Month 2: Volume 2
let us dodge the empire of predictability
Welcome to (Month 2: Volume 2), the third exclusive collection for paid subscribers! Thank you again for supporting this project, I really appreciate it!
(Month 2: Volume 2) contains twenty-one contemporary visual artists from all over the world with an emphasis on Ukrainian artists, fifteen pieces of contemporary literature: poetry/fiction/theory/interviews, six mind-blowing albums, fifteen entrancing videos: artworks, fashion shows, music videos, interviews, documentaries, and more stuff that resists categorization!
Don’t forget this newsletter will exceed most email limits, so you’ll need to click through to “view entire message” at the bottom of this email or click over to the website to enjoy the whole thing.
And remember, every entry comes with a link so you can explore more and more.
Now then, without further ado…
ALUCIIN (2020)
directed by Florence To
Using generative motion graphics and an architectural approach to spatial design, artist and director Florence To condenses her interests in psychoacoustics, neuroscience and computational methods into ambitious sound and light installations.
With ‘ALUCIIN’, the artist turns her attention to her dreams, examining the relationship between movement and time by rendering conceptual visualisations of her different dream states.
“There is no rational experience but indispensable ambiguity between the temporal and conceptual”, she says of the piece. “The textures evolve into advanced repetitive variations inherent to contradictions and dualities”.
The hypnagogic sounds accompanying the animations were made using Cyema, an instrument of To’s own making that utilises the resonances of a number of synthesised iron rods. To weaves these soundscapes into the fabric of her dream visualisations, anchoring these abstract textures into a cohesive audiovisual experience.
Contemporary Ukrainian artist Artem Volokitin
Cassandra, thank you so much for asking about birds and words. I think that in some ways we do write one long poem throughout our lives. I started writing as a child and I’ve never stopped, though I’ve often faltered and been unsure and unknowing about my path.
— Ruth Danon in conversation with Cassandra Cleghorn, via The Literary Review
"Paper Piece" composed by Ben Patterson (1960)
performed by Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater (Shinjuku Bunka Center, 2012-10-31）
ALSO: This recent article on Ben Patterson via The Wire where “Anton Lukoszevieze surveys some key works by a Black American composer who was at the heart of the European avant garde”
Richard Quinn | FALL 2022 READY-TO-WEAR (full collection)
Every morning I wake up and the first person I see says, “Hi, I’m the internet, here to shorten your memory.”
Moloch demands his daily flesh. I mean the surveillance capitalism complex.
How tired am I of this plaguey empire! But it was like this when we got here.
— from Kathleen Rooney’s “With the Face to the Rear, in the Direction Behind,” via TriQuarterly
Contemporary Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Carlos Estévez
When I asked him why he had not called he explained to me that he had been buried alive and that he did not have a phone. In his thin chicken lips there is or was not any daring.
— from “Three Poems” by Miyó Vestrini, translated by Cassandra Gillig & Anne Boyer, via Granta
Real & Unreal (2015)
directed by Wheeler Winston Dixon
"Here’s a complete re-draft of this film. Images of the real and unreal blended so that the boundaries between them become blurred and indistinct – if there ever were any boundaries in the first place." - WWD
“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.” - Harold Pinter
“People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.” - Andy Warhol
This video was created using footage and soundtracks in the Public Domain, or released as CC0 Public Domain materials, and is made entirely from recycled, repurposed and refashioned images and sounds.
Contemporary French artist Gérard DuBois
In fiction, every moment has infinite possibilities. These infinite possibilities shape characters in infinite ways, and each choice creates a different sequence of possibilities, so there are essentially multiple simultaneous existences. In fiction, the characters are living out one such possibility, so my characters and their world are grounded. This is real to me because it could happen here in this trajectory, even though it didn’t. Maybe it’s actually that fiction writers pledge fealty to the lie, whereas nonfiction writers pledge fealty to the truth.
— from Julie Iromuanya’s interview with Julie Marie Wade, via The Rumpus
And You Were Wonderful, On Stage
Cally Spooner – BMW Tate Live: Performance Room (2014)
Cally Spooner's performance of 'And You Were Wonderful, On Stage' captured live 27 February 2014 at Tate Modern. Following her live musical at Tate Britain, And You Were Wonderful, On Stage, the second part of Cally Spooner's BMW Tate Live commission transforms the musical into an extended trailer for a future film that doesn't exist yet.
Contemporary American artist Max Hooper Schneider
Contemporary Ukrainian artist Iryna Maksymova
The perfumes were constructed at the molecular level, and so too, it seems, was the sound. You hear brief snippets that don’t recur, lending everything an evanescent, momentary sense of being. At one point, on the top level, I listened to hard-edged sharpness, akin to breaking glass. In a room below, down a flight of stairs, I encountered bits of electrical drones, reminiscent of refrigerators and heavy equipment, the steely clang of metal hitting metal.
