Sofa Issues

Much Love to You Dearest Gilian

“I looked closely into the bushes in front of me, locating the patterns of the leaves, and into the racing rivers with repeating patterns in motion. I was losing myself in this chaos and a new world opened up.”

-Violet Baxter

One of the greatest gifts of my childhood was spending a few times each year in my Great Aunt Violet’s studio. Part of it was spending time with her paintings, and a lot of it was also listening to her music, eating her snacks, watching her dance, and hearing stories from her life in downtown New York City. We looked at her work and I listened to her musings on color, nature, light, memory, and family. After my mother died in January of 2021, I was touched by a deep and ever-present longing for the soft feeling of maternal hands. Visiting Violet, who isn’t related to my mother by blood, I still see gentle glimmers of my mother in the shape of her eyes, the texture of her skin, her loving warmth, and her familiar stories. I had to, in some way, mark the space we share, a holy present bolstered by a lifetime of visits and lineage. The title of this conversation is how Violet has often concluded our visits, so I felt a benevolent sweetness when I heard the words come out at the end of this interview, which took place after a recent overnight stay at her Manhattan apartment. 

---

Gilian Rappaport: How did you become an artist?

Violet Baxter: It’s like asking what it’s like to be me. From my earliest memory, I made pictures. It was how I communicated. I lived through my drawings. In the years that I was not painting, I was a fish out of water. 

My fourth grade teacher, Evelyn Licht, was an artist who connected with me and became my lifelong friend. When I was 13, she arranged for my first job on Saturdays designing cake boxes and later helped on my first exhibitions.

I was the oldest of five in a lower middle class family in the Bronx (NY). I attended night classes at Hunter College. Two years later my high school classmate at HS Industrial Art, Eva Hesse, invited me to the Green Camp, the campus of Cooper Union (NJ). She was already a student and invited me to spend a weekend with her there. That’s when I found out that Cooper Union was a scholarship school. A major day in my life was when I got the envelope that said I was accepted. Needing a job, I applied to night school and happily attended there for five years, gaining a certificate with honors in 1960.

Gilian: I wish I could have visited your first studio. Will you tell me about it?

Violet: In the 60s, I had a studio on the roof of a factory building at 47 E.12th Street in Manhattan. It was an unheated, 30 square foot shack with four windows and a skylight. The halls were mostly unlit, and very, very dark. It was a high walk-up so not many people would make it up there. Once, at about two in the morning after working at the studio, I stepped on someone who was sleeping on the steps. In 1962, preparing for a solo show at Brata, a Tenth Street Gallery, I schlepped many large paintings up and down the stairs, a demonstration of my energy. The studio faced a courtyard and looked into Willam de Kooning’s studio. One darkened day I stood on the fire escape and there he was. We stared at each other until the sky brightened.

Gilian: Will you describe the evolution of your work leading up to when you started painting the New York City Greenmarket Farmers Market?

Violet: From Cooper U, my paintings were large and abstract, often referring to childhood memories of walking through the woods at Baxter’s Corners, in Monticello, New York. My father was born there and it was where my family spent summers until I was 14. 

Later, in my studio at Union Square, I turned to realism, mostly using pastel to try to describe what was in front of me, the wall and my window. The challenge, since it was just a wall, was how to make it look vertical on the flat surface without perspectival devices. I wanted to convey the visceral feeling of looking at the wall, and what it felt like. For the next few years, I was obsessed with walls, windows and the view across the street into other windows.

Violet: Eventually I began what I thought was impossible: depicting the Greenmarket and daily events as seen from the other windows facing east. It turned out to be a major part of my work continuing until I moved my studio to Long Island City. The architect, Barry Benepe, the originator of New York City’s farmers markets, saw my work and brought me to The Council on the Environment of New York and their activities. I exhibited my work at a few of their celebrations, where I met some of our past mayors and other dignitaries. Mayor Koch was the most fun. Once they seated me at Abe Beam’s table. He said ‘Who are you?’ very disdainfully, and I said, ‘I’m an artist, that’s my work’. He was disinterested and annoyed. These funny things happened over the years working with the Greenmarket.

Gilian: Your work has changed several times throughout your life. Where do those changes come from? 

Violet: Serious demands have limited my work over the years. Always, when returning to my work, I was changed, thus a change in my vision, like when I became a mother, my energies were redirected. For example, while my daughter Mara was growing up, I did complete a series of mother and child paintings that had a lot of angst. Each time away there was a change of focus. 

Gilian: How do you see nature in your work? 

Violet: Being in nature is where I feel my smallness. It overwhelms me. I’ve mostly lived in the city. In 1996 at the Vermont Studio Center, it took me two weeks to comprehend what I was even looking at. I made paintings that were banal, something was badly missing. After two weeks I gave up trying. I looked closely into the bushes in front of me, locating the patterns of the leaves, and into the racing rivers with repeating patterns in motion. I was losing myself in this chaos and a new world opened up. I made more work in the remaining two weeks there than I did in the preceding year. It was a profound experience, and it changed the direction of my work.

Gilian: How do you feel about social forms of art? Socially conscious art or participatory art?

Collaborative work can be really exciting. You get that mostly in theater. When I was a teenager I did a stage backdrop for my cousin who was an opera singer. I’m currently a member of a gallery in Chelsea, NYC, an artists collective, and the Federation of Modern Painters & Sculptors. But mostly I look for authentic, personal expression. I see interesting outcomes from collaborations. More minds working on the same kind of thing.

In terms of impact, painters, through the centuries have worked with social commentary. I think of how Goya’s “The Disasters Of War” (1810–1820) can really make you cry.

Gilian: What music do you listen to? 

Violet: I did calligraphy listening to Gregorian chants. I love classical music. Of course, Bach, Chopin, Baroque music; pop songs from the 60s, The Beatles, Joan Baez, and all those wonderful socially-conscious singers. Contemporary musicians that echo nature with electronics. I like the liturgical, mystical music of Arvo Part, the Estonian composer. And then again, I love African rhythms. As a kid living in the Bronx, there was a radio station that played Chinese music that fascinated me.

Gilian: What artists do you admire?

Violet: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, Goya, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Bonnard, Paul Klee, Balthus, Mauricio Lasansky; De Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Max Beckmann, Maurice Prendergast, Rezika, Phillip Guston, Wayne Thiebaud, Graham Nickson, Stanley Lewis, Trevor Winkfield, and many more; Hokusai, Utamaro, Benin etc. Too many to list.

Children’s drawings are interesting. I had a book on children’s drawings from around age seven, around the world in different countries. How similar they were in the way they perceived things, that development was really, really interesting.  

Gilian: Do you like to dance?  

Violet:  I love to dance. If I can’t get outside and walk, I dance. Many of my models have been dancers, and my drawings pick up from their movements.

Gilian: Have you taken any memorable movement classes?  

Violet: My dance teacher, Elaine Summers, recommended me to her teacher, Carols Speads, who taught breathing with very slow motion. She kept the classes small, since this breathing would actually release toxins. The slowness appeared to allow for clear thinking.

Gilian: What are you interested in now? 

Violet: My recent work is spontaneous play, a stream of consciousness, surreal, just letting it happen. It’s all on paper, all small.

Gilian: How are you spending your time these days?

Violet Baxter: My sister is very ill, so my time is divided with assisting her. I’m going now to be with her. I’m starting to learn about gardening. Every other weekend I spend with Richard, whose house is close to Manhasset Bay on Long Island. I planted a tiny pot of daisies there and it quickly became a bush. It is very thrilling.

---

Violet Baxter was born in New York City in 1934. She attended night schools at Hunter College, Cooper Union, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and the New York Studio School. She worked as a cartographer and calligrapher, taught calligraphy in a special program for Pratt Institute (1970’s), and subbed as drawing instructor at The National Academy of Design. In 1960, she was part of the 10th Street Gallery scene. She was elected to the board of NY Artists Equity Inc (1991–2015), The Fine Arts Federation of NY (2004–2009) and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (1994–present), was an honorary member of The National Arts Club (1999-2012). She received medals from the Audubon Artists Annuals, and the Jane Peterson Memorial Award; The Richard Florsheim Art Fund Grant (2002); and the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award (2021). Her work has been reproduced and reviewed in publications including The New Criterion, Art and Antiques, The Pastel Journal, Contemporary American Oil Painting (Jilin Fine Arts Publishing, Changchun, China, 2000); Hyperallergic, etc. Her works are in the collections of The Crisp Museum (SE Missouri State University), Savannah College of Art & Design, Museum of the City of NY, Council of the Environment (NYC), and Consolidated Edison Co NY.

Gili Rappaport was born in New York City in 1988. Gili is a naturalist, educator, curator, and designer working in social and visual forms. Their interdisciplinary practice is place-based and often in natural contexts. They co-authored Field Guide To The Northeast (The Outside Institute, 2017–2021) and co-organized Ralph’s Neon Oasis Beach Party (Jacob Riis Park, 2022). They founded their design and research studio, The Workspace of Gilian Rappaport, in 2016. Their work has been shown at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Parallax Gallery, and Dream Clinic Project Space, and is in the permanent collection of KSMoCA and Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University. In 2024, they will publish their book They Call Me The Mayor at Riis Beach, and their book of interviews through KSMoCA. Gili is nonbinary and of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. They live in Portland, Oregon. | art projects: www.gilian.space | design projects: www.gilianrappaport.space | @gilnotjill    

We Can’t Extricate Culture From Liberation

“Art offers us another way, another possible reality. Art opens up the beauty inside of us and the ugliness inside of us, so that we can confront our conditions and our situation.”

-Jasmine Araujo

The beginning of the pandemic was a tough time for everyone, but in a specific way in New Orleans. A town built on outdoor interaction and intersections, creative levity, and joy became silenced and dull. I walked around my neighborhood, Bayou St John, got a dog, and drank too much. But a bright spot appeared in the form of Southern Solidarity, a mutual aid collective of artists and organizers that delivered meals to houseless people in New Orleans. The project inspired many people with secure housing to act by cooking meals, doing drop offs, signing people up for government services, and advocating for equitable resources for folks living in precarity. In sleek black and white photos, t-shirts, and promos, the group seemed to strip away any complexes one might have about getting involved in a mutual aid project and urged you to just jump in. In this interview, I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Jasmine Araujo, the founder of Southern Solidarity, about how organizing is an art form, how to get many people on the same page, and what revolution looks like in the everyday. 

---

Lou Blumberg: Thank you so much for agreeing to do an interview with me. I just started an MFA program out of Portland State in Art and Social Practice. In thinking about what those things mean to me, I immediately thought of your project, Southern Solidarity. Living in New Orleans during the pandemic was super intense, for, as you know, so many reasons, and I feel like what y’all were doing was so inspiring to so many people. It was really such a principled political project, as well as one with aesthetic components. So I was curious to hear you describe it, how it came about, any takeaways or lessons, and where it’s at now.

Jasmine Araujo: We started in New Orleans at the height of the pandemic. I was going for a lot of walks and noticing that a lot of houseless people were coming up to me because they had no idea what was going on, and it seemed cruel. So we started Southern Solidarity with the intention of keeping houseless people informed and keeping them fed. A lot of the shelters were not feeding as regularly, or they were feeding within one site, which is dangerous during the pandemic. So we were, and are, delivering food directly to houseless people. We were delivering food every single day. Once the 2020 rebellions began we were participating in those–closing down bridges, opening abandoned buildings for houseless folks, and making sure that they had a shelter. We also protested, and were able to relocate a hundred people into housing by pressuring the government. We continue to meet with government officials to demand that they open up affordable housing in New Orleans.

