“I think that’s another lie that we’re told growing up is, that we have to wait for some Gandhi or some MLK to come and be the one to do the thing. When it’s, like, all of us have the power to do the thing.”
Lou Blumberg
Educational Sukkot event- photo by Chana Rose, 2019
With the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, we have all been grieveing. With protest encampments popping up across different universities in the United States and other countries, we see the biggest student movement emerging after the Vietnam Anti-War Movement of the 1970s. One such protest encampment started at our school, Portland State University, and it was met with violent police action resulting in injuries and arrests of students and community members. As the PSU community continues to protest against this blatant infringement on our right to free speech, we aim to discover and develop new methods to make our struggle more sustainable and effective.
Lou, my very beloved classmate, has been an active member of the Jewish Voice for Peace in New Orleans and has worked intensively to raise a voice against Israeli apartheid in Palestine. They have just moved to Portland. I spoke to Lou regarding the ongoing situation of the world; the protest encampment in our university, cops, suffering and possible ways of healing, the bliss of ignorance vs the fulfillment found in solidarity with the community. We also derive some comfort discussing my project ‘Songs For Dark Times Like These’ and Lou ends up singing a song for me that they wrote for our shared struggle for justice.
Simeen Anjum: Good morning Lou, how does it feel to be here today? (On a Friday morning in May we sat down for breakfast together on my terrace and began talking about Lou’s move to Portland and the ongoing student protest)
Lou: Well, I was shy when you first asked me if I wanted to be interviewed, but now that I’m here, it feels like we can just chat as friends.
Simeen: Totally. So, I wanted to chat about your transition to Portland from New Orleans. and the changes you feel and what changes you see coming up in the future, especially given the social unrest in our world right now and the ongoing student movements in both New Orleans and here at Portland State University (PSU).
Lou: It’s definitely been quite a change. I mean, the temperaments of both the places are really different, although I think there are some similarities. There’s definitely a DIY kind of ethos in both places.
The week I left New Orleans was the week that the local encampment on Tulane’s campus was raided, and it was such a moment of intense grief for so many of us who had been there. So it was really hard for me to leave. I cried when I went to the airport because I felt very sad to leave my community as they were grieving and trying to come back from that.
Once I got here in Portland, the library encampment in our university had already been dismantled, with a noticeable change in the atmosphere, marked by the installation of a fence and the removal of graffiti.
Protest encampment at PSU Library, dismantled by Portland Police Bureau after multiple student and community member arrests. (May 2024)
Protest encampment at PSU Library, displaying graffiti done from inside the library’s glass windows. (May 2024)
Simeen: Yeah, it was also the week that the encampment here got dismantled and there were a lot of arrests and police brutality. We were also grieving and trying to come to terms with it. Even though you weren’t physically present here, you must have received all the emails and alerts from the school administration, right? How did it feel for you? It seems like you were witnessing a similar situation in a different city, receiving these emails in real-time from the administration, knowing this is the place you were moving to.
Lou: Absolutely. It was incredibly strange and confusing to receive those emails. I didn’t know where to get accurate information from within the encampment because I’m not on Instagram much. The only information I was getting was the university’s narrative, which painted the protestors as unlawful and dangerous. However, I saw stories from you and Luz showing it was a peaceful protest, similar to the one I experienced in New Orleans. Despite this, I found myself almost believing the university’s messaging, imagining the library was totally destroyed when, in reality, people were simply writing “Free Gaza” on the spines of old encyclopedias that no one reads anymore. It was really strange, and I didn’t know where to get my information, but I knew not to trust the authority and the narrative they were sending.
Simeen: Definitely, the messaging that we were receiving was very misleading. As someone who was there and was trying to follow up on everything that was going on, I also felt that the tone of the emails we were receiving was very intimidating. They repeatedly used words like, ‘if you go around the library, that is criminal trespassing.’ And I feel like, in that same email, they were mentioning that it’s your First Amendment right, that no matter who you are, you have the right to free speech. And at the same time, they’re telling me that if I go to that place, I will get arrested? That’s hypocrisy.
Lou: And I remember you saying that, in India, when the protests were happening at your university, at least the administration didn’t pretend to be supportive. But here in the States, they’re pretending to be supportive of free speech, yet they’re calling militarized police onto campus. There is so much hypocrisy. It’s so dissonant to see that. And I think in New Orleans, the administration there didn’t even pretend. They were completely like, ‘this is dangerous and terrible and unlawful.’ Even though I was at the encampment and there was music, there was so much free food, I got a massage. There was just so much community care happening and it was like a really beautiful space that people created.
Simeen: That’s true. That’s absolutely true. And, on a different note, as someone who has only been here in Portland for a few months, that whole week of being in solidarity with the people made me feel like I belonged here because there was just so much community care. People taking care of each other. I recently read about how “Healing happens in the community.” Activism creates this sense of community that we need at this point in time.
A woman at the PSU protest encampment writing a placard with a piece of coal. The placard says “Inquilab Zindabad” in Hindi (Simeen’s first language), a popular protest slogan that translates to “Long Live the Revolution.” (May 2024)
Simeen holding her protest placard at her first U.S. protest, with the message ‘Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.’ (October 2023)
Lou speaking at an event called “Sazeracs against Surveillance” about the surveillance connections between New Orleans and Palestine (in 2019)
Seder in the streets with jvp nola. photo by Temple Blacksnake (April 2024)
Lou: Absolutely. That’s why I’m so interested in the dynamics of conflict. When conflict arises within the beautiful communities we create, it can feel really bad and demoralizing. At least I had this sense over the last few months when conflict would come up in my community. I’d feel like, wow, we can’t even handle our own shit and we’re fighting these enormous systems that are propped up by so much money and power. It feels so important to create that community amongst each other, that healing community that actually feels good to be a part of, that can heal from and move through conflict together.
Simeen: It’s empowering. I find it incredibly empowering because at the protest, when we were standing in front of the cops, I realized that we’re all kids that I see every day at school, but I would normally not talk to them. We would just walk past each other. But there we were, standing together, so full of energy, so full of passion for something that we believe in. It creates a community, a solidarity and that’s just so powerful.
Protesters holding a sign that says ‘PSU Faculty Stands with Students and Palestine’ at a protest in PSU Park Blocks following violent police action and the arrest of protesting students and community members. (May 2024)
Lou: That’s really powerful.
Simeen: Does the administration really expect us to believe that the violence that was used on our students, people that we go to school with, was justified because they were unlawful?
Lou: Yeah, I don’t buy it. Nobody’s buying it. Especially not the people who were there and saw the beautiful community that was created.
Simeen: I also wanted to talk to you about how we keep going? With everything that’s going on, we do have to go on, so what strategies are you trying to adopt that I can also seek from you? What do we do now?
Lou: That’s such a good question. So many people think really differently about it. I feel like I keep reminding myself that there’s no one right way. Like, there’s no one thing that everyone needs to do. There are so many different ways that we can work towards liberation and I really don’t want to hate anyone who chooses a way that I might not choose.
I’m in a moment of really asking myself that question on a really personal level of where do I feel most energized? What do I do now? Where do I feel like I can sustainably and meaningfully put my energy in liberation work? Because I think for a long time, I got really burned out and that’s not sustainable.
Simeen: We should invent a liberation struggle that doesn’t burn us out.
Lou: Yes and I do think that’s possible. And I think part of it is loving community, not working alone and working in a group of people that is diffuse and has many, many leaders, so people can take a step back when they need to and it doesn’t mean the end.
Simeen: And there’s no shame in being scared.
Lou: Yes, definitely. I’ve been really liking this definition of a leader as someone who encourages others to take risks. And it’s not about being the loudest voice or the figurehead of a movement. I think that’s another lie that we’re told growing up is, that we have to wait for some Gandhi or some MLK to come and be the one to do the thing. When it’s, like, all of us have the power to do the right thing.
Simeen: Yeah and also we don’t have to be perfect. I think for the longest time I thought that, you know, you have to be perfect, you have to be on top of everything. You have to know the history of the entire world to be able to speak up.
Lou: That’s so true. I think we naturally just know when something is wrong and we should just say it. It’s really frustrating and saddening that a debate about killing children and destroying every single cultural institution in a region is a debate. Like, that is just wrong and that is not a war. And to keep calling it a war or a conflict is obscuring the very real wrongness that anyone can see if you really just sit with it for a second.
Simeen: People like to say it’s a complex issue.
Lou: Yeah. I don’t think it is so complex.
Simeen: Okay, so what’s the plan of action going forward?
Lou: Well, I saw on your Instagram that there’s something happening today at 7 pm. Are you gonna go?
Simeen: I’ll go. Yeah, we can go together.
Lou: Okay. Other than that, take care of ourselves. I’m gonna spend a lot of time outside. I’m gonna go to the river. Practice being hopeful. Crying. Sing a song.
Can I sing you a song that I wrote?
Simeen: Yes, OMG!
Lou continues to sing a beautiful song as the both us sit together on my terrace basking in the warm sun that the city of Portland is seeing after many months of gray skies
So much heartbreak,
Break it open…
Let your love pour out of you…
We will build this world together,
We will build this world anew…
Lou singing at a rally. Photo by Abdul Aziz (October 2023)
Lou is an artist, educator, and facilitator with ties to Portland, New Orleans, and San Francisco. They think a lot about what it means to feel safe vs. what it means to be safe, what you can gain by being vulnerable, and how to live a good life. Hire them to mediate your next conflict.
Simeen Anjum (she/her) is a social practice artist and cultural activist from New Delhi, India. Locating herself in the disquiet of state suppression, surveillance, personal and collective trauma, she attempts to document,cherish and archive the smallest fragments of ordinary life. Through her work, she hopes to provide alternatives to established socio-political narratives. She works in direct interaction with her community and surroundings.
“There’s no utopia until the revolution arrives. Right? I cannot run from one place to another. The revolution has to come, and it has to come for all of us everywhere.”
Simeen Anjum
Simeen and I interviewed each other on a warm and sunny day in Portland, a week after I arrived from New Orleans, where I had been participating in school remotely, to complete my first year of the Social Practice program at Portland State University. Simeen has a quiet warmth that I was immediately drawn to when we met in the fall of September 2023, and we both entered the program hoping to understand how art could help create and sustain a better world. Related and equally as important, Simeen has a deep commitment to delicious food–I never go hungry when I’m with Simeen. We both dream of a better, more just world. I hope you do too.
Both of us felt deeply affected by watching the genocide in Palestine unfold in front of us during our first year in school (as so many did), and we shared a similar cycle of initial hope watching the student encampments begin followed by deep sadness witnessing the universities across the country so violently shut them down. Although we come from different places, we are both hopeful optimists that people working and moving together can (yes, really can!) make a better world. I hope you enjoy reading this second half of our conversation, and if you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check out Simeen’s interview of me, “Where Do We Go From Here?”
Lou Blumberg: I’m curious to hear your reflections on moving to a really new place in the midst of a genocide supported by the country that you moved to, and what that’s been like. But maybe before we do that, how are you? How are you today?
Simeen Anjum: I’m okay. I’ve been kind of drained. I mean, I don’t want to say bad because I’m just so grateful to have found all of you. It has definitely been difficult, especially with everything that you mentioned that’s been going on. I feel like I’m coming from a lot of existing political suffering from India. I really hoped that coming here would give me some space from that, which I was really looking forward to. But that’s not how it ended up. So that makes me think that this struggle is going to go on, no matter where you are and it’s our responsibility as human beings to respond to what is going on. There’s no utopia until the revolution is there. Right? The revolution has to come, and it has to come for all of us everywhere. So that is one realization that I had.
A screenshot of Simeen’s instagram story on April 29th, 2024, juxtaposing her college protests at Jamia Millia Islamia with the protests at PSU. Photo courtesy of SImeen Anjum.
