SheThey
Copyright @ 2020 Sydnney Margova Islam SheThey Magazine Cover art: Architectural Alterity, EilĂs Finnegan All rights reserved
SheThey Art and Literary Magazine
Issue 4 - September 2020
Letter from the Editor September has been an eventful month-- but what month in 2020 hasn’t been? Many folks went back to school, hence another semester of zoom university, folks have begun to go back to work, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away and left another Supreme Court seat open for Trump to have access to fill and stack the court, Breonna Taylor’s killers walked free, the election is quickly approaching and feeling ever increasingly hopeless, Covid is still alive and well. It’s hard to be optimistic. The United States continues to fall quickly into a fascist state as Trump does what he pleases. Black women are still severely unprotected. Our rights are literally on the line as we might soon have a conservative Supreme Court Justice roll back all of our freedoms, and much more. It’s easy to feel that we can’t do anything as individuals, but it’s important to remember how much power we have together. So many aspects of our life in the US are life or death decisions. Participating in mutual aid? Life or death. Wearing a mask? Life or death. Abolishing the police? Life or death. Establishing affordable housing for houseless folks? Life or death. Eradicating systemic racism? Life or death. Dismantling capitalism? Life or death. Voting and electing representatives to follow through on all these life or death changes? Life or death. The list goes on. This may sound dramatic, but tell that to the 7,120 victims of hate crimes from 2018, the 200,000 covid deaths, the 1,004 deaths from police brutality from last year, the 567,000 houseless people, and the 38.1 million people in poverty. Those folks indeed faced life and death situations and needed serious change. We need that change now. So please, vote. Donate. Protest. Participate in mutual aid. And keep speaking out.
Love,
Sydnney Margova Islam
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Contents Cover
Architectural Alterity, EilĂs Finnegan
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Yellow Thread Represents Your Past, Cherish Witherspoon
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Summer Dreaming, Allie Verbeke
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Jesus is in a Government Test Tube, Rose Lederer
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Kinrage Streetwear, Haana Hail
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Cool Sunglasses, Elena Claire
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Feel, Khalidah Carrington
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Architectural Alterity: An Uncanny Manifesto of De-Familiarization, Displacement, and Dreams, EilĂs Finnegan
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Day 5, Loren Marple
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Jenna, Audrey Rauth
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At the End of My Garden, Olivia Anizor
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Sarah, Audrey Rauth
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Voting in A Fascist Democracy, Sydnney Margova Islam
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Somewhere Only We Know Pt 1, Viera Margova
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Stream of Consciousness VIII, Loren Marple
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Claire on the Shore, m.k.s. Moonlight, m.k.s.
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Yellow Thread Represents Your Past Photography By Cherish Witherspoon
Issue 4 - September 2020
Summer Dreaming Digital Collage By Allie Verbeke
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Jesus is in a Government Test Tube By Rose Lederer
Jesus is in a government test tube An experiment by people seeking truth Seeking forgiveness, seeking indulgences Indulging in the idea that They’ll be told what to do Searching for something to satisfy Seeking an answer to the questions above their heads Forgetting their own resilience By forgetting that Jesus is dead So ignorance is bliss, but only for you Because you’re keeping Jesus in a government test tube So ignorance is bliss, but only for you Because you’re keeping Jesus in a government test tube Don’t expect me to cry Don’t expect me to lie Don’t expect me to die for thee Ignorance is bliss, but only for you Because you’re keeping Jesus in a government test tube Ignorance is bliss, but only for you Because you’re keeping Jesus in a government test tube
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Issue 4 - September 2020
KINRAGE STREETWEAR Clothing Line By Haana Hail
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Issue 4 - September 2020
Cool Sunglasses Digital Drawing By Elena Claire
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Feel
Digital Drawing By Khalidah Carrington
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Architectural Alterity: An Uncanny Manifesto of De-Familiarization, Displacement, and Dreams By EilĂs Finnegan
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By way of introduction, my name is Eilís Finnegan (she/her) and I am a recent 2020 graduate of Auburn University with a dual Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Interior Architecture degrees - I am also a person with Narcolepsy w/ Cataplexy. Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder of the sleep/wake cycle that usually develops during childhood or young adulthood. Symptoms of narcolepsy include excessive daytime sleepiness, fragmented nighttime sleep, cataplexy (sudden muscle weakness triggered by emotions like laughter, surprise, annoyance, or exhilaration), sleep paralysis (temporary inability to talk or move when falling asleep or waking up) and hypnagogic hallucinations (vivid hallucinations that may be terrifying while falling asleep or waking up). One in 2,000 people have narcolepsy worldwide. Project Sleep (https://project-sleep.com/), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about sleep health and sleep disorders, educates and empowers individuals using events, campaigns, and programs to bring people together and talk about sleep as a pillar of health. This past year, Project Sleep initiated World Narcolepsy Day (Sept. 22, 2019), a day dedicated to raising awareness of narcolepsy on a global scale. Established by 24 patient advocacy organizations across six continents, World Narcolepsy Day unites the international narcolepsy community to inspire action, increase public knowledge, and elevate the voices of the 3 million people living with narcolepsy worldwide. This year, I am a committee member for World Narcolepsy Day with Project Sleep, in addition to being a Rising Voices of Narcolepsy trained public speaker. My goal and task with the committee is to advocate to Universities and Colleges around America in an effort to raise awareness for students diagnosed with Narcolepsy, and to help educate students studying the sciences about the complexity and nature of the rare sleep disease. As someone who received a lot of support from my faculty throughout architecture school, which is infamous for being a grueling, and “sleep” unhealthy experience, I want to help make sure that students who aren’t so lucky have someone in their corner. I feel so lucky to have been invited into this committee this year and am so proud of the efforts of all who have been involved. Especially because this year’s World Narcolepsy Day will exist entirely online, everyone has been working so hard to make sure that everyone feels excited, engaged, and encouraged by the events that we have planned. As for me, I will be speaking virtually at several major institutions around the country, specifically to rising medical school students and others studying the sciences. … 10
