Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic
Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic
Publisher Sming Sming Books
Author Suchi Branfman, editor and curator
The United States has the largest prison population in the world. As of the publication of this book, Covid-19 positive cases amongst incarcerated people nationally are 192,423 resulting in 1,305 deaths. The California state prison system has experienced 17,459 cases and 82 deaths. The pandemic has ravaged prisons, shining the light on mass incarceration at its worst. In 2016, choreographer and educator Suchi Branfman began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed “Dancing Through Prison Walls,” developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and how we survive restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The project abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers—Brandon, Yusef, Richie, Landon, Carlos, Terry, Raymond, Angel, and Clinton—began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is the resulting deeply imagined work, written between March and May of 2020. Proceeds from this book go to the choreographers and to support the work of Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
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Author Suchi Branfman, editor and curator
The United States has the largest prison population in the world. As of the publication of this book, Covid-19 positive cases amongst incarcerated people nationally are 192,423 resulting in 1,305 deaths. The California state prison system has experienced 17,459 cases and 82 deaths. The pandemic has ravaged prisons, shining the light on mass incarceration at its worst. In 2016, choreographer and educator Suchi Branfman began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed “Dancing Through Prison Walls,” developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and how we survive restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The project abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers—Brandon, Yusef, Richie, Landon, Carlos, Terry, Raymond, Angel, and Clinton—began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is the resulting deeply imagined work, written between March and May of 2020. Proceeds from this book go to the choreographers and to support the work of Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
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The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future
The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future
Publisher Pluto Press
Author Cassie Thornton
In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, with neoliberal 'self-care' offering little more than a bandaid, how can we take health and care back into our hands? In The Hologram, Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple: three people - a 'triangle' - meet on a regular basis, digitally or in person, to focus on the physical, mental and social health of a fourth - the 'hologram'. The hologram, in turn, teaches their caregivers how to give and also receive care; each member of their triangle becomes a hologram for another, different triangle, and so the system expands. Drawing on radical models developed in the Greek solidarity clinics during a decade of crisis, and directly engaging with discussions around mutual aid and the coronavirus pandemic, The Hologram develops the skills and relationships we desperately need for the anti-capitalist struggles of the present, and the post-capitalist society of the future. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book offers the reader a guide to establishing a Hologram network as well as reflections on this cooperative work in progress.
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Author Cassie Thornton
In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, with neoliberal 'self-care' offering little more than a bandaid, how can we take health and care back into our hands? In The Hologram, Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple: three people - a 'triangle' - meet on a regular basis, digitally or in person, to focus on the physical, mental and social health of a fourth - the 'hologram'. The hologram, in turn, teaches their caregivers how to give and also receive care; each member of their triangle becomes a hologram for another, different triangle, and so the system expands. Drawing on radical models developed in the Greek solidarity clinics during a decade of crisis, and directly engaging with discussions around mutual aid and the coronavirus pandemic, The Hologram develops the skills and relationships we desperately need for the anti-capitalist struggles of the present, and the post-capitalist society of the future. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book offers the reader a guide to establishing a Hologram network as well as reflections on this cooperative work in progress.
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Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
Publisher Pluto Press
Author Marina Sitrin, Colectiva Sembrar
In times of crisis, when institutions of power are laid bare, people turn to one another. Pandemic Solidarity collects firsthand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. The world's media was quick to weave a narrative of selfish individualism, full of empty supermarket shelves and con-men. However, if you scratch the surface, you find a different story of community and self-sacrifice. Looking at eighteen countries and regions, including India, Rojava, Taiwan, South Africa, Iraq and North America, the personal accounts in the book weave together to create a larger picture, revealing a universality of experience. Moving beyond the present, these stories reveal what an alternative society could look like, and reflect the skills and relationships we already have to create that society, challenging institutions of power that have already shown their fragility.
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Author Marina Sitrin, Colectiva Sembrar
In times of crisis, when institutions of power are laid bare, people turn to one another. Pandemic Solidarity collects firsthand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. The world's media was quick to weave a narrative of selfish individualism, full of empty supermarket shelves and con-men. However, if you scratch the surface, you find a different story of community and self-sacrifice. Looking at eighteen countries and regions, including India, Rojava, Taiwan, South Africa, Iraq and North America, the personal accounts in the book weave together to create a larger picture, revealing a universality of experience. Moving beyond the present, these stories reveal what an alternative society could look like, and reflect the skills and relationships we already have to create that society, challenging institutions of power that have already shown their fragility.
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Wash Your Hands
Wash Your Hands
Publisher Pound the Pavement
Author Josh MacPhee
A couple years ago I started photographing graphics of hands I found on signage out in the world, particularly ones containing two hands. I had an idea to use them to create a zine called "Many Hands Make Light Work" (which I might still do someday…), but the reality is that almost all of the graphics with two hands were from bathrooms: hand washing instructions. Not so useful for a project about labor, but strangely perfect for one about a pandemic. "Wash Your Hands" contains 78 instructional icons about washing and drying your hands, collected between 2015–2020, assembled into four 5.5” x 5.5” booklets and an 11” x 17” poster, packaged in a riso-printed envelope.