Lou: Awesome. Do you see it as an art project? Do you see it as a mutual aid project? What sort of categorization would you give it?

Jasmine: That’s a great question. It’s definitely a liberation project that includes mutual aid and survival programs as part of the way we function day to day. But really, we talk about ourselves as a liberation project in conjunction with houseless people. So it’s a mutual liberation project together. And I think that one thing that’s different about Southern Solidarity, that ties into this intersectionality in our politics, is that a lot of artists are part of Southern Solidarity. A lot of musicians and visual artists are part of the project, and we find ways to make those connections even stronger through art auctions and through fundraisers that incorporate the artists so they are inspired by the work that they do with us. I think that’s where the alignment is. 

Lou: Yeah, totally. I’d love to hear more about that. What does it mean for artists to be the ones who are part of that liberatory project?

Jasmine:  It plays a really important role in liberation projects. In the mainstream, we’re trained to see the world from the eyes of the oppressor, and art offers us another way, another possible reality. Art opens up the beauty inside of us and the ugliness inside of us, so that we can confront our conditions and our situation. And I think that a lot of artists who are members in Southern Solidarity see that and have been inspired to kind of activate their work through Southern Solidarity. Other organizations are doing amazing work but maybe they’re not targeted towards getting artists on board because there’s such a focus on researching Marxism and reading. And that’s important! But we’re coming to our research from the lens of art. For instance, one of the first consciousness raising events that we had was reading a book called We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85. It was solely about the interconnections and intersections between art and politics for these women who were organizing. Their liberation work was completely tied to art, and there were artists and collectives that would work together to create a vision for the liberation movement.

Lou: I really appreciate naming that because we just did a unit in my History of Art and Social Practice class about the Black Arts movement. I had, of course, learned about the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, and the revolutionary side of that, but I had never heard about the art structure behind that. And I’m craving to find that in today’s world as well. Who are some visionary artists or movements that you feel are painting that sort of, like, beautiful liberatory potential that we as activists, as artists can be working towards? Which is a totally long winded way of asking, do you see that sort of art movement informing justice work today? 

Jasmine: I think there’s not as many artist collectives as in the past, like with Leroy Jones, with Max Roach, with Quincy Church. I think that those pockets of artists that we had, that were all engaged in liberatory work, have shifted recently. But I do think that there are individual artists that are doing great work. There’s Noname, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, she’s doing great work. There’s Aja Monet, who’s a poet who does a lot of revolutionary work. I think that the function of artistic technique and of the Black aesthetic is to make the goal of communication and liberation more possible. What these artists are doing is that they’re communicating the kinds of visions that they have for the world on a mass level in an artistic way.

Lou: I love Noname’s book club as an artistic and political practice. That’s so inspiring. If there isn’t a collective of people, what do you think is gained by just having people who are working in their own ways towards the same goal?

Jasmine: You know what? I don’t wanna say that these artists are working individually, cause they’re not actually–Noname has her book club and Aja Monet works with a lot of other activists and artists. She does a lot of work with Robin D. G. Kelly. But I think that there is something so powerful about forming a large collective so that we can begin to kind of peel away at the celebrity cult that America is ingrained in. I think we need to tear down as much as possible these celebrity cults that we establish. I think having a lot of voices in an artist collective can help us be more of a non hierarchical group that is embodying the kind of socialist practices and abolitionist, anarchist practices that we want to see in the world. 

Lou: I’m curious to know more of what you’re up to now. I saw that you’re at NYU in an MFA program, right?

Jasmine: Yes, I’m in my last semester of my MFA Program. I’m teaching and I’m still doing Southern Solidarity. We started a branch here and we go out every week. We go to protests together and we’re still organizing as strongly as we were during the pandemic.

Lou: I wanna get into the nitty gritty of how you do that. I’d love to hear more about how you navigate the decision making part of organizing and how you’re putting your politics into practice.

Jasmine: I think at the very crux of our organization, what sets us apart from other organizations, is that everyone on our team has access to the funds. We do grant writing as a team, and then we are able to get funds from various sources, either private donors or from the government, or from other nonprofits. We are on Open Collective, and I really hope that other organizations start getting on Open. It’s such a great site. All our funds are moved in there. There’s a pool for anyone on there in the organization to use as long as they show receipts; it holds everyone accountable. Everyone knows the budget. Everyone knows how much money we have left. Everyone can say, hey, I have this idea, can we get a bulk order of pants for houseless people this week? And then that person orders it and shows the receipt, and there you go. Also houseless people can say, hey, we need Narcans this week, and we’ll go from our pool of money, and we’ll get Narcans. And so everyone, the community members and non-members, houseless people and non houseless people are engaged in a shared vision with resources that we have.

Lou: I love that. That’s like a mini participatory budget project. 

Jasmine: Exactly. It’s really, really helpful and then, beyond that, when we are making decisions, we usually have a group chat or we’ll have a Zoom meeting to get our heads together around something, and to get to a common ground. The biggest challenges are kind of ideological differences, even amongst the left. One of the ways we mitigate that is by having a lot of consciousness raising events that help us get on the same page around some important things that align us more closely to our vision of liberation. So we’ll have a Black anarchist come and speak to us. We’ll have someone who’s trained in Black socialism come and speak to us. And in that way we can come together. 

Lou: Having a shared political understanding can be so important. I’m curious to know about how you navigate your days as an artist and as an organizer. How do you find balance for yourself and your own practice? 

Jasmine: I think last semester I was teaching 2 days a week. I was going to Southern Solidarity every Saturday, doing grant writing every Sunday, and doing fiction writing any other time that I wasn’t doing that, which was about 4 hours a day. It was definitely overwhelming but it was totally doable. I really enjoyed having those different pockets of my day.

Lou: How did you come to find your creative practice? Was it always something that you feel like you had? How did that evolve?

Jasmine:  I think that any time I have been at a really low point in life, the only thing that has gotten me out of bed has been the urge to write. If we think of ourselves as units of power, I think that I’m really activated when I think about the power that I have with writing, whether fiction or nonfiction. That is just something that I’ve observed that motivates me. I hope that can help someone. 

Lou: What are you writing now? If I can ask.

Jasmine: I’m working on a book that is loosely inspired by Kalief Browder‘s life. He was the 16 year old who was placed at Rikers for about 4 years without being charged with anything, And then, when he finally got out without ever having a trial, he committed suicide. I think that’s such an important story that’s not often told nationally. And so I wanted to kind of add some creative fiction to it.

Lou: That sounds super powerful. In the program, I’m learning so much about a push in some areas of the art world for art to have this socially engaged component. And I’m coming from a socially engaged place, being involved in anti surveillance work in New Orleans, and anti Zionist work, and I’m clarifying how that fits with my own art practice. I’m curious how other people see this: is activism work inherently an art practice?

Jasmine: I think that ties into the first question you asked. I think, yeah, you can’t really have organizing without thinking creatively, without breaking away from norms. And I think the only thing that helps us do that is art. I think with organizing we are engaging in a narrative of a community. That’s storytelling. So yeah, absolutely, I think organizing is definitely artistic. There are so many ways to kind of think through inspiring people to want to activate and self-actualize. So how do we do that?  At Southern Solidarity we had so many amazing artists. And I’m just thinking about how they thought about organizing and all the fresh ideas that they brought to the space. I’m thinking specifically about Spirit McIntyre. They are an amazing musician. And they engage in a lot of narrative work and helped us kind of figure out the culture of Southern Solidarity. And I think that artists do so much with culture, and we can’t extricate culture from liberation. 

Lou: I love that narrative change work that they’re doing of, “we have all this money, why don’t people have what they need?” It’s getting outside of the “deficit” way of thinking, right? Meaning, thinking that our societal issues are because we don’t have enough resources, which is totally false. Because America is actually a very abundant land. Resources are being taken away from people, even though they exist. So juicy. So, so juicy. Is there anything you’re curious to ask me?

Jasmine: Yeah, tell me about your artistic practice. 

Lou: It’s definitely new and evolving. I feel similarly to you, like in moments where I felt super low or hopeless, the only thing that feels like it can inspire me is making little sculptures of things, or doing little water colors, and that’s sort of how I got to an artistic practice during the pandemic. I definitely didn’t think of myself as an artist before that. I had been involved with Eye on Surveillance here in New Orleans and with the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, and I was feeling challenged– how are we getting more people into this wider movement for justice? And, how are we selling our vision of the future that we’re really trying to build here? And I think what both of those movements have in common is this idea of safety; what does it mean to really feel safe? 

Jasmine: You know, I was just having that conversation of safety. And again, here’s where artists can come in and show us alternate visions of safety that don’t include police, that maybe even rest on indigenous ways of keeping each other safe.

Lou: Yes, I love that. I’m curious if you have specific examples of indigenous thinking on safety.

Jasmine: I think a lot about longhouses in indigenous tribes where you had 40 people in the same home. And I think about what kind of safety that must have created, what kind of levels of accountability that must have created without having this police invention, which began, I believe, in the 1800s in Britain, and then was brought over to the Americas, but always as a vestige of slavery. The fact that people even think of something like police as safety when it comes out of such a violent place is wild to me. 

Lou: Yes, absolutely. This is so at the top of my mind right now, of course, seeing how many Jewish folks believe that a violent nation state is the epitome of their safety, even though it’s making everyone less safe, especially Palestinian people who are under military rule. So thinking of that, how are we selling that vision of a sense of community that’s so much bigger than an identity, or a religion, you know? That’s really top of mind for me right now.

Jasmine: And how can we tease away at the ideas of nation state, which itself can be a violent idea, right? That is so deeply ingrained in our ability to navigate the world. It feels impossible to imagine something different. But there are some great writers exploring this idea. My good friend William C. Anderson is doing a lot of writing on kind of unpacking the nation state. He wrote a book called No Nation on No Map that’s totally great and investigates the legacy of Black anarchy. 

Lou: That’s sort of what drove me to apply to this program, wanting to really think of art as a way to see different futures and bring people into movements. And the classic Toni Cade Bambara, “make the revolution irresistible.” It’s a journey to figure out how to do that; I think it’s a balance between meeting the material conditions of folks, like what Southern Solidarity does, and then getting people who are privileged in this current setup, you know, like white people, my people, to get them to be like, this isn’t actually working for you, and to sort of unearth that and say, you have a stake in this completely, and your soul has a stake in this work.

Jasmine: That’s such a great way of putting it. It is definitely a balancing act. And I think this ties into what you were asking about social practice. What Southern Solidarity is doing on a daily basis is trying to show the vision in concrete terms. This is what socialism looks like. It looks like a reframing of what motivates us. What motivates us should be care, not profit. And this is what that looks like– taking care of people who are deemed to have no value in society. And whereas art gives us that and can give us that in an abstract way, what is it to reorient. 

Lou: I love putting care at the forefront of what is possible, as we have the resources, especially here in the US. What could it look like if care was actually the first and foremost value that we were foregrounding?

Jasmine:  Exactly. I think I talk to so many people who haven’t quite gotten to the left yet, and I think what I hear the most from them is that they’re saying they don’t believe it’s possible. They’re resigned to the present reality, where we’re fighting, where there’s wars, where there isn’t enough for everyone, and they believe that that is the way things actually are, that that’s realistic. And that we are just being too idealistic. And then I think art has such a big role in bridging that gap of helping us see it as more realistic.