With everything that happened in the last week, with the student encampment at PSU and the local community supporting it, it really gave me a lot of hope and empowerment. I’ve been here for eight months. After eight months, for the first time on campus, it made me feel like I finally belong here. I found my people. I found that sense of community, that sense of looking out for each other. So that’s a milestone for me. And even though everything is difficult, I’m really grateful to have found that community, to have that glimpse of a community.
Lou: I’m curious to go back to utopia and what you imagine utopia to be. Have you ever felt close to experiencing that, or been in a place that felt close to utopia? Simeen: I feel like the only feeling close to utopia that I’ve experienced was before I became more aware. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ – it definitely puts you in a bubble. I would have personally liked to live in that bubble for longer. But because of my identity, the bubble was broken and not by my choice. When your identity is the one being targeted, and you and your community are at the receiving end of oppression, you cannot stay in that bubble. And my friends and other people who come from a more privileged social location, are still living in that utopia. In the same country and same city. So it’s very tricky, I don’t know how to process that. But at this point the utopia that I would love to build would include everyone and not just the privileged class.
Simeen painting a mural in Delhi in 2019 during the Citizen Amendment Act protests. Photo courtesy of Simeen Anjum.
Lou: Sometimes people use that ‘ignorance is bliss’ argument here in the States to say, “well, that’s why we shouldn’t learn about critical race theory. That’s why we shouldn’t learn about oppression, because that’ll just make people upset.” Or the argument in Florida with a bill that the legislature was trying to pass was, “we shouldn’t teach critical race theory, because then white kids will feel guilty and they’ll be sad.”
Simeen: What we need to understand is that someone with privilege can ignore it and not be sad. But for someone who’s on the other end of the spectrum, they don’t have that privilege. It’s a reality that they have to live through.
Lou: As someone who holds some privileged identities, I feel like the work for people who do have that privilege is to recognize that you actually can’t be living in a utopia while other people are not. We all need collective liberation. We all lose something by living in an oppressive system, even people who have privilege, but of course to a very different extent.
Simeen: Yeah, you cannot reach your fullest self in that system.
Lou: How do we build a utopia, a mini utopia?
Simeen: Mini utopia…we should make a Zine about this! We can make a utopia for our friends that might need a break. It could be a space where you go to recharge, so you can go back to fight again. It should definitely be cozy. There should be a lot of pillows. There should be other comrades to support you emotionally and tell you, “hey, it’s okay if you’re scared. If you’re tired, it’s okay. We take our time. We’ll get better.” Lou: Sounds like the collective the first years are working on, “Taking Our Time.”
The Taking Our Time Collective/1st year MFA students during the class trip to Pittsburgh. L to R: Lou, Simeen, Clara, & Nina. Photo by Olivia DelGandio.
Simeen: Yeah we just keep going back to rest right? We need it so much. I feel like in activism it gets hard to take a step back and care for yourself. But rest is a part of resistance, because the fight is gonna be long and you cannot humanly go the whole way without paying attention to your own needs. I think it should be emphasized more that we have to take care of ourselves.
Lou: Yeah, totally. I know I’ve been thinking about that in relationship to the slogan, “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” that’s been on so many campuses right now, and how there are moments where you can’t rest because the state doesn’t rest, but how we need rest so much.
Simeen: True. We should definitely work on building a system and general understanding of taking turns and making sure that everyone is getting enough rest because we need to be able to sustain the fight. I think this is the moment for us to think more about this. We need to level up.
I think we don’t take rest as seriously because there is a sense of urgency in the air. We all want to bring about change now, but we need to understand that it’s gonna take longer. And we need to build stronger and more sustainable strategies so that we can keep going. Even when we are sleeping, someone will be there in our place.
Lou: You sleep, I watch out for you.
Simeen: Yes, someone making sure everyone is eating enough. That would make us so strong. Oh, my God, if we figure this out…
Lou: I feel like it requires so many people. But we have so many people. There are so many of us.
Protest at the Red Fort in Delhi, 2019. Photo by Simeen Anjum
Simeen: Yeah, we are so many people. There were these protests in Hong Kong a few years ago, and they were just so well coordinated, even though these people didn’t even know each other. They would show up to the protest and then afterwards dissolve into the city. No one could catch them. And they each had their particular role. When you have a community that has predefined roles and areas of work, you’re able to share responsibilities.
Lou: What do you think your role is?
Simeen: I cannot say it while being recorded [laughs]
Lou: Totally. Really good security practice. What else should I ask you?
Simeen: We already spoke of hope. What else have we not spoken about?
Lou: Something that I think about and I wonder if you think about is, living in the context of climate collapse and apocalyptic predictions that so many people have about the incoming severity of storms and climate change. For me, that can be coloring all of these conversations. And I wonder how you feel about that.
Simeen: I feel like I really don’t think so much about it, because there’s just one thing after another, and the climate just stays at the back because you don’t see its effects here, right?
Lou: On this beautiful sunny day.
Simeen: It’s not right because I think ultimately we should be thinking about it. Especially coming from New Delhi, I have seen the city become a gas chamber, literally, the way it is right now. Everyone is coughing. Everyone’s voice is changing. The older people are getting more sick. Young people are having to get all these inhalers and medicines. And I have no idea why it’s not an emergency. I think it’s an emergency. But there is no talking about it, because we are so busy earning our daily bread and working for our basic necessities. We don’t know what to do about it. Sometimes when you wake up in Delhi everything just seems gray. The landscape has changed, and it has all happened in front of me. I would never go out on a weekend and just want to walk around because it looks different. It looks like something out of a dystopian movie. If you go today, there’s no sense of urgency, nobody is alarmed by it. It’s just something in the background that’s happening. The primary thing remains the same, that I have to earn this day’s bread.
Lou: And the people that you end up working for to earn your bread oftentimes are the same people who are profiting off of not doing anything about climate change.
Simeen in Portland’s Forest Park, May 2024. Photo by Lou Blumberg
Simeen: I mean, if you make more money you can buy an air purifier for your home, for your kids. I think that’s the biggest form of violence in the end. As time passes, it’s gonna get worse. And the rich can modify their houses but the poor will still have nowhere to go. That will be so bad. Do you know about the Bhopal gas tragedy? An American person had his factory somewhere in a small town in India, and he was running it without proper safety measures, because in India you can get away with a lot of things by bribing the government and the government is also very lenient. They don’t pay attention to all of this, and labor is cheap. There was a poisonous gas leak in the factory, and the workers there didn’t know what to do. They were not trained in taking care of themselves. They were not trained in how to stop the gas from leaking and ultimately traumatizing. Long story short, the whole village died. It was like many, many, many thousands of people, and the American company got away with it. No one faced any charges at all.
Lou: That’s terrible.
Simeen: Big companies definitely exploit the resources of poor countries. And I really hate how, whenever we talk about climate, it is based on individual action: “you change your toothbrush, you recycle.” I mean those are definitely good, sustainable practices. But that’s not what it is about, right? We are not causing this climate crisis. It’s a bunch of companies that are exploiting our resources everywhere, that are putting all their waste in the waters and everything, and there’s just no conversation about it. I feel like the whole climate conversation has been hijacked by these companies.
Lou: Yes, I mean, it’s like greenwashing. This is really a big thing in Louisiana. There are companies along the Mississippi River outside of New Orleans that emit poisonous gasses, and the rates of cancer are so high in the surrounding communities that they call it Cancer Alley because of all the toxicity. And those companies, you know, it’s like Chevron, Shell, big chemical companies. But the Aquarium in New Orleans is sponsored by Shell, and there’s
a monument to how helpful the oil platforms in the middle of the ocean are for creating sea life. And that’s greenwashing right? It’s like, you’re the ones killing the fish, and now you’re telling everyone that you’re actually helping with their habitat?
We need to create as strong of a system as they have, but a system of people power! Speaking of people power, I’d love to hear you talk more about your project In Dark Times Like These.
Simeen: I feel like when I came to Portland it was a big transformational moment for me. I moved to a whole new country and was trying to find a sense of belonging and a sense of community. And then the genocide started after October 7th. I was thinking about what I needed at that time. It was very emotionally exhausting. It was also isolating, feeling so helpless about everything. I kept remembering how back home during protests or community gatherings, we were always singing all these songs. It was so refreshing and so hopeful. And that was something that I felt was missing here at protests in Portland. That’s where the idea came from. Why don’t we just get together and sing just for the sake of it? Not for any particular event, but just to sing together and cherish how it makes you feel.
I named the project In Dark Times Like These because a lot of these songs are actually timeless. They have been used over and over for a very long time. Singing some of these songs does give me a lot of hope because I know that there were people fifty years ago who felt just as bad as we are feeling right now and then they sang these songs like the “Bella Ciao” song. And it gets modified each time depending on where and when it is being sung. I think that’s beautiful and something really precious that we all share. I think we should make it cool again.
Like the “We Shall Overcome” song. It’s such a precious song for me because that’s like my childhood and I didn’t know it was used here in a very different movement. It connects us in such a beautiful way.
Lou: There’s something about singing together in a big group that really works. I feel this grounding, you know.
Simeen: People have always been singing together. This is something that the governments will never do. The bad guys will never do that. It is something only you and me can do.
Lou: Yes. I agree. Are you continuing the project?
Simeen: I am. I just didn’t find a chance to actually sing in this dark time.
Lou: I’d love to sing with you sometime.
Simeen: I also feel like in times of crisis we are in so much despair that at times we forget to sing. We forget to–like we discussed earlier–we forget to rest. To take a pause and take care of ourselves. Even though singing and resting are just as important for us to keep going. There has to be songs in dark times, right?
Lou: Yes, absolutely. I’m curious to hear more about your relationship to art making and what role you think the artist has in dark times like these.
Simeen: I don’t think of myself or artists as a very separate entity or anything like a hero who observes people from afar. I don’t feel like it’s anyone very special or outside of society or anything. I think you’re just there, you are one of the people in the crowd. And you’re just supposed to respond, just have a natural human response.
Lou: That’s such a big thing, to take away all of the other narratives that we might experience and just have a natural human response. I think that’s something that you do well. That’s one role of an artist in a movement space.
Simeen: And that response can come from anyone who is part of the movement, not necessarily someone who is going to an art school or who has an art degree. I’m personally glad to be alive at a time where those hegemonies that we had associated with being an artist or art making are finally dissolving. People are like, you know, we don’t care about it. We’ll make art. We’ll make bad art, do whatever you want about it. I’m really happy to be present at that time when those hegemonies are no longer keeping people from making art.
Lou: That’s a really nice thing to point out. I feel like the more people making art, the more opportunities for new ways of being and seeing, and in order for more people to be making art you need to forget about what makes good art or bad art. It should be okay to make bad art. I’ve been telling myself that, anyway.
Simeen: Yeah and on a different note, I’m the first person in my very, very big family to study fine arts. They’re like, “What is this subject? And why do you study it? What kind of job do you get?” Because for most people, for most middle class people, you go to university so you can get a job, any job, some job. And studying art is like, kind of a privilege that is normally reserved for people from more socially privileged backgrounds. In my first year, I was going to all these exhibitions and all these shows, and just looking at other people and thinking about “where do I fit in here? How do I fit in here? And will I ever fit in here?”
But a realization that I had recently is that you don’t have to fit in here. You just have to be yourself. Do what you do and respond to things as you experience them. That’s been my journey. Because, starting my second year, there was a huge protest in the Arts Department. I’m coming from a background where there’s no sense of a high brow aesthetic, there’s no accessibility to art institutions – we are disconnected from that whole world of classic aesthetics, matching colors. Sometimes our bed sheets and pillowcases don’t match. That’s just how it is. So I was learning to appreciate art without beauty, without a sense of aesthetics. It’s not necessarily about looking good, it’s about responding and feeling and embracing those feelings. I think that’s been my biggest learning journey.