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Author Josh MacPhee
A couple years ago I started photographing graphics of hands I found on signage out in the world, particularly ones containing two hands. I had an idea to use them to create a zine called "Many Hands Make Light Work" (which I might still do someday…), but the reality is that almost all of the graphics with two hands were from bathrooms: hand washing instructions. Not so useful for a project about labor, but strangely perfect for one about a pandemic. "Wash Your Hands" contains 78 instructional icons about washing and drying your hands, collected between 2015–2020, assembled into four 5.5” x 5.5” booklets and an 11” x 17” poster, packaged in a riso-printed envelope.
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COVID-19 Action & Informative Design Series
COVID-19 Action & Informative Design Series
Publisher Instagram/Raina Wellman/Lauren Sarkissian
Author Raina Wellman (and certain collabs with Lauren Sarkissian)
This document is made up of informational posts I created to inform people about COVID-19 and other health/social issues. I took inspiration from my ongoing research project on infectious disease & visual communication, which has primarily focused on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox. The projects “Shame is a Bad Public Health Tool”, “Pandemiquette,” “Assessing Symptoms and Risks,” “COVID-19 Updates,” and “Practical Guide to Protesting & Pandemic Prevention” were created in collaboration with Lauren Sarkissian, a MPH candidate at University of Washington. Both in collaborations with Lauren and independently, the goal of this work is to make urgent and often complicated information accessible, clear, and based in ongoing research.
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Author Raina Wellman (and certain collabs with Lauren Sarkissian)
This document is made up of informational posts I created to inform people about COVID-19 and other health/social issues. I took inspiration from my ongoing research project on infectious disease & visual communication, which has primarily focused on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox. The projects “Shame is a Bad Public Health Tool”, “Pandemiquette,” “Assessing Symptoms and Risks,” “COVID-19 Updates,” and “Practical Guide to Protesting & Pandemic Prevention” were created in collaboration with Lauren Sarkissian, a MPH candidate at University of Washington. Both in collaborations with Lauren and independently, the goal of this work is to make urgent and often complicated information accessible, clear, and based in ongoing research.
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A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone
A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone
Publisher Impractical Labor (ILSSA)
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative tools and resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response. The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020, requesting submissions to this book “A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone.” The book seeks “to document your activities, questions, challenges, suggestions, strategies, remote collaborations, invitations, reading lists, priorities, boundaries, and social distance projects. How has the Coronavirus / social distancing / shelter-in-place / remote everything affected your practice? What are you reading, and/or what do you hope to start soon? What new resources have you found? What are you trying?” ILSSA members' submissions from across the USA (and a handful around the world) are organized chronologically, color coded by weekday. Risograph printed, forthcoming fall 2020.
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Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative tools and resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response. The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020, requesting submissions to this book “A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone.” The book seeks “to document your activities, questions, challenges, suggestions, strategies, remote collaborations, invitations, reading lists, priorities, boundaries, and social distance projects. How has the Coronavirus / social distancing / shelter-in-place / remote everything affected your practice? What are you reading, and/or what do you hope to start soon? What new resources have you found? What are you trying?” ILSSA members' submissions from across the USA (and a handful around the world) are organized chronologically, color coded by weekday. Risograph printed, forthcoming fall 2020.
Filed Under
ILSSA News Bulletin
ILSSA News Bulletin
Publisher Impractical Labor (ILSSA)
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response.The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020: "Regardless of our personal situations, we find ourselves disconnected from our usual patterns, habits, interactions, assumptions, routines, and faced with new ways of being, doing, and making. Some of us find ourselves aboslutely exhausted. Some of us wonder about other modes, possibilities, potentials. What have we been doing, that has gotten us here to now? How can we choose differently and contribute to something otherwise?" The publication seeks submissions for two forthcoming projects: "A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone" seeks to document the experiences of impractical laborers during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, and "Surveying the State of the 2nd ILSSA Union" requests impractical laborers to self-assess their working conditions as artists using a rubric borrowed from sociology. Printed risograph & letterpress, hand folded, stamped, & signed.
Filed Under
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response.The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020: "Regardless of our personal situations, we find ourselves disconnected from our usual patterns, habits, interactions, assumptions, routines, and faced with new ways of being, doing, and making. Some of us find ourselves aboslutely exhausted. Some of us wonder about other modes, possibilities, potentials. What have we been doing, that has gotten us here to now? How can we choose differently and contribute to something otherwise?" The publication seeks submissions for two forthcoming projects: "A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone" seeks to document the experiences of impractical laborers during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, and "Surveying the State of the 2nd ILSSA Union" requests impractical laborers to self-assess their working conditions as artists using a rubric borrowed from sociology. Printed risograph & letterpress, hand folded, stamped, & signed.
Filed Under
COVID-19 COLLECTIVE DREAM JOURNAL
COVID-19 COLLECTIVE DREAM JOURNAL
Publisher Neptune
A record of dreams and hallucinations experienced by the People of the World during the coronavirus pandemic. A research project examining symbols, mythology and motifs that can be extracted from our collective unconscious during this time of collective isolation. Every dreamer is a storyteller.
