Spot 1: Origins of Creativity
Karen Holmberg: Archeology in an Emergency
In Part One of this two-part conversation, Will Corwin and Karen Holmberg discuss her fascination with volcanoes, her discovery of mysterious “spider vulva” petroglyphs, and consider whether these images can still speak to us.
We Were Creative Before We Were Human
Freshly back from excavating in the Afar desert of northeast Ethiopia, Yonas Beyene PhD sat down in his Addis Ababa office to discuss the origins of human creativity.
Gender and Artistic Practice in the Ice Age
Keeper of antiquities and curator of the blockbuster 2013 exhibition “Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind,” Jill Cook explains the idea of spiritual landscapes, the surreal continuity between ancient and modern artistic practice, and gender equality in the Paleolithic.
Spot 2: 2021 CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Turning The Page: 2021 Contributing Editors
To highlight the outstanding work of our contributing editors, we have compiled the following dossier of texts.
Spot 3: Mimicry, Camouflage, Transformation
Firelei Báez: The Poetics of Opacity
Cosmo Whyte and Firelei Báez discuss practices of coding, withholding, and “mixing the honey with the sting” in Báez’s symbolically layered works.
Inaudibility: Krista Belle Stewart’s Sonic Repatriation of Knowledge
Krista Belle Stewart mines the power of strategic incomprehensibility to reclaim ownership through the mediation of access and refusal.
Claudia Peña Salinas: Seeing Sites Without Sightseeing
Claudia Peña Salinas takes stock of how some of the most visited archeological and spiritual sites in Mexico endure tourism for generations, yet still provide eternal inspiration.
Spot 4: Reviews
Patty Chang: Milk Debt
Sasha Wortzel: Dreams of Unknown Islands
PEN15
PEN15 shouldn’t work—two 33-year-old women acting like 13-year-olds while surrounded by a cast of actual 13-year-olds—but good God, does it.
100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell
Spot 5: ARTIST PROJECTS
Artist Project: Spring 2021
In this series of drawings, I combined my usual lineup of materials, tools, and transformative processes—making marks by burning and branding, and use of gold leaf—to build surfaces that mimic naturalistic elements and environmental conditions.
Constitutionally Flawed
María Korol’s artist project traces the subtext of history and autobiography in her practice of layered obfuscation.
Spot 6: Monumental Interventions
Monumental Futures
TK Smith maps a trajectory of interventions toward the articulation of a monument aesthetic for the African diaspora.
A Living Presence + and the body, Felix, where is it?
Christian’s essay and machado’s poem produce a dialogue that—in content and form—responds to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. These interwoven texts can be read separately or as one dialogue in two voices.
Monumental Collapse
A discussion on toppled statues and reimagining archives.
Monuments Under Occupation
Patricia Eunji Kim and Mashinka Firuntz Hakopian discuss monuments as physical evidence against cultural erasure, their role in preserving indigenous Armenian histories, and augmented reality as a site for activism and memorialization.
Spot 7: PRIDE: Queer Resistance
Queer Intimacy: A Conversation with Diedrick Brackens
The implications of emerging fully black and fully queer into the art world, and of creating images wherein men touch.
Randy Ford: How To Pave a Street for Queens
A conversation about creating and protecting spaces for queer and trans people of color.
M. Lamar: American Cuck
New Territories of Queer Separatism
Radical communities update—and revindicate—off-the-grid feminist movements of the 1970s.