FORM VOL. XXII by FORM Magazine

FORM A Space for Ideas, Culture, and Aesthetics

For Gianna

Editors’ Letter For us, the process of producing a magazine is a chance to come together not just as creators, but also as people. We have always started from a blank white page, allowing our vision to color FORM’s spreads with words and visuals. For issue XXII, we wanted to expand from the typical exercise of selecting a theme and developing visuals to the exploration of issues that speak to each of us. As every contributor brings their own perspective, we seize on the opportunity for discourse about topics that usually divide people; we aim to depart from the echo chamber that so often confines us. Our challenge was to move away from the binary that arises in conversations about divisive topics like gender, climate change, identity, and gentrification through the single experience that lies at the root of all our encounters, actions, and abilities: art. FORM XXII is charged with stories that matter to us, narrated without the expectation of choosing sides. Whether the discussion surrounds fashion, nature, design, or something entirely transcendental, we have found that the complexities of any issue are best represented through an equally complex conglomeration of media, techniques, and voices. We hope that our readers find themselves sinking into the pages of this issue and in doing so, leave behind their own conceptions of duality.

In our Art and Design section, El Otro addresses the complexity of Black masculinity. The repetition of the subject’s presence represents the double consciousness of black men and the dissonance in how black Americans see themselves and are viewed by outsiders. The poses of the subject force a redefinition of black masculinity. In our Style section, Mx. refuses to stick to the binary which limits personal expression. Rather, it moves forward, departing from general conceptions of clothing and creating an idealized space where the gender of the wearer does not limit their freedom of expression. In the Travel and Culture section, we see a familiar city through a new lens, and curiosity pushes us to discover new sites around the world. Torii departs from the modern identity of Tokyo and traditional outlook of Kyoto to unite Japan in one visual essay. The orange color transforms an element from traditional Japanese Shinto culture into a symbol of the cultural transformation of the country. The other stories among these pieces symbolize how we depart from duality in Issue XXII to embrace a new way of representing reality through art. Best, Tommaso Babucci & Gianna Miller

EDITORS IN CHIEF

Tommaso Babucci Gianna Miller

DIRECTOR OF LAYOUT

Savannah Norman

DIRECTORS OF ART & DESIGN

Gea Bozzi Sofia Zymnis

DIRECTORS OF STYLE

Allison Wu Jean Yenbamroong

DIRECTORS OF TRAVEL & CULTURE CREATIVE DIRECTORS DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORIAL DIRECTORS DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR OF LOGISTICS AND FINANCE ART & DESIGN CONTRIBUTORS Debora Cordero Maya Parker Francesca Maglione LAYOUT CONTRIBUTORS Paola Casado Gillian Card Nia El-Amin Annie Hirsch Annie Komack Layne Vanatta

COMMUNICATIONS Ananya Sadarangani Cole Zaharris Carly Mirabile Claire Ryland Defne Turan

Claire Gibbs Irene Zhou Sonia Fillipow Kelly McLaughlin Justin Bรกez Joseph Kim William Bernell Blythe Davis Stephanie Cutler Bryan Rusch STYLE CONTRIBUTORS Ava Navarro Alex Raghunandan Elena Rivera Alyssa Shin Ikenna Ugwu Dani Yan TRAVEL & CULTURE CONTRIBUTORS Advaitha Anne Noah Breuss-Burgess Kat Guo Sophia Li Clara Lyra Jwalin Patel Rafaela Rivero Sawyer Uzzell Mindy Wu Amy Yoon PHOTOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTORS Kayla Carlisle Rae Hsu Samuel Zhang Fatima Abubakar

Table of Contents ART & DESIGN El Otro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Pleiades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Cyanosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 STYLE Boundless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 ADISH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 CREATIVE WRITING Inside/Outside. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 TRAVEL & CULTURE Chicago Travel Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 That Which is Common. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 The Valley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Torii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

EL OTRO

El Otro

A Photographic Essay Exploring the Duplicity of Black Masculinity

Art & Design

Supple in its simplicity, the images in El Otro are saturated with a poignancy that’s almost haunting. As the viewer’s gaze follows the subject from one image to the next, they’re confronted with a narrative that speaks to the complexity of black masculinity. Through both portraiture and gesture, the work depicts a subject that dares you to define him. Through defiant glares, soft gestures and hazy double exposures, the artist splinters any definitive idea one would work to impose on the “black male.” Both coy and confident, contemplative yet demanding, the images collectively toy with ideas of duplicity. The duplicity is attributed to a DuBoisian “double consciousness:" the self-realization that the singular mind is in fact “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings." These images depict a psychic fragmentation which stems from a dissonance in how black individuals see themselves and their communities, and how others see [them]. I find this depiction refreshing in the ways that this psychic fragmentation, in efforts to display “double consciousness,” also prioritize nuance.

Art & Design

Both coy and confident, contemplative yet demanding, the images collectively toy with the ideas of duplicity.

EL OTRO

There is no image that’s clear. Not one where I can definitely tell you who the subject of focus is. Such as in the first image, Verguenza. Backgrounded by a simple dark backdrop, what dominates the frame is the male subject in a simple white tank top with his hands concealing his face. What’s nestled tightly next to him, is another iteration of himself. This time however, his face is fully visible—his expression unclear. His eyes stare down the camera in a way that’s both startling and inviting. Again, daring you to define what you’re looking at. What’s perplexing is that you may not be sure. Two iterations of the same man, one seemingly ashamed or withdrawn, the other confident and almost brash, leaves one to wonder: which is the real man? Is it the left iteration? Is it the right? Is it both? In this narrative I’ve been invited into, I — the viewer — am being asked to participate. The subject’s invitation is not warm and welcoming, but speculative; as if there’s doubt that I’ll be able to make sense of the story in which I’ve been brought into. This is a metaphor for black masculinity that I find to be reverent in its games. The way that the camera, a tool for duplicity, prioritizes nuance usher in a space for black consciousness that’s simultaneously gender conscious. Here, there is room for a man to be his most human: full of complexity and contradiction, with rigid softness and subtle strength. Here, a black man mustn’t be one thing, but instead must be everything. This everything highlights all the parts of black masculinity we’re often too fearful to ascribe. A black masculinity that allows for a gender spectrum. A black masculinity that can acknowledge its faults. A black masculinity that can be confused, and critical and beautiful all the same.

EL OTRO

Two iterations of the same man, one seemingly ashamed or withdrawn, the other confident and almost brash, leaves one to wonder: which is the real man?

Art & Design

I see it in the way the subject’s veins protrude ghostly from his hands as he reaches towards another in ¿Truce?. A soft reminder of his strength, these veins are coupled by his painted fingernails—short and neat yet darkened by polish. His hands are both strong and soft and still reaching towards the other. The other hand doesn’t recoil at the chance of encountering another hand or stretch timidly because of a seemingly effeminate trait. He reaches out confidently and gently all at once—an acknowledgement of duplicity. It's visible again in the last image, En Relación a Mi. In the lower right corner, the subject can be seen from the waist up, his gaze directed towards the upper right corner. Meanwhile, the left side of the work is dominated by the subject’s body from the waist down. Cut in half by the frame, all that’s visible to the viewer is the right side of the subject’s body, his right hand firmly tucked within his pocket. Another double exposure, it too fragments identity in the way it physically segments the subject’s body and rearranges him in a way as if to physically self-analyze. His gaze is deeply contemplative, in a way that conjures a gentleness. Meanwhile his lower left half stands firm in a clear power stance. The bold games played in these pieces bring power to truth. A truth that acknowledges the robust potentiality of one’s identity that isn’t always accounted for in simple identity markers and stereotypical tropes. These images are freeing, forward and truly intellectual in their intrigue. The narrative the subject invites you into, and the games he plays with you once you’re there force the viewer to reconcile the ways they may limit the subject and subsequently—themselves. PHOTOGRAPHY Justin Báez WRITING Ashleigh Smith

EL OTRO

Art & Design

PLEIADES

Pleiades A slow, rainy, February Saturday in Durham â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one by one, the teams arrived in front of a small office space in the heart of downtown, Adam Dickinsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unassuming real estate development office. In the conference room by the front door the early arrivals began to chat about architectural movements and design aspects as they waited for the rest to come in and shake off the rain. And once everyone was there, the visionaries and actualizers of Pleiades Modern, the recently finished modern housing development of Durham, began to tell of their work. PHOTOGRAPHY Samuel Zhang WRITING Bryan Rusch & Max Bernell

Art & Design

M: Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk with us about Pleiades Modern, the property, and everything that has gone behind it.

M: In your introductions, you touched a little on location for the property. How did you land on this location and what drew you to it?

B: Just to get us kicked off, would each of you mind giving us a little bit about your backgrounds, and your roles in this project in particular?

A: When Stuart and I were finishing up our second house on Vickers Avenue, looking around for what is next, I had been attracted to this site because it was large, close to downtown, and close to a burgeoning ‘eatertainment’ district. I knew the neighborhood, and believe that sustainability starts with walkability. So when we were thinking of doing something at this scale, that could be sustainable in a lot of different metrics, and had enough potential home sites to be worth the design challenge, this site was perfect.

A: I’m Adam Dickinson, co-developer of Pleiades Modern, grew up in construction, came to Durham 15 years ago to go to business school at Duke. After business school I went into sustainable mixed-use neighborhood development (blending residential with business zoning), and then in 2009 transitioned full time into real estate brokerage here in the Triangle. So over the past ten years as a broker, with the downtown market booming, I’ve helped more people buy and sell in the downtown Durham market then any other agent. It’s gotten to the point that there is so little supply of good stuff that I got inspired to go out and create some new good stuff. I formed a partnership with Stuart Cullinan; he and I did one renovation and one new construction in a historic neighborhood of a more traditional form, and came across this sight at Glendale and Mangum. I met Robby and the team at Raleigh Architecture Company and we have worked together from there.

R: As far as our role goes, we’re in the back room. Adam and Stuart were really the visionaries of the location and its relationship to the districts and nodes that were happening in Durham, so we worked on the project in a micro-way responding to the site itself, and how the structures responded to each other. When we talk about modernism, there’s a lot packed into that - we could talk about a whole philosophy of life, we could talk about what it means to architecture in this context, what it means to us. It was important that we built houses that were sustainable, full of space, volume, and light, and that had a really strong connection from indoors to outdoors.

R: I’m Robby Johnston, and I am the architect of record for Pleiades Modern. I’ve been practicing in the Triangle now for 15 years, and prior to that I went to architecture school at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte and NC State. I grew up in North Carolina, not far from Charlotte. I’ve been trying to get away now for roughly 20 years, and I just can’t seem to find a reason. There seems to be more reasons to set root than to run. I chose the Triangle because of the modern lineage that we have here, that really does goes back actually to NC State’s School of Design, with Henry Kempf in the 50s, who was hired to start the program and sought out some of the greatest talent we had across the country and brought them to Raleigh. Part of the criteria is if you come and teach, you build. And that really started what is now a 70 year history of Modern architecture in this area. So taking a step back and rolling the dice on where will facilitate this practice and architecture, I chose Raleigh and Chapel Hill, and it has been incredibly rewarding.