— from Geeta Dayal's essay/review of “Florian Hecker: Resynthesizers” (2022), via 4Columns
The Un-Private Collection: Nathaniel Mary Quinn + Donna Augustin-Quinn
In conjunction with Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade, The Broad presents an Un-Private Collection conversation with Broad collection artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Donna Augustin-Quinn, actress, director, writer, and producer.
Contemporary Brazilian artist Thai Mainhard
![Thai Mainhard "Heart to Heart" Acrylic on Canvas - Lerebours Antiques](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zL7I!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7c174c6e-632e-4f5a-9ad7-a5f092d2e3a9_1600x1404.jpeg "Thai Mainhard "Heart to Heart" Acrylic on Canvas - Lerebours Antiques")
![Thai Mainhard "My Turn" Acrylic on Canvas - 1RentPlace](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rLhZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F21a07f43-56b1-42fd-aec8-65e01ff39e07_3000x3000.jpeg "Thai Mainhard "My Turn" Acrylic on Canvas - 1RentPlace")
Before advancing, one may raise the question: what is cuteness? Cuteness can be understood on two different, if necessarily interconnected, levels. On the one hand, from a psychophysiological point of view, cuteness is an “affective response—a feeling one may refer to as the ‘Aww’ factor”[32] serving as an evolutionarily advantageous trait. […] On the other hand, cuteness exists as a socio-cultural concept and, by extension, as an aesthetic category.
— from Ana Matilde Sousa’s INTRODUCTION: CUTE STUDIES AND NEGATIVITY, via her website
Contemporary American artist Alex Olson
Mugler Fall Winter 2021 by Casey Cadwallader (full lookbook)
Directed by TORSO.
In one hand the mother held an electric lantern, in the other a long, sharp knife. She was there. For days she'd traveled back to the old city, staring out the window of the train, imagining what would happen when she arrived. Sometimes she pictured killing the man who used to be her husband. Sometimes she helped him escape.
— from Lucas Southworth's “All This in a World Without Dragons,” via West Branch
Nadine Ijewere is a London-born photographer of Nigerian-Jamaican parentage
As Deleuze and Guattari would have it, liberated desire is difficult to pin down. Unlike popular desire, encoded by the flows of capitalism, liberated desire eludes authority and escapes the “impasse of private fantasy” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009). Desire’s amorphous capacity is its genius—to get plugged into different outlets, to reemerge through collective expression.
— from Mimi Howard’s “Ontology’s Exhaust (Review of Fred Moten’s consent not to be a single being) (2020),” via boundary2
Inconsequential Doggereal (1981)
written, directed, produced, edited by Ulysses Jenkins
Here’s Jenkins talking about the film 30 years later:
Ulysses Jenkins in conversation with Lucas Matheson
Series: Other Uses
EMPAC | Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer, March 26, 2018
A conversation between artist Ulysses Jenkins, whose videos examine television’s power to shape current events and historical episodes, and curator Lucas Matheson. This event was part of EMPAC’s 2018 moving image series Other Uses.
Ulysses Jenkins is an artist who has given particular consideration to the portrayal of Black men in America. The evening featured documentary and performance videos Jenkins made from the 1970s to the present, beginning with the artist’s filming of the Watts Festival. Alternating between clarity and obscurity, the forms and content of television were redeployed to challenge the perceived neutrality of the televisual record.
Contemporary American photographer Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin, based in Los Angeles
Contemporary Tongva artist River Garza
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
— from Noor Hindi’s “Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying” via Poetry Foundation
Contemporary Guyanese artist Andrew Lyght
Andrew Lyght, "Full Circle", Dorsky Museum of Art, 2016
Andrew Lyght gallery talk and exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz, April 2, 2016.
Contemporary American artist Jeffrey Simmons
She slit them open, gutted the inedible portions / her masks our masks / her mouth always at our lips / stamped tin, cold gold / crumble-eyed Dreaming in their bellies
— from “Haunted Passages: Three Poems from MINERAL PLANET” by James Pate, via Heavy Feather Review
Mitski — “Stay Soft” (2022)
from the album Laurel Hell
Director: Maegan Houang
Contemporary New Zealander artist Jess Johnson
Sometimes I wonder where the ancestors gather. I am, in those moments, assuming a lot. Maybe I am wistful. Maybe sad. Maybe I am, underneath it all, estranged from what I believe to be an expression, or emanation—or maybe the organization—of the past, in the form of what is commonly, even conveniently, referred to as the ancestors.
