Issue 1. Volume 1. “IDOLATRY” 2022

Editors’ Note

Idolatry is defined as extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone. An idea most will take back to the biblical sense - to worship, or to put something ahead of God.

Yet Idols are found not just in blasphemous acts, but in our everyday as people, things, and items that have simply taken up too much of our time.

Capital.

Has taken up too much of our time Exploitation.

Has taken up too much of our time Ableism.

Has taken too much of our time Art.

Has maybe not taken up enough. What happens when we look to our communities and peers for inspira tion and hope?

People who are Black, Indigenous, POC, disabled, queer or a mix of these identities have been fighting and advocating for commu nity care and a collective radicalization.

Everyone who has worked on this zine resides on stolen lands, the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and Tiohtià:ke.

Where ever you are reading from: we encourage you to rally with and listen to the Indigenous peoples whose land you reside on, and to support local Indigenous artists.

We can always build up from where we are.

Take care;

Your editors: Kemi King and Lisbet MacLean at

For more of our projects, follow @yikestheatreco on social media; or contact us directly at yikestheatreco@gmail.com

The easiest places to grow crops are on you:

Part I

PIECES GATHERED BY: LAURA CHAIGNON

Golden green world was another woman above. Gratefully, she sang: “after humans, the art of earth can endure”.

Hold the Skyworld She fell like rectangle from which she clutched — in her mouth, with earth — different stories.

These she stepped from the animals too, connected with more filaments sprang out from mining waste sites.

Part II

PIECES GATHERED BY: LAURA CHAIGNON

“Mushrooms dominate the buddha’s discourses” he says in thirds. Then he would sit there all day “we too are inexhaustible”

Fungi provide a stick to push back against in reshaping the social, the environmental, our guts and their own microclimates, entranced by their knowledge of each other.

Yet most dreamed of water. Of heavier plants such as gutters, fencing, pots, walls.

But you, brillance. Wholeheartedly awake to all humanity. You on the earth. For the easiest places to grow crops are on you.

Learn and do the same air again. You, the uncreated and death, the goose music.

PIECES BY: CHRISTINE LEE

PIECES BY: CHRISTINE LEE

Another way to say that time is money. How much time does it take to make good art? How much time does it take to finish an art?

So I used my time working a job instead of finishing the rest of the poems.”

“Capitalism.

-Christine Lee

PIECES BY: CHRISTINE LEE

III

PIECES GATHERED BY: LAURA CHAIGNON

I would be reckoned with. I actually got out to do great failures of words and actions; preheated oven until browned, arches, arbors, and gardens. Toasting to know beauty and minor marks.

Later in today’s urban world, the sweet-smelling hair of celestial blue whales, atemporal emptiness, language it makes a much-needed addition to translate. The year of explaining—something.

The tree’s trunk can imagine he became a European city. And my hands — assembly of sameness and water, the indestructible chain of teachings.

For all I am, sunrise until late evening. Present, without our time.

The rain and I lay down some solace.

Co. 2022 |

2022 Mixed Media Sculpture Installation.

the gold tastes plated now

Piece by: Emma

Ineversawmyselfassomeonewhohadpotentialtowaste.

By the time I was old enough to feel it, the gap between my peers and I grew from a puddle to an ocean.

I lived in that ocean, convinced I was to blame for creating it, until I was sixteen .

And then one day, after years of being seen as an apathetic under achiever who didn’t try hard enough…I decided to change pretend I was someone entirely new. Six years, a college diploma and half of a degree later I found myself utterly unrecognizable.

The worship of academic achievement had brought me to an even darker place then when I started. It turns out just because you don’t use your accommodations doesn’t mean you don’t need them.

Each element of this sculpture represents a moment where i felt like things changed:

A pair of kindergarten shoes that I never remembered to put back in my cubby.

Pages and pages of rushed, shaky assignments.

A gold plated box that felt like a way out but eventually felt hollow.

A vision of the future, glowing, growing and hopefully authentic.

As kids we are taught to idolize educators and hang onto their expecta tions with the hopes of being one step closer to “good enough”. Today: questionwhatyouaretaughttobelieveaboutyourself . and i cannot stress this enough: where you’re going doesn’t matter if you don’t care enough to get there. theoceanmightalwaysconsumeyou,butthewaterwillbecomeeasier totreadoneday.

Artist Statement

Laura Chaignon

Computer-generated series of three poems written by a program being fed the words of loving friends, activists, sages, and botanists.

This process was steeped in magic, more than it was a deed of technology. I see this as a modern oracle. I asked: what is there to learn from all the hopeful, the loving, the selfless writ ten words? What is there to learn about life and death? And the machine wrote these words for us.

Here we give up the idolatry of the author’s ownership, as words exist only in collectivity. We give up thinking that only humans are capable of creativity, of seeing, of believing. And, maybe, in our newfound humility rests our solace.

Special thanks to Devon Runions

PROGRAM USED: JanusNode

CORPUS:

Birthday cards + recipes from loved ones

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake

A Handbook of Community Gardening, Susan Naimark

Urban agriculture Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities, Jac Smit, Joe Nasr, Annu Ratta

The Role of Policy in Developing Sustainable Urban Agriculture: Recommendations for the Toronto Urban Growing System, An gela Gong

Tibetan Book of the Dead, Padmasambhava The Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chodron A path with Heart, Jack Kornfield

Space for Jot Notes