C: The houses wouldn’t look anything like they do if they were anywhere else. They are in direct response to that site, which was very challenging in terms of fitting that many houses on it. The first step of the design process was spending an intensive amount of time studying the site plan. That is where the forms became a direct reflection of Adam’s vision, and the actual footprint of the site, and the context on either side of the site, since Glendale and Mangum have vastly different paces, traffic, adjacent buildings, and scale. A: It was important to me going forward with a modern form, even though it is different than everything else on the block, that we engage that streetfront. Having the front porch was a big part of that. B: Running with that idea of the front porch, were there other architectural ques from the Durham area you tried to incorporate, and what aspects from the surrounding community did you bring into the individual properties?

C: I’m Claire Craven and I was the project manager and designer who did all the drawings for the Pleiades Modern project. I grew up in France but my father is American. I relocated here in 2015 after working with a design firm in New Haven, Connecticut and graduating from the University of Tennessee with my B.Arch in 2012. Actually, Pleiades Modern was the first project I took on with Raleigh Architecture.

R: To go from 30,000 feet, then focus back in, the first thing that we recognized with the site was that it had two unique conditions: on Glendale Avenue you have a much more domestic location. Then on Mangum, you have more commercial traffic.

STILL LIFE

Art & Design

PLEIADES

You start taking this criteria and diagram it. The site response, the forms, the spatial quality are all a byproduct of those original diagrams documenting the surroundings. The houses fit right in - if you weren’t paying attention, you would just move right past Pleiades Modern on the street.

To flesh out the legal aspect, each of these houses sit on a plot that is each about 35 feet wide, and about 120 ft deep. And legally, property lines are 6 feet from one side of the house, and 9 feet from the other. Traditionally, what you would see is that each house would claim their own backyard and side yard and so you have very little side yard and a very segmented backyard, usually separated by six foot privacy fences. To create the pocket park and create the side yards, there were a lot of mutual easements granted in the deeds, so the home owners had to buy into this model, which is more complex then what a traditional development would get in to.

M: You’ve mentioned sustainability - how is sustainability incorporated into the foundations of your design? R: It’s an important thing for Adam, and he really challenged us to do everything we could to respond in that way. I think one thing we haven’t mentioned about sustainability is density. It’s not only about jamming a bunch of things into a small area, but about coming up with a creative response to what Adam opened up with - we are running out of land, but there's a lot of opportunities to do things. And so when we have land, we need to do as much with it as we can. So the site plan of this property - if we’re open and honest - when we first were looking at it we were like, you can’t do this here. So it was with a successful legal approach, in how the land is deeded, and how do you say to your neighbor, ‘we’re going to share a driveway that’s split by the property line,’ or ‘my air conditioning unit might be on your property,’ or ‘my trash on yours.’ But really how the site is designed, you never know these lines are there, and you use these direct amenities to yourself, so it becomes a sophisticated and elegant structure of legality that gives us this density. It’s then focused on this little pocket park that could all be individually claimed backyards, there could be fences, ‘this is mine, this is yours.’ But it's this idea of social sustainability that we are creating spaces we can use and come together as a community.

M: What made you have this idea to bring sustainability to Durham? Was it from the Durham community or personal experiences? A: From a marketing perspective I felt that there was a need and a demand for houses that were modern in form, and beautifully designed and built, but also are economically, ecologically and socially sustainable. Economically, you’re making use of existing infrastructure, and the tax base which was significantly a vacant site. We are making use of curb, gutter, and water lines which have already been laid, as opposed to new construction that require them to be installed just for that purpose. In the bigger picture, in the Durham community, those which are built at the fringes in the large lot suburban model, initially the developers pay for infrastructure to be laid, but in the long term it costs more to maintain the infrastructure then the houses bring in tax revenue. So you see this all over the county, the dense city center subsidizing as a tax basis for the suburbs. Ecologically, walkability, and bikeability are key. Then the design aspects we’ve discussed. Socially, I wanted to create a space where people would interact with one another from their porches, and those preexisting in the neighborhood. You could walk to twenty or thirty amazing social spots in five to ten minutes, but with good windows and good insulation, also be quite inside. For my personal background, my dad was a home builder up in Maine. He built our house when I was three, with passive solar design and active solar hot water, so I’ve been around those things for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been around that type of thinking, which was re-emphasized by my experience in mixed use neighborhood development.

We get so wrapped up with the idea of ecological sustainability as what are the active systems and how much was spent on a solar product. While some of these properties have those, to further offset energies there’s some really basic ideas incorporated: the sun stays low in the winter, and so if we can capture that heat and that energy, we can heat the house for the majority of the day. In the summer, you know that the sun is high, so where are we going to have overhangs on the building to keep the glazing shaded. If you have done those two things well, you could cut your energy cost by 25~30%. A: You may be living in a smaller space, but it feels much more spacious. That excellent design enables these houses to feel larger because of the volume, because of the light. So someone who has been considering a 2000+ squarefoot house may walk into one of these and say, this is really large, but it’s only 1600 square-feet. So right there, your energy savings and cost of maintaining are less, because you have a well designed interior and exterior space.

M: Obviously the core park, with its mix of usage is very unique here in Durham. What kind of philosophy do you want to communicate to your residents through this shared space? —

Art & Design

A: Social sustainability and acknowledging that people need less space. In suburban or even urban infill there’s a lot of wasted space. With great design, you can unlock a small site that feels right to its core. Once the Mangum houses are completed, the park will feel very contained. Think like a sculpture garden, as these houses - the pieces of sculpture - are beautifully designed from all sides, then these great trees will mature over time, and you can go sit back there in the sun and fresh air. We need to point to the power of design to maximize the little space and land we have left in the urban cores.

Its affected the way we think about other projects. Its affected the fact that we aren’t just making places, but making places to connect. It could be a single family house. It could be a 40 unit mixed-use condo complex. As designers, because of this project, we are engaging differently with everything we make. C: Coming from Europe, a place with higher density, you are working with a tighter footprint and people’s bubbles are smaller than in the United States in terms of comfort level between people and houses. I think that was great to challenge the concept of property with loaning parts of your property and easements and to push people into tighter spaces. That was what was fun for me, challenging people's comfort levels.

R: Also, full execution is key. It's one thing to do the indoor-outdoor thing and just give you a window to see it, but a completely different thing to invest in having a spatial experience outside your own house. To see that come to Durham, its meant to serve as precedent for future work.

M: Looking at the two phases, what informed the changes?

C: What’s so successful about this project was that Adam and Stuart’s vision allowed us to design all the houses simultaneously - so we designed all nine, and thought about how they would relate to each other. In most developments urban or otherwise, houses are treated as islands. The houses don’t stop at the walls, especially in Modern architecture. With the plan we had to consider what offered privacy, but then as soon as you go out, offered connection. And achieving both on a tight footprint was challenging but would not have been able to happen without the vision of the pocket park. I see it as a great precedent, seeing the density of the world grow, every inch already occupied, and how instantaneously and remotely we can do things now on our own devices. This is an opportunity to not see yourself on your own island.

C: First there was a desire based upon the surroundings and two fronts of the property. There was space and feasibility only for smaller footprints on the Glendale side, then the larger footprints on Mangum. But even that was informed by the context. If you go down Glendale, it's a dead end. So you’re already slowing down. When you go down on Mangum, you’re coming in speeding up, it's a thoroughfare. So the context of speed and adjacent occupancies informed the individual buildings. On Glendale they are all small one or two story house with gabled roofs and porches, so that influenced the forms, heights, and materials of the houses on that side. We really wanted to make that connection to the street. If you step onto one front porch, you see through all your neighbors’ front porches. So that became a way to connect to the street and to the other houses. The horizontal siding serves as reminiscent of the vernacular architecture on that side. We created privacy as programming through a back porch. Then the Mangum side is a bit bigger, a little higher because we also had to navigate a grade change, a four foot fall from Glendale to Mangum. To create a space where no houses feel higher than the others, we worked with Stewart Engineering. That is also why the Mangum houses are further up the street, to navigate that and create privacy, so when you sit in your office on the Mangum side, you aren’t looking directly at traffic. That’s part of how the choice of form and material came into play on Mangum. There’s brick warehouses, some houses, and some abandoned warehouses which are being repurposed. Through the brick, which provides a good sound buffer inside, it ties the new buildings in, while in form and material, relates to the Glendale houses. Another challenge was having each side relate to their own context, while still being part of the same family.

B: Does the pocket neighborhood fit into any national movement or precedent? A: Ross Chapin was an architect from the Pacific Northwest who coined the term ‘pocket neighborhood.’ From his work it is more suburb/rural density transfer, where a tight neighborhood would be built around a preserved green space, then the surrounding land would be maintained for forest work or gardening. I have not seen anything of Chapin’s in an urban context, but this is inspired by him. When I worked in mixed neighborhood development, I worked with Duany Plater Zyberk out of Miami, a legendary new urban planning firm. I got to attend the Congress for New Urbanism multiple times, which is a really fantastic gathering of designers, builders, and developers to share ideas and create places - not just houses - and this is about place making. R: I can’t speak to a particular phenomena, but I can speak to people living in cities, as the city becomes their amenity. Being able to bring things which a city might have to a microscale outside of your door is a powerful thing.

STILL LIFE

Art & Design

PLEIADES

R: I think it's easiest to think about Glendale as porches and Mangum as stoops. You have a more urban response on the Mangum side. Even looking at the early renderings, you start to feel those different responses, each feel of their place, of their street, of the urban response required to mitigate from a sidewalk to a house on a busy and on a quieter street. M: We’ve talked a lot about the design process and where this fits right now, but turning to the future, how do you see this architecture philosophy and this development in particular fitting into the Durham of the future?

I think these spaces are powerful, having the connection to the site and surrounding community, having access to light, having access to volume... I think that the quality of life is increased and can inspire people, whether it's here or another similar project, to start to understand the value of your space, and make you think about your own living conditions, about a house not just being a commodity.

A: I hope we see more of it, but the challenge we face is there aren’t many sites this large that are unlockable in Durham. The City of Durham is considering a significant change in zoning in downtown Durham to increase density. With those changes it would have been a lot easier for us to do this project. If that is successful and not watered down by people who are scared by changes in their neighborhood, who are legacy, wealthy, primarily white folks, I feel that’ll encourage more innovative developments like this. So I hope that change goes forward, as people are fighting battles of thirty years ago about fears of increasing density and changing the face of communities. In order to unlock the potential of Durham, turn loose all the design talent we have in the area, release the conscientious developers who want to do cool things, that zoning amendment is crucial. B: You have painted quite the complete picture of Pleiades Modern - in the spatial, the social, and time. I am excited to see what becomes of your work! Before we leave, is there anything else you would like to share? R: I’d encourage everyone to experience these houses. As far as these spaces having an impact, there's a lot of forces at play here. You’ve got the downtown development pushing, inspiring projects like this pushing back, and everything in between trying to connect all these broken links in the community. But people simply don’t get to experience spaces like these often. I think these spaces are powerful, having the connection to the site and surrounding community, having the access to light, having access to volume, making a space that is 1500 square feet feel like 1900. I think that the quality of life is increased and can inspire people, whether it's here or in another similar project, to start to understand the value of your space, and make you think about your living conditions, about a house not just being a commodity. It has so much power over you and your health and how you participate in your community.

