The Sick Muse 11

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ART & MUSICKI NG & D I Y

M ARCH 2019

ISSUE 11

Double-sided poster inside: pull out the centerfold!

FREE


Letter from the editors To our loyal, disloyal, and unwitting readers, For those unwitting readers, The Sick Muse is an independent publication devoted to underground musicians and artists in Chicago. We explore why people make art by publishing interviews, essays, illustrated lyrics, photographs, paintings, sketches, manifestos, poetry, prose, prose-poetry, poetry-prose, comics and other knick-knacks from the Chicago landscape. Up to now The Sick Muse has operated as a small-circulation zine. This issue being our first on newsprint distributed for free across the city, we selfconsciously reflect on the theme of mass media: interrogating how information propagates, how mass media affects cultures and subcultures, how different forms of media influence art, and the politics of these processes. Because in fact, we ourselves have changed medium. It’s hard to call a newspaper with a circulation of 5,000 copies a “zine.” For instance, what’s this “zine” doing with ads in it? But while this isn’t your typical zine format, the essence and ethos of the zine lives on in these pages: valuing independent thought, amateur (“for the love”) arts, and amplifying voices that would otherwise go unheard by a larger public. All of the advertisers are businesses/independent artists that we respect and are thrilled to promote; a big thanks for their support. Here is a brief overview of the content in this issue related to the theme of mass media. On page 4 we interview the founder of Open TV, a platform for Chicagobased web series’ bypassing Hollywood broadcast television to produce more diverse and relevant TV. On pages 7-9, Anna Friz contemplates the potential of radio art to create more ecological and less hierarchical media, with reference to Chicago-based radio art platform Radius. On pages 16-17, Zean Dunbar, winner of The Sick Muse Essay contest, discusses the “digital wake”, how we mourn our dead through social media. On page 18, Christo Yaranoff’s sculpture “Social Media Algorithm” expressing frustration with the limits of social media. On pages 24-25, Daniel Shukis interviews Mac Blackout about mass media and the incorporation of media iconography in his graffiti aesthetic. The centerfold of this issue is a double-sided poster, featuring work by the first two winners of the Sick Muse Poster Contest, COOP4LIB and Christina Mighty. Remove the centerfold page and pin it up! We have launched a Patreon to cover costs! If you enjoy this issue and want to see more like it please visit patreon.com/thesickmuse and become a donor! The Sick Muse

EDITORS Noah Jones Sasha Tycko LYRICS EDITOR Jol(ene)isha Whatever POETRY EDITOR Jesi Gaston ART DIRECTOR Natalia Rios DESIGNER Benjamin Karas COVER ART Mac Blackout (see article about Mac page 19!)

BACK COVER ART Noelle Davis (Xander Black) WEB thesickmuse.com EMAIL sickmuse.chi@gmail.com FB: @chisickmuse IG: @sickmuse.chi

The Sick Muse 11 © 2019 Authors, Artists, & Photographers


Table of contents 04 Q&A

Aymar Jean Christian of Open TV by Sasha Tycko

07 Someplaces: Radio Art, Transmission Ecology and Chicago’s Radius by Anna Friz

11 QTs in Bed

by Hazel Magnolia

14 The Digital Wake:

pulvis et umbra sumus by Zean Dunbar

16 POETRY

edited by Jesi Gaston Featuring: Zacky Hunter Gill Alex Shapiro Walker Storz Noa/h Fields

by Christo Yaranoff

19 PULL-OUT POSTERS “Bag$; Not Binkies” by Christina Mighty “People’s Assembly” by COOP4LIB

by Hannah Moore

24 From Old Media to Social Media: The Visionary Journey of Mac Blackout by Dan Shukis

27 Interview w/ Cordoba by Noah Jones

30 LYRICS

edited by Jol(ene)isha Whatever Featuring: Forced into Femininty oeugons are real Zumuz Romancoke

33 Q&A

Mixing Mass Media w/ Cqqchifruit by Sasha Tycko

34 #SecurityForWho:

Queer Women of Color Advocacy as DIY by Victoria Parra

36 Girly Show

by Adele Henning

39 SHOUTOUTS

“Michal” by Joanna Zochowska

18 Social Media Algorithm

23 Sketches


Q & A W/

AYMAR JEAN C HRISTIAN OF OPEN TV. BY SASHA TYCKO

HOW WEB SERIES DUCK UNDER THE GUARDED GATES OF TELEVISION David Foster Wallace wrote that if we want to know—or rather see—what American normality is, trust television. It’s not that television successfully and transparently captures the likeness of the Normal American who exists out there in the wild, but that television producers, in calculating what the Normal American wants to see, give the N.A. what she wants. And what the N.A. wants to see has something to do with her calculation of how she sees herself and how she thinks she’s seen by others. Television is not so much reflecting as reproducing normal. The resulting “normal” is overly white, heterosexual, middle-class, and ablebodied. This is reiterated as the gates to broadcast television have been heavily guarded and expensive to pass through. But Aymar Jean Christian, a professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern, argues that the rise of web series (or indie TV) is changing the rules of the game, and, with them, the norms we see reproduced on screen. With the ability to duck the gate by distributing on the internet, indie TV writers and producers are presenting nuanced and original stories about and with people that have been underrepresented and devalued by cable television. To put his academic research into practice, Christian founded Open Television (OTV), a research and development platform for web series’ created by Chicago-based artists with underrepresented identities. On OTV’s website (www.weareo.tv), you can watch shows such as Brujos, a surreal queer-of-color series about four gay doctoral students who contend with being witches; Seeds, which follows the friendships and misadventures of four young black women; and Two Queens in a Kitchen, a cooking series hosted by a rotating cast of fabulous queens who gossip and deliberate as they prepare a delightful snack. One crucial ingredient to OTV’s community ethos is debuting new series’ at in-person screenings—pull up a chair on April 4th at the MCA or April 10th at the Chicago Cultural Center!

Two Queens in a Kitchen premiere Photo by Jackie Rivas

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Sasha Tycko: OTV is a model for what a serious investment in indie TV can look like. Can you break down what tha model is? Aymar Jean Christian: The OTV model is in constant development. Our model currently fuses an indie TV channel with a research project, focusing us on exploring the data necessary to develop intersectional artists. Our agreement with artists are non-exclusive and artists keep their intellectual property rights. My theory was that supporting artists in owning their own stories would lead to innovation and value creation. That’s turned out to be true, but ultimately that model isn’t sustainable in America’s corporatedominated media market, so we’re currently devising a new plan and pitching to larger stakeholders. The plan would give us a greater stake in our artists, their work and our community, in ways that hopefully allow us to do more for everyone. S: On your blog you wrote that OTV was born out of your personal mission to cultivate community and wellness for yourself when you first moved to Chicago. I really appreciate when organizers of any kind of community-oriented project share how their work fulfills a personal need. I think the work is more honest in those cases. Can you say more about how indie media projects serve community? AJ: Media brings people together. It’s hard to get folks to show up for a panel to talk about social and political issues, but if it’s a TV show created by and starring people in their community, it increases their incentive to see each other. I think indie TV can showcase the work of writers, actors, and directors, of course, but also musicians, visual artists, dancers, performance artists. Indie media can not only expand artists’ audiences online but also in their homes cities and others around the country and world. We’ve seen this in so many ways through OTV over the years. S: On a similar note, in the age of Netflix and chill, television seems to increasingly serve the role of binging as escapism. In general, we seem to be navigating increasingly addictive relationships to media. How do OTV and indie TV in general counter that relationship?

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Two Queens in a Kitchen S2 (Aymar Jean Christian on left) Photo by Alexus McLane

AJ: Right. It’s really important for us to show [at events] as many times as possible in Chicago. We want people to actively consume TV, not just on their couches, but in their neighborhoods. We want to connect digital media to real life. Over time we believe this can build capacity for social change. TV is becoming too privatized. S: I often think about something that Gayatri Spivak calls “critical intimacy,” how you have to love the thing you are critical of. She said in an interview, “You locate a moment where the text teaches you how to turn it around and use it.” You critique mainstream TV, but I’m going to assume that you also have loved TV your whole life. So what about the television that you have loved are you keeping? Where is the moment in television that teaches you to turn it around and create something like OTV? AJ: I’m a child of the 1990s, meaning I grew up with cable, Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, etc., and after FOX joined the broadcast networks and used black representation to establish their brand (in part). My generation grew up expecting to see folks who look like them on TV. I remember seeing In Living Color and the Men on... sketches that were my first memories of black queer representation. As I grew older shows like Queer As Folk, The L Word and The Wire really shaped my understanding of the possibility for truly representative TV. More recently my book chronicles the many web series creators who inspired me to produce and distribute indie work. Issa Rae was by far the most influential and I think did it better than most of her peers. S: By now we’ve seen several web series get picked up by cable, including a series that debuted on OTV, Brown Girls, which is being adapted by HBO. How crucial is that phenomenon--eventually being picked up by a more traditional media platform--to the indie TV model? Is it possible for web series to find financial success and a mass audience by remaining online as a web series? AJ: I think it’s critical. The reality is that in America, corporations own all the channels for distribution, and they produce so much that there’s very little space for anyone else to get attention. What does get attention outside the corporate media sphere—the grassroots work that spreads on social media—is not always the kinds of complex storytelling you see in Brown Girls. Just like very few indie filmmakers make a living in the indie space and instead are more often auditioning for studio directing gigs, indie TV is a space to develop television writers, but also potentially feature film directors. My goal is create organizations that can scale this process and develop some independent revenue so we can continue to funnel money into the indie space.

