Issue 35 February 2024

Issue 34 November 2023

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Issue 31 February 2023

Issue 30 November 2022

Issue 29 August 2022

Issue 28 May 2022

Issue 27 February 2022

Issue 26 November 2021

Issue 25 August 2021

Issue 24 May 2021

Issue 23 February 2021

Issue 22 November 2020

Issue 21 August 2020

Issue 20 May 2020

Issue 19 February 2020

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
Parasites in Love –Travis Diehl
To Crush Absolute On Patrick Staff and
Destroying the Institution
–Jonathan Griffin
Victoria Fu:
Camera Obscured
–Cat Kron
Resurgence of Resistance How Pattern & Decoration's Popularity
Can Help Reshape the Canon
–Catherine Wagley
Trace, Place, Politics Julie Mehretu's Coded Abstractions
–Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.: Featuring: Friedrich Kunath,
Tristan Unrau, and Nevine Mahmoud
–Claressinka Anderson & Joe Pugliese
Reviews April Street
at Vielmetter Los Angeles
–Aaron Horst

Chiraag Bhakta
at Human Resources
–Julie Weitz

Don’t Think: Tom, Joe
and Rick Potts

at POTTS
–Matt Stromberg

Sarah McMenimen
at Garden
–Michael Wright

The Medea Insurrection
at the Wende Museum
–Jennifer Remenchik

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Mike Kelley
at Hauser & Wirth
–Angella d’Avignon
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Issue 18 November 2019

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
The Briar and the Tar Nayland Blake at the ICA LA
and Matthew Marks Gallery
–Travis Diehl
Putting Aesthetics
to Hope
Tracking Photography’s Role
in Feminist Communities
– Catherine Wagley
Instagram STARtists
and Bad Painting
– Anna Elise Johnson
Interview with Jamillah James – Lindsay Preston Zappas
Working Artists Featuring Catherine Fairbanks,
Paul Pescador, and Rachel Mason
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Children of the Sun
at LADIES’ ROOM
– Jessica Simmons

Derek Paul Jack Boyle
at SMART OBJECTS
–Aaron Horst

Karl Holmqvist
at House of Gaga, Los Angeles
–Lee Purvey

Katja Seib
at Château Shatto
–Ashton Cooper

Jeanette Mundt
at Overduin & Co.
–Matt Stromberg
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Issue 17 August 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Green Chip David Hammons
at Hauser & Wirth
–Travis Diehl
Whatever Gets You
Through the Night
The Artists of Dilexi
and Wartime Trauma
–Jonathan Griffin
Generous Collectors How the Grinsteins
Supported Artists
–Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Donna Huanca
–Lindsy Preston Zappas
Working Artist Featuring Ragen Moss, Justen LeRoy,
and Bari Ziperstein
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Sarah Lucas
at the Hammer Museum
–Yxta Maya Murray

George Herms and Terence Koh
at Morán Morán
–Matt Stromberg

Hannah Hur
at Bel Ami
–Michael Wright

Sebastian Hernandez
at NAVEL
–Julie Weitz

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Alex Israel
at Greene Naftali
–Rosa Tyhurst

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Issue 16 May 2019

Trulee Hall's Untamed Magic Catherine Wagley
Ingredients for a Braver Art Scene Ceci Moss
I Shit on Your Graves Travis Diehl
Interview with Ruby Neri Jonathan Griffin
Carolee Schneemann and the Art of Saying Yes! Chelsea Beck
Exquisite L.A. Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Ry Rocklen
at Honor Fraser
–Cat Kron

Rob Thom
at M+B
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age
of Black Power, 1963-1983
at The Broad
–Matt Stromberg

Anna Sew Hoy & Diedrick Brackens
at Various Small Fires
–Aaron Horst

Julia Haft-Candell & Suzan Frecon
at Parrasch Heijnen
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Shahryar Nashat
at Swiss Institute
–Christie Hayden
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Issue 15 February 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor
Men on Women
Geena Brown
Eyes Without a Voice
Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto
Christina Catherine Martinez
Seven Minute Dream Machine
Jordan Wolfson's (Female figure)
Travis Diehl
Laughing in Private
Vanessa Place's Rape Jokes
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Rosha Yaghmai
Laura Brown
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Patrick Martinez,
Ramiro Gomez, and John Valadez
Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Outliers and American
Vanguard Art at LACMA
–Jonathan Griffin

