Letter From the Editor

As I write this, the election results have just come in—a blustery wind outside and the first rain of the season refreshingly signaling the start of something new.

Last week, as we were all stuck waiting—the frantic energy leading up to election day suddenly stalled out and suspended. We’ve been waiting longer than that really, amidst a global pandemic: waiting to hug our loved ones, waiting to go back to school, waiting to gather, waiting for even a glimmer of peace amidst the chaos.

In this recent week of waiting for election results, I was reminded of Faith Wilding’s powerful performance Waiting (1972), in which the artist condensed the span of a woman’s life into a 15-minute repetitive script that she recited while kneeling and rocking methodically. Wilding powerfully critiques the notion of woman’s constant reliance on others for fulfillment, as she lists the ways that women wait on others, while never quite feeling whole: waiting to be beautiful, for breasts to come in, for a man, for children, to be noticed, to grow wise.

Despite all of the collective organizing 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 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 all here—the notion that we can collectively and creatively push for the futures that we desire. As Audre Lorde says of poetry, art too can “[lay] the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”² Across this issue, our writers express an urgent longing for both connectivity and refusal, wondering whether art can help them find either.

Even with a massive communal victory on our heels, this year has been an isolating one. It has made clear the essential role that other people play in our lives. As we wait for the time when we can again gather, my hope is that the Los Angeles and broader art community will continue to advocate for each other, both in art-making and in the street. I believe that, in doing so, we offer each other necessary support, and truly harness art’s potential to act as a bridge across fear and into the futures we want to see manifested.

With love,

Lindsay Preston Zappas

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

1. Faith Wilding, Waiting (1972). Performance at Womanhouse, Los Angeles. 2. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (New York: Ten Speed Press, 1984), 38. 2

. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (New York: Ten Speed Press, 1984), 38.