021. Reunited Reliquary
Hello friends,
What better way to dive back into the world of (bi)weekly newslettering than with a list of bits and bobs that have snagged my attention these past couple of months?
I collect a lot of digital stuff each day. I can't help it. My phone notes, my computer, even my email inbox, are all filled with lists upon lists of names of books, artists, movies, links to articles, essays, exhibitions. As much as I would like to, not everything I'm interested in makes it on to the final product you get in your inbox. Maybe it doesn't fit into a particular theme or I have to cut it due to space constraints. That's why I decided to dig into my list-purgatory and share some things from my online stockpile that I've been loving lately.
TOUCH
I’m not a big reader of short stories, but I barreled through Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties in just a matter of days. This sci-fi, speculative fiction collection contains some of the most unusual stories I have ever read—from a list of lovers produced during an epidemic and a reimaging of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to the ghosts of girls sewn into dress linings and a surrealist take on Law and Order: SVU. Machado does a brilliant job of portraying female sexuality (and the violence that women frequently experience) in such an unsettling, almost gothic way. Describing this text does not do it justice, much better to experience it.
At the end of summer, I took a trip to PPOW Gallery to see their exhibition on David Wojnarowicz’s installations. Wojnarowicz, who is mostly remembered now for his provocative photography during the AIDS crisis, his fierce activism, and writing, produced a number of ephemeral installations, sculptures, and performance works (which he called “action installations”) right up until his death in 1992. The gallery recreated a range of these pieces, both physical recreations and with documentary images and video footage. While the Wojnarowicz show at the Whitney this past summer felt more sanitized, this exhibition brings forth his creative tenacity and his skillful, multitudinous use of detritus materials to carve out radical social and political spaces. It was a great way to engage with an artist whose work was not really designed to fit into white gallery cubes, a respectful, challenging tribute that did not bite off more than it could chew. You can learn more about the show here.
It’s that time of year again when the combination of walking through numbing winter winds and arid indoor heating sucks all the moisture straight out of my skin. So I’ve had to rely on Make Beauty’s Marine Salve to bring my crusty chapped lips back to life. The big tube has lasted me for ages even as it’s moved back and forth through my bags each day. Unlike other salve-style lip balms, it has a very neutral (basically no) scent so you can also put in on your cuticles or a small dab on a dry patch of skin and not worry about breaking out from any artificial flavoring. It also comes in a tinted version if you really want some color, but I’d stick to the original since it’s so versatile.
I’m so glad I got to see “Delacroix” at the Met before I went home for the holidays. This exhibition displayed not only some of Delacroix’s more notable paintings, but his prints, manuscripts, sketches, and drawings from his time in France and Morocco. This show definitely gave me a greater appreciation for his bold, energetic technique and passionate life he led. I could’ve spent all day pouring over his doodles on the margins of his prints and reading excerpts from his journal. One of my favorite pieces? The lithograph pictured above, titled Lion of the Atlas Mountains from 1829-30.
I’ve been really lucky to read some amazing books this past semester. Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary is one of those texts that I devoured in one go and it’s stayed in the back of my mind ever since. Mullen is an absolute master of her poetic craft, creating poems tangled up in intricate plays of language that challenge your sense of conventional poetic narrative. These poems have a delicious sonic quality too, making them a treat to both read and recite. I don’t have my personal copy on me right now so here are two poems to tide you over: “Elliptical” and “Sleeping with the Dictionary.”
LOOK
Sabina Ott, an artist who worked in nearly every medium possible, died back in June and I’ve been thinking about her immersive creations since. Ott’s cacophonous environments of detritus sculptures and textures (such as the mountain she created her 2016 solo show at Hyde Park Art Center pictured above) encouraged viewers to engage with her pieces, to explore, watch, and even touch. This direct participation is rarely permitted within sterile white gallery walls, but Ott, also an educator and curator, focused on closing that distance between artwork and viewer, to think through our networked world with materials. As she described her work in a 2010 essay: “The work is full—maximal and I inhabit this land of Maximalism where networks of associations makes one wander from edge to edge, from color to color, from drip to drip, from object to object. In much the same way I find myself wandering from site to site in the non-material space of the Internet, or in the way I hope others will wander in the spaces I create.” You can view more of her work here.
