Randy Issue #3

First launched in 2012, and published by mfc michèle didier (micheledidier.com), == is a small-run arts publication, edited by Matt Keegan. ==#2, 2015, is designed by Su Barber and published in an edition of 500 by Capricious Publishing. Barber and Keegan worked together on North Drive Press (northdrivepress.com) between 2005-2010, and this publication shares a variety of traits with NDP.

==#2 is a non-thematic arts publication contained in a box with a 96-page bound volume featuring artist-to-artist interviews, texts, and transcriptions. Six loose multiples are also included.

Contributors include: Sam Anderson, Uri Aran, Fia Backström, Darren Bader, Judith Barry, Stefania Bortolami, Daniel Bozhkov, Milano Chow, Anna Craycroft, Lucky DeBellevue, Cristina Delgado, Haytham El-Wardany, Jake Ewert, Vincent Fecteau, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Harrell Fletcher, Rachel Foullon, Aurélien Froment, Kenny Greenberg, Calla Henkel, Leslie Hewitt, Jaya Howey, Adelita Husni-Bey, Iman Issa, Ruba Katrib, Jill Magid, Jo Nigoghossian, Aaron Peck, Max Pitegoff, David Placek, Olivia Plender, Lisa Robertson, Andrew Russeth, Amy Sillman, Diane Simpson, Greg Parma Smith, Jessica Stockholder, Martine Syms, and Anicka Yi.

Se Te Subió El Santo is a collection of self – portraits taken by the artist directly after she awoke every morning while away on a week-long residency in Iowa City, IA at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies in Spring 2016. This daily practice confronts notions of the artist’s interests in rendering a full self implicit of gender, race, sexuality, and spirituality while challenging and collapsing the intersections of each identity as well.

The title of the work is taken from Ana Mendieta, the Iowa Years: A critical study, 1969 through 1977 where Julia Ann Herzberg writes in the dissertation:

Ana and Raquelin Mendieta’s vocabulary contained many Afro-Cuban idiomatic expressions. For example, they would often respond to a friend who was acting in an unruly or hyperactive manner by asking” “Se te subió el santo? (“Are you in a trance?”) In the Afro-Cuban context, the expression “subirse el santo” is used in religious ceremony when the orisha/saint takes possession of the believer.

The monograph also includes an essay by author Akwaeke Emezi.

First edition, 94 page, black and white, leather bound hardcover with white foil embossment 

TIONA NEKKIA MCCLODDEN is an interdisciplinary research-based conceptual artist, filmmaker and curator whose work explores, and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and social commentary. McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach traverses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations. Themes explored in McClodden’s films and works have been re-memory and more recently narrative biomythography.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ first monograph, Untitled. Spanning three bodies of work, this 200-plus page monograph includes poems by Ser Alida and Aurora Masum-Javed, a conversation between Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard, and essay by Bill Gaskins. Designed by Studio Lin.

As recipient of the second annual Capricious Photo Award, Sasha is a vital, emerging voice in contemporary photography, engaging the charged line between documentary and fine art. Her work ranges from affecting studies on diaspora, family and place to revolving social phenomenons in which energy, beauty and power meet.

The second annual jury panel was helmed by Capricious Founder and Publisher Sophie Mörner and Associate Publisher Anika Sabin alongside Lauren Cornell, Katherine Hubbard, JOFF, Matt Keegan, Guadalupe Rosales, Ka-Man Tse, and Lyndsy Welgos.

This latest issue of Worms invites readers into a bold and tender exploration of love in all its messy, political, and transformative guises.

Set against the backdrop of state-sanctioned transphobia in the UK and US, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and a litany of global injustices that see us staggering under the weight of collective and personal upheaval, this issue reckons with thinking and writing about love in a time of crisis. How do we take seriously the seemingly frivolous demands of love, devotion, beauty—in all their myriad and sometimes painful forms—when basic needs and rights are stripped away.

Featuring voices from at home and overseas including Shon Faye, Torrey Peters, Melissa Febos, Constance DeJong, Sarah Aziza, Precious Okoyomon, Carmen Maria Machado and Constance Debré, as well as contributions from rising stars in experimental literature, we ask: How can we continue to love someone who refuses to change? Is writing about sex still strange – or have we done and seen it all? What do you do if you fall in love with your sperm donor?