The first artwork that I now recall myself making was because I was just confused. I’m coming into art school with a different background, and I don’t know what others are talking about, like how to make a fucking painting. So there was a protest in the Art Building, and we had this iconic sculpture, a bust in our department that had his mouth open. It seemed like it was screaming. And I put a ribbon around the sculpture, around his mouth. So that morning, when everyone came inside they were like, “Oh, there’s a ribbon around his mouth!” and that was my first artwork. I didn’t consider it to be an artwork but I now think it was. I only recently started to believe in myself as an artist!
Simeen’s first artwork, 2019, Jamia Millia Islamia. Photo courtesy of Simeen Anjum.
Lou: Did anyone help you get there?
Simeen: Yeah, I met a friend who was an artist. She’s graduating this year from School of the Art Institute of chicago. A few years ago, she was discussing something she was working and I gave her a random suggestion that she should use these dastarkhwan, dining mats that are a specific thing in our culture. And she is actually incorporating them in her work! It’s been like four years or something, and it just makes me really happy. You don’t really have to have a background and a big experience with aesthetics or working with art to be able to do it. And she has really been a mentor to me and has really pushed me to believe in myself and helped shape my art practice.
Lou: Definitely, yeah, it’s a lot about believing in yourself and taking risks.
Simeen: Yes, and letting yourself feel things and pay attention. And also giving yourself the liberty to express, and the liberty to rest!
Simeen Anjum (she/her) is a social practice artist and cultural activist from New Delhi, India. Locating herself in the disquiet of state suppression, surveillance, personal and collective trauma, she attempts to document, cherish, and archive the smallest fragments of ordinary life. Through her work, she hopes to provide alternatives to established socio-political narratives. She works in direct interaction with her community and surroundings.
LouBlumberg is an artist, educator, and facilitator with ties to Portland, New Orleans, and San Francisco. They think a lot about what it means to feel safe vs. what it means to be safe, what you can gain by being vulnerable, and how to live a good life. Hire them to mediate your next conflict.
“You’re always going to be a mosaic of all the people and thoughts and research and conversations that you have.”
Monyee Chau
Monyee standing in front of Of Salt and Altars (left wall), 2024. Tacoma WA US
Photo by Nancy Mariano.
I first met Monyee Chau while we were both working at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. As we got to know one another, we discovered the parallels between our lives, becoming strangely humorous for the many coincidences that existed. We had both grown up in Kirkland, Washington, a suburban neighborhood outside of Seattle. Both of our families owned restaurants. We had attended the same middle and high schools, although we didn’t know each other then. From there we both went to different art schools– Monyee to Cornish College of Arts in Seattle and I to the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
As we became friends and later collaborators on a mural, we’d find even more evidence of our parallel trajectories; yearbook photos of one another and the realization that we had admired each other’s art even as young teenagers.
Nina Vichayapai, Monyee Chau, and Jae Eun Kim in front of Fruits of an Imagined Geography, 2021. Facebook campus, Bellevue, WA, US. Mixed media.
When our paths crossed at the Wing Luke Museum, a museum dedicated to the art, history, and culture of Asians, it would be simplistic to call it a coincidence, as these interests also run strong in both of our work. As I got to know Monyee, I grew a deep appreciation for their vibrant art and impassioned community work. For us to be drawn together again seems to only have been destiny and a testament to the underlying values that forged us. I continue to be deeply inspired by Monyee’s work that puts Asian American stories at the forefront, especially in Seattle where their art, murals, community work, and so much more can be seen all across the city. As an artist with many fascinating socially engaged processes embedded in their life and work, I was eager to speak to Monyee about some of their latest projects.
Nina Vichayapai: It’s such a treat to know you as a friend. We’ve collaborated together and also went to the same middle and high schools. Could we start by talking about what your experience was like growing up on the Eastside of Seattle?
Monyee Chau: So much of my work really began when I was able to think about my family’s restaurant as a location and space that really rooted me to my identity. What made that so strong was the complete cultural juxtaposition with where we lived and where we grew up. Growing up in a place where I felt like my grandparents were picked on for coming to my school events, where I felt really out of place, and really uncomfortable in my skin, helps me really appreciate what it meant to grow up in my family’s restaurant in the city of Seattle. I think growing up on the Eastside allowed me the ability to sit back and reflect on how much it meant for me to have that experience, because I feel really lucky. And I know that we also have a lot of parallels in having a family restaurant.
Monyee Chau and grandmother Noi Chau, 1998, at Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant. Seattle WA, US.
Nina: Yeah, and a lot of my work is also influenced by growing up on the Eastside and feeling out of place. So your family had a restaurant in Chinatown-International District (C-ID) in Seattle. What was the name of the restaurant?
Monyee: The name of the restaurant was Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant. It was on the corner of 4th and Jackson and had been around for 20 or so years and was just a very special place for my family to be able to thrive and have a community within the neighborhood.
Photo of grandparents and father and family friends in front of Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant sign, on Jackson St. Circa 1980’s. Seattle WA, US
Photo of grandfather, grandma, and uncle at a restaurant in Seattle, WA, US. Circa 1970’s.
Nina: How did your family end up in Kirkland?
Monyee: My grandparents on my mom’s side live in Kirkland and my grandparents on my dad’s side that had the restaurant lived in the city, in Beacon Hill. I grew up in Bellevue, but when my parents split up they both went to live with their parents, so that also meant that I split my time living between Beacon Hill and Kirkland growing up.
Nina: So it sounds like you were bouncing between Seattle and the greater Seattle area for your childhood.
Monyee: Yes, that played a big part in recognizing that contrast – going to school on the Eastside, and then every weekend being in the city and just seeing the vast differences between the communities there.
Nina: They’re so different. I feel like it’s hard for people to conceptualize, especially if they weren’t around the Eastside back then, just how different it is from today. Today it’s so much more diverse and also so much more wealthy.I’m wondering, what were some of your early experiences with art or community work since both are a really big part of your life?
Monyee: Growing up I started taking some art classes with a friend of mine who ended up becoming my god sibling. They were taking art classes from this teacher in Newcastle. That is where I really built up a lot of technical skills, because he comes from Shanghai and there’s a big culture of replicating works as best as you can. And so a lot of technical skill was born out of that.
As for doing community work, I was really interested in finding a community, but I didn’t entirely have one that I felt incredibly connected to. I first found that sense of community when I went to a town hall meeting at the Nisei Veterans hall that was about rezoning the Chinatown-International District (C-ID) to allow for taller developments.That’s where I found the C-ID Coalition. They were handing out culturally relevant foods and had signs for folks, making sure that there was advocacy for the elders as well. And that’s what really got me into doing the work that I do now. It really let me see the ways that we can engage with people that we might not always be connected to through our work or school. So I think that was the first of many moments that gave me a lot of perspective on what it means to engage within a community.
Ingredients For A Mourning Soup, From The Diaspora, 2021. Seattle, WA, US. gouache on paper. Painting of a Taiwanese street food cart. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Nina: Can we talk about the project you did in the neighborhood then, Medicine for the C-ID?
Monyee: This took place at an artist residency through Flower Flower, which was an all queer, all trans Asian and Pasifika artist collective. I worked together with Jaeun Kim, and our residency was very rooted in what it means to make art for a neighborhood and how oftentimes elders get forgotten in that conversation. Jae and I really wanted to make sure that we were making work about elders that supported elders.
It began with a workshop that we did with a local acupuncturist named Dr. Tamsin Lee. We did a workshop called The Spirit of the Lung where we talked about how to supply our community with tools to support ourselves during wildfire season.
Dr. Tamsin shared with us some of the current Chinese astrology as well as how to prepare for wildfires, using tools such as Qi Gong. Dr. Tamsin also worked with us to create a lung support tea for elders in the neighborhood.
In addition to elders, we had a range of ages of folks in the workshop that made this tea. We were able to make like 200 bags of tea that we gifted to share with the neighborhood elders through ACRS (Asian Counseling and Referral Services). And a lot of the students who came were also able to take that tea home with them.
This workshop was a precursor to Jae and I interviewing some of the organizing aunties, Auntie Sue Kay and Auntie Karen. We talked to them about what it was like to get into organizing, what their experience has been like in the city, what changes they have seen, and what kind of things they hope for.
We talked about the neighborhood and their own personal relationships with medicine including herbs. Auntie Sue would bring gifts to other organizers when they were feeling sick or after a protest. So that all culminated into Jae and I collaborating on a piece that were portraits of these two as well as frames that were printed with linoleum block prints of the medicine and herbs that they had mentioned during the interview.
Nina: That is such a sweet project. The portraits you painted and the block prints that Jae did on the frame are so beautiful. I love the way your art comes together. Can you tell me what kind of herbs were in the tea that you made for the workshop? And what herbs did you learn about for use after protests?
Medicine for the CID, 2023. Seattle WA, US. acrylic paint on wood, linoleum block prints on fabric.
Monyee: So it looks like there are strawberry leaves, roses and some sort of lily. I know a lot of them were specifically anti-inflammatory. Some of the herbs represented in the paintings that we talked about were ferns, which Auntie Karen would collect with her family at Seward Park, and there’s also Chinese yams as well as matsutake mushrooms.
It was really sweet because when she came to the interview she also brought a bunch of things with her. They brought Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa honey loquat syrup. She says that she’ll bring that syrup to organizers because it tastes really good, is really good for your throat, and helps you recover from a sore throat, especially after chanting at protests.
Nina: That’s amazing. It’s so cool to learn about other people’s relationship with herbs and medicine. I’m really curious what the process was like for you to take an interview and turn it into a piece of art. How did you come up with that idea? I think it’s funny because we’re doing an interview and also talking about an interview that you used in making this art. Interviews can be such a great tool for making something collaboratively.
Monyee: It was really fun because Jae and I think really differently. It was just a great opportunity to get to know Auntie Sue and Auntie Karen better. A lot of the time when we’re working together it’s in response to what’s going on in the neighborhood and working towards that. I think not a lot of intentional time had been put into getting to know each other deeper and so this was a really special opportunity to do that.
When we were thinking about the art that we wanted to make afterwards, a lot of the historical icons who have done work in the neighborhood have been very patriarchal. We always have portraits and photos of a lot of men, so why don’t we take this opportunity to celebrate these two wonderful women who have been doing this work for a long time?
While listening to their stories and what they wish to see in the future,something that really spoke to me was, when we think about the city, there’s so many different neighborhoods, right? It’s all divided up into Japantown or Little Saigon. I remember from the interview they were talking about how it didn’t used to be like that. It used to just be that we were all together. And it seemed really strange and disconcerting when those labels were put on everything, especially with I-5 gutting the neighborhood as well.
So it was just really wonderful to hear these small details that they maybe wouldn’t share on an everyday basis. But being able to have that intentional time together was really special for us to experience.
Nina: What was it like for you to collaborate with Jae, who is also your partner?
Monyee: I love collaborating with Jae. The first time that happened to a lower degree was when the three of us were all working together. It’s been really fun because we’ve been really excited to work on new things together. And because we’re in a relationship, our communication skills have been really rooted in a lot of compassion and understanding and friendship with one another.
Finding the intersections of what we’re both passionate about is really exciting because there’s a lot of magic that happens in that little intersection. So it’s a really fun and exciting thing for us to do as a duo.
Nina: Do you have any other collaborations planned with Jae or that you’re working on currently?
Monyee: We have been talking about collaborating with Dr. Tamsin again who we did in The Spirit of the Lung workshop with. I think we were wanting to expand on that and really talk about different aspects of the body and which parts hold different emotions. The lungs can carry grief, the heart carries joy. Our goal is to bring in some of the knowledge of traditional Asian medicine as well as health and herbs. It’s been a goal of ours to do what we can to keep our communities healthy in a time of climate crisis and other scary things.
Nina: When you’re really deep in it, in your art projects, are there certain ways that you like to receive care from Jae or vice versa? Likehow do you like to support Jae while they’re really going through it in their own projects?
Monyee: I think that learning from art school has been helpful in how to really vocalize feedback or critique. I think that with Jae and I, a lot of affirmations and conversations are really helpful for the both of us, especially with an approach of compassion and care.
