.
Cordyceps Militaris mushrooms (in foreground) and spirulina (background) grown at William’s lab in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Video still from a vlog posted on his TikTok and Instagram accounts in 2021.
Mo: Even though these things are very integral to life.
William: Very terrestrial. I think it’s just like leaving little breadcrumbs for myself along the way to help remember. And through all the different beliefs and where everybody’s different, where everybody’s coming from, there’s a human element that connects all of us. We’re all humans, we’re all alive here. We all need to eat, we all need to drink water, we all want to have sex—it’s all human.
Mo: Forging connections?
William: I think we’ve forgotten how amazing we are, and what our capacities are. Because a lot of people are overloaded with stimuli from computers and television. Any kid that’s in high school right now, you can talk to them, and they will tell you 100 different brands. Yeah, it’s all symbols. But it’s taking up their capacity, when they could be looking at nature and knowing that this tree has associations with this mushroom versus this company has associations with this famous person.
Mo: A leaf is a symbol.
William: Yeah, it’s an indicator of relationships.
Mo: Do you think about how that perspective assists you in thinking forward in time?
William: Yeah, just like I said, there’s nothing new. It’s all patterns, everything that will exist, already exists. Time is nonlinear. The Mayan culture perceived time so vastly that they had a calendar that went all the way to 2012 accurately with star patterns. They weren’t thinking about minutes and days, months and months, and stuff like that. They were thinking about planets moving through space and stars coming in contact with each other.
Mo: In a sense, their knowledge was more spatial?
William: It’s not even that it was more spatial. It’s all about how you treat your consciousness. We’ve been born into a system that treats consciousness very, very badly—a system that utilizes humans like a battery to perform work functions.
Mo: For you, is that part of sharing things with a wider public?
William: You know—the way that we look at time—humans are only ever looking in the microscope and never look up even further. But you can. I can show people timeless things through organisms. It’s just a different type of agriculture, a different type of living, you know. I’m recreating an entire holistic system that utilizes technology: the way that people understand modern technology, as well as electricity and everything like that, for biological and natural functions. Because that’s what it is. Life is life. Taxonomy makes it really weird to classify organisms down to species because you can go forever, but there’s not that many organisms on this planet. They’re just variations of each other.
Mushroom specimens collected near Mayaguez, Puerto Rico for Moksha MycoPermaculture class in 2021. The class was trade or barter for entry, and foraged coconut husks were processed for use in mushroom cultivation. Photo by William Padilla-Brown.
Mo: Do you see your work as being part of an alternative to this current economy?
William: Yes, yeah. 100%.
Mo: And do you think that the community that you’re building by putting things out into the world and making public actions is part of that economy?
William: Yes. I’ve inspired so many people to fuck the system. And they don’t say it in that language. But I understand it in that language, because I inspired them to do what I do, which is fuck the system. Because this system sucks. And it was made by old kings and queens that died a long time ago. We’re following the same fucking rules of operation that Europeans came to this country with. We’re still following laws that were written back then.
Mo: [Laws that were] a response to another fucked up system. I think there is value in talking about the very act of colonization—how all of our bodies have been acted upon by colonization.
William: I mean, I’m the product of colonization, I’m Nigerian DNA mixed with Eastern South American genetics, because of slave trades. The whole reason I exist is because of colonialism. So I mean, like, we could talk about it all day. And I’m glad I exist because these genetics are pretty freakin’ cool. My body reacts very well to different compounds, based on my genetic lineage. And I know it to be true because I study molecular biology. I’ve been studying it specifically, selfishly, to understand why the hell I was born. Why do I feel this way? And why am I existing in this form right now? Why was I disturbed from my bliss?
Mo: You’re thinking about your own biological existence, and in your work you’ve utilized music, visuals, and all kinds of techniques to share this with people, to put it out into the public realm.
William: Yeah.
Mo: Is using those forms intentional?
William: It’s another language. I’m speaking in symbols. I understand that the human tool is capable of understanding higher linguistic complex patterns, life is language and humans are just tricked into thinking that auditory language is the only linguistic structure. The human scientific tool is programmed by nature to understand symbols as a language: DNA is protein syntax uttering itself into existence. And the human being is the operating tool for translating the symbols. That’s why kids can talk in emojis before they can talk in English. My little boy could send emojis early on, because it’s a symbol.
Mo: Identifying emotion.
Music video still from “Pinnacle” by William’s music project, It’s Cosmic. Lyrics written by William Padilla-Brown, music produced by Meson, video shot and edited by IceWaterChase, with loops by Micah Buzan. 2020. Available here on Youtube.
William: And so I think that as mature humans, we’re capable of understanding the most complex patterns that the universe has to offer us. Yeah. And I think that offering your life as a symbol is the most powerful language that you could speak. So every movement that I make is a living language that I’m speaking to the world, because I don’t even have all the tools necessary to express myself the way I feel in my head.
Mo: Yeah, when I was thinking about talking to you, I was thinking about limiting the need for verbal explanation [in the project]. That’s important to me when I do things—explaining ideas with the materials themselves. But that’s more difficult with this kind of intense science.
William: I mean, it’s all about perspective. Because, like, you know, I don’t think it’s intense. Whenever I started getting into all this, when I was younger, everybody was telling me I’m a genius and stuff like that. Which was scary to me, because I thought everything I was doing I should have already known when I was a child. Because all of this—it’s all biological science. How do I identify the plants that are around me? What is edible that is growing in the nature around me? My six year old son knows way more edible plants and edible mushrooms around the area than grown adults who have lived there their whole lives here. So by the time that he’s in his late teens, I can’t even imagine where he will be. And I think that’s just normal.
Mo: Is that the reason that you think you have resistance to language? Because the symbols are more important?
William: I don’t have a resistance to language. I feel like language is crippling once your brain has evolved around it. I really like what the Rastafarians do with English. They don’t use curse words. They don’t say good morning—you mourn when somebody’s dead. They don’t even say “you,” they say “I and I,” and they’ve deleted linguistic structures that create mental instability. It’s all very vibrant, the way they speak.
Mo: Do you spend time with that community to learn about the ways they use language?
William: One of my best friends is Jamaican, Anthony Rodriguez. He’s working on the documentary, “Growing Back To Nature.” And his family’s from the island. We’ll be talking and he just changes his whole linguistic structure. He will sound like he just came off the island, and you would never know that he knows how to speak [American] English.
Mo: Totally. You start to see in multiplicity—splintering. When you’re studying an organism, are you thinking about that?
William: I mean, I feel like it’s a better way of seeing it. I don’t know. If you can understand the environment, and you can understand what that is doing—it’s just the language structure. I was really blessed when I came into this world. I was taught auditory language by two English professors. My grandfather learned English by going to the church to do sermons in Latin because he grew up in Jim Crow Virginia, and he couldn’t go to public school. So, he went to church to learn Latin sermons. He learned English by learning Latin first, and he taught me to use this linguistic structure from its origin structure. So, I already knew that this language had a proto-language from the time that I knew how to use it. He always showed me the phonetics, the syntax, and suffixes and prefixes from the beginning. I lived with my grandparents when I was first born.
Mo: Do you think that has influenced the way you think about your research now?
William: Um, yeah, the linguistic structures are such a big deal because I’m a molecular biologist, I look at the language of life. Like if I didn’t know the language like that, I don’t think I’d be able to look at the language of life this way.
Mo: That reminds me of the way we were talking about “time” before. How do you think about yourself in this moment?
William: For me, I’m just trying to stand on the fine line of being in the present moment and loving my family right now. And in preparing for what’s next. Because all of my actions are in preparation for what’s next. I’ve solidified some level of social equity, which fulfills my very human need of having some nuts buried away. The very animalistic need of having some sort of security. I’ve secured some social equity.
Mo: Yeah, and [you’ve done that] in many parts of the world.
William: Because homeostasis cannot be achieved without symbiosis with local systems, both biological and social. So once you’ve achieved homeostasis with your biological and social systems that are right around you, then you can achieve symbiosis at national- and international-level biological and social systems. I’m reaching into symbiosis with international biological and social systems which allows me to free flow through them.
A mutual friend, Phil Wells, pictured here with the vertical mealworm farm he built for William’s property in New Cumberland, PA. 2020. Photo by William Padilla-Brown.
Mo: You’ve got an internal cycle and you’re introducing your body into another cycle. looking further down the road.
William: Yeah, everywhere I move, I’m taking care of. My body is nourished. Not just nourished—taken care of to the highest degree. Everywhere I go, I’m at the dopest farm that exists there with the people that have achieved the highest level of consciousness there. It allows me to consistently not need to worry about myself.
Mo: When you think about yourself moving through space, do you think about yourself as an organism?
William: I think of myself as a consciousness entity operating a biological computer moving through space. I think of myself as a space.
Mo: So when you picture yourself, there is a machine element?
William: Um, it’s a biological mechanism. Consciousness is a free-form space and timeless thing, right? And I don’t think that it’s always organic, because I think that artificial intelligence can be created. I have no opposition to technology. I think that tools can be used to crush societies or build them. What I’m doing is in opposition to suffering. And that’s it. The only thing I oppose is suffering. That’s why if I could say I exist for anything, it’s to be a part of ending suffering. Suffering is anti-evolution. Like—how can we use energy for more complex experiences?
Mo: Yes.
Screenshots of instagram posts in which William describes wild grape vine tips and serviceberries — edible foods that can be foraged in urban areas. With these posts, he addresses gaps in access and awareness by drawing connections between cityscapes and forested areas. Various locations in Pennsylvania, 2019. Photos by William Padilla-Brown.
William: And we’re getting there. I mean, it all started with little freaking bacteria that could barely use energy, and then they figured out how to use solar radiation. And now we have nervous systems. What’s next? You know—it’s all for higher levels of complexity. I think that we are the fruits of this experiment. We are the fruits of the planetary womb, incubating under the nuclear star for hundreds of millions of years to the point where life has produced high consciousness that’s capable of entering into the realms of higher intelligence. We’re capable of taking our physical biological bodies, re-altering our structure into light, and exploring multiple dimensions of reality. And that’s the one thing I’m trying to figure out. Because I think that’d be really fun.
Mo: Because why not?
William: Yeah, I mean, it’s all in our code. I’m just trying to figure out what phrases and which code language makes my body turn into light. So I can move through dimensions again.
Mo Geiger (she/her) is an artist and graduate student in Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA program. Trained as a theatrical designer and technician, she began her career working in live performance and continues to do so now. Since then, she’s created interdisciplinary, site-specific artworks, designs, and research projects seen in art galleries, theaters, museums, public places, and local organizations. She is a co-founder and member of Valley Traction performance collective, and she is based in Boiling Springs, PA. More info is available here.
William Padilla-Brown (he/him) is a Multidisciplinary Citizen Scientist practicing social science, mycology, phycology, molecular biology, and additive manufacturing. Interested in the mix of Contemporary Ritual and a nuanced modern Urban Shamanism, William spends his time vlogging for social media, writing, researching, rapping, singing, and loving his Beautiful Lady Lydia and their son Leo. William holds Permaculture Design certificates acquired through Susquehanna Permaculture and NGOZI, and a certificate from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. William regularly teaches youth and adult classes at schools, universities, clubs, and events, as well as in private consultations. More info is available here.
On Grief, Storytelling, and Building Little Altars Everywhere
December 12, 2021
Text by Olivia DelGandio with Starr Sariego
“When you’re in the space of death, people dying, and fragility, things become very clear. It’s a very real sacred space and I think it’s the closest we get to being truthful about life and emotion.”
STARR SARIEGO
I met Starr somewhere in my teenage years through the deep friendship she shares with my grandmother. Right away, I sensed her kind, compassionate energy and this was only exemplified when I learned about the kind of artist she is. Through following her work over the years and seeing her occasionally, I learned that our interests overlapped in quite a few areas, the most notable being photography and storytelling. It was for this reason that I decided to interview her, however it became clear pretty quickly that we had even more in common than I thought.
Over the last few years, the topic of grief has been heavy on my mind and my artistic practice. Since starting this program, I’ve especially been thinking about ways we might be able to reshape our environment to be more supportive of those who are grieving. When I told my mom that I had decided to interview Starr she asked me if I knew how her and my grandmother met and I realized that I actually did not. She told me that Starr and my grandmother had shared a chunk of time on the hospice ward, my grandmother as a social worker and Starr a volunteer. So our proximity to grief and loss became a new theme connecting me and Starr. What follows is a conversation on grief, what we keep from those we’ve lost, and how we can use art to uplift the tender humanity that is all around us.
Olivia DelGandio: I actually just found out that you met my grandmother because of your shared time working in hospice, I had no idea. Can you tell me how you got involved there?
Starr Sariego: So I started working at hospice as a way to sort of give back in my personal family history. I lost a sister about 16 years ago to cancer.
Olivia: Oh, I’m sorry.
Starr: It was tough because it was my first real experience with that sort of loss. And then my second sister passed away and then my mom passed away. And we used hospice for all three of their passings. And so when I got back to Miami, I felt like, gosh, I really want to get involved. And I was not interested in being committed to one family. So the other option was to work on the unit at the hospital. The hospice there had a whole floor. So I met your grandmother, who, you know, fast became like a dear friend to me. And she made such a difference in my life because she really taught me about grief and holding space for people going through it. And I think, you know, as women, certainly culturally, we are trained to fix health. To repair. You know, I could keep going with the adjectives, but you get the idea. And I learned from your grandmother that the best thing to do here is to be an open receptacle for that person to, you know, lead the way through their grief. It was just good practice for life, you know?
Olivia: Yeah, for sure. My grandma is really good at that, at holding grief, for sure. But I mean, I’m so sorry to hear about all of that loss. That is so much. That’s so, so heavy.
Starr: Yes, it was.
Olivia: Was there any overlap between your time working in hospice and your art or any overlapping interests in that realm?
Starr: It’s interesting that you ask that question because I always wanted to do a photography thing on hospice. I was already doing photography and I had done the first photography project on women with disabilities called the Bold Beauty Project. I don’t know if you looked at my website, I have all the projects there, the projects that I’ve worked on. So I think they were overlapping and I was very called to do something in hospice, but I never did because I was worried, you know, I just didn’t want to deal with all the privacy issues and all of that.
Olivia: Yeah, definitely. So what do you think a project on grief and hospice would do or challenge?
Starr: I think that what happens is, when you’re in the space of death and people dying and fragility, things become very clear. It’s a very real sacred space, and I think it’s the closest to being truthful about life and emotion. This space of grief and handling grief, it is a very deeply truthful space. It’s as honest as you can be. You know, I think in real life, you’re out in the world and you’re distracted by your children and your friends and going out and whatever it is you do in the world. But when somebody is dying, it’s like all those facades are ripped away and it’s a very truthful space to be in. So I think it’s an amazing place. You know, I think a lot of artists do their best work when they are troubled, you know, writers, poets and musicians and painters. So yeah, it’s a great motivator for art.
Olivia: Yeah, I agree. And you know, I’m sure you saw recently that Scott [my uncle] passed away.
Starr: I can barely handle it. I called your grandmother. I’ve called her twice. Then she called me and I was on this trip and I haven’t called her back yet. Yeah, I mean, I can’t believe what your family’s been through.
Olivia: Yeah, me too. But I feel called in this moment to make something about it. And so I’ve been thinking about that a lot, like the space and the truth that’s coming out of this moment. And like the ways, especially because I’m so connected to my mom and my grandma, the ways that we’re all existing in this time, in this space. So I don’t know what it’ll be yet, but I think something.
Starr: Yeah, and I think you write beautifully, I’ve seen other stuff you’ve written, and I think that, you know, maybe in speaking to them, something will come alive for you. There is this thread of connection that’s very strong between the three of you and there’s something about what gets handed down. You know, the whole idea of epigenetics, where even another generation’s emotional experiences have an impact. In fact, I was just talking to my daughter-in-law about this. She’s sitting here in the car kind of smiling because we were talking about the things that had happened in her family two generations above her. Hmm. You know, it’s like in your case, I think it’s a very strong, positive thing. And in her case, it was sort of a very negative damaging thing and the effect of how that affects families positively or negatively, especially in the grief space.
Olivia: Yeah, for sure.
Starr: You know, she [daughter-in-law] lost her grandfather earlier this year to cancer. But out of that loss came a lot of truths in her family. And I find that that does happen. I don’t know if there have been more stories about your mom’s family and your grandmother’s family, you know?
Olivia: Yeah, definitely. I mean, and it’s funny, really funny that you mention epigenetics because I had a conversation with a classmate yesterday, literally about epigenetics and grief.
Starr: It’s a huge thing, it’s a huge thing. I mean, I don’t know what’s happened in your family, but— I think I met a poet once in California who was Jewish and her parents had been in the Holocaust and survived. And what trauma came to her even though she wasn’t in that trauma?