Sperm Cult
at LAXART
–Matt Stromberg

Kahlil Joseph
at MOCA PDC
–Jessica Simmons

Ingrid Luche
at Ghebaly Gallery
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Matt Paweski
at Park View / Paul Soto
–John Zane Zappas

Trenton Doyle Hancock
at Shulamit Nazarian
–Colony Little

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Catherine Opie
at Lehmann Maupin
–Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 14 November 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Figurative Religion Catherine Wagley
Lynch in Traffic Travis Diehl
The Remixed Symbology of Nina Chanel Abney Lindsay Preston Zappas
Interview with Kulapat Yantrasast Christie Hayden
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Sandra de la Loza, Gloria Galvez, and Steve Wong
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews Raúl de Nieves
at Freedman Fitzpatrick
-Aaron Horst

Gertrud Parker
at Parker Gallery
-Ashton Cooper

Robert Yarber
at Nicodim Gallery
-Jonathan Griffin

Nikita Gale
at Commonwealth & Council
-Simone Krug

Lari Pittman
at Regen Projects
-Matt Stromberg

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Eckhaus Latta
at the Whitney Museum
of American Art
-Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 13 August 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor Julie Weitz with Angella d'Avignon
Don't Make
Everything Boring
Catherine Wagley
The Collaborative Art
World of Norm Laich
Matt Stromberg
Oddly Satisfying Art Travis Diehl
Made in L.A. 2018 Reviews Claire de Dobay Rifelj
Jennifer Remenchik
Aaron Horst
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Anna Sew Hoy, Guadalupe Rosales, and Shizu Saldamando
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews It's Snowing in LA
at AA|LA
–Matthew Lax

Fiona Conner
at the MAK Center
–Thomas Duncan

Show 2
at The Gallery @ Michael's
–Simone Krug

Deborah Roberts
at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
–Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi

Mimi Lauter
at Blum & Poe
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Math Bass
at Mary Boone
–Ashton Cooper

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Condo New York
–Laura Brown
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Issue 12 May 2018

Poetic Energies and
Radical Celebrations:
Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger
Simone Krug
Interior States of the Art Travis Diehl
Perennial Bloom:
Florals in Feminism
and Across L.A.
Angella d'Avignon
The Mess We're In Catherine Wagley
Interview with Christina Quarles Ashton Cooper
Object Project
Featuring Suné Woods, Michelle Dizon,
and Yong Soon Min
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Meleko Mokgosi
at The Fowler Museum at UCLA
-Jessica Simmons

Chris Kraus
at Chateau Shatto
- Aaron Horst

Ben Sanders
at Ochi Projects
- Matt Stromberg

iris yirei hsu
at the Women's Center
for Creative Work
- Hana Cohn

Harald Szeemann
at the Getty Research Institute
- Olivian Cha

Ali Prosch
at Bed and Breakfast
- Jennifer Remenchik

Reena Spaulings
at Matthew Marks
- Thomas Duncan
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Issue 11 February 2018

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Museum as Selfie Station Matt Stromberg
Accessible as Humanly as Possible Catherine Wagley
On Laura Owens on Laura Owens Travis Diehl
Interview with Puppies Puppies Jonathan Griffin
Object Project Lindsay Preston Zappas, Jeff McLane
Reviews Dulce Dientes
at Rainbow in Spanish
- Aaron Horst

Adrián Villas Rojas
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
- Lindsay Preston Zappas

Nevine Mahmoud
at M+B
- Angella D'Avignon

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960- 1985
at the Hammer Museum
- Thomas Duncan

Hannah Greely and William T. Wiley
at Parker Gallery
- Keith J. Varadi

David Hockney
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (L.A. in N.Y.)
- Ashton Cooper