Lou: Hmm, yeah, I love that. And I think that I’ve felt that from art, too. Yeah, to think that that’s what art can do and to know that that’s what art can do because it did that for me. That is powerful to hold on to. How do you think we get from here to there?

Jasmine: I think there’s always going to be a ‘getting there.’ I don’t think there’s ever going to be a moment where we’ve raised consciousness to the point where we’re happy with it. We’re going to constantly be emerging and growing. And that ties into my idea of revolution. It’s constant. It’s daily.

Lou: I love that. Are there ways for people to plug into Southern Solidarity? Now, if they’re interested, or any advice you’d have for someone who wants to make the world into this place where care is foregrounded?

Jasmine: This country is so good at making us depressed, and then it makes money off of our depression in so many ways. So I think that joining an organization, whether it be Southern Solidarity or any other organization, that kind of speaks to the ways in which you wanna change the world, right? If it’s environmental, then join an organization that focuses on environmental work. And I think that that’s where we get the sense of community that helps us get out of bed. The people that I’ve met through Southern Solidarity have been some of the best people I’ve ever met. Because they share similar values around viewing houseless people as actual people, and we don’t see that a lot around the world, or nationally. So I think joining an organization is first and foremost. To plug into Southern Solidarity, you can hit us up on Instagram and send us a message. If you want to help with grant writing, if you want to cook for us, if you want to distribute food; there are lots of options. If you want to help us with social media, just DM our Instagram.

Lou: Well, thanks! Yeah, I mean, it’s inspiring to talk to you. And hear about your vision for the world, it’s so needed.

Jasmine: Thank you so much. I just love doing interviews that kind of get us more into the abstract space. This was really fun. 

---

Jasmine Araujo (she/her) is currently a writer acquiring her MFA in fiction at New York University. She founded Southern Solidarity, a grassroots network that distributes 500 meals daily across two cities. She has written on liberatory mutual aid for Roar Magazine and is currently working on a novel that fictionalizes social death. You can follow her at @jas_araujo

Lou Blumberg (they/them) is an artist, educator, and facilitator living in New Orleans. Their work deals with questions of personal and community safety, vulnerability and intimacy, and how to live a good life. Hire them to mediate your next conflict by emailing them at loub@pdx.edu

Cover

Image from Laura Glazer’s interview with Nina Katchadourian: Gallery attendant looking at Nina’s exhibit at The Morgan Library. Photo by Laura Glazer.

Our cover this spring comes to us from Laura Glazer, who took this picture herself while viewing Nina Katchadourian’s work at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City this year. You can find their interview in this issue under the title, “Listen to the Subject.” We loved this image because it felt so quintessentially “social practice” to us. The focus is the person viewing the work rather than the work alone. It is often those relationships that we are interested in exploring with our work. 

-Luz Blumenfeld

Letter from the Editors

What makes the field of social practice dynamic and compelling is the vastly different themes people bring to the work. Within our cohort of 15, no two practices look the same. Because our medium is the constantly shifting public, the ways our work manifests are always changing. We respond to relationships and social contexts and we all respond differently. This is what makes the field exciting; the ability to engage with and learn from so many different ways of making. In this issue of SoFA Journal, our interviews reach across a variety of subjects. Olivia DelGandio gives us an inside view of the Art and Social Practice Archive at PSU, Marissa Perez talks to Ruth Eddy about what it really means to interview someone, and Morgan Hornsby interviews photographer, Wendy Ewald, about rural life and art. Each interview shows us just how fluid social practice can be. 

As Becca Kauffman says of their interviewee, “Jeremy Deller knows the essential ingredient for making the kind of work you can see yourself in: he looks to what people care about.” We, as social practice artists, are often looking outward to the social sphere instead of inward for inspiration. Because we work in this way, each project turns into something new and different. As Wendy Ewald says, “I’ve learned to look and listen, and to understand that I have preconceptions always, and to learn to let them go or be transformed by the situation.” From looking and listening, we move towards making. 

Just like we garner information from artists we’re influenced by, we also look towards the people we’re to closest for inspiration. You can see this reflected in Caryn Aasness’s interview with their mom and in Gilian Rappaport’s inclusion of their collaborator’s response to their initial interview. As social practice artists, we see the world and our art through the lens of these relationships. 

In exploring these relationships and influences, we’ve put together an exciting batch of interviews for this issue. If you want to know more about Vietnamese memes, making molasses in Kentucky, or why Nina Katchadourian is interested in writing her own wall labels, you’re just like us, and lucky for you, we asked the right questions so you can read all about it here.

Your editors,

Olivia DelGandio, Caryn Aasness, and Luz Blumenfeld 

(with Becca Kauffman and Morgan Hornsby)

Goodmorning. Goodnight. I miss you. I love you. Have you eaten yet?

Ashley Yang-Thompson with Li Yu-Tang

translated by Yuyang Zhang

“People like me have gone through too much to believe in God.”

– Li Yu-Tang

My grandmother and I lived together for many years and even shared a bunk bed, but I know very little about her. Due to my limited Cantonese, her limited English, and my mother’s anathema to personal conversations, all I knew was roughly assembled scraps of information, a lot of personal lore, and those weird phantom limbs of trauma that are particular to rootless children of the displaced. After my father’s death in May 2022, I was infected with an urgent sense of memento mori. Thinking of my senescent, nearly nonagenarian grandma, I often break down – How am I going to survive loving you? I had to know the story of the woman who walked me to kindergarten every day, who was so reluctant to leave me that she dozed in the corner of the classroom until the end of school. 

The title of this interview is the gist of our diurnal FaceTime conversions, so I felt very lucky when I befriended the Chinese artist Yuyang Zhang. He translated this interview from Mandarin.

Ashley Yang-Thompson: What happened during and after the Chinese Cultural Revolution?

Li Yu-Tang: Before the CR, I used to be a radio broadcaster at Guangdong Broadcast Station in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. During the CR, my colleagues and I were accused of distributing rumors against the government, even though we only ever broadcast the news that came from the government. Then I was sent to the countryside to serve punishment through hard labor. I was separated from your mother, who was only two. Punishment through labor included working in the fields plus other labor intensive tasks (people who served then usually had never worked those tasks before). My punishment went on for 3 years, before I was assigned to a health bureau to keep working until the end of CR. After the CR, my former boss helped me go back to Guangzhou and work at a newspaper publisher called Guangzhou Daily. Later, after the Open Policy, I was invited to work at the newly established Guangzhou Television Station due to my experience as a broadcaster. After that, I became the chief of Guangzhou Audio and Video Publishing House. I had to work extra hard and traveled all over China so I could make enough money, which led to a severe stroke. I retired after that. One of my high school classmates stayed with me and helped me to recover. After two visits to the US (the first was when you were born), and assessing the senior living situation, I decided to stay in the US.

Ash: What was my grandpa like? How did you and grandpa meet? How did he pass away?

Li: Grandpa used to work at a court as a prosecutor. I was around 18 and had a job teaching. We were both chosen to participate in the revolution movement. After we met, we fell in love and got married. Grandpa loved studying even though he was not able to attend college. He wanted to teach himself to be an engineer so that he could leave the court. He ended up switching to work at a factory. Jumping from one profession to another was difficult and required a lot from grandpa. He would often study until 3AM and then go to work at 6AM the same morning. This schedule taxed his body heavily and caused hepatitis. Grandpa continued studying without a full recovery and became an engineer at the end. However, the hepatitis worsened into liver cancer, and grandpa passed away one month after being diagnosed, at the age of 40.

Ash: What has brought the most joy to your life?

Li: Being with you. You were a lot of fun when you were a kid.

Ash: Do you miss China?

Li: Yes but I can’t go back. I miss my siblings and I really want to show you my former home and have you meet my sisters. But your mother refuses to let me go.

Ash: What’s the relationship like between you and my mom?

Li: I pulled some strings to get your mom into college. However, she decided to drop out after just 2 years. Your mom was smart but didn’t like to study. She worked multiple jobs but didn’t really tell me much about any of them. She was never a Red Guard. She had a very rebellious personality, probably due to her separation from me when she was 2. The separation created a very distant relationship between us. She almost didn’t recognize me when I came back from the labor camp.

Ash: When did you start going to church? Do you believe in God?

Li: I started going to church when I was around 7 with my uncle. I didn’t go to Church to worship; I went for the music. After I moved to the US, I started looking for Mandarin or Cantonese speaking churches for support and to feel less lonely. I don’t fully believe in God because people like me have gone through too much to believe in God.

A Foil to the Horseman of the Literary Apocalypse, Even After Three Decades

Ashley Yang-Thompson with Kevin Sampsell

“I’m glad I wrote about my first oral sex experiences, because if you asked me now, I don’t know if I could tell you. Thank God I wrote about that!” 

– Kevin Sampsell

Some people know Kevin as a collage artist. Some people know Kevin for his writing. Some people know Kevin as Powell’s small press person. Some people know Kevin as a publisher (Future Tense Books). Some people know Kevin for the events he hosts all over town. Some people know Kevin for weird performance art shit. Some people know Kevin because Portland is small and he’s lived here since 1992. But until this exclusive interview, dear reader, no one has known about ALL his multitudes. Maybe.

Ashley Yang-Thompson: I love the title of your latest book, I Made an Accident. Do you think that poetry and art is a glorified version of a micturating dog marking its territory?

Kevin Sampsell: I’ve heard that when dogs smell the pee of other dogs in their neighborhood, it’s like they’re getting the news of the day. So I guess pee is like gossip. If an artist had to walk around smelling the pee of other artists to get the daily news, I think it would result in a more vicious cycle of art-on-art crime. Thinking about art and ego (and piss) in that regard, I question whether something is intentional or an accident. Since I am not trained in any art or skill, I think my work is an accident.

Ash: You may not be trained by an institution, but you’re certainly an autodidact. Although no matter how “skilled” an artist is, my favorite work is often a collaboration with chance. Like Marcel Duchamp’s “The Large Glass” breaking on its way to the exhibition, and Duchamp exclaiming, “Now, it’s finished!” Do you think your lack of institutional training has benefited you? A lot of people have been ruined by academia because they can aim too precisely and stop making accidents.

Kevin: I think it has certainly benefited me, in that sometimes you can learn a lot by working through–or with– your naivety and rawness, but I never really liked school in the first place. Somebody else might totally benefit from academic environments, but I don’t think I was ready for it. I respect it though, and can see how certain people can really thrive and learn from that kind of teaching. I’ve worked at a bookstore for about half my life though and that’s been a huge education on its own. I just keep learning from reading a lot and being around other writers and artists, so I guess that’s been my training. 

I love that story about Duchamp.

Ash: You’ve written extremely personal and erotic non-fiction, and I’ve been told that everybody knows everybody in Portland’s diminutive arts/literary scene. Do you ever think about how much your coworkers or bosses might know about your sex life? For example, we’ve never talked about it directly, but I know all the details of your first experiences with oral sex. 

Kevin: Well, one great thing about recording so many moments and details about your life through writing or art, is that it gives you a catalog to refer to. For instance, I sometimes forget certain things from my life and then I remember that I probably wrote about it somewhere. As if my nonfiction writing was merely a very sporadic diary. For example: I’m glad I wrote about my first oral sex experiences, because if you asked me now, I don’t know if I could tell you. Thank God I wrote about that!  

Ash: Haha. Do you ever hear back from ex-lovers you’ve written about? 

