Editor's Message
We’ve only Just Begun…
I would say that I’m ready to lay down my sword and shield, except that I own neither. I also could serve up a cliché about pens and swords, but it seems totally irrelevant. There has been plenty of dissent in the press and elsewhere regarding the pending war in Iraq, but in the end it doesn’t matter. The president is ready to take on Saddam, Congress is quite willing to back him up, and the only real question is whether General Tommy Franks will be an able occupation ruler of Iraq.
And so, reluctantly, I must refrain from saying that “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” That’s because we are being given very little choice other than to do so. Last fall, Donald Rumsfeld promised a forty-year war on terrorism, and by my count, that means we’ve got 39 more years to go. That the richest, most powerful nation in human history can devise no better means for ruling the world other than through military aggression seems rather primitive. But perhaps I’m the one who’s being naïve.
The good news is that very few pages in this issue actually pertain to Iraq. In fact, this issue is dedicated to the proposition that there is more to life than war. Peace.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Elle Pérez with Ksenia M. Soboleva
JUL-AUG 2022 | Art
Elle Pérez locates intimacy that moves beyond bodily matter. Ranging from portraiture to landscape, their photographs capture the lived experience of bodies and nature, the transformations that occur across time and space. The distinct configurations in which Pérez presents their work in exhibition spaces offer a glimpse into the artist’s thought process, allowing the viewer into their creative constellation. I had the pleasure of being in conversation with Pérez on the occasion of their exhibition Devotions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as their inclusion in this year’s Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams. We spoke about their introduction to photography, its malleable qualities, and the ways in which thinking about gender has taken a backseat. Pérez generously described the process around Devotions, as well as the photographs in the Biennale, taking me on a journey to Puerto Rico and their first visit back after Hurricane Maria.
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound
By David CarrierAPRIL 2022 | ArtSeen
Bouabré said that he didn’t work from his imagination, but drew what delighted him. His delights included cloud formations; the natural markings on the surfaces of oranges, bananas, kola nuts, and leaves; numbering systems; and, more broadly, what he called “knowledge of the world.”
Howie Chen and Renée Green
JUL-AUG 2022 | Critics Page
It is a "framed" conversation between me and Renée Green. It captures a dialogue nested in a dialogue (sort of a dialogic readymade) but also points to expansive issues such as institution, decolonization, and undoing necessary to understand the “assignment” at hand—in the spirit of this AA project.
Aimee Parkison’s Sister Séance
By Jacquelyn Marie GalloOCT 2021 | Books
Sister Séance, the most recent novel by Aimee Parkison, far surpassed my proclivity toward all things strange and unusual and emparted a new context for one of the greatest and most fascinating movements of the 19th century.
