this face
that cannot
imagine the sweetness
of reciprocity, begs
for release.
Wages for Housework and Other Necessary Labor
The Eclipse (El Eclipse) by Lola Alvarez Bravo.
Where is God?
Kathleen Gilje, “Susanna and the Elders, Restored - X-Ray,” 1998.
Where is God on the testimony floor?
Outside, in marble hallways. In the shoes
slipped on, behind the shouting on the news,
and in the voice of Christine Blasey Ford.
Most Things Die In the Winter Here: 3 Poems
(in dreams)
my teeth fall out.
I am a mouth full
of crowns and empty
houses; my gums, bloody
shores where ancestral trauma still washes up
today.
The International Women's Strike: Feminism for the 99% and an Emancipated Culture
There is something rotten in Hollywood. If anything has been proven by the events and revelations of the past few months, it is that. It is also clear that the rot goes far deeper than Harvey Weinstein. Though he is clearly the worst kind of predatory slime. Or any collection of creepy, entitled individuals with a measure of power. It is a culture in which abuse is not just accepted but often rewarded, or at the very least invites no consequence.
Read moreSunday School / Slapped
Lee Krasner's The Seasons
Madeline loves it
And sits as Mother would.
The priest like her Father
Dressed all in grey,
Palms fluttering with
Paper clowns
Dancing On Phyllis Schlafly's Grave
There is a special place in Hell reserved for Phyllis Schlafly. It is by no means the hottest or most painful sectors reserved for the Hitlers or Pol Pots. But it is a dismal one.
It is likely a gray, colorless room with no doors or windows. Before her are three buttons that provide a break from the endless, blood-curdling screams piped in from outside. Each button will briefly play a short slice of soulless elevator music chosen by the Satan's hand-picked focus group.
Read moreA Whole Revolutionary
The uses and abuses of Rosa Luxemburg as a revolutionary icon are many, and they tend to focus excessively on the tragedy of her death or on her intellectual relationship with Lenin. Old Stalinists display great alabaster busts that disfigure her as a mute, empty eyed martyr to the cause of the mass murderer with whom she shares a bookshelf. Far worse than irrelevant or instrumental, the left has managed to render one of the most magnetic, vivacious and daring of its intellectuals as boring. Consequently the most exciting thing about, Red Rosa, Kate Evans’ graphic biography of the Polish-born German revolutionary is that when she undertook this extremely ambitious project, she scarcely knew anything about her.
Read moreMary Perry Stone: Cold War Social Protest Artist
Slaves (Slave Labor then and now), oil 1993 4'4"x 9'.
If you wanted to understand my mother’s commitment to social change, I would start out with her belief, “We don’t become who we are in a vacuum; we are shaped by those around us and our experiences and time.” Born in 1909, Mary Perry Stone grew up in a family of seven in the small town of Jamestown, Rhode Island; she described her childhood as happy and developed a love of art from an early age.
When she was fifteen years old she worked for a summer for a very wealthy family in Newport, Rhode Island who said if she worked for them at their winter home in New York City, she could take art classes at the Art Students League. While the Art Students League experience made her want to continue to study art in New York City, she found the wealthy family shallow and backbiting; the person she admired most was the family’s kind chaperone and cook who had helped her.
Read moreWanted: My Oppressor
I have always believed that art and magic were the same thing. In magic, you can manifest power by manipulating objects. These objects (such as images, symbols, and signs) could be utilized to induce activity on the forces of nature and create different mystical phenomena.
This is the main reason why the majority of my works are expressionist ink sketches with figurative representation of resistance against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and other backward manifestations. I believe expressionism is a product of resistance against impressionism and academic art; an art movement charged by emotions, spirituality, and mysticism.
Read moreThee Mistakes E.P.
Thee Mistakes was an accident. It did not slip from our tongues fraught with meaning or even mystery; not at first. Much like the systems under which we all live, it was a small idea at first, a placeholder for something better that was yet to come. And like those systems, it stuck. It caught on; we ran with it.
Upon some reflection, though, it came to represent a certain truth. It had felt right because our existence, our collaboration, and the fruits of our discourse highlighted that there were errors, in the system, in our art, our lives, and that we, somehow, had begun to address them.
