Each month(ish), the Variable West team shares what’s on our reading and watching list.
February 28, 2025: Amelia Rina
- Developing a Movement: How the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement Used Printed Matter to Protest Apartheid by Jovonna Jones in Boston Art Review
- Mazola Wa Mwashighadi: A Practice In Placemaking by Tedecia Bromfield in Burnaway
- The Cartography of Identity: Angeles Salinas’ “Navigating the Labyrinth” by Christopher Karr in Glasstire
- PST ART: Art & War Collide in Cai Guo-Qiang’s WE ARE by Chelsea Shi-Chao Liu in Contemporary Art Review LA
February 17, 2025: Ella Ray
- The 24-Hour Working Girl by Ayanna Dozier in Ultra Dogme
- Kendrick Lamar’s meta performance at the Super Bowl by Doreen St. Felix in The New Yorker
- KeiyaA Can Do Anything, Including Experimental Theater by Dylan Green in HEARING THINGS
January 1, 2025: Amelia Rina
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- bell hooks and Wayward Immobility by Meredith LeeJune in ILLWILL on June 14th, 2022
- In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain by Anil Ananthaswamy in Quanta Magazine on November 22, 2024
November 1, 2024: Amelia Rina
- The Believer in general, almost cover to cover, and definitely the copy editing challenge at the back
- What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
- To get off fossil fuels, America is going to need a lot more electricians, by Emily Pontecorvo in Grist
October 21, 2024: Ella Ray
- Miss Modular w/ Sudan Tapes Archive on NTS Radio
- Moving Towards Life by Marina Magloire in LA Review of Books
- Garrett Bradley in conversation with Zora Simpson Casebere in November Mag
September 9, 2024: Ella Ray
- Survival Is a Promise by Alexis Pauline Gumbs review—a cosmic perspective on Audre Lorde by Lola Olufemi in The Guardian
- Visual artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary on creating without fear by Pola Pucheta in The Creative Independent
- Peter Hujar’s Still Life in Motion by Miciah Hussey in Momus
July 15, 2024: Ella Ray
- Greg Tate on Julie Dash by Gregory Tate, original published in BlackStar Film Festival Program Guide in 2016
- Tender Mercies: Exploring Agency and Intimacy in the Personal Archives of Black Women Writers, Black Women Radicals Youtube
- Internet Archive’s searchable index of MTV’s website
May 27, 2024: Ella Ray
- Fashion Institute of Technology Students on Campus Occupation for Palestine Protests by Lex McMenamin in Teen Vogue
- In the Studio: Arthur Jafa. A visit to the artist’s Los Angeles studio, interview by Judnick Mayard on 52 Walker website
April 19, 2024: Amelia Rina
- We are hurtling toward a glitchy, spammy, scammy, AI-powered internet by Melissa Heikkilä in MIT Technology Review
- Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media by Nathan E. Sanders & Bruce Schneier in MIT Technology Review
- Amelia’s note: I’m especially terrified by the implications of AI-powered personal assistants. YIKES.
April 8, 2024: Ella Ray
- The Principle of Return: The repressed ruptures of Zionist time by Adam Hayahia in Parapraxis Magazine
- Arthur Jafa shifts into another realm by Harmony Holiday in Los Angeles Times
- Remembering is Resistance: Archival Practices to Disrupt Memoricide by Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah in GIDA Journal
February 8, 2023: Ella Ray
- Radical Dreams, Underground Sounds: 13 Films Presented by Dweller, on Criterion Channel
- Nikki Giovanni’s Extraterrestrial Adventures by Hanna Phifer in Oxford America
- “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide” by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi in Protean Magazine
- Kwame Ture on Mobilization & Oragnization
- Palestine Film Index
- June Jordan speaking at Poets and Politicians Against the War in 1991
Image: Excerpt from June Jordan’s Intifada
December 14, 2023: Ella Ray
- “The Silence Is the Loudest Part of Renaissance: A Film” by Angelica Jade Bastién in Vulture
- “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide” by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi in Protean Magazine
Image via AMC Theaters
December 7, 2023: Amelia Rina
- “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar
- “This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI” by Melissa Heikkilä on MIT Technology Review
- “The race to optimize grief” by Mihika Agarwal on Vox
Image: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | REIJKSMUSEUM, ENVATO
November 17, 2023: Amelia Rina
- Gut Feminism by Elizabeth A. Wilson
- “The Sphere and our ‘Immersion’ Complex” by Jackson Arn in The New Yorker
- “Joy Buolamwini: ‘We’re giving AI companies a free pass’” by Melissa Heikkilä in MIT Technology Review
November 9, 2023: Ella Ray
- The Shadow of the West (1983), a film by Edward Said, dir. Geoff Dunlop
- “Memetic Survelliance of Black Women” by Ashley Odilia Armand in The Media Manipulation Casebook
- Dereliction by Gabrielle Octavia Rucker
October 26, 2023: Amelia Rina
- “How to fix the Internet” by Katie Notopoulos in MIT Tech Review
- “How to review art as a feminist and other speculative intents” by Amy Fung in Track Changes
- “Understanding the parallel scandals happening right now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” by Amelia Marran-Baden on Instagram Reels
October 19, 2023: Ella Ray
- “THING, the revolutionary magazine that chronicled the birth of Chicago’s queer, Black club culture“ by DeForrest Brown Jr. in Document Journal
- “Moving Towards Home” by June Jordan
- “Locating the Poetics of Collage in Blondell Cummings’s ‘Chicken Soup’” by Daniella Brito in ON MIND