Kevin: There have been a couple of times, especially after A Common Pornography came out. One was very sweet about it, but said she was glad I didn’t use her real name. When I write about real people and things that have happened, I often change names. In the end, it’s usually me who is most embarrassing in the story. If I feel mortified to put something out, I know it’s probably pretty good.

Ash: I am also in a state of constant humiliation (when it comes to my art). Why do you think enduring any and all embarrassments is so crucial to delivering a literary gut-punch?

Kevin: Being embarrassed/embarrassing is just part of being human and it’s also a way to connect with readers or other people in general. Imperfection is the base of who everyone is. I don’t want to ever meet a perfect person. 

Ash: My step-dad always said, only Jesus was perfect and they crucified him! 

Do you believe there is such a thing as non-fiction? I think narrative itself is inherently fictional (framing and collating material from an unstable memory), and that nonfiction is as delusively objective as a photograph. 

Kevin: Yeah, it’s hard to say. People can manipulate “real life” pretty easily. Just look at reality TV or documentaries. Even on certain news shows, it’s easy for context to be destroyed in the name of a sound bite or attention spans. Also: conspiracy theories get clicks and ratings. Maybe that proves that fiction really is popular. I’m getting this pretty twisted, I know. The answer to your question is yes–there certainly is non-fiction. 

How pure is that non-fiction though?

1. Who cares
2. It’s a mystery
3. To the author it’s 100%
4. The reader must trust the writer
5. All of the above

Ash: To change the subject a bit, I want to talk about the state of poetry readings. At most poetry readings, I feel like crying tears of boredom. I also feel enraged that soporific readings promulgate the notion that poetry is a fun-sucking vampire. I’ve heard you tell stories about saturnalian poetry readings at Voodoo Donuts – can you tell me more about Haiku Inferno?

Kevin: I always loved haiku and wanted to do something funny and performative with it. I formed this group in 2004 with my (now ex-) wife (B Frayn Masters), my best friend from work (Elizabeth Miller), and the loudest poet in Portland at the time (Frank D’Andrea). We would do these very straight-faced performances where we would read a bunch of topical haiku**, rapid fire-style, and then intersperse that with ridiculous tea ceremonies, karate demonstrations, and other distractions. We did a bunch of shows for about four years, opening for punk bands, jump rope troupes, comedians, writers, and other performers. We made fun of poetry even though we were all haiku masters, truly. And yes–we did a few readings at Voodoo Doughnut when they first opened in their original tiny space. They didn’t have a stage so we had to climb a ladder to this little storage nook, and sit on our knees to perform. The audience (they could only fit twenty or so people in there) had to crane their necks up to watch us. It was awkward and uncomfortable for everyone, in a variety of ways. Eventually, in 2007, we put out a chapbook of a bunch of our haiku and it was really beautiful. They’re pretty hard to find now though. The reaction to our group from haiku purists was not very enthusiastic. It was fun, but pretty silly. 

**One thing that we always had to tell people was “The plural of haiku is haiku.”

I might have some other images (real life black and white photos), but here’s one of our “band photos” that I found on Facebook Haha (clockwise from top: Frank, me, Elizabeth, B Frayn). I don’t think we have any pics of us in performance.

 Ash: You started your own press, Future Tense, in 1990, and since then you’ve published over 60 books and become a bonafide Small Press Legend. What advice would you give to people who are contemplating starting their own press? 

Kevin: Think about–and know–why you want to do a press in the first place. Figure out your expectations and the expectations of the writers you’re going to work with. I think a lot of people start small presses thinking it’s all fun and global domination and bags of chunky money, but it’s also a load of work and steady commitment to reading and writing and publishing. Don’t get in over your head with promises. Start small. Be serious but with a wink. Wear something cute. Do it for the kids. Use a lot of sports analogies. Go for it on 4th down. Kick out the jams. Write everything off on your taxes. 

Ash: You’ve published numerous books with a heterogeneous range of presses, including Tin House, Harper Collins and Clash Press. You mentioned that you’ve had trouble finding a publisher for your latest book, which you described as your weirdest book yet. What makes it such an outlier? 

And what stops you from self-publishing a la Gertrude Stein?

Kevin: Yeah, it’s been a nightmare trying to find a publisher for this book. Some editors and agents say it’s too fantastical, or they say they don’t like stories about babies sneaking out of their homes at night to talk to the moon (the baby’s father). I don’t really like self-publishing my stuff anymore. For this particular book, I think I just need to know that someone else loves it. When I finished the book almost three years ago (right on the brink of COVID), I had no idea it would take this long and still not have a home. It’s a reminder to never take publishing for granted. 

Ash: Before I began interviewing you, I googled you for the first time, and dozens of interviews surfaced. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve been asked in an interview?

Kevin: That’s a hard question. I mostly get asked about writing and publishing. I did a “self-interview” once for a site called The Nervous Breakdown and I asked myself: If you were to drive around naked, what song would you crank on the car stereo? My answer: Something perverse like Beethoven. 

But outside of interviews, a girlfriend from a few years ago once asked me, “What’s the worst email you’ve ever received?” It’s such a scary question, I still nervously laugh out loud whenever I think about it.

Ash: What’s the worst email you’ve ever received?

Kevin: Heh heh heh heh. 

Ash: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done sexually? 

Kevin: Now, that is the weirdest thing anyone has ever asked me in an interview!

ADDENDUM

In February 2023, Kevin showed me a poem he was working on, What Used to Be… about the changing facade of Portland, which made me think of the traveling gnome prank popularized by the film Amelie – but what if we used my free standing Flesh Walrus in lieu of a gnome? With Katie Price as our photographer, we traversed Portland with the Flesh Walrus and made The Flesh Walrus Guide to Portland.

Ash: I’m not sure how to fit the What used to be… into this interview….

Kevin: I feel like it goes with the social practice theme of the journal, no? I see it as my first social practice project. 

Ash: What was the inspiration for What used to be… poem?

Yeah, I guess you’d call it a poem, or a train of thought. Because I’ve lived in Portland for so long, from the early 90s, when it was cheap to live here and artists and musicians moved here because rents were low, to the slow growth that turned into the booming growth of the last ten years. So many things have changed, so if I’m driving around with someone, especially someone who’s not as familiar with the area, I find myself saying things like, “That place used to be this other place” or “I used to hang out there when it was this other business.” It’s partly a history lesson and part nostalgia. I started writing down a bunch of these changes and realized it was kind of interesting and funny and sad and ironic. It’s something that could easily be an ongoing project because things are always changing. The process of gentrification through real estate feels more tangible and disturbing when it’s written down.

Ashley Yang-Thompson is a ninety-nine time Pulitzer Prize winning poet and a certified MacArthur genius. ashleyyangthompson.com @leaky_rat

Kevin Sampsel is a longtime Portland writer, small press publisher (Future Tense Books), bookseller (at Powell’s), and collage artist. He’s the author of a novel (This Is Between Us, Tin House) a memoir (A Common Pornography, Harper Perennial), and other books. He was also editor of the anthology, Portland Noir (Akashic Books). One of his essays, I’m Jumping Off the Bridge, appeared in Best American Essays 2013. More recently, he’s published short stories in places like Paper Darts, Joyland, Southwest Review, and Diagram. A book of his collages and poems, I Made an Accident, was published in 2022 by Clash Books.

Intimacy and Ritual

“I felt that I graduated to another level where it wasn’t so much a striving within a genre, but rather a ritual for myself.” 

-Miranda July

This spring, Harrell Fletcher (our professor and co-director of the program), invited his longtime friend and previous collaborator to visit one of our classes. It was through this experience that I had the opportunity to interview artist, writer, and filmmaker, Miranda July. 

I’m not going to pretend that I don’t think it’s extremely cool that I got to interview one of my favorite artists this year. 

Learning to Love You More, a collaboration between Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, was a project where you could complete assignments from the artists and submit your work to the website where it would be posted and added to the growing archive. When I found the website, it was around 2007 (the project ran from 2002-2009). I was in high school and lucky enough to grow up in Oakland at a time where there were a lot of DIY community art spaces, like Rock Paper Scissors Collective, which still exists today. I was really interested in participatory artworks and artists who used the intimate details of their lives in their work. 

I find that those things still draw me to socially engaged art; the everyday quality of it and how it often includes people outside of the art world. In my current practice, I’m making work about the immateriality of memory and the power of play. I’m interested in voyeurism and fantasy and the blurry line between public and private.

It was really cool to have a conversation with one of my favorite artists about some of our shared interests. I think that Miranda’s work can feel like an invitation into her private world and I appreciate how she let me into that world for a little while. 

---

Luz Blumenfeld: I think so much about you being in the public eye. Do you feel like that’s changed the way that you make work? Do you ever find that there’s a hyper-visibility or something?

Miranda July: Well, I had about 15 years, from when I was a teenager to age 30, when I was working to create an audience, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job of that, you know, for an artist and a performer and someone on the fringes. And then when I was 30, my first movie came out. I was not used to being recognized so I suddenly had a different sense of myself in the world; it was a bit of a creative crisis, it felt sort of alarming. So while I stayed ambitious, I didn’t think, oh, and now I want to get even more recognized in the street. It was like, okay, this is good, if I could maintain this in such a way that I could always make my work, but not ever go beyond this level of anonymity, because that actually might actually prevent my work. So that kind of became the goal, to just maintain that level. Which I have done, so I’m really used to it at this point. 

Luz: Yeah, that makes sense. I would imagine that too much visibility would be hindering in a lot of ways. I mean, artists are already so inside of our own heads all the time about our own work and ideas, but I can’t really imagine the kind of constant input from the outside, or at least, that I think is more visible with how much social media there is now.

Miranda: Right, I know. But you tend to not end up in this space accidentally; you tend to want it on some level. Whether that’s healthy or what kind of wounds that comes from— people who don’t want attention have a very clear path to not getting it. 

Luz: I’ve seen you use Instagram in your work in a really interesting way lately. It felt almost like a play to me, that piece that you did with the actor Margaret Qualley. That was a really interesting way to use the platform that I hadn’t really seen before. I want to know what you’re thinking about with how that platform can be used for something that it’s not really supposed to be for? And like, what making that work does?

Miranda: Yeah, I mean, though I had made these feature films and sort of normal-ish books, I kept being the same artist person that I always had been. So my interests have remained very curious as to what are all the different ways that work could be – not just distributed, but sort of…that the path the work takes to get to the audience [can be] part of the work.

So even though I’m surrounded by people who are like, yeah, I want to get my TV show made, or my movie made, there’s a kind of flattening through that whole process – you gain a lot but a lot is also ruled out by the process, no matter how organic or improvisatory you try to be. I think I became very aware of this while making Kajillionaire. On the one hand, I was so happy, I had a bigger budget than I’d ever had, a lot of trust. And it also gave me the space to see what it inherently wasn’t, you know. Even at its best, it wasn’t going to be spontaneous and immediate. With my wonderful but large crew I wasn’t going to be the way that I would be with just one other person—

Luz: Yeah, like that level of intimacy—

Miranda: Yeah, and then there was a year between the time I finished Kajillionaire and it coming out and in the meanwhile, I was making things and sharing them the next minute through Instagram— the complete opposite. And that made me so happy in a way. There was a purity to that; for all the dirtiness of Instagram and Facebook, there is also something that can be pure about cutting out all those middlemen— all the other companies besides Facebook. So yeah, I had had in my head, what if you could make a movie through Instagram? and actually, the original idea was to have it be decentralized. So you would have to jump from my Instagram to Margaret’s Instagram to other people’s, and you’d kind of follow it. 