Edgar Arceneaux
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (L.A. in S.F.)
- Hana Cohn
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Issue 10 November 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Barely Living with Art:
The Labor of Domestic
Spaces in Los Angeles
Eli Diner
She Wanted Adventure:
Dwan, Butler, Mizuno, Copley
Catherine Wagley
The Languages of
All-Women Exhibitions
Lindsay Preston Zappas
L.A. Povera Travis Diehl
On Eclipses:
When Language
and Photography Fail
Jessica Simmons
Interview with
Hamza Walker
Julie Wietz
Object Project
Featuring: Rosha Yaghmai,
Dianna Molzan, and Patrick Jackson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McLane
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Reviews
Regen Projects
Ibid Gallery
One National Gay & Lesbian Archives and MOCA PDC
The Mistake Room
Luis De Jesus Gallery
the University Art Gallery at CSULB
the Autry Museum
Reviews Cheyenne Julien
at Smart Objects

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
at team bungalow

Ravi Jackson
at Richard Telles

Tactility of Line
at Elevator Mondays

Trigger: Gender as a Tool as a Weapon
at the New Museum
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 9 August 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women on the Plinth Catherine Wagley
Us & Them, Now & Then:
Reconstituting Group Material
Travis Diehl
The Offerings of EJ Hill
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
Interview with Jenni Sorkin Carmen Winant
Object Project
Featuring: Rebecca Morris,
Linda Stark, Alex Olson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McClane
Reviews Mark Bradford
at the Venice Biennale

Broken Language
at Shulamit Nazarian

Artists of Color
at the Underground Museum

Anthony Lepore & Michael Henry Hayden
at Del Vaz Projects

Home
at LACMA

Analia Saban at
Sprueth Magers
Letter to the Editor Lady Parts, Lady Arts
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Issue 8 May 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kanye Westworld Travis Diehl
@richardhawkins01 Thomas Duncan
Support Structures:
Alice Könitz and LAMOA
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Penny Slinger
Eliza Swann
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
taisha paggett
Ashley Hunt
Young Chung
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Alessandro Pessoli
at Marc Foxx

Jennie Jieun Lee
at The Pit

Trisha Baga
at 356 Mission

Jimmie Durham
at The Hammer

Parallel City
at Ms. Barbers

Jason Rhodes
at Hauser & Wirth
Letter to the Editor
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Issue 7 February 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Generous
Structures
Catherine Wagley
Put on a Happy Face:
On Dynasty Handbag
Travis Diehl
The Limits of Animality:
Simone Forti at ISCP
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
More Wound Than Ruin:
Evaluating the
"Human Condition"
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Brenna Youngblood
Todd Gray
Rafa Esparza
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Creature
at The Broad

Sam Pulitzer & Peter Wachtler
at House of Gaga // Reena Spaulings Fine Art

Karl Haendel
at Susanne Vielmetter

Wolfgang Tillmans
at Regen Projects

Ma
at Chateau Shatto

The Rat Bastard Protective Association
at the Landing
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Issue 6 November 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kenneth Tam
's Basement
Travis Diehl
The Female
Cool School
Catherine Wagley
The Rise
of the L.A.
Art Witch
Amanda Yates Garcia
Interview with
Mernet Larsen
Julie Weitz
Agnes Martin
at LACMA
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Analia Saban
Ry Rocklen
Sarah Cain
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews
Made in L.A. 2016
at The Hammer Museum

Doug Aitken
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Mertzbau
at Tif Sigfrids

Jean-Pascal Flavian and Mika Tajima
at Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Mark A. Rodruigez
at Park View

The Weeping Line
Organized by Alter Space
at Four Six One Nine
(S.F. in L.A.)
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Issue 5 August 2016

Letter form the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Non-Fiction
at The Underground Museum
Catherine Wagley
The Art of Birth Carmen Winant
Escape from Bunker Hill
John Knight
at REDCAT
Travis Diehl
Ed Boreal Speaks Benjamin Lord
Art Advice (from Men) Sarah Weber
Routine Pleasures
at the MAK Center
Jonathan Griffin
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Fay Ray
John Baldessari
Claire Kennedy
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Revolution in the Making
at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