Art & Design

Cyanosis While strolling around the Rubenstein Arts Center on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I caught a glimpse of Will’s studio, an airy, brightly-lit space with high windows covering every wall. I found myself peeking through the door, drawn by the irresistible pull of a window into an artist’s creative process, and inevitably became absorbed by every detail of the space: tables stacked with tubes of paint and rough sketches, canvases still wet with oil paint, books and magazines left half-read on a page where inspiration struck. - “Come in, it’s open” - a cordial voice grounded me back to reality, and invited me to step into this world of color. That’s how I first met William Paul Thomas, the artist behind the Cyanosis portrait series. Perhaps this same openness and instant familiarity that Will constantly exudes are what enabled him to paint the intimate portraits of the series, capturing emotions and conveying characteristics with a unique sensibility, rendering his paintings so captivating. After a brief conversation and tour of his space, I revisited Will’s studio. We talked about his current project, the goal behind his work and steps moving forward both for himself and for aspiring creatives.

Art & Design

CYANOSIS

S: What is Cyanosis and what brought about this project?

But I’d get to Photoshop it, and Photoshop is flexible enough that I would get to play with a wide variety of colors. It’s forgiving that way. I spent some time in the program editing, and by the time I arrived to something I thought was interesting, I would go straight to a 2 foot by 3 foot canvas and draw a loose contour, a loose outline of all the major shapes of the subject, and then start to block in color from that point on. Initially, since I had been using those digital edits to alter the color, I was referring to the edit I made to determine what the color would look like in the paintings. But as the series grew, I stopped altering the color to blue in Photoshop, and just started intuitively doing that. As long as the values from my digital reference corresponded to my painting, then I didn’t always need to alter the color digitally; it was just a matter of turning this shade of brown to a shade of blue. As long as the values I used matched, the effect that I wanted to achieve was there. Usually, before I even get to an edit, I invite the people to sit for me, for at least an hour if they can, both having a conversation with them and taking as many pictures as I can, then sifting through those and finding the one or two that I think will work in my painting.

W: The definition of cyanosis is a blueness of the skin that develops from improperly oxygenated blood. I came across that term when I was about three paintings into a series that I was making, which was initially going to be of family members. The first painting was one of my nephew, the second painting was one of my brother, and the third painting was actually not of a family member, but of a man that looked a lot like my father-in-law, so that was my justification for it. This is partly why I invited Paul, Paul Magee, who is in that third painting, because I’m pretty distant from my family. Most of my family is in the Midwest, either from Chicago or a little town called Beloit in Wisconsin, and so with them being 800 miles away, I started thinking about how I needed to expand my subjects to be more than just family. So three paintings in, I looked up that term cyanosis as a way of labeling or putting under an umbrella what these paintings were about. Rather than being a literal deprivation of oxygen, it is a metaphor for some other kind of deprivation, whether that’s emotional or psychological or social, and I think it varies depending on who the person is and how they might be experiencing any one of those deprivations.

S: What made you chose to title your paintings the way you do, like “Monica’s Son” and “Lindsay’s Friend?”

S: Was the painting of your nephew just an experiment, or did you already have this goal in mind?

W: Most of them are titled after a woman or child who’s connected to the man in the painting. My rationale for that is multifaceted. Even though the series includes only men, I thought it was interesting to consider the relationship these men have with women and girls in their lives. I also consider that to be a parallel to the unfortunate and terrible phenomenon that we see of black men being killed by police officers or vigilantes or whoever, and then we get to know those men because they've been victimized. And not only do we get to know those men’s names, like Trayvon Martin or Mike Brown, all those people, but we also get to know their families too, and we get to know who their loved ones are: their mothers, their sisters, their daughters. I thought that if I named these paintings after a woman or a child connected to the subjects in the paintings, then it would reinforce that these men are loved by someone, especially before they’d been victimized. Because it seems so unfortunate to me that these men that become hashtags—we don’t get to know who they are. I guess the general population doesn’t have to know them until they are murdered, so I thought that for these men who are still alive and well, it’s necessary to consider the love of a woman or a daughter as a reason to sustain our lives, as a reason for our lives to be protected. I was always thinking about how significant the loving relationship that I have with the woman in my life, and that the love of a woman is continually important with all these men that I’m representing.

W: I think the painting of my nephew was preceded by an experiment, a digital edit that I had been making to alter the subject’s skin color. By the time I made it to the painting of him, I think I wanted it to be a thorough project that didn’t have an endpoint. I wanted to include as many men as possible, first those of my family, and then I expanded it to other community members. It’s still an experiment in the sense that I still play with many of the design elements. The color combinations that you see often come from me trying to see the temperature contrast in the flesh and the background contrast with the subjects represented. I still get to play around, even when I’ve set the parameters for the project. S: You mentioned how you create digital photographs of the subject before you paint them. What is your process behind taking the photos to finished painting? W: Early on, the process involved me making a digital edit in which I changed half of the subject's face into a bluish color—sometimes it was a dull blue color, and other times it was a little bit more saturated.

Art & Design

S: All these paintings are all of black men. Do you ever see yourself mirrored in any of them? Do ever see them as a self-portrait?

It’s not ideal to only have a few minutes with the model, but in that case I did, and I wanted to remember the exchange that I had with him, so I thought that it was important to make a painting because it was something that I wanted to register in my memory. So the ideal scenario for me is that I get to sit with my subjects for a while and then, even after the painting is made, I stay in touch with and continue to build a connection with them.

W: I don’t see them as complete self portraits, but there are similarities between each one of the men that I end up photographing, something that we share in common. My brother is a part of the series, my nephew is a part of the series, but the men that aren’t related to me by blood, they’re artists, they’re men that are also kind of introverted, so I think there are personality traits that we share. Sometimes I don’t realize until I engage with them in the process of photographing them, and just having casual conversation. Throughout all of them there are things that we have in common. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I’m drawn to paint, or invite someone in to sit for me—if we’ve established that connection based on those similarities, and that something intuitive has drawn me to them rather than just a broad, “If you’re a black man I’m gonna paint you.” It’s finding some common bond beyond that.

S: Do you try to include the local community where you are painting at the moment in your portraits? W: I do. So being here at Duke for this residency, my goal was to include students, faculty, and staff, whoever was interested, black men that were here on this campus. It always is of interest to me to include people that are local. Part of it is that I like the phenomenon of exhibiting works of local people, so that people that might be strangers to me attending the exhibition might know the person in the painting, and that is someone that we have in common.

S: I remember the last time I was in your studio, a random man walked in and introduced himself to you and, after a brief conversation, asked if you would be willing to paint his portrait for your series. Is that how you usually find your subjects, or do you already know them beforehand?

S: You mentioned that you get a lot of different interpretations of your work, and I get the feeling that you like hearing about them before explaining your goal. When we met you did the same: you asked me what I thought about it, and then you told me what you actually intended. So, have you been surprised by any way people have interpreted your work?

W: That was unique in that, the man that came in here, we had met before. I think he worked in security at the Nasher. But sometimes it happens like that; we happen to be in the same place at the same time, and I might share what I’ve been working on, they might be familiar with it, and I’ll invite them once they’re familiar with the work or have an interest. But it’s still a matter of having a rapport with them. Like, I like that guy, I didn’t know him well, but as he came in, I liked his energy and his demeanor. That’s not necessarily the case with every person; it’s not like I’m super connected or find an immediate bond to each person, but when I do, I usually at least present the request. So he didn’t volunteer, but I did ask him if he had some time and if he would be interested in coming back to sit for me.

W: When I had shown some of these paintings down in Concord, a woman asked me if I was familiar with haint blue. Do you know about that? Haint blue? So, from what I remember, she was describing haint blue as the hue of blue that is used in some homes in the South, and especially in southeastern parts of the United States where they paint either the porch ceiling or the interior front room ceilings a sky blue, and it’s meant to help guide spirits out. The fact that she saw some of my paintings having men with blue painted at the top of their faces associated with that use of that blue in a kind of spiritual ritual, a kind of way of interacting or aiding spirits in going on to the next phase was really fascinating to me. I wasn’t familiar with haint blue, and it was something that I thought that I needed to hear, that I imagine other people might have a similar association with. Just the fact that she had this kind of association with blue, and it being painted on the faces, was something that I would have never thought of just because I was unfamiliar with that practice. It made me want to embrace the idea that, even though I started with this kind of metaphor about these men being deprived of something, that people could read into the symbolism of the blue based on their own experiences and histories. I felt that was a strength in the work, that it didn’t have to be narrow in my own perspective and experiences, because I think that would be boring. It’s much more fascinating when folks get to bring their stuff too.

I usually do try to set it up so that there’s a more intimate conversation that happens in tandem with the photographs being taken, so it’s not just a quick exchange. There have been a few instances that this has happened. This one guy I met as we were hopping off the bus asked about my camera, and so we started having a conversation about that, and then that segued into him talking about having to go take care of his mother in another county outside of Durham—he was legally not supposed to be doing that, but he insisted, because somebody needed to take care of his mother. I don’t even know how we got to that point, but that was the last time that I saw him, and I made a painting of him the next day.

CYANOSIS

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CYANOSIS

S: I think I mentioned this before to you, but this semester, the theme of our magazine is multiplicity and moving away from the binary. You mentioned that you wanted to exhibit your work in a way that shows the spectrum of experience. Do you think your work conveys a multiplicity of experience in some way?

W: I am working on a video collaboration with my friend Antoine Williams, who is a professor at Guilford College. We’ve been recording footage for the last couple of years, sporadically, based on African American food culture, which is not really African American food culture—it’s using food as a metaphor for these other social realities. We were looking at MF Doom’s album Mm..Food as a jumping off point. We will continue to make videos together, which will be fun, because it will take me away from the independent practice, and coming together to make some interesting stuff. I’ve done another video project called TEEF. Just like the Cyanosis project, it’s one that I add on to without the prospect of having it designed for an exhibition, but I just wanted to build this database. So the TEEF project is black men smiling on camera for an extended period of time until it becomes unbearable, paired with narratives of men talking about moments of happiness. So that is again an ongoing video project that I tend to work on my own, and it’s similar to the Cyanosis. Just inviting men, some strangers, some family, to include in the series.

