American Factory

By Andy Battle

JUL-AUG 2020 | Field Notes

American Factory, directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert in 2019, begins with scenes of hope. In 2008, General Motors shut its factory in Moraine, Ohio, just south of Dayton. Nearly 2,500 auto-workers lost their jobs. Counting workers in ancillary local industries, the jobless toll rose to 10,000. When Fuyao, a Chinese auto glass maker, announced in 2014 that it would take over the old GM plant and employ 800, the reaction was relief.

Shaun Leonardo: The Breath of Empty Space

By Louis Block

MAR 2020 | ArtSeen

Shaun Leonardo’s current exhibition posits a simple act of resistance: to excavate these optical memories, sifting through their noise. In his repeated drawings of news photographs surrounding violence against Black men, Leonardo builds a system that questions a singular image’s capacity for truth-telling.

Degrees of Retreat

By Carina Kohn

MAY 2020 | Fiction

Every little thing in Rosa’s house has energy, down to the dish towel. She never stands close to the microwave. All her pots are cast iron. Her clothes are cotton, and her food, organic. Every piece of furniture she and her husband bought has been replaced with its natural, unpolished wood equivalent.

From The Factory

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd

SEPT 2019 | Fiction

As I opened the basement-level door, I thought I could smell birds. “Hello, I’m here for a two o’clock interview,” I said to the overweight woman seated under a sign that read Print Services Reception. Without looking up, she nodded and lifted the receiver. I watched her mouth the words. Your two o’clock is here. Her lipstick had come off in places.