Critical Conversations is a nexus space between artists and those who reflect upon and present their work. Our critical writing initiative specifically engages Oregon’s arts writers and cultural producers around currents in society, our region, and the field of art. Commissioned writing comes from a range of perspectives and creative practices, and vary in form from speculative essays, art reviews, and interviews, to photo essays, annotated bibliographies, ekphrastic poems, and editioned multiples. All of this work can be found on the Oregon Visual Arts Ecology Project and some appear in print in our annual thematic publications. 

I am Alive, You are Alive, They are Alive, We are Living

This Critical Conversations edition gets its title from an eight-foot-tall beaded textile work by Jeffrey Gibson. ALIVE! is heavy with the weight of glass beads and rows of tin jingles, its color and pattern in the lineage of Gibson’s Choctaw and Cherokee nations. The sculpture’s weight takes flight with a proclamation of space, conjures Jingle Dances, and celebrates: I AM ALIVE, YOU ARE ALIVE, THEY ARE ALIVE, WE ARE LIVING!

Gibson is an exceptional celebrator of contemporary Indigeneity, a MacArthur Fellow who brought Fancy Dancers to the American Pavillion at the Venice Biennial this year, breaking expectations and making fucking history.

There is a generational aspiration to join Gibson in chorus. We heard it over and over, from varied practices and positions throughout the state, as the work of this collection’s writers crossed our inboxes. We put their stories forward hoping they make room for more. From those who have struggled to find authentic teachers, about those who have taught, and the conversations that consider art and community every day to inch our world toward a slightly better condition.

Featured Contributors: Amber Kay Ball, June L. Park, Morgan Ritter, Dr. Jordan Amirkhani, Anthony Hudson, Molly Alloy, Jeffrey Gibson, Mukhtara Yusuf, Simone Ciglia, Garrick Imatani, Jess Perlitz, Stephanie Snyder, Sean J Patrick Carney, Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk, Kristan Kennedy, Dan Devening, Christopher Michlig, Hannah Krafcik, Ella Ray, Amelia Rina, Nina Amstutz, Roz Crews, Ralph Pugay, Matthew Boulay, Tammy Jo Wilson.

noon

Noon may be the least romanticized phase of a day. Not a beginning or an end, but a quiet tipping point. The lighting does not swoon as dawn and dusk, the energy does not pulse. But one can move without the deep shadows of other times — a body alone without the complications of its drawn shell.

This time for our world may be noon. Soft noon, lower case, not to slide into the hard High Noon of Western pastiche. We find ourselves just past history-making periods for racial justice, social networks, and women’s rights. After such upheaval, these spaces are changed but not by any means resolved. Restitution has hardly begun. Sickness lingers. Losses of ground around every corner. Wars draw on with faltering attention. There is a sense still of the day ahead, but not many markers for what it will bring. Aren’t we close enough to dusk for urgency?

Featured Contributors: Grace Kook-Anderson, Sara Diver, Bean Gilsdorf, Ben Read, Ashley Stull Meyers, Steph Littlebird, Melanie Stevens, May Maylisa Cat, Yaelle S. Amir, Tiffany Harker, Roya Amirsoleymani, Ella Ray, Natasha Ginwala

Conditions

The title and concept for CONDITIONS came into focus as the editorial team launched its first issue, FIGURING. Here, we shift from FIGURING’s multiple perspectives on the body and the psyche to examine the cultural and biological mysteries and actualities of life at this tenuous environmental and socio-political moment. As our need for breath and sustenance are foregrounded across an accounting of our shared lives, we hope that CONDITIONS offers a space to meditate on the ways in which works of art (including writing) support us in making meaning from our state of, and provisions for, being. 

Featured Contributors: Amelia Rina, Laura Butler Hughes, Luiza Lukova, Sara Krajewski, Malia Jensen, Lumi Tan, Steph Littlebird, Ido Radon, Alejandro Espinoza Galindo, Stephanie Gervais, Stephanie Snyder, K. Silem Mohammad, Prudence Roberts, Sara Jaffe

Figuring