S: Going off that last question, I’m thinking about how much mass media (the theme of this issue of The Sick Muse) relies on upholding norms, as it seeks to appeal to the broadest audience/market possible. That in itself seems to lead to the kinds of problems you identify in cable television: a reliance on stereotypes, basic and repetitive story lines, over-representation of white, heteronormative lives. Whereas OTV, on the other hand, is explicitly making work with people who live lives outside of what’s presented as mainstream or the norm. Is a mass audience for these shows desirable? Is the future of television perhaps one with smaller, more diverse, and more invested audiences? AJ: One of our artists, Ricardo Gamboa, likes to say that “specificity is relatable.” The old Hollywood calculus was to make characters as close to the American middle or upper class ideal and that would get more viewers invested. But with so many stories being produced, those representations are starting to be exposed as hollow. Instead, I encourage writers to tell stories with their communities in mind. Would someone who shares your identities relate to your characters? We have found that stories written in this way are still beloved by people with different identities, because it’s what makes us different that makes us truly human, and everyone understands that. S: Shout out some of your fav web series’? AJ: This question is too difficult! I do however want to shout out that OTV is not the only indie TV network focused on intersectional stories. SLAY TV, Between Women TV, Revry TV, The Arthouse, WhoHaHa, SVTV, Black & Sexy TV, Section II are just a few of the other indie channels out there creating content for historically underserved audiences. FOLLOW US!

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Someplaces: Radio Art, Transmission Ecology and Chicago’s Radius 1

BY ANNA FRIZ

From the early avant-garde Futurists to present-day, utopian dreams litter the history of art meeting technology. 2 When it comes to radio and wireless, these often include the dreams that each new technology will conquer space and time; that distance overcome will enable the symbiosis of human with machine and the union of self with other, and that time overcome will bring about a simultaneity of experience. 3 For many radio and transmission artists (myself included), our work with ‘trailing edge’ media seeks to critically engage these myths, positing wireless transmissions instead as time-based, site-specific encounters between people and devices over distances small or large, where the materiality of the electro-magnetic spectrum is experienced within a constantly shifting transmission ecology in which we all, people and devices, function. One hallmark of radio art is the desire to appropriate broadcasting by rethinking and re-using technologies of transmission and reception in service of crafting new mythologies and futures for the medium. Artists have long questioned the policies and norms established by state and market around radio broadcasting which delimit experimentation and autonomous practices. Bertolt Brecht’s call in 1932 for radio to exceed its one-to-many broadcast format in favor of a democratized, transceptive (or many-to-many) medium still resonates with contemporary artists and activists alike.4 What else could radio become, we ask, if not only a disseminator of information and entertainment, acoustic or digital? If radio so far has largely acted as an accomplice in the industrialization of communications, artistic appropriations of radio can destabilize this process with renewed explorations of radio and electromagnetic phenomena, constructions of temporary networks small or large, and

radical explorations of broadcast beyond the confines of programming and format norms. Curators, producers and art historians typically describe radio art as the use of radio as an artistic medium, which is to say, art created specifically for the technical and cultural circumstances of broadcast, and which considers these circumstances as artistic material. Today these circumstances have exceeded terrestrial broadcast to include satellite, online, and on-demand forms; similarly radio art has also expanded to include sprawling telematic art exchanges 5, online podcast series 6 , and unlicensed temporary interventions into the radio dial7. As a further reclamation of radio as a medium, many artists pull radio out of the studio to create installations, performance works and public actions which consider not just the act of transmission or the creation of artistic content, but also the material aspects of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and the circuits of people and devices which activate and reveal them. Japanese media theorist and artist Tetsuo Kogawa describes broadcast radio art as art radio, where art is the content of a transmission. By contrast, Kogawa asserts, radio art involves directly playing with electromagnetic waves as the artistic medium8. Galen Joseph-Hunter of Wave Farm9 further expands Kogawa’s formulation of “radio art” with the term “transmission art,” so as to include audio-visual broadcast media and artistic activities across the entire electro-magnetic spectrum, such as work with Very Low Frequency (VLF) and Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves, or high frequency wireless networks. These definitions of radio and transmission art both emphasize that radio is not a container for content, but is defined as relationships between people and things,

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occurring in the context of the electro-magnetic spectrum within a transmission ecology.

I apply the term transmission ecology in reference to both the symbolic spaces of cultural production such as a radio station, and to the invisible but very material space of dynamic electromagnetic interactions, both of which feature the collaboration between people and things. Transmission ecology asks more than “who owns the airwaves” by questioning the shifting relationships between all actors in the environment, from human to device to localized weather system to nearby star, and thus is not defined by homeostasis but by constant change. These relationships also support a theory of technology where people are not the absolute controllers of things, but where a push and pull of collaboration occurs within complex material and cultural environments. All activities in the electro-magnetic spectrum form ecologies in relation to one another conceptually, performatively, and materially. Consider the Radia network, an international alliance of independent radio stations who share radio art programming as an alternate transmission ecology within the broader culture of private broadcast radio stations.10 Another kind of ecology is formed by radio receivers all playing the same station diffused across countless cars and households, as they function in relation to other kinds of wireless devices and electronic systems nearby. Such a muster of receivers can be physically brought together, for instance, in a multi-channel radio installation, to reveal the complex relationships among devices, as each receiver also becomes a sender by electronically affecting its neighbor. A mobile phone receiving wireless internet likewise functions within the instability inherent in the surrounding transmission ecology shaped by all aspects of the built environment, such as the electrical grid and other urban infrastructure, as well as weather or time of day or solar flares. Human bodies and devices alike register the invisible electromagnetic activity that surrounds us as physical, measurable, and affective. With this in mind consider radio art as occupying “radio space,” a continuous, available, fluctuating area described by the reach of signals within overlapping fields of influence and the space of imagination that invisible territory enables. The extrasensory nature of radio space allows for a productive slippage between real material signals and audible imaginary landscapes. Many radio art and transmission artworks specifically draw attention to the transmission ecology in order to question the naturalization of mainstream communications systems, the normalization of practices within those systems, and the pervasiveness of electrical infrastructure, proposing alternate narratives and experiences. So what is some of this work like? In the past year I have had the pleasure to work with Chicago-based Radius, an experimental radiobased platform which broadcasts locally using the Audio Relay Unit, an unlicensed autonomous low-watt FM radio transmitter system developed in 2002 by Temporary Services and the Intermod Series11. Radius neatly unites radio and transmission art by embracing the production of artistic content for broadcast, sampling existing content for artistic expression, and artistic use of the electro-magnetic spectrum generally. Radius functions as an intermittent exhibition space and as an intervention into the predictable daily grind of the FM dial. Artists compose their pieces specifically for the interference-prone radio space where their work may only be heard in fragments, as the instability and fluctuations of the relatively small Radius signal in relation to the big commercial stations broadcasting from downtown all form the context for experiencing the 7

Radius founder Jeff Kolar by Lake Michigan with yellow transmitter. Photo courtesy of Radius

radio art works. Radius broadcasts each episode for an entire month on a schedule determined by the artist, with pieces varying in length and repetition, and some following a strict schedule related to cosmic or social timing. In 2013 I crafted an episode for Radius while on an artist residency in Seydisfjördur, Iceland. The town was the site of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph link between Europe and Iceland in 1906, which was also the year that Reginald Fessenden first broadcast a human voice over radio from his workshop in Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Iceland is remote enough that the electro-magnetic ‘pollution’ from human signal activity is notably absent, and located far enough to the north that in October the light disappears rapidly, so that each day loses eight minutes of daylight. The piece was called Radiotelegraph, a beacon crafted from spoken morse code and sampled signals, then sent from north to south, simulcast on my own low-watt FM transmitter in Seydisfjördur at sundown each day as well as on Radius in Chicago12. The transmission marked time passing, beginning earlier each day as it followed the path of the sun. My intention was not to overcome but to experience and recuperate distance through the relation of a remote radio outpost to another minor outpost further south within a metropolis; to hear distance and feel it; to understand that distance, however finite, is a necessary condition for communication and relationship, and that distance is the key ingredient of situated, time-based, spatialized sonic experiences. As part of the year-long theme on “Grids,” in 2014 Radius tackled the electro-magnetic field space of the city by inviting four artists to create new works to be performed near power stations. In his piece electrosmog13, Canadian artist Kristen Roos utilized a high frequency receiver to sonify signal activity in the 800 MHz – 2.5 GHz range, which includes mobile phones, wireless phones, wifi, and microwaves. His sitespecific performance took place overlooking the Fisk Generating Station in Chicago, and included microwave ovens and micro-watt transmission to a sound system made of radio receivers. Thus the work was site-specific to both the transmission ecology of urban Chicago and the field effects of the electrical grid, mixing material signals with a speculative approach

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as to what the cumulative effects of living in this built environment characterized by centralized power could be. In Roos’ work, radio space contextualized and revealed the real—though naturalized and often invisible—relationships between people, things, and systems, where a microwave oven gestured at both danger and musicality. Radius artists often mix acoustic and signal spaces, seeking to listen across fields of influence to both mechanical sound waves and electromagnetic activity, often transducing one for the other. On May 6, 2017, Chicago artist Peter Speer was curated by Radius to perform live as part of SoundCamp/REVEIL, a 24-hour radio broadcast that tracks the sunrise around the globe.14 Speer used a hydrophone to pick up sounds at dawn from the underwater in the lagoon at the Indian Boundary Park Cultural Center. He played surrounding structures such as metal railings with rubber mallets, such that the hydrophone was able to sense these vibrations along with the incidental sounds of the city waking, all filtered through the water of the lagoon. These sounds in turn were broadcast on micro-FM and streamed online to the global listening community. In this way, Speer and Radius enabled the sound and sensibility of a specific place to be made audible both micro-locally and transnationally, as Tetsuo Kogawa advocated. Also on the theme of water-specific broadcasts, Radius commissioned artist/musician/boat captain Anthony Janas to create a new work Water Has Nothing To Say and Neither Do I as part of the “Ground” series on August 27, 2016.15 Janas undertook a live performance for radio from a 25-foot sailboat on Lake Michigan between the Adler Planetarium and the 31st Street Beach, using hydrophones and contact mics which he processed through a modular synthesizer and transmit the resulting sounds via FM to the audience on shore. Audience members carried portable radios and were able to move up and down the shore to tune in and to play with the signal as an audible part of the acoustic soundscape and as a part of the ecology of Chicago’s FM dial.