Sometimes the sun sets purple. The sky is purple, I mean. Briefly.
—from Brandon Shimoda’s Four Part Series THE AFTERLIFE, via Future Feed
Contemporary American artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty
I’m interested in the relationship between form and engagement and what at any moment you’re being invited to feel with the artwork. Based on any number of things, like your personal history or institutional specifics. What’s the difference between seeing something at Sikkema Jenkins versus the Whitney, and where was I two, three years ago, mentally. Those are all things that are part of this encounter, right? It almost feels like it’s the beginning of a thought process. It’s not the residue of one. It’s a conversation because there’s always something unfinished.
— from Amber Jamilla Musser in conversation with Jennifer Packer, via The Brooklyn Rail
Mecha Maiko - “Phones” (Official Video)
from the album Let’s! (2019)
Directed by Adam T. Burke
Cinematography by Andy Appelle
B Camera Operator Dan Tahmizian
Editing and Title Design by Nathan Boone
Contemporary Spanish artist Cristina Álvarez López
Sarah Jane Burton, the creative director at Alexander McQueen, presents: Storm Chasing, Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2022 collection, about which she said:
I love the idea of the McQueen woman being a storm chaser, of the qualities of storm chasing uniting the passionately individual community of characters wearing the clothes,” Burton explained. “They inhabit the same universe and the clothes are inspired by and made for them. Storm chasing is not only about the beauty of the views but also a sense of mystery and excitement – about embracing the fact that we can’t ever be sure of what might happen next. To give up control and be directly in touch with the unpredictable is to be part of nature, to see and feel it at its most intense – to be at one with a world that is bigger and more powerful than we are.
Short film directed by Sophie Muller
And here’s the runway:
Contemporary Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Balbyshev
WRECKDOM / Free Digital Release / 31 Levels /
Through WRECKDOM, Logan Berry has written a work of intense confrontation and examination.
Bodies dragged through disintegrating interfaces, eyes illuminated in a radioactive green, CCTV footage looping through the static in the air. WRECKDOM is a work of ultratheatricality, luring its audience into the digitized constraints of a primitive stage.
Utilizing highly constrained and primitive game development tools, WRECKDOM has been designed with a certain abrasion in mind. The eyes strain and the ears bleed. We are all suffering in the esoterica of the watching eye.
Please hold you're breath until the performance is finished.
George Condo: The Way I Think | Louisiana Channel
George Condo was part of the 1980s wild art scene in New York. In this video, recorded in his New York studio, the iconic artist shares his life-long love of drawing and thoughts on his artistic expression, which he describes as “artificial realism.”
“I kind of draw like you’re walking through the forest, where you don’t really know where you’re going, and you just start from some point and randomly travel through the paper until you get to a place where you finally reach your destination.”
Contemporary Cuban artist Alberto Rey
90-year-old Contemporary Japanese artist Ushio Shinohara
a lesser known definition of the word flee is to move swiftly, to take flight. i guess what i am saying is how can we know for sure a moth is flying toward a light and not away from some darkness we ourselves do not know.
— from “dear eva and anna” by nicole v basta, via Waxwing
Forest of Bliss: Rushes, by Robert Gardner
Still images and journal entries read by Robert Gardner from the making of his documentary Forest of Bliss (1986).
Oleksandr Rojtburd (1961-2021) was a Ukrainian artist of the Ukrainian New Wave and co-founder of the theory of the Ukrainian Transavantgard.
Scales in the Spectrum of Space (2015)
Filmmaker: Fern Silva
Composer: Phil Cohran
Footage: Chicago Film Archives
Made for the 2015 CFA Media Mixer
Arsen Savadov is a Ukrainian conceptualist photographer and painter of Armenian descent.
The meaning of a literary work like Dante’s “Inferno,” Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” or Stein’s “Tender Buttons”, we would like to say, lies at least partly in an aesthetic ‘vibe’ or a ‘style’ that we can sense when we consider all the myriad objects and phenomena that make up the imaginative landscape of the work as a kind of curated set.
—from Peli Grietzer’s “A Theory of Vibe” (2017) via Glass-Bead
Adrian Ghenie is a contemporary Romanian painter, who lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Mary Lynn Buchanan’s walkthrough of Mexico City Art Fair: Zonamaco 2022
Zonamaco is one of my favorite Art Fairs and Mexico City is one of my favorite cities. I haven't been back since the 2020 edition, so it was great to be back to see old friends as well as discover some new incredible galleries and artists.
Details about each artist and gallery mentioned can be found [in the description on the YouTube page] .