A time for reflection: “Coming Up on September,” Petra Collins & Creative Residencies
Issue no. 2
An excerpt from Marge Piercy’s “Coming Up on September”:
Now is the time to let the mind
search backwards like the raven
loosed to see what can feed us.
Now, the time to cast the mind forward
to chart an aerial map of the months.
The New Year is a great door
that stands across the evening
and Yom Kippur is the second door.
Between them are song and silence,
stone and clay pot to be filled from within myself.
I will find there both ripeness and rot,
what I have done and undone,
what I must let go with the waning days
and what I must take in.
With the last tomatoes, we harvest the fruit of our lives.
What’s Cool Lately
As long-time fans of Petra Collins and her evocative photographs, we’re glad she’s making waves this week. You can thank Collins for being the first to capture the “Euphoria aesthetic” (as we now know it). Her resurfaced interview with Punkt demonstrates how big studios continue to rip off indie artists and how women creatives are too often at the receiving end of this troubling behavior. But it also celebrates the mesmerizing breadth of her work.
Award shows are always a lil’ chaotic, and this year’s MTV VMAs was no different. From “malfunctioning” sets to the return of NSYNC, catch up on highlights you might’ve missed so you can join in the convos this week.
Moment of Inspiration
Are rebrands starting to look the same? Graphic designer and writer Elizabeth Goodspeed muses on the fragility of original designs within the commercialized branding world. She writes in an article for It’s Nice That:
Commercial art is in a bind; clients’ increasing reliance on venture capital and fast returns has pressured designers to deliver work ever-quicker and more predictably. Coupled with post-Covid economic tensions and an impending recession, originality has become a gamble. Studios can hesitate to push boundaries, especially if they doubt a client's willingness to buy into something more experimental.
Open Calls & Opportunities
🖊️ The Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens present a Writing Residency in Belgium between 24 November and 22 December 2023. This residency allows an artist to further their writing practice. Application deadline: 15 September 2023.
📚 The South Asian American Digital Archive invites applications for the fifth cohort of their Archival Creators Fellowship Program. This year’s fellowship theme is intersections. Fellows will each receive a $5,000 USD stipend, $1,500 USD project budget, and $1,000 USD advisory group budget, along with travel expenses for the in-person convening in Philadelphia. Application deadline: 1 October 2023.
🏛️ The Bruce Museum is excited to accept applications for their inaugural Artist-in-Residency program. Through the support of the Art Bridges Foundation, the Bruce Museum will host one Artist-in-Residence for a period of nine months in Connecticut. Application deadline: 7 October 2023 by 11:59pm EST.
🔬 Located in Switzerland, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne is now welcoming proposals for the 2024–25 edition of the Enter the Hyper-Scientific program. The program promotes artistic research and experimentation that connects art, humanities, science, and technology by supporting up to four artists for three-month residencies at the EPFL. Application deadline: 16 October 2023 by 11:59pm CEST.