hello grapefruits friends!
i was feeling burned out at the start of this summer, and decided to take a light sabbatical (a.k.a. a vacation), which i haven’t done in years, in hopes of resetting my brain a little bit. it took a surprisingly long time for me to shake the sense of dread and exhaustion brought on by years of endless emails and logins and scheduling conflicts and ULTRA HIGH PRIORITY tasks, but in the past month i finally started to feel relaxed… and then something interesting happened. my computer died, and took all its secrets to the grave with it. ✮:♱.☠︎ ☠︎ ☠︎.☆☾⋆｡𖦹
luckily, a very generous and thoughtful friend offered me their old macbook air to replace it within a few days. but for a moment i thought “maybe this means i don’t have to do email anymore. nobody can find me now—i am a shadow!” i was free of the conduit for much of my work-related stress, and it was great! but also deeply anxiety-provoking in its own way. who am i without my DATA?? (don’t worry, all of my stupid google docs and whatnot were still safe.) it was a bit of a shock to the system, but a good one in the end. i was due for a technological purge.
i don’t know if that little story directly relates to anything in this email, but it kind of indicates where my head is at right now, in these chaotically lazy late days of summer. hesitantly emerging from the pleasant fog of vacation, trying to sift through big questions with a sun-baked brain, freshly revived by some unexpected rainy days. did taking a break fundamentally change me and my presence as a worker and human in this weird capitalist situation? or are all my old stresses lurking in the cloud, waiting for me to return? can i shift my angle of approach just slightly to allow for some kind of lasting wisdom from this time of repose and reflection to take hold? i have found hints of a direction pointing towards some kind of truth(s) in some of the following essays and discussions. i hope you all find them as invigorating and generative as i did!
first, a podcast! the art angle’s interview with scholar and author anna kornbluh revolves around the idea of “immediacy” and its impact on contemporary art and literature, which is the subject of her new book. immediacy as she explains it is distinct from urgency or seriousness, and is a result of the influence of techno-capitalist demands on cultural workers to constantly produce “new” and “authentic” content that sort of feeds back into the machine. ew! she uses this idea to make a counter-argument for the necessity of deep, thoughtful criticism, which, of course, but also i think a lot of artists and writers would agree the decline in criticism and media in general makes this kind of work really challenging and unsustainable. i’m really curious to read the book and get some more nuance and background on this idea…
here is another podcast, which i though was an interesting companion listen to the previous one. in this conversation with the editors of momus, a canadian art publication, palestianian-american artist and writer fargo nissim tbakhi talks about the limitations and responsibilities of art in “times of crisis,” specifically in the context of the genocide in gaza. tbakhi uses a piece by poet solmaz sharif as a lens through which to think about these questions, and comes away with some prompts for how to proceed. between this conversation and anna kornbluh’s thoughts on immediacy, i have been thinking a lot about how these ideas could or should influence my own artistic practice, and how i can identify and thoughtfully consider them in the work of other artists as well. have you noticed a detrimental sense of immediacy or a poetic political activism in any art or writing lately?
i don’t usually link to the same publication more than once in a single email, but i really like momus, and i really really like what is now becoming a series of their titled “reviewing the reviews.” (i linked to the first one, about 2022’s documenta 15 exhibition, in a previous email. it’s very well-done, check it out if you haven’t already.) the second installment in this series is about the 2024 whitney biennial, which the curators titled “even better than the real thing,” and which attracted a lot of grumpiness from critics all over. i don’t think it was a perfect show (although what do i know, as someone who didn’t see it in person!), but i’m not sure everyone was on the same page regarding expectations to begin with. i appreciated that the writers at momus brought up the question of pressures and influences from institutional sources, funders, artists, and audiences alike. it may be that putting on a show this enormous will always be problematic—there’s a reason “design by committee” is a cliche diss! i know some of you out there got to see this show, and i would love to hear your thoughts on it and on the reviews if you’ve read any.
the kind of meta-criticism that “reviewing the reviews” does is important, or at least i think so. it helps me to get a grasp on the larger themes that are influencing artists like me (or unlike me), and introduces me to new ways of understanding issues and ideas that are meaningful now or at a specific time in the past or that maybe will be in the future. it can also be a way to identify trends in criticism that have outlived their usefulness, or maybe were not fully formed to begin with but their appeal made it hard to see their failures. kaya noteboom’s recent essay for public parking, “mycelial without meaning to,” dissects the fungi fad in art writing, which attempts to position mushrooms as an aesthetic antidote to life under capitalism. you can’t blame people for wanting to make it work—it sounds so cool—but the concept kind of shrivels up and dies under noteboom’s laser-sharp analysis. thank you kaya! do swamps next lol!
grapefruits news: i will be tabling for grapefruits art space at the upcoming form.a art fair, sept. 7-8 at oregon contemporary! there will be over 30 small publication outfits and artist-run spaces represented, with exhibitions and events from oregon contemporary, well well projects, carnation contemporary, and outer voice, plus food and drinks. i will be selling grapefruits merch and some small artworks and zines from exhibiting artists (all proceeds from art sales go directly to the artists). please come out and support this cool event and everyone who is participating, it will be fun!
in other arts news: if you haven’t yet heard, the james f. and marion l. miller foundation here in oregon has just announced their new spark award for oregon artists! this is a no-strings cash award of $25k, which will be given to 20 selected artists each year for three years. that is huge! the next comparable artist grant around here is the hallie ford fellowship, which is a similar amount but only goes to three or four artists each year. this year they are accepting applications from performing artists, next year will be writing and video/film, and in 2026 they will give out awards to visual artists. a rare bit of great funding news for artists in oregon : )
in more annoying arts news, the regional arts and culture council has been selected by portland’s city arts office to administer the artist grants program. this isn’t surprising, but it seems so silly that the city made racc go through a public RFQ process when there was never going to be another org that could manage this program, and accusations of high overhead costs were the reason the city claimed to have cut their funding in the first place! making them jump through all these hoops is so inefficient and really just confusing. what is the plan here? thanks to the mercury for reporting on this story, i hear there may be a more in-depth piece coming out soon too.
music corner
one of my favorite online art criticism publications, 4columns, just dropped their “albums of the summer” list, and i’m super into all of it! i hadn’t previously heard of most of the artists they featured, and i really enjoyed the writeup of each record. i am especially loving the atmospheric noise album “marked” by klein, and the review by harmony holiday is kind of mind-blowing… here’s just one sentence: “(klein) invents a sonic landscape dense and defiant enough to transmute that crown of omens atop the ruins with intensity so committed it becomes optimism, utopian vision.” wow! i wish i could write like that ( ♥‿♥)♡
alrighty then! (i’m trying to bring back terrible catchphrases from the late 90s/early 2000s—that one is from “ace ventura” in case you forgot haha. sorry in advance if you click on that link.) i have more deep thoughts and fascinating links for you in the near future, until then thank you for reading and please write back if you feel like chatting about any of this or anything else! love you all xoxox
—martha