Live from Oxford

projects and ruminations

I started my third term of a two-year Tibetan and Himalayan Studies program at Oxford last week. Having moved here with my family in September, I am just getting my bearings—both in this country, in our family routine, and in Tibetan language. With this modest confidence, I started making things again, like I’m returning to another room in my inner life. It reminds me of returning home after being away for awhile, how much more acutely I’m present to the smells of the place and the endearment they elicit, the weight of its atmosphere, its comfortingly familiar disarray. Coming back to this place, resuming some of its projects, I’m not sure I can explain it properly (or without a Romantic edge) but I feel more grounded here.

One of my favorite things about Oxford is riding my bike to and from class. I’m getting used to a long stretches of sustained effort. A friend described learning a language as a brute athletic force of memory. I’m inclined to agree and don’t feel intrinsically athletic. I do feel grateful to those who teach it, however, the patience and enthusiasm required. I am generally out of breath but mostly like feeling of the bottom of my lungs. I like feeling my edges blur and wobble and am growing fond of the rain which seems softer here. So to any of you engaged in practices of seeming endless effort and doubt, I’m with you. Let’s go!

Here is a mix for spring, rain, and flowers. An index of projects and more follows below. Most of these are things I’ve been working on for years and here they are now! Live! In bloom. I feel very lucky to have collaborated with so many incredible people.

Publishing:

A book series I co-edit with Giovanni Aloi, Art After Nature, just released a new volume by A. Laurie Palmer called The Lichen Museum which was recently written up in e-flux. It’s a beautiful project about looking and seeing and being in the world. An early installation of the Lichen Museum was installed at Sector 2337 back in the day where also hosted a Lichen Walk. Giovanni and I had the chance to interview Laurie about the book for University of Minnesota Press. You can listen to that here.

Art after Nature is soliciting book proposals until June 1. If interested, please send a CV and 500 words abstract + orientative bibliography to galoi@saic.edu and caroline@sector2337.com.

The Guggenheim recipients were recently awarded and another author from the Art after Nature, Petra Kuppers, received an award for Theater and Performance. Giovanni and I interviewed Petra about her book, Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounter, too. You can listen to that conversation here.

My final Green Lantern Press, The Mandorla Letters: for the hopeful by Nicole Mitchell Gantt, and co-edited with Fulla Abdul-Jabbar came out this last winter. This Afrofuturist memoir on jazz, collaboration, and the search for collective well-being is, like all of Mitchell’s work—amazing. It’s her first book of what I hope will be many! She also got a Guggenheim this year and had some nice interviews about this book in particular on New City and VAN Magazine. If you ever have a chance to go and see Nicole perform, please do. She is such an incredible artist and thinking and world-maker and working with her, Fulla, and the designers Lauren Williams and Kizzy Memani on this publication was incredible. You can find copies of her book here.

Otherwise, the Green Lantern Press was officially adopted by the Hyde Park Art Center last fall and is officially under the stewardship of Mariela Acuña. The official statement about that transition is here although my happy place is seeing the GLP on the Hyde Park Art Center website.

Exhibitions:

I co-curated an exhibition, Reckless Rolodex, with Every house has a door (Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson) inspired by the legacy of Lawrence Steger, an influential Chicago-based performance artist who passed away from complications due to AIDS in the early 90s. The show was at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Gallery 400 between February and March and recently travelled to CoProsperity Catskill where it will be on view until June 2. Gallery 400 has a nice list of critical attention the show received on the exhibition webpage. You can also find an in-depth review by Michael Dango in Art Papers and another by Noa Micaela Fields (including an awesome animated gif of the show by Kiki Lechuga-Dupont) on Sixty Inches from Center.

Comics + Interviews

And I had a couple of articles, interviews, and comics go live too.

A really nice conversation about The Healing Circle with my lit crushes Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley on I’m a Writer But. I got to talk to Sarah Meckler on GSME Book Review podcast—she was very kind putting up with a terrible cold I had at the time (and had had for months! Which I guess is what happens when you move from a high desert to an island with two very young kids).

An article about Eco Art Actions and what they can yield via the Democracy Chain with thanks to my editor Bill Lasarow for (always) encouragement and guidance.

A more recent Scooby-doo/Jem and the Holograms mash-up comic about Stormy Daniels which ran in the Cannibis issue of the Chicago Reader (thank you Salem Collo-Julin for editorial support). I can’t find a link to the issue so I’m just embedding it here….maybe a nice note to end on?

I hope all is well dear friend! Thanks for reading.