Trans-pakistan
text and images by Umber Majeed
Within my interdisciplinary art practice, I use video and digital interfaces to collapse multiple sources from family archives, Internet stock imagery, and Urdu publications on poetry and tourism. The humor, lush visuality, and disjointed narratives in my writing, drawings, collages, and animations explore the Pakistani state, and urban and digital infrastructure through a feminist lens. “Long Live Trans-Pakistan (Trans-Pakistan Zindabad),” is a digital research project that outlines intersections of military and state surveillance, global capital networks, gentrification, and urban internationalism in Bahria Town, a corrupt housing corporation in Pakistan. The project combines performance, animation, virtual reality experience, and interactive web environments. Bahria Town, a global enterprise, has miniature and large-scale replicas of a Sphinx, Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, and more. In my project, this global enterprise is investigated through the facade of a digitally-revitalized tourism company, “Trans-Pakistan”—once owned and operated by my maternal uncle. The multi-layered narratives and visuals overlap tourism, family archives, metaphors of the body, and technological piracy proposals as urban design. The contrast between small-scale garden sculptures created by local artisans and commissioned by Bahria Town and the large-scale Western reproductions of monuments and corporate modernity, accentuate the socio-economic tensions of those within and outside of the housing community. “Long Live Trans-Pakistan (Trans-Pakistan Zindabad),” is inspired by South Asian informal networks, low-cost media, and pirate practices (as defined by Indian media theorist, Ravi Sundaram, in Pirate Modernity.) The piracy of audio and video Bollywood cassettes, an illegitimate means of consumption, became a culture within and onto itself. This activated the personalized media experience and allowed individuals to reclaim public space and protest culture from the state-owned corporate sector. I also draw from Eyal Weizman’s Roundabout Revolutions to rethink how digital tools in architectural features like roundabouts can be reclaimed by the working class and those that have been gentrified out. In the context of Bahria Town, a housing corporation accused and charged with land-grabbing by the state, roundabouts are containers for functioning tourist sites and semi-public spaces for non-residents (labourers). In Pakistan, the architecture and urban planning of gated housing communities trace South Asian diasporic economy and capital as the force of gentrification.
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f you’re a child of Chinese immigrant parents who grew up during the postwar Communist Revolution era, you’ve probably heard about their childhood birthday meals. The most special and gifted celebratory food was simply the humble egg. These stories are meant to evoke gratitude and privilege for the abundant access to meats and proteins that we, as their children living in this era, get to enjoy. Proteins, especially pork and beef, were scarce during years of Mao’s China. In the middle of twentieth century China, families were forced to use commodity ration coupons (liang piao 粮票) for essentials—unless, of course, you came from the super wealthy upper class. Rationing was meant to solve the limited food supply available for a country of tens of millions. The programs were designed to ensure that, under the collective system, everyone got their fair share. Although I can’t speak to how fair the rationing distributed food at the time, the stories of single egg birthdays and annual meals of beef and pork are still with me. The ingenuity of families during that era, how they made so little go so far, made those stories (and those meals) all the more special My ancestors settled in the Sichuan province and I was born and raised in Chengdu. We believed that every meal should be special and bring you closer together in remembering how much things had changed. In Chinese culture, the Sichuan region is often referred to as “The Land of Plenty.” The unique and diverse geography of the region lends itself to producing an abundance of livestock, freshwater fish, herbs and spices, and crops. There’s no concept of a “foodie,” in Chengdu because food is a fundamental part of our cultural identity; everyone from the region takes pride in being food-obsessed. In my family, Grandpa Li was responsible for our love of food. A war vet, and former restaurant owner, Grandpa Li was also an amazing chef. He instilled in us the value of always setting an intention before sitting down to eat. He made sure there was always joy when a meal was shared with family. To make family meals feel less depressing during these lean years of rationing, Grandpa would get very creative with ingredients and whip up all kinds of pork sliver dishes. There’s a whole genre of recipes in Sichuan cuisine where pork slivers (AKA shredded pork) is stir-fried with vegetables. These dishes have always been part of Chinese cuisine, but became a mainstay for many families during the rationing era. During weeks when families could trade in coupons for pork, the amount allotted to a family for the entire week was often no bigger than the size of a grown man’s fist. Pork sliver dishes are a great way to make a small amount of protein, if used sparingly, go further than one serving. A single allotment of pork could be made into multiple meals throughout the week in the hands of a skilled cook. When deciding on how much pork to portion out, Grandpa used to say “just enough to flavor the pan.” Since fuel was also another commodity that fell under rationing, cooking quickly and efficiently was another mark of an accomplished chef. Meat and vegetables were cut extra fine so they could be prepared and eaten at a moment’s notice. The era of rationing and bartering is not that far in the past, but I’d like to think that sliver pork dishes are highly underrated outside of China. They’re long overdue for some mainstream notoriety and reappraisal. With the impact of factory farming, and the industrial practices fueling global warming, it’s past time we re-examine our own eating habits. Pork sliver dishes should be enjoying a newfound relevance— except this time, we’re privileged enough to be able to choose to cook these meals instead of families being forced to cook this way. They use minimal amounts of meat and act more as a flavouring component than a main course. In Chinese Cuisine, these dishes are considered, “common home cooking” (jiacangcai 家常菜) and like most beloved 家常菜, their genius lies in the details of their simplicity. For one, a proper pork sliver dish must be cut into small thin strips so it can be well cooked within seconds of hitting the hot wok. That way, the pork achieves both tenderness and a slight chew. The meat is also marinated with a few essential components. First, comes the flavoring, which is usually some combination of soy sauce, white pepper, minced ginger, and, yes, MSG (don’t @ me, #teammsg4eva). The second element is water. You add this to keep the meat moist during cooking. And the final ingredient, tapioca starch, acts like a protective shell to keep the meat from overcooking and retain its juiciness. Here’s one of my favourites:
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CACtTUS Revelation Revelación CACtTUS
text and images by Jorge Mujica
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ince 2017, Creative Arts Coalition to Transform Urban Space (CACtTUS) has been a passion project in my life that has led me to create 44 artistic interventions collaborating with 156 artists around the world. While my experience curating and art-making extends a handful of years, my focus was all discovery until CACtTUS was formed. The pivot in my thinking was the stability provided in creating a functional space and the ability to pull the trigger on projects without red tape. To add to the experience, CACtTUS was initially created in the East Village of Long Beach, a community which I have been a part of since 2008, when I acquired my first studio after graduate school. Because I was familiar with the community, the idea of CACtTUS functioning as a project space for emerging contemporary artists resonated with the city, and cultural bridges between civic entities, businesses, and the neighborhood matured mutually. Operating out of a small 300 sq. ft. gallery space in a live/work storefront for over three years provided plenty of opportunities to delve firsthand into installation and curatorial decision-making, which refined my understanding of operational
organization. Between active projects and logistical forecasting, my engagement with artists became a daily journey of wonder, which helped me work on listening and communicating non-verbally with others. From the beginning, I remember recognizing that for CACtTUS to succeed, I needed to learn to communicate my ideas efficiently. I applied to the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena to become a Teaching Fellow and complimented my curating pedagogy with art education techniques designed to scaffold collaborative ideas. The Long Beach location was home to dozens of artists’ first exhibits or first solo exhibitions. It was incredible to host artists on a monthly basis and learn their various processes, thoughts, and compliment their ideas with my skill set. However, CACtTUS has been a one-man operation that regularly challenges me to be patient. My growing pains have shown me my weaknesses. In 2019, CACtTUS closed in Long Beach and started exhibiting in alternative art fairs in Berlin, Rotterdam, Mexico City, Tijuana, and Los Angeles. Changing the setting rejuvenated my motivation because it allowed me to blend what I was doing at CACtTUS with what I was doing as an independent artist
CACtTUS Mad Lab Collaboration. Rotterdam, Netherlands.