Carl Cheng
at Cherry and Martin

Joan Snyder
at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery

Elanor Antin
at Diane Rosenstein

Performing the Grid
at Ben Maltz Gallery
at Otis College of Art & Design

Laura Owens
at The Wattis Institute
(L.A. in S.F.)
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Issue 4 May 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Moon, laub, and Love Catherine Wagley
Walk Artisanal Jonathan Griffin
Reconsidering
Marva Marrow's
Inside the L.A. Artist
Anthony Pearson
Mystery Science Thater:
Diana Thater
at LACMA
Aaron Horst
Informal Feminisms Federica Bueti and Jan Verwoert
Marva Marrow Photographs
Lita Albuquerque
Interiors and Interiority:
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Char Jansen
Reviews L.A. Art Fairs

Material Art Fair, Mexico City

Rain Room
at LACMA

Evan Holloway
at David Kordansky Gallery

Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue
at The Mistake Room

Carter Mull
at fused space
(L.A. in S.F.)

Awol Erizku
at FLAG Art Foundation
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 3 February 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Le Louvre, Las Vegas Evan Moffitt
iPhones, Flesh,
and the Word:
F.B.I.
at Arturo Bandini
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women Talking About Barney Catherine Wagley
Lingua Ignota:
Faith Wilding
at The Armory Center
for the Arts
and LOUDHAILER
Benjamin Lord
A Conversation
with Amalia Ulman
Char Jansen
How We Practice Carmen Winant
Share Your Piece
of the Puzzle
Federica Bueti
Amanda Ross-Ho Photographs
Erik Frydenborg
Reviews Honeydew
at Michael Thibault

Fred Tomaselli
at California State University, Fullerton

Trisha Donnelly
at Matthew Marks Gallery

Bradford Kessler
at ASHES/ASHES
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Issue 2 November 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Hot Tears Carmen Winant
Slow View:
Molly Larkey
Anna Breininger and Kate Whitlock
Americanicity's Paintings:
Orion Martin
at Favorite Goods
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Layers of Leimert Park Catherine Wagley
Junkspace Junk Food:
Parker Ito
at Kaldi, Smart Objects,
White Cube, and
Château Shatto
Evan Moffitt
Melrose Hustle Keith Vaughn
Max Maslansky Photographs
Monica Majoli
at the Tom of Finland Foundation
White Lee, Black Lee:
William Pope.L’s "Reenactor"
Travis Diehl
Dora Budor Interview Char Jensen
Reviews Mary Ried Kelley
at The Hammer Museum

Tongues Untied
at MOCA Pacific Design Center

No Joke
at Tanya Leighton
(L.A. in Berlin)
Snap Reviews Martin Basher at Anat Ebgi
Body Parts I-V at ASHES ASHES
Eve Fowler at Mier Gallery
Matt Siegle at Park View
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Issue 1 August 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
MEAT PHYSICS/
Metaphysical L.A.
Travis Diehl
Art for Art’s Sake:
L.A. in the 1990s
Anthony Pearson
A Dialogue in Two
Synchronous Atmospheres
Erik Morse
with Alexandra Grant
SOGTFO
at François Ghebaly
Jonathan Griffin
#studio #visit
with #devin #kenny
@barnettcohen
Mateo Tannatt
Photographs
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Slow View:
Discussion on One Work
Anna Breininger
with Julian Rogers
Reviews Pierre Huyghe
at LACMA

Mernet Larsen
at Various Small Fires

John Currin
at Gagosian, Beverly Hills

Pat O'Niell
at Cherry and Martin

A New Rhythm
at Park View

Unwatchable Scenes and
Other Unreliable Images...
at Public Fiction

Charles Gaines
at The Hammer Museum

Henry Taylor
at Blum & Poe/ Untitled
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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The Limits of Animality

Sleep Walkers 04

Simone Forti, Sleep Walkers (1968/2010). Performance at Artist’s Residence, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Jason Underhill.

Simone Forti is in the midst of an august ascent. These past few years, the octogenarian L.A.-based dancer, choreographer, and writer has seen her stock soar, with the likes of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) formally acquiring, this past December, seven of Forti’s Minimalist Dance Constructions (1960-61). These task-based dance repertoires evidence Forti’s choreographic range that is every bit quotidian yet idiosyncratic, with ordinary gestures made notable, maybe even romantic, via entanglements with circumstance and chance. In making work that involves all this, Forti has fostered a sincere approach to dance that foregrounds the potential of the body as a laboring material always at odds with evolution. Animate one moment, inanimate 
the next, Forti highlights how bodies take on movements and manners 
that occupy an indeterminate space, between subject and object, human and animal.

