ROUND-UP May 19-June 25, 2020

Hello dear readers! I write to you from Los Angeles, California, where I am spending my summer remotely interning and hanging out with my family (and staying healthy!). Here are the most recent pieces of writing I've had published since my last round-up post (including in a new publication)!

• "Nightwish Go in a Folk Direction on Their Double LP 'Human. :||: Nature.'." PopMatters, May 19, 2020.

"When your favorite band releases a new album, you want to love it. You want to be dazzled, to be moved, to feel goosebumps flicker across your skin ideally once per song (conservative estimate). You want to feel inspired to wrap yourself in all the new sounds and words, to draw constellations between these newest creations and to the songs that came before them, challenging yourself to envision how this new collection fits into a larger oeuvre. You certainly don't want to sit over it for a month, unable to conjure up much of a reaction to most of the new material. And you certainly don't want to wonder: Is that it? Was this really worth a five-year wait?"

• "A Look Into The Future: Four Pivotal Queer Artists Discuss Their Most Powerful Work." them., June 25, 2020.

"Whether you’re spending your Pride in quarantine or protesting on the streets, your life has likely been touched by the power of the image these past few months. Perhaps it’s the television you’ve watched to stave off boredom, or through the haunting videos of police brutality that have inspired millions to don their masks and demand justice and change. Perhaps you were one of those millions, or perhaps you were the person behind the camera, documenting it all. 

"As Toni Cade Bambara famously declared, “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Art, and its ability to harness and complicate power, has played a key role in a variety of activist movements, including ACT-UP’s 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” AIDS awareness campaign and the performance art interventions of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests. Art, especially in the public sphere, confers value, legitimacy, and recognition to its subjects, and art is present in this moment of change, both arising from the grassroots and being commissioned by those in power. For We Are Everywhere, them.’s 2020 Pride issue, we invited artists Julie Mehretu, Lola Flash, Carlos Motta, and Vaginal Davis to discuss integral works of art from their careers. Below, we consider how they evoke a queerness that is about resistance, resiliency, and the creative will to envision a different future."