working in other alternative art spaces. With COVID-19 impacting projects in 2020, CACtTUS morphed and continued its programming using Instagram as the platform of choice to conduct studio visits, and disseminate collaborative digital content with artists in the Netherlands, Mexico, and the United States. Currently, CACtTUS is focused on a collaborative installation for Highbeams, an art collective enabling drive-through exhibitions in downtown Los Angeles with Ricardo Harris Fuentes and Rob Brown, and is slated to exhibit at Beverly’s in New York in autumn of 2021. CACtTUS has left my heart warm and full of uplifting memories shared with other artists (and now you). As I close on this reflection, I want to thank the winning lottery number, my parents, Jorge and Elvia Mujica, who have shared their charisma and creative aptitudes throughout my life, and are fixtures at all CACtTUS events. So, when you make it out to the next CACtTUS show say “hi” to them =)
CACtTUS at Tijuana Zine Festival (Hanan Perez). 2019.
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Reaper Mook at CACtTUS Long Beach.
esde 2017, Creative Arts Coalition to Transform Urban Space (CACtTUS) ha sido un proyecto apasionante en mi vida que ha logrado llevarme a crear 44 intervenciones artísticas trabajando en colaboración con 156 artistas de todo el mundo. Aunque mi experiencia en curaduría y creación artística se extiende más que una década, mi enfoque fue todo descubrimiento hasta que se formó CACtTUS. El eje de mi pensamiento fue la estabilidad proporcionada al crear un espacio funcional, capaz de actualizar proyectos sin la burocracia asociada con otras circunstancias. Para agregar a la experiencia, CACtTUS se creó inicialmente en el East Village de Long Beach, una comunidad de la que he formado parte desde 2008, cuando adquirí mi primer estudio después de mis studios universitados. Debido a que estabo familiarizado con la comunidad desde el principio, la idea de que CACtTUS funcionara como un espacio de proyectos para artistas contemporáneos emergentes resonó en la ciudad, y los puentes culturales entre las entidades cívicas, las empresas y el vecindario maduraron mutuamente. Operar desde un pequeño espacio de galería de 300 pies cuadrados en una tienda
convertidad en espacio para trabajo y vivir durante tres años brindó muchas oportunidades para profundizar de primera mano en la pregunta de instalación y la decisión curatorial, que refinando mi comprensión de la organización operativa. Entre los proyectos activos y el pronóstico logístico, mi compromiso con los artistas se convirtió en un viaje diario de asombro que me ayudó a trabajar en la escucha y la comunicación no verbal con los demás. Desde el principio, recuerdo reconocer a través de la reflexión interna que para que CACtTUS tuviera éxito necesitaba aprender a comunicar mis ideas de manera eficiente, por lo que solicité el ingreso al Armory Center for the Arts en Pasadena para convertirme en Teaching Fellow y felicité mi pedagogía de curaduría con técnicas de educación artística diseñadas para andamiar ideas colaborativas. La ubicación de Long Beach fue el hogar de docenas de artistas que exhibieron por primera vez o para su primera exposición individual. Fue increíble acoger a artistas mensualmente para aprender su varios procesos, pensamientos y complementar sus ideas con mi conjunto de habilidades. Sin embargo, CACtTUS ha sido una
CACtTUS Trip at Copyright. Berlin, Germany. 2019.
operación financiada y dirigida por una persona y mis dolores de crecimiento me han mostrado mí debilidades y me desafían regularmente a ser paciente. En 2019, CACtTUS cerró en Long Beach y comenzó a exhibir en ferias de arte alternativo en Berlín, Rotterdam, Ciudad de México, Tijuana y Los Ángeles. Cambiar el escenario rejuveneció mi motivación porque me permitió combinar lo que estaba haciendo en CACtTUS y con lo que estaba haciendo como artista independiente trabajando en otros espacios de arte alternativos. Con los proyectos impactado de COVID-19 en 2020, CACtTUS se transformó y continuó su programación utilizando Instagram como la plataforma elegida para realizar visitas a los estudios y difundir contenido digital colaborativo con artistas en los Países Bajos, México, y los Estados Unidos. Actualmente, CACtTUS se centra en una instalación colaborativa para Highbeams, un colectivo de arte que permite exhibiciones en el centro de Los Ángeles con Ricardo Harris Fuentes y Rob Brown y está programado para exhibir en Beverly’s en la ciudad de Nueva York en el otoño de 2021. CACtTUS ha dejado mi corazón calentito y lleno de recuerdos estimulantes compartidos con otros artistas y aho-
ra con usted. Al cerrar esta reflexión, quiero agradecer al número ganador de la lotería, a mis padres, Jorge y Elvia Mujica, quienes han compartido sus aptitudes creativas de carisma a lo largo de mi vida y son parte integrante de todos los eventos de CACtTUS. Entonces, cuando te pases por el próximo programa de CACtTUS, diles “hola” =)
Jorge Mujica is an artist, curator, organizer, and director of Creative Arts Coalition to Transform Urban Space (CACtTUS). He holds an undergraduate degree from California State University, a masters in visual and critical studies from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and an MFA in painting from Yale University. behance.net/jorgemujica
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distracted by how beautiful the province is—evergreen trees, windmills, the acres of farmland. I scream every time I see a cow. Mirusha tells me to pay attention to the road. Like most of our friends, we’ve had to make a shift to hanging out almost exclusively in the outdoors in the midst of a pandemic. Our time spent together ranges from short park hangs, days spent with Neptune—Mirusha’s rescue bull terrier—on the Toronto Island, shrooming in High Park, ending our nights sitting in parking lots talking about our parents. We love our Toronto summers, but as the months go by we find ourselves craving new experiences that take us further and further from the city. Maybe we’re just bored. So I tell her we should go to Banff. That I so badly want to see mountains. That I’m obsessed with the idea of the two of us—two absolutely annoying brown kids from the city with no hiking experience or gear—climbing a mountain as we close one of our most memorable summers spent together. Mirusha laughs. We’re surrounded by young white families at the spot we’re at, and there’s a couple nearby taking Instagram shots of themselves while being pummelled underneath the waterfall. Romantic af. She says she’ll have to check with her work. Over the next few weeks, I slowly convinced her over a few more Facetime sessions. After a few weeks of meticulous planning (I get off on building itineraries), we hop on a plane to Calgary.