Then there’s the delightfully chromatic work of fashion photographer Sinjun Strom. I’ve followed her on Instagram for ages and each time she updates her portfolio, I’m absolutely dazzled by the way she plays with theatrical color schemes and set pieces so glamorous they verge on kitsch. One of my favorite series has got to be “Hot Mommas,” where Strom photographed elderly women dressed up in elaborate costumes, their eyes punctuated by neon-bright eyeshadow, looking absolutely badass. You can see more of her work here.
Last summer, I was introduced to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings when they were displayed at the New Museum. Placed within a gallery with deep burgundy walls, it felt like stepping into a lush Gothic house (not such a stretch considering that the London-based artist draws inspiration from centuries of traditional European portraiture). Yiadom-Boakye’s subjects are not real models. Painted from her own imagination, they exist a timeless landscape, not bound to a particular place. Yet, as fragmented and dislocated as they might appear, her figures have an undeniably human quality to them. With a few simple, powerful painterly gestures and symbolic compositions, Yiadom-Boakye pulls us into their world. You can check out more of her work here.
Ursula von Rydingsvard’s impressive weathered sculptures are definitely on my mind again now that the weather is getting colder here in New York. I first one of her pieces at Storm King Arts Center about a year ago (although, at the time, I had no idea who she was at the time). Her medium of choice to produce these giant abstractions is either cedar wood or bronze, and she slowly builds up these geological vessels (or leviathans?) through gluing stacked blocks together and carving into them with a circular straw. The result looks like either an ancient tree trunk or a hornet’s nest or a bulging cocoon, definitely something worth seeing in person if you can. You can check out more of her work here. I would also highly recommend listening to her interview with the Modern Art Notes podcast here.
I have one more painter for you: Sanam Khatibi. Like Yiadom-Boakye, her pieces evoke centuries-old traditions. Her washed-out figures cavort in highly realistic Edenic settings reminiscent of Persian miniature paintings and Northern Renaissance landscapes. It’s such a pleasure to study the richness of detail, and the way she uses the age-old medium of oil painting to push back against centuries-long issues of Orientalism (that have traditionally played out in European/Western painting). You can check out more of her work here.
LISTEN
My keep-on-repeat album as of late has got to be Mitski’s Be The Cowboy. I honestly don’t know where to even begin talking about her work. Her poetic lyrics tap into some of our greatest vulnerabilities about love and loneliness and amplify them into emotional storms of sound. Tracks like “Geyser” and “Two Slow Dancers” sear themselves into the interior of the heart while bouncier tunes like “Nobody” and “Washing Machine Heart” make you want to dance around your room (and cry a little bit too). You can listen to the whole album here and watch the great music videos for the album here.
True crime podcasts are my (not so secret) guilty pleasure to listen to on my way to work and school. But two, in particular, grabbed my attention these past few months:
The first is the second season of In the Dark. This particular season focuses on the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man who for the past 21 years has been tried 6 times for the mass murder of furniture store workers in Winona, Mississippi. This podcast delves into one white prosecutor's botched (and, frankly, highly corrupted) attempts to get him convicted, as well as how racism and racial bias in the criminal justice system have caused this disastrous case to go on for as long as it has. You can listen to this season (or begin with their first) here.
Bear Brook is a show about a chilling pair of crimes: four unidentified bodies found across two barrels in New Hampshire. This show begins at these decades-old barrels and follows the subsequent police investigation into a complex story of deception, missing identities, and evasion. It’s only 6 episodes long, so a great way to either dip your toe into the true crime podcast world or to take a break from your regular programs. You can listen to all of the episodes here.
Then there’s King Princess. I had seen her name float around on Twitter, some songs get shared on Instagram, but I finally took the plunge over the summer when I found myself in a bit of a musical rut. And what a marvelous decision it has been. Her EP Make My Bed accompanied through walks across the city (and I’m still convinced that “Upper West Side” should be my school’s anthem) and I can’t get enough of her cool vocals, her smooth melodies that cling to your skin like stepping into an afternoon wet with humidity. You can check out her latest releases here.
Lastly, there’s Fela Kuti’s track “Expensive Shit.” I swear, each time I listen to this song it feels like a shot of endorphins. Even in the bleakest depths of winter, this Afrobeat tune always manages to lift me up, like the first ray of light across your eyes in the morning. Listen to the song and the rest of the album, titled The Best of the Black President 2, here.