From the resilience and fierce creativity of trans writers, the challenges and ethics of telling love stories that are not our own, to the guts and gristle of motherhood, pet love, age-gap relationships and getting off on poetry, Worms 10 is a testament to the power of writing, and of love, as acts of resistance, reclamation and truth.

FEATURING: Shon Faye, Jackie Ess, Precious Okoyomon, Constance Debré, Melissa Febos, Torrey Peters, Carmen Maria Machado, Sarah Aziza, Constance DeJong, Sophie K Rosa

CONTRIBUTORS: Caitlin Hall, Zara Joan Miller, Devki Panchmatia, Lu Rose Cunningham, Gabrielle Sicam, Aimée Ballinger, Mimi Howard, Enya Ettershank, Sufjan Bile, MK McGrath, Amie Corry, Dizzy Zaba, 2ly (Molly Cranston, Safiye Gray, Hanako Emden, Sophie Florian, Johanna Maierski), Jemima Skala, Fariha Róisín, Summer Moraes

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Minu, Dozie Kanu, Jen Dessinger, Karla Monroe, Sophie Williams, Ellen Stewar

ILLUSTRATORS: Rifke Sadleir, Chloe Sheppard, Charlotte Pelissier, Leomi Sadler

EDITORS: Caitlin McLoughlin, P. Eldridge, Clem MacLeod, Arcadia Molinas

DESIGN: Caitlin McLoughlin

LA Warman transforme les rayons d’un supermarché bio en boîte à fantasmes.  Des clientes frustrées aux collègues en chaleur, de la boucherie au bar à fruit, de l’orgie à la pause dej’ au booty call dans la chambre froide, chaque recoin du supermarché est propice aux expériences sexuelles de la protagoniste.

Extrait : 
« B fait une liste de choses à lécher : 
— Du 100% coton, des contenants en plastique fraîchement sortis du lave-vaisselle, tout type de marbre, de la papaye (évidemment, 
donner une pichenette aux pépins 
avec la langue), des sacs en 
plastique remplis de raisin, 
n’importe quelle feuille 
d’arbre. 
— Qu’est-ce que tu lèches 
d’autre B ? 
— Les pommes, les huîtres, 
les prunes, certains 
métaux, le pudding, le 
lait, les confettis, les vieux 
bouts de papier (...) »

For the Interjection Calendar each month Montez Press invites an artist, a writer, a poet or a doer of some sorts to say things. All 12 pieces have introspection and reflection in common. They are a subjective overview of writing in the expanded field of contemporary art and writing in the year 2019. This is the Interjection Calendar 2019, the fifth collection in this series. 

With contributions by sabrina soyer, Lisa Robertson, Hatty Nestor, Adrianna Whittingham, Sondria, Claudia Pagès, Laetitia Paviani, Bella Milroy, Georgina Tyson, Son Kit, Alix Jean Vollum, Rene Matic and bleubaglife. 

Find the last 12 PDF's on montezpress.com.

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives.

Jack Halberstam proposes “low theory” as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from eccentric archives. It runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It entails a willingness to fail and to lose one’s way, to pursue difficult questions about complicity, and to find counterintuitive forms of resistance.

Tacking back and forth between high theory and low theory, high culture and low culture, Halberstam looks for the unexpected and subversive in popular culture, avant-garde performance, and queer art. Halberstam pays particular attention to animated children’s films, revealing narratives filled with unexpected encounters between the childish, the transformative, and the queer. Failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido.

A collection of photographs from the archives of the icon of underground and alternative Parisian nights Dora Diamant.

A self-taught photographer, Dora Diamant has left thousands of photos. The Dora Diamant Association, custodian of this archive, and Éditions L'Amazone have joined forces to bring them to life by devoting a series of publications to them. Each volume of the Dora Diamant Archive was created by a different person and is the result of a subjective selection and arrangement specific to its author.

Figurehead of the Parisian underground and queer nights, photographer, DJ, multimedia and polymorphic artist, Dora Diamant was the daughter of Pascal Doury.

Selected by Yamil Farah and Mélanie Matranga.