New Archives

June 25, 2020  /  note

Reading Lists for the Revolution

I recommend all the essays/articles I post on our reading lists – but one that I have come back to a lot over the past couple of years is the one quoted on the third slide, written by Kemi Adeyemi, who happens to be a scholar based in Seattle, and is also the advisor for New Archives.

  1. Piñata by Dana Heng.

  2. Juneteeth: On Police Violence and Unexplained Loss, Vivian Phillips, South Seattle Emerald

  3. Beyond 90°: The Angularities of Black/Queer/Women/Lean, Kemi Adeyemi

  4. Death by Hanging (film), directed by Nagisa Oshima

  5. Seeing the Country’s Shadows on My White Husband’s Face, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Paris Review

  6. The Plot of Her Undoing, Saidiya Hartman, Notes on Feminism (pdf download)

Stay safe and stay focused. Even if the visible protesting has slowed down, the work is always just beginning. <3

satpreet

A black and white sedan made of painted cardboard has the word ‘COPS’ written across its side. Its windows are cracked and bright red and yellow cardboard flames shoot out of its roof and tail.
1. Dana Heng.
“Generations of Black families have huddled around caskets, swallowing cakes and pies to sweeten the bitterness of violent, unexplained loss. Exchanging low hums and loud agonizing cries, they ask why? Information is usually slow arriving, much like after abolition, when slaves in Texas continued to labor for two years before being notified they were free.”
2. Vivian Phillips.
“This scene in the performance reflects upon the multilingual and multisensorial ways that non-white people can interrogate and refuse the expectations of civil discourse that overdetermine their participation in society writ large. For us, the doing of politics is not staged through (or even possible within) the allegedly civil discourse characteristic of processual, bureaucratic, representational (and reparative) government that has long served Man and his rigid perpendicularity: the woman’s invisible antagonist will never truly perceive her complaint, let alone repair the wrongdoing, no matter what scales of urgency she performs. What emerges is instead a doing of politics that takes as its starting point the acutely leaning performatives of those for whom the very capacity for civility (and rationality and thus citizenry) has always been suspect.”
3. Kemi Adeyemi.
“It’s the nation that does not permit you to live.” / “I don’t accept that. What is a nation? Show me one. I don’t want to be killed by an abstraction.”
4. Nagisa Oshima.
“Black people are hearing from former colleagues and associates they never thought they’d speak to again. Any white progressive worth her salt is posting black squares or the latest instructive memes on privilege. Donations to bail funds are soaring, and yet most Black people I know are suspicious. How could they not be? It’s hard to know what sparked the sudden onset of concern. If it’s guilt, it won’t lead to sustained impact, just as it wouldn’t in my own relationship. In a few weeks, the concern will start to dwindle as will the support, and unfortunately, without the commitment of allies, the movement will falter. It is white people’s problem after all, racism. They’re the inventors of it, and they’re the carriers and the wielders. Its demise rests in their hands.”
5. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.
“The undoing of the plot begins because she won’t do shit. She won’t be no bird in a cage, no black woman at the lectern, no model Negro, no cog in the machine.”
6. Saidiya Hartman.
New Archives: February-December 2020
February 13

mission

Satpreet Kahlon
March 2

note from the editor

Satpreet Kahlon
March 3

I have it; you can borrow it

Satpreet Kahlon
March 5

travelish

mario lemafa
March 8

YES IS A FEELING

Matthew Offenbacher
March 10

I have it; you can borrow it

Satpreet Kahlon
March 12

travelish, part 2

mario lemafa
March 14

what is exciting right now?

Satpreet Kahlon
March 15

950 Gallery

Matthew Offenbacher
April 30

an unplanned hiatus

Satpreet Kahlon
May 4

Art at Home

Satpreet Kahlon
May 7

The Girl and the 101st View of Mt. Fuji

Matthew Offenbacher
May 11

A dark storm is passing

Tom Eykemans
May 14

Missing Rhoda

Asia Tail
May 18

Ask a Conjure Women

Satpreet Kahlon
May 21

Garden of Delight

Beleszove Wildish Josivu Foldlanya
May 27

Humiliation kitchen towel

Aurora San Miguel
May 29

Seamstress

Christina Montilla
May 31

Reading Lists for the Revolution

Satpreet Kahlon
June 2

Reading Lists for the Revolution

Satpreet Kahlon
June 18

Reading Lists for the Revolution

Satpreet Kahlon
June 25

Reading Lists for the Revolution

Satpreet Kahlon
July 22

note from the editor

Satpreet Kahlon
July 23

I Don’t Like Art

Ashley Stull Meyers
August 19

Artist-to-Artist Conversations are back!

Satpreet Kahlon
August 25

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
September 1

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
September 8

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
September 11

Reading Lists for the Revolution

Satpreet Kahlon
September 15

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
November 10

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
November 12

Trying to Photograph Perfume

Amelia Rina
November 17

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
November 19

Art isn’t money, real estate or objects

Matthew Offenbacher
November 24

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
December 1

Artist-to-Artist Conversation

Satpreet Kahlon
December 4

Algorithm: Archetype

Kym Littlefield
December 15

note from the editor

Satpreet Kahlon