Elucidating these embodied links—how animality and humanity, in more ways than one, operate on 
a systematic continuum—was paramount to Forti’s early dance works. In the late ’60s during a sojourn in Rome, Forti spent days 
on end at the Giardino Zoologico di Roma caressing lion cubs, sketching the breath of oxen, or noting how flamingos slept upright. These daytrips to the zoo became movement research into non-normative bodies—animals here—executing dance of a captive sort. Forti was held captive by captivity, sharing her afternoons with fenced-in bears, chimps, and giraffes—fellow “captive spirits”— negotiating an already fragile
 existence. 1 These outings shaped Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras (1968), a sequence of repetitive animal “dance behaviors” Forti abstracted for her sensate body. 2 On the occasion of Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras approaching its 50th anniversary, Forti re-performed the animal-inspired piece at International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) as part of the exhibition The Animal Mirror.

In a narrow hallway abutting the main gallery, Forti began upright, stuttered to her left and right, and then slowly leaned back, eyes closed. She appeared in stupor, sleeping perhaps. Her right hand shook—tremors, the signs of an aging body—as 
the weight of slumber rocked her backwards. Eyes still sealed, Forti’s hands came up, flapping initially by her sides, but finally settling into a series of crossed-arm gestures that cradled her face. After some time,
 she balanced on one foot, her head resting on her folded arms. Crane-like, Forti quickly found her feet—bipedal again. In the next motion, the doyenne strode across the room, dipped at 
the waist, hanging in a like-for-like posture to Shimabuku’s image, Gift: Exhibition for the Monkeys (1992), that hung across from her. No sooner had Forti bent over than she was swinging her white tresses in a sweeping arc.

Every so often, Forti hung in the air
 for a second or two, taking in her surrounds, but not necessarily engaging the audience that encircled her. After swinging about, Forti returned to the spot where she began the performance. Laid out on the floor, she slowly rolled across the room and back. Other movements in Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras caught Forti in a plank, balanced on hands and toes, hopping on all fours intermittently. The piece ended with Forti shuffling three or six steps forwards and backwards, kicking out at the end of each traverse to begin again. Her right hand swung as she shimmied across the floor, pacing as though entranced, nervous, driven by ritual.

1Forti_AnimalStudy#6__

Simone Forti, Animal Study: Ox (Breathing) (1968). Ink on Paper, 9 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

A talk with curator Kari Conte and Forti followed the performance. During the tête-à-tête, Forti delved into the specific spirits that captivated the movements: the sleeping flamingo suspended on one-foot; the polar bear exercising his torso; the seaweed swept up in the surf; the water strider running atop a pond; 
and the elephant navigating monotony. Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras situates dance as captivity. But the constrained—and contained—movements vacillate to other latitudes: dance acts an emollient, a “functional ritual” 3” in animals as way “to provide a modicum of relief.” Forti, “Animate Dancing,” 56.] to 
quell those unfettered moments of angst. Read this way, dance becomes this container for the ennui found in the margins.

Age is one such margin. But despite entering her early 80s, Forti still commanded her body with poise, stopping and starting with equal parts gaiety and gravitas. Even with slight tremors in her right hand and head, Forti glided about ISCP, assuming postures that might challenge the strength and coordination of her peers. To borrow dance historian
 Sally Banes’ term, the “democratic body” was on view here, its jitters
 and stutters undoing the modernist appeal to sublime form and technique. Forti injected litheness to the dancing body held captive, now, by the degenerative forces of ageing. Rather than a salve to self-soothe, dance movement, for Forti, becomes a way to enchant, defy the odds, and, more importantly, immerse oneself in a shared kinesthetic sensibility with, say, the sea lion—a knowledge commons fostering radical relations with others and with the world. 4

Returning to animality, however, complicates these utopian latitudes. Lest we forget not all bodies—black ones, for example—get the luxury 
to negotiate confinement through movement. 5 The power of locomotion was often a right stripped from black bodies during America’s Reconstruction Era. And today the rise and fall of black death and dissent is often coterminous with #chimpout (a Twitter hashtag that aligns blackness with the chimpanzee), as well as the baseness of animalistic impulses. In
 a similar gesture, language lumps worms with the feral cat. The resultant “animal” as a category flattens any difference, establishing human
 as somehow separate from animal. While Forti likens her movements to states of mysticism and enchantment, in a way, these systems-of-spectacle— language, the zoo—contour the body, govern the kinesthetic commons, and deny any predisposition to animality in the human.