Olivia: Yeah, I’ve been wanting to read about ancestral trauma and such. I’ve been thinking about that because my mom’s grandparents on her dad’s side fled Germany during the Holocaust. And so wondering, yeah, how that’s been passed down, for sure.
Starr: Very interesting. And then interestingly in your family, like how intensely cancer has ravaged your family. And in my family too, not to the extent of yours, but definitely, you know, in my immediate family, it’s like, wow, yeah. And then my mom’s whole line of family all died of cancer. So it’s very interesting.
Olivia: There’s a lot there that I want to read about and learn about. It’s definitely a field and theme that I don’t know enough about. So I want to do some reading.
Starr: Well, you have plenty of time in your life. The universe will just give you those life lessons.
Olivia: Oh yeah. Okay, let’s see what other questions I have for you. So you work mainly in photography and storytelling and I’m wondering what experiences, moments, or memories led you here, to the way that you tell stories. What were some influences on your practice?
Starr: So interestingly, every project I do gets birthed out of my own personal experience. I don’t know if that is true for a lot of artists, but I think in my personal experience I have to have a deep emotional connection to the subject matter. So with the women with disabilities project, one of my friends had a disabled daughter, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with a lot of other people with disabilities. Even deeper than that, I think it’s really underrepresented in communities, you know, they aren’t seen, generally, or understood in our cultural lives. And so I think women with disabilities are really infantilized, and I did this project and I found out these women were sexual and had relationships and children and had big jobs and had been through tremendous trauma. And then the women in prison, the same thing. It was like this deep dive into the other and the disenfranchised, in a way. Recently, I started therapy again, and I think that a lot of my interest in that comes from my own feelings of having been “other” in my life. And instead of like seeing that, I’ve been looking for it outside of myself.
Part of the Bold Beauty Project, a visual arts exhibit that featured women with varying disabilities. Digital photograph. 2016. Miami, Florida, United States. Photo by Starr Sariego.
Olivia: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, it makes for some really beautiful work.
Starr: Oh, thanks, honey. Thank you.
Olivia: Actually, the program that I’m in had a project at a prison in Portland, Oregon, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot and maybe wanting to get involved in something like that. What was your experience there like?
Starr: Oh, it was very crazy. I mean, the biggest takeaway is that, since the 80s, the population of women in prison has risen 700 percent.
Olivia: Wow.
Starr: And of all the women in prison, like almost 90 percent, I think the number is 88 percent, have been physically or sexually abused by the time they’re 18. So when you go into that population and you meet these women and there are a lot of white women, more white women than you would expect, you realize these women could be my sister, my neighbor, my auntie. You know, somebody that you would know, except for this event that had happened to them. So, you know, that was my experience. But for me, you know, you were asking about the narrative portion. I really think the story, along with the image and the person telling their own story, has such tremendous power. Yeah, it’s like, This is how I want to be seen in the world. This is the story I want you to know about me and how I got to where I am. See my humanity. That’s my thing. I want people to see that humanity, you know? To remove the otherness, maybe.
Olivia: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I saw on your website that you said you’re mainly self-taught. Can you tell me about that?
Starr: Yes, yes. I came to photography really late. I think I’ve always been visual and creative and artistic at home, or whatever. I like my environment being pretty in a way that suits me, not to suit another person or somebody else’s idea. In fact, I think my space is kind of a little quirky.
[Daughter-in-Law jumps in]: Yeah, your space matches your soul. You select things that are beautiful to you. Things you love to touch, you love to look at. Right?
Starr: Right, right. I like to talk about everything on my wall. Yes, and everything in my home has a story; the thread of meaning and the value things hold. It’s like the emotional core value that Little Altars Everywhere came from. When I was stuck at home by myself during the beginning of the pandemic, I realized I really cling to emotions, the past, and ideas from the past. I’m really working on evolving from that. The narrative, I think for me, is always important to the story of a thing, of a human, of an ornamental object. I always tell people I have a lot of dead people’s things in my house.
From Little Altars Everywhere, a pandemic photographic project by Starr Sariego featuring family talismans, vintage photos, Starr’s body, and natural treasures discovered on dog walks. This photographic exercise became a way of processing feelings of loneliness and anxiety. Digital photograph. 2020. Miami, Florida, United States. Photo by Starr Sariego.
Olivia: Oh yeah, me too.
Starr: Not in a morbid way. But I’m comforted by having those things around me.
Olivia: Yeah, me too. Yeah, for sure. I just made a little altar and I put, you know, photos and I have all of these little objects and stuff. So, yeah, totally.
Starr: Take a photo with your phone and text it to me.
Olivia: Yeah, definitely.
Starr: My whole house is sort of like little altars everywhere.
From Little Altars Everywhere. Digital photograph. 2020. Miami, Florida, United States. Photo by Starr Sariego.
Olivia: I love that. Yeah, I love that phrase.
Starr: Yeah, and it’s true. I have little collections and things everywhere. I have this wooden angel and underneath it, it’s like my offerings to her, little bits of mica I find on hikes and beautiful leaves.
Olivia: Oh, that’s so good,
Starr: If I remember, I’ll take a picture and send it to you.
Olivia: Yes, please.
Starr: Yeah, it’s like honoring the beauty and little things you stumble across every day.
Olivia: Definitely. So what’s one of your favorite things in your space like that right now?
Starr: Oh gosh.
Olivia: Or maybe not one of your favorites. Just tell me about one.
Starr: Well, I value this portrait of my grandmother that was painted in 1942 and it’s a very beautiful, very sort of bougie, antique looking portrait. It’s like a classic vintage portrait of somebody that you would hang on your main wall and be like “this is my great grandma who built this house.”
Olivia: Yeah, that’s so cool.
Starr: That’s very meaningful to me. And then I have two portraits of my children, if you text me and remind me I’ll send you photos of them because they’re quite lovely. Ok, well, so those things are very important to me and some furniture that my dad had made for me.
Olivia: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Starr: Yeah, that I cherish.
Olivia: That sounds like a lovely space.
Starr: Oh, thanks, honey. Well, honey, if you think of anything else, you can always just text or call me tomorrow, OK?
Olivia: I actually have one last question. Maybe kind of random but are you someone who remembers your dreams at night?
Starr: I do sometimes, and sometimes I don’t. I was getting ready for this trip and I was having a lot of anxiety about it. I had a very specific dream. I’ll tell you my Halloween dream, which is really crazy. Ok. You know, I photographed a lot of LGBTQIA folks for my latest project. And so I had been photographing drag queens. And so in my dream, I was with a friend in a drag queen’s studio or shop that had amazing dresses. And I had eaten a hamburger, which I never eat red meat, but I had a hamburger recently, like maybe two days before the dream. And in my dream, the friend I was with found the most beautiful gown, cut out to the stomach with just thin strips of fabric that showed her beautiful, flat stomach. And she looked gorgeous. But I couldn’t find a dress that fit me. Every dress I put on, I couldn’t pull the zipper up. It was like an anxiety dream. Finding the right costume in the shop of the drag queen. And I was worried about my belly. So there you go.
Olivia: That’s so funny.
Starr: It was very specific. I do sort of remember some of my dreams.
Olivia: I’m just asking because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams and using dreams in artistic practice. So I’m just always curious about people and their dream life.
Starr: Have a dream journal next to your bed, perhaps.
Olivia: Yeah, I do. I write them down. I actually made my grandma start doing that because I want to write down my mom’s, my grandma’s, and my own dreams at this point in time. So she’s been telling me her dreams lately.
Starr: Oh, that’s so amazing. Wow. If that doesn’t suggest a project…
Olivia: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking about. And actually, last week, all three of us had dreams about dogs for like a week straight
Starr: Oh, that’s so funny.
Olivia: So it’s just on my mind.
Starr: It’s so strong, the connection between the three of you, you’re even dreaming in triplicate.
Olivia DelGandio (she/her) is a mixed media artist interested in human connection, what it means to be tender, and the joy/sorrow dichotomy. She graduated from New College of Florida with a degree in Sociology/Gender Studies and is currently working on her MFA in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University. She finds solace in creating through and for grief and is currently thinking about how grieving can become more of a community practice. She likes to create books, photos and videos for and about the people she loves. The hope for these projects is to make intimate moments and connections more visible. You can find more of her work here and find her on Instagram here.
Starr Sariego (she/her) is a native-born Miamian and now calls Asheville, NC home. She is a passionate and mostly self-taught photographer. With over 15 years in photography, she’s found that her interest lies in photographing people. Whether it be a family portrait, a headshot, a business client or an event, making that human connection to bring out the best in subjects is her superpower. She is committed to getting the most out of every photo shoot for the benefit of the subject and the cause. You can explore more of her work here.
Healing in Practice
December 12, 2021
Text by Kiara Walls with Darrell Grant
“I think about joy being something that doesn’t come from the outside and joy is not something that we assume is permanent. It’s something that we are trying to be aware of. I think that recognizing that the possibility for joy exists within me changes my focus. Because I’m looking less directly at how I can succeed, how can I win? I think that’s a really useful way to think about it.”
DARRELL GRANT
The Black Box Conversation Series (BBCS) is a podcast and radio project launched in 2020 in response to the pandemic. BBCS aims to create a safe space where people of color can hold meaningful conversations centered around their human experience. My practice often uses conversations and storytelling as primary tools to connect us. I’m interested in co-authoring work that centers the need for reparations to address the injuries inflicted on the African American community. For SoFa journal, I’m sharing a conversation about healing with PSU jazz professor and composer, Darrell Grant. This interview originally aired on Portland State University’s radio station, KPSU, on November 11, 2021.
Black Box Conversations Series flyer. Portland, Oregon, United States. 2021. Photo by Hiroshi Iwaya, courtesy Darrell Grant.
Kiara Walls: Hello everyone, my name is Kiara Walls and this is the Black Box Conversation Series. The Black Box Conversation Series aims to create a safe space where people of color can hold meaningful conversations centered around their human experience. Today, I will be speaking with professor Darrell Grant, and we will be talking about healing. So to kick things off, I will let Darryl introduce himself and then we’ll go into some of the questions.
Darrell Grant: I’m Darrell Grant. I’m a jazz pianist, composer, and a professor of music at Portland State University where I’m entering my 25th year of teaching. I’m also associate director of the School of Music and Theater at PSU. I direct a new program in the College of the Arts, it’s called the Artist as Citizen Initiative, which is an interdisciplinary pathway/intersection between the arts and social justice.
Kiara: Awesome. I’m super excited to be talking with you today. We’ll just jump right in. The first question is, what does healing feel and look like to you?
Darrell Wow, well, let’s start with the easy question. The first thing that I think of is self-knowledge, because I think without that, it’s really difficult to approach the idea of healing. Self-knowledge, for me, has meant coming to understand myself as a Black person, coming to appreciate the unique experiences that I have had, and both the challenges and the successes. I think then coming to see that it’s okay for me to be uniquely myself, both, you know, as an individual, but especially as a Black person in America. That has been a big part of the healing is, you know, self knowledge and then self acceptance. After that comes the process of sort of working through all the things that come up, trying to find contentment and satisfaction. I mean, happiness is kind of a big ask. It’s something that comes and goes, but I’m feeling like this way of feeling content, you know, sort of content with my lot in life, with my path in life. So those are the kinds of things I think about when I think about healing.
Kiara: Thank you for that. I just want to touch back on how you’re talking about being content versus being happy, because happiness is fleeting. There’s this idea that the main goal is just to be happy, and happiness is an emotion that comes and goes. What I think about is joy, and being able to cultivate joy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to anything that you’re working towards, but something like a framework that you create every single day. You find joy in the little specialties of life, you add value to that, versus something that’s external and also something that takes a certain amount of work to get towards. Then the idea is that you’ll be rewarded with feeling. In my opinion, healing is also tied to happiness. Before I had a better understanding of what healing was for me, I used to think that it was more about when you get to a certain point in your journey that you no longer deal with any bad things.
Darrell: Right! Like nothing goes wrong, it’s all good. You have finally crossed over!
Kiara: I’m just like, WOW, that’s a really tall order. I think it’s also not sustainable. I mean, to be human is to make mistakes.
Darrell: Yeah. It’s to be imperfect. I mean, that’s nature, you know, it’s really funny. I was just watching Oprah’s interview with Will Smith, and he has just written a new memoir where he talks a lot about this idea of joy. I know a lot of African Americans, especially artists in my field who are always aspiring, always reaching, always stretching, and always trying to get to someplace. On the outside, a lot of that looks like success. Some of it looks like security. I think about joy being something that doesn’t come from the outside and joy is not something that we assume is permanent. It’s something that we are trying to be aware of. I think that recognizing that the possibility for joy exists within me changes my focus. Because I’m looking less directly at how I can succeed, how can I win? I think that’s a really useful way to think about it.
Kiara: Right. It’s about giving yourself that agency to experience that feeling, you know, giving yourself that power versus always having external validation, because I feel like external validation is nice, but what happens when you don’t always have that type of energy around you? Not to say it doesn’t feel good when you get the external validation, but it’s not going to be a situation where it’s around you all the time.
Darrell: Or you wear yourself out constantly seeking it. That’s what I think is interesting hearing Will Smith talk about it in reflecting on that myself, that there’s this really interesting and insidious way where you keep chasing accomplishment. It’s never quite enough, you get it, but it’s not. It’s just, Oh, but if I could just get that, oh, this is nice, but if I could just get that one thing. I always thought I’m not really chasing money or I’m not chasing things that are considered vain. It looks like I’m really trying to do good things, right? But if I’m still seeking that validation, then I’m ignoring the times when I really need to be stopping and doing nothing, just sitting, just restoring myself for the thing that I’m really supposed to be doing, rather than doing this one other little thing to try and get the validation. I’ve noticed this act of chasing your tail a bit.
Kiara: That also makes me think about the energy that one puts into their work. When you aren’t chasing external validation, you’re truly creating the work because it’s coming from your heart and your soul. There’s a level of transparency and an organic element to it that is seen within the work.
Darrell: I don’t know though. I mean I hear what you’re saying, but I also feel like it won’t necessarily be perceived outside of yourself. Do you know what I mean? Because I think that one of the things that we get good at when we are seeking validation is, we get good at doing things that get the kind of recognition that we’re looking for. Right? And if you desire to be validated for being selfless, you get really good at doing work that is admired for being selfless. The problem is if you’re really supposed to be doing something else, like if your own path to joy or fulfillment involves something else, other people may not recognize that because you’re not hitting those buttons that they’re used to seeing. I think that as an artist, I find that especially true. It’s like, sometimes you really do have to go inside and when people ask you what you’re doing, you got nothing to show you can’t say to them I’m trying to figure some stuff out. I’m just working on some stuff. Because they’re like, “When are you going to play a show? What are you going to do?” And then I say, “I’m not sure because I’m really trying to work some stuff out.” This kind of dialogue does not get a lot of validation. So I think it can be lonely. So that’s when I think what you said about the joy, finding the joy and doing it for those reasons, is really necessary because it can be a dark lonely place sometimes.
Kiara: I totally understand. It’s funny because people can’t always see the work that you’re doing or the work that you’ve been up to and all of the things that you’re processing. So it just boils down to giving yourself that validation, and allowing yourself that space to process things and not be worried about what anyone else is saying or their expectations. With that said, what are the expectations that you have for yourself? Can you meet those expectations and call it a day? Can you describe any day-to-day rituals you practice that contribute to your self-care?
Darrell: Wow. I wish I could. To be absolutely honest with you, I need to embrace more of that. I am a jazz improviser, and my dream for myself has always been to have a life that was completely absent of routine. It’s interesting because there’s a certain number of things that you can get done in one big gesture. But oftentimes if you’re trying to do something that’s really large, you have to break it up into pieces, which means you have to go at it for many days at a time. I just premiered an opera in September (Sanctuaries) that I’ve been working on for four years. It took four years from start to finish, from the conception of the idea to acquiring the commission. Then it was delayed a year and a half by COVID, which I just took as an opportunity to rewrite it. I thought, I can make it better, and in that there was a need for this regularity. I’ve worked a lot over the course of my life trying to become a person who can embrace doing things incrementally, and more so now, iteratively. I’m realizing now this is just the first draft, get it done, throw it away and then start on the second. Once I get to the second, good; fix it and get to the third. I’ve become more of that person, but I still, in my heart of hearts, I just love surprises. I love not doing the same thing or at least feeling like I’m not doing the same thing. It’s been hard to cultivate rituals because rituals by their very nature are things that you repeat that you do on a regular basis and that you focus on.