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s my melatonin starts to kick in on the plane, I think about how before this summer, neither of us—like most brown kids—would have called ourselves “outdoors-y.” Brown kids do not spend time in the outdoors growing up, at least in Toronto. Being “outdoors” for recreation was not a part of our cultural curriculum. My childhood was not spent going for hikes on the weekend with my family or learning how to ski. It was spent accompanying my dad to the West-Indian grocery store down the street, going to Albion Mall to watch Hindi films on the big screen, and walking with my siblings to spend time at our grandmother’s apartment during our summer vacations. I wonder why this is, and how I’ve been conditioned to have a strained connection to the outdoors. I know from this summer that spending time outdoors costs $$$ and time—both of which my parents did not have in excess. I know that brown people rarely see themselves in outdoor recreation catalogues. I think back to the first time I walked into a Mountain Equipment Co-op in downtown Toronto when I was 21, hunting for the perfect Nalgene water bottle, and was instead blinded by posters of white women cyclists. I remember grabbing a few CLIF bars and promptly hauling my ass
out of that store as soon as I could. In a city that loves to boast about its wooded ravines as a point of civic pride, and easily accessible by transit, I think about how Toronto’s outdoor spaces always seem to be populated by white folk. Even with the off chance that we can, brown people just aren’t going outside. I wonder if others also have felt like they don’t belong in the outdoors. Do they see the outdoors as a white space? What are the consequences of that feeling? What are brown kids missing out on? Mirusha and I arrive in Calgary, meet up with our shrooms dealer at a parking lot outside a Cabela’s near the Calgary Airport (he hops in the car and we are slightly uncomfortable) before driving to Banff. Mirusha comments that she thinks he’s hot and I say “Ew, absolutely not.” We practice radical honesty together. A couple hours into our drive, mountains appear in the distance. We take a second to turn down the volume on our music. Mountains. We smile and cry and scream. SZA’s “20 Something” plays quietly in the background. We talk and laugh about how jealous we are that kids growing up on the West Coast have mountains in their backyards, while Ontario kids have Niagara Falls, which is inarguably, much less exciting. We feel scammed. Over the next few days, we take our time getting ready before heading out on our planned day-long hikes. I meditate and get our sandwiches for the day ready while Mirusha writes in her journal. Our mornings are slow and quiet. We try our best to divide up the shrooms equally so that we can share in the same heightened experience as we set out on our hikes. Who needs a scale?
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lberta is different from home. As we begin our climbs, we see cute brown families who are here for the long weekend, their hikes usually ending at the first rest stop on the trail. On one morning, before we hop into our car, we see a small Tamil family staying at the same hotel with us, playing with their two young children. Mirusha asks me if it’d be bothersome to ask if they’d like a photograph. I say no, and we share twenty special minutes with the family, taking photos of their kids and getting their emails so that we can send them over once we get back home. We share a small moment with them, and I wonder if they’re as happy to connect with other brown people in this space as much as we are. Over the next few days, Mirusha and I climb mountains. We tell ourselves that we feel powerful, and that we can do anything. We stop every five minutes to take in the sights, and I keep falling in love. I say sorry out loud as I collect some flowers to frame them when I return home, we share an AirPod each as we listen to the Little Women soundtrack together and pretend we’re in our own
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movie as we peak and debate whether or not Timothee Chalamet is good in bed (we think he is, but only when he wants to be). Mirusha says that hats are like a hug for your head. I talk about how I feel like this is the closest thing to falling in love. We say we want to move to the West Coast to be closer to nature, perhaps to make up for the time we’ve lost so far. We cannot stop laughing together as we climb, sharing little moments of joy. I’m so aware that I’m living in a memory. We belong here too. As we go deeper into our trails, the brown faces become fewer and fewer, and our company in the outdoors quickly becomes exclusively white. At a rest stop, one girl tells us that she can see Mirusha’s orange toque in the background of all of her photos, and that she loves our bright colour palettes - purples, blues, oranges. I notice that most of the white folk we’ve seen on the trail wear more natural hues like black and browns. We later talk about making an outdoors clothing line exclusively for POC, with clothes that are exceptionally bright and vibrant, that announce our arrival and claim our space without having to say much. “Is anyone else even seeing this!!!!???” I yell when we stop at Mirror Lake. I make mental notes on the hikers that pass us by, observing that they’re not engaging with their surroundings in the same way that we are. They walk, they stop, and then they continue without missing a beat. We hear them say things like, “the view is *so* much better around the corner,” and I wonder why they can’t appreciate what’s
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right in front of them. I joke that that’s a symptom of capitalism, of never feeling satisfied with what you’re given, and of aiming to extract more than you need from one experience. I still think some of this is true. I meditate on my relationship to the land at one point when I can feel myself peaking. I think about what my Indian ancestors felt when they were brought to Guyana on boats to cultivate, to tend, and to care for the lush, gorgeous, tropical lands that in turn sustained them. I had been looking at this entire summer as a new discovery of my love for nature, but what if my entire experience had actually been more of a rediscovery of that love and care for the land that my ancestors felt, and had passed down. I wonder what a white person feels connected to when they see what I’m seeing. Mirusha and I leave Banff feeling whole, and happy.
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few months later, while cleaning out my parents’ garage, I come across a few photos of my siblings and I—we’re all outside in a forest, neatly sitting across a log in a line. My two brothers are waving at my dad (the photographer) and my sister and I are looking pensively at the camera. I take a seat to look at it more clearly— four brown kids who look happy to spend some time frolicking with their Dad outside on a Saturday, soaking up some sun and fresh air. I want this for brown kids everywhere.
Little birds walking on the roof: Building an eco-home in argentina text by Roohi Sahajpal images by Flavio Christensen and Tove Eklöf
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fter meeting in Isla Mujeres in Mexico five years ago, Tove Eklöf and Flavio Christensen’s love for nature and adventure has them embarking on a new journey together— building their eco-friendly home in Argentina. “When we met five years ago, we decided to go traveling together through Latin America. We traveled through 10 countries together for a yearand-a-half before we reached Argentina. There wasn’t really a plan from the beginning that we would settle in the little town where Flavio grew up, but as Flavio needed to go back to be with his mother, we decided to come here together and keep building the house that he had already started on some years earlier,” says Eklöf, who is originally from Sweden. The home is in the centre of Ingeniero Maschwitz, a small suburban town in the north of Buenos Aires. The town is surrounded by wetlands, creeks, farms, and big eucalyptus and pine trees. “Here, we have a bit of a bohemian vibe among the people that live in the town. It’s full of cultural activities like yoga, dance, art, and music,” says Eklöf. When they came to Argentina in 2017, they continued building upon the home that Flavio had started constructing a few years before, after learning about bio-construction and eco-bricks Eco-bricks are plastic bottles full of garbage that work as building blocks and insulation
inside of walls. They’re made by packing dry, clean plastic bottles to a set density. The couple collected 400 bottles by the time they returned to Argentina to start building their walls. “We chose to use recycled materials for two reasons. One: our interest in using recycled materials came from traveling to many places. We’ve both seen the possibilities to build by using different techniques. Second, was the budget. We didn’t have much money to build a house, but realized this way would be very economical.” They used a mixed method to build the walls of the house. They began with simple construction using wood. Inside that, they put all of the plastic bottles, with help from steel wire and fencing that they found on the streets. They then used the method called cob building, where the earth has been through a process of fermenting with horse dung and then is mixed with dried grass. In order to get the cob to attach to the walls, they used nails set into the wood structure to make sure the surface they worked on was wet for the earth to set. Putting the home together has also been a community effort, with Flavio’s friends donating things like dirt and recycled wood. “The decoration of the house also has a lot of recycled things—artwork that we bought in different corners of the world, made ourselves, or gifts from friends. The kitchen bench is made out of recycled wood, and some of the kitchen shelves
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by wood boxes found in the street. The kitchen sink is a recycled gift from a friend. Even our kitchen chairs, we recycled and changed the fabric part with the help from a friend. Our couch comes from another friend’s grandmother.” The roof of the kitchen and living room area is made of plastic, which allows light to shine into the home. A big avocado tree covers the house from the hot sun in the summer.“We can see the branches sway and little birds walking on the roof if we look up.” The home can get quite cold in the winter, so they have a wood burning stove that a friend built for them, made from an old water tank. Along with a vegetable garden, animals like chickens, rabbits, turtles, and different birds come to visit and make themselves at home in the garden. The process of building the home together has shaped their view of what home means. “It has changed our view of the possibilities to build your own home. It can be more simple than we might have thought from the beginning. Also, it can be a very playful process, with lots of imagination involved.” Christensen and Eklöf want to continue to collect more eco-bricks and travel again, potentially to Africa, to start a new project and learn more bio-construction techniques. They plan to start crowdfunding to support the new project.