Read moreMore Than a Riot: An Interview With Michelle Cruz Gonzales
Michelle Cruz Gonzales (then known as Todd) played drums and wrote lyrics in Spitboy, one of the most important hardcore bands of the 1990s. Along with bands such as Grimple, Econochrist, and Paxton Quigley they were part of an explicitly political corner of the East Bay punk scene. With an all woman line-up Spitboy’s performances defied expectations of what “women and rock” and “feminism” were supposed to mean at the time. Gonzales’ new book Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press) defies expectations once again. People of Color have been part of the punk scene from the beginning. Gonzales is part of a lineage that includes Detroit’s Death, The Bags (Los Angeles), Poly Styrene and Pat Smear. Spitboy Rule makes the invisible visible. It is both a walk down counter culture’s memory lane as well as a serious exploration of identity, gender and race.
Read moreWomen Of Dada and Their Times
Fashion Show (1925-1926) by Hannah Hoch
Yes, there were Dada women!
One hundred years of Dada this year. Cabaret Voltaire lasted less than six months from its opening, February 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. Who would have guessed that its obscure beginning would herald a world-rocking negativity that was at the same time an ardent demand for renewal?
The group, idea, movement that it created, Dada, itself didn’t last very long but quickly mutated into surrealism and somehow made its radical presence known worldwide.
Read moreGraphics Of the Women's Revolution
The Chicago Women's Graphics Collective, much like the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and its Rock Band, is one of those neglected facets of the feminist movement in the 1970's. That is beginning to change with the release of films like She's Beautiful When She's Angry, as well as a broader interest being shown by a younger generation of feminists in their roots and history. The Graphics Collective created stunning work, some of which has found itself into the most well known iconographic annals of "the Long Sixties," even if its creators are far too infrequently acknowledged.
The text below is from Estelle Carol, a founding member of the CWGC. Still a feminist and socialist, she is now one half of the political cartoon duo Carol-Simpson, as well as a web designer in suburban Chicago. She also helps maintain the CWLU Herstory Project.
Read moreCamp Camp, Bang Bang
Trenton Doyle Hancock, Cave Scape #3, 2010, ink on paper, 6 ¼ x 10 in., (James Cohan Gallery, New York)
Enter Donita Van Pop. She sits down on a swing set that is located on the left side of the stage. The stage lighting is a mixture of bright pink and purple. She sits on the swing, and the scenery behind her switches from a blank wall to a dreadful park background. It is of trees, bushes, and a few flowers and looks like the picture you drew in kindergarten that your poor parents were obligated to place on the fridge. Such a shame. You really made the kitchen ugly for almost a year.
Donita Van Pop: The world is mad. (Puffs her cigarette) But when you have great tits like me, it’s a little less. (Ms. Pop readjusts her bra strap that peeks out of her black and white polka dot dress. She takes another puff of her cigarette)
Read moreThe Rapist David Bowie
Dirty his name? The dirt was always there,
just carried under nails of struggling girls,
in rucksacks, tossed in cupboards, hidden, curled
in elbows, tucked between their hats and hair.
The dirt was always there, beneath the shine,
between the lines we thought we understood,
in laurel leaves we garland round the good
Flawless
"Flawless" is a dance performance piece about gender and sexuality choreographed for pre-professional dancers ranging in age from 13-17. We asked some of them to describe the piece and its development in their own words.
Choreography by Jenny Espino
Video editing by Aaron Garcia
Subside Not
♫ when i break up with my boyfriend
what i need is my best friends
when i break up with my boyfriend
what i need is my best friends
girls and guys / exes and fly / babes of the future / celebrated witches / queer/androgynous no /
frontiers / love is / in / between
when i break up with my bf
and i’m driving thru the desert alone
Two Poems
I am not sure
Truly, she was nothing more than just a purse
But when lost, there was a problem
How to face the world without her
Especially
Because the streets remember us together
The shops know her more than me
Because she is the one who pays
She knows the smell of my sweat and she loves it
She knows the different buses
And has her own relationship with their drivers
She memorizes the ticket price
And always has the exact change
Once I bought a perfume she didn’t like
She spilled all of it and refused to let me use it
By the way
She also loves my family
And she always carried a picture
Of each one she loves