W: I think it does. I think it embodies multiplicity in that, although I have a narrow focus on black men, there’s such a variety, such a range of types and roles that all those men play in comparison to one another, but even for individuals— consideration of the various roles that we play in the lives of our loved ones. So whether you’re a child or a parent or a friend or a student, all the different things that you can name, all the labels that you give yourself—the potential of you having to perform differently in those roles to be effective is pretty high for all the people in this series. Something that I really haven’t had an opportunity to see manifest through the exhibition of these works yet is bringing the actual subjects to an exhibition where you get to see some of that variety. People coming from different backgrounds, educational backgrounds or economic backgrounds—that’s something I’ve been always fascinated with. Again, there’s a kind of variety represented in the series to overturn the idea of black men being monolithic. Whatever stereotypes we might place on them, it would be easy to break that apart once you meet any one of them, to defy whatever stereotype one might have for black men. The series does that, but I think the thing that conveys it even more is when the men who participate in the series actually show up in person, and the people that are interested in seeing them get to engage with them. That’s what I look forward to and appreciate in the process, photographing and having conversations where I get to gather information about how they do represent the breadth of blackness or maleness. All of that is, I think, embedded in this work.

S: In your talk you mentioned that part of your focus on black men is to showcase how they have been historically underrepresented in the arts. Is that why you chose them as your subject in both projects? W: Absolutely. That’s one reason, for sure. Wanting to see more black men represented in spaces where they are underrepresented is important. And even though we see a lot of artists doing that, and maybe we can name a bunch of them between us, it doesn’t mean that the work is done. I feel like I’m contributing to a much-needed new tradition, new as in twentieth, twenty-first century, to reverse the narrative of black folks not being included. S: Do you generally find your inspiration from your local communities, and what have their reactions to your works of them been?

S: Ultimately how many paintings are you planning to make, and how are you planning to exhibit them?

W: I am definitely compelled to make work inspired by local communities, because I like for there to be a conversation with an audience that has been included in the process somehow, and is connected to the folks that have been included. Usually the responses I get are pretty affirmative. I should be careful with what I wish for, but sometimes I wish I got more critical feedback. In grad school, that was where you received criticism. You’d show your work and it would be torn apart by people who feel like they know better. But I think that critical feedback is useful in being able to grow as an artist. So sometimes I wonder, outside of that context where I show work, if people are being honest in their reception of the work. But usually if I’m having a formal exhibition in a gallery, especially around here, people seem very supportive.

W: When I first started the series, I thought of fifty, which was an arbitrary number. I feel like it can go beyond that. I almost see it as a series that I’ll keep chipping away at even as I develop other projects, but at a minimum I have to make the goal of fifty. I’d like to be in a space that can accommodate fifty or more of them, and then show them so that you see a color spectrum, a gradient from one color to the next. If you think about a twelve-step color wheel and being able to fill in the gaps in between the progression of colors, that’s my ultimate goal. I’m just filling in the blanks along the way. S: Other than Cyanosis, what other projects have you worked on recently?

My own insecurity makes me want to strive for something that’s even more complicated, to receive even more complicated responses. Usually I feel like the responses get reduced to “Nice job,” and I think I want more generative feedback, more in-depth conversations about what I’m doing, so I can dig deeper if I want to elicit more involved responses to what I’m doing. S: In a few weeks your residency at Duke ends, so what are your plans for the future? W: Short term, I’m preparing for an exhibition at Barden College for the fall semester, so I’ll be making more of these Cyanosis paintings. Long term, I would like to branch out beyond North Carolina. Over the last few years, a lot of what I’ve been doing has been concentrated in-state, moving around the state in Charlotte and on the coast and around a little bit. But I think I need to make an effort to show around the country, potentially internationally. It’s just a matter of figuring out the best way forward in a way that’s still true to what we talked about in terms of wanting to represent the local communities. Ideally I would be travelling to different places and replicating what I’ve been able to do here in Durham or in Chapel Hill or anywhere I’ve been, to maybe have a space on the West Coast or abroad and be able to do a similar kind of project with people that live in the vicinity. S: As a final question, for the creatives and aspiring artists that will read this interview, do you have any advice for moving forward in the field? W: I don’t know how to not make this cliche, but I think you should trust your own intuition and follow through on ideas, even when you think they might be silly or frivolous. That might be some of the best stuff. I think you make things more challenging for yourself if you are always comparing yourself to some external standard. But I think trusting your own perspective and desires is the best place to start to make something that will last and be relevant to you for a long time. PHOTOGRAPHY Fatima Abubakar WRITING Sofia Zymnis

Art & Design

BOUNDLESS

Boundless PHOTOGRAPHY Joseph Kim & Rae Hsu WRITING Kelly McLaughlin

Style

Not Mr., not Ms.—Mx. Nice to meet you. You’ve met them before. They’re not a stranger. They aren’t quite two things coming together—they are one whole, remaining as it has always been. Lying on the line of masculine, pressed within feminine.

BOUNDLESS

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BOUNDLESS

Their faces are not mirrors to the fear presented to them—they are tender and sweet. These intimate glances into freedom of expression prove that presenting “properly” isn’t a list. “Properly” isn’t attractive. Lace and corduroy shouldn’t collide with each other like old friends, but they do. Eyes squinted, all that can be seen is something whole. Colors don’t suit them; they suit the colors. Pink is flushed and bashful. Yellow is elated. White swoons in their presence. Black is emboldened and poised. Green is covetous. Blue settles into them.

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BOUNDLESS

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BOUNDLESS

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Eyes open, this feels different and better. Soft linens hold fast to thick dark trousers. Combat boots don’t belong on such dainty ankles. Their gazes are sturdy: stares that can be nestled into for safekeeping. And now we can see that they were always meant to be together. “Performance” doesn’t need to be dress-up or make-believe, and yet it feels like the end of a fairytale. Their faces are open and demanding, challenging you to accept their invitation.

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BOUNDLESS

They say opposites attract, and yet here they are attracted to one another, attracting you. They are blended so perfectly, connected and cohesive, breathing together. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve met you before. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re no longer a stranger. Two things are coming together and crossing at the middle, at the intersection, at the x.

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ADISH Amit Luzon and Eyal Eliyahu are making clothes to make a change. The duo started ADISH after a summer trip around the world in 2016, and the brand has since been picked up by prominent fashion stockists and covered by various media outlets. Founded on the spirit of Middle Eastern culture and multinational collaboration, ADISH has never wavered from its values. The founders constantly emphasize craftsmanship, heritage and ethics as the core of their work. It is this kind of commitment that can make fashion a voice of social change.

Staying with the brand mission, ADISH is bridging gaps—both stylistically and socially. With the production of every piece of clothing, Israelis and Palestinians collaborate to combine traditional Middle Eastern embroidery with modern streetwear silhouettes. As such, ADISH encapsulates the departure from duality. And while Luzon and Eliyahu have faced their share of challenges, they show no signs of slowing down. In the past several months, the founders have unveiled their Fall/Winter 19 collection, written a magazine piece about their brand’s vision and opened a workshop in the West Bank for Palestinian embroiderers. Amidst this rush of developing a young company, Luzon speaks to FORM about his brand’s history, progression and future.

ADISH

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ADISH

D: It seems like this is a very busy time for you—thanks for taking the time to do this interview. To start things off, could you tell me a little more about yourself and your background?

We did some research and found Palestinian embroidery, which we definitely put on our list. But then we got an opportunity with a family when a Non-Government Organization introduced us to three Palestinian ladies who were experienced in embroidery. We started the process with them and gave them some fabrics and samples to try, since they had never worked on that kind of fabric before, only on their fabrics, which are special fabrics fit to their embroidery. They had never worked with t-shirts or jerseys that weren’t especially designed for their embroidery, so we needed to develop a new way to work for them.

A: Sure. I’m the co-head of ADISH, which I started with my partner Eyal (Eliyahu)—it’s not just me, it’s the two of us. We grew up in two different cities, but in the ninth grade, I moved to his city because I played tennis and there is a tennis academy there. So I was in his school in the ninth grade and we became friends. We always had the same hobbies and interests in arts, fashion, culture and music, so we always wanted to do something together.

We started with them, and then we found our current partner through the same organization. Our partner is Palestinian. He manages all of the production in Palestine, buys all the materials, and just manages everything there— we couldn’t do it without him. He checks the quality of everything and recruits more embroiderers to the team, so he’s a major help to us.

In Israel, you have to do two years of mandatory army service, but after the service, we took a trip to New York, South America, Colombia, Peru. In New York, we went to all the department stores, boutiques and concept stores, and at first, we thought to import the brands we liked and to open a store or website or something. But then we realized that with all the culture in the Middle East, and in Israel and Palestine particularly, there are so many cultures and raw materials that haven’t been exposed to fashion and streetwear, which we both liked—so why don’t we do that?

A year ago, we also met Jordan Nassar, a New York artist who specializes in handmade Palestinian embroidery. We met him in March 2017, and we first started to work with him on a one-time collaboration, but he has since become a full-time partner of the brand and has been making a huge impact on our embroidery and research. A week ago he came to Israel because his husband is Israeli and he is doing a huge show in Israel, so he was here doing research for his work. He invited us to see the archive of Palestinian dresses and it was so insane.

After the trip, we started to work on our own brand. Before, I worked with my mother, who is in the beauty business, which is how I discovered the fashion world from the inside, going to all the fashion weeks and doing all the marketing for her. Eyal worked in a fashion boutique in his city, near Tel Aviv, where he was the store manager, so we have different backgrounds—him being more retail and me being more marketing—but it worked well, and after the trip, in June 2016, we started to develop the idea of ADISH.

Now, we mostly know what to do. We know what everything means, we have the books, we have everything. We are a really good team that knows what’s going on.

D: What is the meaning of your brand’s name? Is there a story behind it?

D: It definitely sounds like you’re ready to go. Could you tell me more about your relationship with the Palestinian women who work for the brand?

A: Yes, the name originates from the Hebrew word for “apathetic” or “indifferent,” though we use this terminology in a sarcastic way. To us, ADISH is about trying to make a real, meaningful change in the Middle East, and not giving attention to the empty promises of politicians and those in power who don’t care about peace.

A: Sure. Most of the relationship was through the organization at first, but now we are mostly going through our partner. They don’t speak English and we don’t speak Arabic, so that’s the problem. Our Palestinian partner speaks both fluently, so most of our interaction with the embroiderers is through him. We send them instructions where we illustrate the embroidery and exactly where we want the cross-stitching to go and what we want them to do.

D: Working with Palestinian embroiderers is such a big part of your brand. How did you learn about traditional Palestinian embroidery?

D: The theme of our issue is “departure from duality,” and I think your brand really embodies this spirit—what would you say is your brand’s mission?

A: When we started ADISH, we brainstormed how to bring ADISH to where we wanted. We wanted all the craftsmanship and handmade stuff; we didn’t want to just be another t-shirt line, like some silk-printed t-shirt line from the Middle East with Hebrew art.

