003—End of Summer Musings
Dear reader,
We don’t know about you, but for us, this summer has held both quickness and slowness. While we have embraced the season’s naturally slower pace, we have also been in the final stages of preparing our fourth issue for print. Perhaps we have been finding ways to move forward with focus and intention but without the pressures of speed. Where and how does productivity intersect with repose, relaxation, and reflection? What if we thought of this place as a garden with its own rules, its own concept of time? What could we grow there together?
In the spirit of curiosity, this newsletter contains musings from Kameelah Janan Rasheed on the research “rabbit holes” we find ourselves in and the different ways of illustrating that journey, we hear what is grounding Reparations Club founder Jazzi McGilbert in a short Q&A, and end, as always, with a question to hold as we move forward together.
From our Reference Room:
“The process of doing research is generative. When someone gives you the answer, there are no rabbit holes, and no accidental findings. What’s fascinating to me about research is that you may have one clear question, but in the process of trying to get an answer or resolution, you stumble upon these other things… and they all soon become more interesting.”
In “Kameelah Janan Rasheed on research and archiving,” published by The Creative Independent, the writer, artist, and educator discusses her personal research and archiving practice, the history of archives as wielded by institutions and in relation to imperialism and colonialism, and the importance of primitive hypertext. Read the full conversation on our are.na channel.
Stockist Highlight:
We’re honored to have Reparations Club—a concept bookshop + creative space Curated by Blackness® and located in Los Angeles—among our stockists. Founder Jazzi McGilbert kindly answered a few questions for us here.
What’s something you read recently that you can’t stop thinking about?
“Strangers meeting on the streets...enabled people of unequal rank to conduct a civilized conversation and to cooperate in public projects without feeling called upon to expose their innermost secrets.”
Since a Rep Club event a while back with my favorite podcast host, Recho Omondi of The Cutting Room Floor, I’ve been working my way through Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. He remarks on Richard Sennett's critique of the privatization and fall of “the public man.” In short, it has me thinking about L.A.’s car culture, de facto segregation, social media’s algorithm feedback loop, and performed intimacy on and offline. We’ve lost a certain public space to force interaction with people who may or may not look, think, or even relate to us on an individual level. I don’t have a conclusion here but it is something I think about often and in relation to design especially.
What is currently grounding you?
It might be a cliché answer for a bookseller, but it’s the truth: reading! Ironically, owning a bookstore means I have less time and capacity to read. So I might be feeling a little untethered day-to-day, but I come back to myself with those moments of forced meditation.
Finish the sentence: Reading is a forest in which…
…every leaf has turned to pages coated in letters forming words into portals.
A question to close:
“What time is it on the clock of the world?” —Grace Lee Boggs
This question is inspired by a conversation on remembering between Prentis Hemphill and Alexis Pauline Gumbs from the Finding Our Way podcast.
Thank you for dreaming alongside us.
Sincerely,
The Deem Team