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Series:

Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow
Series: The Local Is Not Defined by ProximityGuest Editor
Jordan Rosenow

During my time with the multidisciplinary publishing platform of Mn Artists, my focus was to find voices that would bring a fresh lens to a current art event. I chose to engage writers and artists who are willing to take creative risks and bring honesty and generosity to their ideas about the wide range of arts being created and presented in Minnesota. As I considered the role of Mn Artists in the local community, I tried to define the local—and quickly realized that the boundary of the local cannot simply be defined by proximity. In today’s connected world, the local subjects relevant to Minnesota artists are national and global topics.

 

It is vital that the artwork being created now is written about and engaged with critically. I often fall back on the words of the influential performer and musician, Nina Simone, as she was asked about the responsibility of an artist:

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.”

These passionate words ring true today, just as they did during the Civil Rights movement of the late ’60s and ’70s. What is happening right now? Who is shaping our structures? Which voices need to be amplified? What needs further reflection, so that we can influence change towards a better, more equal community?

 

The essays published during my guest editorial position speak to what was happening in the art community from October of 2017 through January of 2018: uncovering a future when trauma has seemingly collapsed the past and present, calling for a reworking of spaces and the practice of gendering of tools, searching for expansive tenderness and more attention toward an interior blackness existing outside the paradigm of the public and political, and using poetry to engage the slippage between language and what is seen or felt.

Iyapo2
1Iyapo Repository
Literature Moving Image Visual Art
10-26-2017

Trauma is a Time Machine: Art and Healing in Troubled Times

Christina Schmid
1Photo by Emmet Kowler, courtesy of Walker Art Center. Meme by Chris Cloud.
Design Literature Moving Image Performing Arts Visual Art
11-3-2017

A Memeorial: To Lay a Hate Symbol to Rest

Jordan Thomas
1From Topographies of Loss and Longing by Keren Kroul. Image courtesy of the artist.
Visual Art
11-8-2017

A Braided History in a Time of Resistance

Sheila Regan
1Artwork by Bobby Rogers, image courtesy of Public Functionary.
Visual Art
12-1-2017

A Deep-Rooted Sweetness: Bobby Rogers’ The Blacker the Berry

Amina Harper
1The Inhabitation Project, photo courtesy of Tia-Simone Gardner.
Design Performing Arts Visual Art
12-7-2017

This Thing This Home: Stevie Ada Klaark In Conversation with Tia-Simone Gardner

Stevie Ada Klaark
1Artwork by Jennifer Nevitt. Image courtesy of Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Literature Visual Art
1-2-2018

keeps watch

Miriam Karraker
1Selma Fernandez Richter, Kristina and great grandmother Dhan Piakurel, Saint Paul, MN, 2011.
Visual Art
1-8-2018

Being In Place: Selma Fernandez Richter’s “The Ache for Home”

Regan Golden
1Photo credit: Studio Zu.
Design Literature Performing Arts Visual Art
1-17-2018

Feminizing the Axe

Jess Hirsch
IMG_5711 2
1
Design Literature Moving Image Performing Arts Visual Art
1-19-2018

A body / a sign : On Black subjectivity / interiority / finding tenderness: beyond political meaningfulness

Mara Duvra
1Still from The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets, Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys (2017).
Literature Moving Image Performing Arts Visual Art
1-26-2018

Anti-Ethnography: The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets

Megan Jeanne Gette
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