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A: Our brand mission—first of all—is to show the world that people can work together and live together if they are given the opportunity. This is the biggest mission; this is what we want to show the world. Even if it’s as small-scale as ADISH, we already have 60 Palestinian embroiderers and we also have other Palestinian people that we are buying materials from. We want to make it a big operation with a lot of craftsmanship from Palestine as well as Israel.

When we started to work with the embroiderers, people told us not to take this political direction because it would kill the brand. But when we started to work with these people, when we met them and spoke with them and told them about what we wanted to do and about our mission, we realized that it isn’t something that we can escape from. We can’t lie to ourselves, and it would be lying to ourselves to take a non-political approach to the brand. You can’t escape from it if you live here.

In the next collection, we are going to work with Bedouins. They are Israeli Arabs, and they do not consider themselves to be Palestinian. We want to work with them on weaving as well as embroidery, a different style of embroidery from the Palestinians. We want to recruit different groups from around the region to our team so we can work with them and empower them and show their story and to give them work, which is really disappearing these days.

D: We touched on the “departure from duality.” What were some challenges in creating and perfecting your brand's dynamic? A: Yes, it’s still not that simple, and some people will always have something to say about controversial ideas, and of course we still have the physical gap that we can’t really visit the embroiderers and work with them directly. However, we feel now that our partners in the project, for example the Palestinian ladies, are now very proud to work with us and love the project and what we do. Some of them even told Qussay (our Palestinian partner who is working with all the ladies in Palestine on production and development) that they feel that the project they are doing with Jordan Nassar and the work they are doing for ADISH feel like the renaissance of Palestinian embroidery, and that it’s making a revolution in the way they are thinking of the embroidery and on working with Israelis in general.

D: Keeping with your brand’s values, you mentioned craftsmanship, and I know your brand places a lot of emphasis on ethics in the production process. Could you talk more about your commitment to these values? A: Ethical production is important because we want to give good work to the industry of this region. Also for us, it is more logical. For example, if we are doing something with fabric from Italy, we need to cut the fabric there, then ship it to Israel and make the embroidery and ship it back and forth between factories. Logistically, it’s a mess, so we must keep a close eye on it to ensure the quality. There are many defective items and we really need to keep the quality high. We don’t want merchandise that can’t be sold—it’s our brand, so we want each piece to be as good as the others. It’s never going to be perfect, but we can make it close. The reason we work so closely with the factories here is because it’s so important for us to keep the quality of the brand and garments really high.

D: I really admire your commitment to the values of your brand—why is it so important for you to be dedicated to these values? A: As I said before, when you go to Palestine and you see how these people’s lives are, you just can’t escape from it. It’s so powerful and it’s only forty minutes away from my house. It’s a different country, it’s a different life, it’s different people. When you see the checkpoints, when you see what it’s like, it’s just not something you can ignore, something you can be indifferent or apathetic to.

D: I know that you have received a lot of criticism about what you are doing, especially politically. How do you respond to that?

It’s important for us as human beings, not just the owners of the brand, to highlight that people from both sides can work together and live together. It’s just building trust between people. You know, if every Israeli could go to Palestine and have one Palestinian friend, it would be enough. It would be a better place here.

A: We knew when we took this direction for the brand that there would be a lot of criticism from both sides, not just from Palestinians or Israelis. We knew that the message wouldn’t be clear to everyone, but it’s something that we’ve accepted from the beginning. We are not doing what we are doing to convince everyone that we’re doing a great job. The people like you, who know that we are doing something to help both sides, those are our clients, our customers, the people that we want to empower. Our brand is not for the people who have criticism.

D: Absolutely. Now I want to move to your collections. You said you’re working on a new one and you’ve already released two, which are both inspired by groups of people who help the ADISH production process. Could you tell me more about your collections and how you view them?

ADISH

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ADISH

A: I think our process of developing these collections is mostly just how a normal fashion brand works. With the first collection, we didn’t have a showroom or anything. We just produced the clothes, because it was just the beginning of the brand and we wanted a product to work with and to show stores.

D: You are a young brand, but you have received positive attention from many publications and your clothing is in Slam Jam and will soon be carried by END. and Opening Ceremony—what are you proudest of so far? A: We’re really proud of the commercial success, because we’re not a regular brand working with big factories. The people that we’re working with, the craftspeople, are not factory machines, and buyers can respect that not all the items are perfect. It’s really important to us to see that our clothes can be sold in the best boutiques in the world. We feel that we have really brought the culture and traditions from the Middle East to the highest places of the fashion world. I’m sure that the Palestinian ladies would be shocked to see clothes they help make being sold in Opening Ceremony, with the displays and price tags and all the designer brands.

As we worked with the Palestinian ladies, it influenced the design of the garments. It was the first collection and we wanted to do something really valuable and genuine. At first, we thought the collection would be very different from what it ultimately became. Jordan [Nassar] came, and the ladies told us what they could and couldn’t do, and it all influenced how we worked. It was really just the beginning, but our work now is more shaped. We know what we are doing with our collections. During the first collection, we were working with Palestinian taxi drivers with logistics and they were a big influence on the second collection. It’s like a chain. We started off with embroideries, and then we were inspired by different parts of the production process.

D: What do you hope to do with the brand in the future? A: We definitely hope to find more craftspeople to work with, and not just with the Palestinian embroidery. The embroidery will definitely always be there, but we want to find more groups to work with and to do different stuff. For the next collection, like I said before, we’ll be doing weaving and working with a different group of craftspeople. Our mission is to find more and more groups to do new things and be innovative with. We want to continue working with the groups we’ve worked with before, but we want to raise the quantities on everything. We want to build small workshops around the region and do special things in each of them. With that, we’ll be able to pursue such a variety of projects.

D: Some of your F/W19 collection was just revealed. Could you tell me a bit more about it? What pieces or ideas from the collection do you like most? A: Yeah, so our F/W19 collection, titled “Sea of Sand,” draws its inspiration from the Middle East during the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time in which the countries of today did not exist. Once referred to as “Greater Syria,” a large part of its inhabitants were Bedouin tribes, which dramatically changed upon the arrival of European colonialists in the region. This season’s collection is inspired by the Bedouin’s traditional garb and British military uniforms, reimagining their first interactions and exchanges. Combining Eastern and Western styles, the composition unfolds into wide pants and dresses with special attention paid to heavy embroidery and classic tailoring. We are kind of trying to present an alternate story of beginning of the tensions and conflicts that continue to disrupt the area.

D: It looks like I’m calling you right as you’re coming out of the studio. What have you been working on? A: We were working on the new collection and the show, which is very soon. We need to have everything done in a month and a half. We also have all the orders from the last collection to send out while we’re developing the next collection. And we’ve been going to all the factories. It’s a mess.

In addition, for this collection we worked in collaboration with the female Bedouin weavers of the Lakiya Negev Weaving Initiative. The weaving craft is a vibrant and essential part of Bedouin heritage. Today it is a means of empowerment for the women, who practice techniques that have remained unchanged for thousands of years. As part of the F/W19 collection, we were very proud to have worked with the Initiative, based in the Negev Desert, which brings together around 150 Bedouin women from the area as it preserves this unique artistry.

PHOTOGRAPHY Courtesy of ADISH WRITING Dani Yan

Creative Writing

INSIDE/O Setting: A sticky, early summer evening in a small laundromat in what might be called the ghetto of a southern town. The door propped open and a light, warm breeze blowing through the room.

To enter the laundromat, you have to walk through something like a wind tunnel: the hot air of a cramped room filled with wet clothes and dryer lint rushes out the door, and the fumes of burgers from the place down the street waft in.

The laundromat is the first place I think of. This particular laundromat has no bathroom—you have to use the one in the Waffle House next door—and is open twenty-four hours a day, and I have never seen the door closed.

There aren’t any designated seats in the laundromat. There are washing machines, of course, accompanied by signs that say “Don’t sit on the washing machines,” but we sit on them anyway. There’s also a wide windowsill where you can curl up and watch people walk by outside while your clothes flop around inside one of those rattling, soapy cubes.

Here are some of the people I’ve watched in there:

And it’s the same soap that the guy leaning against the back wall—the guy with the gold chain around his neck and the patch of hair sticking out from the hem of his tank top—is using.

- An environmental science graduate student. Quiet. Long, stringy hair. Round glasses. Swimming in his cargo shorts. Shoes too big. - A mother of three grown boys. Bright pink turtleneck in the middle of June. Pink lipstick to match.

I have noticed other realms like the laundromat—other liminal spaces, in-between places, insides, skeletons of business—establishments everyone visits sooner or later— the spaces we must all inhabit to keep on—to keep on doing whatever it is we’re doing. I have felt the crossing into other-worlds over the thresholds of gas stations, in fast food restaurants in the witching hour, during one-night stays in hotels next to airports, in airports themselves, in train stations and rental car agencies and at bus stops, in Walmarts, in malls, in movie theaters, in public libraries, in the emergency room and hospitals and dentists’ offices.

- Old man, eighties. Couldn’t get the quarters into the slot on the dryer. Outside the laundromat, we are rich, we are poor, we are lost, we are residents, we are professionals, we are students, we are parents, we are old with no children, we are children. Our washing machines are broken. We’re staying in a hotel and need a clean pair of pants for our interview tomorrow. We’re living in a car. We’ve just bought a washing machine and haven’t figured out how to work it yet.

How many fingers have touched that 2010 issue of People on the waiting room table? How many shoes have kicked that hung wheel on the shopping cart? How many zip codes have been punched into that tarnished keypad on the gas pump?

INSIDE/OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE Even if these places have no walls, they’re microcosmic— cathedrals, inside, through a door, real or not, islands. The laundromat is surrounded by a moat—window panes, closed—and a drawbridge—door, open. We can call them closed systems insofar as they are closed: their operations are always the same, hives, bodies buzzing within the container. But the door is always there, late into the night, and at any time, a figure might enter or a figure might exit.

I see altars in all these places—altars, wafers, and chalices, and I hear hymns. The altar of the laundromat seems to be the quarter machine, where people line up to present their money and catch the holy coins in their hands. In the airport, it’s the jetway, or perhaps baggage claim. In fast food restaurants, it’s the counter where you pick up your food on a plastic tray. In malls, it’s the single huge department store that takes up half the square footage of the entire building.

I grew up in rural North Carolina, and, as a child, was an acolyte at the small, run-down Episcopal church twelve miles from my house. There were four or five other acolytes, and in the parish house, if you could call it that, we’d drip hot wax from the candlelighters on each other’s heads, bite the wooden crosses and try to make gang signs with our hands, perform dramatic readings from the lectionary. But the minute we tripped over the hems of the mildewed red and white robes into the back room of the church itself, our jokes would choke off, and we’d find ourselves sitting on the same wooden pews as every other member of the congregation—mostly old ladies in enormous clip-on pearl earrings and wool suits last dry-cleaned in the 1960s—listening to the same halting sermon delivered by the aged priest, parroting the same hymns, cringing at the same wrong notes on the organ. Sucking on the same papery wafers and hoping they’d tide us over until lunch. Sipping the same sacramental wine from the same chalice at the same altar. Knees sore from kneeling.