Anthony Janas’ live radio performance from a sailboat on Lake Michigan. Photo courtesy of Radius.

Anna Friz is a Canadian sound and radio artist who specializes in multichannel transmission systems for installation, performance, and broadcast. Anna completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and since 2015 is Assistant Professor in Film and Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. She has performed and exhibited widely across North America, South America, and Europe, and her radio art/works have been heard on the airwaves of more than 25 countries. She is a steering member of the artist collective Skálar – Sound Art/Experimental Music, based in Iceland. nicelittlestatic.com

These radio artworks enact places in radiophonic space, and experiment with transmission to question the status quo of how the airwaves are controlled and used. As radio trickster Gregory Whitehead notes, it is position, not sound, that matters most with regard to radio. Artists remain committed to making radiophonic someplaces, however temporarily constructed, inhabited by interpenetrating and overlapping fields and bodies.

SOURCES

1

This article originally appeared in Sounding Out! November 6, 2014. It has been updated for this issue of the Sick Muse. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2014/11/06/ someplaces-radio-art-transmission-ecology-and-chicagos-radius/ 2

Dietz, Steve. “Ten Dreams of Technology.” Leonardo, Vol 35, No. 5, pp. 509-522, 2002. 3

See the 1933 Futurist manifesto by F.T. Marinetti and Pina Masnata entitled La Radia. 4

Brecht, Bertolt. “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication.” (1932) In Radiotext(e). Neil Strauss, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. p. 15. 5

See the international project Horizontal Radio, initiated in 1995 by ORF Kunstradio, a radio art program heard on the cultural channel of Austrian national public radio. The project was a 24-hour live multi-media telematic radio and network project involving over 20 radio stations among other connected nodes in galleries or private spaces world wide and over 100 artists. http://www.kunstradio. at/HORRAD/horrad.html

6

For instance, Radio Web MACBA: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/home/

7

For example, see the work of New York-based duo neuroTransmitter from 20012008: http://www.neurotransmitter.fm/projects/cmp.html 8

Kogawa, Tetsuo. A Radioart Manifesto. http://anarchy.translocal.jp/non-japanese /20080710AcousticSpaceIssue_7.html 9

https://wavefarm.org/about

10

http://radia.fm/

11 12

http://theradius.us/episode44

13

http://theradius.us/episode54

14

http://theradius.us/episode79

15

http://theradius.us/episode74

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QTs in beds for Queer identifying and identified people.

Peregrine

IG: @prgrn_b “i am someone who is received as able-bodied, thin, cis, non-Black poc, documented, someone who is educated and housed. i can understand in my BRAIN that we are navigating our impact on each other within a selfdestructive system that has forced its way not just into our daily lives but centuries deep into our egos and our bodies, such that i carry out the harmful behaviors and ideals of my oppressors on levels that i am still becoming aware of. reconnecting with terms for care, love and liberation in a way that my BODY understands is ongoing work. holding this truth for myself and others at our most vulnerable moments in our very different processes is part of resisting the shit. also reminding myself and others that checking our privilege does not devalue our own trauma or struggles but expands our capacity for grief, gratitude and compassion for ourselves. and that ripples out. that is transformative in a social structure that capitalizes off shame, scarcity mentality, isolation. i am learning about my responsibilities to other living beings, and not just humans, and i try to be up front about

Although rooted in exploring the layers of identity, monoliths, community, agency, visibility and representation, QTs in beds recognizes not only the importance of these, but acknowledges limitations that are impossible to untangle from the triumph of access to them. Place, time, experience and the lens we have based on any/all of them, will determine our perspective and actions. How do these impact ourselves, our neighbors and the world? My goals for this 12-year-old project have evolved and become more fluid. Attempting to define them all would be futile, because I’m no longer convinced I even know what questions need to be answered, or that a solution to fit all is even possible. This portrait and interview series is a collaboration with QTs around the world, to create a resource that would have been incredibly helpful to my younger self, and one that I still need today. A slow and intentional moment for participants and readers to think about: identity, how do we want to be seen and who are we centering when we answer that question? Our access to (or replication of) dominant and hierarchical systems, vulnerability, joy, sorrow, struggle celebration, self love, self accountability and more. How are we getting what we need and want, and how do those needs impact others we don’t personally interact with (or take the time to get to know).

where i am in all that. this looks like showing up for people i love physically and financially/with material resources when that is needed and when i can; remembering and naming my teachers and lineages and sharing knowledge widely; picking up when someone needs to rest; resting; cooking; staying curious, and asking for support when i don’t feel like i can do the thing; making mistakes gardening; slowing down enough to feel; being honest about my states of wellness/dis-ease; and so many other small acts that are also in the long-term super pleasurable. i try to be brave within my position as an educator and art-maker, etc to hold space for vulnerable folks to connect to their creative, emotional and spiritual lives and also to their physical bodies, and to their stories. blessings to my therapist and my beautiful partner and my pods who are helping me through my inner work and demons and barriers to entering a space with my full self and the intent to listen and to understand.”

Talia IG: @taziacira

Thank you, Sick Muse, for the opportunity to share a glimpse of what we’re creating. Love and gratitude to the QTs featured in this QuTe CHICAGO ZINE!

“As someone who is born in the West, has citizenship, is white/white passing, does not have varying physical abilities, is working class but has never been in poverty, and weight wise, is within relatively the bullshit standard of “beauty”, it is really important for me to actively unlearn the internalizations of prejudice and comfortable privilege that I have carried. The biggest catalyst, apart from gratefully being able to consume media from people who have identities I do not, is working to ask myself what similarities or internalizations in smaller ways that I may hold to the systems of oppression I claim to want to deconstruct. In the beginning, while I’ve never been conservative in my beliefs, I began to realize that I did subconsciously take in from the prejudice run off from the hateful river, if you will. Unlearning, being open to listening, and actively doing internal work is vital overall. In terms of resistance, my biggest actions apart from that have been to try to put my funds towards resistant efforts and brands owned by folx of varying identities through my brand and through donating, calling in family and peers, amplifying voices, and continually doing internal work.”

To every QT that has been, or will be featured in this process; it’s not easy to put yourself out there and be open to judgment and criticism within community. It’s even harder to challenge the more dominant systems. Not everything we feel, experience or do, should or will be public. But hopefully readers will celebrate what you all have courageously and generously shared with us. Please visit my website to learn more, get involved, or for other ways to support this work. Thank you! -Hazel

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Sasha

Q: Can you share a resource, idea or person that has been helpful with the work of resisting/unlearning beliefs or actions that keep you comfortable in a position of power over others?

IG: @t_cko

SASHA: “Freedom Dreams by Robin Kelley and The Undercommons by Fred Moten & Stefano Harney. Freedom Dreams is just an amazing history of the Black radical tradition. The Undercommons is sort of difficult to read because its v academic and v poetic, but it blew my mind, it kind of charts a way of being “in but not of” institutions, tells us to steal all the resources we can (from ideas to printer paper) and study liberation together. Basically, they’re like, don’t buy the myth that academic institutions are places of enlightenment and “higher” learning, but don’t deny that they are and have been places of refuge. It’s really made me think about leveraging/using institutional resources without being loyal to institutions.”

Amina Q: What are some ways you have been able to resist/unlearn beliefs or actions that keep you comfortable in a position of power over others? AMINA: “Mmm I think my access to resources and education and now recently through stable employment has given me a sort of power and a (small yet notable) public profile where I have access to spaces and resources that others may not, so I try and share those things and redistribute those things.” Q: What are some barriers or needs for support do you experience while navigating those efforts?

IG: @aminaontheinternet

AMINA: “I feel like a LOT of spaces don’t have comprehensive conversations about class and access to resources and capital, in concrete ways. So I am big about transparency and engaging those conversations.” Q: Can you share a resource, idea or person that has been helpful with this personal work? AMINA: “Honesty, openness, humility and tangible action.”

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Q:How do you want to be seen? Remembered? Thought of?