“The connection to home for us who really love and care for nature is to be able to find a harmonic way for humans to live with nature and not apart from it. That way we can reuse things that otherwise would be thrown out and cultivate a community to help each other to make our homes.”
Roohi Sahajpal is a freelance writer and journalist. She is also a co-founder of Didihood, a collective for South Asian women in Canada who work in creative industries. She is based in Vancouver.
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Dreaming of Hornbill Birds and Clouded Leopards: An Interview with Omar bin Musa
text by Miranda Newman woodcuts by Omar bin Musa
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mar bin Musa is an author, poet, rapper, and artist from Australia. His debut novel, Here Come the Dogs, published in 2014, was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the People’s Choice Award at the ACT Book of the Year Awards. In 2015, he was named a Young Novelist of the Year by The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2017, he released “Since Ali Died,” a full length hip-hop album, which became a one-man play that premiered at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney, Australia. I first had the pleasure of making Omar’s acquaintance back in the spring of 2016. He was in Toronto to help headline the Spur Festival, a literary festival I helped produce. I was a fan of his writing prior to meeting him, and moved to chills by his spoken word performance at the festival, so I was excited to get to know him better during his weekend in the city. We got better acquainted over late-night poutine, drinks in Kensington market, and, if memory serves, some embarrassing karaoke. I had a blast. He was undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable speakers I’ve hosted in my (former) event career. Though I’ve only had the opportunity to meet Omar in person once, I’ve been following him on Instagram since. I noticed his work started to take on a different direction. Omar began to create works of art out of woodcuts. We spoke in December, 2020, about his foray into woodcutting, how he’s been holding up since COVID-19, and how the medium has allowed to tap into his sense of humour. How are you doing? How’s COVID-19 been for you? Everything is pretty open. I live in Queanbeyan, which is a small town in New South Wales outside of Canberra, the capital of Australia. We’ve been really lucky here, unlike somewhere like Melbourne, which has been in lockdown on and off for months. I live in the countryside so, even when we were in lockdown, I was able to go on some nice socially-distanced walks along the Queanbeyan River, which is beautiful and where I grew up. I took in a lot of nature, took the opportunity to start reading a lot again, and took things at a slower pace. I’ve had conflicting feelings because I haven’t been able to travel as much as I want to. I did want to move back to Borneo this year and live there this year for six-to-eight months (or maybe even a year). Borneo is where my family’s from and my ancestors are from. I’ve been spending a lot of time there over the last five years and that’s actually where I picked up woodcutting. You’re a multi-talented fellow—you’ve done music, books, plays, I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of stuff—so I wasn’t really surprised to
find you experimenting with different medium, but I’d be really interested in learning what drew you to woodcutting and how that particular medium came into your life. I’ve always loved visual art. Even before I got into poetry, I was more into drawing and painting because my grandmother was a cane painter and I come from an artistic family. My Mom’s an arts journalist, so I was always going to exhibitions and I think I was drawn to the visual even before I was drawn to words. When I write, I conceive of my poems and fiction in a really visual way—as if I’m trying to describe in words vignettes from a movie or frames of an old photograph. About two years ago, I went on a really life-changing journey up-river in Borneo, from the East Coast right into the heart of the jungle. It felt like an existential journey as much as a literal one. I was at a point in my life where my mental health was pretty bad and I’d become pretty disillusioned with writing and my place in the writing world. I felt like the thing I had once loved and was passionate about, I now hated—instead of nurturing me it was slowly destroying me (or maybe not so slowly). With all that in mind, I went on this river journey to the heart of my homeland and I felt this weight lift off my shoulders. I felt a freedom I hadn’t known before when I got there. I knew something significant was going to happen, but I didn’t know what it was. I knew I was looking for a new creative outlet that wasn’t writing and I didn’t know what that was going to be. I didn’t even think of anything visual. I happened to be in a place called Tamparuli, which is outside of Kota Kinabalu in the East coast state of Sabah, which is quite near where my Dad was born. They’ve got a place called the Tamparuli Living Arts Centre, which, as far as I know, is one of the few arts residences in Borneo. They had asked me there to do a performance. I was just rapping and doing some poetry but I could see that they had a woodcut workshop. Everyone was sitting on the ground and there was this crazy punk rocker called Aerick LostControl—I don’t think that’s his government name. He’s covered in tattoos and scars and has a huge bright smile and he was teaching these people how to do woodcuts. He was a member of a famous woodcut collective called Pangrok Sulap. Pangrok Sulap was this collective of guys from up in the mountains—a place called Ranau. “Pangrok,” is the Malayanisation of punk rock and “sulap” is a farmer’s hut—a resting hut in the fields where a farmer would go. So it’s like punk rock from the hut. These guys would make these beautiful woodcuts using cheap brown MDF (medium-density fiberboard) often with themes relating to environmental destruction in Borneo, corruption in Malaysia—quite political things—but also themes that were just longing for a return to a more simple way
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of life like looking after nature. For years and years, I think we had heard about each other from afar but I never got the chance to meet them. So, when Aerick was doing the workshop I came over after I was done performing and they were already halfway through. I said, “Look man, I know you’ve already started and I’ll probably be really shit at this but can I give it a go?” He said, “Of course. Just draw something. All you need to know is the v-shaped woodcut tool makes a deeper, thinner groove and the u-shaped one makes a shallow wider one. You can make different effects like this—” and he showed me some grass and clouds. Then he goes, “Just draw something and then carve it. See how you go.” I hadn’t drawn anything in years and I just sat down and thought, I’m going to draw the most beautiful thing I know. The most beautiful thing that I knew was the Bornean clouded leopard, a beautiful big cat (well, a smallish big cat, really) that cruises around in the jungle and near rivers. I’ve never seen one in person but I’ve dreamt of them. So I drew this little cheeky clouded leopard with its tongue poking out and a few clouds around it. Then I wrote: “When the loggers are away the leopards will play.” I was just so stoked when I saw it printed. I don’t know what he saw, but Aerick said, “Man, I think you’re going to be really good at this. I can tell that you’re going to get into this.” He gave me two woodcut tools: a u- and v-gouge and little piece of MDF and he said, “Go on. Go and practice. Go and work on it.” I’ve been to the highlands. I was just sitting there and I started carving the patty fields and all the things that I saw. That was it. I was addicted after that. I became obsessed. Within a few months,
I had my first exhibition in Sydney. How does place or a sense of place influence your woodcuts and your work? Places are also projections. They’re as much a product of our fantasies, and imaginations, and memories, and longings, as rocks and trees and water. A lot of my woodcuts have been made in Australia about Borneo and about my longings for the place. I find that it anchors me and it gives me an outlet for those dreams. It allows me to stay connected to my heartland, to my homeland. I’ve done a recent woodcut and it’s about being in lockdown. There’s a poem that goes with a picture of a volcanic mountain that has plants all beneath it, and the ocean beyond, and a hornbill bird sitting in a tree. The poem says, “I missed the jungle so I propagated a memory and made one on my windowsill. Then I ate tom yum.” It’s about how here, in Queanbeyan, in COVID-19 times, you couldn’t really leave your house for a while so everyone got into gardening. I was propagating little succulents and putting them on my windowsill. I made a jungle on my windowsill that I could visit and dream of hornbill birds and clouded leopards while sitting in a suburban flat in wintry Queanbeyan with skeletal trees outside and frost on the ground. Windows become portals to different places and memories and our art does as well, obviously. I keep it pretty simple. I see a lot of visual art out there is so postmodern and intellectual and I’m not a very smart person— Oh, c’mon now. But I do have a very big imagination. I just follow that. I made work that makes me feel good.
