hi again! in the week or two that have gone by since the first part of this issue, a few people have messaged me or told me in person something to the effect that they really appreciated the theme of “alternate realities.” i’m so glad people liked it! sadly i feel like the idea of retreating from reality just keeps getting more appealing (╥﹏╥)
but my goal is to use that feeling and energy to dig up some inspiration! part 1 was focused on extraterrestrial encounters, conspiracies, magic, and spiritualism, and included lots of historical/archival material and at times a general air of nostalgia (for things like 90s television, flip phone keypads, gilded age parlor magic, second wave feminist antics, etc). i think applying a lens of curiosity to the past is a natural and often productive way to make sense of the present—after all, the past is the main ingredient that constitutes each present moment—but sometimes it feels like you just need to move forward, maybe very rapidly. if the last email was about getting into a radical mindset that can allow for imagining new and better ways of being, this one is maybe about what those new and better ways might be. in this follow up, i want to look at some texts and artworks that are concerned with futures of all sorts, both hopeful and cautionary.
ok i know i said i wasn’t going to focus on the past, but here i go linking to a text from the distant year of my birth (1985). donna haraway’s cyborg manifesto uses the idea of the human-machine hybrid to examine the ways other binaries (such as man/woman) can be bridged or broken down. if you haven’t read this before, or if it’s been a while (like it has for me) you can read the whole thing for free at the anarchist library! haraway’s writing has sparked a ton of subsequent theorizing and imagining in the years since it came out, and will probably just keep getting more and more interesting to think about as technology continues to merge with ever more facets of our social and physical experiences of the world.
maybe reading a manifesto is not your idea of a fun leisure activity? that’s fair. how about looking at manifesto-inspired art instead? the cyborg manifesto has inspired a lot of artists—i first learned about it in the context of an art theory class. this article offers a quick rundown of a few contemporary artists woking with the concept of the cyborg in one way or another. i liked how the writer provided examples of a few different perspectives on the cyborg and explained how the concept holds a variety of meanings for artists working within specific lenses of experience and identity.
oops sorry here’s another manifesto! this one is the glitch feminism manifesto by legacy russell, and i think it’s an interesting complement to donna haraway’s work. glitch feminism is based on the thought that maybe the “glitch,” whether it’s an issue with data or some other part of a technological process or environment, is not so much an error but is instead a correction to a system that is itself erroneous. kind of similar to the idea of a glitch in the matrix, except the glitch is a tool of intersectional feminist power instead of a corporate edgelord weapon! the webpage for the glitch feminism manifesto has a ton of great videos too, in case you prefer listening/watching to reading. one is a conversation between russell and artist lynn hershman leeson, who i have more on below.
lynn hershman leeson is a super cool artist who was way ahead of her time—she started making conceptual, video, and performance art about identity and technology as far back as the late 60s. check out the art21 video feature here for an overview of her career, and/or watch a bootleg recording of her 2022 video work “logic paralyzes the heart,” which tells the story of a 61 year-old cyborg.
if you prefer your dystopian sci-fi futurism delivered in song (and i know for a fact that some of you do), watch artist lex brown’s atmospheric apocalypse musical “carnelian.” the whole thing is available to watch for free (!) on her website. it’s an hour long, kind of ambient in terms of its narrative structure and beautiful the whole way through, which means you can flip through the video almost at random and every time you’ll land on something good. the script is equally consistent in poetry and profundity, and i really appreciated the built-in subtitles that helped me catch every word. here’s an article from hyperallergic that explains a little more about the film and the artist.
of course, this email would not be complete without musician sun ra’s afro-futurist masterpiece “space is the place,” from 1972! in contrast to “carnelian,” this film has more of a conventional story arc, in which sun ra and his band transport african americans to a new planet through the power of music to escape the harms of earthly racism. there is a lot here that is reflective of the specific political and cultural moment in which it was made, but it still resonates now with its vision of a future arrived at through mind-expanding collective experience. plus the costumes are so great!
since we’re talking about sci-fi movies, i have to mention one of my favorite recent ones, “prey.” this is the 2022 prequel to the first movie in the predator series, the rest of which are totally silly. this one isn’t not silly, but it somehow manages to be a really good movie too. it picks up where predator 2 left off, and is set in 1719 in the north american plains region (note: you absolutely do not have to watch any other predator movie to enjoy this film or probably for any reason ever). the cast is almost all native except for the goofy european trappers (and the predator of course). they also released a version dubbed in comanche language as well. i really enjoyed it, and it seems like a lot of native film reviewers did too.
“prey” is just one of a number of sci-fi stories i have been exposed to in recent years that centers or is written by someone other than an old white guy. i have really enjoyed getting familiar with writers like samuel r. delaney and artists like april bey, and now i’m super excited to read this anthology of indigenous science fiction. it’s not new, but it is new to me—i wasn’t really interested in science fiction until a few years ago, partly because it felt like a really male-dominated genre to me. i haven’t ordered a copy of this book yet but it’s on my list! has anyone else read it?
i want to end with an essay that was included in the booklet for sondra perry’s show “██████████” (don’t ask me how to say that), by the writer n. k. jemisin. the essay, titled “dreaming awake,” is an account of the author’s process of developing a sort of personal mythology or futuristic vision, one that can encompass the perspective of a black woman better than the stories that were made available to them growing up. it starts on page 9 of the pdf linked here. the whole booklet is interesting as well, lots of fun play with text and formatting!
hope you all enjoyed this futuristic sci-fi cyber-whatever edition of the grapefruits sometimes art email! these themed issues take a bit more time because i get so carried away researching things and keep finding more cool stuff to add. i have some more like this planned for the future, but in the meantime i want to return to some more bite-sized and current-events-related editions again. as always, let me know if you are reading/viewing/listening to anything interesting lately, if there is cool stuff coming up, and/or if you have thoughts/feelings about this issue! i love hearing from everyone, it’s the main reason i do this.
thank you for reading xoxoxo (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