Issue 4 - September 2020 In 2017, during my second year of architecture school, I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy w/ Cataplexy. Although I had been experiencing symptoms for as long as I can remember, even as a child, they worsened significantly after starting my collegiate academic career. After experiencing my first cataplexy attack, of which I experience full body paralysis caused by intense laughter, I really realized that something was the matter. Because all of my peers were also struggling with sleep and wakefulness, it took this more significant instance to make me realize I needed to get some answers. Thus, I went home to Chicago from school on a weekend and spoke with a sleep specialist who was then able to diagnose me after taking an MSLT, Multiple Sleep Latency Test. For many, diagnosis is not shocking, due to the great disparity in time between symptom onset and diagnosis. It ends up being more of a “what now” moment, where you really begin to examine what this means for you, your family, and your loved ones. For me, I initially struggled trying to understand how I would be able to carry on in school when this duality takes over half of my life – it became clear that my efforts to separate them would be futile, and it would be so much better if I found a way to marry the two. It did not begin in such an “aha” clear moment, but more as a coping mechanism. I would sketch and draw from my dreams in class in order to help me stay awake, and I eventually began to share them on social media. Shortly after, Julie Flygare, CEO and Founder of Project Sleep, became interested in my work and she invited me to draw some graphics for a Giving Tuesday Campaign. From there, my confidence grew in sharing my work, and I ended up putting my dream sketches, now DREAM*S, into my portfolio. The crossover between DREAM*S and my architectural work only grew. This past year, the 5th year of architecture school, I decided to pursue the ultimate intersection of the two through my thesis. … Architectural Alterity: An Uncanny Manifesto of De-Familiarization, Displacement, and Dreams acts as a call to feel again, and to feel powerfully. The vast array of emotions one feels while dreaming - elation, confusion, pleasure, discomfort, sadness, and even ecstasy - ought to be delivered by our conscious, waking environment as well. The uncanny is a representation of a mental state interrupted by a disturbed and distorted projection of the real and the unreal, the space between waking and dreaming. The emergent elision between reality and fiction creates an uneasy sense that ought to have remained concealed. 11
SheThey Thus, the thesis explores how the Architecture out here, the spaces that exist within our consciousness, can be more like the Architecture we see in there, the conditions and experiences built out of our uncanny subconscious. Displacement is defined as the removal of someone or something by someone or something else which takes their place. Through the lens of this research, this means that something familiar, being replaced by a warped version of itself, becomes a displaced thing - an uncanny mirror. Many seek out these displaced entities, that which makes us uncomfortable. It is plausible to suggest that people today are actively interested in and pursue the undesirable. It is imperative that people return to a desire to feel, and to feel powerfully. Experiential integrity and value are lost on those who seek to avoid feeling - those who seek to be comfortably numb. An architecture that destroys this notion is one that places the user on their toes. As proposed, if architecture was plagued by a neurological disease, one situated in the interstitial space between waking and dreaming, its risk management and mitigation would not be in mathematical and financial viability, but rather in containing and designing for these uncanny, hallucinogenic, metaphysical encounters – that which breaks from the familiar and warps it. An architecture sited within the context of the human sleep cycle, through a lens of a sleep disease, Narcolepsy, would act as a simulation for an “other” version of “ordinary” if designing for the uncanny, the uneasy, was standard and necessary in regards to maximizing experience. There is a call for a new kind of architecture - one that is able to accept ‘otherness’ and craft the unwanted, the unimaginable, the marginal. These projects in particular have the ability to foster memory makes them increasingly culturally sustainable and ideal for creating a sense of place. Thus, this thesis explores a simulated architecture that exists within the interstitial space of sleep - a site that is a state of consciousness. The cyclical nature of the site, the sleep cycle, lends itself to this idea of a journey, one that requires places of pause or moments of remembrance. These points of impact are represented as they are in the conscious reality, as rest stops and welcome centers. These nominally standard programs are set up within the first stages to then be broken down and warped in the later stages, the ones approaching a full slip of consciousness. The emergent architecture is one that insights uneasiness in the form of ‘unrest’ stops and also illuminates the uncanny existence that a rare portion of the population has the ability to experience. 12
Issue 4 - September 2020
Attached to this thesis is a critique of everyday life. Through an uncanny lens, the critique of the everyday results in a rethinking and warping the everyday pattern architecturally. Spaces with high user frequency and standard, streamlined use create the perfect storm for interrupting the norm. If this architectural discourse is to move forward, it is essential to explore structures that support these kind of visceral reactions - one’s that many seem to avoid now in an effort to remain ignorant and even blissful in the absence of a more challenging human condition. However, many experience these symptoms silently. Therefore, if there was an architecture to portray this condition publicly, the conversation would be far less taboo or even obscure. The uncanny would remain, but the fetishization of its sensations would adopt a new popularity. A desire brought out of the shadows. A desire that cannot remain so hidden when the rabbit hole become inverted. … I hope to continue my research into neuroaesthetics and the uncanny into my professional career. I think, even as just a process in design, exploring the duality, and giving validity to that which we see in our subconscious, can help make the spaces of our reality more dynamic, and hopefully, equitable – more human. I am so grateful to SheTheyMagazine for featuring my story and allowing me to continue my advocacy for Narcolepsy. Project Sleep and the World Narcolepsy Day Committee are looking forward to this upcoming World Narcolepsy Day on September 22! If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to check out the Project Sleep website to find a calendar of all of the upcoming events for the day.
