PROTODISPATCH
A monthly digital publication of artists’ dispatches on the life conditions that necessitate their work.
UNTIL WE BECAME FIRE AND FIRE US
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Abbas and Abou-Rahme combine video, music, and poems on the regenerative cycles of destruction and regrowth, by both nature and human hands.
EDUCATIONAL CHARTS, MYTHS, AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Chitra Ganesh
Artist Chitra Ganesh maps how the visual language of childhood is produced by powerful ideologies, unpacking a nearly ubiquitous Indian food chart as evidence of the Indian government’s attempts to systematically erase a multivalent, secular, and diverse India
LOOPHOLE OF RETREAT: CONVENING OTHERWISE
Simone Leigh and Rashida Bumbray
Simone Leigh and Rashida Bumbray discuss an intertwined practice of building cultural infrastructures with care, friendship, and generosity, with Laura Raicovich
GUNS AND VIRIONS: MEL CHIN’S I SEE…. THE INSURGENT MECHANICS OF INFECTION
Mel Chin
Thirty years after Mel Chin pointed a rifle at the heads of an audience assembled for a public talk, the artist re-examines this eerily prescient work in our current moment of resurgent fascisms, rampant viral scares—both medical and digital—and the need to reimagine everything.
WE HAVE COLONIZED POTENTIALITY
Jordan Deal
The artist Jordan Deal reflects on the sanctuary and peril of public gathering.
AIDING AND ABETTING IRAN’S WOMEN’S REVOLUTION
Homa and Saba*
How a group of transnational artists are using archiving and accelerated storytelling as radical acts of resistance.
A BLACK AQUATIC
Kenya (Robinson)
Through a hyperlinked lyric essay, and a month-long social media takeover, Kenya (Robinson) explores the relationship between Black people and water—both fresh and saltwater—as an essential part of the storytelling of US histories.
WHAT WE HOLD IN COMMON
Ximena Garrido-Lecca & Ishmael Randall-Weeks
Ximena Garrido-Lecca & Ishmael Randall-Weeks describe a process of building a structure communally out of materials brought by participants, revealing the strength of collective memory and its capacity to unveil corruption and lies in the context of Peru’s recent and deep pasts.
RELEARNING THE ANCIENT: PATHS TO INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS IN BORIQUÉN
Jorge González and Angela Brown
An email exchange accompanied by a diary of images and texts, reflects on and practices the relearning of traditional crafts in Boriquén (Puerto Rico) as a recuperative strategy for colonial erasure of land rights, a subject increasingly raw and urgent as climate crisis deepens.
WHEN HATE BECOMES AN INSTRUMENT: ANTI-LGBT+ RALLY IN ISTANBUL
Alper Turan with B. Toprak Karakaya, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu, and Koli Art Space (Yasemin Kalaycı & Elçin Acun)
The illusory victimhood of ultranationalists draws passionate responses from queer culture workers from Turkey who are committed to undoing their hate.
DOCUMENTARY UNDER THE GAZE OF THE STATE
Tiffany Sia with Emilie Sin Yi Choi and Chan Tze-Woon
Three Hongkongers got together in July 2022 to talk about the relationships between documentary filmmaking, protest, who gets to record history, and the challenges of working and screening films under the gaze of the state.