Jenn

JENN: “Empowering, transcendent, hopeful, vulnerable, honest, generous” Q: What personal feelings, thoughts or struggles, have you experienced about your sexuality? JENN: “Growing up in a community rooted in Christianity definitely impacted my perspective on my sexuality. I struggled to make space for both my spirituality and my sexuality.” Q: How are you currently feeling about your sexuality? JENN: “Through the work and life of Audre Lorde, I’ve been able to heal and overcome a lot of the struggles that were born out of my upbringing. Burlesque and Lorde has transformed my outlook on myself, my body, my sexuality and my spirituality.” Q: What is something you turned to when you were in a space of hopelessness? JENN: “Reciting Audre Lorde’s poetry specifically ‘A Litany for Survival’”

IG: @itspochop web: itspochop.com

Z Q: How do you want to be seen? Remembered? Thought of? Z: “I want to be seen as a human, not a gender. Remembered for my patience and generosity. Thought of as creative, talented, and kind.” Q: What personal feelings, thoughts or struggles, have you experienced about your gender? Z: “Probably way too many to list here. I’m currently struggling with trying to figure out who or what I am. I’m frustrated that I feel like I can’t just be me (not female, not male - but at the same time both and everything in between) because society can’t handle the non-binary. I’m definitely non binary, I believe there is so much more than the binary. I’m basically uncomfortable everyday in my body.” Q: Is there anything else you would like to share about yourself? Z: “I’m a first generation, US born Arab-American. All throughout my upbringing, I always felt like I was straddling two existences. Even before I discovered my sexuality and gender questionings, I felt like I was always trying to balance my families culture and traditions while also being influenced by living in America. Even to this day I am straddling all of my existences. Culture, family, sexuality, career, gender...everything.”

QTs in beds: a portrait and interview series hazelrmagnolia.com

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my mouth to speak our names, Dunbar names. Eleven siblings spread across two continents -- Liberia, America, nowhere. Connected by an Atlantic with scattered roots.

The Digital Wake: pulvis et umbra sumus By Zean Dunbar

Act 3: What is a wake in the digital sphere? What will they find when they come to collect your body? What are the things you left in your closet? Your desk drawer? Your heart? ... that which never materialized, that which was lost? Watching someone you know go through the personal effects of their recently deceased parent on the internet is a new form of wake. We unwitting mourners were only looking for cat videos and a way to sublimate our own fear of the post-dead; after:life. We become unknown partitioners to the ritual gaze, wrapped in silence, across distances, sharing stories at the church of the disappearing 30 second video. Just days before you shed silent tears as you wrote another farewell, sent on 1s & 0s, to another mourner. A call and response of metadata. We live as Claudia Rankin asks us to, in the “already grief”; in the pre-dead of our before:life of our mourning. And after:noon, comes and washes the grief down the drain. We can sip coffee and wonder if we will find intelligent life on mars, and what the water will mean for a future not written. I am the broken promises of a life I’m not sure I ever wanted, but have resigned myself to have. Act 2: Who speaks for the departed? I sit on my couch in Chicago, thinking about what it means to belong to a heritage that I know nothing about. How I got to grief from a facebook message in early June of 2016, on an unassuming day. How my sisters “found” me on the internet, our relationship growing from a received message to phone calls and group texts. Counting the number of children my father, our father, sired before he left my mother and I to cross an ocean, to die. I open 13

In gentil Midwestern moments, the nagging feeling inside of me bubbles: why now? What does it mean to feel included in this family after so many years? After, birthdays and graduations and weddings; after everything? It means nothing, and yet, how harrowing it is to see the faces of my father’s family on screen. How hard to hear their voices recorded in home movies accessible on youtube. How brutal to know that they share a life and a memory and a closeness that feels too tight to be worn and too loose to hold. What a life! Oh Stephen, father, Deddeh, what a mess you made, to give me so much only to not be here to see it. In white letters on a black background, in between what one assumes is the image of a ribbon, sits the words “bereaved”. Who knew that word alone could convey so much. Bereaved, ‘deprive of’- ‘to plunder, to steal’. To be stolen by something or someone. My estranged sister Stephanie, who I imagine is ‘the cool one’, with her shaved head and colored lipstick, broadcasts this word “bereaved” for all seeking on Facebook. What does it mean to have Koko, her sister, (my sister?) lose her husband on a quiet morning in September in 2018? To me? Nothing really, everything somewhat. And I think about the first time I’ll hear Koko’s voice will be after I say “I’m sorry for your loss”. What do we do in the after:life pre:dead? We say we are sorry for the lost- your loss and some being, deity, stranger, friend, lover, person, nothing reaved a life... Soon gone, just gone. Just gone ... reft. Some nights, when my mind wanders before I succumb to sleep, I fear all of my father’s memories will die off like he did, alone in a hospital in New York on a sunny day in June 1991. Thousands of miles away from his black diamond and baby daughter, who did not know then, but surely know now that love, like family, lies in what we remember, not what we forget. ‘Reft’ is the past tense of ‘reave’: to plunder, to steal. It is sad that this life was reft, “taken too soon” people say, but who is to say if ‘too’ belongs as a pre-fix to the postmortem of this man I did not know. After:life. There’s almost a clinical sense of distance between what I think I know and how I truly feel about this loss. Like the abstract of some far away land, I can know of it, but never really hear the waves or remember the smell of the sand or feel the rain. All of this is just, speculative. Like the sound of my father, our father, who art in heaven. Whose body lies on a Long Island, across the great American wasteland. A lone flag demarcating the ways a war can truly separate a family; the ways we, living in the pre-dead of our post-grief, stand and wonder, after:life... a mourner’s burden.

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Act 1: Who responds to the posts of grief? And again, three prayer hands suspended in midair against an abstract image of a guitar rest against my cornea. Above the hands, puritanical pristine hands, fingers touching, like two lovers kissing for the first or last time, sit the words “bereaved (heavy heart)”. This time it is my sister Stephanie lying on the digital mat, months after Edwina, another of my estranged sisters, slowly passed away on an ordinary day in in October. Who makes images like these? Stock footage for unsuspecting parishioners to fall into the digital wake. Stephanie again is there to lead the vanguard of our mourners’ march across the world wide web. A book of faces I’ve never seen. And my mind wonders- how “heavy” is the heart in this facebook post? Like a pound of feathers, or a body? The weight feels the same when we fall. How heavy? Like the size and shape of a heart, in a beating chest, with flowing blood and bones and expectations? Or a body? Reft Edwina was my sister. And my insides feel like outsides, and my body feels too heavy. And I want to drink a million beers and clean my ears out and fall asleep and stay up all night and fucking freak out and cry or scream and I just feel so deflated. She was (like) a sister (to me).... And I laugh to myself because we shared the same blood and bond and a body named Dunbar. Named Dunbar; named nothing. We are the connective tissues of a man who had the same eyes as me. Sépia toned and terrible and amazing and loved and lonely. And who was Edwina? Named after her grandfather President Edwin J Barclay. A royal baby. A body now. How much do we have left to give when we are reft in the digital wake? How do we perform grief through the screens of other people’s filters? Do we “like” or “heart” or “sad face” the call of the mourners? What, truly, can one say that will lay to rest what is reft? Who took you? God, royal baby. Who took you away. From corporal to something else. Edwina, did you know that we lived in the same city for years? That we might have passed each other on the street. That we drank that dirty water, and shit in the same sewer system. Did you know that our names are connected? That we share a line, a tree, a root- a nothing. And so when do we get to go from here? Make nice and peace with all the others who knew you royal baby. Add new friends with the same last name, and share photos. Wave at each other and collect pieces of our curated lives across a continent? Who watched you grow, from before, into being, into woman, into someone, into broken, into body, into nothing? I sat on the floor, against the peach-colored walls and wept for the truth is I don’t know anything or myself. How heavy is the heart when it is reft? How heavy? How heavy? How... gone. She was (like) a sister. She was something to everyone and now she’s dead. Gone, on a quiet day before the witches New Year, but who cares and who is asking about her? What will they comment under the posts? And someone will send a group message about what colors we will wear to see her urn on top of some Dias while people say nice things about her and who she was, about her and who she was- to everyone but me. and in the digital wake, everyone memorializes their fallen.