I think one of the things that I’m doing now, actually that’s fairly recent, or at least my sort of returning to, is just breathing. Really taking the time to notice my breathing. My wife is reading this really cool book called “Breath,” which talks about the science of breathing. I just realized, Oh, that’s something that I can just do. What’s useful about it is that it counteracts knowing exactly when I have to do it. For example, I turn on NPR and then the radio comes on and I start to get this tightness on my chest as they start talking about how terrible the world is. It’s like, Okay, let’s breathe. Now. This is good. I recognize this is the time. That’s something that I’m looking at cultivating. I think the next thing I probably need to cultivate is a ritual around sleep and rest because all my life I have resented the need to sleep. If I didn’t have to sleep, I would never ever sleep. You can’t do anything when you’re sleeping. Needless to say, I’m missing the whole fact that your unconscious is processing, your brain is resting and your body is recuperating. There’s a lot that’s happening when you’re sleeping. But in my impatience I’m like, Nah, I want to do something. I want to do stuff. I don’t want to retreat to bed. I’ve gotten to this age now, 59, where it’s like there is such a thing as the end of your energy. There’s such a thing as wearing it out entirely. The machine starts to break it down and it ain’t going to recover like it did when I was 30 or 40. So now I think it’s time to cultivate some rituals around rest.
Kiara: Right. I’m just curious, how many hours of sleep would you say you get at night?
Darrell: To be honest?
Kiara: Yeah, to be honest.
Darrell: I would say mostly around six, sometimes less than five. If I do a couple of days of less than six hours of sleep, like I have been the past few days, I start talking to myself and getting a little loopy. I’ve also noticed that I’ll get brain fog and I can’t remember names. The conflict I’ve always had is that I thought that to be an artist it required those kinds of sacrifices. For example, artists can’t sleep or artists don’t eat…they just do the work. They do the work all the time and, you know, that’s romantic. I think it can be true but what they don’t actually talk about is the consequences of that. It’s like: yes, that is true and sometimes if artists do that for too long they get sick and they die just like everybody else who does that. I didn’t really think about that part. I’ve got to change this attitude towards sleep. I’ve actually got to change because I can’t just make myself go to sleep. I always found that when you want to change a habit, you have to care about something else more, and have to find something else to care about more. So I need to find something else to care about more than staying awake.
Kiara: That definitely makes sense. What would be your definition of self-care? If you could form your own definition using the practices that you’re already doing, do you feel aligned with self-care?
Darrell: Oh, man. Now we’re moving into therapy. Okay, Doctor, I’d love to talk to you about this.
Kiara: [Laughs]Sorry, just trying to ask the right questions!
Darrell: That’s a good question. I feel like you got a little Oprah on here. [Laughs]Well actually Kiara, what I really need to do is… My definition of self-care…well… it’s a big question. I feel like self-care can start anywhere. I think the first place I would have to start for myself is being honest with myself. Right. Your body changes as you age and you have different needs. I keep feeling like when I was 20, I could live on ice cream sandwiches and ginger snaps for weeks. I didn’t have to eat food. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t gain weight. When I was 30, I was totally skinny and didn’t have to do anything. As you get older, I think this idea of being honest with yourself about what you need [is] the first thing. Then once I come to terms with that, then I’m faced with the fact about being honest about who I am. That’s the first step to me in self-care, is honesty. It’s funny… I mean, it seems strange to think about the idea of being honest with oneself, because you think, well, if you can’t be honest with yourself, who’s making you lie to yourself, but in some ways that’s the hardest thing, right?
I noticed this in two things in the Will Smith interview. And I also watched a film about Magic Johnson and how he would talk about Magic like it was a third person, His name is Irvin Johnson. So in the film he would say “Irvin was this, but Magic required this.” I just thought to myself, This is so strange. He’s living this external persona. He is a prisoner of this persona that he created. What he thinks the world expects of him and inside him, there’s this kid, that’s Irvin, that was before all the fame happened. It’s funny, Will Smith said the same thing. So I thought, okay…so being honest with oneself in part is like, what am I doing? Because the world thinks that’s who I am, and what am I doing? Because that’s who I think I am and who I really want to be. And I think to myself, that’s the root of self-care because once I can come to terms with that, then I can say, well, what does that person need? What does Darrell need that’s separate from what the world expects me to be doing?
Kiara: That’s a very powerful way to look at it. It makes me think of this concept of the “inner child”, we all have our inner child that we’re trying to nurture and heal. I think that’s also a part of self-care is recognizing your inner child.
Darrell: I’ve heard that idea; t’s been around for a long time. Our parents are always trying to get us to grow up and we’re just trying to be adults or act like an adult, grow up, be mature. Right? How is it that we’re supposed to be paying attention to our inner child when they keep on trying to get us to not be that person and to be a grownup person, you know? I have an appreciation for the authenticity, the individuality, and the joy and all of those things that were inherent in that. I might not call it my inner child. I might call it my real self, you know what I mean? I was closer to that real self in many ways earlier on when I was younger.
Kiara: I think about the action of unlearning and getting back to that essence, like who you are at your core. How do you cultivate sacredness in the spaces you inhabit?
Darrell: Hmm. Another fantastic question. Dr. Walls. Wow. So I’m in the process of activating this space in Northeast Killingsworth that used to be the Albina Arts Center(1) way back in the 1960s. I didn’t know [ the history of the space,] when I walked into the space, but I felt something that was so amazing. I’m not a person who just skips down the street, but I’m telling you when I closed the door and I had the key to that place, I was skipping around inside it. I was thinking to myself, This is not like me. I was talking to somebody about it and they said, “You were feeling the spirits of all the children that had gone through that place in this year.” I would say an element of sacredness is history… knowing and honoring the history of who came before. That is something that I feel, I mean I’m not going to start a religion around it or anything, but it’s so important to me that I would say that it’s a core principle. You have to honor and recognize the history of what came before and those who came before. A lot of the work that I’ve done in my time here at PSU has been this sort of discovery of and uncovering and then trying to represent past history, whether it was the jazz scene on Williams Avenue or the the Black jazz musicians who were, you know, the old cats in the scene way back in the 1950s and 1960s and sort of trying to find a way to see them honored. That’s one of the ways that I try to honor spaces is to know about them and represent their history.
Kiara: That makes me think about Sankofa(2) and looking at your past to inform your future. Learning your own history or learning the history of your ancestors or whatever spaces you’re inhabiting. That’s definitely a way to activate the space and you’re also paying homage and giving them their flowers, you’re recognizing them. I’m super excited about that project too.
Darrell: Thanks. It keeps on growing. I’ll have to send you the list of things that are happening. I didn’t bring my Kwanzaa on Killingsworth postcards.
Kiara: It’s all good. I’ll give you a shout out next week. Where do you see yourself on your healing journey?
Darrell: Hmm. Wow. Where do I see myself on my healing journey? I think I have some degree of self-awareness. I think that I’ve learned some things. I think that I’m fortunate in that I’ve inherited a lot from my parents and my family. My father was the youngest of 12 children. My grandfather was a sharecropper in Arkansas and he worked his whole life to get his family out of the South and move them up North. My dad was the first in his family to go to college. I have a master’s degree and a teaching job. I started with a strong foundation in thinking and a strong moral background. I also believed that I was and could be okay and that I was worthy. There’s a lot that I brought to the table. There’s still a lot for me to learn. I have this idea of being my true self and not being so susceptible to the patterns from my past or from the outside culture sort of running me in a particular direction,that aren’t necessarily in my longterm best interest or that don’t feel authentic to me. I’m happy with that. I’ve done many years of therapy and counseling. I’ve had the privilege of having access to that and taking advantage of those. I’ve also been around some really amazing people who’ve taught me a lot and have been good friends. So in a way I feel like I’m pretty evolved, but I still see all the ways in which I’m like, I’m clueless. I thought I had that together, clearly I’ve got a long way to go, even in terms of attitudes and perceptions. I feel lucky. I feel very fortunate and blessed in my life. But I also feel that I’ve got a lot of work to do. Some days I feel optimistic about doing that work and other days I feel like I’m never going to get it.
Kiara: Thank you for the transparency. There’s this idea that I’ve been thinking about, the yin and yang symbol. You can be on your healing journey feeling really good and at the same time, still have this other stuff that you’re dealing with. Those two experiences can happen at the same time. That doesn’t mean that you’re not evolved or like you’re behind or anything, it just means you have momentum and are moving in the right direction. But realistically you still have these things going on at the same time, which is normal and human. I think a lot about grace.We want things to be all good, all the time, but that’s not how life is, right? In life there’s a balance. There’s definitely a balance. It’s also about the perspective that you have and choosing to focus on the good that you have in your life and not necessarily let the bad outweigh that, you know?
Darrell: Also I think gratitude, you know, being grateful to be…I’m grateful to be on the path. That’s what makes me feel good. I still have the opportunity to learn. And you reminded me that I have this habit of setting an alarm for things that I want to remember on my phone. Most of them don’t go off anymore, but when I’m setting new alarms, I’m scrolling through and seeing them. Some of these have actually been on my phone for many years. I started this habit when I was trying to be a better parent to my son and remind me of stuff that I wanted to stop doing. And so I was just looking at my 8:20AM alarm and it said, “Shut up and listen, stop pushing half faith every day”. My 8:34 alarm says, “Increase my willingness to accept suffering.” And that’s on every day. 8:35 is, “Consider the possibility of not worrying about the future.” 8:45 is, “it’s okay, Darrell, there are others who are well-equipped and well-prepared to do this task. You can focus on your own activities.” 9:45 says, “Can I embrace self-care with intentionality as an act of resistance?” That’s been going on for a good year. 3:00PM: “How do I eliminate the guilt and anxiety of not having things done?” 8:00: “Seek out and delight in opportunities to learn every day.” It’s just reminders to keep staying on the path and checking in.
Kiara: You’re checking in with yourself and I think that’s amazing. I might actually start using that because I love it. I have a coworker that has an alarm set for something, I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was something very optimistic, like “Keep going,” or “Things aren’t that bad,” or something like that.
Darrell: I mean, if you’re going to have a phone, it’s a good use of your phone.
Kiara: Yeah. I feel like that’s an appropriate use. That’s healthy. We’re onto our last question. What advice would you give to someone who is seeking to heal their past traumas?
Darrell: Well, I think you already said it. I think grace is the thing that you have to keep. You can always come back to it. It’s not like it’s not a continuous linear thing. Just to be able to forgive yourself and give grace to yourself, I think that’s probably the most important thing because you know, it’s an ongoing journey. So I think that’s the thing I would say mostly.
Kiara: Thank you so much, Darrell, I appreciate your voice and your perspective around this topic.
Darrell: Thanks for asking such great questions.
Footnotes:
(1) Albina Arts Center was a “historic art and culture hub that was a touchstone of Portland’s African American history.” It is now a resource center called the Center for Advocacy and Community Involvement, run by the police accountability group Don’t Shoot Portland to assist community members with social equity-related causes. (Portland Tribune, 2020)
(2) Sankofa is a word in the Akan language of Ghana that translates to “go back, look for, and gain wisdom, power and hope.” It implores for Africans to reach back into ancient history for traditions and customs that have been left behind.” (Wikipedia)
Kiara Walls (she/her) is an arts education administrator, originally from LA but now stationed in Portland, Oregon. Her work is centered around increasing awareness of the need and demand for reparations to repair the injuries inflicted on the African American community. This interpretation is seen through many forms, including story-telling, site specific audiovisual installations, and the Black Box Conversation Series, a monthly interview series on Portland State University Radio. http://psusocialpractice.org/kiara-walls/
Darrell Grant (he/him) Since the release of his debut album Black Art, one of the New York Times’s Top Ten Jazz CDs of 1994, Darrell Grant has built an international reputation as a pianist, composer, and educator who channels the power of music to make change. He has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe in venues ranging from Paris’s La Villa jazz club to the Havana Jazz Festival. Dedicated to themes of hope, community, and place, Grant’s compositions include his 2012, Step by Step: The Ruby Bridges Suite, honoring civil rights icon Ruby Bridges, and The Territory, which explores Oregon’s landscape and history. Since moving to Portland, Oregon he has been named Portland Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalist Association, awarded a Northwest Regional Emmy and MAP Fund grant, and bestowed the Governor’s Arts Award. He is a Professor of Music at Portland State University where he directs the Artist as Citizen Initiative. https://www.darrellgrant.com/
The Art We Value
December 12, 2021
Text by Shelbie Loomis with Michelle Grimes
“I have this eye for things.”
MICHELLE GRIMES
I have been reflecting on how this time two years ago, I wrote about the Jantzen Beach RV Park —a community that I still live in today— in the 2019 SOFA Journal: Exchange issue. I was new to both the RV lifestyle and the Pacific Northwest, and very preoccupied with getting acclimated to a new culture and way of operating in graduate school. My first interaction with a resident when I initially pulled into the park was with Michelle Grimes, my next door neighbor. She has been a huge influence on my time here and taught me how to look out for other neighbors and to be a better listener within my artistic practice.
Because I am a sentimental person, It’s only natural that I begin my final year of graduate school with an interview with Michelle and her granddaughter, Cece, to talk about art and what we value within our lives and our tiny homes.
The scope of my practice has scaled down to my individual relationships with my neighbors, and cultivating conversations of exchange, for survival. My neighbors and I lived through toxic forest fires that required us to keep within our small confines, ice storms that left many of us without power while tree limbs shattered our windows, and finally within a global pandemic that shut down programs and businesses that we rely on within Hayden Island.(1) We have relied on each other as support systems whenever someone needed help— wandering out of our RVs to lend a helping hand.
In October 2021, I initiated a project called “The Art We Value,” a project where I ask my neighbors to share a piece of themselves by selecting an item from their house to talk about using the lens of art. I take their picture and then draw them together with that item. When I approached Michelle to participate in the project, she was interested, but only to have a portrait done of her granddaughter. For the almost three years I have known her, Michelle has lived through so much stress and grief with her family; I wanted to convince her to get a portrait of both of them together. I argued that it would be a valuable thing to look at and reflect on for years to come.
She loves to see my dogs (and they her), so we found many great opportunities to chat in passing. Michelle would share her passions for teaching herself about stocks and NFTs, or finding great deals on groceries or artwork at garage sales. While talking about the project and setting up times, she would casually ask me for permission to spray out the leaves in my driveway, or clean up my garden box, both of which I’ve neglected over the last few months. Since the death of a parent figure in my life in February 2021, I had slowly pulled myself from my passion of gardening and allowed things to go wild. Since we live so closely together and her kitchen window overlooked the jungle of vines and leaves I left while I was healing my broken heart, she asked me to allow her to help. I agreed if she allowed me to draw her.
We set up a time when I could come over to her place for our photo shoot and a brief conversation.The conversation ended up being three hours; we talked, laughed, and she pulled out notes and artwork she usually keeps tucked away. We’ve continued the dialogue since that time we spent together, and have decided that once the portrait is completed, I’ll turn it into a non-fungible token (NFT) for her. We agreed that she could receive royalties on her likeness every time it was traded, much like a stock, in hopes to support herself and her family in the future.
Left: Michelle Grimes & Cece with the items they value. Right: Michelle Grime’s living room. 2021.
Hayden Island, Oregon. Photo by Shelbie Loomis.
Shelbie: Okay. Tell me a little bit about the piece that you selected that I’m going to be drawing you with.
Michelle: The piece I selected is a photo I took of my son, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter. She was maybe two, two and a half, and we were walking in downtown Portland, Oregon. And something just tells me like, Hurry, you know, take this picture because this… you know…
Shelbie: So it looks like it’s a candid picture. They didn’t know that you were taking it. It’s like this perfect moment where Cece is just learning to walk. And you guys are out on a family outing. And so you had it printed in black and white. So tell me about that.
Michelle: I actually do a lot of black and white. I think there’s something about bringing them here [into my house]. There’s something about black and white. It’s timeless.
Shelbie: So you, I’m just noticing that you have a lot of artwork in here.
Michelle: I have a lot of artwork! Yes.
Shelbie: So tell me a little bit about how you select the artwork you keep, because this [gestures to the living room] is curation. You’re a curator.
Michelle: Right? So that’s— I don’t know, what do you call those, caricatures?— Anthony [husband] and Alex [stepson]. And then those are pictures that Alex drew when he lived with us. He actually drew those freehand. He’s very talented. You know, he also made that whole boat picture thing over there that you could go look at, if you want. Yeah, there’s tons of artwork.
Shelbie: What I’m interested in is when you live in an RV, you have to be very selective with what you put in the space. And then you have to justify the value right now. You and I, we don’t move our RVs, right? So we don’t have to think about it like some people who are travelers.
Michelle: Snowbirds, like Gary and Jeanie, right, yeah.
Shelbie: Right! So the towing capacity is different for us. But yeah, I’m interested in how you keep your space and how you select the art that you have.