Whereas, with my writing, I would make work that was about destroying myself. The process, maybe even the content, was so dark.
of trying to hide it but I like that. You can’t beat yourself up too much about it. I have a mate who is an artist who said, “Ah, man, you should do it on Photoshop first so you I’ve noticed, in your woodcuts, there’s a lot more actually know what it’s going to end up looking humour. It’s just a little cheekier than some of like.” But that mystery of what it’s going to be your writing. Is that because the medium has excites me. You’re working with everything backallowed you to go to those cheeky places? wards. You honestly don’t know what it’s going to The humour—woodcuts was an amazing look like until everything is printed. So much work outlet for that. I was influenced a lot by a dear goes into it before the final revelation. I find that friend of mine who is a bit of a star of the contem- pretty exciting. porary art scene in Australia called Jason Phu, a Chinese-Vietnamese-Australian artist. He uses That sounds pretty exciting. Very different from heaps of irreverent humour in his work. When I writing. saw his work, and I was getting excited to make my It’s difficult too. It’s physical. I’m using my own work, it was that amazing moment as a writer hands. Your knuckles get sore, your hands get or an artist when you see something and you go, calloused, your palm gets bruised so there’s an “Oh, I didn’t realize you could do that.” element of pain that goes into it and endurance in That realization leads you to be able to try the lead-up to an exhibition, I’m finding. You see different things. I started putting silly jokes in my all the Pangrok Sulap guys and they’ve got huge artwork, characters talking to each other, making calluses on their fingers where they hold the tools. fun of each other, making semi-nonsensical long I like that element. titles. Being friends with Jason, that influenced me For instance, with writing, I can’t listen to a lot. I liked his playfulness. Even if you’re talking anything when I’m writing. If I do listen to someabout the darkest thing, being playful with the thing, it might be instrumental. With woodcuts, words or the visual construction is very important. because it’s got that more practical hands-on element, I can put on a podcast and work for like I don’t have a great grasp on the process of eight hours straight. I really like that. woodcutting. Can you talk a bit about the process? We’ve talked about how getting into woodcutting I know some people that will play around has been a bit of a journey as an artist for you. I with it on Photoshop or draw it beforehand. I draw have a feeling there are quite a few creatives directly onto the wood. I don’t do sketches. There’s out there right now who are struggling a bit. Do a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants element to you have any advice for them? it, which I like. Once you cut into the wood, it’s Be playful. That’s one thing. At a certain done. You have to keep going. You can’t really point as artists, we start to take ourselves too revise it. I mean, you can come up with clever ways seriously and think that the future of our world
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rests on every single serious letter that we pen or stroke that we make on a canvas. I think joy has to be there as well. I’m only saying this because I’ve written from a place of darkness for so long. I’ve come to this realization that an element of risk is an essential part of art and art-making, and maybe even writing. I came up with my own definition when people ask for my definition of poetry. I said, “I’ve come to this point where I think it’s about finding the right word vessel for an intellectual or emotional risk.” Funnily enough, I heard Mike Tyson talking about this the other day during this really cool interview at the New York Public Library with Paul Holdengräber. He was talking about how he won’t try anything unless there’s a risk of complete and utter humiliation. I’m not sure I’ll go that far, but I do sort of see what he’s saying. In risking being playful and trying stupid, silly, irreverant things you can make a bit of a fool out of yourself, but it’s also the only way you can have a real creative breakthrough. Another piece of advice would be to just take a break sometimes. Try something completely different. Go out into the garden, take a quilt-making workshop, go work in a cafe, drive an Uber. Sometimes, when you’re banging your head against the wall and trying to be so singularly-focused it actually can be counterproductive. Knowing when to let your mind rest is good too. And not
beating yourself up about it. Thanks so much for taking the time today. Anything else you’d like to add before we say farewell? To be making art from a place of joy again, it reminds me of why it was I got into this game in the first place, when I was a kid. I just loved it and it would unmoor mind for a few hours every day. Where can people buy your woodcuts? omarmusaqbn.bigcartel.com
Miranda Newman is a writer and co-editor of AFTERNOON. Her work has been published in the Literary Review of Canada, The Walrus, Broadview Magazine, and more. She also writes a mental health newsletter, Life as a Lunatic. She is based in Toronto. mirandanewman.com
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text and images by Daniel Llaría
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ecently, I read something like: “Paint as if you were poor, and if you are poor just paint the figurative.” I do hate painting, but this is the kind of catchy, hard-to-decipher, semi-silly, semi-cynical statement that stays with me when making art (or attempting to with nihilist joy). At the end of the day, I am poor and I make figurative art. It feels good to know that’s what I am and what I do. I like my (thought) processes simple so I can actually carry them out. Thinking before acting is becoming harder as the years go by, so when an image or idea comes to mind I always go by firstthought-best-thought and start making by instinct. I also do it this way because I find the ideological very dishonest. Truth lies in desire and impulses more than in anything else. In the past couple of years, I forced myself to focus on a single medium because I grew limited by my lack of commitment to one. Despite the fact that video had been my instant joy-provider for years, I couldn’t stick to it; Youtube had been killing the video-art star in me for a few years by then. So, I stuck to objects and the love for manual labour. And then my art ran wilder than ever because, as a sculptor, I behave like the only child I am: one who builds a dummy to play with and who sets the playground to do so. This primal approach hopefully produces art that is blunt and honest about the reason it exists in the first place, its material conditions of existence, and the decadent and antiquated context in which it is condemned to have any life. I like my art unashamed of being literal, or self-explanatory, even childish if you may. The privilege of art education is, as any other privilege, one to check and dismantle constantly. So, in these pictures you see mainly hardened t-shirts. I choose them because they only cover torsos: they lack head, genitals, or legs. It is that lack which allows them to form a unity. They are also hollow and light as fuck, like a tube. And deeply unstable: the starch and the structures I used to shape them are poor materials used in a precarious manner that may not hold forever. Colourful, hollow, light as fuck, unstable. Tee, tube. There’s another realm of figuration in my work that functions more like a metonymy. I use graspable objects to speak to the body by its main negative space, alluding to its functions, and how we relate, and care for it. It is more about what we share than what we don’t. The piece titled, “Valle Verde,” came out as a landscape but I was trying to allude to some kind social mass. So, I got on with the idea of the social as a solid representation of nature: soil as a membrane and symbols as trespassers. Suspension as the ultimate operation holding all of it. Yeah, overall I would say I speak to the absurdity in the idea of self. You’re not a separate entity whatsoever, and that’s what’s so great.