I met Margaret one week, and I wrote a little script and we had that first FaceTime, which is the script basically, the next week. So we didn’t know each other at all. Now, we’re good friends, but this was kind of how we got to know each other. And then Jaden Smith, I saw him in the comments, I saw he was following.

Luz: Yeah, that was wild. Was that actually an organic thing that happened? I couldn’t tell.

Miranda:  Yeah, I mean, neither of us knew him. He did write a comment, just an emoji or something. And then I DMed him and said, hey, do you want to, like, play a role in this? And he was like, yes, you know, he just wrote right back. So I wrote out a four page script. He’s a really good actor. He memorized it really quickly and we shot it through FaceTime and screen recorded on Thanksgiving Day. He was into the idea that it was gonna go on his [Instagram page] first because I still had the decentralized idea. And we’re watching it together over the course of that day, and I was like, Not enough people are jumping— you know, it’s not working. I need to post it. 

Luz: Yeah, the attention span is so wild with that.

Miranda: Right? I mean, it was just kind of an experiment. I just wanted to try it, but yeah, and so then I posted and it was really exciting. It was exciting for him and me and Margaret and all the people involved because it was very raw, and it was all strangers. And it was all in real time, roughly. Everyone involved… that’s what we’re here for; that kind of collaboration. Especially for someone like him, or even Margaret, who are used to having a lot of handlers involved, to even have the power to be like, I’m in and be doing it the next day, without signing anything… it’s a great feeling. A totally normal experience when you’re younger or in the art and performance world, but not in this business. Actual trust. 

Luz: Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like it was also really exciting from a viewer’s point of view because at the very beginning, I really couldn’t tell if it was like, a bit, or something that’s playing out in real time, or something kind of in between the two. Especially knowing your work and the way that you play with intimacy. So for a while, I really couldn’t tell, but I was like, I’m not sure it matters. Like this is really interesting, a way of interacting with this platform— artists connecting and using that in a way that is different from— I just feel like I use Instagram to like, very low key promote things and remind people that I make what I remember to post on there, but it’s really boring, and I don’t love it.

Miranda: Yeah, I’m in that same boat most of the time. I have something that I’m working on that I’ll do closer to next year, that is another very different but kind of Instagram-based project. And it is such a different way of— when it becomes your art, like with the Margaret thing or like this new thing, it [the platform] suddenly loses all of its power, its normal power, and only becomes this tool, like Microsoft Word or something. 

Luz: Yeah. It’s like some sort of medium and also kind of a weird obsession at that point. 

Miranda: Yeah, it’s nice to know that the mechanism itself isn’t good or bad. You know what I mean? It’s like other tools. The company is specifically gearing it in this addictive direction but it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s part of why I always like to tangle with whatever the current technology is, just to remember that these companies are making choices that are not in our best interests. But we were always going to make these tools and there’s something hopeful about seeing ourselves still in the technology, I think.

Luz: Yeah, I think about Instagram and Tiktok a lot. There are certain parts of it that are kind of built into the culture that I do find really fascinating, and it’s also totally oversaturated. But you can scroll through people’s live feeds on TikTok and on Instagram too with the reels. It’s so voyeuristic; it’s like another thing I do sometimes which is to go to a camming site and just check out people’s rooms because it’s so intimate— sometimes the person has it all set up and it’s like a set and sometimes it’s just someone’s bedroom.

Miranda: So where do you look at that, like Only Fans or something?

Luz: Before Only Fans there have been camming sites. The one that I know about is called My Free Cams and the way the website is designed kind of feels a little old internet, like it’s all a grid of profile pictures. And then when your mouse goes over one of them, it gives you a preview of their room in real time. I think it’s such an interesting way to get a glimpse into someone’s private world.

Miranda: And it’s not just the room empty without the people in them?

Luz: Sometimes. If you catch someone at the right moment where they’ve just left the room to get something then you are just watching an empty room. And it’s fascinating to me because it is in real time. And I think for me it’s along the same lines of when Google Earth first came out, and it was like, oh my god, you can just see the world as it is. And that’s insane— almost like time traveling.

Miranda: Agreed. I haven’t dug into camming or Only Fans or anything like that, but because I worked in the peep shows when I was in my 20s, I often think, oh, right. That’s what I would be doing if I was in my 20s, now, probably, and it’s much better in some ways. So much safer. And that makes me curious about it. It still seems to have potential. And then it’s interesting Occasionally if I’m extra broke, I’ll think well, I guess I could be a cam girl…

Luz: Right? That’s always on the back-burner.

Miranda: …and then I have to sort of grapple with being a real niche taste now, being older. When you’re young, it almost doesn’t matter what you look like, because you’re young, right? But I’m in a special category now. 

Luz: I was wondering if there’s kind of a medium or an area of art that you haven’t explored ever before, but you still want to, like, maybe that feels kind of out of reach for whatever reason?

Miranda: Well, there’s things that just aren’t gonna happen, like singing or playing the piano; I’m just kind of wistful, like, I just have no aptitude. It might as well be sports or something. But then there’s things like— I mean, in a way dance falls in that category of something where it’s like, Well, I actually don’t have a lot of aptitude. I can’t follow choreography or anything but there’s a colloquial form of dance that we all have access to, you know, just like dancing in a club. 

But it’s funny. The other night I was being interviewed on stage by a friend, by Carrie Brownstein. And she was talking about dance in my work, and me dancing, and she said, but it’s always mediated by the phone, right? It’s on Instagram. Would you ever just dance on stage, like, do the same kind of dance? And I said, yeah, sometimes I have dreams where I do that, you know, when I’m asleep. And she said, would you do it now? And this was in front of 500 people. So I tried. I put on music—

Luz: Oh like, now now. 

Miranda: Yeah, it was very shocking. But I’ve known her forever and she knows it’s hard for me to resist a dare. But it was interesting to see how I sort of couldn’t do it. I mean I did something, including some push-ups?  And the audience was very nice. But I couldn’t think the way that I do when I’m alone in my room. And when I’m alone, I have time to sort of get into it, you know? And have it be bad, and then have it get better. And I have a mirror! I can see oh, that looks cool, or I can even record it and play it back. And this was without all of that. And I realized like, oh, I do have dancer friends who, given a stage and an audience, they would have endless things they could do, and I simply didn’t have that at my disposal, not with any immediacy, but it made me feel sort of hungry. I’d like to be able to be that kind of person. So maybe in a way, I’ve been in training, in my room, to figure out that next step. But I wouldn’t have seen the gap if I hadn’t tried in that high stakes way.

Luz: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, those ways of showing a dance are so different. I feel like with your phone and with Instagram, you have some control to a certain extent. And giving up control as an artist is kind of impossible for a lot of us, or just feels really scary.

Miranda: I think because I have these dreams so often, you know, like sleeping dreams where I’m dancing and it’s just all going so well. It was like I just wanted to see— it was like the equivalent of well, maybe I can fly, you know, and almost that dangerous. Luckily not fatal, but I did see like, oh no, I can’t, not yet. But I think I could get there. It didn’t seem impossible. I felt vaguely humiliated, but in a way that I felt I could survive. 

Luz: I feel vaguely humiliated on social media, I think, and like, in my everyday life, just having a body and being perceived.

Miranda: Yeah, it’s awful. But it’s also like, where we’re at. 

Luz: And so much connection can happen through that. I’m thinking about some sort of meeting in between the peep show and dancing on stage and wondering, when you were doing that work, did that feel humiliating? Or like you were really exposed? Or did it feel like you had more control? I’ve been interested in recreating a peep show because there aren’t really any anymore, just so that I can experience what it feels like to have the curtain be pulled back temporarily.

Miranda: Yeah, it was kind of interesting. I mean, they were all there in Portland too, where you are, but I guess they’re gone. It certainly wasn’t creative, although it does pop up in my work sometimes. There’s a peep show in one of my short stories. But at the time, you’re so concerned with like, am I gonna get people today, will I make money and so, it’s sort of deadening the way a lot of other jobs are. Yeah, the thrill is gone pretty quickly.

Luz: Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve done camming both for work, and also just kind of for fun to see what people do, and they’re very different experiences. I think you are really good at looking at intimacy in your work, beyond like, bedroom sexuality, and into the intimacy of people’s inner worlds and how weird they are. And like how universally weird they are. I think that’s something that I find that you’re really good at and I look for in your work.

Kind of going back to the work that you did with Margaret Qualley and the intimate 1:1 thing— I’ve been thinking about art projects that are really just for you and another person or just for you. And what does it mean to share that or share the existence of that, but maybe not the whole project? Or to share it at all? And what do you gain with either? Have you made work that’s really just for you, or just for another person?

Miranda: Yeah, that project with Margaret, weirdly, for how public it was. Part of why it felt so real is that I really needed a ritual in my real life to help me with a real problem. And I think, because it didn’t cost or make any money, you know, because it wasn’t created as part of a market in that way, and despite the large audience, I thought of it as very pure and, and the fact that it ends with a literal ritual…a nod to the whole thing being a ritual. I’ve talked about this with Margaret, how it worked. It was effective.

Luz: Like it felt like a closing?

Miranda:  It shifted me into a different place forevermore, and this had to do with the specific people that I worked with and met along the way. Even the penny circle and even the audience, even people being invested in it was part of the ritual. We were talking earlier about fame or ambition, with this project I felt that I graduated to another level where it wasn’t so much a striving within a genre, but rather a ritual for myself. We sort of intensified it by being watched, but the spell was complete enough that it stayed sacred. And then I went on from that and spent the last four years writing a book that was a similar experience. I can’t believe it’s just a book because it feels like a four-year seance. I don’t know, I can’t quite explain this. In any case, this may have also happened when I was younger but frankly, I was completely entranced by just the goal of making a movie, or writing a story, you know, and having it be both true and honest and good took all my focus. So the witchcraft aspect of it – the thing that goes beyond the medium – wasn’t quite as available to me.

Luz: And then there’s that thing that happens, where you’re striving towards something for so long, and you get to it, and then everything shifts. I’m trying to get better at taking a step back and being like, oh, you’re here, you made it to that point that you were trying to make it to for a really long time. So, what are you looking for now? And I think it’s a great place to be. And it’s also fucking terrifying. Yeah, it’s actually so scary to be doing what you want to be doing. It’s weird, right? 

Miranda: I remember when I was young, living in Portland, I would have these kinds of board meetings with myself, just in my notebook that were like, what do you actually want to do? I’d do it each week, so it’d be a constant refocusing. Just because you were so gung ho last week about this doesn’t mean – you keep refocusing. I think I need to start that up again, but not about work. Maybe not a board meeting but some other ritual. 

Luz: I find myself drawn to certain Jewish rituals. I was raised Jewish, but more culturally than religiously. But when I was growing up we did practice Shabbat sometimes and it’s such a nice ritual to light the candles and have some bread and that ritual of closing out your week. And there’s another part of it on Saturday night, at the end of the sabbath, called Havdalah, where you light these braided candles and you smell this little spice box, and it’s supposed to awaken you to the start of another week.

Miranda: Oh, wow, that’s so cool. I’m half Jewish – Jewish enough to smell a little spice box.

---

Miranda July (she/her) is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her books include It Chooses You, The First Bad Man, and No One Belongs Here More Than You (winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award). July’s fiction has been published in twenty-three countries and has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. She wrote, directed, and starred in The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know (winner of the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance; re-released by The Criterion Collection in 2020). Her most recent movie is Kajillionaire (2020). July’s art works include the website Learning to Love You More (with Harrell Fletcher), Eleven Heavy Things (a sculpture garden created for the 2009 Venice Biennale), New Society (a performance), Somebody (a messaging app created with Miu Miu), and an interfaith second-hand shop located in a luxury department store (presented by Artangel). A limited edition of her most recent work, Services, was produced by MACK Books in 2022. A monograph of her work to date was published in April 2020. Raised in Berkeley, California, July lives in Los Angeles.

Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Third generation from Oakland, California, they currently live and work in Portland, OR where they are a second year in the MFA in Art + Social Practice at Portland State University. Their first book, More and More Often, will be available this summer. You can see more of their work here.

I Was a Hero and Loved 

“idk it’s like it never happened” 

-Nate Hill

Nate was a classmate of my brother’s at the former unaccredited, free collaborative school, Bruce High Quality Foundation University in New York City. We met in 2016 after he asked me to participate in a project of his. I did, and we began a strange and brief relationship of which the memories and timeline are fuzzy. I remember hiding a bottle of cheap white wine under the table at a seafood place in New Jersey, his son’s red plastic car shaped bed, empty on the floor of his studio apartment in The Bronx, sitting on a white leather couch at the 24 hour karaoke place in Chinatown, watching him perform in the pink light with awe. Following a fight on the street after seeing the film Psycho together, we didn’t speak for six years. We reconnected recently, and below is a brief conversation conducted via a shared Google doc.

---

Nadine Hanson: What did you eat today? 

Nate Hill: Work mom gave me some food she cooked. It’s like chicken and Mac n cheese.. she also had a plate someone gave her of Mediterranean that she didn’t want so I took it .. Often I scavenge food from work.. 

Nadine: How did she become your “work mom”?

Nate: She wanted to date but she is not my type but she kept giving me food so we are friends .. me bringing her some food or something in return is long overdue I would like to reciprocate..

Nadine: What’s your favorite song on Lana’s new album (Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?) 

Nate: I like Paris, Texas a lot right now..  I like how she whispers Texas .. the melody makes me feel like I’m with some fairies in the woods .. I like feeling like I’m in a magical world .. This is a good escape from the noise.. what’s yours? It’s a lot the album is obviously rich.. 

Nadine: Paris, Texas is one of my favorites, too, but Fishtail is #1 for me. The line “I wish I could skinny dip inside your mind” reminded me of a text I sent to a man I was dating, where I said I wished he could carry me around inside his mouth and I could look at the world through the gap in his teeth. I meant it, I was obsessed. I broke up with him the next day.

Nadine: When did you last cry, and why? 

Nate: I soft cry here and there like I don’t bawl it’s just a few seconds and maybe a tear or two comes out. Last time was yesterday I microdosed and of course got emotional about joy.. pain.. the past.. family .. exes.. my son..typical human things.. I cry in little doses there’s not like one big cry ..

Nadine: Do you believe in god? 

Nate: Idk

Nadine: Can you name any artists / projects you have been influenced by?

Nate: When I was 20 or so I found a book in my college library about 2 performance artists (google tells me they are called the Art Guys?) who spent 24 hours in a dennys. It taught me you could do anything and call it art.. as a young man I copied their work. I spent 24 hours in a dennys then 24 hours in a tree in McCarren park ..

Nadine: Tell me about how your project Death Bear started and how you experienced it.

Nate: My son’s mom made it up with me.. I wanted to give people something nice that wasn’t ironic, hurt or disturbed them.. it worked it went viral .. I was a hero and loved.. it was nice to feel .. then I got burned out doing it .. during tho I loved it feeling like people were playing my make believe game and they were happy at the end it was positive lol .. it was the most wholesome thing I ever did that was also successful.. once a stranger on the subway handed me a note that just said thank you for death bear .. I felt like a good person

Nadine: :,,,,,)

Could you talk a little bit about some other projects you did around that time? Maybe Free Bouncy Rides, Punch Me Panda?

Nate: well I don’t really do great at this point explaining what it was I did.. maybe I got too old or just don’t care.. but like I was completely out of control at this time.. uhh I was I guess unhinged? Like complete lunatic?? I felt fine and normal at the time but looking back I can see I was possibly out of my mind? It didn’t matter no one could tell me shit and if they tried to stop me they were no longer my friend as if that happened anyways .. I was only friends with other performance artists or outcasts at this time.. that’s all I can say for this time atm

Nadine: Are you open to talking about the project I met you through?

Nate: It’s ok

yes

Darling Try Me

I haven’t looked at it in a year or 2.. 

ok I just looked back at it wow it’s pretty cringe lol

The facts as I recall are…

Around 2016 after I cheated on my wife while she was pregnant and got caught 

We separated 

I set up a website 

Wore a paper bag on my head naked 

Invited random women to my apartment 

After hearing my confession of wrongdoing they could choose to do whatever they wanted with me

You came over and [redacted]

Anyways during my divorce my son’s mom printed out the website 

Lots of drugs and sex

She brought it to court 

She told my mother 

I took the website down

There were like a dozen women who did it?  

Idk it’s like it never happened

Nadine: What kind of work have you been making since you left the city? 

Nate: I do byelol.com it is a black screen you can stare at online .. I host events where controversial issues are proposed and all are welcome to attend the black screen .. No discussion is possible yet people who disagree can be in the same space something less and less common nowadays lol

Nadine: What’s your favorite thing about being alive?

Nate: Hanging w my son and flipping over rocks stuff like that .. 

Nadine: When you flip over rocks what are you hoping to find? / what have you done with the things you’ve found together? 

Nate: Last week by the river I found a leech and put it in my aquarium .. he collects ants, studies them, and we bought some queens and have started a colony at home..

Nadine: What is your least favorite thing about being alive?

Nate: Idk I feel amazing 

Nadine: Are you scared to die?

Nate: I have an 8 year old I want to be around now but before him I didn’t care as much 

Nadine: Can you talk about your relationship to costumes? 

Nate: I feel like a time traveler wearing this ice cream man fit.. it’s a way for me to dissociate and deny harsh realities..or feel unaffected or safe.. especially at work it makes me feel unique and not like part of a machine even if I may be I don’t feel it as much it is a buffer I need.. in the past costumes were ways to invent identities in performance .. I know how to capture the imagination through mask and make people believe and play along with me.. I like to play and need to play or I get sad 

Nadine: Why an ice cream man? 

Nate: I like a sweet facade with sinister hidden underneath .. I carry a fake cotton candy prop.

Nadine: What is sinister about it to you? 

Nate: I’m hiding something …things that have been shared in my work.

Nadine: Could you work somewhere that didn’t allow you to wear your ice cream man outfit? 

Nate: I have a plan to wear normal clothes for first month or so then transition 

Nadine: Have you sold ice cream in your outfit? Would you want to? 

Nate: No I heard you can get tendonitis from scooping 

Nadine: What advice have you listened to regarding your art practice? 

Nate: Not much. I was a bit self destructive and burned bridges throughout.. I had a chip on my shoulder, daddy issues, basically fuck everyone during most of my art career and used people to advance my art ideas making or maintaining few friends except those who were ruthlessly focused and driven on their own work or who supported me without question lol

Nadine: What’s your Mcdonald’s order?

Nate: Cheeseburger .. I like a filet o fish ironically 

---

Nate Hill (he/him) is an artist based in New Jersey where he works in a lab taking care of fruit flies. byelol.com IG- @00000000000000oo00000oo

Nadine Hanson (she/her) is an artist based in New York City where she works as a waitress. nadinehanson.com

I Did It, So I Know I Can Do It 

Morgan Hornsby with Pernell Fults

“I made my dream look as real as I could so I could let somebody see what I really want to do in life and what I could do if I was out there to do it.”

-Pernell Fults

I met Pernell Fults last year in a poetry class I taught at the Grundy County Jail. Each week, our group met in orange plastic chairs around foldable tables in a small, cinder block classroom. It was in this setting I began to get to know Pernell and his dream of building a log cabin in the woods, of living close to the land and being completely self-sufficient. This was also where I got to know his talent as an artist. When our class decided to print an anthology of poetry, he designed the cover, a beautiful rendition of flowers, animals, and a gray chain drawn with a small pack of gel pens. With a compact mirror, he drew a self portrait that was so striking that I printed it poster-sized, displaying it in the lobby of the jail.

When I wanted to try a new project, inspired by Justin Maxon’s Livin’ the Dream, I was grateful Pernell was in the group so we could figure it out together. On the first day, he sketched his dream, which he entitled “Log Cabin Living.” From empty boxes of green tea and other assorted cardboard, he created a log, saw, and stand, even adding a small chipmunk coming out of the log. I photographed him pretending to use the sculpture and we found images of the woods in old National Geographic photo books to use as the background. Finally, we incorporated the sketch of his cabin and waterwheel to form a collage. Together, we brought to life a dream that I had heard so much about.

During this conversation, Pernell and I talked about his experience with art as well as our most recent collaboration.

---

Morgan Hornsby: Okay, first question. Who are you as an artist?

Pernell Fults: Who am I as an artist? Someone who enjoys art. That makes it easier to do. My daddy was really good at woodwork, and his daddy was really good at woodwork, so it just kind of ran down the line. So that’s what it means to me and why I enjoy it.

Morgan: For anyone who doesn’t know you, what kind of creative things do you do?

Pernell: I can take just a solid square piece of wood, say two inch by two inch, and use my pocket knife to whittle a chain out of it and leave the links together. I can make any kind of jewelry box. I can build log cabins, waterwheels. I made a whole Harley Davidson out of wood that looks like a real Harley Davidson. That kind of stuff, giant bird houses with like twenty houses on it, or twenty rooms in one house. Stuff like that.

Morgan: What kind of art stuff have you done since you’ve been here? 

Pernell: Well, I’m presently working on a painting. And you see my log and saw over there [motions to the corner of the room]. 

Morgan: Poetry, too.

Pernell. Yes, poetry. I loved drawing in poetry.

Morgan: You designed the cover for a poetry anthology we created a couple months ago. Can you explain what that process was like?

Pernell: The cover came from everybody in the class getting together and agreeing what should be on it. We put our heads together and agreed that it should have a lot of flowers and of course American ginseng [a plant native to the region]. I added an owl too because I love them so much.

We also added a chain, from being locked up here at the jail on one end but on the other end in this class we turn into the bird and fly off free.

Morgan: Again for someone who doesn’t know you, how would you describe who you are as a person? 

Pernell: Well, I think I’m a pretty good person. I mean, I’ve done wrong and got in jail, but more or less I ain’t really hurt nobody or done nobody wrong. I try to be good to everybody and do them like I want them to do me.

Morgan: I’m also thinking about the way you’ve lived and want to live your life, self-sufficiency and living close to the land. Do you feel like that’s part of who you are as a person?

Pernell: Oh, yeah. I would love to just go plumb off into the gulf and build a cabin and not never come out. I would just live off the land, grow my food, and eat wild animals. Like Grizzly Adams, Jeremiah Johnson. I always liked those kinds of movies and that’s the way I’d really like to live.

I got on the run from the law one time and went off in gulf and really did stay there for two years. So I know that I can do it.

Morgan: How would you describe the project that we just worked on together?

Pernell: Well, we picked out something that we really liked to do and we brought it as close to life as we could. I made my dream look as real as I could so I could let somebody see what I really want to do in life and what I could do if I was out there to do it.

Morgan: Can you say more about the dream you chose to bring to life?