Michelle: So there’s a story behind those two pieces. If you want to go look at that one on the floor, you can take pictures of the one back there. We have to move. I have tons of art and I hope someday [it brings value]. But to be honest with you, Shelbie, I’m very “art like” but I can’t draw, like, stick people. I can’t draw anything. [However], when I go thrift shopping or something, I have this eye for things. Like I have a $165 Italian wallet that I paid $1 for. [I just have] this weird eye about things.
Shelbie: I definitely agree with you. I’ve noticed just by the way that you even work through the yard. It’s like you have an eye for form. You see the way that things kind of transition, and so, you’re kind of curating, I just feel like you’re a curator. If I were to give you a title, I think it would be a curator.
Michelle: What is the actual definition of a curator?
Shelbie: I define a curator as a person who makes visual or artistic decisions on how to place things, or directs how to place things together.
Michelle: Yes, so yes, if I had to do life over again, I’d probably be something like an archaeologist. Or, believe it or not, in the last six weeks I’ve been learning the stock market and cryptocurrency. I have notes on my bed and watch both TVs blasting. I have the stock market on all day and I can’t believe how much I’ve learned and taught myself.
Shelbie: We need more people who know the stock market and the financial world. It’s actually that we need more women.
Michelle: It’s hard to figure it out. And so I was trying to find it for myself. I re-downloaded my Twitter, so I could follow things on Twitter. I read all these notes because I did go to college. I mean, notes from hell. One of the Bitcoins is on the real stock market now. It was the first Bitcoin EFT and of course, then this guy comes on, he’s like, Yeah, well, you know, they, the old school people of stock market, need to learn that it’s crypto currencies, really a big deal.
Shelbie: Yeah, it’s really interesting because you have a lot of people that are older… Older investors who want to keep gold as a standard wealth investment.
From Michelle’s collection. Left: “Untitled,” a woodcut print by Marcia Brown. 2021. Photo by Shelbie Loomis.
Right: Stone Soup, by Marcia Brown. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Originally published 1947. Image courtesy of New York Times.
Michelle: What is that I have? Oh, there was a story behind it [image above]. Her name is Marcia Brown. Looks like this is an anonymous woodcut…So like I told you, I just have this weird eye or whatever. This [artwork] was in Goodwill in Wilsonville, probably four years ago, before I moved here. [These woodcuts] were numbered. They were [by] the same person, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I’m just buying them. So then I go home and I Google all this stuff. Well, come to find out this lady here is famous. She is. I can find all this stuff. I have notes everywhere. I remember. She was a children’s book… What do you call that? An illustrator? Yeah. She also has, there’s the Marcia Brown Museum in New York. I don’t know where my notes are. I don’t know where the big note is where I wrote it down, you know? Right here, University of Albany, New York Department of Social Special Collections.
Shelbie: So she has been collected by the University?
Michelle: Yeah, they actually have a museum there because she was a famous children’s books illustrator.
Shelbie: Interesting!
Michelle: And because you’re artistic, you caught those in my house, which nobody ever does.
Shelbie: Really?
Michelle: Yeah. And I’ve been meaning to call them for like three or four years. Yeah. And then I’m like, but I like them. But then I want [them] to go to the museum.
Shelbie: Well, here’s the thing. You could at least have them appraised, because what you could do is, you still have ownership over them. But depending on if they’re looking for this special collection, for example, you could send them to be a part of a show. Or they can just appraise them, so that you know where they are and how much they’re worth.
Michelle: I like to watch Antiques Roadshow all the time. I get really upset when there’s like this 200 year old, you know, Cherokee blanket that belonged to some tribe, I feel it needs to go back to the tribe. Sure. That’s how I feel. Sure. So if this lady has a museum in New York, and this can be hung in that museum, and there’s something about her, that’s why I want them to go back.
Shelbie: I can understand that!
Michelle: And that’s another thing. Another reason why I don’t get rid of some of my stuff, you know, is because my son wants to throw everything away. Cece’s dad and I had this really big picture in my room at their house. I told them I don’t give two shits about you throwing away my mean uncle’s barbecue or all that stuff, [but] you are not going to get rid of that picture up there, ever. Right. One thing I’ve learned about watching Antiques Roadshow, almost every single episode, 99.99% of the time, oh, somebody in their local hometown appraised it and didn’t know what it was worth. They came to find out, it’s worth half a million dollars. Right. And you know how pissed I would be if something I had and dropped off at Goodwill was on an Antiques Roadshow special? I would lose it. You know? Yeah. So that’s probably why I just hide it all over.
Shelbie: Well, I think it would be kind of cool for you to know what you have, and create an inventory list.
Michelle: Well, I have so many health problems now and I’m sick all the time and everything. If you don’t see me outside [it means] I’m sick, you know. And just, yeah, the bills, the stress, you know, life— something always breaks our income. I just gotta figure something out. You know, try to make money. Yeah. [Looks at Cece] Grandma’s been addicted to the stock market thing.
Footnotes:
(1) Hayden Island: an island that is between Vancouver, Washington (South) and Portland, Oregon (North)
Shelbie Loomis (she/her) is a socially engaged artist and illustrator. She makes projects and drawings with communities and participants about complex grieving, alternative housing, and exchange culture through times of crisis. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico she now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Michelle Grimes (she/her) is originally from Los Angeles. She loves to cook, garden, and clean and spend as much time with her granddaughter by taking her everywhere and doing things with her.
Process, Pop, and A/Temporality
December 12, 2021
Text by Luz Blumenfeld with Alex Olive
“Without one another we don’t have the context that makes our sense of self meaningful—to accept distortion and accept mutation is to accept one’s place in the world.”
ALEX OLIVE
Alex Olive, or Olive, is a visual and sound artist based in Oakland, California. I am particularly interested in her experimental sound practice and how she uses and manipulates field recordings. I think that there is something really special in getting to listen to artists talk about their work and their processes, especially artists I admire.
Olive and I spoke about her practice and process, her upcoming album, and what excites her about making music. I’m really interested in starting to make experimental sound art a part of my practice, including the use of field recordings, and I’m really excited about the possibilities that could come out of using sound as material. I’ve been thinking a lot about temporal intimate spaces, both physical and emotional, and I wanted to talk to Olive about how her practice and process explores those concepts.
Alex Olive: So what were we talking about?
Luz Blumenfeld: I started recording because our conversation felt related to something I learned in class this week when I did my presentation on my practice, which is: the way I was previously thinking about documentation in social practice art was really limited. I thought you could take a picture or a video, or show an object that was a part of the work, and that was pretty much it. But everyone in my program was like, No, there’s actually a lot of different ways to document a project. So then I was thinking about how I’ve used voice memos on my phone as a tool for recording for a long time and how I usually don’t have an intention behind that beyond the feeling of, Ooh I need to record this right now. But I have this collection of moments in time, and I was thinking about what you were saying about the beginning of recorded music aiming to just capture that moment.
Olive: The history of pop music or popular music as a specific form is really interesting to me. The way that it’s developed has been sort of like, inseparable from economic relations and from social relations, like interpersonal relations. The beginning of pop music, I mean, in a certain way is like Tin Pan Alley type shit where it’s like, people were just banging out sheet music for songs every single day. Just like creating endless amounts of songs for people to take home and perform for one another.
Luz: That’s really cute.
Olive: Yeah, and like, for the longest time, reproduced and manufactured music was like, you know, sheet music that people would play in their parlor to entertain their guests or their family, and so people were cranking out tunes every single day for people to go home and play. But then after a certain point that stopped being the relation of like, one of us is going to perform something for a group of people, to someone in another part of the world has performed something outside in a field or in a room specifically designed for this. And then we can listen to the fact that somebody has played music.
Luz: That’s honestly really cool as a concept. Just the fact that we can listen to someone play music in a field far away.
Olive: Yeah. It’s far away in space and also in time, moreso all the time.
After a certain point, technology and technique sort of made it even further divorced from the original moment of performance or the original moment that is being documented, where you have overdub technology where you record one part and then play another part over it. And so what ends up being recorded is not one performance of a song, but like a curated selection of various people performing it at completely different times. And then you get mixing, which makes it even more complex, and then sampling and using Mellotrons and other instruments.
Luz: What’s a Mellotron?
Olive: Oh, it’s like a keyboard instrument. It looks like a piano, but it’s loaded with tape loops inside of it of different instruments playing a single note so that you can switch it to something like a violin or a flute. And then when you hit the keys, it plays basically a tape of a flute playing those corresponding notes.
The Arturia Mellotron. Courtesy of Arturia.
Luz: That’s like my childhood memory of what a keyboard would do. Not a piano, but like a keyboard.
Olive: Yeah, totally. That is extremely similar to how the MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface] works now, where you can just put in… I mean, maybe it’s a bit more similar to a player piano where you can just put the notes that are supposed to be played and then you just plug it into whatever instrument or thing is supposed to interpret that.
Luz: Player pianos are fascinating to me because they’re really similar to early looms.
Olive: Yeah, because they’re similarly, like, computerized sort of.
Luz: Yeah, well they relied on this punch card system with holes in different places and the same is true with the player piano. I used to have a sheet of player piano music that I got for free at somewhere like the Depot(1) at some point and I just hung it on my wall because I thought the pattern was pretty. It was just a really thin sheet of paper that had a pattern of holes in different places.
Player piano roll being played, 2019. Photo by user Draconichiaro, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Olive: That’s really, really fucking cool. But yeah, I think the way that I use the MIDI is very similar to a Mellotron. I typically sample either like found sound shit or a lot of times, well, not even just me, but a lot of people use sound fonts. They’re most commonly associated with, like, video game soundtracks. With sound fonts, you can download all of the instruments that were used to make a specific game soundtrack, and then you can use them as your own, basically. And I’ve only really recently started using sound fonts but they definitely help with what I’m trying to do in terms of like, melodic sensibility and maybe even just like, emotional presence. Video game music has been hugely influential in how I approach music, in part because it’s supposed to create an environment. You’re supposed to go into a level, area, or environment and then the specific loop of music is supposed to be playing indefinitely.
Luz: And it has to feel different from whatever space you were in before, but also still on the same theme so that you’re still in the same world.
Olive: Yeah, it’s like score music, but also looped, which I think is interesting because if it’s looped indefinitely and specifically connected to a place, that implies that the passage of time in the piece of music doesn’t matter because it just goes on forever, which means that it ceases being a composition unfolding across time and becomes in itself a sort of place-state or like, an aspect of place that also isn’t real at all.
I grew up playing video games a lot and my immersion in them was to the extent that I remember having to write a “What I Did for Summer Vacation” paper in the third grade and just writing about playing Pokemon but as though it was real, essentially because all I had done that summer was beat Pokemon Gold.
And, I don’t know, for some reason synthetic and artificial spaces were way more close and emotionally accessible, and real to me as a kid [more] than anything that was happening in my physical life. And I think that I’ve only really been able to appreciate the real world through my relationship to synthetic worlds. And I think that’s kind of part of why I use a lot of like, sound font type shit.
Luz: That’s really cool, that makes sense.
Olive: Yeah, and a lot of my music, even though it changes composition and the arrangement sounds really different at one point in the song than it would in another point in the song, I attempt to use the same chord progressions with the same few pieces to sort of like, imply a similar place-likeness where it’s just one thing looping for a really long time. But what you’re getting is these different layers and different interpretations of what that is or could have been.
That being said, there is a certain school of thought against world-building in art that I do more and more sort of agree with.
Luz: What is that?
Olive: Basically I think the sentiment is that when our attempts to be a world-building thing beyond the scope of its medium, like, I don’t know. You see this all the time where people put out albums and they’re like, “It’s not just an album, it’s a whole world,” you know? Or like, you have an ARG [Alternate Reality Game] experience to promote the thing or there’s the implication that engaging with this piece of art is somehow going to, like, transcend the boundaries of real life.
Luz: Yeah, it reminds me of— and I didn’t actually watch this, I just saw it get memed a bunch– but like Mark Zuckerberg announcing the metaverse thing, like it feels like that.
Olive: Yeah, it feels very similar. And there’s also, like, the theme park-ification of museums and shit.
Luz: Oh yeah, that’s a whole other thing I could talk about for so long.
Olive: Yeah and I think that also what frustrates me about world-building or like, obviously world-building is part of the narrative arts if you’re doing fiction or even non-fiction, but like, in terms of making a piece of art and saying, “This is a total experience, a total work of art,” I think is dishonest and undesirable, because nothing is total, art is necessarily inseparable from the context in which it was made. And to say that it’s its own thing that transcends the boundary of experience is, I think, really silly and also just disengages from what is important about the arts.
Luz: Yeah, it feels like a marketing technique and like a promise to be better than something else, and that feels weird to me in an art context because it feels really far away from the thing that made you excited to make that work. I think it’s cool when that’s still somewhat visible.
It doesn’t have to be the entire thing, but you can still have traces of why you made this and what was interesting about it. To attempt to make something entirely divorced from the context of its creation feels silly to me.
Olive: Yeah cause also it’s like, if you feel the music or painting or whatever has the capacity to communicate something in excess of what it is—which is true, that is how art works, that is how perception works, then isn’t that the value of the medium and the value of the work you’re making? And isn’t it sort of insisting that that be like, totalized into a whole other like, separate world sort of insisting that art is primarily a form of escapism? Which is a notion that I try to rail against really hard, even though I’m making pop music.
When I do stuff that is really similar to video game soundtracks and more specifically, JRPG [Japanese Role-Playing Games] soundtracks in my work, I try to do it through a lens of it being distorted or feeling half remembered or buried under processing of some kind, so that it feels untrue and inaccessible, but also like, a nice memory, a nice thought.
Luz: I’m interested in the untrue and inaccessible part.
Olive: Yeah, I don’t want my art to be interpreted as just like, Wow, this reminds me of when I was a kid playing video games, it’s so awesome to be a child! I want it to be like, your emotions are still real, your memories are still as happy as you can imagine, but also your memories of childhood have been scrubbed of all context, they’re completely divorced from the reality of that— especially idealized ones about how awesome it was.
Luz: Yeah, or like the stuff that makes you weirdly nostalgic, and you’re like, I hated being that age, but when I hear this particular soundtrack for this thing, I feel like I’m just blissed out about it. Weird.
Olive: Yeah, and I think there’s a sort of cultural precedent to be like, Oh, well this made me feel safe as a kid, which is, I think, very valuable to be like, This is something that meant alot to me during a difficult time. But even still, at some point, there’s life outside of your best memory, there’s endless potential for the world to be happy.
This goes along with the theme of anti-escapism pop art shit, but my favorite, I think, work of art ever is fucking ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’, and one of the big takeaways from that as stated in the movie ‘The End of Evangelion’ is–I think the line is like, “Anywhere can be heaven as long as you choose to live.” And I think that is very true. Basically I think the broader implication of that is that the world we live in and are materially a part of— that we have to make choices to be a part of— is the only place that we can access happiness and intimacy and all of the things that make life beautiful, but it is also necessarily a place where all of the pain you will ever feel exists as well. And so, if you really truly believe in accessing the beauty that you felt as a kid, or the things that made you feel safe, then you have to accept that you are a part of a world that is also not very simple and you have to do right by the positive emotions and continue living in the world.
Still from the animated science fiction film, “Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion,” 1997
Luz: Yeah, I think the part that I appreciate about what you were saying, what you’re trying to do with your music– I feel like I’m getting better at describing this because for a long time I wasn’t super into music, like, you know, I had songs and artists that I liked for some reason, but I didn’t—having no understanding of how music is produced or anything, I think, changes the way you hear things a lot.
Olive: Oh, absolutely.
Luz: And having any sort of artistic, medium-specific connection to it really changes the way you experience it. But yeah, I think something I really like is when I can pick out different sounds within a track. There will be something that reminds me of something else, but it’s not the whole thing. I guess that’s what intrigues me about using field recordings and stuff is that you can kind of pop it in for a little bit, but then it goes away and other things keep happening, and I like the way that makes you experience time.
Olive: Yeah, totally, because that means that the recording of the initial thing is edited and is inserted in a way where it makes you aware that it’s edited and it makes you aware that it’s like a memory, as opposed to a total experience.
Luz: Maybe it’s because I’ve recorded so many voice memos over the years, but whenever I can pick out a field recording in something that I’m listening to, it does feel like a memory, but not my memory. I think that it’s the person who recorded or, I mean, I guess people use other recordings that they didn’t make themselves, but in my head I kind of imagine that it’s the artist who has this, you know—I’m thinking of that Grouper track with the owls field recording.
Olive: Oh yeah, I’m certain that was probably done by her.
Luz: Yeah, so then I think it’s cool to get to feel the complexity of someone else’s memory of that experience and then the memory of recording that and then all those layers and just hearing the one sound is really exciting to me.