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ak hadn’t text her back. By this point, she was too hungry and thirsty to wait any longer. Em knew her order but the waiter did a walk-by menu toss. While she waited, her eyes wandered the restaurant, and landed on a man watching porn on his phone. He was the only other customer. Em was behind him, his back rounded to her. They both faced the window, but he paid the street view no attention. The waiter hadn’t noticed the porn. It was only when she leaned to her right that Em could partially see the screen cradled in his hands. She held focus for a few seconds to confirm. Specifics were hard to decipher, but it was definitely porn. She wasn’t particularly disturbed; she’d seen worse things in the city—probably even just that day. Em expected a pervert or a porn addict. Maybe a clammy basement-dweller logged in to multiple incel forums; maybe a faint-mustached background lurker; but the man didn’t match Em’s vision. She could see his face reflected in the window when passing headlights didn’t wash it out. His eyes, glazed over, were unmistakably kind. To her, he seemed like the trustworthy grandpa-type, had he not been watching porn in a restaurant. The man noticed the waiter before Em. He flipped his phone face down on the chair, scooted in, and placed his hands on the tabletop in a deliberate motion. He ordered his meal. When the waiter came to Em, he scooted back out again. She ordered a number eight, but the waiter left without hearing her ask for a Coke. When he returned with both their meals, it came without a beverage. The man prayed to his videos as he ate and Em watched him the whole time. Strange as his behaviour was, Em was at ease. Finally, he shuffled his phone into his pocket and replaced it with his wallet when the waiter brought the check. He positioned a few bills in a neat stack and poured out coins that seemed pre-counted. He removed his fortune cookie from its wrapper and slid the paper out without breaking the cookie. Em heard a pointed breath from the man. The man’s back moved with two more sharp sighs. In the window, she saw tears tracking down his cheek. He stopped crying and his bottom lip stiffened. When he dragged his jacket sleeve across his face, he was composed again. He stood, bumping the table just a little. It made a low pitch screech against the floor, and in dissonance, the chair made a high one. Then he left. Possessed, Em put a spoonful of fried rice in her mouth and walked three steps munching
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over to the other table. She flipped the tiny slip of paper that was left behind, focused on its message, and carefully read each word in her head like a riddle or contract: “You will be highly respected in your field.”
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“EMAHOY! EMAHOY! EMAHOY!” Her cousins all sing-cheered. Some jumped. One punched in all directions. No one had told them that this wasn’t accepted behavior at exhibition openings. Maybe, there was also added excitement as this was Emahoy’s very first time exhibiting work—and how serendipitous for the opening to land on her birthday. The body of work consisted of photographs she had shot only one week prior, on a camera her grandfather had given her. The camera—a plastic royal blue FisherPrice model was her first, a present for her sixth birthday. There had been a major blackout that left much of the Northeast United States and Ontario without power for a few days. To keep her happy and entertained, her grandpa bent the rules. Emahoy received the camera a week ahead of schedule. The exhibition started on the fridge. These first photos of Emahoy’s set the context: for that brief powerless, TV-free moment—yes, but probably much more too. Number one was black, an accidental exposure. Next, and the show’s highlight, was a portrait of Emahoy’s grandfather with a blissful grin and just barely-open eyes—the result of an experiment by Emahoy (which was turning on the flash). When Emahoy’s mother thumbed through the developed photos, and saw the portrait of her father-in-law, she howled. It’s a story she’d practice retelling for years, and always included how she’d made the cat jump a foot high. “Boss-man! You’re looking wasted. You might have to slow your pace! Or do we blame that face on your reggae music, hey? Beenie Man, Bounty Killa? Hmm, think I don’t know?” In fact, everyone knew Emahoy’s grandfather was a religious man who did not smoke or drink—but he never thought wrong of anyone who did. Like many grandfathers do, he wished success and happiness for his granddaughter. Perhaps not as universal of a wish, he hoped that Emahoy would stir the pot with her life, wherever it may need stirring. Folded over laughing, Emahoy’s mother struggled to reach out and hand Emahoy’s grandfather the photograph. She was a fun person who
laughed often, but Emahoy had never seen her mother laugh like that. Emahoy was proud of making her laugh but her greatest delight that day was the success of her first roll. “Gimme that!” Emahoy’s grandfather said in a fake tough guy voice. He snatched the material in question, and winked at Emahoy as if to say, “We’re on the same team partner.” His eyes took a half second to focus on the photo, and when they did he howled with the same intensity as Em’s mother. The cat jumped again. Then he began to cough— one of the reasons he lived with Emahoy’s family.
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or years, Josep had not heard his own name other than in waiting rooms and a couple other general cueing or administrative situations. He hated these; the situations, but also that he had no one to speak to in the city, or on the phone, or anywhere, really. The Internet was important to him, but solely as a consumer and observer. He watched films of all genres—usually at least two features per day. Over time, his watching habits grew with the rise of streaming services, so he’d never really stopped to think that his movie intake might be higher than the average person. He had become adjusted enough in his way that he didn’t quite understand the crucial role they played in the groove, doubled as a hiding spot, he had carved out. He would think it too cocky to call himself a film-buff. Actually, the term had not crossed his mind. He just thought he really liked movies. “Before Sunrise, the first installment in the Before trilogy, is a 1995 American romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. On his way to Vienna, American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets Celine (Julie Delpy), a student returning to Paris. After long conversations forge a surprising connection between them, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him in Vienna. Since his flight to the U.S. departs…” Josep’s film love wasn’t delusional—he didn’t think the characters were his friends. He wasn’t the type to re-enact a Travis Bickle episode. What films did, was keep him somewhat attached to the world and current. He was well aware that solitary life can make a person weird. Josep was a bright, witty man, often fighting his own cynicism. He used to read a lot, but now rarely. Most readily available material was English. He’d learned it in his mid-twenties but never formally. He understood everything he read but found himself too slow for the amount he wanted to know. Luckily, he gleaned what he needed from films. He surely wasn’t as happy as he could be, but movies kept his sadness calm and kept him shuffling along like a rock he might kick down the sidewalk. There was also a story. He had written it a few different ways, a few times, in his head and in point form spread through different notebooks,
and in his phone. It split between English and Polish, but never finished. He had amassed quite a large amount of material, gradually, not feverishly. The story hadn’t left his mind since its arrival, but now he mostly watched movies, patiently waiting until the end came. The idea for the story—the tiniest, but truest little single-celled organism of an idea—first popped into his head the day he left Europe (to which he never returned). Josep, through the act of replaying the memory to himself for decades, had timed the genesis of the story coming to him at the very moment his boot left European soil. For years, it built steadily, but had remained without an end for a long time—even for someone so stubbornly patient. Josep watched Ethan Hawke, as Jesse, and Julie Delpy, as Celine, fall in love on a self-directed walking tour of Vienna, but he was more focused on the architecture, the signs on storefronts, and the people in the background of the film. Jesse and Celine, fine as they were, were tourists. He checked the year it was made: “Hm, ‘95,” he said to nobody. This week, he felt urgency to finish the story. Or rather, for Josep, something more akin to ‘get the ball rolling again.’ The urgency was fresh, arising out of nowhere, but magnified by the end credits of the Linklater movie. He hated it; the urgency, not the movie. He was aware he had two cigarettes remaining. He would smoke the first at home, and the last on the way to the only restaurant he went to, and the only one he’d ever tried in the city. He saved the restaurant as a big treat to himself. He only went maybe once a year, if that, and never on a silly day, like his birthday or Christmas. He would eat and then get the ball rolling.
