Winter 2020
Letter From the Editor
also resistant to the status-quo. Wilding’s recounting of waiting is also a resistance against it. In this issue, Catherine Wagley writes, “I want to live in a different, more liberated world than the one most of us find ourselves caught in, and I want art to help me find it, even as art worlds themselves have again and again proven to be fully committed to a hierarchical, confining, and capitalist reality.” Of course, art itself can provide a pathway towards a more connective world. It’s this very possibility that keeps us As I write this, the election results all here—the notion that we can collechave just come in—a blustery wind tively and creatively push for the futures outside and the first rain of the season that we desire. As Audre Lorde says refreshingly signaling the start of of poetry, art too can “[lay] the foundasomething new. tion for a future of change, a bridge Last week, as we were all stuck across our fears of what has never been waiting—the frantic energy leading before.”² Across this issue, our writers up to election day suddenly stalled out express an urgent longing for both and suspended. We’ve been waiting connectivity and refusal, wondering longer than that really, amidst a global whether art can help them find either. pandemic: waiting to hug our loved ones, Even with a massive communal waiting to go back to school, waiting victory on our heels, this year has been to gather, waiting for even a glimmer an isolating one. It has made clear the of peace amidst the chaos. essential role that other people play In this recent week of waiting for in our lives. As we wait for the time when election results, I was reminded of Faith we can again gather, my hope is that Wilding’s powerful performance Waiting the Los Angeles and broader art (1972), in which the artist condensed the community will continue to advocate span of a woman’s life into a 15-minute for each other, both in art-making repetitive script that she recited while and in the street. I believe that, in doing kneeling and rocking methodically. so, we offer each other necessary Wilding powerfully critiques the notion support, and truly harness art’s potential of woman’s constant reliance on others to act as a bridge across fear and into for fulfillment, as she lists the ways that the futures we want to see manifested. women wait on others, while never quite feeling whole: waiting to be beautiful, With love, for breasts to come in, for a man, for children, to be noticed, to grow wise. Lindsay Preston Zappas Despite all of the collective orgaFounder & Editor-in-Chief nizing ahead of the election, while we waited, I felt a lack of power: a sense of reliance on the hegemonic forces at work to determine our fate. (“Waiting to be beautiful, waiting for the secret, waiting for life to begin…” Wilding recounts).¹ Yet, I was also reminded of the power of community—the power of collectivity, and of organizing. As artists and creatives, we have a window into a mode of communication that can be revelatory and connective while
Issue 22
1. Faith Wilding, Waiting (1972). Performance at Womanhouse, Los Angeles. 2. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (New York: Ten Speed Press, 1984), 38.