Olive: Yeah, totally. It reminds me a bit of Caveh Zahedi’s whole theory of film being like capturing God essentially; where you’re capturing the sort of unfolding of an embodied moment in a certain way, and that, in so doing, you’re capturing the essence of the divine because the divine permeates all things and unfolds across time, so if you are recording time, you are sort of making a recording of like, the face of God essentially. And that’s a very broad paraphrasing of Caveh Zahedi, but that’s kind of generally what I seem to be getting from his work. But yeah, I think using field recordings and found sound is increasingly something that I want to do. Something else that I am thinking a lot more about is improvisation in music and irreplicability and wanting to make things that, even if they are recorded, they may not be replicable in the sense that they are completely improvised. And I think noise music and other types of experimental music are pretty ready to be used to that end, and that’s definitely something that I want to push harder in future projects.
Luz: Yeah, that interests me a lot too, and I think a lot about––especially in regards to social practice art–– what it means for something to only exist in this one time and place. I mean, if you record it, you have that documentation of it, but it’s removed and it’s different and it’s not the same as having that experience of being in that space at that particular time. And I like that, I like the idea of doing that and not recording it and it only living on as documented in people’s memories.
Olive: Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways that may even be preferable to something like a video recording just in the sense of something like a video recording does give you the illusion that you’re experiencing it as closely as you could be, but aspects of actual presence and embodiment and the affect and the sequence of the unfolding of the thing and how that makes you feel as an immediate observer in the place, in that specific time, are intangible and unreportable.
Luz: Yeah, and unrepeatable.
Olive: Yeah, exactly.
Luz: Two things I’ve been thinking about in connection to that is: one is that rave we went to last week and all the intention behind it. I would honestly love to talk to the people who organized that about what they had in mind for what they wanted it to feel like for everyone there, and maybe talk to other people who were there about what it felt like for them.
And the other thing is, I was talking to Alex [a mutual friend] yesterday about a memory of a very specific part of Telegraph Avenue [in Berkeley, CA] and I remembered I had a picture of myself in that exact spot when I was like, 15, so I tried to find it. I went through my external hard drive and instead of finding that, I found an entire folder of photos and videos from a Nikon Coolpix camera of Live105’s BFD(2). The videos— it’s like me shaking in the crowd and you can hear me singing along and it’s very weird to hear your teenage voice, but I was thinking about what my intention was when I was recording that as a teenager. I think I wanted to remember it, but I probably never looked at the footage until I found it just now.
Still from video of performance by band Street to Nowhere at Live105’s BFD festival, Mountain View, CA, circa 2005. Photo by Luz Blumenfeld.
Olive: That’s crazy.
Luz: Yeah, but I feel like there’s something interesting there about recording performances and I guess feeling this compulsion to record and you don’t really think about why. I’m thinking about that in connection with intentionally not recording something and having it exist as a one-time event, but also it lives on in people’s memories and the conversations they have and the way it informs their practices and whatever they end up doing too, which is also really cool.
Olive: Yeah, totally. I also have been told about things— pieces of art and stuff that are so amazing when people are telling me about it, and then when I experienced it for myself, I mean, it’s probably still pretty good but it doesn’t have the charm of my friend’s interpretation of it.
Luz: Yeah, I also feel like there’s so many works that I’ve heard people talk about that I’m like, “Oh shit, I love what you got from that,” and I don’t end up ever looking at the actual thing they referenced because maybe it doesn’t exist anymore or whatever.
Alex Olive’s home studio set up, including her mixer, midi keyboard, and a handful of old and broken guitar pedals, Oakland, CA, 2021. Photo by Alex Olive.
Luz: There are certain parts of your album you have shared with me that incorporate field recordings. You’ve told me where some of those field recordings originated and I wonder about the intention to use those specific sounds even though someone may not be able to pick them out and be like, Oh that’s what that is. Why use those sounds? And what does it mean to not be able to recognize them?
Olive: I think there are a few moments on the album where I use field recordings that are very legible and people can pick up what they are, but I think for the most part that’s not the case and I think that my thought there is that it’s all memory. The way that I feel about consciousness or the soul is that it is essentially an experience of memory, but not as a linear, sequential thing of like, This is everything I’ve experienced in my life, but as specific moments, one at a time, that themselves contain an entire network of everything you’ve ever experienced. So my thought is that by using processed, prerecorded, materials, it’s a similarly endless jumble of half-remembered, distorted, or idealized memory sort of fighting for a place in one’s experience of any given moment.
And there are points at which that becomes more part of a theoretical arc of the album—it does start out as a more idealized and cogent conception of identity that should be defended by self-actualization, and then, after a certain point, flips to being about that distortion of memory and the distortion of even the notion of a static identity of sense of self. And that, that is actually in and of itself possibly more empowering than saying, “I am this one way forever and you all have to fuck off,” because I think that intimacy and connection with people, connection with the world around you, is inherently sort of mutative. It’s only through connection and presence that you can really access what it is to be alive, which in turn requires relinquishing control of the possibilities of who you are and what your life can be. This is the connection we have to offer each other and that can be beautiful. Without one another we don’t have the context that makes our sense of self meaningful—to accept distortion and accept mutation is to accept one’s place in the world.
Luz: I love that. Do you want to tell me more about your album?
Olive: My album is called Here Are My Tears of Joy, and it is basically half an experimental pop record and half a more broadly experimental record. I feel a little bit as though this is the last thing that I wanted to make, in the way I’ve approached it for the specific reasons where it has a sort of emotional arc to it and it has things that it’s trying to do formally and communicate lyrically that I think were born out of an experience of art and music that was about listening to things in headphones alone and trying to really divine meaning and communication from other people’s work and wanting to do that the same way that I no longer really have a lot of faith or stock in. But I think that, it’s in the form of a pop album and so that’s like, the idiom that I’m working in: communicative songwriting and attempts at communicated abstraction.
The album is a lot about the stuff I was talking about a second ago in regards to self and identity, but I really think I should preface any discussion of my art being about the self or about identity by saying that, even though I’m transgender, my work is not about being transgender. (laughs)
Luz: (laughs) Isn’t everything about being transgender?
Olive: Yeah, everything is about being transgender. Everything that is about being transgender should only be about how fucking awesome identity is and how important and supreme it is over all other types of experience or discourse (laughs).
But, no, I do think that being trans and being neurodivergent and being raised in a really insular religious community certainly has given me a specific analysis of the relation between culture, power, and an individuals’ identity. My work isn’t about being trans, but it is about the formation of one’s sense of self and the idea of the true self that one holds as a future possibility that they’re always working towards; this higher being that they will become, you know, if they work really hard and are really good. This sort of seems to me like a suicidal pathology that you see in a lot of ways. I know from being raised in that community, that everyone in it holds the future as the thing, and that when Armageddon rolls around, they’re going to be granted new, true, perfect bodies, and live forever living the life that they’re supposed to have been living this entire time. And I see how that fucks up people’s lives in that context, and now –outside of it, as an adult– I see that in the culture surrounding various political projects, and I see that in myself in a lot of ways. What that essentially amounts to is a hatred for oneself and a hatred for the world, and the idea that the goal of living is to sort of perform an absolute negation of oneself and an absolute negation of the world and basically attempt to escape. Before all else, one has to want to escape, and that seems really fucked up to me.
But at the same time, I think there is a less static experience of identity out there; the particular experience that you are special, that everybody is special but only for reasons that are largely out of their control. And that lack of control, is, like I said earlier, the collective process of creating the world, of being a part of the world that is being created from all directions, from the entirety of history up until now. There’s a lot of horrible, awful, evil shit that can and must be overturned, but everything that is good and everything that is you is given to you. That strikes people as being horrifying, especially in a world where individuality is considered to be of the highest value. But it is, in fact, both beautiful and not optional to have inherited the world, in a certain way. You have a built-in connection to the world. You’re never really alone in the way that people imagine they are alone, and I think that’s a positive thing.
Footnotes:
(1) The Depot, or The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, is a donation based craft supply resale store that I’ve found a ton of cool materials at. Although, I feel I should mention that every Oakland artist I know is still boycotting them because they fired their entire staff during the pandemic, so maybe don’t go there.
(2) LIVE105’s BFD (Big Fucking Deal) was a music festival in the Bay Area that ran from 1994-2018. The alternative rock radio station featured acts like Green Day, The White Stripes, etc; as well as hundreds of local bands.
Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is a mixed non-binary gay artist from Oakland, CA. Their work is often intimate and concerned with self-documentation and memory. Luz is a first year in the Art and Social Practice Program. They are currently interested in creating temporal intimate experiences using karaoke and playing with experimental sound art. You can see some of their work here, and you can follow them on instagram at @dogsighs__.
Alex Olive (she/her) found God while standing directly in front of a big speaker at a Merzbow show. She makes elegiac computer music from a mixture of field recordings, no-input feedback mixing, and MIDI. Work on her album, Here Are My Tears Of Joy, is currently being finalized for release in 2022. You can listen to her music here.
The Tapes, Conversation I
December 12, 2021
Text by Rebecca Copper with Marti Clemmons and Gilah Tenenbaum
“…There was that fear: What if I don’t have full parental rights, just because I’m not the biological mother?’”
MARTI CLEMMONS
Public Domain image by Renee Comet acquired from National Cancer Institute.
Tomatoes, with little tomato seeds, and tomato flesh dripping with tomato juice. Growing up, my grandmother and my mother were always exchanging tomatoes. Tomatoes that they either grew, or found at local farmer’s markets. They would give these tomatoes to family members, friends, co-workers, and each other. Although, the conversation you’re about to read has nothing to do with tomatoes. The conversation you’re about to read has everything to do with closed objects, restricted audio tapes(1), lesbian mothers, and custody trials during the 1980s. In the 1980s, my grandmother left her second husband to live alone in her own home, after her children had grown. In the 1980s, my mother graduated from high school, studied medical assisting and married my father. She also gave birth to my brother and then to me. My mother would later divorce my father in the 1990s, the same time she began working nights for the United States Postal Service.
“Ain’t I A Woman” newspaper, February 1973 print, pages 16 and 17. Experimental text layout, showing larger text that reads, “beginning to struggle among ourselves” and “a lesbian mother speaks’. The newspaper is housed in the Women’s Studies collection at the Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University. Photos taken by Rebecca, courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University.
About a month ago, Marti Clemmons [an archivist, now friend and collaborator, who I met through my research assistant position with Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice Archive] shared with me a collection of restricted audio tapes. I wasn’t able to listen to them, but I was able to look at them in a box. These audio tapes were given to Portland State University’s archive from the feminist bookstore, In Other Words, after it closed a few years ago.(2) The tapes contained personal accounts of lesbian mothers in the midst of custody trials during the early 1980s. Their husbands or ex-husbands didn’t want the women to have custody of their children because of their sexual orientation.
Written in Marti’s handwriting on a small piece of paper: “Gilah Tenenbaum, Attorney on Tape, PDX, July 1981.” Photo courtesy of Marti Clemmons.
Having history as a single mom, who has had my own experience with lawyers, guardian ad litems, counselors, and such, I’ve developed a personal interest in post-separation abuse, coupled with the use of family court as a tool for abuse. Marti, being a queer single parent, has their own immense connection to the tapes. I told Marti that I would do whatever I could to help find the women on these tapes— to ask for permission to share their stories. We ended up locating a Gilah Tenenbaum. Gilah is a retired lawyer who was recorded on one of the tapes. Gilah doesn’t have children, but was active during the time of these trials and very much a part of the lesbian community in Multnomah County, Oregon. I reached out to Gilah and asked if she knew anything about the audio tapes. Maybe she could help Marti and I locate the people on the tapes so that we could get their permission to share these recorded stories. Marti had digitized the audio tape that Gilah was on.(3) We planned to meet with Gilah over Zoom while Marti was at the university’s archives so we could have her listen to the recording. Unfortunately, at the time of the meeting— as it goes with the life of parents— Marti was stuck at home caring for a sick child, so we weren’t able to listen to the recording. The closedness of the tapes, the remaining lack of access to the actual content of the tapes, adds more power to them.(4) And, consequently, for me, added more meaning to our dialogue about them. My hope is to document a succession of conversations in relation to these tapes from In Other Words, as we move through the process of searching for the people who are recorded on them. The following is the conversation of our first meeting, between the three of us: (Marti, Gilah, and myself).
Rebecca Copper: Marti, if you don’t mind going over some of the things you do and maybe give some context for these tapes, that might be a good introduction.
Marti Clemmons: Yeah, I work in the Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University. I’ve been there for nearly 12 years, off and on. Now, full-time as an Archives Technician. I process a lot of the collections: I look through things, I throw away the things that don’t have significant historical context. I get collections ready for the researcher, or the user— patrons, students. We acquired a collection a few years ago from In Other Words, a feminist bookstore and collective. They were located in Northeast Portland. I think it was about five boxes. One of these boxes, it was offset, was a collection of about 70 cassette tapes. The custody tapes were of mothers who came out in ‘81— well, probably came out before that, but a lot of the tapes are labeled from 1981, 1982, and 1983— mothers that came out to their husbands, and therefore, their husbands took them to court for custody of their children. So, lesbian custody tapes, I guess is a broader way to describe them. I’ve only been able to listen to a few of them, they aren’t digitized. The only information on the tapes is a name and a date, sometimes initials. There’s no release forms. There’s nothing else.
Gilah Tenenbaum: Is there a name of an interviewer or an interviewee?
The box of audio tapes from In Other Words within Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University.
Rebecca holding one of the tapes. Both photos taken by Rebecca, courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University.
Marti: Usually, it’s just the interviewee. A lot of the time on the cassette tape, it might just have initials. I’ve noticed a few that have the same initials. Some of these tapes also take place in Los Angeles. I don’t know what that connection is, either. In an oral tradition or practice, the interviewer would state their name, who they’re interviewing, place, date and so on. I haven’t been able to listen to all these tapes, so some might say the names as they’re introducing. I know on your recording, specifically, it gets cut off, the interviewer’s name gets cut off.
I don’t think Rebecca told you yet— I think I recognize the other voice, the interviewer, which is even stranger. I took an oral history capstone class, from a person named Pat Young, who is a historian in Portland [Oregon]. I swear it’s her voice, but I haven’t made that confirmation. She has a very specific laugh, and it would make sense that she would be doing these tapes. I know that she did have some connection with, I think, Katharine Williams, who’s also mentioned on the tape.
Rebecca: Gilah, there is a Katharine that you mentioned. You said I should reach out to Katharine English. Is that right?
Gilah: She was one of the first, if not the first attorney, to win a lesbian custody case in Multnomah County. She educated the judges, she really put in a lot of effort. It came to be that you could go to court in Multnomah County, and you weren’t going to lose just because you were a lesbian. This was a long time ago, but I think the circuit court generally, in Multnomah County, not just this one judge, came around to deal with these cases the same way, whether or not they personally approved.
Marti: I’ve listened to bits and pieces of your interview and I’m sorry that I’m not at work, I had planned to share a snippet with you— but, you do mention different judges, and just the way that it works. How you would walk in, almost having to expect to lose. I feel like these women, you know, with every inch of their being, they wanted to fight for the custody of their kids. Going into court, it’s traumatizing and scary. And, on this recording, you had a lot to say about that and the different judges, not necessarily by name, but what to expect.
Rebecca: Marti is at home with a sick child. That’s why we can’t share the tape you’re on, we totally planned to have audio for you to hear.
Gilah: I was looking forward to it.
Rebecca: It’ll happen, though. I’m sure we’ll get it to happen at some point.
Marti: The recording is about an hour and fifteen minutes, it’s a long conversation. The snippets of the other tapes that I’ve listened to, it’s devastating. It’s their life stories and what they’re trying to accomplish while going through court. It’s really nice to have your tape. Not as someone who is going through a custody battle, but someone who has a different, outside perspective. I think you say on the tape that you were also community support during this time, so it was affecting you as well.
Rebecca: Gilah, you were just talking about how you weren’t sure how much insight you’d be able to give, considering that you weren’t a mom going through one of these cases. But you were a lawyer, you were a lesbian, and part of the communty. Because I’ve been through court custody-processes myself, when Marti showed me these tapes I was interested in the conversation about family court used as a form of abuse or control. So, there’s that way that I connect to the tapes. I wasn’t born until 1989. I wasn’t even alive when these tapes were recorded. But, you were the name Marti had. Then, I tracked you down. And you were there, you were physically there. To me, it’s valuable how the three of us are connected to these tapes. Also, how some of what was happening in 1981, is essentially, in some ways, still happening today.
Gilah: Oh, yeah.
Rebecca: I was hoping that maybe we could connect in a dialogue over that and maybe some of your experiences. I don’t have any prepared questions.
Gilah: I’m happy to help in any way I can, given all the caveats, you know. I have a vague memory– really vague. Maybe I even created the memory once we started talking; that I was once involved in something with interviews, but you know, I don’t remember a whole lot.
