004—Endings, Beginnings, & Finishing Issue Four
Dear reader,
Days after the fall equinox, some of our team—who are currently spread across three coasts and two continents—met in Los Angeles to finish the last phase of production for Issue Four. While we can’t disclose much more than that (yet), we will say that making a publication is ritualistic. It is a process seeking to rupture and balance, and one we co-create with friends and collaborators, and with you. Since we last wrote, our co-founders spoke with Scaffold Podcast about what inspired them to create Deem and how our print pages can reflect an ongoing practice of deep listening.
Our newsletter was created with a similar intention. This month, we had the pleasure of speaking with Issue Three collaborator and artist Althea James about incorporating equity into her vision for the illustrations that accompanied a conversation between Robin D.G. Kelley, Elleza Kelley, and editor Isabel Flower. We also heard from one of our lovely stockists, magCulture shop manager and writer Danielle Mustarde, about the last thing she read and what’s grounding her these days. As always, we end with a question—this time inspired by mushrooms.
From our Reference Room:
“The Critical Coding Cookbook perceives history as a messy entanglement rather than a linear graph. There is a growing awareness towards reclaiming ancestral knowledge and a movement to decolonize computation. Through centering marginalized bodies and identities, we aim to build a collection of alternative histories, narratives, and approaches to computation. This volume of material can serve as an open-source educational resource across a spectrum of learning communities.”
Learn more about this in-progress, collaborative, and free database here. And follow us on are.na for more resources that inspire the work we do.
Q&A with Althea James, the artist behind the illustrations that accompanied “Imagining the Immeasurable: Robin D.G. Kelley & Elleza Kelley in conversation,” in Issue Three, “Envisioning Equity”:
We invited you to illustrate a conversation about equity between seminal author and historian Robin D.G. Kelley, his daughter Elleza Kelley, and our editor Isabel Flower. What themes did you take away from the text that fed the vision for your drawings?
The overarching question that I wanted all of the illustrations to touch on was, how can humans collectively address the insurmountable damages caused by settler colonialism and capitalism? I wanted to highlight that even though this conversation is addressing complex and dark topics, there was still a light hearted and somewhat optimistic tone in the way that the three participants were talking about the future. I wanted to focus on the idea of rearrangement and rassemblement that Elleza brought up. I was struck by the idea of how utopia cannot really exist. In order to live outside of the state we have to use what the state has already built and left us with, and in order to do that people need to be honest about who they are and what they have to contribute to this more equitable future.
Tell us a bit about your process in creating them?
I read through the whole text a few times pulling out different ideas with each read. I like to create a sort of framework of the general idea so that once I start drawing I have a bit more freedom to play on top of that foundation. After creating a rough sketch for each drawing, I start to fill things in with pen and ink. The whole process took about 5 months I would say.
The complex worlds you invent in your compositions often feature cherubs and other celestial beings. What draws you to this iconography?
The cherubs really started showing up in my work around 2017. Originally a cherub or a cherubim was a divine being who lived in the heavenly realm of the gods, either as a servant or as a mediator between humans and the divine. Different ancient empires had different ways of representing the cherubs. They went from ferocious war-like creatures with multiple heads and limbs to little asexual babies. Time is something I think about a lot in my worlds—the ability to change the exterior in order to preserve the core seems like a small act of rebellion that I want to honor in my work.
Who are some illustrators, historical or present-day, whose work you especially admire?
Some illustrators who I always come back to, who inspire me not only because they are incredibly talented but because of their connection to their work, are Hayao Miyazaki, Margaret Killgallen, Henry Darger, Wangetchi Mutu, Frida Kahlo, Osamu Tezuka, Albrecht Dürer, William Blake, Marjane Satrapi, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, and Louise Bourgeois. There are many more but those are the first people who came to mind in this moment.
Stockist Highlight:
This month, we are highlighting our friends over at magCulture, an online resource, events producer, editorial consultancy, and magazine shop located in Clerkenwell, London. Shop manager and writer Danielle Mustarde was kind enough to answer a few of our questions.
What’s something you read recently that you can’t stop thinking about?
“Navigating the Mysteries,” an article in the current issue of Emergence Magazine—one of a semi-permanent stack of magazines I’ve had on my coffee table throughout the summer months. Emergence explores ecology, culture, and spirituality. In this particular essay, mythologist Martin Shaw asks, “What if we reframed ‘living with uncertainty’—the theme of the issue—to ‘navigating mystery’?” He explores the phrase in depth, concluding with four ways to light “a lantern to your own den of nighttime thoughts and wayward illuminations.” One passage that stuck with me is the following:
“Orientate to what feels like truth. Endless fictions fatigue us. Be your naturalness, then commit to the lively disciplines such naturalness is calling forth in you. … Stay honest to the shape you came here to embody.”
What is currently grounding you?
The morning sky, especially as autumn draws nearer. I’m usually woken up by my still-young cat Romy and, following her upstairs before anyone else is awake, I’m often greeted by the bright, early morning sky through our top floor window. Similarly, when I’m cycling to magCulture for work, under the open sky, the criss-cross of vapour trails (it is London, after all) meets the golden light of the rising sun. Those moments—light, really—ground me.
Finish the sentence: Reading is a forest in which…
…I can quiet my mind and willingly lose myself for a while.
A question to close:
“What do you do when your world starts to fall apart?”
—Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World
Tsing goes on to answer this question, “I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back into my senses, not just—like flowers—through their riotous colors and smells but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there. Then I know that there are still pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy.”
May the things you love and wonder about pull you back to your senses.
Sincerely,
The Deem Team