Pernell: My dream was to go off and build another cabin and a big waterwheel and generate my own electricity, for free, that way I could go a little further than the old cabin people did. I would really have lights, so it would be a little modern day. It would be kinda hard to get a woman to go down there if she couldn’t watch her soap operas, so I’ll make sure she has her soap operas. And instead of lighting a lantern in the middle of the night, I could just flip a switch. The waterwheel itself would generate everything I needed by nature. I know how to do it because I’ve already done it.

I think it would be great to have a horse out there too, and maybe just get up in the morning and saddle it up, go riding. During summer, I could cut my own hay in the big fields and put it up for my winter; feed my horse, and it could live just like I did. 

Morgan: What other dreams do you have? 

Pernell: Well, even though it’d be real sweet to be down there off by myself like that, I’d like to come out and enjoy seeing my grandkids grow up. That would have to be part of my life. I would like to show them stuff. They’re going to ask, “Grandpa, how do you do this? How do you do that?” Well, I want to be able to show them, and maybe help them do it. With enough grandkids, one of them is going to have the same dream I did. One of them might want my cabin.

Morgan: Since we finished our project, I’ve been trying to think of what to call it, a title for it. Do you have any ideas?

Pernell: A title for it?

Morgan: Yeah.

Pernell: Well, for my picture, maybe “The Old Man in the Woods,” or something? I don’t know. I think you better come up with something.

Morgan: Earlier today when we were talking, you said it would be cool to see the pictures we made printed big at the intersection.

Pernell: Yes! 

Morgan: What other places could you imagine them ending up?

Pernell: Well, it might be cool to see them like paintings in an art museum. That way my grandkids or kids could come through and say, “That’s my grandpa,” or “That’s my dad.” I think that would be sweet. Maybe if enough people liked it you could make some money? But I think the main thing is for people to look at it and say, “That’s who done that,” even years and years and years from now, like Michaelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. Isn’t that amazing? That people still remember him today and will from here on. Some stuff can do that.

Morgan: Definitely.

Pernell: Like, I built my first car; four wheel drive, before people had cars that were four wheel drive. I wrecked the body of my truck, and put a car up on it, and it looked killer. I would like to have a picture of that, and people say, “Hey, this is one of the first ones that was ever built, and this is who built it.”

Morgan: Okay, last question. With whatever you’re making, on the outside or in here in class, what about creating brings you the most joy?

Pernell: What brings me the most joy? Well, it brings me joy to be able to do it, to know that I come up with it myself, in my mind, that I ain’t following somebody else’s instructions, that I wrote them myself. I just sat down and figured out how to do it, and it worked. So that’s what I love. 

Morgan: Okay. Well, that’s all of my questions, unless you have anything else.

Pernell: Thank you for letting me be here. I hope to get to see you on the outside.

Morgan: Me too. 

---

Morgan Hornsby (she/her) is a photographer and socially engaged artist from eastern Kentucky. She currently lives and works in Tennessee. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, New York Magazine, NPR, Southerly, Vox, and the Marshall Project.

Ronald Pernell Fults (he/him) is an artist and woodworker from Altamont, Tennessee. He builds things with his hands, from jewelry boxes and picture frames to cars and cabins, and he gives it his all. He was introduced to art by his dad, who could draw or build anything he wanted to. He hopes to pass his skills on to his children and grandchildren.

Sari, I Crossed Your Boundaries 

“When we can tap into a sense of play, we are free to connect because it’s less about ego or some sort of tangible achievement or future oriented goal. It’s more about asking ‘What is the fun of this moment? Let’s follow that thread.’”

-Alana Miller

In April 2023, my collaborators Danny DevitHOE, Mississitti Rivaaah, and I performed our piece, “Jell-O Bounce Jiggle Smear Slap Stick Ogle Ooze.” The piece involved three Jell-O cakes, our bodies, and 150 audience members at a party (Rubulad in Brooklyn, NY). 

The party was called Fools Mold and was the most recent in a series of absurd art parties at Rubulad, an art space in Brooklyn, NY. The party was curated and hosted by glittermilk. My dear friend Alana Miller is behind glittermilk, and has been organizing these parties since 2020. 

Almost a year before, our performance “Egg Fight” laid groundwork for our participatory mess performance explorations at Rubulad — and also crossed an unforeseen boundary with the beloved owner of the space, thirty year NYC nightlife vet, Sari Rubinstein. 

The conversations that follow document our journey to sympathize with one another. Conversations were printed with permission of Sari and those involved in the making of this work. 

---

Gilian Rappaport writes to Sari Rubinstein on Instagram (May 27, 2022): 

Gilian Rappaport: Hi Sari! This is Gilian, I’ve got a performance that I’m planning for the glittermilk party, which Alana asked me to run by you! 

So I’m thinking that it will be a durational performance, happening outside ideally under a tree that is also close to an outlet. I will be wearing a box around my pelvis that is lined with (fake) fur, and has an opening to the front. I will be standing in a fish tank filled with green water which will be lit, and then it will also have bottles in it of a drink that I make. (You might remember me from past parties when I served drinks there from foraged plants!) It will be a very small quantity and not served as drinks but more like part of the ritual. 

I will have an Intake Daddy ushering people over to me to put their hands in the box. They will be timed for 30 seconds. Then I will crack an egg into the fish tank. I plan to put a tarp under the whole space. 

How does this sound to you? I welcome feedback. I want to make sure it feels comfy for you! 

Sari Rubinstein: It sounds messy. I don’t really want drinks served at all so maybe think of something else to serve (cookies) or just do the show without handing out stuff. Also a giant fish tank full of raw eggs, eggshells and water is not something I want in my yard full of electricity. Eggs are gross and hard to clean- so maybe you could modify this to be less gross/ dangerous- I’m sorry but you asked what I think. 

Ps. I know Alana likes eggs but I really hate em and last time there were eggs everywhere after the show – it got cleaned the next day but -gross 🤢

Perhaps you can think of something more lovely and less disgusting to do in a durations performance – I would really appreciate that. Sorry to be blunt. 

Gilian: Ok I appreciate that! Thank you! Can I give it some thought and send you a modification? I’m so sorry that it was disgusting in your yard!

Sari: Yes pls. I appreciate that! I really do. I don’t love asking.

Gilian: How does this sound? No tank, no eggs, no drinks. 

I’ll wear the box, and prompt people to describe the box using cue words that I will either create or prompt other people to give me. Then they will describe the box, and I will record the stories. Maybe they will write them and pin them to a big piece or fabric or write them on a big piece of paper. If it pleases me, I can give them the option to tap or touch the forest box. It’s not fully fleshed out, it could change a bit in terms of how it works, but something like that. How does that sound?

Sari: Yes!!!! Thank you!!!!!! Hang them on a tree maybe. If near a tree. 

Gilian: Yea that sounds cool! I’ll see what kind of materials I can find this week. I am missing the grotesque element a bit so I may try to find a way to get that in there in some way but do fully understand to keep in mind the requirements around the space!!! 

Sari: Dang girl!

Gilian: I promise no egg smash or water tanks or booze

Gilian calls Sari, with the aim to learn from Sari (May 11, 2023): 

Gilian: I wanted to have this call over Zoom, and you said “I’m not going to hop on this Zoom call right now, I just can’t handle that.” How do you set boundaries so unapologetically? 

Sari: It’s Mercury Retrograde, all communications are broken.

Gilian: But is it broken? If you’re just able to say “No, that’s not gonna work for me”? 

Sari: You have to know your limits.

Gilian: Have you always had a pretty good sense of your limits? Or is that something you’ve been able to understand more over time?

Sari: Definitely over time. I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. You try things and they don’t work a bunch of times. So then you know. 

Gilian: Elaborate?

Sari: It doesn’t work to be super loud outside at my space because then I’d get noise complaints. If we could be loud as hell, that’d be great. But, we can’t and still have this space.

Gilian: I did a performance with eggs in your space and that didn’t feel super good to you. I’d love to understand better about what crossed the line there. 

Sari: I don’t like messy things at Rubulad because they stay there a long time. Once, Hungry March Band put gum in their piñata on New Year’s Eve. We were scraping gum off the floor for five years. Now I know. (Laughing). Gum doesn’t work.

Food outside, when I really don’t want rats to be invited, doesn’t work for me. I have no good way to clean gravel.

Also, it just so happens that I’m someone who really doesn’t like eggs.

Gilian: Do you not like even eating eggs?

Sari: Yeah. I don’t like them on my plate. It’s a food phobia or something.

Gilian: Well, I want to say that I’m so impressed with what I’ve seen at Rubulad. I’ve seen some crazy stuff happen there! Wild! 

Sari: Oh I’m glad.   

Gilian: (Laughing) Why glad?

Sari: Well, despite having certain boundaries that make it so that we can actually function as a space, it’s my very strong opinion that there are too many rules. So, as long as we can not have rules, the happier we’ll be; you do what you want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do. 

So many times in life, you come up against someone who says, “Rules are rules,”

and you say, “This doesn’t make any sense, this rule,”

and they say, “I don’t care. Rules are rules.” 

People say no just to say no. I try to not be that person if I can help it. But, then there are rules that are not really my rules.

Gilian: When are they not your rules? 

Sari: Rules that affect my greater community. If I affect my greater community in a way that upsets them, then I can’t have a harmonious spot, which I so truly desire. All we ever wanted was to be able to do our thing without people interfering.

Gilian: Who’s the ‘we’ that you’re talking about? 

Sari: The people of Rubulad. The people who set up and make the art and work there. Some of those people have been there a really long time. 

Gilian: When was it founded? I don’t know the history.

Sari: Oh, well, we founded it in 1993. We are 29 this year. So you know, we have a lot of experience with these issues. 

Gilian: Speaking of experience, I want to share one of mine with you. In 2011, I helped put on the first live painting action in the US by Hermann Nitsch, founding member of the Viennese Actionism movement. Nitsch’s initial notoriety was tied to his ‘Orgies Mysteries Theater‘ (1960s). During the two day event in 2011, titled “60. Painting Action // 60. Malaktion,” Nitsch and his assistants performed ritualistic painting acts with paint in a gallery. During the acts, one of his assistants peed under my desk. No questions asked, he just peed under my desk. For me, it was my limit, I was like, “I can’t do this anymore.” But for him, it was just part of his day.  

How do you navigate when a yes for one person feels like a no for another person? How do you navigate different limits when it comes to extreme art experiences in your space?

Sari: (laughing) If it’s not hazardous to the space, I try to be hands off. 

Gilian: Do you think that censorship is the same thing as rules?

Sari: What a great question. I kind of do, but we all have them. There are certain things I don’t want on my stage. So I try to be hands off. But, if someone is actively racist on my stage, I don’t enjoy that. And I don’t want Rubulad to be a place that presents that, even though I want people to be free with what they express. So we all have our limits. 

We did a large benefit show for More Gardens, which is a group that was trying to make gardens permanent in New York. One of my artists brought in this tree, and she announced, “I’m gonna kill this tree in the middle of the dance floor so everyone can see how horrible it is to kill a tree.” Well, the audience at the More Gardens benefit went ballistic. People were ready to jump in front of the chainsaw to save this tree, and she was like, “What, it’s my tree, you don’t get to say what I do in my piece.” It was so upsetting for people, they were truly traumatized to see someone kill a tree on purpose. 

Gilian: And then what? Was it a riot?

Sari: Almost! Things were getting really crazy. In a sense, it’s not her tree. It’s the Goddess’s tree. It’s a living being. 