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Poetry Now that there is an official poetry section to The Sick Muse, it seems necessary to say something about poetry. Here and now is that place and time to say something about poetry. I don’t know what to say about poetry. Talking about poetry generally manages to take the wind out of poetry’s sails, and all poetry does, anyway, is speak for itself. That being said, it’s important to note that poetry can be good and that, in fact, the poems you’re about to read are good. Poetry is by most accounts a diverse field, and these poems, in their small way, reflect that in their varying forms, subjects, verve, flows, lengths, etc., but they are all exactly alike and homogeneous in the fact that they are good. This is the only homogeneity I hope you come to expect from The Sick Muse’s poetry section. Thank you, and please enjoy the poems. -Jesi Gaston (pictured left)

Apple Tv

Been Buried

bay Hong Kong follows whatever bay it is Greenland night day same Dubai traffic molasses smog at day river manmade loops and carvings Burj Khalifa night Mainland China, agrarian The interpass between 405 and 10 downtown at night Intercontinental Hotel LAX in formation Golden Gate Bridge plus new life-saving nets Times Square looks like Times Square from all angles even if you were underground looking at nothing encased by dirt cement pipes the island of Manhattan the financial district i mean The Big Island The Big Island Kuai Liwa in the UAE The Thames the Tower Bridge i’ve always found to look foolish (the newer buildings less so)

two trash bags swelling out of our alleys, overwhelming each other to an impasse, to a chorus of get the fuck out of the road to nuzzle for leverage for to accumulating relentlessly and the hot rubbing (and bumpers ripping between us) burst us open, our plastic casing conceding to the chaos composure suppresses, spraying we remains onto streets already reeking of and glossed in rotting apple cores and an iPhone 5 and torn jeans and a soiled scone and tissue and meats too untrustworthy to reheat (we have family on these streets. we are rain, falling with the faith our gravity will eventually lead us to unity), cluttering fluttering bodies to be squeegeed between

by Zacky Hunter Gill

by Alex Shapiro 15

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fever 103 Bright, bright nausea A bone cringing and spilling its contents into a toilet My skin hot and red as a blistered, dying star The charred sun sloughs off its skin onto me—h bombs, Belsen The light of the bad angels playing on a wooden television disintegrating into snow In this bed in a small yellowed attic I writhe around under the covers. It is so hot I think it must be a witch’s oven Yellow fat melting into a long gold shriek and I can’t breathe, not without ice After an interminable silence— the kind of long wait after you beg for help and then give up on any response I slip into delirium and dream I am still

The Fifth Season invaded by weakness, it sits sticky in all of my cells At my aunt’s house at Christmas I carry a vase to the table, heavy with pain and confusion, even in my dream; and trip and fall, throwing the vase into the air. It smashes into the shiny wooden floor like a crystal dirge The sky seems to open up as it must have for Prometheus: In preparation for an executioner’s hand reaching out of the heavens to take its tax And I kneel in the glass as my father yells— his face a blurred mask of high, cold fury a silver bellow pressing me into the floor I try to clean up the glass that I am kneeling in but I am so heavy, pinned to the floor, my knees encrusted with shards and bleeding The party paused—every

face contorted slow and fixed in aspic and anger I can’t think beyond the edges of this circle My mind in its meatbox retreating into pain, the conditioned aversion immanent to the broken cell I am orthogonal to the world, and can never enter it So I must dance around the cross and bare my chest as an offering The malignant chatter of the party comes back into focus and I bathe in these shards and laugh as I stumble trying to right myself I feel a hand In the small of my back, pressing me down, then another hand on the back of my head, grinding my face into the glass dust

dancing ribbons threading their ways to a central knot dancing streams running to an estuary I am a blunted dagger and I wish to sharpen myself Smoky, soft, red-brown light seeps into the room from under the floorboards a surging cold, grey-green salt-water maelstrom throws me down I struggle to breathe and find the center A whirlwind of ions, neither friend or foe Now it laps at me gently As the crown of my head feels air A cold wind runs cold and then hot all the way to Hell; the prisoners shiver in delight. I am somewhere else. by Walker Storz

Maroon laughter and blood of the same color, but tinged with velvet black, bursting out of my face and knees

The Sick Muse • Issue 11

There are five seasons now Of a show we binged together. When did the months wedge So firmly between us? More & more I annotate The accumulated distance. I cannot stand this list Less poem. I devote A room to these stops & gaps, But they spill out the door & clutter my lonely Apartment (the second you Haven’t seen me living in). The walls lack the limbic Memory of inviting you in. There’s a porch out back Overlooking a garden. Two chairs seeped in light I’m in one, coffee in hand, Composing. I imagine you Next to me sharing my quiet Ritual. I’m weathering This narrow life of mine Without you at hand Only reachable by phone. Dlugos found comfort in the fact That “everyone, no matter how Far the physical distance / Is only a phone call away.” But I am not happy When I remember that. Time goes beyond reason. An unwelcome dream lingering Into the morning of the poem, Disobedient of stanza breaks & Anniversaries. In this fifth Season of our togetherness Apart, our longing is stretched Thin, yet the gravitational Pull of a dream Keeps us spinning in our orbitals. by Noa/h Fields IG/twitter @doyounoahpoet

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Social Media Algorithm

by

Social Media Algorithm arose due to the frustration with the limits and mathematically curated feeding of/to my experience via multiple social media platforms. Symbolic and illustrative in thought, process, and materials, the piece is made of green tinted glass, eyedroppers, marble, and electroplated steel spheres; it poetically and minimally expresses the angst felt while engaging within social media. The process of drilling through panes of glass at high rpm is reminiscent of the constant scrolling and validation inherent in social media platforms. Grinding channels into marble signifies a new cultural paradigm. Electro-chemically transformed metal spheres are eyes reflecting and transfixed as they sample, through mathematical limitations, the landscape of imagined and vital expressions, the digital DNA of experience. IG: xo_yaranov Social Media Algorithm, 2018. Green-tinted glass, eyedroppers, marble, and electroplated steel spheres.

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The Sick Muse • Issue 11


Sketches

by Hannah Moore

Hannah Moore is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, who moved to Chicago last year and immediately jumped into the environment, sketching musicians and producing live art at shows to capture the energy and essence of music in the city. Here we show some of her raw sketches that breathe so much of the life of music. She is also very talented at oil paint portraiture, puppetry, animation, and mural work. Visit her website at hannahmooreportfolio.com

Somewhere on Chicago Ave. October 2018 Patrick Sundlof on his banjo, December 2018

Backyard Jams in July, Humboldt Park area (Alex Ellsworth on cello, Elijah Berlow on banjo) Museum Campus in August The Sick Muse • Issue 11

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From Old Media to Social Media: The Visionary Journey of Mac Blackout By Dan Shukis Chicago artist Mac Blackout’s work often depicts bold, explosive characters whose eyes and mouths pop out and grin at the viewer with high energy and high mischief. His work can only be described as “wild,” whether it be wild faces and color combinations, wild abstracted forms, or the wild punk-looking aesthetic that parallels his musical projects. All of the imagery is extremely fresh, vivid, and new looking, but I can’t help but notice something older and more familiar that seems to hint at mass media’s earlier influence. As I will discuss in this article, his art exemplifies that the underground subcultures of graffiti and punk can blend with the old and new styles of mass media, and are being newly transformed by social media today, exposing the ongoing dialogue between art and mass media. I met Mac at the 2018 Chicago Art Book Fair where he was tabling nearby The Sick Muse. When approaching him, I noticed that he wasn’t scrolling through his phone like everybody else, but instead had his head down in his sketch book, completely focused, doodling in a trance to pass the time. I could sense the spark and the energy in the person behind all of the provocative, colorful work that I’ve admired over the years. For this article, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mac and the quotes in the article unless otherwise noted were from our conversation about his life, works, and thoughts on media. _________ Born in 1977, Mac is old enough to recall the early days when mass media was both new and universally familiar. Much of his work is collage-oriented, with pieces of retro photography blended with hand-drawn characters and scenes. When looking closely at his murals and paintings, I can see a vague resemblance to the imagery of ‘70s and ‘80s children’s cartoons, whose creators often made everything look bright, loud, and psychedelic. Mac said of this time, “It is probably hard for anybody born in the age of the internet to comprehend. The main mass media platforms in the ‘80s and prior were radio, newspapers, and the TV. Mass production had just begun really in the mid century in conjunction with the world wars. This mass media renaissance inspired the pop art movement of the ‘60s and began to slowly give each person a vague idea of what might be going on on the other side of the world, or even what was happening coast to coast in the US. This was something new and extremely exciting, but everything was communicated and spread very, very slowly.” While the graffiti movement at that time was still underground and restricted to major urban centers, Mac was able to discover it through the vessel of mass media—“My first glimpses of graffiti culture were from seeing it on Welcome Back Kotter, the news, and occasional talk show. I wasn’t exposed to the extent of it until I found a copy of Subway Art in the early ‘90s. Prior to the ‘90s you had to seek out culture through word of mouth, Thrasher Magazine, a college radio station, record stores, head shops in the cities or college towns.” Before attending the Herron School of Art in the late ‘90s, he lived the life of a full time graffiti artist in Indianapolis, IN, a place without much of a graffiti scene when he first arrived. 19

Mac Blackout. Runaway Dream, 2019. acrylic on canvas. 24” x 24”.