Rebecca: What do you remember?
Gilah: Just that it happened. Not any specific incident. I’m trying to think if I was in a conversation with Pat Young. Was she in a position of having to go through this? Or, were she and I talking as people who were providing support?
Marti: She was in the position… I’m going to pull up my email… Actually I think it is Katharine English, not Williams, now that I’m thinking about it. Let me just pull this up really quick. There are records that say that Pat was working with and doing this type of oral history interviews during that time.
Gilah: And she spoke about Katharine English?
Marti: I’m going to pull my email up, really quick. I remember asking Pat about this a couple years ago. She didn’t say whether she remembers or not, she deferred the question. I am trying to pull that email, I have to scroll because it was a couple of years ago. [laughter]
Gilah: While you’re doing that, Rebecca, how did you find me? It shouldn’t have been hard.
Rebecca: Um, yeah, no. It took me maybe a few hours on the internet. I learned, weirdly, quite a bit by googling your name. Actually, I forgot about this really cool thing I wanted to share with you. I got this booklet titled, Divorce. I printed it out through Google Books, which I didn’t know you could do, but it’s a collection of court documents and articles on divorce and its impact on children. There was a committee held in Washington, DC by the House of Representatives on June 19th, 1986.
“Divorce” is a collection of briefings, articles, and other documents of opinion on the topic of families and their wellbeing post-separation. The findings were a part of the Select Committee on Youth, Children and Families that was held by the US Congress in 1986. This copy was printed through Google Books online printing service.
Gilah: Is it a collection of essays?
Rebecca: It’s like court documents. But, your name is in this, you submitted a letter to a representative opposing joint custody. I have it highlighted somewhere. It was wild to find this and then be able to print it in a book; to learn there was a committee the House of Representatives created to discuss this topic in Washington D.C in 1986. As I was searching for you, I found that. I was led to your contact information through the Women’s Lawyer Group of Oregon. They connected me to the Oregon State Bar who gave me your email and your telephone number.
Gilah’s name listed in this collection of opinions opposing court-imposed joint custody laws.
Marti: Nice.
Gilah: I tried to look up Katharine English through the Oregon State Bar. I didn’t know if there was a section for retired or inactive members. I resigned from the bar after I had been retired for I don’t know, three or four years— it just didn’t really make any sense to keep paying that money and I wasn’t practicing. I thought maybe I could find Katharine for you through them. But, I wasn’t able to. I don’t remember if Cindy Barrett was involved, but she’s an attorney. She’s now inactive. She certainly would have known what was going on and might have been involved at the time.
Marti: There was a Cindy in this email I’m looking for, Cindy Comfer.(5)
Gilah: Oh, Cindy Comfer! Oh, sure! I haven’t seen her in years. Yeah, Cindy probably worked on cases, maybe even with Katharine.
Marti: I found the email. Pat said, “I will forward your email to Cindy Comfer, who was a lawyer, retired now and did many custody cases along with Katharine English.”
Gilah: So, my memory is reasonably still there! [laughter]
Marti: Cindy wrote me back. This is from 2019. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about these tapes. I remember Joanna from In Other Words. I did some lesbian custody work in the latter 1970s in the 1980s. But, I don’t know anything about these tapes.”
Gilah: Joanna? Did she give a last name?
Marti: Brenner? Yeah, she’s the one that started In Other Words and was active as a professor. I think she may have even started the Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department at Portland State [University]. But, that was the last time I looked into this. I was like, “Okay, you don’t remember.” And, I had so many other things to do in the archives. I got really excited… but…
Gilah: It’s possible that she knows how to contact Katharine English. She might be one of the last people that has kept up with Katharine. All I remember is that Katharine moved back to Utah. She was from Utah, originally. I think she was from a Mormon family. I don’t think she had anything to do with them. I don’t think they accepted her.
Rebecca: What was it like in the ‘80s, as a witness to lesbian mothers going through custody battles? I mean, would you be willing to share what that was like? No pressure by any means.
Gilah: I have a few memories I can share, not tied to specific women. These cases didn’t always come up in the context of a divorce. For example, I remember that there were women who specifically did not live with their partners, to try and keep it from the ex-husband. I remember there was a case one time where the woman got custody, but a condition was that her lover couldn’t live with her and wasn’t really allowed contact with her children. I don’t know if it was in the early 80s or the late 70s, I graduated law school in ’78. I remember that we heard stories all the time about women around the country who were losing their children, so we sent money. Those of us that could help pay for lawyers. It was just crazy. You know, just misogynist, homophobia.
Marti: Did you have that same experience, Rebecca? Well, I mean, you don’t have to go into detail. Did you deal with a lot of misogyny in court?
Rebecca: (6)
Gilah: I would highly recommend that documentary that I told you about, Nuclear Family. It shows a lot of what went on. I remembered when I was watching it, that the women couldn’t be married at the time. It was before there was any legalized gay marriage. That the non-biological mother was not allowed to have anything to do with these discussions. She couldn’t even go into the courtroom. She couldn’t be there for support for her partner. She was just left out as if she didn’t count, which is the same thing that often happened and probably still does. Like, when somebody dies, and their “blood” family comes along and says, “Well, I don’t care if you lived with them for 25 years…” and just completely excludes the partner from any kind of closure rights, whether property or whatever.
Marti: Yeah, when my eldest was born, she’s seven now, there was that fear, What if I don’t have full parental rights, just because I’m not the biological mother? Times are different [now]. Hearing this is just like— that could have been me, 20 years, 40 years ago. I ended up adopting my kids. That’s how I have full parental rights. There are ways around it now.
Rebecca: Even though federally, gay marriage is legalized, there’s still a lot of shit– excuse my language– happening in terms of rights. I’m thinking about conservative states and how much bias can play into a judge ruling.
Gilah: There was at least one time that I remember where a woman moved from somewhere else in Oregon, to Multnomah County. So, when things went to court, it would be in Multnomah County because things were clearly better here.
Marti: I mean, I’m sure that there were cases like that, with people moving elsewhere to get a fair trial, or something close to a fair trial. Yeah, you mentioned [in the recording] that people actually did do that. Wow.
Rebecca: Yeah, that’s a lot. I’m in Ohio, currently, because I can’t pick up my kid and move without money to pay for a lawyer, court fees, etc. And, even then it’s not guaranteed that the judge would rule in my favor. I would have to go through the process; start a motion to move elsewhere and prove that it would be in my son’s best interest. With moving elsewhere to get a fair trial, to even do that is difficult in and of itself. Which makes me think of mutual aid and support. It seems that there is a resurgence in that kind of community-based support.
Gilah: Just from the little that I’ve seen, it is coming back, the sense of a lesbian community is coming back around. Things have changed so much with the greater acceptance of people being gay or trans, however they identify. It’s on people’s minds more than it was in the past. I mean, with the whole craziness that’s going on with abortion, there are national, regional, and local groups that are raising money to help women pay for abortions. I don’t know if there was anything like that back then. I remember giving money, but the money was just funneled through the woman or through her attorney. I don’t remember there being any, or I didn’t know of [any]organizations that were specifically for that purpose.
Something I mentioned in our last email exchange is the Community Law Project. I’ve been trying to remember where it is, this yellowing copy of a 50 page book that was titled something like, Know Your Rights. It had chapters written by different attorneys, and I wrote something in it. [Laughter] I don’t remember what, but I know I have it. I saw it when I was cleaning out some stuff not long ago. There might be something of interest to you there. So I will keep looking for it.
Rebecca: Oh, cool! Thank you! Did the bookstore, In Other Words, close down recently? Like a couple years ago?
Gilah: Yeah. 2018, maybe ‘19?
Rebecca: Do either of you know why it closed down? Was it financial?
Gilah: I remember there being fundraisers more than once, to help keep it going. I think it was just not enough financial support from the community. I was trying to remember where the store was before it was on Killingsworth.
Marti: I think it was on Hawthorne?
Gilah: I didn’t go in there a lot when it was on Killingsworth [Avenue]. I did once in a while. I donated books to them and money; it was also a meeting space, and a safe space for people. I think [the reason] was just basically money, though.
Rebecca: Would you mind telling me a little more about In Other Words? I’ve actually never been there.
Marti: Yeah, it was in the Hawthorne District, originally. I only went into the Killingsworth location. It was small, you walk in, there’s a huge open area, like a gathering spot, lots of readings, lots of music, a lending library. It just felt like a safe space. I moved here from New York, where I went to Bluestockings Bookstore. It was nice to have the same type of vibe, energy and events to get connected, having moved here to Portland and not knowing anyone in the queer community, and going there and just being one with my people. I would always go there because there was a little music venue next door. If you didn’t like the band that was playing, you would just go to In Other Words and hang out. Yeah, I think it was just about the vibe and having a space that felt good.
Gilah: There was a place— I moved here in ’75, for the gay community— it was Mountain Moving Cafe. It was a cafe open for all, but it was known especially as a safe space for gays and lesbians. That closed and that was a real loss.
Marti: Yeah, I’ve come across that name many times in multiple archives. It’s like one of those places, where you think, Ahh, why can’t I time travel? That place just seemed so cool.
Gilah: It was.
Marti: There’s also the aspect with Portlandia, the show that filmed in In Other Words. I know that started off as a good connection, but it ruptured as they kept filming. There with little to no monetary support. And [the show] kind of made fun of, you know, us in the community. That left a bad taste.
Rebecca: Gilah, I was wondering about your position as a lawyer in all of it. With your expertise as a lawyer, in a courtroom, watching as women went through such a process, and understanding the biases of the judges. I’m curious, was there anything that stood out as unconstitutional, or unlawful, for example, that you saw or that you can remember?
Gilah: I don’t remember there being anything unconstitutional. I think there was a lot of white male privilege, assumptions and ignorance about anything to do with gender or sexuality issues.
Rebecca: What would be their [the judges and opposing lawyers’] reason to prevent a gay woman from having custody of her children?
Gilah: Well, that homosexuality was a sin, and illegal in some contexts. They didn’t want the children to be influenced by this. Also that children need a mother and a father. If the children saw two women being affectionate or holding hands, it was not good for the children. The standard is always, What is in the best interest of the children? Under that rubric, lawyers can argue whatever they want, and as you pointed out earlier, they would tear women apart. “Did you have a shoplifting conviction when you were 16?” I mean, so, what?! They would pull out anything they could. “How many times have you moved in the last five years?” Or, whatever, really. I can’t say there was anything really “unconstitutional” other than white male interpretation of the Constitution. You know, all “men” are created equal.
I did some domestic relations. Most of the cases that I handled were settled out of court. And, I did some writing on the way you protected yourself, as a gay person— as a gay person with a partner, or without a partner for that matter, In those days you had to have lots of documents. You had contracts between you and your partner about what would happen if one of you died. Because you couldn’t be married, you couldn’t get any of those assumptions or benefits. I helped people come up with living-together agreements. Like, wills and other contracts or documents to protect their rights, vis-a-vis each other: What’s going to happen if we break up? I was the one that had the money for the down payment. Yeah, but I was the one that was bringing in the monthly income. My theory was always, yes, it’s unpleasant to put one of these agreements together, but it’s going to force you to confront your issues, and to resolve them while you’re still totally in love with each other. That’s the kind of legal stuff that I was mostly doing during that time.
Rebecca: (7)
Gilah: I think I just remembered a judge’s name that Katherine worked on. I think it was Harlow, H-A-R-L-O-W, Lennon, L-E-N-N-O N. I’m going to double check that on my computer to see if he’s who I’m remembering. I would hate to be giving you the totally wrong name just because I happen to remember one of the judges.
Marti: Yeah, I really appreciate that. I feel like I remember you saying that name in the recording. I want to do this again, when I’m at my desk. I really do. I need to figure out if it’s Pat Young, first of all. Then, go forward with that. I don’t want to play something that no one has given permission to play.
Rebecca: Gilah, originally I was thinking we could give you a list of names to see if you recognized anyone, but we can’t actually provide a list. The archive can’t even give out names without signed release forms. Is there a way to work backwards? Like, if you think anyone you know could be on the tapes, could we check that name against the list from the tapes?
Marti: Unfortunately, that’s where we’re at, that’s the only way. [laughter]
Rebecca: I know you said you might recognize some of the names, if you saw them?
Gilah: Yeah. Oh, I might well recognize a name, but that’s not the same as coming up with it on my own. [laughter]
Marti: No pressure! [laughter]
Rebecca: [laughter]
Gilah: Offhand, I can’t think of any friends or even acquaintances who went through that. I think Katharine English had. Other than her, nobody comes to mind. It’s interesting. Katharine, physically, is a very small woman. I don’t think she’s more than five feet tall, but she’s feisty as the day is long. Articulate, and so on. I’m sure she had things to fight just because she was small in stature. It’s hard enough to get taken seriously as a woman.
Rebecca: Yeah, and I really appreciate that name, Katharine English. I’ll make sure to work with Marti, to see if we can locate her.
Marti: Yeah, and Cindy Comfer. I have a connection with that, too. I’ll shoot Pat and Cindy an email.
Rebecca: It’s 7:32pm [EST]. I know, Marti, you have to go?
Marti: Yeah, to pick up the other kid.
Rebecca: I hope Ansel feels better.
Marti: You know how it goes. [laughter] Gilah, it was nice to meet you.
Gilah: Likewise.
Marti: Let’s chat again soon.
Footnotes:
(1) The audio tapes are restricted because there are no signed consent or release forms on record.
(2) In Other Words was a Portland Oregon feminist community center and bookstore and was featured in several episodes of the Netflix comedy series, Portlandia.
(3) Due to the age of the tapes, they are digitized to prevent further wear and tear on the tapes from being listened to repeatedly.
(4) In a conversation with artist Lucia Monge, Lucia pointed out the power of a closed object.
(5) Mentioned in an email from Pat Young to Marti Clemmons as someone who may be connected with the tapes
(6) Redacted text
(7) Redacted text
Rebecca Copper (she/her) is currently a graduate candidate at Portland State University, through the Art + Social Practice MFA Program, where she worked in 2020 as a research assistant for Portland State University’s Art + Social Practice Archive. Rebecca’s work centers on ontology; how our being and perceptions of reality exist against one another. And, how that reality is mediated, dictated back to us in varying forms. She is deeply invested in vast inversion of imperial/masculine archetypes, power dynamics, and ideologies. And, the reduction of hyper categorical, industrialized research.
Marti Clemmons (they/them) is an Archives Technician at Portland State University’s Special Collections and University Archives located in the Millar Library and previously worked as the Archivist for KBOO Radio. They are interested in using archives as a place for Queer activism.
Gilah Tenenbaum (she/her) was born and raised near Boston. B.A. Government and Political Science, Boston University, 1970; J.D. Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College, Member Cornelius Honor Society and recipient of the first World Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Progress of Women’s Rights Through Law, 1978. Admitted to Oregon State Bar 1978.
We Did This
December 12, 2021
Text by Diana Marcela Cuartas with Jesús “Bubu” Negrón
“For me the ideal would be to get the community to see itself as the artist, becoming responsible for making sure the community understands the project and uses it to its advantage. And you can leave, but the project keeps going, it’s part of the community, you can go find it.”
Jesús “Bubu” Negrón
I’ve been fascinated by Puerto Rico since I was a child. Being born in Cali, the world’s capital of salsa music, I grew up listening to plenty of music by Puerto Rican artists. Somehow, that made me feel connected with their landscapes and people’s culture, whose lives and struggles sounded very close to what living in Cali was like.
Later, when I became interested in art, Puerto Rican artists popped up again with different projects that presented an approach to art more aligned with my own interests. An art that would bring people together and generate shared memories that would make everyone’s hearts pumping with joy. An art that could happen at the beach, the neighborhood, in a fried food kiosk, or anywhere but a white cube.
In 2018 I finally had the chance to visit the island and encounter those landscapes and faces. It felt pretty much like meeting siblings you didn’t know you had. There I met Bubu. We visited his neighborhood, friends, and favorite places. Hanging out with him, I learned about multiple projects developed in such a natural manner that seemed almost magical. At that time, a term like “social practice” didn’t have a daily presence in my life, but I learned a lot about it without knowing it.
I invited Bubu to chat with me for this edition of SoFA Journal to continue learning about Puerto Rican social forms of art and the magic that sparks when people make their way together to resist oppressive structures.
Jesús “Bubu” Negrón, during an artistic residency at Kiosko, Bolivia, 2014. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Diana Marcela Cuartas: How would you describe your artistic practice?
Jesús “Bubu” Negrón: I would say that it has been a mixture of allowing myself to be carried away by the circumstances of my life and responding to those situations. I’ve never been able to be the kind of artist who goes into his studio to paint and make work every day. Instead, it’s more like I’m on a mission. They invite me somewhere and I encounter the situation, and the projects come from that. Many of those projects were created to address some specific problem that I had to experience, and the majority were communal experiences, which is something sensitive, but those are the ones I’ve enjoyed the most, where I experienced the most, suffered the most and really lived.