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Day 5
Digital Art By Loren Marple
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Jenna
Photography By Audrey Rauth
Issue 4 - September 2020
At the end of my garden Walking through the rows of snapshots of different seasons lived traipsing on petals of insecurity, we’ll hold hands, me & who I want to be, her kind eyes look good with my shiny naïveté. We’ll use each other not to stumble, supporting each other through the overgrowth of lies disguised as weeds, and we’ll tiptoe over fear taking care to keep it underfoot. We’ll take a picture and laugh this is what we used to wish for. We would blow on dandelions with crossed fingers dreaming about blooming and blossoming, now our dream has bright green buds and it smells like spring. We walk hand in hand and reminisce on the doubt that threatened our garden, and we’ll smile because our faith needed a little doubt to grow. My garden of lessons learned, imperfect & magnificent and tended to with the gentlest of hands.
what a beautiful thing it is to see being & becoming bloom in the same soil.
At the End of My Garden Photography and Poem By Olivia Anizor 17
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Sarah
Digital Drawing By Audrey Rauth 18
Issue 4 - September 2020
Voting in a Fascist Democracy Digital Collage By Sydnney Margova Islam
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Somewhere Only We Know Pt 1 Acrylic Painting By Viera Margova
Issue 4 - September 2020
stream of consciousness VIII By Loren Marple So it’s one long blank before I get to where I am going it lasts all day and is a foggy whiteness amidst taxi seats and u ea kaes and closed windows so I eat a cookie which always becomes a sleeve and the sugar is sustaining somehow. All I can think of is the arriving and the last thing I do prior is hand an old man his walking stick. He moonlights as strange. And the first thing I see is the yellow the unreal pilly lived-in fluorescence and I feel a softness and I can see a face in the half light and the frustration of the patchy cheeks. And I can’t keep my mouth from curving and it’s warm and enveloping all of a sudden though we both acknowledge I’m the warm one. And I stumble on the realness in the almost dark and collapse on entrance and inhale the spice and my nose stings with the heat and ensuing water and it feels nice to react to a bite So now I’m wide awake we lie and I think there’s still some questioning and lack of sure but it feels real here in this place and only occasionally brackets an amiable silence. It exists in the edges as a necessary and I like the lack – it makes for thought and grows us. There is space for further knowings. I only hope in my deeps that it doesn’t do something else something like the slow erosion of November. I turn over and I’m enveloped.
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Claire on the Shore (above) Moonlight (below) Photography By m.k.s.
Issue 4 - September 2020
The mission of SheThey Magazine is to open more dialogues about the experiences of women and gender non-conforming folks through impactful art and literature. With an intersectional feminist lens, I want to give this community a resource where they have a voice to share what it is like to live in their skin and showcase their creative work. My goal is to cover any and all subjects relevant to these folks, including but not limited to; sex, race, LGBTQ+ rights, body positivity, reproductive justice, ability, racism, colorism, sexual assault, Indigeneity, trans* rights, white supremacy, age, gender uidity, domestic violence, patriarchy, sexuality, menstruation, relationships, toxic masculinity, sex positivity, uplifting favorite artists, writers, musicians, activists, etc. I hope to share perspectives from women and non-binary folks of all races, abilities, ages, religions, nationalities, and sexualities. Any and all forms of art and literature are accepted.
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Thank you to everyone who supported this dream of mine and helped create a community around speaking our truths.
If you are interested in submitting work for the next issue, please contact me by email at syd.mislam13@gmail.com
Until next time.
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SheThey Magazine September 2020