Mac moved to Chicago in 2000 after finishing art school and leading a double existence as both studio artist and illegal street artist. At a certain point, the rebellious impulse towards graffiti was re-channeled into playing rock music. From early 2000 until today, Mac’s musical projects include The Functional Blackouts, The Daily Void, Mickey, and Mac Blackout Band. His exposure to mass media and attention to its art informed the way he crafted the poster art for musical projects. Using his copy machine at work, his poster art often blends white out, ink, and pen with older era collaged advertisement images to look raw, passionate, and DIY, the very spirit of the music he was producing; “I’ve always looked at media pretty abstractly. I’m not usually focusing on the bottle of soda they’re trying to sell...I’m looking at the way the ad was made or how it’s funny, succeeding, or failing at what its objective is.” Starting in 2003, he began his signature boombox art, where the archaic music players of pre-internet media are turned into canvases for him to work with. Any discarded objects from the past can come back to life in a new way when Mac adds his characteristic eyes and mouths to them; suddenly, the things seem to be consciously looking back at you with intensity and vibrancy. In his book Madman’s Eye Mac says, “I bring out the human, animal, and cosmic elements in inanimate objects. If I’m not referencing physical features specifically, I’m creating a sense of presence from anthropomorphic energy in the piece whether it be a painted object or a sculpture created from raw materials.” Media and art are constantly self-consciously looking back at themselves and its this reflexive gaze that Mac captures in his boomboxes. It can be hard to comprehend how much has changed over the decades of Mac’s career, from graffiti, to punk, to a top player in Chicago’s 21st century art world. The hyper-connectivity of the internet and social media makes culture change more quickly and

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sporadically than ever before, and in our interview, Mac reflected on how this new atmosphere can lead to a loss of authenticity more quickly than it did in the past: “The underground networks that we held so dear don’t exist the same way now. Holding knowledge and traditions dear, knowing that you and your friends were truly the keepers of the cultural keys was something truly special. Today’s mass culture and the fact that everything is at everyone’s fingertips has destroyed old culture and created an entirely new way of living.” However, from the point of view of a visual artist, we seem to be in a type of renaissance of connectivity and visibility for new styles to spread in seconds. When asked whether social media was helpful or harmful to studio or street artists today, Mac made it clear that things are overwhelmingly better than before: “When I was a kid I thought there was a very slim chance of success as an artist doing purely my own thing. Galleries wanted 20 of the same painting and half of the sale... the system was not on the artists side. Social media has opened up doors for driven artists to make their own way. The algorithms are bullshit though. People need to be in more control of what they see on social media.” Mac’s social media presence offers a glimpse into his creative process, which can be extremely interesting to view from the outside. Often his pages show time-lapsed videos of his intricate free hand marker drawings, or even the massive grid style mural arrangements of transforming huge brick walls into public art. “I think the big innovations in street art are with the materials, colors of spray paint, caps, ink, markers. Brands that exclusively sell supplies for graffiti and street art are alive and well because social media allows everyone to see the badass work being made with these new materials in turn spawning new artists daily. In the 90s we were only using Krylon, Rusto, and Griffin Shoe Dye for ink. The more time goes by the more foreign the pre-internet age seems. I’m very nostalgic for it but I cant complain. The internet has allowed me to make art full time.”

Attunement to how mass media affects the art we make is more important than ever before. Mac’s work strikes a delicate balance as he’s been a part of the underground subcultures that remain fragile and important to maintain in today’s world, but also he has pioneered with the best of what 2019’s social media networks have to offer. As we look into the future, I hope that veterans like Mac can teach younger artists how to remain driven, authentic, and successful in this ever changing world of hyper-connected mass media 2.0. “My art is rooted in an alternate but parallel consciousness. I want my work to reflect the feelings and embodiment of what it is to be human on earth, in the universe and in the man-made worlds technology has placed us in. I want to create positive work that instigates dreams, inspiration and power for others to create into the future...At this point I create with all people in mind. Some people may relate to one piece more than others but that’s the beauty of art. When you find a piece you really relate to it’s something special. Time will tell how mass media will affect it all.” Mac Blackout. Alley of Dreams mural in progress, 2018. 2424 N Lincoln. Ave, Chicago

Mac also pointed out how social media has perhaps given a voice to audiences to more effectively voice their desires for artistic expression: “The mural boom now in 2018 is what I’ve always dreamed of. Now that the people have more of a voice with social media, government and businesses are taking notice striving to appeal to people. They’ve finally realized that buff brown walls are ugly and people like art.” Mac’s public work has popped up all over Chicago and beyond since then, and shows no sign of slowing down. You may recognize his murals from Bucket o’ Blood Records, Lincoln Hall, or Sleeping Village, just to name a few. As seen on the cover of this issue one of Mac Blackout signature boomboxes.

Mac Blackout. BB100 (100th painted boombox), 2018. enamel on vintage boombox.

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The Sick Muse • Issue 11


Interview with Cordoba BY NOAH JONES

Cordoba. From left to right Zach Upton-Davis, Eric Novak, Cam Cunningham, Brianna Tong, Khalyle Hagood. Photo by Khori Wilson.

It was a hard time transcribing my interview with Chicago sextet Cordoba, parsing through the band’s effusive laughter, joking, and tough love. Not to mention Kevin and Hell was swinging away in the background, and the chatter of a crowded night at Café Mustache spilled over to our table by the door where we talked. But eventually I got the interview typed up, cut to size, so take a gander and then go online and have a listen to their latest album “Break the Locks Off Everything New” on bandcamp. Noah Jones: Your first two albums Rust and Dream, Consume, Break dealt with intensely personal and abstract subjects of loss, separation, love, dreams, abuse, and the passage of time. This latest album Break the Locks Off Everything New tackles more concrete social and political issues in Chicago. Can you describe the current projects or activism that informed the content of the album? Brianna Tong: I’ve been doing Chicago organizing and activism before I started playing in this band but I didn’t want to put all of that in the songs until Cam said maybe we should, and then I thought about it… I found ways I could write about that. I’m part of The People’s Lobby and Reclaim Chicago. I started out organizing with Chicago Student

Action—that’s really dope and informs a lot of what I do. Just being part of movements in the city with Black Lives Matter Chicago, folks from Assata’s Daughters, folks who are part of No Cop Academy, the sort of people doing big movements in the city. Noah: Dave Tremblay said of your latest album “Jazz is the perfect vehicle to convey revolutionary sentiments and ideas for protest. Cordoba takes that ideal in their release Break the Locks Off Everything New, a jazz fusion calling for major societal changes.” What to your mind makes jazz the perfect vehicle to convey revolutionary sentiments and ideas for protest? Cam Cunningham: If you map the key signatures on the album, it actually creates a Marxist dialectic! Zach Upton-Davis: Personally, I don’t think jazz is the “perfect vehicle to convey revolutionary sentiments and ideas for protest.” I don’t think political art can be a replacement for political work. It’s a nice thing; it’s part of the public consciousness. We all feel a need to express our feelings about this really strongly, and that makes our music powerful and I think it has an effect.

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Brianna: I think there is something to the release of emotion that goes into, or comes through, improvisation. I don’t think it’s revolutionary, but I think it can deepen the things that are in the lyrics of these songs, and provide an outlet to feel more about the song. I think it is an important part of people’s radicalization to actually feel about what the fuck is happening, and not just be like this is how it is, it sucks, but well... Noah: Songs off the new album are in 4/4 or 3/4 time signatures but with extremely tricky phrasings, and with a lot of tension and interplay between a solid groove and moving melody parts layered on top. Like the horn part at end of “Outcry,” the first iteration of horn melody implies an 8-beat pulse, but on the repetition, it cuts out after 6 beats and continues out of phase until you get back to downbeat. I guess what I want to know is how did you compose for the album? How do you come up with that horn part? Cam: I really love Thelonious Monk. He is one of my favorite musicians for sure. “Outcry” was inspired by a lot of Monk’s development of melody; a lot of his solos are only based on melody, and I am not nearly as good as Monk so I leave the melody, and I’ll realize that midsolo and be like, why am I doing this? There is so much content just in the one phrase that you can develop. So what I tried to do was just develop that initial phrase and see what other phrases I could come up with…We aren’t trying to sound like a math rock band. I like math rock, I don’t have any issue with it, but I want to be based on the thematic material, which is a very jazz approach. By doing that we end up with some odd feels at times, but its more about developing melody than it is about coming up with alternative grooves. Zach U-D: As a drummer, I feel really drawn by the top of the music. Sometimes I feel like when I’m learning a song, I am like, what the fuck is Khalyle [the bassist] playing here, is this actually grooving? But the drum parts are really centered around embellishing the melodic components. Khalyle Hagood: When it comes to Cordoba stuff, Cam writes everything I play. Usually when you hear something on the album, it’s not the same as what I play live anymore, because I’ve become comfortable with it by then…What you shouldn’t do is rely on muscle memory more than your sonic memory. I try to think more so about textures adding to the piece…Just recently, in the last part of a song, I decided to do a descending scale, instead of the riff—it lets me play more notes, instead of the same thing over and over which a lot of bassists do, and I feel this note choice is more melodic. It’s kind of a cop out to say it sounds melodic without really explaining, but, well, the song is winding down, so having this descending line over it, and it shifts up a step to this brighter chord when Brianna goes up in the melody, so that kind of washing down makes it feel like it is getting toward the end. Eric Novak: I sort of do that too. I learn what Cam writes, and then at some point I start to add new stuff to it…Since I’m the horn player, and can’t play chords and shit, I try to find a way to either mimic the vocal parts that Brianna is doing or compliment them in some way— not really like a vocalist and a horn player, but more like two vocalists. So, I’ll be doubling what she’s doing or like harmonizing, or outlining some chord by playing some arpeggios. 23

Cordoba live. From left to right Zach Bain-Selbo, Brianna Tong, Cam Cunningham, Eric Novak. Photo by Ayethaw Tun.