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A record of dreams and hallucinations experienced by the People of the World during the coronavirus pandemic. A research project examining symbols, mythology and motifs that can be extracted from our collective unconscious during this time of collective isolation. Every dreamer is a storyteller.
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Learning from End of Life Care Workers Now and After Covid-19: Insisting on Structures for Grief and Time
Learning from End of Life Care Workers Now and After Covid-19: Insisting on Structures for Grief and Time
Publisher Thick Press
Author Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
Thick Press' "printout" series gives physical form to digital content. The publication, "Learning from End of Life Care Workers Now and After COVID-19: Insisting on Structures for Grief and Time" is a transcribed conversation between Thick Press and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, author of "Stages: On dying, working, and feeling" (Thick Press, 2020). The digital version of the conversation appeared on April 23, 2020 on Dirtdmv.com, an independent platform, collective, and resource for critical arts discourse. The conversation is an extension of a project in which Rachel made a play with nursing home staff, and then created a poetic, hybrid-genre book about that experience. In conversation with Thick Press, Rachel shows how writing, public art, and living an emotionally engaged life has the potential to politicize care work and healthcare.
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Author Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
Thick Press' "printout" series gives physical form to digital content. The publication, "Learning from End of Life Care Workers Now and After COVID-19: Insisting on Structures for Grief and Time" is a transcribed conversation between Thick Press and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, author of "Stages: On dying, working, and feeling" (Thick Press, 2020). The digital version of the conversation appeared on April 23, 2020 on Dirtdmv.com, an independent platform, collective, and resource for critical arts discourse. The conversation is an extension of a project in which Rachel made a play with nursing home staff, and then created a poetic, hybrid-genre book about that experience. In conversation with Thick Press, Rachel shows how writing, public art, and living an emotionally engaged life has the potential to politicize care work and healthcare.
Filed Under
Quarantzine
Quarantzine
Publisher Lunes Studio
Author Lunes Studio
Quarantzine is a zine sharing quarantine stories from people around the world in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Speaking with family and friends all over the world, it has been fascinating to hear how varied experiences of lockdown are, and so we wanted to document people's perspectives to highlight that there is no right or wrong or normal way to deal with quarantine In issue #1, those we hear from include a teacher in New York City, delivering personal protective equipment to frontline workers in her community and a photographer in Kuwait who is shooting from his window. Issue #2 features a cruise ship member stuck at sea between Miami and Orlando who volunteers to DJ as colleagues watch from their balconies and a food explorer in Canada learning food techniques she previously did not have the courage to try. Quarantzine was created remotely and interviews were conducted via email, video call and social media. All photos were submitted by contributors, who were given an open brief to share snapshots of their quarantine experience. Gemma Suyat - Co-Founder of Lunes Studio and Editor of Quarantzine
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Author Lunes Studio
Quarantzine is a zine sharing quarantine stories from people around the world in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Speaking with family and friends all over the world, it has been fascinating to hear how varied experiences of lockdown are, and so we wanted to document people's perspectives to highlight that there is no right or wrong or normal way to deal with quarantine In issue #1, those we hear from include a teacher in New York City, delivering personal protective equipment to frontline workers in her community and a photographer in Kuwait who is shooting from his window. Issue #2 features a cruise ship member stuck at sea between Miami and Orlando who volunteers to DJ as colleagues watch from their balconies and a food explorer in Canada learning food techniques she previously did not have the courage to try. Quarantzine was created remotely and interviews were conducted via email, video call and social media. All photos were submitted by contributors, who were given an open brief to share snapshots of their quarantine experience. Gemma Suyat - Co-Founder of Lunes Studio and Editor of Quarantzine
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Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus
Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus
Publisher Asian American Feminist Collective
Author Rachel Kuo, Matilda Sabal, Salonee Bhaman, Tiffany Tso, and Vivian Shaw
With the COVID-19 pandemic neither behind us or solely ahead of us, this zine offers a way to make meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics. We bring together first-hand accounts and analyses from our communities, including health and service workers and caregivers on the frontlines, students, people living with chronic illness, journalists, and organizers. Together, this collection of stories, essays, and artwork shows how we experience, resist, and grapple with a viral outbreak that has been racialized as Asian, is spoken of in the language of contagion and invasion, and reveals the places where our collective social safety net is particularly threadbare.
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Author Rachel Kuo, Matilda Sabal, Salonee Bhaman, Tiffany Tso, and Vivian Shaw
With the COVID-19 pandemic neither behind us or solely ahead of us, this zine offers a way to make meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics. We bring together first-hand accounts and analyses from our communities, including health and service workers and caregivers on the frontlines, students, people living with chronic illness, journalists, and organizers. Together, this collection of stories, essays, and artwork shows how we experience, resist, and grapple with a viral outbreak that has been racialized as Asian, is spoken of in the language of contagion and invasion, and reveals the places where our collective social safety net is particularly threadbare.
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