And when the sermon was over, and after we’d drunk the blood of Christ and eaten His flesh, and after we’d given thanks and sung the closing hymn, the priest would send us forth into the midday, and we’d stumble down the wooden stairs with the sun in our eyes and split off into families, and drive home, and split off again into ourselves. My brother and I would boil water for frozen tortellini, and after our late lunch, we’d clean our rooms and shared bathroom. We’d argue over whose turn it was to wipe down the mirror—out of the in-between, separate again—older and younger, girl and boy, one of us bleaching the bathtub and the other mopping the floor. What is sacred? To me, these places are sacred. If it’s the miracle of creation you’re praising, you can just as well worship from the detergent dispenser in a public laundromat as you can from the front pew of any church. WRITING Blythe Davis

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

Chicago Travel Guide

PHOTOGRAPHY Tommaso Babucci WRITING Gianna Miller Chicago juggles two identities. It is one of the most diverse cities in America, yet also one of the most segregated. The duality in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personality is what we seek to acknowledge, yet also break from, in this travel guide. Traversing various neighborhoods throughout the city, we explore the beauty in its cultural diversity despite the regionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; geographic separation. This guide walks through the city in an authentic way that gives a taste of the entire Chicago, not just the postcard locations. After all, it is the mix of cultures that make Chicago so lovable and second to none.

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The Robey Hotel Situated on a bustling six-corner intersection, the location and exterior hardly make The Robey identifiable as a hotel. The 200-foot art deco monolith towers over the trendy Wicker Park neighborhood around it. Surrounded by bookstores, coffee shops, boutiques, and bars, Wicker Park is an eclectic neighborhood that buzzes with the energy from its young and artistic residents. Walking into The Robey, old directories and mailboxes reveal clues about the space’s past life as an office building. The dark hallways, adorned with intricate wrought-iron gates and granite floors, and ending with a breath of fresh air and light, emphasize its ancestry and are reminiscent of architectural details found in Chicago’s business district. On the second floor, The Lounge provides the perfect environment for people to work or relax with drinks, accompanied by a birds-eye view of Wicker. If you’re hungry for more views, The Up Room will satiate. The sleek bar, located on the thirteenth floor, includes a wraparound walkout patio where guests and bar-hoppers can be stunned by a hard-to-come-by 180-degree view of the city. Guests finish their day in rooms that are perfect combinations of freshness, light, and ancestral details. The Robey embodies everything about Wicker Park: gritty and urban, and perfect for the traveler who is looking to break from typical Chicago tourist attractions.

2018 W. North Avenue

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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Red and White Wine Bar Warm golden hour sun pours into the spacious bar and shop as we walk in. Specializing in natural wines, the Red and White Wine Bar is meant for both wine novices and experts. The simplicity of the interior decor mimics the naturalness of their wines, emphasizing that less is more. It is an inviting space that lacks the pretentiousness often found in wine shops. Wood shelves house a variety of wines whose origins span the world. High-top tables and bar stools line the large windows, allowing customers to comfortably taste their specialty wine. The bar is located next to the shop. With a loft-like aesthetic, the dining room feels versatile in its function, perfect for an afternoon glass or a date night dinner.

1861 N. Milwaukee Avenue

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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Publican Quality Meats Located in the Fulton Market meatpacking district, Publican Quality Meats is much more than just a butcher. With a full service bar, seasonings and salts crowding the shelves, and customers constantly in search of the homemade bread that usually sells out in the early morning, PQM is more of a cafe-butcher-market. It straddles the line between what the neighborhood used to be and what it is becoming. Located west of downtown, this part of Chicago is historically infamous for its rancid smell and streets filled with forklifts carrying slabs of meat. Once home to the meat packaging and distribution facilities, Fulton Market is now spilling over with some of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the country'sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;top restaurants, including PQM and its affiliates. A window-covered wall lets in light that makes the meats and cheeses sparkle in the display, begging you to try them all. The simplicity of the ingredients juxtaposed with the complexity in flavor of the sandwiches we enjoyed highlight the time and care PQM puts into their food. The only problem with PQM is that it closes at 6 pm.

825 W. Fulton Market

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

Momotaro Unassuming from its exterior, Momotaro occupies a space that seems large and intimate simultaneously. Upon entering, your eye is immediately drawn up to the skyhigh ceilings, which add a sense of grandness and airiness to the dining area. We sit in a dimly-lit, tucked-in booth that makes the space seem personal. Chef Gene Kato focuses on upholding the integrity of Japanese food while bringing customers something new and fresh. With a rare sense of environmental duty, there is an intention and active effort to sustainably source menu ingredients. Sizzles and pops are the soundtrack to the dining experience, which is a performance in itself. Dishes are set on the table still cooking, inviting diners to engage with their food and have a hand in its preparation. Located in the West Loop, an ever-changing neighborhood, Momotaro offers Japanese cuisine that is sure to stay.

820 W. Lake Street

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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Jim's Original Easily overlooked, Jimâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Original is a hotdog stand that sits right off the expressway just south of downtown. Jimmy Stefanovic worked at the stand owned by his aunt before buying it and making it a Chicago icon. Humble in its presentation, Jimâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s has been operating since 1939. Open 24/7, the stand churns out hot dogs and burgers at any time of the day. The service is fast, and ordering is too. The Chicago hot dog may seem like a go-to, but the Polish sausage is what makes this stand world-famous. It comes with a splash of mustard, a heaping amount of grilled onions, and a hot pepper, all served with a side of fries. A grape soda is a local favorite to wash it down.

1250 S. Union Avenue

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

S.K.Y. S.K.Y sits in a formerly abandoned building on a corner in the Lower West Side neighborhood, Pilsen. The interior is industrial, with exposed brick and ductwork, but has a welcoming warmth. The sense of community that fills S.K.Y is a common feeling in Pilsen, which has long been the first stop for immigrants coming to the city and remains so today. S.K.Y holds a unique position in the neighborhood with a different aesthetic and culinary approach than the mom-and-pop restaurants that fill the area. However, the story of Chef Gillander, the son of an immigrant, and his Korean-born wife, Seon Kyung Yuk, the source of the restaurantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name, shows that S.K.Y. is not a big-money corporation moving into the neighborhood, but a family-owned restaurant similar to the rest. The food is modern American with international influences. From black truffle croquettes to organic fried chicken, the menu is playful, yet approachable, with flavors that will leave you wanting more.

1239 W. 18th Street

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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Underground Bookstore In the South Side neighborhood, Calumet Heights, the Underground Bookstore is a mecca for black literature. An Afrocentric bookshop, Underground has everything from limited-edition classics to contemporary novels, all written by black authors. In a neighborhood that has been plagued by violence and structural deterioration, Underground is a black-owned business that serves as a positive, uplifting influence. In a time when it is increasingly popular for customers to shop online, Underground reminds us of why brick-and-mortar shopping is irreplicable.

1727 E. 87th Street

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CHICAGO TRAVEL GUIDE

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that which is common

I met Yolanda Kakabadse over coffee last October. She had just given a talk at Duke about our role in the global climate crisis. I wanted to hear more about her experience in environmental conservation, most recently as President of the World Wildlife Fund; she also founded Fundacion Natura, one of the most important environmental organizations in Latin America, and held office as Ecuador’s Minister of the Environment. In our hour together, Yolanda wanted to hear from me — why I cared about the environment, where I wanted to see change. She had a calming presence about her, and a warm smile. At the end of our conversation, ranging from Duke’s investment in fossil fuels to the health of our oceans, she generously welcomed me to call whenever. A few months later, my friend Noah and I Skyped Yolanda to have a conversation about Ecuador, environmental work, and a response to our changing climate that brings us all together.

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Noah: I think we just wanted to find out a bit more about your life, your experience with your work, how you started. I think a good place to start would be getting to know your relationship with your home country, in Ecuador. Where did you grow up? Was there are a particular relationship you had with your surroundings, either your family or your city? Or the nature? I guess we could start there.

A: How did that learning process begin for you? Y: It was the... environmental profile [we did] that was this study of collected information from mass media, experts, even from abroad. We brought some people from outside who had experience from, for example, chemical pollution in the agricultural sector, because we didn’t have anyone in Ecuador at that time who could do these studies... I remember the one [expert] on agrochemicals who was absolutely essential to understanding what was happening with food production in Ecuador. This study was a profile of the environment of Ecuador and that was more than enough. It carried so much information that it really drove all of us — me and the friends who created Fundación Natura — to define priorities, where to start, how to do it, and what the next steps were.

Yolanda: So, I’m Ecuadorian, and I was born in Quito. I’m part of a family that has always been close to nature. My parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, all of us are in some way related to nature by farming and farms. So our weekends and holidays were always in the countryside. In addition to that, my parents were great fans of Ecuador, so they took us to see different places every weekend. Beaches, mountains, lakes, rivers, local communities to try to learn and understand our country better. So that was my childhood. When we were young adults, me and my friends decided that we needed to do something because something was changing. Maybe too many things were changing. I don’t know — garbage, forests being cut down, rivers being polluted. And even though it wasn’t as serious as it is today, we could notice a difference between what we had seen as children and what we were viewing... as young adults, not knowing really what it meant. We had no idea of what today we call environmental sciences. When I started directing an NGO that we created, I had no idea of what pollution was, what deforestation and soil erosion [were]… Nothing! It was a learning process. My first project [was] an environmental profile of Ecuador. I [wrote] something like 20 chapters [on] legislation, fisheries, forests, water, national parks, species, agriculture. So every chapter was a whole new world of information... That gave me the whole picture of Ecuador. And this was the late 70’s, early 80’s.

N: I had the opportunity to spend two months in Quito last year. Ecuador is a beautiful country. I went through La Sierra, I went to Puerto Lopez, then to Banos de Agua Santa. I felt that the tourism industry did a really good job with emphasizing environmental conservation, which I think you’re seeing in a lot of places now, all over the world. But later that year I got to go to Southeast Asia... and you didn’t necessarily have that same awareness. So I was wondering, just from your experience doing the study in the 70s and 80s, where you have seen Ecuador go in terms of their conservation efforts, and if there’s anything we can learn from that? Y: Well, I love listening to you and [hearing] that you find that our problems were not as bad. We think they are terrible. But anyway,... there were several strategies. One of those is highly relevant to your question: we needed to focus on education, on public awareness. And public awareness of everybody—of decision makers, general public, of children, teachers. We put a lot of effort on teachers. We produced some manuals for all the classes of primary school for the teachers to use with information on Ecuador’s values, resources, wealth. So that was important. But also teaching decision-makers of government—mayors, ministers, directors of different branches, from defense military to the health system.

