Fuck Tr*mp is a photobook of the signage from the Women's Marches of January 21, 2017, created by 43/30 Parallel Press. Photographs by: Lynne Heller / Washington, DC; Kate Jarboe / Austin, TX; M. Wright / Austin, TX; Anne Wilson / Chicago, IL; Alison Palacios / Washington, DC Katrina Wright / Eureka, CA; Emanuela Tallo / Oakland, CA; Liisa Schmoele / Sacramento, CA; Fenella Sentence / London, UK. This book was made as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. It can be purchased online.
This wall text is in response to an exhibition call which asked artists to create work based on the theme of a “Perfect Moment”, an open-ended and versatile theme to ignite diverse and thoughtful responses. Life has a string of brief periods of time—some of these are flawless. It could be an ideal day or perhaps a time when al the desirable elements come together. This exhibition held those fleeting moments that define perfect.
Reviews Editor
Virtual Creativity (VCR) is an academic peer-reviewed journal focusing on creativity in online virtual worlds and other related platforms where the virtual is examined as a central theme in contemporary media art practices and applied contexts. Pieces exploring the subject of digital creativity are sought from the broad perspective of Art, Science and Technology, in what is a widespread field of discourse. One focus of the journal is an examination of creative activity in the metaverse – from art, design and architecture, to research and education, to play and entertainment. Additionally, Virtual Creativity seeks to engage with ways in which the virtual reflects upon the implications of the physical.
Suspended uses collaged photographs and drawings that mine childhood memories, reflecting the volatility of nature, community and identity through the evocation of the summertime family retreat Camp Naivelt (Yiddish for “New World”). Located in Brampton, it was centred on secularist, progressive socialist values, activism, and a celebration of Jewish and Yiddish culture. At one time Naivelt was frequented by up to 5,000 people on any given weekend. While growing up, the artist experienced it as a place of sanctuary and freedom.
The installation references a poignant childhood memory. Visiting Naivelt in the spring off-season, when the artist's family came upon enormous ice floes ejected from the Credit River that runs through the camp. Unpeopled and distant from the bustle and heat of summer, the site was made stranger still by this dramatic scene. The massive ice blocks were both organic and oddly unnatural. Similarly, to this haven of radical politics was in itself outside the norms of the Jewish mainstream. The ice-covered land evoked the gradual deterioration of the site alongside the dwindling of the community. Naivelt continues until today albeit with more modest participation. In the exhibition, the terrain of memory interweaves with the textures of College Street as perennial graffiti markings on our window enter the piece, linking the past with present-day realities where the artist’s self-conception is firmly grounded. An image of the Naivelt bridge appears signaling possibilities in connecting two seemingly distinct realms, holding out the potential for crossing into the promise of a new world.
Review
Curator's Remarks
Window Text
One for Sorrow is a virtual reality (VR) landscape/game/sojourn that seeks to confound the dichotomies between hand and digital making as well as the illusion of two-dimensionality versus three. The making process is a way to position and trouble the translation of the handmade into the digital using collage, assemblage and montage along with craft theory. Though ostensibly a first-person puzzle game, the experience uses the old nursery rhyme One for Sorrow, to entice the player to explore and discover, not necessarily mixed realities, but rather, mixed sensibilities—2D/3D, hand/algorithm, drawn/photographic. Digital and handmade aesthetics, coupled with considered sound design and narrative, evoke an immersive experience and provide an unorthodox model for VR art.