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he flipped the white paper a few times, hoping to reveal a clue, but the same message of encouragement and lottery numbers came up. Beside the coin pile there was a little blob of paper (that had been through the wash, maybe more than once)—a business card that had fallen out with the money. Em un-balled it, and could just make out the name. She was aggressively hunched in her inspection of the man’s table when the waiter, already standing at her table with the bill, cleared his throat. She jolted and spun, instinctively showing her palms. “I wasn’t—I just—he left a—Sorry, I was just looking at something.” The waiter, assuming Emahoy a little strange, raised his eyebrows in patronizing exaggeration and smiled at her with a perfectly horizontal mouth. She nodded meekly in apology as she grabbed her backpack to fish the mess for her wallet. The waiter waited. Visible twin pools of sweat had formed beneath her arms. She tipped way too much, but would have doubled it to leave one second sooner.
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Outside, she checked her phone to help rid the awkward vibe. Nothing from Dak. When Em was nervous, her mouth dried quickly. Thirsty and annoyed about not receiving a Coke, she huffed along the longer route home that passed the bodega. Real effort had been required to stay on top of her day and not become swallowed by it. Em decided she would treat herself to a Mexican Coke. Maybe she’d bring an extra home. She texted him again: “heyyy, gonna maybe grab dinner with some photo ppl from the show. might be late. idk maybe not.” In her peripheral vision, Em caught a green mass pass by. She registered that green to the jacket the man in the restaurant used to wipe the tears from his face. She let him walk ahead a couple steps and reassessed her instincts. Her camera brought her confidence in these uncertain moments; as an introduction but also to remind her of the many faces she’d learned, and the sharpness of her judgment. “Hey, hey! Um… Simon! Simon Guerke!” Em called out. He walked a couple steps like he hadn’t heard her and then paused. “Hey! Simon!” she repeated. “I was just eating with you at King Dragon. I’m a photographer and I was wondering what you do for a li—” He removed a cigarette from his mouth slowly and turned. His very wrinkled brow, working hard in Em’s presence, was at odds with the smoothness in the rest of his face. Even though his moustache (stained, the only visible evidence of an old smoker) hid the corners of his mouth, she knew a smirk was there. He cleared his throat twice and answered too quietly for Em to hear. Finally, putting his neck into it he said, “That’s my chiropractor.” “Oh.” They walked a bit closer. He was holding five packs of cigarettes (three in one hand and two in the other, which was also maneuvering a lit cigarette). Instead of a handshake he nod-bowed and said, “Hello, young lady. My name is Josep.” “Oops! I’m so sorry about that! I saw a card on the table and... Anyway, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Em. Emahoy. I was wondering if I could photograph you for a project I am working on? I think that you’re an absolute perfect fit for it.” She assessed his reaction—barely there, but not dismissive—and laughed like a friend. “I mean, you don’t have to commit right now. We can talk a little first, and I can explain it to you, if you’ve got the time?” He smiled, but she might have not known. “So what do you do, Josep?” Josep smiled again. This time, noticeably. “Well, Emahoy, mostly I worry.” She didn’t laugh aloud, so he continued earnestly: “About the ending of a story. But this very well could be the ending I’ve been hoping for. Thank you, young
lady.” He took the walking lead while Em explained her project. In his head, he’d agreed at its first mention, so while still trying his best to be respectful, he enjoyed the moment of interaction, letting the time pass as slow as he could make it. He was glad he didn’t wander too far into his contentment, so when she finished, he could respond with natural ease. “It’s beautiful. I’ll do it.” They were approaching an elementary school and Josep clued in to how long they had already been walking together. Realizing he owed a little more to the conversation, he said, “I would have liked to study something like photography too, maybe cinema. Maybe even writing...” With the last sentence, he veered into himself, and became, momentarily, deflated. Then, hoping to push away the feeling, shrugged it off like a high school senior still weighing options. “You don’t have to be in school to study those things,” Em said. Squinting to make him malleable, Em imagined Josep in his youth. He was the athletic type—maybe football. In reality, Josep was a stick skinny child. Though he now took on a square, he wasn’t muscular or even overweight. His form had simply molded to his couch. They came to the next intersection and paused while they looked both ways. In the way the universe can direct a sitcom, they turned to each other and said in perfect unison:“Seen any good movies lately?” They laughed so hard, a group of passing kids tried to make a video. “Jinx! You owe me a Coke!” she said. He didn’t ask for clarification. “Well, I very recently watched a film called Before Sunrise. Very beauti–” “Josep! I love that movie!” “I was going to say a very beautiful film, but give me a break with those two! Ethan Hawke’s character—what are these fairytale magic romance ideas? I know he is playing a young man here, but are there men who are over-dramatic like this?” Josep didn’t feel the need to alter his statement to fit Em’s enthused reaction. He felt like he had found a friend. With a cartoon expression of pretend shock and disgust, it was clear Em loved his answer. “How could he know that this one girl, Julie Delp—err, Celine, I mean—is the true love of his life from only just seeing her on the train?,” Josep continued. “It’s an especially lonely time for him too, right? Loneliness and a man’s mind...Does he ever consider how many people there are on this planet? In Europe, rather, my goodness! You’ve been, yes? To Europe?” “Yes,” said Em. She added an eye roll hoping to add fuel to the growing fire of his monologue. “Good. Anyway, this nut-job who believes in
love at first sight—beautiful a night as they had, this is not what love is,” said Josep. “They were not in love, but OK Emahoy, only to move this forward, let’s assume they were. Even if they were, which they weren’t, sometimes shit happens, right?” Josep had dropped the ‘young lady’ by now, and Em, an avid studier of people, enjoyed watching Josep become more animated. “It just can’t possibly work out that way for everyone. What a fine-tuned machine that would be.” “You do believe in love, right Josep?” asked Em. “Emahoy!” he said. “My God. Almighty! Of course, I do! But, tell me, how were they in love? How did you know it?” “The last time I watched it, I was maybe a different person. From what I remember, it was the way they talked so easily. Not just that, it’s the kind of things they said too.” Her voice dropped at the end of the sentence. “Anyone will say anything they want, especially if it can bring them something they want.” “Are you completely sure you believe in love?” “Emahoy, Emahoy, Emahoy,” said Josep. “You know I do, but its proven fact: people can say anything at all, with or without the existence of love.” “For example,” he said in a nasal tone. “My name is Simon Guerke. Is Emahoy there?” When he shook his shoulders in a funny dance, Em spotted the hidden drama nerd she had mistaken for an aged jock. They laughed for more than half a block. When Em finally caught her breath, she said, “But what about the beauty of chance encounters? That must amplify things. The feeling of a life-shifting cosmic lottery landing on your number? You meet a person with so much to offer, but under an impossible time limit—just knowing you may never see a person again must instill some kind of feeling, reaction, response…” She fell into a silence looking for accuracy. Josep walked comfortably alongside her. “It’s nice to meet someone new. It’s the endless possibilities, like a blank roll of film. And you get to be a blank roll too,” she said. “To bring it back to the movie, Jesse and Celine are, what? Twenties? You can’t deny that what you feel in those years seems bigger—an impossible period to compete with, for a million reasons. If it feels real, it’s real to them.” Josep’s face dawned an understanding. “Plus, don’t you feel that, as you get older and older, things become less exciting? I haven’t felt properly excited about anything since…” Em stopped speaking as she searched for the feeling’s last appearance. Josep’s face changed again and she was shocked at the carelessness of her speech. She
