Arts & Culture

“An act of survival and a strategy to heal:”  Suné Woods Interview and Performance
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

“An act of survival and a strategy to heal:” Suné Woods Interview and Performance

I had the opportunity to interview artist Suné Woods about her commissioned video performance Suite Number Seven (2020), which will appear in the group exhibition Eco-Urgency: Now or Never in late August 2021. Suite Number Seven (4 min. 28 sec., 2020) is Woods’s commissioned contribution to Meshell Ndegeocello’s project, Chapter […]

Dying While Black
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

Dying While Black

(Mourning Breonna Taylor’s Demise) Life’s sacred trust shatters, night’s peace extinguished, vitality’s hope destroyed: error blameless, intolerance swarming dereliction’s hatred, each time and place like every place and time vacancy’s insidious bloat slaughters life, devastation’s purpose fulfilled, human love wasted, sentient feeling stilled, power’s grotesque fantasy, self-appointed horror snuffing what […]

Imagining Liberation
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

Imagining Liberation

Our cry for the right to love (and be loved) is the fiercest and most radical revolutionary demand anyone could make. It is the demand for the complete liberation of the human body and spirit (with carnal fullness) into the transcendent capacity of our human existence, socially and personally. Love […]

this mourning
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

this mourning

  star of Bethlehem open in profusion with the new moon a ground cover of small celestial flowers on this day when the faithful break their month-long fast   at long last the bones of our children have been returned to family and earth…   how could it be? almost […]

Indelible
Arts & Culture / Health / The Reading Room / Vol 3. No. 1

Indelible

The August sunset burnished the room. People swarming in costumes–tangerine scarf and ballooning teal trousers on one woman, another with some kind of free-form jewelry, like golden arms encircling her neck.  Men in suits and ties, younger ones in shirts with Beckett-styled hedged hair and Yeatsian rimmed glasses.  Polyglot chatter: […]

Blood Orange & Saint Augustine
Arts & Culture / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

Blood Orange & Saint Augustine

As a cisgender, pasty-white man, I’m often buffered from reality. Worse still, I’ve cloistered myself away from contemporary life by becoming a scholar of medieval theology. But recently, like a revelation, Youtube’s algorithms have connected me with an enchanting music video by Blood Orange. This song, “Augustine,” is a sensual, […]

Donald Trump is Still a Threat to Our Democracy, and Artists Should Not Back Down
Arts & Culture / Dispatches / Politics / The Reading Room / Vol 3. No. 1

Donald Trump is Still a Threat to Our Democracy, and Artists Should Not Back Down

We all need a break. Despite the fact that the murder of George Floyd, among too many other Black Americans, jolted an important and overdue conversation about racial inequity to the forefront; we all felt drained from a year in which we lived through a deadly pandemic and an election […]

Image Credit: Susan Bee, Anywhere Out of the World, (2019), 24" x 18", 30” x 24”, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

from Where Here Were We

June 24 Every once in a while well maybe not every when the wind is especially fierce there’s a rawness without sorrow or wound, shouted into storm, the low the high the good the bad. Well maybe not bad but it feels that way, like a slap across the face […]

Image Credit: Chiffon Thomas, A mother who had no mother, (2017). Embroidery floss, acrylic paint, and canvas on window screen, 57" x 44 1/2". © Chiffon Thomas.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

from A History of the Bitch (AHOTB)

Testimonial Testify For a time, in some places, only men could testify. “Testify” rooted with testes testicles. Tongue tied to crotch; talk of truth as— biology.                  Biblical Abraham had his servant swear a solid: “put your hand under my thigh, and I […]

Image Credit: Henry Taylor, Rock It, (2008). 5 cardboard boxes (premium malt boxes), acrylic on foam mannequin head, wood) 36" x 12" x 80 1/2". © Henry Taylor
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

The Danger of Cheer’s Resolve

Ruckus squawking overhead, each moment seagulls grousing as if the world were theirs. Somewhat out of sorts, a casual form slogs along the strand gazing at sky’s noise, a forceful finger lifted to the din, his gruff deliberate bark snarling BASTA! Awkward, slightly corpulent, no longer quickly springing up to […]

Image Credit: Charles Frederick, Shawangunk Mushroom, (2013-2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Arts & Culture / Climate / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

Climate Catastrophes

the roses too/ bloomed red that year/ at the wrong time/ (far too early)/ a warning/ (which once again we refused to heed)/ thus against the fields of white frost,/ they were as though stigmata/ (breaking a holy flesh)/ earth signs, bloodletting/ animals at night/ injuring one another/ (my father […]

Image Credit: Bethany Collins, Too White To Be Black, (2014). Graphite, charcoal, and latex paint on Arches paper 29 × 41 in. © Bethany Collins, Courtesy of Patron Gallery, Chicago.
Arts & Culture / Politics / The Reading Room / Vol. 2 No. 4

Be (In) Water: A Note on the Black Otolith

The first time that I heard the word “otolith” was in a brief video from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. In it, their “curator of fish,” James Maclaine, demonstrated the new scanning technology that would allow him to examine the undigested stomach contents of the Museum’s rare, preserved […]