Sofa Issues

Keeping the Keepsakes Alive

“So I take it upon myself as a responsibility, as my duty, as an Indian person of origin, that I as an artist need to speak up. I need to raise my voice against the ongoing oppression because my fellow artists, my brothers and sisters back home do not have the privilege and the freedom to do so currently.”

Simi Malhotra

On October 13th, an emotionally charged and energetic protest resonated through the streets of Portland, summoning individuals to stand together and raise their voices against the relentless atrocities and violence inflicted upon the people of Palestine. In my mere month-long stay in Portland, I found myself navigating the intricacies of the city’s public life and culture. As a newcomer to this land, I reveled in the liberating embrace of freedom of speech.

I stood here at my first protest gathering in Portland, a rare occasion in a time when the space for dissent was rapidly diminishing. Shyly clutching a placard, I hesitated to join the impassioned chants, acutely aware of my unfamiliarity with the city and its people. 

A voice cut through the energy, calling my name—or so I thought. I turned, and my gaze met another woman, her countenance mirroring my own features. She stood boldly, fearlessly, raising a hand painted banner. It was then that I realized the call was intended for her. She noticed my confusion and introduced herself, saying, “Hi, I am Simi,”. I replied, “We have the same name!” This unfolded my first encounter with Simi Malhotra, a performance artist in Portland, whose roots trace back to New Delhi, much like my own. However, her artistic journey in Portland had started two decades prior to mine, holding a more intimate connection with the city’s public life and culture.

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Simeen Anjum: Good Evening Simmi! Long time no see.

Simi Malhotra: Good evening Simmi! Yes. :) (We literally have the same names if pronounced by someone from Delhi)

Simeen: So would you like to begin by introducing yourself for my readers?

Simi: Sure. Hi readers! My name is Simi Malhotra. I was born and raised in Delhi, India, same as Simeen who is here with me, and I moved to Portland 20 years ago when I married my husband who is a native Portlander. Growing up the first art that I learned was Kathak (A classical Indian dance). I practiced Kathak from the age of six to eleven,  and then I switched to Odissi and I learned Odissi (a dance-drama genre of performance art, where the artist(s) and musicians play out a story, a spiritual message or devotional poem) . I got trained with the Mahapatra family lineage. My guru’s name was Shri Dilip Shankar Mahapatra. And I learned that and I represented my school, my college, and my university, and my state in many state and national level championships, and I won a few also. In addition to that, I write poetry. I also sing— Sufi, Classical, harmoniums, and vocals. I also do Madhubani paintings.

Simeen: Wow! I am very curious about your poetry. Do you write in English?

Simi: I write in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, a mix of the three languages. I am interested in delving deeper into understanding the complexity of human emotions. 

Simeen: Can you share an emotion that you’ve been engaged with in your work recently?

Simi: Yes, you see we’ve grown accustomed to encountering news about deaths through cold numbers and statistics, yet each number represents a unique world, an entire universe of individual experiences. Lately, I’ve been experiencing this realization more often. When we look at stuff happening in the world, it’s easy to say something like “so many people died,” or “so many got hurt.” But for those folks, and their families and friends, those are their whole worlds. It just makes you think about how life is both temporary and permanent at the same time. And how something we might see as no big deal can be the most important thing in the world to someone else.

Simeen: Absolutely, I completely get what you’re saying. It’s like we’re bombarded with news about death and violence all the time, and it can make us a bit desensitized. We see these numbers and figures, and it’s hard to really grieve or truly empathize with the people behind them. It’s kind of sad when you think about it.

It reminds me of something Susan Sontag wrote in her work Regarding the Pain of Others, “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” It’s a powerful reminder that just being aware of the pain and suffering around us isn’t enough; we need to take meaningful action to make a difference and truly feel empathy.

Simi: Right.

Simeen: I am also interested  in the fact that you have been doing all these various traditional forms of Indian art. Can you describe the transition you went through when you relocated to Portland and started practicing these art forms in a completely different environment? How did this experience contribute to your connection with the local community here?