tried to cover her embarrassment in casualness. “All I know, Josep, is that we are a rare and wonderful chance encounter in action. I am most excited to have met you. Plus, at the end of the day, what do I know about love, or life, or movies, or anything, really?” “Hopefully a little bit more than Jesse and Celine—tourists. You definitely know more than them, Emahoy. I can tell you are a brilliant gem of an artist,” Josep said these last points with a sincerity they both felt. Then he sighed. “Almost home. Thank you for the walk.” Hearing his own voice still sounded strange to him. “Of course, Josep. We’re homies now. Oh, you know it’s a trilogy? It’s your chance to find out if I really do know more about love, life, and the world than Jesse and Celine.” They stopped so she could take two photos: one of him standing in a parkette under a streetlight, and a second joyfully blinded one where he agreed to let the flash go off four inches from in his face. Under different circumstances, he might wince in discomfort but this time he laughed from it. When she saved Josep’s number, she saw that Dak had responded. She wished Josep well and read the text as she walked back to the parkette. “eating!? without me? made plans w alex he’s w me now /we’ll head home soon/ grab beers? or you gonna be out late-late? y/n? look I made an acrostic poem w ur name!! ^^” She sat on the parkette’s public bench. Swimming headlights illuminated a brass anonymous dedication plaque affixed to it: “In memory of a quiet lover of life, an admirer of all worlds, and the creator of mine.” She waited another stretched moment and used her phone to write: “not sure when ill be back.” Her phone then abruptly died like it had put forth great effort on its part in delivering the text-turned-swan-song. Her shoulders relaxed and she loosened into the bench. In his apartment, Josep smoked a cigarette and opened a notepad. He flipped through to find a blank page, tapped his pen once, and closed the notebook again. “The story will finish itself,” he thought, and he cued up Before Sunset. Alex Sheriff is a Los Angeles-based artist, filmmaker, writer, and co-editor of AFTERNOON. alexsheriff.com
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How did you come up with the idea for this zine? I didn’t choose the zine life, but the zine life chose me! It’s hard to say when the idea formed because The Youth Water Leaders Zine came together in such an organic way. In January 2020, I joined a program called Youth Water Leaders run by Ottawa Riverkeeper and met other youth who wanted to start a zine about water art. The program requires youth to dedicate 120 hours to learning about the river and creating a service project that educates the community about the watershed. Last year, my service project was supposed to be a water walk for World Water Day on March 21, 2020. I had to transition to a webinar about Water Walks because
of the pandemic, so it was important to have a COVID-19 friendly service project. What do you hope to achieve with this project? Last year, when I joined the program, I didn’t know anything about water or zine-making. The pandemic prevented us from gathering on the water and the program had to switch to online platforms. The Ottawa River is the second largest river in eastern Canada, so a lot of youth who lived in different areas participated in the program. It was hard to maintain the youth engagement because all of us still missed that physical connection. I met
two other girls in the program who shared the same vision of making a water zine as our community service project. In the fall, I applied for a rising youth grant from Taking It Global to have the funding for the zine to be printed and to offer youth honorariums for their artwork. It was a challenge to get started because it was our first zine, but we all had a passion for art and water. I hope the zine was able to uplift youth voices and help others stay connected to water during COVID-19. What can readers expect from Youth Water Leaders Zine? It was a completely youth-led project, but it was our first zine, and we created it during the middle of the pandemic. The zine is free for the community, in both English and French. A lot of us live near the Ottawa River that serves as a natural border between Ontario and Quebec. I am a guest on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory and I was always going to include Indigenous language into the zine. All of the French translations are done by bilingual youth from Instagram posts, Google forms, and the zine itself. The grant allowed us to expand the team from outside the Ottawa watershed, but we’re all students who are balancing our free time with the zine. I didn’t think we would get any submissions, but a diverse group of youth from different backgrounds and genders submitted their artwork from all across Turtle Island. Can you speak a bit about your relationship with water and its importance to you? I am from an unceded reserve called Wiikwemkoong (Beaver of the Bay) and the Three Fires tribes, Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. I was always connected to the water because my clan is Pike and I am from Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater island in the world. I experienced culture shock moving to Ottawa for high school and walking along the river helped me cope with being homesick. It was reassuring to know the Ottawa River or Kitchissippi (Grand River) was the original highway that connects to the St. Lawrence River and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. I found being near water was medicine for my spirit because it reminded me of my home. Have you learned any interesting lessons about collaboration, creation, or zine-making that you’d like to pass along? I am a helper with Assembly of Seven Generations (A7G), a local Indigenous youth group in Ottawa that’s met every Friday for the last three years. I asked A7G to help with my water walk webinar last year. This year, they let me plan a Bob Ross—themed paint night to get more art submissions. I planned this art night in a week with another youth, but if it’s a good idea the collab-
orations will happen naturally. I had to learn how to order art supplies online because of COVID-19 and another youth with a car volunteered to drop them off. The youth got to keep the art supplies, A7G has copies of the printed zine, and other Indigenous youth are making their own zines. How or is this project helping you during COVID-19? I was introduced to the zine community about two years ago by joining a group for survivors of sexual assault. It was the first time I had shared my story as a survivor. I felt a lot lighter and empowered from it. I believe zines are making a comeback because people need a creative outlet to come together and share each other’s truth. I had never taken on a leadership role or assembled a zine but, now that I know the process, I will try to support other youth who want to make their own zines. I transitioned to posting water videos on Tik Tok because my phone space was already filled. I did Instagram Live sessions on Fridays by the Ottawa River because I just needed to get out of the house. I am so proud of all the youth who dedicated their time and effort to get water submissions in the middle of winter and COVID-19. Any tips for those wanting to start their own zine? I saw the zine evolve in so many different ways. It could have just been an easy way to get our service project but all of the youth wanted the zine to make an impact. The zine team started with only two members and we lost members but recruited four other youth. I think being flexible is important because youth were reaching out from outside the Ottawa watershed. I think my best advice is to plan your posts ahead of time to give yourself a break because social media does get exhausting. I was really grateful for the people that allowed me to interview them on Instagram live for February because they all pushed me to finish the zine. Any other thoughts? I am from the same community as Autumn Peltier the Anishinabek Nation Chief Water Commissioner. I was inspired by her journey into water advocacy as her great aunt is Josephine Mandamin-baa, the original water walker. Last year, I hosted a workshop at Color Me Mine for youth to paint four clay pails to be used in the water walk. It just happened that I planned it on the same day as Josephine Mandamin-baa’s one-year anniversary journey into the spirit world. I mailed a copy of the printed zine to Autumn Peltier and I recently got vaccinated, so hopefully, this summer, I will be able to attend my first water walk.
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