LICK
Halloween has already come and gone, but I still feel need to mention a thriller I recently watched with some friends: Bunny Lake Is Missing from 1965. The film follows a single mother, Ann, whose 4-year-old daughter, Bunny, disappears after she's dropped off at nursery school their first day in London. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that there are some doubts that Bunny even exists. The camera work and plot construction are elaborately crafted to disorient you and subvert your expectations at each turn. Definitely reminds me of Old Hollywood noir and Hitchcock's psychological thrillers with more of a cool, London-in-the-60s feel (even The Zombies appear as a cameo). This was my first time watching an Otto Preminger film, and it's definitely left me craving more.
I came across a picture of Junya Watanabe’s “poetry pants” denim collaboration with Levi’s while scrolling through the recesses of Tumblr a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t too familiar with Watanabe’s work at the time, prompting a deep-dive into the rather strange world of JW clothing collectors. These pants, which fashion editor Suzy Menkes described “like a text message between two young lovers,” have a timeless quality to them (maybe it’s the Levi’s brand, maybe it’s the fact that so many contemporary brands and companies have done similar text work over the past twenty years). Watanabe would replicate these text designs again and again on sneakers and shirts, transmitting messages through woven cloth and screen-printing. Who says the printed word is dead? You can learn more about the designer’s legacy here and his other collaborations here.
Verse is a poetry website with a simple, yet effective, mission: to bring you curated poetry ‘playlists’ centering on a specific theme (like "Outer space" or "Blackness and apocalypse"). These poetry curators are not just individual writers, but publishers and readers eager to share their passion with literary and non-literary communities alike. Whether you keep telling your writer friends that you’re still “trying to get into poetry” or you’re looking for new authors to add to your already-massive reading list, this is a great way to get introduced to all kinds of poetic styles. Warning: you may end up spending a lot of time on here clicking from one selection to another. You can fall into the poetry rabbit hole here.
Then there’s St. Vincent’s music video for her tune “Fast Slow Disco” (a remix of her original song “Slow Disco” from her 2017 album Masseduction). She’s an absolute queen, dancing in a sweaty crowd of leather daddies. It’s a great song, a great video, and definitely an underrated queer party anthem. You can experience the whole bacchanalia here.
I remember using Tumblr so much in high school and, from time to time, I go through these bursts of needing to mindlessly scroll through my feed of strange images and articles, looking for something to rattle my brain with inspiration. I have one to share with you today: Thirtyfifty, a blog for a boutique store in Arizona (and first shared with me by my friend Grace as we talked over some weird fruit-infused wine over the summer). With a nice mix of elegant design and mostly Southwestern-inspired images, it always offers some relief from the bitter gloom of New York winter.
If you’re in the New York City area, I suggest trying to make an appointment to visit the Sorted Library in Brooklyn if you can. This independent library was designed to provide a nonlinear learning experience (the Dewey Decimal system has left the building, folks). Designed to generate spontaneous discovery of new literature, visitors are responsible for selecting 3-5 books from the over 3,000 volume collection and arrange them into a particular theme like “Eat Pray Love,” “Books Sometimes Used to Justify Shitty Behavior,” or “System Poetics” (you can see some of the mini collections on their Instagram). You can learn more about this radical program and its founder, Dev Aujla here and, if you want to pay them a visit, you can contact them here.
CLICK
It feels like such a long time since I last shared a poem with you. So here is “In the Morning” by Jayne Cortez. This poem is so visceral, immediately grabbed my attention with its opening lines: “Disguised in my mouth as a swampland / nailed to my teeth like a rising sun / you come out in the middle of fish-scales / you bleed into gourds wrapped with red ants”.
Since I’ve been tumbling my way through all kinds of self-reflection (about life after graduation, my own creative practice, even the future of this newsletter), including McKenzie Wark’s essay, “My Collectible Ass”, feels quite apt for this particular letter. Wark’s piece takes a look at what it means to collect a digital object, what it means to be or create a rare, collectible digital art-object in our information age that emphasizes shareability above all else. You can read the essay here.
I’m still trying to make sense of Fiona Hile’s dizzying poem “Forget the Stars”. It’s a meaty one, of motherhood and meat and metallic tastes in your mouth. Within Hile’s “taxidermied light,” it feels like slipping out of your own skin might be the only way to escape.
