So far in 2024 three publications have landed in my hands.
Fawn Daphne Plessner recently left a copy of the exhibition brochure Near Dwellers as Legal Beings in my work mail box. It is from a 2023 exhibition at The Tree Museum & Street Road Artists Space (Cochranville, PA) that is part of a year-long series. The overall project puts forward “interspecies interdependencies” as a representational challenge for artists and scholars. In the brochure, exhibition artworks by Plessner and Susanna Kamon are beautifully summarized with descriptions, video stills, and exhibition views. While both artists are considering autonomy and treaty making for or with non-domesticated creatures, Fawn Daphne Plessner’s draws attention to the way practices of violence between species are contained inequitably in law.
Harming other beings and negotiating and regulating violence is, of course, at the heart of how all animals, including humans, conduct themselves politically through systems of laws… [humans’ property law] distances humans from the moral dilemma that human acts of killing present. That is, the life of an animal can be extinguished (via farming or hunting, etc.) without one being held responsible for taking its life.”
The Tree Museum & Street Road (2023), Near Dwellers as Legal Beings.
Plessner’s work can be experienced through the website and podcasts Deer Tour.
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A small ‘zine, Lady Justice (Dragu Worker International, 2024) arrived by way of the post, shortly after a video version of nearly the same photos and words was DM’ed to me by Margaret Dragu. Of course the book is better! In fact, I have lost the video, but here now in my hands is this little hand-sewn treasure to read and look at, again and again. In it, four poems describe the improbable and completely poetic real-life occurrence of Lady Justice’s sword falling from the sky and landing in the hands of Margaret Dragu, while in the act of preparing her famous frugal cooking. I join many in recognizing the virtues of health and economy in Dragu’s cooking, which is often shown in video reels on social media, but the omen of a flying sword of justice signals another level of profound honour, altogether! It ends like this,
Poem #4 for Lois
Lady Justice reaches
Margaret Dragu (January, 2024), Lady Justice, SameDayEdit, Dragu Worker International (DWI).
for serendipity & magic with her left hand
for chance & improvisation with her right hand.
The hair on both arms stands up.
Not from an electric storm, shock, fear,
nor low-blood sugar, or poltergeists.
It is from being present in the moment.
This is a gift, she says gratefully.”
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The third book is a tiny add-and-pass miniature that is filled with ephemera collected by way of mail art exchanges. None of the contributors are listed but Ginger Mason who mailed it to me in an envelope labeled “Fe-Mail-Art”, and filled with collage-ed bits and pieces, tells me that the tiny book was passed to her in mail from Coco Muchmore. The Hoch quote about boundaries of the self and self-certainty reiterates the vice of “the purported human-animal divide” described in Near Dwellers as Legal Beings, which is likely of real concern to Lady Justice.
Also in Ginger’s mail art package is an Artist Trading Card (“The Politics of Coffee”) and three mantras on folding stands, illustrated with still-life photos of feet: “Invite CALM into this moment”, “Be kind to yourself / BE GENTLE”, and “BREATH / Let it all go”, all of them by Mason (Gingersnaps, as she is known in the mail).
Thank you Daphne, Margaret, and Ginger for so many delights and challenges! You will be seeing some RML publications in your own mail boxes in the not-too-distant future!!
Lois Klassen