Amy: Given that you didn’t have prior experience [with] environmental issues, was there a specific experience in your life that drew you to [future] conservation work (to found Fundación Natura in Quito from which you built your career?) Y: Natura was the result of the concern we had. My passion for the work was the result of learning what was going on in Ecuador. I think that the environment is like a virus, in that Quito bites you with this virus and you can never get rid of it. It just keeps growing and growing. The more you know, the more concerned you are.

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Another strategy that was very, very useful was that [Natura], as an NGO, thought that our role was to contribute to the government with responses. We never threw stones at any issue unless that was the last resort. Our first instinct was to define the problem and define actions to address the problem. And if we found a brick wall that we couldn’t pass, then we decided to fight. Natura’s main [approach] was to try to find open doors and give sufficient information so that [the government would see us as] a source of information, a partner. And that was very big.

N: I think you get that with any kind of [radical] change, [movements setting a precedent and then policy and popular culture slowly follows]. I guess an important question— and kind of a scary question, I am nervous to ask it—but do we have hope for the future? Are we going places? Y: I have hope, and I really enjoy looking, watching, being a witness to positive things. Every time you see something positive you [have to] say, “We can change other things, we can do more.” But if you lose hope about saving the planet, saving humanity, why are we here?

A: That actually relates very well to the theme of FORM magazine this semester, which is “Departing From Duality” — the concept of moving beyond a dichotomy of opinions, towards a collaborative and unified initiative. And we wanted to know how you’ve worked with people from a variety of perspectives related to environmental politics, how you collaborated with all these different stakeholders towards a common goal.

A: You talked earlier about how you helped communicate [more radical opinions] in a public policy setting. How do you think we can improve the communication about environmental science and policies between the government and the public? Y: There is not only one solution, but there is one that is absolutely key, which is to find a [simple] message, using very common words for people to understand. Most of our failings when we don’t see reaction of the people is because we are delivering a very complicated technical message that nobody understands. I carry here the most important condition of educating: if people don’t understand you, why do you want to be part of the solution? Why do you want them to be part of the solution? So communicating in a language I used to say that my mother could understand — and she was 80 — then that is what I would consider a good message. If she said “WHAT?”, if she didn’t understand, [then] nobody else would.

Y: I think it depends on personalities. We [Natura] were people who were very practical. We could not tell the government of Ecuador to stop oil extraction. It was the main source of our economy... we didn’t have an option. We knew that more than 50% of [Ecuador’s] economy depended on oil, so our advice was how to do it well, how to be less destructive [rather than “do this instead of oil”]. We didn’t spend our energy on issues that had no solution. We tried to invest in issues that would result in a positive impact, [where] people could learn, contribute, and benefit from change. Probably because my academic studies were in psychology, I didn’t spend a lot of time fighting against the impossible.

N: You mentioned earlier about speaking to people [in Ecuador] about identity: this is what we value, and this is how we need to move forward within this identity. And I think this is a very powerful thing, because an identity can give you purpose. The US right now [seems to be] in an identity crisis: a country politically and demographically built upon immigration yet [demonizing] migrants; a country that has built its power on its advancements in technology, yet is falling behind many European countries in terms of renewable energy output. I don’t really know where I am going with this, but does the conversation need to start with the values before action; meaning before means? Because that is something that has struck me.

N: One very interesting facet of the environmental movement is the desire for the perfect solution. We both heard a guest lecturer last semester on biogas energy solutions for Duke University, and her point was, “This may not be the perfect solution, but we have to stop the bleeding so we can keep the patient alive so we can cure the cancer,” which I thought was like a great analogy. [It’s like] we’re not going to get it right now, but this is closer to where we want to be, so let’s try and move there. I think the difficult thing is that even [the proponents of environmental conservation] are not necessarily going after the practical solutions. How do you get people to meet in the middle, if that’s possible? Y: I have great admiration for radical movements and positions. I think they are necessary because they punch, punch, and they put the issue on the table, on the front line, on the front page of the news. And that’s where I come in: to negotiate, to say what are we going to do about this, and how we can work together on a solution. I have a fantastic admiration for those people for being so convinced of what they do. 104

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Y: Maybe in Ecuador [identifying with the environment] was not that difficult because the natural capital of Ecuador is so big, so visible... people can immediately identify and relate to nature, but as you say, unless there is some meaning to why [we should] defend the environment, it is very difficult to convince anybody. People have no idea what nature is about. In the case of Ecuador, you [can] use examples of the value of a certain tree for medical purposes, or a species of bird, to keep a system going and moving, and [also] because the cities in Ecuador are still so small and close to the rural world, it is much easier. It is not perfect, but at least there is a majority of people who would understand what you are talking about when you mention one species or another.

N: [Personally,] I find myself in this strange place where I have these values yet I am buying food and products that are directly contradicting [them]. So [I am] kind of in this ironic stance of my purchasing power—investing in fossil fuels, or corporate mass farming operations—yet protesting the same things that [I am] investing in. It is a strange place to be. How do you [acknowledge that duality] and then move forward? Y: I think it is not easy, to change lifestyles. It is very difficult. But the moment, especially with youth, that you plant an idea in someone’s mind, it begins to roll on its own. How much do you need? How much do you use? How much do you spend? Fast fashion, fast food, energy use, paper use. You are more conscious, more aware, more strict with yourself, [and] once you start you won’t stop. Sometimes you can become a pest, criticising everybody. There are so many moments when you can influence others: friends, colleagues, family, neighbors, just by being nice, not by being radical, but by messages like, “Why don’t you help us with this?” It is how you deliver the message also, because otherwise you scare people, and that is something we don’t want.

N: We are all affected by the environment, in one way or another, and mostly we don’t realize it. At least, I know here, in the US, it is easy to forget where we get all our food from: not from a factory, but from the ground, [for example]. Have you found there are significant issues related to the environment that people [particularly] aren’t aware of? Y: The linkage to health gives fantastic results.Think about polluted water, the Flint [Michigan] case—a woman struggling with the local government because her children were getting sicker and sicker and sicker, and it was pollution, it was the water that was not healthy. And then [think about] food that is not healthy, water, the air that you breathe. Health of the environment and health of the human being are so closely related that you can very easily talk about it and build the linkage, and it is easy for people to understand; [for example,] you are not talking about CO2 emissions, you are talking about water. You can give examples of the good, and the bad, and the ugly of the world that is immediately around you. That is, I use health and food security as two areas of survival that are so much related to the health of the environment. If there is no water, if there is no forest, if there is biodiversity, what are we going to eat? It is so easy to demonstrate with no water, no life.

A: We just wanted to ask if you would like to end with a final message of hope for, I guess for Duke, for this generation of students, and future generations, and moving away from duality and engaging in conversations like you said, in a way that is not being judgmental, but that is moving towards a constructive solution to these issues. Y: I sometimes feel that there is a divide artificially created by us. What are we to leave our children with if they are to carry the burden, the responsibility? And I always think that whatever is done wrong is not because one is bad, it’s because one is ignorant. One does not have sufficient information to act correctly. So, there is an intergenerational responsibility that we need to work on and become aware of. We are responsible, even if we did something wrong, for trying to mend it. [We must look towards] younger generations as partners to the solutions, not as a passive sector of society to which we have to provide all the right things. As a partner, working together: I have the experience, you have the creative capacity, the innovative mind, why don’t we work together instead of separating the adults of today and the young minds of today as if they were in different societies? Building that partnership with young people can take you anywhere.

A: Yeah, it makes those issues very salient to people. Y: Absolutely. I often say that the easiest topic to talk about is food, because everybody is an expert on food. All of us are experts on food. We know what we like, what we don’t, when we are hungry, when we are not, when we have had enough, when something is tasty, when something is ugly. So nobody can say they are not interested in food.

PHOTOGRAPHY Noah Breuss-Burgess WRITING Noah Breuss-Burgess & Amy Yoon

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T O R II 108

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Kyoto & Tokyo And thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more. Between these mountains, ancient temples reside. Guarded by Imperial stone gargoyles who have stood firmly in place for centuries, they enshrine the spirits of Japanese gods, immortalizing the legacy of true faith and belief. Wood and bamboo criss cross over dark, weathered terra cotta, quietly emanating a soft sobriety. Standing at the entrance, I glimpse some wisps of smoke deeper in the temple escaping upwards into the spring sky, not dissolving immediately because of the fresh, postrain humidity. The open gate is sheathed in an invisible film- the air behind them seems denser, richer. Promising a cleansing, a purification. Perhaps this was what had propelled the subtle release of energy I had felt, stepping under torii gates of Mt. Inari. A reconsideration. A revival.

The midday Shinkansen carriage is relatively empty and quiet. Though even when jam-packed with people, it is never riotous, the most commotion consisting of shuffling feet and the slicing pages of a newspaper. As the train zips through boundless stretches of pastureland, the sprouting green of fields blurs into the clear, pale blue of the sky. On this Tokaido line, you can briefly see the left side of Mt. Fuji as the train makes its way from Tokyo to Kyoto, snow-capped and looming large behind stooped, earthy-colored village houses and saturated horizontal power lines. Inside the carriage, the upholstered seats bathe in a yellow sheen of soft sunlight coming through large window panes that have been fastidiously wiped clean. We alight at the Kyoto Station and shortly after emerge on to Hachijo Street. On our way into the city, the change in topography becomes more and more apparent as a sprawling skyline replaces the flatness of country terrain with its painful verticality. Straight lines and jutting angles fill our field of vision. Intolerant to even the slightest curvature or bend in architecture. At an intersection, immaculate lines of salarymen assemble at the pedestrian light, waiting for it to turn green. Suit and tie, they walk with a uniform discipline. Exacting. Imperious.

I ponder at this indelible persistence of history. Are they still proudly standing their ground, or have they been concealed and pushed off-center by the commercial cosmos of metropolitan life? Are they waiting, patiently, for an eventual devastation, or have they submitted to the infestation of human machinations? These questions sit, at the pit of my stomach as we amble cautiously through Kyoto. I find myself back in the heart of the city center. At twilight, the lanterns hanging on the frames of roofs start to emit a furtive red glow. My heart jumps at the thought of Hanatoro, when cobbled streets and sliding papered doors would all be lit by the delicate fire of lanterns. Restaurants, ramen shops, outdoor patios tarped with a thick, transparent plastic to avoid the rain; each warms up as the night dawns upon the city, ushering in the lost modern souls that ache to hold themselves together, piece by piece.

Yet the mountains reappear. Walking further on, what rises beyond the gleaming edifices are mountains that completely obscure the sense of urban potency we had felt moments before. Decimating it into oblivion. They tower over the skyline, looking down upon the buildings, sneering. Man had naĂŻvely geared up for war, not understanding that the land could destroy it all with a small flick of its fingertips.

Bidding goodbye to my companions, I shrug off the coldness and turn away from the bustle, wandering deeper into Gion. PHOTOGRAPHY Tommaso Babucci WRITING Irene Zhou

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Perhaps this was what had propelled the subtle release of energy I had felt... a reconsideration... a revival.

