For the past two months, I have been working on a collaborative zine alongside four talented, spirited, playful artists. This past weekend, we presented our final product at the NEXUS 2022 Interdisciplinary Conference hosted by the University of Tennessee. The conference itself went swimmingly, the readings and round-table-discussion a heartwarming success. [A PDF to the zine is linked here]
In the vein of not only the conference, but of creative collaboration, Nuha, Jake, Alex, Erica and I met every Monday at 6:45 to talk on Zoom and create around community. We began as strangers in our small digital frames, quietly introducing ourselves: what we do, where we are from, why we are here. And slowly, with a plunge into trust and vulnerability, we began to make.
The collaborative process took flight with a colorful, chaotic Google Doc in which we brainstormed ideas for our project. Just us, as colors, and words, armed with the impossible idea of community. Together we discussed what it means to be part of a community, both virtual and in-person. We reflected on ways in which the pandemic has altered our perception of community and how reliance on a virtual Zoom-scape has both socially connected us, as well as distanced us in unimaginable ways. As we were tuning in from various locations across the South, our immediate, real-time communities look very different than the one curated on-screen. Conversations about gerrymandering, community gardens and neighborhood walks germinated as we began to create a sense of belonging. After two weeks of Google Doc-ing, we arrived at the idea of making a digital zine, the jumping-off point being exile.
You know community through knowing exile. If you know what it feels like to be left out, you know what it feels like to be included. Our ideas of community are complicated by the fact that it must border some sort of exclusion, you cannot have one without the other. These complications brought about conversations around borders, bodies, mapmaking and quilts. Throughout the coming weeks, the zine itself would begin to take on the form of a scrappy, digital quilt — each addition intrinsic to the creation as a whole. The more we created, the more elaborate and interwoven our varying themes and conversations became. Our work became one, destroying the idea that art should ever be a solitary experience.
The title of our project, “Miscommunity” comes from the inevitable miscommunication that occurs when working together. For our team, there was a particular miscommunication with a differentiation between “yellow jackets,” and “yellowjackets.” There were times where miscommunication lead to discovery and other times, few mind you, frustration. Nearly every attempt at communication is a form of miscommunication, even the words which leave our mouths are some bastardization of thought. We are constantly translating what we think and feel in an effort to make sense of our surroundings, a humble attempt to adapt and understand one another.
"I asked my friend the translator, What was the first known act of translation in the history of mankind? His answer was, Probably something into or out of Egyptian. I thought about this for a while and ventured a certainty: No, I said, it was when a mother heard her baby babble or cry, and had to decide in an instant what it meant.
-from“Twenty-two Short Lectures” by Mary Ruefle
Alongside our creative presentation was keynote speaker Ross Gay. Ross Gay is a teacher, poet, and inspiration living and working in Bloomington, IN. Gay’s reading cultivated many powerful seedlings of thought; most notably for me, a reminder to ask, “Can I play with you?”
Play has always been and will always be a part of my creative process. Make-believe games were forever the impetus behind my stories as a budding young writer. Growing up, I constantly foraged the prairie of our backyard for kindling, made potions and perfumes from the neighbor’s hydrangeas. After facing the Wild West alone, I returned home and cast my sisters in multiple, unrelenting renditions of both Snow White and Little House on the Prairie and maybe once, a cross-over episode of both. My sister Andrea later became the family director, roping us into a number of home videos in which we remade SNL skits or at times, Ken Burns documentaries. Even today, many of my close friends and family resort to some sort of bit or character after spending enough time together. The sweet spot between reunion and ripping each other apart is usually a bit.
Ross Gay’s reminder to ask to play is a reminder not only to play, but to be conscious of our role in the communities we join and ultimately leave. As a graduate student, my thoughts on community are complicated by the fact that I will not be in Tuscaloosa forever. Living in a college town for nearly seven years of my life, I saw the ways in which the constant cycling of young minds in-and-out can leave a town and its people feeling depleted, a concept sometimes referred to as “the brain drain”. However, that does not mean we should grow comfortable in the insulated bubble that academia creates. While T-town may not be where I put roots down, I am here now. There are ways in which I can responsibly be involved in a flexible, ever-changing community and situations in which I should probably take a backseat. The most important thing to do is to ask, “Can I play with you?”
“Do not confuse informality with lack of demand.”
-bell hooks
I want to take a moment to highlight the genius of my team. Please please check out the work of Nuha, Alex, Jake, and EVPL. They are making some amazing art and I highly encourage you to check out not only our work together but their work individually as well!
Check out Nuha Fariha on Instagram (@nuhawrites) and Twitter (@nuhawrites). Nuha would also love to shoutout the beautiful magazines that have housed her work. Most recently, she has a fiction piece published in Stellium Lit as runner up for the CUSP prize & poems in the Liminal Review & The Minison Project.
Artist EVPL can be found on Instagram (@evplart) or feel free to visit their website.
Find Alex Bruce on Instagram (@alexbrucedesign), Twitter (@sultan_of_swag), or visit his website at alexbruc.co
Look for two pieces by Jake Zawlacki forthcoming in Abstract Magazine and Thin Air Magazine.