Cam: Both of you really think in textural ways as well, which is something I don’t write really at all, and I think that brings it more alive. Noah: You started the band and recorded the first album Rust with no horns. Then Eric came in with the saxophone for the second album Dream, Consume, Break. How did your composition change when you had a horn section? Cam: I studied composition. I wrote for big ensembles and I just want it big. I just love the big music. I want Cordoba to be a Wagnerian experience, without any of the racism. I feel like I have to struggle with cutting. I want to include too much sometimes. On our next record, we want to add strings, some harp you know. We have more ambitions. I think Rust was something we recorded just to finish something. Cordoba at that point, it was a wilting flower, and we just wanted to finish it and get it done with, but we started to have more ambitions, and be more forward looking. Noah: Eric, how did you come to join the band on sax? Eric: I moved to Chicago 2 to 3 years ago and I posted some album I recorded on the DIY Chicago fb page and said I play saxophone and I want to play with people. Cam hit me up shortly after that and he was like my band is trying to get a saxophone player, and trying to get freakier or something. Brianna: I didn’t even like Eric when he joined, but now I do. Eric: You were mad about my facial hair looking like a question mark Noah: So what about you Zach B, when did you join? Zach Bain-Selbo: I played in another band with Eric. We play in Tamarie T. and The Elektra Kumpany. It’s like a 10- to 12-piece psychedelic funk group. You guys were talking about finding a keyboardist and then Eric knew me and asked me to play.

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Khalyle: To me, you just showed up one day and I was like, who is this motherfucker? Zach B: Ha! Yeah you didn’t say a word to me. I wasn’t acknowledged by half the band until like 3 or 4 practices in. Noah: The three albums you have come out with thus far are very cohesive sonically. Similar tones and production even though you worked at three different recording studios and a couple different producers. Every instrument is very distinct and clear and the overall sound is rich in low frequency. Did you have a vision of the soundscape since the beginning? Cam: We absolutely have to battle the people trying to mix. No insult at all, everyone we worked with has been great, but we have really pushed back. Like especially with Brianna’s vocals. Brianna: People love to put hella verb or lots of room on the vocals, but I like them, and we all like them, a little more, like, queer and warm.

Noah: The music, like any band, plays with certain restraints of style. Do you think about the constraints of your sound and how you work within them? Eric: More recently I have been trying to play less, because I have a problem playing too many notes sometimes. I’m finding ways without changing notes; make one note into a few different things, hold a note for really long, and change shit with my throat to add some extra overtones, or throw on some effects to change the timbre of the note. Khalyle: What I really love about this band is Cam has yet to tell me no on any effects that I’ve wanted to do on anything. Cam: I am a bad parent. Khalyle: He never tells me no! Brianna: Band daddy. He lets us eat ice cream!

Cordoba keepin’ time. Photo by Khori Wilson.

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Lyrics

The Sick Muse was first imagined as a platform to present lyrics by Chicago bands. When put to song, even one word may take on the emotional saliency of a novel, transmitting experience at unfathomable speeds with improbable densities. At a show, the words sometimes come through in shadowy waves. Here we put lyrics down in the silence of print where they kinda dance around naked on the page, mingling with a new crowd of colors and lines. Let’s see what happens.

“Stained Glass Tiles” by Romancoke

Inspired by “Stained Glass Tiles” Painting by Jessica Sawyers of Awaken Artistry

“some people pray to feel closer to god” by oeugons are real

some people pray to feel closer to god in a silence so comfortable, a crying ovation this is where time employs illusion some people pray to feel closer to god From upcoming EP called “say it again with different words”

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The Sick Muse • Issue 11

Say what you do, it matters. Don’t press your time to flatter. It’s an inverse proportion. It leads you to absorption. Say you won’t make a deal. The man is so demanding. A flicker fire commanding. He shot the arm to lever. His strength the man is clever. The Golden Mile, Is just stained glass tiles. You take it all and you’ve gained nothing, nothing at all. I see we can’t stop laughing. Soften the blow of crashing. It hurts to find a reason. And if you do it’s treason. Stay a while, stained glass tiles. I know you wanted to sing your song and I know you waited so long. Lyrics by Andrew Mccusker


“X Y & Z” by Zumuz

Explaining a rhythm that nobody knows Extending a chord that no one has heard Expanding two words to make a stand Exposing a vision through a band Yearning for a new kind of unheard sound Yielding the stanzas by the heavy pound Yelling the lyrics into the microphone Yawning to the creation of a fresh tone Zooming through the pages of space and time Zeroing on the number of words to write Zoning the mind up to procreate art Zapping the neurons part by part

“Grated Floor”

by Forced into Femininity

Explaining the colors when I’m color blind Extending the escorts of the limited mind Expanding the volume of a molecule Exposing to society within solitude

Lament lament Lament Clutching our hair tearing our flesh despite our display pain becomes figment no reality no recourse to empathy their violence merits respect

Yearning for water in the core of the sun Yielding not to walk but learn to run Yelling inside a sunken glass boat Yawning to the crash as we float Zooming across vast opportunity Zeroing beyond the universal unity Zoning down the balance of nature Zapping to kill the power of culture

we walk towards a sawblade the spurt of blood on a page lets them hear the answer to your specific disorder therefore therefore therefore we bring the briefs to the leader he circles them with a marker the learned wade in the bowels of the executed steam rises like souls from the dead our stories slide through the grated floor slide

Explaining to solve the unsolved proof Yearning that the answer fights against truth Zooming away from the light into the murk X Y & Z at work Lyrics and art by Zuqy

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MIXING MASS MEDIA: Q&A W/ CQQCHIFRUIT by Sasha Tycko A conversation between DJs Sasha Tycko a.k.a. Sasha No Disco and Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero a.k.a. Cqqchifruit about DJing to craft narrative and investigate history. Sasha No Disco: So, the theme of this issue of The Sick Muse is “mass media,” which has a specific connotation—network television, national newspapers, radio, magazines, etc.—but, more generally, has to do with the transmitting of knowledge and information, and the technologies, techniques, objects, and people that facilitate that transmission. That, to me, has so much to do with DJing. I think more so than musicians, DJs are always thinking about how what they do will affect their audience. They are organizing disparate media that already exist in order to craft a narrative that makes sense to other people. Those are my initial thoughts about DJing as it relates to mass media. I think you are a very intentional DJ and artist, with a mind for history and community. So first of all, what are your thoughts on what I just wrote? And, other than making them dance, how are you trying to affect your audience? What are you trying to communicate? Cqqchifruit: I agree with a lot of what you wrote about DJs and mass media; although I don’t think every DJ is intentionally trying to create a narrative, that is the outcome regardless of intent. Whether or not the narrative tells a story, is up to the DJ. Sometimes the intent is just to keep folks dancing, and I think that can push narrative to the side. I see this reflected in my own sets; if I focus too much on making people dance, and not enough on my emotional connection to the rhythm and message of the music, I often feel like I have failed regardless of whether or not people were dancing throughout the night. There can be a loss of purpose, especially in settings where people won’t dance to music that they don’t know. In those settings, although the risk of “failure to dance” is high, failure to achieve my purpose as an artist is an even higher risk. When curating my sets I’m aiming to push the voices of women, gender and sexual minorities, and people of color through the speakers and into folks’ consciousness as a protest against white and male musical hegemony. I want to help amplify these narratives because there needs to be more room to listen, feel, and move to different beats.

Catch Sasha and Jacquelyn performing and DJing @ ALTER on 3/30 at the Hideout. Come as your alter ego.

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SND: How does your persona as Cqqchifruit inform your approach to DJing? C: Cqqchifruit is simultaneously a child of the tropics, an ode to the divine feminine, and an explorer of queer aesthetics in art, music, and dance. I have taken this name as a DJ and performance artist, which has allowed me to float between media, genres, languages, rhythms, and narratives in ways that I am continuing to discover. It’s a mix somewhere between the Miami-style of DJing, with abrupt yet seamless transitions and heavy MC/microphone presence, and the Chicago House-style of keeping the groove, keeping the mix smooth yet with a dynamic flow. I’m pushing myself to take more risks and continue to evolve as an artist; in 2019, original music and an alter ego are blooming. Stay tuned! SND: Thinking about the research and archival aspect of DJing, can you describe your research process when creating sets? Are there particular eras of history, places, topics, or communities you are trying to explore? What have you learned in this research? C: My research process is often influenced by a theme; whether externally posited by a themed night or party, or internally inspired by a song or mood I’m feeling at the moment. I’m often searching for artists that create from intersectional identities; artists who are women and/or queer; artists from the Caribbean, Central American and South America, Africa, and the tropics; artists who originated genres of dance music from these parts of the world, and artists who are continuing to shape these genres. This research often brings forward information about the socio-political climate in which these artists were creating, and how that influenced, or is influencing, their music and careers. Learning about those who paved the way for us today is always inspiring. Sometimes I am given the gift of a research-based commission in which I must integrate archival sound samples with music around a particular theme or time period. I truly love this kind of work, as I do believe that DJs can be historians and storytellers through this kind of practice. I’m planning to produce a podcast this year that will research and share the stories behind the music I love both from my vinyl collection and favorite artists producing digitally; look out for “The Cqqchifruit Collection” coming soon!