Simi: I have mixed feelings about all of this, you know. When I started doing this here, I experienced two different kinds of reactions. On one hand, there were folks who were incredibly appreciative and welcoming. They embraced me with open arms, and there was so much warmth, love, and friendship in their approach. That was one side of it. On the other hand, there were also some folks who were pretty ignorant about it all. They either took it humorously and ironically or made fun of it, even going as far as appropriating it.

As an artist, though, this mix of reactions really pushed me to grow. You can’t evolve as an artist without both the positive and negative feedback from your audience. So, it turned into a kind of a constructive challenge for me. The people who were warm and welcoming helped me expand my circle of friends and acquaintances. But with those who didn’t get it, I saw it as a personal mission to educate them in a gentle way, without belittling or demeaning them. It was all about sharing my culture, my roots, my traditions. I knew that if I lost patience or reacted the same way they did, then there wouldn’t be any difference between us. So, it became an opportunity to grow as an artist, whether by gracefully accepting praise or by gently educating others about our culture in a constructive and informative manner.

Simeen: I can see that you’ve really created a wonderful place for yourself here with the work you’ve been doing. Do you think it would be any easier for someone like me, who’s recently moved to Portland, to draw inspiration from your journey? Or do you think I would likely face similar challenges to what you encountered many years ago when you first arrived? I’m curious about what you think has changed over the years in terms of inclusivity and how people of color like us are carving out their space in Portland.

Simi: Well, since I moved here, there have been some changes, but there are still areas that require significant work, and I’ve been actively involved in that ongoing effort. It’s not just me; it’s all people of color, especially those from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Within our cultures, there are various subcultures. For instance, I’m from India, so within the broader Indian subcontinent, there are further subcultures, and I’m a Punjabi. 

For you, it might mean you’re part of all those larger identities, and then, instead of Punjabi, you identify as Muslim, right? These subcultures affect how people interact with us and what they think of us. Almost two decades ago, the challenges were different because people weren’t as aware. Thanks to social media, a lot of things have become more common for people to see, and there’s greater understanding.

Furthermore, with movements like Black Lives Matter and the increased emphasis on inclusivity and open dialogues, conversations have opened up between white individuals and people of color, as well as with other minorities. This dialogue has resulted in many improvements in various ways. Of course, there’s still much work to be done, but you’re going to face your own unique set of challenges, depending on the specific art form you want to pursue and build a career in.

The good news is that you’ll have more open dialogues. People will be eager to listen to you, and you’ll be provided with space to share your experiences. When I first arrived, I often had to create that space for myself, and it didn’t always work out. But I couldn’t take it too much to heart because the fight had to continue. So, you’re a bit more fortunate in that people are listening, educating themselves, and making an effort to understand and give space to those from minority backgrounds, allowing them to share their stories with the world.

Simeen: That’s great to hear, and I’m excited about creating my own space as well. Could you share your insights on how practicing these diverse traditional Indian art forms has influenced your path in terms of forming your identity and finding your space in this journey?

Simi: Definitely, these art forms serve as my anchor, keeping me grounded and deeply connected not just to the broader world, but especially to my community, culture, and roots. When you have a job, a family, and the demands of daily life, it’s all too easy to either forget or use the excuse of not having enough time for things that are inherently and culturally very, very important to you.

These art forms help me stay in touch with and preserve our traditions and cultures, whether it’s participating in festivals or establishing community partnerships that celebrate rising above differences in origin, beliefs, and backgrounds. For instance, they enable me to celebrate Eid with my Pakistani friends, and they, in turn, celebrate Diwali with me. Art forms are what initially connected us, and they continue to strengthen these bonds. And, it’s worth noting that Bollywood also plays a significant role in this connection.

Simeen: How do you feel when you read the news about your homeland and see how things are rapidly changing? And that you might not have the same kind of freedom for intercultural/interreligious dialogue there among different communities?