I think what makes things the most successful when you’re sharing any kind of feedback is that approach of being like, ‘I know you have the best intentions, but maybe this isn’t being communicated as much as you were hoping that it would be’, for example. And it’s always nice to not be in your own head, so collaborating with someone whose thoughts and mind I really value is wonderful.
Being with someone else helps bounce ideas back and forth a lot easier. I don’t think that the residency Jae and I did last summer would have been anything close to what it was if we were both working individually, you know? The chance to build off of each other has been really special and really exciting.
Photo of Monyee Chau, Karen Sakada, Sue Kay, Jae Eun Kim in front of Medicine For the CID, 2023. Seattle WA, US
Nina: I can’t wait to see what you two make. It’s so lovely seeing your work together. Do you have any tips for anybody who wants to collaborate with a loved one or someone they’re in a relationship with?
Monyee: Every couple is different, but something that works really well for Jae and I is to make sure that we have a specific time and place set aside for planning. Because when we live together everything melts into each other.
Sometimes if Jae’s cooking dinner and I’m just thinking and talking out loud like…”what if we did this for this project,?” But Jae needs a specific place, time, and mentality for us to talk about that, which is so reasonable. So being able to make sure that you have dedicated time so that you can bring your best self into that collaboration is my top tip.
Nina: That’s such a good tip. That’s definitely a boundary my partner hasn’t set with me yet, but probably should because I’m blabbing all hours of the day about a project!
So what happened to the pieces? Do Sue and Karen own them now, and how did they receive it?
Monyee: Yeah, they were gifted to them. We wanted to both honor them as well as give them these pieces. Right now the pieces are actually at the Wing Luke Museum in an exhibit on elders called Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle, which is going on until February 23, 2025. They’re going to be there for a year and then they’ll go to Auntie Karen and Auntie Sue after that.
Nina: I’ll have to go and check it out. I’m curious about your recent project at the Tacoma Art Museum which is opening soon and is on view until 2027. Could you talk about that?
Monyee: The show is called reFrame: Haub Family Collection of Western American Art, in reference to a collection of art at the Tacoma Art Museum with a very colonial perspective of Western expansion. So the Tacoma Art Museum invited all of these curators of color to respond to some of the works. Lele Barnett reached out to me, alongside Zhi Lin, to respond to these Mian Situ paintings that were a part of the Haub collection.
I have been interested in exploring the history of transcontinental railroad workers, so that’s what was cultivated in this project. There is a mural that consists of two walls that highlight the Chinese relationship with the Pacific Ocean, as well as the goddesses Mazu and Guanyin that carried them across. It was really important to me to bring those goddesses in because in one of the records a white person had written about these Chinese workers that “build altars wherever they are,” so that’s a big part of why those goddesses are there.
When you both enter and exit the exhibition, the mural of the ocean that I created is there. So this idea of crossing the Pacific Ocean is a big part of the layout of the work. There’s a lot of symbolism as well acknowledging the fact that the Tacoma Art Museum is on Pacific Avenue, which is the very street that Chinese residents of Tacoma were marched out of during the Chinese expulsion of 1885. The Tacoma Art Museum building itself, designed by Olson Kundig, also has a railroad feature in front of the windows. All of these aspects tie into the mural. Currently, Pacific Avenue has the link light rail which is a source of a lot of community issues and conversations, as public transportation is something that has continually been used to cut through communities of color.So there’s a lot of symbolism and layers to the work.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. latex paint and wood. Mural honoring Chinese Railroad workers and Guanyin. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. latex paint and wood. Mural honoring the journey of Chinese Railroad workers, depicting Goddess Mazu. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. acrylic paint and wood. Close up of mural honoring the journey of Chinese Railroad workers, depicting Goddess Mazu. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Nina: Wow, that’s so cool. Did a lot of those ideas come out of the research or did you have a strong idea going into the project of what you wanted to do?
Monyee: I think a lot of it was being able to see the space itself and what I was able to work with in the environment, like being able to look at that pathway that Chinese residents were marched out on running parallel with the mural. A lot of the information that I found came from the book Ghost of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang. And understanding all of these details with the altars and with the goddesses.
I had learned that hundreds of thousands of letters went between the US and Asia across the Pacific during that time of heightened anti-Asian rhetoric and Chinese expulsion, yet we have absolutely no record of any of them due to the destruction and pillaging of Chinese property. So in the mural you can also see these letters that sort of fly across the sky.
I also found a record of Cantonese folk songs, sung by immigrants who had crossed the Pacific, and their wives and children’s songs about their fathers and husbands going across the water. I think about the way the ocean is so magical and holds all of these songs as well as all these lost souls of people thrown overboard. It gives me chills to think about.
I thought it was really incredible that there was this record of all of these songs. Actually, this weekend I’m bringing some other friends who are also of Southern Chinese descent to go and write more of those folk songs along the lines of the ocean in the mural which I feel is a really special aspect of the piece.
Nina: That’s amazing. It sounds like you do a lot of combining spirituality along with historical research in your work. What does it mean for you to combine those?
Monyee: Those are really important aspects of my own personal life. That’s how it comes out into the work itself because that’s the way that I can process things and also process really heavy topics and conversations. Being able to bring in all of those aspects feels really healing to me.
I get really interested in stories of spirituality or mythology, so I was excited to learn about the story of Mazu, who is a young, epileptic girl who had visions during seizures. During a seizure of hers, she appeared over the water in front of her brother and father guiding them out of a storm into safety. Thus, she began to be known as a protector of seafarers. I think those little things that you get to learn about are always really exciting. I think that’s why it finds its way into my work. I really enjoy overlaying all of those considerations when I work on a piece.
This is the first time that spirituality has been so straightforward in my work. I’m really enjoying it. And I also think it helps me understand what that experience might have been like for Chinese immigrants.
My family on both sides has also been very spiritual. Both sides of my family are Buddhist. As a kid I felt very distant or not incredibly understanding of it. Being with Jae has sort helped me nourish that part of myself more, which is playing a huge part in the work of me trying to understand my ancestors a little bit better.
So, it’s a newer practice, but it’s something that I feel excited to explore more.
Nina: What kind of spiritual imagery are you particularly excited about in this work?
Monyee: In the mural, there are these two groupings of arms and hands all doing different actions that happened with the folks working on the railroad, such as yearning for family, praying, making offerings to deities, or being in a place of solidarity across identities.
Those were based on depictions of the Thousand Arms of Guanyin, who has a thousand arms to offer mercy and compassion to all beings. So I feel like that’s something that has been really fun to bring into different aspects of the work.
Nina: I just love all these elements you’re talking about and how they come together. Is this the largest piece you’ve done?
Monyee: The largest has been our piece for Meta, which was 760 square feet. This one is just 620 square feet. But as the solo creator, it is definitely the largest piece. And I feel like this is one of the proudest works I’ve ever put out into the world.
Nina: I like how you’re like, it’s just 600 something square feet. That’s bigger than my apartment!
Monyee: I had so much help!
Nina: You would need it for sure. I feel like it’s never fun to do a mural or anything large scale on your own. I’m curious about where this project falls in the range of collaboration for you in terms of your other projects.
Monyee: I would say that this project specifically feels like I’m the creator of the work, but so many people came together to make it happen. I had two people, including Jae, help me paint the mural. And then two people who I’m bringing in to add their handwriting and their experiences into the mural. So if I’m to work on more solo projects, this is how I would like it to happen moving forward. Always having community input or letting the community have their hand in the work itself.
You’re never truly wanting to be just you in the studio. There’s always some component at some point for people to come into the project. I feel like that’s how all work is created too, right? Nothing that I create is solely from my own self. There’s always people that bring in so many different aspects or inspire me. And so I feel like it would be wrong of me to say that anything I create is only ever my own voice.
Monyee and Jae Eun standing in front of Of Salt and Altars (left wall), 2024. Tacoma WA US. Photo by So’le Celestial.
Nina: That’s beautiful. That definitely describes what it’s like to be an artist for real. Nothing is really truly just you.
Monyee: You’re always going to be a mosaic of all the people and thoughts and research and conversations that you have.
Monyee Chau (they/them) is an artist based on unceded Coast Salish land, and has graduated with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2018. They explore a journey of personal and collective healing through their lens as a queer Taiwanese/Chinese American, believing in the power of storytelling and breaking bread as a means of community building for the path to justice and liberation. Monyee’s work spans across mediums to speak to the multitude of themes of labor, diaspora, and collective community care.
They’ve exhibited in museums and galleries locally and internationally, including the Wing Luke Museum, Museum of Northwest Art, Mori Art Museum, and Copelouzos Museum. They have spoken at institutions such as Harvard Graduate school of Design, New York University, and the University of Washington. They have been awarded as one of the 100 Changemakers by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and of the 100 Taiwanese Americans, and rewarded the 2021 Arc Artist Fellowship. Their work is in collections such as the Museum of History and Industry, New York University, and Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Nina Vichayapai (she/her) Nina Vichayapai is an artist who orients her belonging somewhere between the United States, where she lives, and Thailand, where she was born. Her relationship to the many disparate places that forged her sense of home has resulted in her interest in excavating the globalized world around her for signs and representations of belonging. Her interdisciplinary art practice weaves textiles, social practice, and placemaking as tools to explore these subjects. She graduated from the California College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017 and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University.
Image from Luz Blumenfeld’s interview with Marlo: Marlo and the Sparrow. Image courtesy of Beth Schlegel, 2023.
Our winter cover showcases an image from Luz Blumenfeld’s article in this issue titled “Marlo and the Sparrow.” Captured by Beth Schlegel, a Media Specialist at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, this photo reflects the collaborative efforts between King School and Portland State University’s MFA Art and Social Practice program, jointly operating KSMoCA (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art). It symbolizes our interconnectedness with time, narrative, and people: Marlo engrossed in a historical painting, Beth observing an elementary student, and Luz Blumenfeld, the article’s author, presenting this interview alongside Beth’s image. As we delve into Marlo’s story, let us remember the significance of collaboration, support, and the beauty we create together. We often overlook the beauty that surrounds us, crafted through our collective efforts. May our practice inspire you to notice the beauty in your own life.
This question is often the starting point for an idea, project, new friendship, and in the case of this issue, an interview. This collection of conversations reveals the many curiosities we are following as artists as we go deeper into our own social practices. What did you learn at school today? How do we preserve our history? What new futures are possible? are amongst some of the inquiries this issue seeks to explore.
Questions about the classroom are aplenty in Simeen Anjum’s conversation with substitute teacher Sophie Von Rohr about the current state of Portland Public Schools following recent protests. Midori Yamanaka explores the format of workshops as a type of performance art with Daiya Aida, the director of education and outreach at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media in Japan. Meanwhile in the lunch line, Clara digs in with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Elementary’s beloved lunch lady, Ms. Ruby Sims. And just down the hall, Luz wonders how an 89 year-old painting at the King School Library commissioned during the Works Progress Administration inspires a kindergartener named Marlo.
Where do you search for joy when you are in need of reprieve? Is it in the water, the open road, or in sports? Gili Rappaport and J Wortham discuss the queerness of nature and water as a source of grounding and community. Nina Vichayapai talks to Samip Mallick about the power of archives for South Asian Americans reclaiming the whitewashed narrative of the American road trip. Over tea, Olivia DelGandio speaks with queer elder Rose Bond about her experiences playing on an all-lesbian softball team in the 1970s and her involvement with the gay liberation movement.
Sometimes questions lead to answers. Sometimes questions lead to more questions. In these interviews, questions have led to new connections, great conversations, and for many of us, new avenues in our practice. We hope you enjoy exploring our curiosities with us in this issue of SoFA and feel inspired to follow some wonders of your own.
Sincerely,
Your SoFA Journal Editors: Simeen Anjum, Clara Harlow, Nina Vichayapai
“I feel the ocean this way. I’m put back together once I enter it, and every time I enter, there’s a homecoming and I feel the need to say a prayer.”