These past few months have brought a lot of unfortunate news of publications either shuttering their print magazines or closing down entirely, firing full-time editorial staff and letting go of freelancers. Some were bought up by larger corporations, some justified their actions as choosing to expand their video and digital footprints (raising questions about why long-time staff could not be integrated into those transitions), while others simply could no longer financially sustain themselves (Rookie, Mic, and Glamour are three of the most recent casualties). Now, as many writers and journalists find themselves suddenly without secure employment, many are left figuring out what to do or where else to put their skills. This brings me to Sean Patrick Cooper’s essay in The Baffler about his time working as a ghostwriter for the 1% through a luxurious biography business called Lifebook. A kind of “glorified ventriloquism”, Cooper was expected to travel to the homes of his company’s wealthy clients, record their life stories, then “spend no more than two business days” creating a biography to the client’s liking. Cooper’s essay takes a dive into the world of biography ghostwriting, stretching all the way back to the fifth century BCE. An interesting look at what goes behind the “definitive, authoritative word on how the heroic caste of makers and job creators can continue living on, in work and in leisure, atop the socioeconomic food chain,” you can read his essay here.
I don’t usually include short fiction in my newsletter (out of, I’ll admit, my limited knowledge in that particular literary field), but I can’t stop thinking about Lily Hackett's “A Seabird” that was featured on Tyrant Books’s blog. It’s an unsettling bit of metamorphosis, a Kafka-esque story with the perils of climate change creeping in. What do you make of feverish lines like "I gave birth to a blue heart. I loved it the same, thought it went sour in the hay. I birthed up a lung, my liver and kidneys.” You can read her story here.
I’m not the type of person to read celebrity profiles, especially on people whose work I’ve never particularly enjoyed, but Allison Davis’s profile on Lena Dunham for The Cut stayed in my mind long after I first read it. Lena Dunham has done and said a lot of really questionable, hypocritical, and downright problematic things over the past few years (feel free to Google). One might expect that a profile of this magnitude and detail to act as a redemption story, but Davis doesn’t really gloss over any of that. If anything she’s hyper-aware of Dunham’s attempts to remake herself in the public eye, taking the time to not only express criticism at her tone-deaf actions (like wanting to be the spokesperson for a fibromyalgia drug while touting a $1,600 heating pad unaffordable to most chronic pain sufferers) but also, at times, to simply present Dunham’s words as-is and let readers draw their own conclusions (when adopting a black puppy, she texts Davis about naming it Rosa, “I’m worried people will get mad bc of Rosa Parks bc I have to consider those things”). To put it plainly, this profile is a lot. Davis’s reporting certainly reinforced a lot of my previously-held views about Dunham and her particular brand of rich white feminism, but it also left me with an unexpected amount of mixed feelings (like sympathizing with all of her chronic pain, addiction, and health issues over the past several years). Davis writes: "But as she texts me increasingly intimate details that she knows I’ll put in this article, as if she were trying to be the director of her own candid, sympathy-generating magazine story, I begin to wonder if Lena Dunham, the performance artist daring us to hate her, is the work.” You can read the entire piece here.
// So much has happened since we last spoke. I left my job at my school's alumni magazine, wrapped an internship at a different magazine (and got to pitch and write a review for them too), got a new job at a local architecture museum, started and finished my senior thesis over the course of a single semester, hit my Goodreads goal of 60 books for the first time ever, and went to a music festival in upstate New York among many other happenings. It's been a lot, but I'm also grateful for all the memories I've created and the people in my life who I've been lucky enough to share these moments with. Now that I'm back in Florida for part of my winter break, both defrosting from the New York winter and in recovery mode from the past semester, I find myself reflecting on everything that's happened this past year, the lessons I've learned, and how to carry these new experiences and interests into the new year (whether it be preparing for adult life after graduation or returning back to my personal writing practice after being in thesis-writing mode for the past 4 months).
Starting up this newsletter again feels like the exciting sensation of warmth in your chest you get after speaking to an old friend for the first time in a while. I have so many things to share with you guys and, as always, I'm just a click away from hearing your own thoughts, questions, and recommendations.
Until next time (which will be sooner than you think!).
Love,
Ellie