In a treatise on animality, Derrida gives this thought: “The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there.” 6 It is tempting—and perhaps anthropomorphic—to suggest an about-face in that we, the audience at ISCP, became animals. The truth is, though, this reckoning mirrors that 
of Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras in various ways. For one, Forti, herself, admitted to “anthropomorphizing” 7 back in Rome, passively identifying with the animals, their loneliness. Forti, however, eventually opted out of observing animals in the zoo. The image of captivity, how it dims the animate into inanimate forms 
of repetition, proved troubling to Forti—saddening is how she put it. By turning away, one risks forgetting, no longer seeing the animal see you. 8 Yet these admissions from Forti endeared her performance at ISCP.

Re-performing Sleepwalkers/ Zoo Mantras reflects an embodied sympathy: we see Forti naked, forward-facing—vulnerabilities and all. But in looking at Forti plank here, and saunter there, we see her exercise a willful remembering, a straining of ligatures, a spontaneity given over to movement. Animality, Derrida noted, locates itself in these gestures of spontaneity, “marking, tracing, and affecting itself with traces of its self.” 9 Forti’s re-performance took on these freeing marks and traces, showing animality—this seemingly senseless impulse—is in many ways human, as well a limit unto itself. And as I think back to these limits, Forti’s body— ageing, riddled with whim—bravely takes up other limits: where human and “animals” meet; where language favors speciecism over similitude; 
and where dance archly opens up animality as existing in step with the history of humanity.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 7.

Sleep Walkers 03

Simone Forti, Sleep Walkers (1968/2010). Performance at Artist’s Residence, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Jason Underhill.

Sleep Walkers 02

Simone Forti, Sleep Walkers (1968/2010). Performance at Artist’s Residence, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Jason Underhill.

Sleep Walkers 01

Simone Forti, Sleep Walkers (1968/2010). Performance at Artist’s Residence, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Jason Underhill.

2Forti_AnimalStudy#7__

Simone Forti, Animal Study: Turkey (Cooling Off) (1968). Ink on Paper, 9 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and The Box, LA. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

  1. Forti uses this phrase “captive spirits” as a way to identify with the confined animals in the zoo. This sense of simpatico can be tied to a host of autobiographical referents, from Forti fleeing Florence, Italy prior to the anti-Semitic laws in 1938 that annulled Italian Jews of citizenship to the loneliness Forti felt in Rome following a failed relationship.
  2. “Dance behavior” is what Forti ascribes to the everyday acts—playful, nervy or unremarkable—shown by animals at the zoo. See Simone Forti, “Animate Dancing: A Practice in Dance Improvisation,” Taken by Surprise:
A Dance Improvisation Reader (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003): 56.
  3. Forti noted that confinement in zoos brought about functional ritual[s
  4. Sleepwalkers is a return to the sensibility that
 I harvested when I was studying with Ann Halprin; that is, the immersion in the kinesthetic sense. A return to movement as a means of enchantment.” Simone Forti, “Danze Costruzioni,” Simone Forti, Galleria L’Attico (Rome: L’Attico, 1968), n.p. Translated by the artist.
  5. Che Gossett notes how for all his radical theorization on human/animal divide, the likes of Derrida and Agamben fail to consider how anti-blackness is constituted through animalization. See Che Gossett, “Blackness, Animality, and the Unsovereign”, Verso Books Blog, September 8, 2015, http://www.versobooks. com/blogs/2228-che-gossett-blackness-animali- ty-and-the-unsovereign.
  6. Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry 28 (2002): 397.
  7. Simone Forti, Handbook in Motion (Halifax, Canada: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974): 91.
  8. Derrida, “The Animal,” 381.
  9. Derrida, “The Animal,” 417.

Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi is a curator and writer based in Los Angeles. He serves on the editorial board of X-TRA.

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