Object pieces often come out of those processes, but I see them more like souvenirs from the project. Because there’s this part of the art world that demands that kind of thing. Like, “Ok, cool projects, but where are the pieces?” There is a public that is like that, and if you can make that kind of artwork, why not?
Diana: Like the Colillón piece. How did the idea emerge to collect cigarette butts in Old San Juan?
Bubu: At the time, I was volunteering for other artists like Chemi Rosado and Michy Marxuach from M&M Proyectos. Spending time with them, I started to throw ideas around, which I didn’t see as art projects at the time, but they did. With the cigarette butts, I was telling them, “Damn, every day I walk around San Juan and I see all these cigarette butts between the cobblestones. It would be really cool to fill it all up with cigarette butts to make a design.” I would say it more like a joke, and they said to me, “Whoa, that’s a project, let’s do it.” And so those projects became an adventure. It’s one thing to talk about it, but suddenly I found myself picking up butts for a month to make the piece. I wound up being a character on the streets of San Juan—the crazy guy who picks up cigarette butts. And that’s when I started to take a liking to that dynamic, not of making the piece, but of what happens in the process. That was what I liked.
People would ask me, “What are you doing?” and it made me laugh because everything could be resolved by saying, “An art project.” I mean, I can do these “crazy” things, and as long as people see it as art it gets neutralized. Eventually, I didn’t know what to do with so many cigarette butts, and there was a joke about making a big one, the colillón. That piece came out and it was neat, but I think the real artwork was actually the indirect performance that happened every night, that crazy person picking up cigarette butts. It wound up being a participatory performance, which was something else I didn’t expect. I started off doing it alone, but suddenly people wanted to help me, and it became a big activity.
All of this, as I said, was circumstantial, because it isn’t something you can plan. And I think it was the project that most led to me giving myself a kind of power, let’s say, of sharing with people outside of my orbit.
Abra de las colillas (homenaje a Angito) / Cigarette path (homage to Angito). Old San Juan, 2002. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Colillón Masculino. Cigarette butt, 2003. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Diana: So, it was hanging out with Michy and Chemi that you got interested in making this kind of art. What were they doing that caught your attention?
Bubu: Well look, obviously I was never able to get used to school, to the academy. I don’t know why I couldn’t do it.
Diana: But you went to college?
Bubu: Yeah, I studied at the School of Visual Arts in San Juan. I was always dealing with painting and drawing, like everyone else. But I left because I found M&M, and they began to support me, and if I was already doing the things I was going to school for, why would I keep studying? With them, we would do whatever projects we wanted. They weren’t worried about selling, we didn’t have to make a proposal. It was like, you’d be sitting there and you’d say, “Man, I’d really like to light a fire in that chimney,” and then Michy would say, “Let’s do it!” You didn’t have to go over a why or how much, not like the proposals you have to write to win a grant these days.
And so that really influenced me, I have to admit, because if things had been different I would be someone who makes paintings. But I was motivated by that way of taking an idea to the extreme. The motivation I got from her at the time was a catalyst, you know? Very few people will tell you, “Let’s run with it and I’ll support whatever crazy thing you want to do,” and I come from that school.
It’s not like that anymore, but that’s probably why the vision for so many of our projects was to try and create something transcendent, something that will stick in people’s memories. There are projects that people from town still mention with the same excitement as when they first happened. And those are things where you say, “Hell yeah, it was worth it,” even though you didn’t make any money. That’s the part I love to experience. I’ve always tried to make it so that the projects bring me closer to myself, to my friends, to the people, to where I come from, to we who have to make a living working in other things, like you and I right now.
7 Days in Igualdad, 2004. Añasco, Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of the artist.
For 7 Days in Igualdad, Bubu reignited an abandoned chimney from a sugar cane hacienda in Añasco, Puerto Rico. In an effort to bring visibility to a dying community, he worked with local collaborators to light the chimney twenty-four hours a day for a week. The resulting smoke signified a concerted social action and the reconsolidation of kinship, symbolically captained by the reignited chimney’s inscription “igualdad” (equality).
Diana: What was your first close encounter with the art world like?
Bubu: Well, obviously it was with M&M. At the time they had gotten really far. Michy is an incredibly visionary person and is respected in that world. I had an idea that she liked. I don’t know if you’ve seen a piece I did called Primeros Auxilios (First Aid). Well, I remember, that was the first crazy thing that they pushed me to do, because I didn’t dare.
There is a statue in Old San Juan of a boxer who is an icon in Puerto Rico. As a kind of joke, I told people in San Juan that, with all their self-importance as the capital and all that, they had to salute some guy from Barceloneta, the little town where I’m from, every day on their way home. Until someone told me the statue was broken, and I didn’t know that. So, I went to see it and there it was, it had a broken leg. I started to think, “Well shit, this guy was from my town, and if the statue is broken, the memory has been forgotten. I need to give him first aid,” and I told them I wanted to put a cast on it so that at least it wouldn’t look so bad. And their response was like, “Whoa, let’s get on it!” And they took me to a place to buy the plaster, they hoisted me up there, even though I was seeing it as a prank. That was the first piece that Michy took an interest in, and she took it to ARCO. I didn’t know what ARCO was and it turns out to be in Spain. I had never left Puerto Rico, but I won a grant and got a ticket, and that was when I started to see the glamour and the way that world works.
Primeros Auxilios (First Aid) San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2001-2002. Plaster intervention on public sculpture.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Diana: Speaking of art fairs, can you tell me about Back Portraits?
Bubu: I remember that it was my first fair project. I was interested in these issues of the collector’s role, exclusivity, originality, price. So, I thought I would go as an artist on the lowest rung of the art world, which is the guy who sells drawings on the street. To make it different, instead of drawing people’s portraits, I drew them from behind, which was easier for me too. During the fair, what I did was sell the original pieces to the general public and the “copy” to the collector. And I realized that a lot of “normal” people go to art fairs, families and children who go because there is an event happening in their city, but they come up against the fact that everything is incredibly expensive, and they leave with this feeling of, I can’t have this. I saw it, but I will never have it. I sold them for a dollar, so suddenly they could buy an original drawing by an artist, and they went home happy. I made a photocopy of each drawing, and at the end, I made a mosaic with all of them. That was sold at a collector’s price. It was a way to force the collector to have the copy.
Back Portraits (drawings), 2002. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Diana: And how do you balance that encounter between the art world and community work in your projects?
Bubu: For example, in Bolivia, Cancha Abierta (Open Court) was one of the projects that turned things upside down in my life and made me mature. That is, when you go and you realize that you’re there as an intruder, that no one is asking you to be there, that you have a bunch of money in your hands, but people don’t have electricity or water, and you have to spend it on some stupid project that you came up with.
I was in Puerto Rico thinking about things based on what I had found through Google. But when you get there, you find a community that has nothing and you go into shock. You start to ask yourself, why make drawings when I could develop something functional that will persist? I remember I told them, “The project you chose, I can’t do that anymore,” for the reasons I just told you about. “Instead, let me clean the court,” because the town’s basketball court had been buried in mud and I wanted to clean it, and that was the project, that’s what happened.
In the end I justified it as land art, that it was some kind of contemporary archaeology for recovering the court. Everything was as if it were an archaeological discovery. There you can play your hand and meet the demands of the art world, you give the curators something to write about. But also, the people from the town realized I was trying to help them. They didn’t care if we were making a work of art. Instead, we did something functional. And I’ve always liked it when those worlds meet, the people coming together with the curator and the art world, and they can converse and they both understand the project. When you make it so that the community that you’re working with sees that this is an art project, though we’re cleaning up a basketball court, for strategic reasons it’s an art project. That’s the part I like.
Cancha abierta (Open court), Bolivia. 2014. Commissioned by Kiosko Galeria, Bolivia. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Diana: I’ve also noticed that you’re particularly concerned with the continuity of the process, with what happens after a project is completed. How do you see the possibility of long-term continuity in these kinds of projects?
Bubu: What I’ve had to recognize when working in communities is that there are two rhythms. Art goes a mile a minute, from exhibition to exhibition, right? Communities don’t. Communities go much more slowly. And that’s the dangerous part of it, when it becomes “We did something with the community, on to the next show.” Because if you really want to work with the community you have to stretch that out. It’s difficult because the gallerist doesn’t care if you’ve been bonding with them, they only care about, Where’s the photo? Where’s the video I’m going to take with me? And those are the things about the art world that leave a bad taste in my mouth, but they also made me understand that I can find other sources. For example, there are other organizations that don’t have anything to do with art but that have a ton of resources, and the people are on the mission to help a community.
For me the ideal would be to get the community to see itself as the artist, becoming responsible for making sure the community understands the project and uses it to its advantage. And you can leave, but the project keeps going, it’s part of the community, you can go find it. To me, that’s what should happen, because if it doesn’t, we aren’t developing anything.
In the case of the project Brigada Puerta de Tierra, the phenomenon I experienced was with the children. As always, they’re the most curious. I had worked with children before and I knew how to deal with it. That’s where the Brigada (Brigade) community came from. None of them cared about art, but they saw the potential. They went to see universities, they were able to travel, and all of those opportunities were built through the project. Because we’re fighting for a real cause, people can’t think of it as “Bubu’s project.” I was always trying to get across that it was Brigada Puerta de Tierra, that the community was the artist, that when a curator arrives, anyone can talk about the project. Because when you set out to work on a social project, it’s collective. It doesn’t belong to the artist because we are all the project. I’ve told curators not to put my name on that project, but they say it’s too hard to move the project without the name, and it’s messed up that that happens.
Diana: And why not use that power of the artist, if you know that having your name attached to it will give the project greater visibility?
Bubu: Because the intention was to hand that power over to the community. What happens is that you also have to learn how to empower the community. Right now, we’re making it happen. The curators know who the Brigada is, and they can go and offer them a grant. Although you’re right, if it helps to hear a name, then do it.
Now the members of the group say “Brigada Puerta de Tierra,” and everyone is impressed. When they introduce themselves, what do they say? I was at Harvard, I was in New York in such-and-such museum, I went to England to such-and-such museum, we won this international prize. And that game of taking them here and there has created a really strong CV, but it’s about using that world to their benefit. The government doesn’t understand what that is, but they see that the collective was talking internationally, was featured in a magazine, and they understand that something is happening there. But it has taken like five years to make that happen.
I’ve also learned to not be so harsh about the art world, because the truth is that it’s limited, but you can use it to turn the tables on a bureaucrat. I love that.
Diana: And what do you have to do so that people participate in an authentic way and are “empowered,” as you say?
Bubu: I think there are a lot of ways to do this, and they all involve talking honestly. Telling the truth about the limitations of the project. So, if the community sees a use for your idea, I think that things start there. I think that’s where the connection is, when they see that your project isn’t the wild imaginings of someone who came and did this random crazy thing. Instead they can get to that place where they say, “Wait a sec, out of all those crazy ideas, this person is making sense and we can use this.” Another way is by paying attention to them and using art as a mere facilitator.
In the case of Brigada, it’s much more political because it directly affects me. I live there, and although we haven’t achieved a lot of the things we wanted, if you look back, Brigada Puerta de Tierra is a social organization that is well established in the neighborhood. That’s a big achievement. At least one step has been taken.
Diana: Also, the fact that it’s a space where people can get together and hang out and share ideas, which is something that supposedly doesn’t matter but is part of what gets people out of bed so they can keep living.
Bubu: It matters to the community. At the end of the day, it’s something else they appreciate about Brigada, which brought together multiple generations. When they saw that a child could have opinions and their opinions could matter as much as those of an adult, that blew their minds. But I do believe that, in the end, the best thing you can do is to pass unnoticed. Without losing track of the idea that we’re making art but lowering the artist ego so that people can empower themselves and say, “We did this.”
Jesús “Bubu” Negrón (he/him) is a Puerto Rican artist whose work is characterized by minimal interventions, the re-contextualization of everyday objects and a relational approximation to artistic production as a revealing act of historical, social and economic proportions. Negrón lives in the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra in San Juan, where he is part of the Brigada Puerta de Tierra – a grass-roots community organization for the preservation and wellbeing of the neighborhood, its history and its people.
Diana Marcela Cuartas (she/her) is a Colombian artist and a current student in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. In 2019, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she has been working independently for the promotion and exchange between Pacific Northwest and Latin American artists. Currently, she works as a family liaison for Latino Network, serving immigrant families through school-based programs at Parkrose, Benson, and McDaniel High Schools.
I Went Back in Time and Everybody Else Was Moving Forward
December 12, 2021
Text by Caryn Aasness with Perry Huntoon
“That’s what you learn from interfacing with other people. […] You kind of cling to each other after a while because not everybody out there enjoys what you do. So when you do, you find a kindred spirit. Boy, it’s something a little bit special.”
PERRY HUNTOON
Social Practice creates a unique/nagging/obligatory need/opportunity/desire to investigate/create/document the places where people are making connections. Recently for me, this has melded with my interest in vintage aesthetics, pre-internet mediation, and self-initiated institutions. Zooming out from this mess of ideas and influences, I started to see a shape forming, and that shape was of a fan club. It’s the perfect intersection of ephemera, human interaction, rules and devotion. I started to research fan clubs that had been around a long time, long enough to still have a bit of a pre-internet history, and was pleased to find that the Guiness Book of World Records’ longest running fan club was The International Club Crosby. The club was started by fans of Bing Crosby in 1936 and is still around today.
I was enamored by their website and particularly struck by the availability of the leadership’s contact information. There were people seemingly ready and willing to talk about the club and Crosby himself. It was a contrast from the way that many websites can feel like a barrier to talking directly to a real person (afterall, isn’t an FAQ page just a plea to not call and ask questions?). I contacted the American Vice President of the club, Perry Huntoon, who agreed to talk to me on the phone, and agreed again after I made a time zone mistake. What I found in talking with him was a personal bent toward fanaticism that reminded me of the way my own brain operates. I too am a completist, but for me this tendency has often felt isolating. In Mr. Huntoon, I saw the opportunity for special interest to become a point of connection.
Caryn Aasness: Could you tell me a little bit about Bing Crosby?
Perry Huntoon: A little bit about Bing you say? Okay. Sure. He was basically the Entertainer of the first part of the first half of the 20th century. He did it all, you know –superstar, he was big on the radio, big in the movies. And he was, far and away, the best selling record singer of the time up until probably the time of Elvis, when the rock age came in and changed music so dramatically. But he was also big in the war effort. He was very dedicated to helping out in any way he could. He was too old to be in the service, but did the USO [United Service Organizations] thing.
It’s an amazing story, but he discovered the use of the microphone. That’s what made him so popular and before his time. People were using megaphones or whatever they did. The electric microphone just wasn’t in existence. He knew how to use it. It changed the whole style of popular singing back in the 1920s. Instead of shouting to an audience, like you might hear in an opera setting or whatever, he could hold that microphone up and croon to the audience, if you will. That captivated the world and changed the entire style of male singing. Almost every singer that came along after him in that popular vein took after his style. People forget, they don’t think of him as a movie star. Especially because I think when you go back to the Golden Age of Hollywood, you think of the Clark Gables, the Cary Grants, the Jimmy Stewarts, people like that. But in the second half of the 1940s Bing was the biggest artist in the movies. He was number one at the box office for five or six years in a row. But of course he was singing in the movies. He wasn’t particularly thought of as a great actor, but he did get an Academy Award in 1944 and was nominated again in the 50s. So you know, he had a lot of talents. But the singing is what people remember today. I’m afraid that in today’s age, what they remember best are the Christmas songs because Christmas is in the background, but he was far beyond that. He could handle almost any style— pop stuff, jazz-oriented, Irish songs, old songs from the early part of the 20th century. He could even sing in Spanish or French if he had to. He could do everything and that’s why he had worldwide popularity, he sold a lot of records. He was a comedian too, he teamed up with Bob Hope, on the “Road” pictures(1). They were spectacularly successful. And he could ad lib. He could just speak off the top of his head, make it work— audiences loved it. It was just wonderful.
He was also a technological innovator; he decided after World War II he didn’t want to do live radio. He wanted to do it on tape where they could edit it. He’s the one that basically brought the use of tape to this country. The Germans had developed it, and he brought that to America and that became the industry standard in the later 40s. So performers didn’t have to go on live and worry that they made a mistake or go to a recording studio and cut a record and have to redo it because something got goofed up. You could cut and splice from that, it revolutionized the whole industry. So that’s a brief nutshell.
Caryn: How did you come to know about him? What’s your earliest memory of Crosby?