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The Valley

McAllen, Texas In Collaboration with The Duke Center for International and Global Studies & The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Divison There is a surprisingly long list of descriptors tied to the largest city in Texas’ Hidalgo County, McAllen, Texas. It’s moniker, “City of Palms” becomes self-explanatory as you venture through the city’s metropolitan and residential areas. Frequent glances out of the passenger side window will reward you with an unassuming mixture of license plates from Texas and Tamaulipas (one of the 31 Federal Entities of Mexico) and a bevy of Spanglish advertisements by popular American chain restaurants, stores, and local politicians. Stop anywhere for a bite to eat, or fill up on gas, and you’ll soon realize the city’s ethnic makeup of 84.6% Hispanic or Latinx is not a boast, but rather a reality. Most of McAllen’s Latinx population derives from the neighboring Mexican city of Reynosa. The existence of the McAllen – Hidalgo – Reynosa International Bridge, coupled with unauthorized immigration across the Rio Grande River, are key contributors to the constant flow of immigrants into this American town. Through speaking with locals, one gets the idea that, in McAllen, the quality of living, and the ease with which you are adopted into the local culture is often designated by your form of arrival. However, class hierarchies, enforced by legal status and proximity to “Americanness”, are often dissolved by socio-economic status. This is made clear by the frequent, but temporary, migration of South American tourists who travel to McAllen to consume in staples of American consumer culture (e.g. commercial mall centers, wholesale buying, etc) and are widely accepted. Throughout this series of photographs, paired with interview excerpts that touch upon McAllen’s cultural spheres of influence, we have proffered a vision of an immigrant experience informed by its dual proximity to the potentialities of grandeur emphasized by popular American culture and the equally emphasized socio-economic conditions & traditions of the countries they once called home; one which, for many, is a 10 minute drive away. As these peaks intersect, the drive for Americanization coupled with the desire to remain grounded in tradition give way to a constant flow of seemingly disparate, but similarly begotten identities that make up the citizens of the Rio Grande Valley. PHOTOGRAPHY & WRITING Justin Báez

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J: Have you lived here your entire life?

J: What sides of the valley have you come across that make you want to leave somewhere as far as California or Vancouver?

R: All my life yeah. I’ve only seen Mexico & San Antonio. All I have is the internet to see different places. It’s a good thing to have, but at the same time it’s not because I’m not actually in those places to experience them. It’s just a false image.

R: Well I’d describe the Valley as really slow and repetitive here. We’re also really isolated from the other major cities in the state. That sort of contributes to the repetitiveness. You pretty much know everybody and see the same people, same things all the time. It’s a nice place, the economy is alright – you know we have our really nice neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods. A big problem here though, is the drugs. But you don’t want to talk about that.

J: Have you ever thought of leaving the Valley? R: I wanted to go to Stanford, in California, but things didn’t turn out. I’m currently going to STC [South Texas College] studying Computer Tech, but I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do. I’m still in those years where I have a bunch of things I like. But I definitely want to leave and explore. Maybe go somewhere foreign, like Vancouver.

J: We can. R: It’s really bad because we’re right next to the border you know? It’s also really easy for anybody from the age of 14 to get hooked on drugs because of chats on Facebook that people create to sell them.

J: What makes you gravitate towards Canada? Do you not feel supported by the Valley culture here? R: I love Canada. I hear the government and politicians are really good over there. I don’t know much about the other side, there’s always duality, but I’ve only heard about the good side. My family and friends are very supportive. Right now, I’m unemployed and they all help me out. I know I sound like a decent person, but I’ve gotten in trouble and have been into drugs, but mother especially has always been there for me.

J: Does the higher accessibility to drugs granted by close proximity to the border make citizens of the Valley opposed to an open border? Is there a lot of pushback on illegal immigration? R: The majority of the Valley is Latin-American, but there’s a lot of people who are against illegal immigration into the Valley. I don’t think their worry is that illegal-immigrants will take everyone’s jobs, but more so that they are a big cost on society. Like, ‘they come here and then they have kids and the government pays for their lives’. But me, personally, I’m not against illegal-immigration because we need a better place. My parents came here for a better life, and now they’re citizens. My mom lived in a ranch where all the houses are made out of straw, branches, and like sand mix [adobe clay] our life here is so much better. I know immigration is still a problem, but I feel like there’s a better option besides building a wall.

J: Is that sort of familial support an integral part of Valley culture? R: Yeah, it’s a big part of it. Everyone does it, but people say that Mexican families are really family orientated because of our big families. We’re more supportive of each other and take care of each other.

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J: When did you move here?

A: For me, it was more of understanding when I have to be individualistic or opportunistic to not get fucked over. But

A: I moved here when I was 12 from Monte Rey in Mexico

J: So, it’s almost cyclical. You acquire individualistic behaviors to defend yourself from others.

J: As an immigrant, do you find yourself making the conscious decision of Americanizing?

A: Yeah but the people who are born here got that attitude – that winner attitude that’s like you got to win no matter what, like if you work hard enough you can get it, because they think there isn’t much to go around. It’s like “I got to get mine however”. They try to get as much as they can for themselves, it doesn’t matter if it’s at another person’s cost.

A: Definitely in the beginning yeah it was, just because you don’t want to be the odd man out. So, for me, since I didn’t know the language, I tried to fit in as quickly as possible. J: What would you say helped you fit in? A: What helped me a lot is –– I think I’m an easy-going person, but I can see how someone who is more reserved would have trouble making friends. Like, my brother is very reserved, and he has OCD. Our first year here, he didn’t make any friends and that led him to become even more reserved. I guess it [adapting] depends on your attitude. It really is situational.

J: Is it hard to associate with people that were born here? Specifically, in school?

A: When I got here, at the beginning they would make fun of me because I didn’t speak English. So, when I tried to, they would make jokes. But that’s all a part of the Mexican culture that’s here – like our sense of humor is hardcore. Even if you don’t mean to make someone feel bad, sometimes you can.

A: Once you break that language barrier, it all depends on how you adapt to other people’s personalities. Other than that, I do see how it can be different across the Valley. Like here in Mission, the Mexican culture has been mixed into the city & school pretty well, so you’ll get along with everyone just fine. But if you go to other high schools, like Memorial [McAllen Memorial High School], it's way more white-washed. There you’ll find yourself kind of lost. Like you’ll get along with the people, but it’s not like you can just – they try to be cool and above it all. Not only that, but the neighborhoods associated with Memorial they’re definitely higher class. A lot of students there come from wealthier families compared to like McHI [McAllen High School] or Sharyland [high school].

J: Was there anything about the culture that was a shock to you?

J: Do you feel like the school system exacerbates this socio-economic or cultural divide?

A: Yes, so the first thing I noticed is that everyone is way more individualistic here. In Mexico, everyone does everything together. Over here, some parts of that collectivistic culture have transferred over, but it’s not practiced as much. Here, people will only be in a collective when they can gain something out of it. When they can’t benefit from others, they’ll act individualistically as if they’ve never received help. At the beginning it was hard for me to know who to trust or make good friends with.

A: It’s interesting because what they call the “better schools” here are the ones where they diminish spanish-speaking and don’t focus a lot on latin-american culture.. I remember sophomore year of high-school I’m there in class speaking spanish with a classmate – not for an assignment or a presentation, just classroom chatter, and the teacher walks up to me and says “Alejandro, this is English class, you can’t be speaking spanish in here.” Like what? Isn’t this his America, there’s supposed freedom of speech. But that’s just the norm in all of the best schools. That’s the bar they set for how to conduct yourself.

J: What were some of the setbacks you faced when trying to associate with others?

J: Do you think those individualistic attitudes are acquired as a rite of passage for those who immigrate here? Are people accepting individualism as a vehicle to achieve assimilation?

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J: State your name, age, and ethnic background.

J: Is there a desire, as a non-Latinx member of McAllen, to leave the city once you graduate high school or higher education? Would you say this is an instrumental part of being in one of McAllen’s sub-cultures?

A: Aima Eromosele, 20 years old, 1st generation Nigerian. J: Is there such a thing as American culture in McAllen?

A: There’s a lot of different races here and I wonder ‘why do we stay?’ I mean, I’m sure you find your comfort here. Once you learn how to assimilate and, on your own behalf, take some responsibility to become comfortable in your surroundings everything gels and flows much better. When you’re open to experiencing more, that experience will also welcome you more. The less you fight the valley and are upset at the fact that street signs are in Spanish or that there is a taqueria on every corner, the culture will embrace you.

A: Given the fact that I grew up here, I think my typical response would be like ‘yeah you get a good representation or understanding of what American culture is living down here’ because most people probably don’t have a very broad idea of what American culture is outside of what they’ve acquired through social media, TV, and pop culture. But I think because my own worldview is a little broader and I do have a better understanding of what life is like outside of the valley, do I feel like you can come here and say, ‘this is American culture?' Yes and no, just because the valley is such a vacuum and your experiences living in the valley are very different from the rest of the country. But, yes, of course, American culture takes a lot of different forms, and even though this place may be more Hispanic or Mexican diluted, submerged, or saturated it is still American culture because American culture is composed of many different sub-cultures.

J: Can you speak more to how your blackness clashes with how comfortable you are in McAllen? A: You don’t really get a lot of outward racism, or anything that makes you feel unwelcome. As much as their experiences are different to you, yours are different from them; like seeing someone who looks like you. Everyone is like a baby seeing a Black person for the first time. I guess they’re just usually very curious. For the most part, nothing is malicious.

J: How do you see other cultures playing into the ethnic dynamics of McAllen. Do you think the city is too homogenized? Do you feel there is space to present your identity?

J: Are there instances when racial tensions do arise? How has Trump’s rhetoric fed into people’s opinions on Latinx immigration?

A: It’s hard, especially with me being Black. You kind of have to create the lane for yourself. Nobody is going to do that for you because they’re not worried about that. Even though we need to make Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans, that desire doesn’t really exist. The little community centers that we do have are self-made, but it’s nice when you find them. And luckily, I have found it, but I do worry about people who come here [Non-Latinx] and can’t find anyone to relate to. Honestly, it sounds kind of harsh, but things do feel very “sink or swim." You do eventually find your group, but don’t expect to come here and live outside of this homogenized group and expect things to be simple, like some of these street signs are in Spanish you know? It’s not easy [laughs].

A: Something really weird here is that you would think that MAGA supporters would look like how they do in the media, like White, Cis [Gender] males, but here they are Brown cis males. It’s bizarre because it’s like hmm, he’s talking about you sis [laughs]; he’s saying 'you’re the rapist.' But somehow, they manage to disassociate themselves from the ‘lazy brown people’ who might even be their own kinfolk. You definitely find internalized hatred. When Trump came down, it was super weird to see White and Brown people on both sides. I guess it all comes down to white supremacy and every race attempting to attain whiteness because they feel that’s how you win in this society.

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