Simi: I feel that no matter which art form I dive into here, whether it’s performing or fine arts, I always make it a point to share it with the world that they cannot stop everybody from speaking up or prevent artists from speaking up or expressing themselves through their art, despite all the censorship and surveillance that might be going on there. I know things are difficult back home with increasing attacks on minorities and press freedom and activists. However, the fact that we’re living abroad and not directly in the midst of it grants us a unique kind of privilege. We’re beyond the reach of those who might want to silence us. This, in turn, places a significant responsibility on our shoulders. It means we can take action without worrying about what the consequences are going to be. So I take it upon myself as a responsibility, as my duty, as an Indian person of origin, that I as an artist need to speak up. I need to raise my voice against the ongoing oppression because my fellow artists, my brothers and sisters back home do not have the privilege and the freedom to do so currently.

Simeen: I am so glad I met you here, you know. I feel really comfortable just knowing that you are around.

Simi: You know, I used to celebrate all the Indian festivals outside, but now I see them as a unique opportunity for community building, especially for those who are away from home. I love to host gatherings where we can come together, feel a sense of security, and revel in our culture. I’m actually in the process of organizing a Diwali party, and I’d love to have you there. The aim is to foster camaraderie and strengthen our community bonds. However, it’s quite a challenge because we’re all leading busy lives, often dealing with our own share of ups and downs.

I was wondering if there might be someone who shares a similar mindset and perhaps has a bit of flexibility in their schedule. Teaming up with such a person could allow us to plan something special together.

Simeen: Definitely! I am excited. Can you share with us what you have been up to these days?

Simi: Right now, I’m in the process of writing. Mostly I’m journaling, which is kind of free flow narrative because of what’s happening, because I just don’t want whatever feelings that I’m having to just go in a vacuum, get lost in space. So that is why I’m trying to write those down in whatever form they come. I’m not trying to be too hard on myself for it to take the form of a story or an essay or a poem, but I’m just trying to let the words flow out of it. And when all of this is over,  I can look back, relate and work on making a form out of them. Right now, I need to just feel.

In addition to that, I am in the process of designing a tote bag collection. I am working with canvas tote bags with hand painted Madhubani motifs. I also just finished a documentary with my friends called The World of Henna, which I helped them shoot in India. I have just finished doing the voiceover for that. Those are the three current things that I’m working on.

Simeen: All right, that sounds great. So I spotted you the other day at a protest demanding a ceasefire on the ongoing violence in Palestinians. Where else can I find you in Portland?

Simi: You can see me at most of the protests for human rights that will be taking place anywhere!  I perform at various places in Portland, I do poetry and dance.

But other than that you can spot me at any of the diaspora congregations, whether that’s the Diwali Bazaar or if there’s an Eid or Diwali Bazaar,I would be there. And you can spot me at Bollywood nights at places around the city because I am Punjabi and I love dancing. I work at the Portland Center for the Arts. So all of the five big theaters in downtown Portland; The Keller, Schnitz, Winnix, Newmark, and Brunish. I work as a house manager at those five theaters. So you can see me at one of the performances that are happening over there. One of them coming up is Chelsea Handler and then Zakir Hussain is playing later this month. And other than that, I work at the community convention center.

I also run my radio show in Portland, serving the Indian diaspora and the broader South Asian community. I curate different playlists that resonate with our cultural experiences. I mostly play folk music of the southeast region of Asia and try to create a sense of unity, building a community where individuals from diverse backgrounds can connect through the soulful melodies of South Asian music.

Simeen: Thank you Simi, for giving me your time for this interview. Here’s my last question, If you could have anything from anywhere in the world for dinner tonight, what would it be?

Simi: Oh my God! Here’s two things. Khatta Meetha Pethe ki Sabzi with Bedmi, the Bharmapuri with the Khatta Meetha Petha, with the big achar from Mathura or Vrindavan.

Simeen: I haven’t had it, but I love how it sounds.

Simi: And the second one is the Amritsari Kulcha bread with nothing but just, like, a big dollop of white butter on it. The one with potato stuffing. And a big big big glass of lassi.

Simeen: Perhaps we can attempt cooking it ourselves sometime if we get together.

Simi: For sure.

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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.