Perry: I came of age musically, when I was 15. Okay, probably late by today’s standards. A little behind the curve. And at that time, I’m talking 1953, he was still played a lot on the radio. Most top stations would have an hour or half hour devoted to Bing Crosby, I can remember listening to pop music on New York radio stations. From 5:30 to 6:00 on one station, that was Bing Crosby time. My older relatives had Bing Crosby records. I would hear them when I went to their homes, so it was kind of ingrained in me. I just realized this guy had the greatest voice ever. I just took right to it. Everybody was talking about Elvis or the Beatles. I was embarrassed to talk about Bing Crosby, it made me an old fogey living in the past. Now I’m kind of proud of it, you know? I have nothing to be ashamed of.
Caryn: When did you become a member of the club?
Perry: In the mid nineties. I don’t know how much you know about the club, but it originated here in the United States in 1936. Club Crosby, it was called, and that’s the club I joined in the 90s and then I found out almost immediately there was a twin club in England: The International Club Crosby. About two years later I joined that also, because they were publishing things that I was interested in— discographies, glossy magazines and things like that. And then about 2001, the two clubs merged. So we have one now: it’s the International Club Crosby, that’s the survivor, and we date back, as I say, to about 1936. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest standing fan club in the world.
Caryn: Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. How did you become part of the leadership?
Perry: Well, first I was just an innocent member doing nothing. They had an annual meeting in Leeds, England. I always wanted to attend one. And finally in 2009, I had a major trip planned and I tied that in, and I said Okay, I’m gonna go over there. That’s how I got to meet some of the people. I thought it would be a one time event, but as it turned out, I liked it so well, I went back every year. Then I started giving presentations there every year. We had an American representative that handled things over here for many years, but he had an accident. He was unable to carry on all of his chores and one of the chores was distributing the magazine to the American members. They come over from England in bulk and then we have to separate out the issues into individual mailing envelopes and mail them out. Once he was incapable of that, I volunteered to do that and I’ve done that ever since. Then when he passed on, I just took over the whole shooting match over here, so to speak, and they wanted to call me the American Vice President. That’s where I am. The problem we have is, it’s an aging membership. Bing died in 1977. The memories are getting further and further back and younger people just aren’t aware of or don’t care about him because we’re in a different musical age. So we have an aging membership and a dwindling membership obviously. But they’re very spirited, they’re very enthusiastic. I’m as enthusiastic as I was when I was a teenager.
Caryn: Is there a part of the club that is dedicated towards basically evangelizing for Bing?
Perry: Well, Facebook is one way. There are several Facebook groups devoted to Bing Crosby and our president in England posts almost every day to those groups. And, of course, he promotes the club, offering a free copy of the magazine or a PDF file. I mean this American club started in ‘36, and it was mostly young girls. I don’t think they were called Bobby Soxers back then, but that’s what they were called in the 40s. You know, they just loved certain artists and formed fan clubs. They were just infatuated with the artists and our club kind of started that way too. But it evolved into something much more serious, it’s much more male-oriented now. And people, they’re true collectors, true lovers of music, and they just want to collect it all. It’s amazing. I collect the music, but people collect all sorts of memorabilia that they can find. Whatever they can find with his picture on it or old photographs, old magazines that devote themselves to Bing, whatever. It’s amazing what’s out there. Even ice cream brands, people still have boxes, empty boxes, I’m sure, of the ice cream. So they’re more enthusiastic about doing that than I am. I just want the music; it is my focus. I have a complete collection. He recorded over two thousand songs you know, I’ve got them all, plus a lot that he had only done on the radio or TV or whatever, live performances. So it adds up to a monstrous collection. I probably have close to one hundred Bing Crosby CDs out of my 3,000 disc collection, and they get played a lot.
Caryn: Interesting. So your collection is all on CD?
Perry: Yeah, I went from vinyl records to tape to CD and that’s as far as I can go. People say it’s better with mp3 and blah blah blah, all the streaming. I have too big a collection and I don’t have the time in my life to convert it now. Which is a problem. Cars no longer put a CD player in the car and I play CDs continually. If I jump in the car I pop a CD in. I have an old Sony Walkman and that’s what I take when I do my three mile walk every day and if those things collapse on me I’m dead in the water, so I just hope it holds up for a few more years and that I can buy one more new car that still has a CD player, then I’m happy.
Caryn: That’s the dream.
Perry: It’s just too late for me to make the transition to the new technology. I’m comfortable where I am.
Caryn: I think there’s something to be said about the physicality of a CD or tape or whatever it is. Having an object and having the liner notes, the booklet and everything.
Perry: Well, if they are commercially made, they have liner notes, yeah. In the old days we would buy albums that were 12 inches by 12 inches, so you could fill the back of an album cover with a lot of notes. And I thought, Boy, with a small CD, how do you do it? Well you do it with a booklet now. That works very nicely.
Caryn: Are there other celebrities or topics that you consider yourself to be a big fan of? Have you ever been part of other fan clubs?
Perry: Oh, I have a lot of interest. We have highway groups, right? Driving the old roads, interstates, that kind of thing. And I’m very active in the Jefferson Highway Association, which is an old route from Winnipeg all the way to New Orleans, or the Lincoln Highway Association from New York to San Francisco, and looking for remnants of the old highways— old motels and cafes, and so on, that are not the standard. Every exit now on the interstate has a McDonald’s or Burger King and KFC. No! The old mom and pop places are what we love! I’ve crisscrossed the country. All the US Highways from number one to 101, I want to go from the East Coast to the West Coast and from Canada to Mexico or the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve done them all. It takes a lot of years and a lot of miles, but it’s fun, and we have groups that thrive on that kind of thing. There’s all sorts of varying interests I have, but I think right now, music is what keeps me young. I love it. And I’m compulsive. I’m a completist, you know, when I like something, I want everything of it. When [I’m interested in] an artist, I want everything they ever did. I want to ride a highway, I want to ride it all. I’m just that way, so that’s why I have all Bing Crosby. I didn’t start out thinking I wanted all this stuff. It’s not all totally to my liking, because he did every type of music you can think of, but take it all together and it’s a wonderful panorama.
Caryn: Yeah, neat. What have you learned about Bing Crosby in the fan club that you don’t think you could have learned elsewhere?
Perry: I was focused primarily on the music, and I realized that many members of the club go far beyond that. Film was important to them. I was very casual about Bing Crosby’s movies. Now I have taken a much greater interest and there’s a historical value to it. You’re going back in time, you’re watching the evolution of an artist. That was big. His entertaining on the radio, which was mostly before my time… And I don’t care about their love affairs, marriages, and all that. But in Bing Crosby’s case, how instrumental he was for World War II, or how instrumental he was in the technology of pioneering tape. There was a lot of resistance to that when he did that. Kraft said, No, no, we have got to do the show live. He said, I’ll go to another network, and [so he went to] the Philco show, on a different network. Within two years, all networks fell into line and almost nothing was done live anymore. So those are fascinating things. Historically, quite a bit of interest, and that’s what you learn from interfacing with other people. Because they have their own focus, they can pick up on what they like and kind of run with it. It just broadens and deepens your interest. You kind of cling to each other after a while because not everybody out there enjoys what you do. So when you do you find a kindred spirit? Boy, it’s something a little bit special.
Caryn: So special! What do you think is the role of a fan club in 2021?
Perry: I have no idea if there are fan clubs today even comparable to what they were, because I don’t know the music scene today. I mean, music of today’s age, from really from the 60s on, I know nothing. I mean, I hear some of it, but I don’t care about it. I’m not an expert on it. But back in the pop music days, in the 50s, I can remember there were lots of fan clubs for different artists, mostly younger people. And it was just a form of adulation for the most part. Our fan club is more serious, but the intent is keeping the legacy alive. The number one thing they want to do is keep it alive. They want to publicize, for example, who Bing was– a really important guy and a wonderful singer, a wonderful entertainer, and spread the word. They want to get beyond the Christmas thing and say Hey, he’s good for all seasons.
I grew up on the cusp when rock just came in, you know. The biggest star of my high school senior year was Elvis Presley. And at that point I didn’t care a bit about Elvis Presley. Then, when the Beatles came a few years later, I went back in time and everybody else was moving forward. But the fan club serves the purpose by keeping the name alive. When Bing died, as opposed to when Frank Sinatra died, Bing’s family, his widow, couldn’t do much to keep that flame alive. Whereas the Sinatra people immediately took his name and capitalized on it, to keep it going, going going and twenty years ago. Oh my god, I could run around Chicago and there’s Frank Sinatra on jukeboxes— people are listening to him still, even when he’d been dead for years. That wasn’t so with Bing Crosby, and it was only much later that the estate finally realized they were missing the boat. There was a lot to capitalize on. Not that our club was the total instigator, but the fact that we existed and communicated with them and pushed the issues, I think that helped a lot. All of a sudden, they found archives that Bing had stored away. And they started making sure to do stuff with the public or they got a channel on the streaming audio systems, you know, so you can listen to Bing just like you can with Frank or Elvis. I think all that was a plus. So I think we served a little purpose. We’re here to publicize Bing Crosby and his work. To perpetuate that is our main interest in life and to enjoy it. I mean, whether it’s watching his old movies or putting on the records, in one form or another, that’s our purpose. To spread the joy, so to speak. That’s the main thing we care about.
Caryn: I know that there’s also been things written that have been pretty negative about parts of his life. I don’t necessarily expect you to speak to that, but I’m curious, what do you see a fan club’s role or a fan’s role when it comes to scandalous things or difficult issues in a person’s past?
Perry: Well, yeah, you know, like in Bing’s case, when he died in 1977, within a year, a pair of writers put out a book that absolutely tarnished, almost destroyed Bing’s reputation. The title of the book was, “The Hollow Man.” They were saying he wasn’t what the image of him was at all. They said he was terrible to his children, beat his children, blah, blah, blah, you know. And then his son, his oldest son wrote a book also and elaborated more on that. But he later retracted most of what he said. But those two books really were devastating to the image of Bing Crosby and I read those books and they just washed over me. I didn’t care what they said. I liked Bing for the talents he had and I didn’t care so much about his personal life. But I realized all of this was overstated, and Gary Giddins, the current biographer, has set the record straight on all that. But we do live in a different age today. My God, you know, I wasn’t beat with a strap, but I was sure spanked when I was a kid. Now you don’t even spank a child, let alone anything else. Times change. But I think Bing made up for it. He had a second family and all those kids idolized him, they kept the flame alive very nicely. But yeah, they’ve all grown up to be outstanding citizens as opposed to the four children from the first marriage. Two of them committed suicide, one turned into an alcoholic. It’s very sad to see it, but that’s the sordid side of his personal life. You know, every family has its bad side. Things became a little more public because of the two books that came out after he died. That very much hurt the image. People still refer to that, that he was a terrible father. Today they believe that because they read it once upon a time, and they don’t get dissuaded from it. None of which is true in my opinion. And I’m not an idolizer here, but I saw it for what it was.
Caryn: Okay, that’s interesting. You’re talking about all this information coming out and becoming public, whether or not it’s true about his life. How much information about a celebrity’s life do you feel like we’re entitled to as fans?
Perry: Well, you know, I think today, the internet age with all the cable channels and everything, people like to dig deeply. They go to the checkout counter in their store and see all the tabloid publications there that sensationalize everything. There’s a fair amount of the public that thrives on that. I can’t say that I do. Most of it is misinformation – and hyped up. But how many people are following Britney Spears’ problems, the conservatorship, and all that. I don’t, because Britney Spears means nothing to me. But there’s an element of our society that grew up with Britney. They thrive on all that stuff. I guess it’s been true throughout history. Except that it was a lot easier to hide more of that back in the day, you know, you didn’t have people on your back all the time and photographers chasing you around and all that kind of stuff. But it’s always been there. I pay little attention to it. I guess I could separate the talent the artist has versus their feelings. Elvis Presley for example, a wonderful artist, but my god there’s no reason for him to be dead at age 43. He let himself go and got bloated, got on pills, and whatever, this, that and the other thing, and it just crushed him. Does that change the image the public has? They still love him, they love him! You’re twenty?
Caryn: I’m 27.
Perry: You’re in a different musical world. And I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about the music of Bing Crosby. People almost my age don’t know more than White Christmas. They don’t remember all the big hits because they were too young.
Caryn: Yeah, I guess I know more about him as a performer, as an actor. One of my favorite movies is High Society, and I tell people about it all the time.
Perry: I have a son who is 45 and I brought him up listening to my music at a very young age. And he knew it, he would know Benny Goodman. He would know who Bing Crosby was or whatever. But by the time he was eight or nine he was drifting off into the world that he’s comfortable with and much to my chagrin, it’s heavy metal for him. Metallica, all those groups. We go out, I mean, I’ve been to some concerts with him and I walk out and I’m half deaf!
Caryn: Have you been to a Metallica concert?
Perry: No, I haven’t been. Not the biggest names, but more second tier groups. It was always puzzling to me to walk into an old movie theater and find all the seats have been ripped out. Nobody sits there. You’re just milling around, you could smell the marijuana in the background. But it’s loud. I could get a kick out of it just for the experience, but I’m not going to run out and go play the music on my own. Yeah, and even that music if it’s at a low decibel level in the background, it doesn’t bother me at all because when I go out to the bars, people are playing stuff on the music system. But if it gets too loud, if it gets in my way where I can’t have a conversation with somebody, I gotta get out. I can’t handle that. But my music was loud. Even my favorite big bands, they were loud. But they weren’t amplifying you know, they didn’t amp it up. Because, hey, the brass section can belt out that stuff! An amplified guitar can make a lot of noise. or a drummer that’s amplified. I can remember vividly when rock and roll first came in. I thought it would be gone in a year, because the year before it was the mambo craze and the mambo came and went. I thought rock and roll would do the same thing, and here I’m stuck with it the last 60 years. The early stuff I kind of enjoy, but I don’t care if I ever hear much of it. It bothered me when we’d go to a club with pounding music where you can’t talk. You can’t hear yourself talk and it’s all highly amplified guitars and a drummer. Oh, I got to hate that. Doesn’t anybody remember how to play the trumpet or trombone? But that’s me, and a lot of people my age feel the same way, I’m sure. You adapt to the times and you finally take it for granted.
Caryn: If someone was wanting to listen to some Bing Crosby or watch some Bing Crosby, what’s your number one recommendation? What’s the first thing they should watch or listen to?
Perry: I think there are two avenues. Number one: you can watch a film. Get a sense of him visually; I think that would be important. And a film like High Society would probably be an outstanding bet because it was a later picture, in color and very carefully staged, and if you got tired of Bing, you had Grace Kelly to look at. Or, go back earlier to get the comedy. I would advise them to watch one of the Bing Crosby Bob Hope Road pictures, specifically, The Road to Morocco. That would be a wonderful film. Considered the best. And they were a classic comedy team. But also musically, I would say to seek out a Best Of. The guy had 21 gold records, pretty good sellers. An album that comprises the best of those gives you a very good background of what he was about musically. If you like some of it better you can even veer off into different categories. I like the more swinging stuff. I like stuff where he’s backed by a bigger band, or a little bit jazz-oriented. That’s my cup of tea, but I can listen to it all. And of course, YouTube has all this stuff. I have been amazed at how I could fill out an artist’s repertoire by going on Youtube! I could find the songs that I didn’t actually physically have the record of. Having the toolkit of a computer, you can access all that stuff. It’s amazing. It’s all out there!
Footnotes:
(1) The “Road” pictures were 7 comedy films starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby released between 1940 and 1962.
Caryn Aasness (they/them) has been club secretary in every club they have ever been a part of.
Perry Huntoon (he/him) is the American Vice President of The International Club Crosby.
Bing Crosby Ice Cream, 1953. Unused container. A gift to The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Gary Fredburg, 2012.
Credits
December 12, 2021
Text by PSU Art + Social Practice
Editor
Becca Kauffman
Web
Emma Duehr Mitchell
Copyeditors
Becca Kauffman and Emma Duehr Mitchell
Advisor
Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher
Journal Concept
Harrell Fletcher
Contributors
Laura Glazer with Elsa Loftis
Gilian Rappaport with Ralph Hopkins
Marina Lopez with Caroline Woolard
Illia Yakovenko with Elvin Rzaev
Lillyanne Pham with Aram Han Sifuentes
Justin Maxon with Desire Grover and H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams PhD
Mo Geiger with William Padilla-Brown
Olivia DelGandio with Starr Sariego
Shelbie Loomis with Michelle Grimes
Kiara Walls with Darrell Grant
Luz Bulmenfeld with Alex Olive
Rebecca Copper with Marti Clemmons and Gilah Tennenbaum
Caryn Aasness with Perry Huntoon
Cover
Photo by Ralph Hopkins
Layout by Laura Glazer
Special Thanks
Eric John Olson
Logo Design
Kim Sutherland