In a certain sense, I like to see Rubulad being enjoyable for people. I want it to be fun for them more than upsetting. I also like it to have a little depth, and sometimes I put in dark things. But in general, I try to keep it pretty happy because the world is harsh, and people need a place to go that isn’t harsh.

Gilian: True or false: art that pushes limits can also be fun for people to experience. 

Sari: Well, it can be really healing for people. I’m a big fan of what we call “indescribable acts.” When you ask, “What did you see at the show?” And the response is, “well, I can’t really tell you because it was too weird.” 

Gilian: “Indescribable acts” is something that is too weird to put words to?

Sari: Yes. Even if you told them the components of the piece, it wouldn’t create an accurate picture. 

A lot of things at glittermilk are like that. Aside from the messy eggs, it’s pretty much a dream come true for me.

Gilian: I’m so sorry about the messy eggs, Sari. 

Sari: (Laughing) Well, last month we had Jell-O.

Gilian: Did you think the Jell-O should happen? 

Sari: Well, you all wanted it so I thought it should happen. 

It’s an absurd response to an absurd world. We, at this time, are left with not that many great options. 

Gilian: What is the intention behind Rubulad now? 

Sari: We specialize in the art of celebration. Alana is really excellent at that. And plus, she’s weird. No one else is going to do what she does. No one else is going to say, “I want my theme to be Danny DeVito. Or, mold.”

Gilian: Since last year when you said, “can you please do something more lovely and less disgusting,” I’ve been curious to understand, what is lovely? What is disgusting? 

Sari: Well I want to say that your probably-really-beautiful-egg-fish-tank wasn’t just about the eggs, but also about accidents of water electricity. 

I would like people to find a gateway or a passage to another world through the experience of performance. This is a difficult to achieve idea, but you can change people’s mood, you can actually change them, you can broaden their horizon, you have this opportunity. 

There’s a lot of gross. On my way to work, there’s people puking, there’s rats. There’s loveliness too, but there’s less loveliness and it’s harder to find and access. 

For the Dada people, there was this terrible war. And the only legit response was just to be silly and ridiculous. They could be in a protected space and laugh. That somehow is awesomely powerful. Clowning silliness, zaniness, and nonsense are all very powerful to me. 

Gilian: I love it. Thank you for making time and sharing your thoughts with me.

Sari: Thank you for being interested in what I have to say. I’m a fan of yours also. It’s a pleasure to get to talk to you and do anything with you guys. 

Gilian: Thank you for saying that, I feel the same way!

Alana Miller responds  through a phone conversation with Gilian (May 16, 2023): 

Alana: One thing I keep coming back to is just how metal it is that Sari said ‘yes’ to our sticky, messy, risky idea. She’s so committed to supporting our art and trusts our vision. It speaks to the intention of the space [Rubulad]. 

It felt serendipitous hearing her mention Dada and (paraphrasing) how in troubled times, we need nonsense-for-nonsense-sake more than ever. That’s something that is important to me too and we had never directly spoken about it before. I feel so lucky that I am able to collaborate with the Rubulad community, it really feels like a match made in heaven. 

Gilian: From what I remember, glittermilk was first about making space to connect, and as it’s grown and evolved, it’s become more about nonsense. How do you see the relationship between those two? 

Alana: They’re the same thing. We can be ourselves in our silliness…there is joy and connection in our nonsense. When we can tap into a sense of play, we are free to connect because it’s less about ego or some sort of tangible achievement or future oriented goal. It’s more about asking “What is the fun of this moment? Let’s follow that thread.”

Gilian: Did anything come up for you in hearing Sari’s boundary around eggs?

Alana: I relate to the push and pull between supporting lawlessness in art alongside the need to respect the physical spaces we occupy. When producing an event, I feel incredibly supportive of all the weird messy performance ideas but there’s also the practicality around maintaining positive relationships with Sari and the space. 

Gilian: Are there other examples from your art practice that involve that push and pull?

Alana: Immersive performance work can often feel like therapy work — it’s about meeting people where they’re at. I am always trying to balance pushing people out of their comfort zone while being receptive to who they are in that particular moment. 

It’s also about knowing the growth zone potential of a particular context. Going too far might mean that something gets cut or is not welcome, and then you’re actually eliminating silliness because it’s too much for the audience to digest. If the right amount of push is delivered with finesse and care, the more impact we can have. I think there’s great skill in this. I think taking these edges seriously can make our public spaces and events more bizarre, surprising, and unexpected. There’s skillfulness in feeling out people’s boundaries, and pushing them just the right amount towards expansion. 

My therapist identity gets to emerge in new spaces that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being therapy spaces, in a way that feels more profound than official clinical therapy work. 

Gilian: Are there clear no’s for you, when it comes to art making?

Alana: I’m not interested in creating art that is pleasant for everyone. I think creating something that almost anyone could enjoy kind of feels like no one gets to enjoy it deeply. It’s like creating a food that everyone thinks is OK, but it’s not the bite of food that you actually desire. This is something I’m figuring out–how to balance specificity with surprise, delight, and strange encounters. It’s themes and ideas that aren’t for everyone, which can be transformative because the people who do show up are connecting more deeply…so there’s a greater potential for expansion.  

Gilian: What are the wildest artworks that you’ve seen at Rubulad?   

Alana: Just last weekend, I staplegunned a $20 bill to Phoenix Fvcktoy’s butt cheek! 

At Fools Mold, Lady Bedbug pulled a glass mushroom out of their butthole and put it in their mouth. 

One of my all-time favorite moments was at our first glittermilk party, “Disco Fish,” when we served breast milk White Russians and one girl on the dance floor was like “No, I can’t drink that, I’m vegan.” 

I really enjoyed witnessing the lifecycle of a romantic love between the clown Connie Lingus and a rainbow dildo at Fools Mold. They taught me a lot about love and marriage and giving birth and tension and separation and rekindling of love — all non verbally with the rainbow dildo!  

And the egg performance at Femme Fatale! The feathers, the singing, the crescendo! The way in which that performance built on itself was so epic! I don’t know if I’ve ever smiled so wide. 

Oh and how could I forget getting Jell-O-cock-slapped in an inflatable bathtub in the middle of the dance floor at Fool’s Mold – that was a dream come true. Once the Jell-O dick hit my cheek, I felt all of my uncertainties dissolve into a puddle of Jell-O. 

Mississitti Rivaah responds through a conversation with Gilian (May 18, 2023): 

Gilian: Your creative imagination is so much of what is behind these performances.  Where do your ideas come from?

Mississitti Rivaah: Oh, gosh! So much comes from silly conversations and bits. The Jell-O idea started when we were hoping that Alana would do a buffet theme for glittermilk. (Laughing). Then you and I got to Jell-O later at a beach bar that was serving them. 

I have always loved getting dirty. I loved playing in the mud as a kid. I have a funny memory from high school of writing a journal entry while mushing a banana in my hands. So that urge existed before. I like messes, and I like moving around. 

Gilian: I also have memories like that from childhood. I clearly remember playing in the sandbox in pre-school and making an ice cream stand with chocolate ice cream made of mud, with slugs on top. And trying to feed that to my friends. 

Do these performances feel rebellious to you?

Mississitti Rivaah: It actually reminds me of my family! My mom was always playing in the mud and climbing trees, and she was a dancer so there is a connection there. And just dancing in general, my grandmother is a beautiful dancer. She is very contained and proper but there’s a lineage of connection. 

Also, people in my family always have big emotions and chaos brains. One reason that I like dance is that there aren’t words a lot of times, so why not just shake it out? 

Gilian: You often choreograph dances by writing stories. What do you like about that process? 

Mississitti Rivaah: I definitely like a beginning, a middle and an end. And I like climactic moments. 

Gilian: Tell us about your stage name, Mississitti Rivaah?

Mississitti Rivaah: For this whole piece, I’ve been asking “How do I bring Mississitti into my everyday life?” It’s challenged me to recognize how I bring my performative, messy, silly, grotesque self that I associate with more private expression or parties into my daily life. It’s reassuring when I fear that my job is stifling my creativity. It is important for me to have some separation, to be Mississitti here.    

I have continued to be struck by you choosing to perform this as yourself — consistently being you in performance, or the other things that you do. It’s a funny and very serious version of rebellion, the Gilian Rappaport in a Jell-O dildo. 

Gilian: I was closeted for a long time in my queer identities, so it feels important to me to be consistent (and ‘out’ in a way) with one name across my work. This also feels useful given that my work stretches across disciplines, locations, communities, contexts – I like the idea that people involved with one kind of project could come across another one through my name, even if it may feel different or challenges what they have seen before or know of my work. 

I also see the fun and the necessity of a stage name. What is important for you about the separation?

Mississitti Rivaah: I worry about my students, and also my family. I work as a social worker at an elementary school and teach students about boundaries. I balance wanting them to learn and wanting them to not feel the bad kind of shame. We talk about how boundaries are different for different people. And how often, we have to make mistakes to discover what we need. And then be kind and forgiving for not respecting the boundary before we knew it was there. Sometimes, I have moments where I ask, “Am I squishing childlike silliness and expression?” 

The harder thing would be to figure out a way to enable that expression and continue pushing against all of the people in the school who are so afraid of getting sued. I think a lot of adults lose the silliness that we’re talking about. 

Gilian: How do you feel when you see the photos of the performances?

Mississitti Rivaah: I feel super proud. I’m proud of Mississitti, and I’m proud of Gilian, I’m proud of Danny DeVit-HOE. This is who I am, I’m not going to live in fear and not be silly and sexy because of what might happen as a result. 

---

Sari Rubinstein (she/her) is co-founder of Rubulad. Like a tree that grows between sidewalk cracks, Rubulad continues to defy the growing corporatocracy and homogeneity of New York City, persevering in a radical inclusivity, joyful spontaneity, and handmade DIY aesthetic that resists commodification, since 1993. Now approaching three decades as Brooklyn’s longest-running underground art space, Rubulad has inspired a generation. www.rubulad.net

Alana Miller (she/her) is an artist, art therapist, producer, and aspiring clown committed to inspiring connection.  Founder of @glitterr.milk, Alana creates a petri dish of unbridled self expression through her weird and wonderful events. 

Danny DevitHO (Alana’s stage name) is the leftover pizza crust you put in your pocket for tomorrow’s mid morning snack. Danny DevitHo is the red Jell-O that wiggles right off your grandmother’s plate. Danny DevitHo is the sun tap-dancing with the moon while farting in quintets. Danny DevitHo has the dance floor energy of an inflatable tube man. Danny DevitHo sees and honors the silly in you.

Mississitti Rivaah (she/her), like her namesake, likes to get dirty, flow & thrash. A bizarro burlesque baby, Mississitti has been gracing the occasional stage since 2020. She comes alive in the descent into chaos, and loves making messes with mischievous friends. Legend has it that a Jell-O-slathered Mississitti Rivaah can be summoned by grabbing a loved one, laying on the ground, placing troll dolls on your belies, wiggling all your limbs in the air and loudly singing a gibberish prayer. 

Gilian Rappaport (they/them) is an artist, writer, and naturalist. They live in Portland, Oregon and New York, New York. They give nature and movement art workshops for folks who like to get messy. Their interdisciplinary work often connects species together in playful, intimate, contemplative ways. Through invested collaborations with other artists, designers, botanists, and elders, they have realized projects in all kinds of places: beaches, forests, RV parks, bars, cemeteries, playgrounds, libraries, classrooms, backyards, billboards, skin (tattoos), theaters, newspapers, books, homes, and museums. gilian.space 

Many thanks to Rachel Traub for her notes on this piece.