Simi Malhotra (she/her), a native of Delhi, India, has been a dynamic presence in Portland for the past two decades. Rooted in classical Indian dance, Simi transitioned from Kathak to Odissi, representing her school, college, and state in numerous championships. Alongside her dance prowess, Simi is a poet, singer of Sufi and classical genres, and a skilled performer.She also practices Madhubani, a style of Indian folk painting. Currently serving as the House Manager at the Portland Center for the Arts, she’s a multidisciplinary artist with a deep commitment to her art and social activism.

A Community is a Rocking Chair

“For me, art is not an item that just decorates. It’s experience, it’s more about time. You are offering time to share with the community, and you’re gaining the time and experience of being with others.”

-Limei Lai

I met Limei Lai at the exhibition of her latest piece on mixed identities. In her installation, she mixes traditional Chinese embroidery, modern embroidery, fabric collage, photographs, and woven containers to bring forth a conversation about her gender expectations, growing up, and creating community through art. 

In my practice, I too have used textiles and crafting to facilitate spaces for people to share and connect with their intuition through embroidery workshops while also exploring the meaning we can find in objects in our everyday lives. I, too, believe in the power of storytelling as a community-building experience. 

Because of this, I was drawn to the fact that Lai invites her audience to share their own experiences with internal and external expectations by making art objects themselves. 

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Adela Cardona: Can you tell me about the expectations you grew up with in China and how those show up in the piece, Mixed Identity, in Portland Textile Month?

Limei Lai: When I think about mixed identity, I think about my personal experience. When I grew up, I eventually realized I wasn’t what was expected by my parents. They wanted me to be a boy, because I was born in China. 

Throughout my childhood, I remember my dad said things like, you’re so dumb, don’t go to that school, you’re not smart, just take this job. Then I got married and moved to the US and I feel like I’m not meeting the expectations put on me again.

This old Chinese mentality shows up in the piece in the mix of traditional versus modern embroidery. Traditional embroidery has symbolic objects, like my name, which is Winter Blossom; whereas modern embroidery is the most abstract. 

Adela: Why use embroidery?

Limei: It’s based on my childhood memory. My grandma did embroidery until she was 80 years old. I grew up in a village where most of the women do embroidery. It was rather commercial, but then what they were making was very traditional. So they were using thicker threads and sewing on linen. 

They had a lot of traditional methods that were very time-consuming. They did it in this place called Women’s House, it was a place for the community to go and do embroidery together. A bunch of ladies spending time together, that’s how I grew up. That’s how I connect. 

Adela: Is that why the idea of a community is so important in your work? 

Limei: Yeah. I think it’s sort of symbolic in a way that our objects are containers for this togetherness. I thought, “What am I going to create for myself?” But then, the thought becomes what do I want? I feel like I want a community. So you go inside and look at yourself and eventually say, okay, I’m fine with loneliness. I’m fine with this kind of quietness and I’m fine with not having a lot of normal things like a husband, a bunch of good friends, a large community.

But I do want to have this community that makes me feel like a rocking chair. I can sit here, it’s a really comfortable environment. It’s a loving, caring environment. If I want that, if I want to be included, then the first move is to include others. So my personal practice is an act of including other people; an act of putting myself into the community. 

For me, art is not an item that just decorates. It’s experience, it’s more about time. You are offering time to share with the community, and you’re gaining the time and experience of being with others. The end result is having everyone together, including each other, sharing some of our most tender moments, and opening up to our vulnerabilities.

Adela: So this is why, in your latest piece, you created egg-shaped containers out of fabric where people could also put their own expectations?

Limei: Yes. There were two ways to interact with it; self-guided or with me. We create some artwork and then they include it in the eggs. Really, what I want is to encourage people to express themselves, to have a conversation with others, it is more important than the final object. 

The object they choose has a value in itself, yet the value changes because we seal some of our time together into this object; we put in our understanding and memory. To me, all this energy already exists. You preserved a beautiful moment and you created that community right at that beautiful time. You finished the circle, it’s all in you, it’s all done. I created something for people to experience and to feel.

Adela: I noticed you have worked with containers before, like pockets, why are they so important in your work?