– J Wortham
J offered “blessings for a new year that is dripping with honey and covered in all the deliciousness that you need” as opening line in an email thread related to their oral history project of Riis Beach, part of the fellowship “I See My Light Shining” that is a collaboration between the author Jacqueline Woodson, Columbia University and Emerson Collective. For years, I followed their work as staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of the podcast Still Processing, and editor of the visual anthology Black Futures, and felt even more inspired as I learned of their practice as sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker. For months after reading their recent piece “Want to Love Your Body? Try Swimming Naked”, I imagined in queer spaces – What stubborn attachments are dissolving fluidly right now through this sacred, collective glimpsing and sensing? I had to ask if I could learn more from the person who shares as service, who offers directly, concisely, and explicitly towards a vision of healing justice and liberation. I felt blessed when my teacher Taravat Talepasand connected me with J for this interview.
Gili Rappaport (they/them): You wrote “You can’t dissociate in the ocean” in your recent piece “Want to Love Your Body? Try Swimming Naked” in The New York Times Magazine. Do you think that being in nature, and the ocean specifically, is a kind of gift that we are being offered as humans to mend the disconnection that we face from our conscious awareness, our thoughts, our feelings, our memories? And how does that relate to being queer?
J Wortham (they/them): This is a beautiful question. There is so much synchronicity between queerness and nature. So much of nature is queer, which is to say that it does what’s best for it. The binaries of the modern world have been pushed upon us both through categorization and compartmentalization. But when you actually look at how nature functions, it has a natural fluidity to it. It has its own orientations. It’s antithetical to hierarchies. There is so much collaboration, cointegration, sentience, intelligence and sensorial information that doesn’t make sense to the humans that study these systems, plants, and bodies of ecology, so they go unrecognized. It feels inherently queer that the intelligence and order of the natural world defies expectations of how things are supposed to work – both that it is quietly existing, and that it is thriving in its own ways without being detected, observed, controlled or perceived. When nature is left to its own devices, it figures out an ordinance that works for it.
Gili Rappaport: What about the history of queer sites along waterways?
J Wortham: There is a long, fascinating history of queer spaces existing alongside bodies of water in nature. Every time I travel, I look into those places. When I was searching cruising spots out in Long Island and the area that is now commonly known as the Hamptons, there were pockets that were less well known to me there and all along the rivers in New York. In pretty much any city, town, or place that I’ve been curious about that had water in the landscape, there was a history of queer encounters. I find that really beautiful, harmonious, and exciting, and it makes sense: there’s a metaphorical fluidity, sexiness, and evolution that happens alongside the water.
Also, something that came out of reading Esther Newton’s book Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town (2014) is that bits of land alongside water also provided privacy and anonymity, which is not the same thing as isolation. There was a need and a desire for a place away from societal rules and regulation to experiment, have fun, and find freedom. That’s also interesting when we start thinking about it from a racialized lens.
Gili: How do you connect this research with Work of Body, the book of essays that you are currently writing on dissociation?
J: First, I want to express that my connections with water aren’t universal, and they may not be true for people other than me: a lot of people feel uncomfortable alongside or in water, and there is ancestral trauma, especially for many Black and Brown people whose peoples have endured pain and historical violence on and alongside bodies of water.
For me, water is a stabilizing and grounding force. I find a lot of re-homing in water. As Toni Morrison wrote in Beloved (1987): “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” This quote speaks to collective shared memory as enslaved people, and the ways in which black people cared for themselves before the Civil War, and helped return to each other.
I feel the ocean this way. I’m put back together once I enter it, and every time I enter, there’s a homecoming and I feel the need to say a prayer. If I’m somewhere and there is a body of water, I want to visit it. I sometimes want to do a ritual alongside it. I feel at home, like there’s a part of me that’s returned to myself. It’s hard to find out a lot of information about my history but I would love to know if there were fisherpeople in my lineage.
This relates to dissociation because I am someone who spends a lot of time outside of my body, and not always aware that I’m outside of it until I’m re-entering it. That process can be slow or fast, and it’s so beyond me. Being around water is one of the ways that I feel consistently located within myself. I find that interesting because the ocean as a body has so many parts, and it’s also this incredibly massive thing.
This summer, I took ocean swimming classes in Martha’s Vineyard and Cayman Islands. I learned how the ocean has a language and rules. Safety there is imperative. Learning to swim in the ocean is different: currents and shifting temperatures can indicate important things about depths or tides. So you’re listening differently, breathing differently, seeing differently. It feels like learning a new language. It is the opposite of dissociation.
A big part of why I wanted to write that essay, besides wanting to write about queerness, water, and beaches, and because it made sense with my research at the time, is because I always am trying to understand the deeper relationship between myself, water, queerness, and my ancestral orientation. I don’t know that it’s ever going to be clearly delineated. It just is.
Gili: What you’re saying about the fisherpeople reminds me of something else that you wrote in The Magazine: “An oracle once looked me dead in the face and told me I crawled here from the ocean floor”. It reminded me of when a medium told me that I had been wandering the desert for thousands of years.
On the topic of queerness, ancestry, and identity, what’s your relationship with your name change and geography of home? I heard you say on the podcast Thresholds (2023), “I wasn’t beholden to anybody. And at a certain point I was like, I’m not even beholden to myself. So who am I trying to people-please? Because nobody out here is checking for me. And that was really freeing.” How have you benefited from having a name change when you were living in the Bay Area, and then returning to your home community in New York?
J: I trust the timing of my life and the great unfolding. It is what it is. I feel a lot of peace around it. Sometimes when I talk to friends in my life who’ve been clear on their queerness from a young age, I feel envious. I wonder what my life would be like, had that been my path. I can also look back on my own life, my childhood, and see all the ways in which there was actually just so much queerness present, which didn’t maybe follow a classic, clear arc, but I’m actually not even sure that there is one.
I was a little bit of a later bloomer, but it was hard for me to access queer community. When I was younger, even though I was trying, I felt outside of the matrices of queerness and queer desirability. When I first moved to New York, I would always try to go to queer parties and queer bars. But I wasn’t really tapped into Black and Brown communities. Instagram wasn’t as popular, so I found it hard to find things. I was constantly going to places and put in these predominantly white environments, trying to appeal there, and feeling so inadequate. It convinced me that I didn’t actually belong or that I wasn’t actually queer, or queer enough. That kept me from feeling like I could be more fully expressed. This dovetails my larger life journey of not looking outside of myself for approval, validation, and acceptance: not needing others to tell me the names that I can name myself. In hindsight, it was a slow dawning awareness, and then figuring out how to own it in a way that made sense and felt comfortable for me. So it did benefit me.
It’s nice to be able to talk about it without shame and embarrassment, which I had for a long time. I love the bell hooks quote about queerness, “not being about who you’re having sex with, but about being at odds with everything around it”. It’s queerness in the way you live your life, orient yourself politically, think about your role in the world and your contributions, and create new paradigms. That feels fitting. I’m trying to press up against the edges of my own queerness and see where it can go and how it goes there. And who can come along with me.
Gili: What is the role of clothing in a place where clothing isn’t required? And how does that relate to a show like Ralph’s Beach Parties at Riis Beach, NYC?
J: There is something incredibly powerful and radical about the ways in which clothing and adornment work for all people, and especially queer people. People who in our everyday lives try to figure out how to dress in a way that attracts the kind of attention we want, or detracts the kind of attention we don’t want, to dress for our genders, and to have playfulness. To participate in true identity construction as much as we want and need. And there’s also a lot of freedom in taking it off. That’s the intersection when I think about a queer nude beach.
I haven’t been to Ralph’s shows. But my guess is, from being on Riis Beach and seeing how fashion works there, it’s fun to wear neon thongs and pasties. It’s all meant to be comedic and funny, to make other people laugh or gasp. Even if there isn’t an organized fashion show, it’s always a fashion show. It’s the way in which we signal to each other and have playfulness. In New York in particular, there’s a culture of dressing for other people, to give other people an experience that defines their day. It’s one of my favorite things about living here, the community, and the ways in which we try to make each other laugh or smile just by how we show up in the world.
Gili: Also, speaking of shame and embarrassment, have you had to overcome any of those feelings around public nudity at queer beaches?
J: I’m rarely nude at Riis beach in New York. I worry about surveillance so It’s not freeing for me the way it is for other people. After growing up with so much internalized fat phobia, body anxiety, and disordered eating, I finally feel really happy with the way I look and feel naked, which is unusual in the scheme of my whole life. But if I end up in naked photos, I want to have agency over that.
In Oaxaca, there seemed to be different standards of surveillance and documentation: there’s more respect and acknowledgement of the space being sacred and special, and not privy to the nonstop documentation that governs so much of our modern lives. It was the first time that I thought, “I might actually be able to experience what so many other people get to experience when they’re in the water and when they’re swimming”. That was a big revelation for me and what I ended up writing about actually more than anything else.
That’s the exciting thing about being a writer: having lines of inquiry and curiosities, following them, and paying attention to what else is happening and coming up. I try to let the circumstances dictate the story. This is a great privilege of still writing at a magazine in 2024, which is rare and feels kind of endangered. Freedom of inquiry feels like a real privilege.
Gili: In the magazine piece mentioned above,you shared some personal erotic accounts: “In the dunes of Provincetown, Mass., where a girlfriend and I tried covertly to have sex, several times, only to have a park ranger chase us away, several times, with the increasing exasperation of someone trying to clear a road of errant livestock.” How do you navigate the agency aspect of sharing accounts with others? I imagine a tension between the need to paint a picture of reality, and the privacy of what you share, with whom, and how you share it.
J: I think a lot about the privacy of the people I’m writing about. I appreciate what Melissa Febos has written in her book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative (2022) about the ways in which we can practice care, consideration, and collectivism in reckoning with the power of being a writer. We will always write in a way that is biased towards ourselves, so how can we be aware of those biases? It feels jarring sometimes to see something intimate or personal in print that you’ve shared. When it feels necessary, I talk to the people I plan to write about.
I find it empowering, important, and necessary to share stories that feel meaningful because I believe in service. I believe in the reparative personal work that we do in talking about it and normalizing it, and it is also helpful for other people. I could be wrong: there could be people who feel that it’s an overshare, not interesting, or a little over the edge. The feedback that I’ve gotten has reinforced that it is helpful when I talk about sobriety, body shame, dysmorphia, dissociation, and queerness.
Also, there still aren’t enough direct, concise, explicit examples. I remember being in my twenties and reading sexy, explicit, disgusting books about women, bodies, and rage and the authors were always white. I never really understood why that was, so it became a personal mission to incorporate that into my own work. It was freeing to do that. I have pulled back some because I am aware that not everybody needs to know every single thing all the time, and there’s a way to write about sex and intimacy that isn’t necessarily just describing acts explicitly unless it’s helpful to the story. So that’s the learning curve that I’m in right now: trying to find that balance between the two.
Gili: Given all of your experience writing for The New York Times Magazine, editing the anthology Black Futures, and also conducting the oral history project, do you have any advice for people who are interested in being archivists, journalists, or working in that kind of socially engaged way?
J: Some of the most engaging and rigorous conversations I’ve been having lately involve concepts of care and mindfulness when asking people to share personal information, whether that be oral histories, or journalism, or really anyone that you’re asking to be vulnerable. To be really mindful of the power dynamics that exist when you’re someone with a recorder and publishing power. So many of the people I reach out to are from historically ignored communities, so sometimes there’s suspicion, and sometimes there’s such excitement that someone cares that people give a lot. It’s up to us to be responsible and protective as much as we can be.
Also, these are two very different roles: archivists and journalists. There are different considerations for both depending on what you’re doing, recording, archiving, and documenting. Being credibly aware that it is an extractive process and that people aren’t always aware of the repercussions and consequences when sharing intimate details of their lives. That is something that I think about quite a bit, and something that I try to let people know in advance. And that we can go slowly.