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The Sick Muse • Issue 11

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#SecurityForWho: Queer Women of Color Advocacy as DIY By Victoria Parra

Selena Sandoval, writer and member of Las Topo Chicas, a femme queer artist collective based on the Southside of Chicago, sat down with Victoria Parra to discuss a recent assault by security guards at Simone’s in Pilsen, the protests she held in response to the assault, and the power that anger holds for women. On November 4, 2018, Selena Sandoval was assaulted by five security guards while attending “Oye Mujer,” an event promoted as celebrating women through music at the Pilsen bar Simone’s. That night, Selena was smoking outside of the bar while waiting for her friend, Nat. She shared a lighter with a friendly stranger, who was then joined by a friend. “He came out and sat right next to me, which showed me that he didn’t know boundaries,” she said. “He felt entitled to my space. He sat right next to me and I could tell he was one, drunk, and two, aggressive.” In an attempt to counter her assumptions, Selena began a conversation with this man, and asked where he was from. He replied that he was from the South Side, but then clarified he was from the suburb of Berwyn. Selena teased him for being from a suburb and not the South Side of Chicago. He began using ignorant language, including the n-word, and Selena told him that he sounded like a Trump supporter. He confirmed her statement by saying that he actually does support Trump. Selena was horrified. “I was like, ‘How can you say that in this community when people are being terrorized by ICE? How are you on 18th street and just going to say that nonchalantly?’” The stranger’s body language became even more aggressive, making Selena uncomfortable, especially as she was the only woman outside. He declared that if she had been a man, he would have punched her already. This caused her to get up and yell, “Get the fuck out of here.” The security guards came out of the bar, and, only seeing her reaction to the situation, assumed that she was the aggressor. When her friend Nat came out, the security pushed both women away, but allowed the man and his friends to continue walking in their direction. “I could still hear him antagonizing me,” she said. “Not only did this guy have the ability to come sit next to me and harass me, but when I defend myself, they didn’t even take him away from the situation. When he continued to threaten me, I continued to stand my ground. I’ve seen too many women in my life have to swallow violence, have to accept being belittled because ‘that’s how men are.’” 29

This was one of Selena’s first nights out after a difficult summer marked by depression and anxiety related to family illness and death. After coming to terms with needing to address her mental health, she had begun taking antidepressants and slowed down on going out, “honing in on self-discipline.” The incident on November 4th brought back painful memories. “My reaction has to do a lot with me being a sexual assault survivor. With trauma, there’s fight, flight, or freeze. I was fifteen when it happened, I didn’t know there was such thing as freeze. That’s what really fucked with me in the healing process because no one talks about that, that you are sometimes too afraid to do anything, so you just get in this hold where you can’t move. At Simone’s, I was like, ‘Oh man, something is popping off again, another man is feeling entitled to my space, my body, my energy, my time.’ I need to do something, so I decided to stand my ground and fight back.” Her adrenaline during the interaction was high, and Selena did not recognize the extent of the security guards’ use of force until a day and a half later, when, while taking a shower, she noticed bruises on her arms. “I was in a fight state of mind and didn’t have time to process everything. When I saw the bruises on my arms, that was triggering for me, that’s the moment I realized what had happened was assault. It’s telling in itself, how we only know how to call out pain when it’s physical. Emotional traumas are undermined in comparison to physical.” Selena felt hurt by the lack of accountability from Simone’s, especially because the event she had attended, “Oye Mujer,” was advertised as a night dedicated to women. “A few days after the assault I began to do my own research on what security guards are ‘legally’ allowed to do, as a way to process the trauma. Upon doing so I found that they are only allowed to use “equal force” to deescalate a situation. On the night I was assaulted, 5 security guards put their hands on me; that is not equal force, that is excessive force. Not only that, but the only response from Simone’s I had received in the days after was a short and apathetic message from the general manager, Ashley Thinnes, stating that they were ‘investigating the situation.’ They couldn’t even apologize.”

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“There’s this aspect of performative allyship. A lot of people like to perform this social justice rhetoric but don’t take the actions to make sure people in these environments are safe.” “There’s this aspect of performative allyship. A lot of people like to perform this social justice rhetoric but don’t take the actions to make sure people in these environments are safe. I became angry, because I know a lot of people at Simone’s and they know what type of person I am, they know I don’t like to start arguments. They were so ready to cancel me out, to forget their history with me because I was the ‘hysterical woman’ in this situation. People will talk about feminism and misogyny but when it comes down to it, they will give you their back. To me, this is like women working in maquiladoras in Mexico, who have been killed on the way to bus routes. Why don’t we prioritize creating safe environments for women? At what expense, are we willing to profit off of something? A lot of people have this idea that there is no such thing as a safe environment, that it’s impossible. It makes me think of ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’ by Angela Davis, when we normalize something it’s hard to imagine a world without it. When we normalize violence and toxic masculinity, they’re something that we just have to live with. To me that’s bullshit.” Pushing back against the narrative of normalized violence, Selena was compelled to #BoycottSimones, by holding multiple protests of the establishment. The lack of an apology from Simone’s, along with messages from women contacting Selena to share their experiences of excessive force in the nightlife scene, convinced her that it was necessary to take action. She coupled the protests with the hashtag #SecurityforWho, to help weave stories together to target the larger problem of toxic masculinity in Chicago nightlife scene.

person is removed. If someone needs to be walked to their car, they will do that.” Despite the success of their efforts to create a safe space on that particular event, she noted that it was the first and last time that Pachanga implemented their safe space strategies. During our interview for The Sick Muse, Selena had the book Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly with her. We discussed how the book has been helpful in processing the night at Simone’s. Selena read two lines from the book: “Women’s anticipation of negative response keep them from voicing what they need, want and feel. When men can so easily choose ignorance and dominance over intimacy..” “Looking at all the comments on my posts,” she continued, “‘Why didn’t you just walk away. You chose to stay in that situation.’ When are we going to choose to stand up for ourselves and recognize it’s okay to be angry? My response in that situation was supposed to be passive and walk away. But if I was a man, it would’ve just been another bar fight, because he was approached and he had the right to defend himself. Women are conditioned to suppress our anger, it’s what we’ve been taught all of our lives. I mentioned that I don’t see myself as an angry person, but, is it because I didn’t want to be or because that’s how I was conditioned? I think of all the moments I had the right to be angry but didn’t think I had to ability to. When we don’t give women the opportunity to be angry, we’re not giving them the tools to defend themselves. Anger is a very survival mode instinct, to disassociate ourselves from that is very scary. We should be able to sit in our anger, listen to it, and see what it is asking for.” #BoycottSImones protest outside Simone’s. Photo by Alejandro Reyes.

Selena’s challenge to the status quo began prior to the protests, with her work with Las Topo Chicas, a Chicago queer-and-femme-of-color artist collective that focuses on preventing sexual and gender-based violence in Chicago. The collective has organized markets, mixers, and house parties prioritizing the inclusion and safety of queer femmes-ofcolor, as well as issued public statements to inform the community of known abusers and unsafe spaces. “A lot of the work that we do is to create a safe space for femmes, for queers, so we can have our own space. To realize change isn’t something far off in the distance, this is something we can do now, it just takes work but it is possible. One thing we did was work with East Room for their Pachanga night [in 2017]. We worked with security to say that if someone called out another person who made them feel unsafe, you have to take the necessary precautions to make sure that

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Shoutouts GROOVE CAFE

BLACK AND BROWN BABES

Groove Cafe is just like it sounds, serving up groovy music and bringing together musicians and music lovers to get down, connect, and help each other out. They are an amazing resource for Chicago artists, and truly live up to their self description: “This little old cafe is a place for joy.” Check out Afermaths series: illuminating exciting music scenes while raising awareness & money for climate disaster. Aftermaths 1 featured 40+ Chicago bands and raised money for projects to rebuild Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Aftermaths 2 featured musicians either living in, born in, or significantly connected to Indonesia, a compilation of harsh noise, industrial music, improv, synth jams, and gamelan raising money for those affected by the 2018 earthquake and tsunami that struck Palu, Indonesia. Shouts to Mike Sugarman and Erica Mei Gamble who work on Groove Cafe! Visit their Chicago arts/music calendar at www.groove.cafe

Black and Brown Babes collective has been bringing folks together for about 3 years now! They have brunches once a month where all the loveliest of humans get together to rave chill. Potluck style, there are always mimosas, great music, and biscuits. Check out their website blackandbrownbabes.com for new events, and join the fb group for the awesome community.

JOSHUA VIRTUE We all know Chicago gets too dang cold, this winter was brutal on bodies and minds. Alex aka Joshua Virtue new album Post Faith Dialogues is spring buds poppin outta the winter ground. It SLAPS and will have ya smile crying while boppin.

CHICAGORAMPSHARING Calling all venues, event organizers, galleries, art spaces, and... anyone else who hosts or attends events in Chicago! A vital new resource is available for making your event/space wheelchair accessible. Contact @chicagorampsharing on instagram or facebook to borrow a ramp (for free!) for your next event. Yes, for free. Meaning there’s no reason not to make your event more accessible for your friends in chairs. They have several sizes available (3-foot, 6-foot, and 8-foot) and will help coordinate the pick up and drop off.

BLACK AND PINK: CHICAGO CHAPTER ATOMIX CAFE MOVIE NIGHT West Town’s cozy neighborhood cafe Atomix hosts a free afterhours screening series every other Wednesday. “Atomix Science Theatre 2019” screens rare and off-beat sci-fi flicks for a growing crowd of cult-loving regulars. Get there before the shop closes for a reasonably priced latte and a homemade vegan muffin, stay for the homespun movie night -- you might even hear some quips from the crowd.

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We have shouted out Black and Pink in the past, but we thought it time to shout them out again since they just launched a Patreon to raise money for their reentry program, supporting formerly incarcerated members while they rebuild their lives. In their words, “Your donation will provide the material support that will enable formerly incarcerated queer and trans people to survive and thrive. We aim to provide this support while eliminating the institutional barriers of traditional nonprofits, instead truly meeting each person.” Visit www.patreon.com/bp_chicago_reentry/ overview to learn more and donate!

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GIRLY SHOW by Adele Henning

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