Limei:  You see, textiles can be a container for memories, just as motherhood is a reminder that our bodies can be a container for civilization. Your body creates the next generation. You create the best artwork of your life and they’re very imperfect, but they’re perfect because they are the future. It is also connected to how I was brought up in a community-focused kind of lifestyle in China. It’s the idea that a community is a container and a shelter for people. When I came here, art became a container for history and storytelling. Then an object becomes the container for artists. It’s a relational thing that exists between the world and the person, and the idea and the person. I find myself making a lot of containers. Partly because people want to be private, and keep something hidden, and partly because it needs to be safe.

Adela: And this play of showing and hiding, it shows up again in this piece. 

Limei: Yes. In terms of the material choice in this one, I was focusing on creating layers, the sheer cheesecloth over objects, contrasted with the wire. This idea of complexity in people, in humans. There is a Chinese writer called Ai Ling Zhang. She died in the United States, but she got super famous at age 30. She was writing novels. In the end, she says, “life is a luxury fur coat, but with all those fleas and bedbugs and all sorts of yucky things inside. So if you open it up, it’s very real.” So that’s why I did that fabric collage, with the idea of seeing through the surface. 

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Adela Cardona (She/ Her) is a Colombian storyteller, writer, content maker & event producer, dealing with the topics of sustainable fashion, mental health, and gender issues. She majored in Communications and Literature. She is the founder of “Mujeres No Graciosas,” an open mic and the podcast of Colombian creators, “La Bombillera.”

Limei Lai (She/Her) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator who enjoys working with paint, fabric, and clay. Her themes depict her fear and love of Pacific Northwest life and Asian women’s immigrant intergenerational stories. Togetherness and inclusion are her messages. Community engagement performance installation is her passion. She believes that art not only critiques, questions, and reflects, but also celebrates, thus bridging good changes.

Much Love to You Dearest Gilian

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

-Violet Baxter

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

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Gilian Rappaport: How did you become an artist?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gilian: How do you see nature in your work? 

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

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

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

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

Gilian: What music do you listen to? 

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

Gilian: What artists do you admire?

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

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

Gilian: Do you like to dance?  

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

Gilian: Have you taken any memorable movement classes?  

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

Gilian: What are you interested in now? 

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

Gilian: How are you spending your time these days?

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

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

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

We Can’t Extricate Culture From Liberation

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

-Jasmine Araujo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jasmine: Yeah, tell me about your artistic practice. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cover

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

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

-Luz Blumenfeld

Letter from the Editors

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

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

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

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

Your editors,

Olivia DelGandio, Caryn Aasness, and Luz Blumenfeld 

(with Becca Kauffman and Morgan Hornsby)

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

Ashley Yang-Thompson with Li Yu-Tang

translated by Yuyang Zhang

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

– Li Yu-Tang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ash: Do you miss China?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashley Yang-Thompson with Kevin Sampsell

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

– Kevin Sampsell

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

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

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

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

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

I love that story about Duchamp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How pure is that non-fiction though?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin: Heh heh heh heh. 

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

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

ADDENDUM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intimacy and Ritual

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

-Miranda July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luz: Yeah, like that level of intimacy—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luz: Oh like, now now. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luz: Like it felt like a closing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Was a Hero and Loved 

“idk it’s like it never happened” 

-Nate Hill

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

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Nadine Hanson: What did you eat today? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nadine: When did you last cry, and why? 

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

Nadine: Do you believe in god? 

Nate: Idk

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

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

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

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

Nadine: :,,,,,)

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

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

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

Nate: It’s ok

yes

Darling Try Me

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

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

The facts as I recall are…

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

We separated 

I set up a website 

Wore a paper bag on my head naked 

Invited random women to my apartment 

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

You came over and [redacted]

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

Lots of drugs and sex

She brought it to court 

She told my mother 

I took the website down

There were like a dozen women who did it?  

Idk it’s like it never happened

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nate: Idk I feel amazing 

Nadine: Are you scared to die?

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

Nadine: Can you talk about your relationship to costumes? 

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

Nadine: Why an ice cream man? 

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

Nadine: What is sinister about it to you? 

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

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

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

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

Nate: No I heard you can get tendonitis from scooping 

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

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

Nadine: What’s your Mcdonald’s order?

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

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

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