Something that I’ve also learned over the years from feedback is that people will feel they were misrepresented or the full story wasn’t portrayed, because it never is, and it can’t be. And while that is something that I do think it’s important to try to be aware of, it’s not always something that we can be responsible for. It is important to try, when possible. When I’m working in historically disenfranchised communities, the last thing I want to do is replicate the systems of disenfranchisement that already exist. We all get to choose our practices, the ways we want to work, and how we want to show up and cover our communities and the things that we care about. I try to remind people that the paradigms of how personal and vulnerable information is received online, which is how most people are receiving this information, can make it really challenging to be vulnerable and authentic. It’s something that I don’t want to haunt me as I get older, and it’s something that really weighs on me. I feel a need for care around it now.
Gili: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing so vulnerably about this need for care. Do you have any other questions before we close out?
J: This book of interviews that you’ve been conducting for the past few years (collected in the anthology I See What You See, KSMoCA May 2024) sounds amazing and necessary. I’m glad that you’re doing it. I hope to meet you and your collaborators, and hear more about the project as it evolves.
Gili: Thank you so much J!
J Wortham (they/them) is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation. J is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the podcast ‘Still Processing.’ J is the proud editor of the visual anthology “Black Futures,” a 2020 Editor’s choice by The New York Times Book Review, along with Kimberly Drew, from One World. J is also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation for Penguin Press. J mostly lives and works on stolen Munsee Lenape land, now known as Brooklyn, New York, and is committed to decolonization as a way of life.
Gili Rappaport (they/them) is a naturalist using their skills as an artist, designer, and educator to deepen relationships with nature through social and visual forms. Their interdisciplinary practice cultivates intergenerational, inter-species connections that move within a range of outdoor sites: beaches, wetlands, rivers, forests, gorges, sky bridges, heritage trees, backyards, and graveyards. They co-authored Field Guide To The Northeast (The Outside Institute, 2017–2021) and co-organized Ralph’s Neon Oasis Beach Party at historic gay beach Jacob Riis (Gateway National Park, 2023). In 2024, Anthology Editions will publish the book they designed with Ralph Hopkins, They Call Me The Mayor at Riis Beach: Ralph’s Beach Parties 1994—2000, and KSMoCA will publish their anthology of interviews I See What You See: Art + Social Practice Conversations. The Front Room at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Parallax Gallery, The Switch Gallery, and Dream Clinic Project Space have all shown their work, and KSMoCA and and Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University has their work in their public collections.
In the Fall of 2023, I was a graduate research assistant for Dr Martin Luther King Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA). My research was focused on a historical piece of art in the museum’s permanent collection; three oil paintings by Portland artist Charlotte Mish depicting scenes from the fairy tale, Thumbelina.
The paintings were commissioned by the WPA for the school in 1939. Through my research, I found that many Portland public schools received WPA works of art, many of which are still visible today.
The first Thumbelina painting (in the series of 3) depicts the scene in the story where Thumbelina sits on a lilypad weeping to herself as she has just been kidnapped by a toad who wants her to marry his son. The fish in the water below hear her crying and decide to help her escape by chewing the root of the lilypad so that she can float away on it.
In the second painting, a field mouse is ordering Thumbelina to sew her own wedding dress. After escaping the first arranged marriage, she finds herself in another.
The third and final painting in the series depicts Thumbelina riding on the back of her friend, the swallow. They are escaping her last arranged marriage and flying toward a magical kingdom of flower people in the distance. Photographs of Charlotte Mish’s paintings, Thumbelina No. 1, 2, and 3, taken c. 1940. Images courtesy of the Multnomah County Library WPA Archive.
As part of my research, I spoke with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr School’s media consultant, Beth Schlegel, to see if she remembered any children who had shown interest in the paintings. She introduced me to Marlo, a kindergarten student at the school, who I interviewed about the drawings he made from looking at the paintings.
Marlo in the school library drawing the sparrow in Charlotte Mish’s painting. Portland, Oregon. Image courtesy of Beth Schlegel, 2023.
Luz: I heard that you were drawing the bird in the painting.
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: What do you like about it?
Marlo: The wings.
Luz: Do you know what story the paintings are from?
Marlo: No.
I read the story of Thumbelina to him. The summary of which is that a tiny girl is born inside a flower and is later kidnapped by several animals who want her to marry their sons or friends. Thumbelina does not want to marry the toad or the mole, and escapes with the help of a sparrow. Together they fly to a flower kingdom where she meets a prince just as tiny as she is who asks for her hand in marriage and offers that she become the queen of the flower people.
Luz: Why did you want to draw the bird?
Marlo: Cause it looked… good.
Luz: Do you like birds?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: Do you see any birds by your house?
Marlo: Yes.
Luz: What birds do you see by your house?
Marlo: A crow.
Luz: We do have a lot of crows here. What do you think about crows?
Marlo: They’re black.
Luz: Yeah, they’re also very smart and they–
Marlo: Eat worms!
Luz: Yeah and they can remember people’s faces.
Marlo: I know.
Luz: You know a lot about crows, huh?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: What else do you see in the paintings?
Marlo: Uh… a castle right there!
Luz: Have you either seen a castle in real life?
Marlo: No.
Luz: Me either. Do you think that’s where the flower king from the story lives?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: I think so too. Why do you think the paintings are so high up?
Marlo: So they don’t get knocked down.
Luz: That’s a good reason. They’re really big, huh?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: Do you like to paint?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: What else do you like to paint?
Marlo: Uh… I want to paint… the clouds.
Luz: It looks like the person who painted these also liked to paint the clouds. I see clouds in two of the paintings. What shapes do you see in the clouds in the second painting?
Marlo: It looks like… a bunch of beaks.
Luz: Like birds’ beaks?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: (laughs) I could see that. Do you ever see pictures in the clouds in real life?
Marlo: Sometimes.
Luz: Do you remember any of them?
Marlo: No.
Luz: Sometimes when I look at the sky I think that the clouds look like ice cream.
Marlo: Me too!
Luz: Do you like ice cream?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: What’s your favorite flavor?
Marlo: Uh… vanilla!
Luz: I like vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.
Marlo: And I like it with caramel!
Luz: Yum.
Marlo: And also rainbow sprinkles.
Luz: I think they’re pretty and they also taste good.
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: Do you think that Thumbelina would like ice cream?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: She’s so tiny. We would have to give her a really small amount. What do you think we could give her ice cream in?
Marlo: Uh… definitely this. (points to an acorn in the Thumbelina book)
Luz: Like a little nut? That seems like a good size. Maybe she could have some ice cream with her friend, the swallow.
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: Those paintings were put up there in 1939, a really long time ago!
Marlo: I know.
Luz: Have you seen any other things that are really old?
Marlo: Uh… yes.
Luz: What else can you think of that’s really old?
Marlo: Uh… it is… when Michael Jordan died.
Luz: (laughs) Michael Jordan… is really old?
Marlo: Yeah.
Luz: How old do you think birds live to be?
Marlo: 10.
Luz: I know that some birds live to be 80 years old, which is such a long time.
Marlo: I know.
Luz: If you could paint something up there, what would you paint?
Marlo: Uh… that bird.
Luz: Would you want all 3 of the paintings to be of the bird?
Marlo: (laughs) Yeah.
Luz: If you ever got the chance to ride on a bird’s back like Thumbelina, would you do it?
Marlo: No, because maybe the wind would blow me off.
Luz: Oh yeah, that does sound dangerous. I would be scared. She looks pretty brave, huh?
Marlo: Yeah.
Marlo’s drawing of the sparrow and the castle. Image courtesy of Marlo, 2023.
Marlo (he/him) is a kindergartener at Dr Martin Luther King Jr Elementary School in Portland, OR. He likes to draw, especially birds.
Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer with a background in Early Childhood Education. Third generation from Oakland, California, they currently live and work in Portland, Oregon. Their practice is about looking and noticing, research and history, and personal archives. Luz’s work has taken forms such as an unofficial artist residency at the Portland State University pool, teaching preschool, making things public through publications, an open invitation to play with soft sculptures, a radio program about field recordings and the immateriality of memory, and more.
“It was important to me that whether it be through our softball games or these events we planned, we spread joy.” -Rose Bond
A central part of my work is exploring queer history, learning from elders, and finding and sharing stories that may otherwise be lost. So when Cayla McGrail invited me to an event they were planning meant to encourage elder lesbians in Portland to consider archiving their personal collections, I saw it as a great opportunity to make connections with a community I was interested in working with and learning from.
At the event, I met Rose, who shared that she’d been a part of the Lavender Menace softball team in the 1970s and had a large collection of material from that time in her life. I approached her later to ask if she might be interested in sharing more about that experience with me. She agreed, and invited me over to her apartment to share tea, stories, and photos.
Olivia DelGandio: Can you tell me a bit about your coming out experience?
Rose Bond: Well, I didn’t think I was gay but I did have this friendly neighbor who seemed to know everything like gay bars and gaydar. She said she could walk downtown and guess who was gay. I was like “what? how?”
Olivia: You were in this queer relationship but didn’t think you were gay?
Rose: No, I could appreciate or be attracted to people regardless of gender but I didn’t have the vocabulary. I thought I’d marry a really nice guy and be a really good parent. Maybe I wasn’t very self-reflective, but there really weren’t many women I was attracted to. I went to an all girls high school and nothing was sparked there, so, you know.
Olivia: How did you meet this woman?
Rose: I moved in next door to her during college. It was a crummy apartment down by Portland State and just randomly, our two apartments were joined by a balcony. It didn’t take very long to start.
Olivia: That’s funny, I met my partner in pretty much the same way.
Rose: And did you know you were a lesbian?
Olivia: I think I felt similarly to you. I didn’t really have any lesbian representation growing up so I didn’t know what was quite possible.
Rose: Yeah, pretty similar. At the time I was working this work study job where I’d make posters and go around and put them up on campus so I always knew what events were going on around Portland State. At some point my boss, Carol, who knew I was gay, sent me out to get this alternative newspaper but I think it was a ploy on her part. I took the paper home when I saw that the centerfold was about gay liberation and women. It was written by someone named Holly Hart. She was sharing info about a gay liberation group and threw out a bunch of names of people that were meeting next to discuss these topics. Turned out she made all of the names up just to get people interested and come to the meeting. My girlfriend said we should go and I said, “whoa, I don’t know if I’m just gay. I think I’m just having a good time with you.” So anyway, we both went over to this little house in Southeast Portland, and that was the first gay liberation meeting. There were about seven women present, none of which were the names from the article.
Olivia: That’s so funny. How did things go after that first meeting?
Rose: Well after that, we had regular meetings. We’d meet at a coffeehouse called the 9th Street Exit in
Centenary Wilbur Church. We started to really get to know each other and go out to these lesbian
centered bars. It was your typical butch femme scene. I had long black hair and I was wearing tie dye
and bellbottoms. I could play pool really well and the older dykes were sort of like “what are you?”
They didn’t know what to make of a long haired butch. Roles were so de
ned as butch or femme. I
was intent on not being put into a box. I wanted women’s identities to exist in a wider range.
Olivia: When did you finally admit that you were gay and not just having a good time with this girlfriend?
Rose: It was during that time of gay liberation and having girlfriend after girlfriend that I was like oh, there’s a gender thing happening here.
Olivia: What else was going on at that time?
Rose: We started a softball team called the Lavender Menace. [Rose shows a photo] This was our first team. We sang and made a performance out of our games. We would take pop songs and change the lyrics to make them girl friendly. I saw it as a sort of political theater.
The Lavender Menace softball team projected at one of the team member’s home, early 1970s, photo taken by Olivia DelGandio, courtesy of the team collection.
Olivia: Were the majority of you lesbians?
Rose: All of us were.
Olivia: Wow. And what year was that?
Rose: The first team started in ‘73, I think.
Olivia: How old were you at the time?
Rose: Early twenties. We would go around regionally, up to Bellingham or Mount Vernon and we were totally out, we were the only ones wearing long pants. Everybody else was wearing shorts, you know, just because that’s what girls did.
Olivia: Do you think most other teams were queer?
Rose: A lot were, but they weren’t out.
Olivia: Interesting. How did you get involved with the team in the first place?
Rose: My girlfriend at the time, Clarice, was an organizer.
Olivia: Had you played ball before?
Rose: I played in Catholic school and then I went to St Mary’s Academy where I played sports until I was a junior. After that, I became kind of anti-sports until joining the Lavender Menace.
Olivia: Were you guys good?
Rose: The first year we weren’t that good but the second year we got good. Some women felt like they couldn’t play because maybe they were married to a guy or had a job they couldn’t risk losing or a family that wouldn’t approve. But we were like a magnet, we brought so much joy to every game, every tournament. We would go out in these small towns, in places like Mount Vernon, Washington, and we would dance. And everyone there would dance with us. We spread joy.
Olivia: What did your family think?
Rose: My mom would say, “you know, I had a girlfriend, too.” She probably could hit both ways, but she also really liked men.
Olivia: That’s so funny. So your mom had to be totally fine with it because she got it.
Rose: Plus there were nine kids, so it didn’t really matter, right? They had enough to worry about.
Olivia: That’s great. So all of this came out of gay liberation and then the bar scene?
Rose: Yes. There would be one popular lesbian bar and then it would go out of business and another would open and that’s where we’d all go. There was one perennial bartender that would go from place to place with us.
Olivia: I wish I could experience that. It feels so different from the bar scene now. I feel like there are so many gay bars for men but not a lot of lesbian options. Rose: It was great and I would meet so many people that way. We did a lot of events and readings and such. I used my art experience to make the posters to advertise what we were doing. I was also part of putting together a women’s film festival. That was cool because we got to really dig into film and find the women directors, I mean we really had to dig.
Rose’s collection of posters and materials from events held during the Gay Liberation movement in Portland in the 70s, photo taken by Olivia DelGandio at Rose’s home
Olivia: When was that? Rose: That was when I was starting to make films in the early 80s. I had met women through film, most of them were straight but they were feminists and wanted to see more women represented in art so that’s how the Women’s Eye View festival started. It was important to me that whether it be through our softball games or these events we planned, we spread joy.
Rose Bond (she/her) is an animator and media artist who has been honored with numerous awards and fellowships from prestigious agencies such as the American Film Institute, The Princess Grace Foundation, Bloomberg L.P., and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2013 Bond presented her animated installation, Intra Muros, on the Media Façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia. She is currently working on a proposed media installation for the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building.
“While when I was young I gave myself the grace to spend a lot of time alone as a way of self-discovery working and taking photographs, it is also true that there is another type of loneliness that comes with age and is hard on a different level. The older you get it is more difficult to move to a place and make friends and that is another layer to the experience of loneliness that you can experience in your life.”
-Marcus Muccianti
Midwesterner in the Northwest. This is the most accurate description of Marcus Mucciante, a former environmental scientist from Chicago who left everything behind to start a new chapter of his life in Portland through the practice of photography.
What would a person from Chicago and I, a Costa Rican person, have in common? probably not much at first glance. But with Marcus, our paths crossed to discover a story of loneliness, self-discovery, and the practice of photography as a way to connect with others and with oneself. This is about unlikely friendships and photography.
He’s now one of my best friends in America. He feels like a very serious person. Lives in Northwest Portland. I am playful and silly, while Marcus has a serious demeanor and is from a cold, windy place.
Manfred Parales: Interviewing a friend can be a fascinating experience but also wow, what did you think when I told you, Marcus, it’s time to make your story a piece of art, I’m going to interview you. What was going through your head?
Marcus Muccianti: I was wondering what this was for? What was it about? Why did you choose me? I always have my own conclusions on why somebody does what they’re doing then I tried to think of a flurry of the questions that you’re going to ask me.
Manfred: Chicago is where it all started. What was your life like there and how that shaped your personality.
Marcus: It definitely comes from my childhood so opening up has always been a hard thing for me. So, yeah, there’s gonna be a bit of a facade there.,, It took some time for me to warm up to people. I grew up in a suburb just west of Chicago called Oak Park. When I was whatever age it was, and I had enough money, I moved out to Chicago and I lived there until I moved here to Portland. I see the differences between Chicago and Portland, aesthetically it’s different, geography of the area is different. Now Chicago is a place that I can never see myself returning to, honestly. Now I do love living out in the Pacific Northwest.
Marcus and his father in the family home in the early 1980s. Photograph courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: I do love living out in the Pacific Northwest too. When was the first time that you heard about Portland? And why did you decide to move from Chicago to Portland?
Marcus: Honestly, the one memory I have of Portland is watching a TV show on our PBS network called Weird, it was like Weird Something, and they’d go across the country and find weird foods, and they had mentioned the donut shop Voodoo Donuts. I remember hearing about that like 10 or 15 years ago and saying I want to go out there. So, it piqued my interest about Portland but Portland wasn’t my first choice and it wasn’t the place I wanted to move to on the West coast. That was the Bay area.
I feel like I want to be a part of a gayborhood and an area that welcomed me. A place predominantly gay. You have the gay bars.I thought it’s like a very welcoming place and you don’t have to worry about being gay.
Marcus at college. mid 1990s. photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: Before coming to Portland did you try to live in any other place in the United States or abroad?
Marcus: No. Before moving to Portland I took about two weeks to visit both Portland and Seattle. And then after that I made my decision.
It made it a little bit easier because I did get a job offer here in Portland prior to moving. So I knew I had some financial stability moving here. Also I decided against Seattle because it felt a little too cosmopolitan. And I kind of wanted to get away from that, being from Chicago. So Portland had a totally different vibe than what I’m used to.
Manfred: One of the experiences when moving from one country to another, or in your case from the Midwest to the West Coast, is experiencing loneliness. How has your relationship with the experience of loneliness been when being new to a place?
Marcus: I moved here not knowing anybody. I did enjoy it in a way. I like having my solitude and exploring a new city on my own. That’s one of the reasons why I also didn’t move to Seattle. I was dating someone who lived in Seattle. I started dating him in Chicago, he moved to Seattle. When I was visiting both Portland and Seattle, he was there. I didn’t want his judgments to cloud where I wanted to move and how I felt about a city. I wanted to really kind of explore it on my own and make my own judgment calls on the city. There was a bit of loneliness in not knowing anyone but it allowed me also to explore on my own.
Self-portrait. 2020. Photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: The idea of your loneliness in a new city was something that empowered you. Was it an opportunity to bring to life a new phase of you?
Marcus: I was able to create my own experiences without somebody else clouding those for me or saying“Oh, this is what I love about this place because it reminds me of that.” I could experience those things on my own for the first time. I think I cherish those moments cause I didn’t have somebody else.
Manfred: In this process, what was something you learned, discovered or were surprised by during this new period of your life?
Marcus: Realizing how white Portland is when you’re here. I was in a restaurant in the Pearl District and I was looking out. I was eating alone. I was looking out and saw a black person walk by. That was my first understanding that Portland was a white city. That moment made me ask Why did I notice that just now? I didn’t think or know how white this city is compared to Chicago, which is more culturally and racially diverse than Portland and just now I noted. It made me wonder if instead of bringing more diversity to this city and just adding to the problem. It was a huge shock to me to find out that Portland is so white. Not as diverse as Chicago in that sense. Another thing that surprised me about Portland, in a more curious twist, was the amount of crows. The amount of crows in Portland is crazy.
Portland. 2021. Photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: Even though loneliness can be a means of empowerment there are times when it feels very heavy. How have you dealt with those moments?
Marcus: When those moments hit, that’s when I would go out in nature. Nature for me was a place where I can kind of gather my thoughts and be at peace where I was. I was particularly enjoying my new job here in Portland but it was really stressful and that was my only outlet.Getting in my car and going out into nature was something that helped me deal with that loneliness. Even though I was still physically alone in those moments I felt at peace being in nature.
Manfred: Talking about nature, there is an interesting intersection in your life where paths cross again. You studied environmental sciences but you have long dedicated yourself to photography, a path that we also share and which you have explored throughout the United States. What is the story behind that?
Marcus: My first job out of college was a contractor for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a lot of what I did was travel and do oversight for contaminated sites. These sites were kind of barren and abandoned areas typically. My photography was based on these interesting abandoned places.
Whenever I was on a job site and I was suited up with a mask or my air tank I always can visually see a photo in my mind. After I would take all of that off, I would kind of try and go back and get those photos. Photography has always excited me. It was something that I could see in my mind’s eye, a photograph.Sometimes it didn’t work but it’s something that has always been like a common thread throughout my life that I’ve really enjoyed. Wherever I am in my life, regardless if it’s happy or sad, photography is something that I can rely on. I bought my first camera in 1996 on a road trip to Toronto and I’ve been taking photos ever since. I have been taking photography for almost 30 years.
Utica, IL. 2006. Photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: Do you have any interesting stories about photography?
Marcus: Here’s an interesting fact. I was going through some of my parents’ cabinets. They have old documents from when my brother and I were kids. My mom also held on to a bunch of photos that my grandfather took. My grandfather also loved photography which I didn’t really know about until later in life.
He also visited a lot of the same places I did in Chicago, like some nature places just outside of the city. It’s nice to have that connection and maybe feel like it was some kind of artistic genetic thing. I own some of my grandfather’s cameras and Polaroids.
Manfred: After these years, what is your reflection on loneliness?
Marcus: While when I was young I gave myself the grace to spend a lot of time alone as a way of self-discovery working and taking photographs, it is also true that there is another type of loneliness that comes with age and is hard on a different level. The older you get it is more difficult to move to a place and make friends and that is another layer to the experience of loneliness that you can experience in your life.
Manfred: Speaking of expectations versus reality, what advice would you give young Marcus?
Marcus: The advice I give myself is to continue to reach out and make those connections. I think I was really flippant in thinking that the people who were reaching out were going to continue to reach out. I’ve lost those connections.Very recently I’ve started reaching back out to those people I originally made connections to, hoping to rekindle that. Understanding now that it was something I probably should have worked a little bit harder on. don’t take those moments for granted.
Washington State. 2023. Photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti.
Manfred: If the Marcus of today could give any advice to the young Marcus 20 years ago, what advice would it be?
Marcus: Let’s start with gaining a smarter and better sense of self. I think moving away from my family lets me be who I truly am which can be scary too. After moving I lost friends in Chicago. It’s hard to keep that connection with long distance. It’s pretty difficult.
Manfred: By the way, did you ever try that place, Voodoo Donuts?
Marcus: It’s not that great. It’s probably my least favorite donut place here in Portland. I like Heavenly Donuts. I like the basics. I grew up with Dunkin Donuts so yeah, I like the basics.
Self-portrait in Oregon. 2022. Photography courtesy of Marcus Muccianti
Marcus Muccianti (his/him), a Midwesterner in the Pacific Northwest, embodies a unique convergence of scientific expertise and artistic expression. Originally from Chicago, IL, Marcus’s journey led him to Portland. With over 8 years of dedicated experience in environmental protection and remediation, Marcus has established himself as a leader in the field. His academic foundation was laid at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Earth and Environmental Sciences, providing him with a robust understanding of the complexities of our natural world.
In addition to his scientific pursuits, Marcus has developed a passion for photography, exploring diverse genres such as landscape, portrait, architecture, and conceptual art. Through his lens, he combines scientific curiosity with artistic vision.
Currently, Marcus has focused on the real estate sector while continuing to pursue his photographic endeavors. He embraces every opportunity to wander into the landscapes of Oregon accompanied by his camera, documenting his vision of Oregon and the world.”
Manfred Parrales (his/him) In his interdisciplinary practice, Manfred often moves between art history, design, and social practice rather than conforming to traditional subject matter or individual expression of art. As a young Latino creator, he envisions art as a communal endeavor, transcending individual expression. He reimagines preconceived notions of art, constantly exploring new perspectives and creative avenues in a practice that embodies the idea of art as a catalyst for community engagement. This approach allows him to become an ‘accidental educator’, which ultimately makes his art practice an integration of art and life.
“I believe that workshops have a significant element of performing arts. It’s quite challenging because it involves interaction with the audience. It’s not just about following the script; you also have to adapt to the characters of the people who come. ”
– Daiya Aida
YCAM（山口情報芸術センター）は、2003年に地域の文化振興を目指して設立されました。メディアアートを中心とした施設で、教育や社会貢献を重視し、多彩なプログラムを提供しています。例えば、議論と身体実践を繰り返して新たなスポーツをつくる「スポーツハッカソン for Kids」や、調理とおいしさを科学的な視点でとらえる「COOKHACK」、現代社会や自身の身体感覚の理解を深められるものなど、興味深い内容が並んでいいます。会田大也氏はYCAMの立ち上げ当初から関わり、現在は学芸普及課長兼アーティスティックディレクターとして活躍しています。今回は、ワークショップを通じた教育プログラムについてお話を伺いました。
Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) was established in 2003 with the aim of promoting local culture. As a facility focused on media art, it emphasizes education and social contributions, offering a diverse range of programs. For instance, there are fascinating concepts such as a “Sports Hackathon for Kids,” where new sports are created through repeated discussions and physical practice, “COOKHACK,” which approaches cooking and taste from a scientific perspective, and others that deepen our understanding of contemporary society and our own bodily sensations. Daiya Aida has been involved with YCAM since its inception and currently serves as the Director of Education and Outreach as well as the Artistic Director. In this interview, we discussed the educational programs conducted through workshops.
Exterior of YCAM, designed by Arata Isozaki. YCAM is launched as an open collaborative community and a new art center. (Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center of Arts and Media [YCAM])
Midori : YCAMでの教育プログラムは、どのように作られてきたのでしょうか？
How have educational programs at YCAM been developed?
Like in any city, I think media art isn’t something that people are familiar with. When you say you’re going to create a facility for media art, people are like, “What’s that?” and the locals think, “Something bizarre has arrived.”
So, I took what I had studied, such as “Media History” and “The Role of Media in the History of Science and Technology” and simplified it to what you could call “Media Literacy Education” in a flat way.
Specifically, it involved designing workshops and creating participatory programs, as well as educational lectures and such. That was the job, including those elements.
Midori : 対象は地元の人ですよね。
Your target audience is the local community, right?
For us, we didn’t see any meaning in narrowing down our audience. We thought it would be fine for people who came from far away to participate. As for age, we were prepared for really anyone of any age to participate. Media is a field that has emerged within a shorter span than a human lifetime. So when it comes to new technology, whether you’re a fourth grader or 60 years old, you’re starting to interact with it at the same time. Having life experience doesn’t necessarily give you an advantage. Midori : なるほど。確かに、むしろ逆ですよね。
I see. That makes sense, actually.
YCAMで11年働いた後、場所と目的は異なるにせよ、東京大学でもプログラムを作られたんですね。
After 11 years of working at YCAM, you created a program at the University of Tokyo as well?
My task at University of Tokyo Graduate School involved teaching doctoral students the theoretical aspects of creating workshops, having them actually create one, and then evaluating the content they developed. The broader goal is to nurture leaders who can operate internationally using ICT. This aims to equip individuals who have traditionally focused their studies and research in academic settings with the ability to implement their findings in society.
In the context of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the failure of Japanese robots during the fuel debris removal project contrasted sharply with the high utility of robots developed by the American DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). This discrepancy highlighted the difference between achieving results in controlled laboratory environments and producing work that is truly valuable in real-world scenarios. It was through this example that experts in robotics began advocating for the education of researchers capable of contributing meaningfully to society.
Midori: 学生たちは、どういう枠組みでワークショップに参加するんですか。
Who actually takes these workshop classes, and how are they structured?
The workshop courses I designed targeted a diverse range of students across 9 departments and 16 to 17 majors. We had students from various backgrounds, including those involved in robotics research, pure logic and mathematics, education, and even nursing. The goal was to incorporate workshops into their research papers as a form of societal implementation. My role was to teach them the fundamental structure of workshops and how to adapt them to their research, ensuring they could handle it themselves.
It was a unique group, and it’s hard to say how successful it was. However, I believe the students learned a lot about the challenges of implementing research outside their field. It’s not enough to run workshops they’ve designed on their own. My colleagues and I will evaluate based on the design and script provided. Should the submission fail to meet the specified standards, it must be resubmitted for further review.
Perhaps, but I’ve always believed that workshops require careful planning, similar to constructing a building or writing a comedy sketch. It’s important to understand the participants’ psychological state, manage timing, and ensure information is clearly communicated. This is why we emphasize a script writing practice, to help students visualize and implement the workshop flow effectively.
Midori : スクリプトがあると、逆にやりにくくなったりしませんか？
Does having a script make it difficult to deviate?
Teaching how to balance between following and deviating from the script was part of my job. In reality, those who don’t prepare a script often struggle more.
Even if they manage to do it, they often can’t finish within the allotted time. It’s not good for a workshop planned for three hours to stretch into four or five, as participants have other commitments. Having hands-on experience allows us to insert impactful phrases at the right moments. If you run out of time to deliver your punchline, it defeats the purpose of the workshop.
Thus, time management is crucial. A script helps you adjust; if you deviate for two minutes, you need to know how to compensate later. The aim isn’t to rigidly stick to a script like a cellphone store clerk, but to have a blueprint. Even if you stray from it, you can find your way back, offering a degree of freedom. That’s the purpose of scripting, and it’s something I wanted them to understand and utilize.
I think of it like a script for a play. It’s not that a play won’t be interesting if it doesn’t follow the script exactly. But when you have a framework, you can call in support members and give them instructions on what you need in the moment. Everyone can refer to the same script.
I also think that workshops have elements of drama. Like saying, “Let’s go with this kind of vibe this time,” or “Let’s play this character here.” (laughs)
I believe that workshops have a significant element of performing arts. It’s quite challenging because it involves interaction with the audience. It’s not just about following the script; you also have to adapt to the character of the people who come. That’s why having a solid framework helps to easily accommodate a broader range of participants than anticipated.
After serving for five years at the University of Tokyo Graduate School, you returned to YCAM. Before that, just for one year, you worked at the Aichi Triennale, which is held in Aichi Prefecture every three years since 2010, and is one of the largest international art festivals in Japan. How was that experience?
My interaction with the volunteers. The roots of volunteering in Aichi Prefecture trace back to the 2005 World Exposition, which inspired many citizens to volunteer. The Aichi Triennale had about 1,200 registered volunteers in 2019, forming a massive organization. It was fascinating to teach them about Visual Thinking Strategies.
Fram Kitagawa, a well-known art director for many incredible art festivals and Triennales in Japan, mentioned “While artists, artworks, and curators in festivals change rapidly, volunteers, or rather the residents, remain constant.” Daisuke Tsuda, Artistic Director for the Aichi Triennale, has mentioned and referred to this many times during the festival’s preparation period. I also strongly agree with this sentiment.
Visual Thinking (Strategy), is an art appreciation method developed for children at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It involves sharing the experience of enjoying artwork with others without prior knowledge of art or the piece itself. This fosters imagination, critical thinking skills, and improves communication abilities.
Even without full facilitation skills, having 1,200 volunteers aware of this methodology shifts from a one-way teaching approach. I felt that this could be a way to explore the possibility of an art festival where interactive dialogues unfold everywhere.
It might sound odd coming from someone who works at a media arts center, but to be honest, I’m not particularly interested in the preservation of the media arts genre itself. Of course, when considering the scope of human society, history, and the history of civilization, I do believe that media plays a crucial role and holds significant meaning. It is through media that humans have changed their methods of remembering and altered their approaches to politics. For example, considering what the Maya civilization, which lacked a writing system, was all about and what it meant, including such aspects, I think there’s a lot to be considered. It would be ideal to be able to depict these things, but it’s not something I can achieve alone. Whether art directly benefits society is debatable; it might end up being useful, but I’m skeptical about works created with that explicit purpose in mind. That’s my candid opinion.
The issue of “freedom of expression” was highlighted at the Aichi Triennale. I believe it’s relatively rare for artists to create their works with the intention of “serving society.” In my opinion, artists often create because they are compelled to, not because they want to serve a societal purpose.
However, when integrating these works into society, there’s a notion that they need to be “useful” in order for funds and energy to flow towards them. Museums and similar institutions play a role in designing how society and art connect, and how to create context for this connection.
From the 2019 Aichi Triennale website, that Mr. Aida was involved as the curator of educational programs. The “The Inconvenience of Expression Exhibition” which dealt with various social issues including hate speech and social taboos, faced an onslaught of protests, leading to its cancellation just three days after opening, on August 3. On October 8, after measures were taken to prevent crime and chaos, the exhibition reopened and remained open until the end of the Triennale on October 14. It was covered by the New York Times and the Biennale Foundation, among others, and attracted global attention as one of the defining art scenes of 2019.
As someone who originally is an artist, I do believe that an artist’s moment of expression can indeed be twisted by societal demands or be contextually misplaced as “I didn’t say that.” However ideally, it should happen as little as possible. My stance is that we should protect the space where artists can freely express what they think, say what they want to say, and showcase their expression.
For this, funding and opportunities for exhibition are necessary. Balancing the autonomy and independence of the artist’s expression while positioning it within society is what I consider my mission.
Daiya Aida was invited as an artist to the Sapporo Snow and Light Project held in 2018. In the photo from left to right are the invited artists: Liza Maria Bickel, Domas Schwarz, Daiya Aida, and Midori Yamanaka, who served as an interpreter during the artist talk.
Daiya Aida (he/him) is an artist, curator, and educator based in Japan. For 11 years since its opening in 2003, he has been responsible for education and outreach at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), overseeing the development and implementation of original workshops and educational content spanning media literacy and art education. Since 2014, he has served as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, specializing in the Global Creative Leaders Program in Social ICT. Following his role as the Learning Curator for the Aichi Triennale 2019, he assumed the position of Artistic Director at YCAM in 2020.
山中 緑：日本生まれ、日本育ちのソーシャルプラクティスアーティストで教育者。現在は、オレゴン州ポートランドをベースに活動中。アートとしての国際交流やコミュニティでの協働における創造性の拡大を模索。多様な社会における学び合い／育ち合いを探求している。代表作には、日本の書道をベースに相互のインタラクションを生む“What is your name?”、コーチングメソッドを活用し、会話を記録した”Art of Conversation”など。アート センター カレッジ オブ デザインでグラフィック デザインの学士号を取得。現在はポートランド州立大学大学院にて、アートアンドソーシャルプラクティスを実践・研究。 https://www.midoriyamanaka.com/
Midori Yamanaka (she/her) is a social practice artist and educator born and raised in Japan, currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her practice explores expanding creativity in international exchange and community based collaboration. She explores mutual learning and growth in a diverse society. Her representative works include What is your Name?, which creates mutual interaction based on Japanese calligraphy, and Art of Conversation, which records conversations using coaching methods. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Art Center College of Design, and currently is studying and practicing Art and Social Practice at Portland State University.
The Social Forms of Art (SoFA) Journal is a publication dedicated to supporting, documenting and contextualising social forms of art and its related fields and disciplines. Each issue of the Journal takes an eclectic look at the ways in which artists are engaging with communities, institutions and the public. The Journal supports and discusses projects that offer critique, commentary and context for a field that is active and expanding.
Created within the Portland State University Art & Social Practice Masters In Fine Arts. Program, SoFA Journal is now fully online.
Conversations on Everything is an expanding collection of interviews produced as part of SoFA Journal. Through the potent format of casual interviews as artistic research, insight is harvested from artists, curators, people of other fields and everyday humans. These conversations study social forms of art as a field that lives between and within both art and life.
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