Aperture 241 - Winter 2020

Utopia

In “Utopia,” artists, photographers, and writers envision a world without prisons, document visionary architecture, honor queer space and creativity, and dream of liberty through spiritual self-expression. They show us that utopia is not a far-fetched scheme, but rather a way of reshaping our future.

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This winter, in the wake of a pandemic, global protest movements, and a dramatic presidential election in the United States, Aperture releases “Utopia,” an issue that shows that other ways of living are possible—when the collective will exists.

In “Utopia,” artists, photographers, and writers envision a world without prisons, document visionary architecture, honor queer space and creativity, and dream of liberty through spiritual self-expression. They show us that utopia is not a far-fetched scheme, but rather a way of reshaping our future.

In a profile, Salamishah Tillet considers Tyler Mitchell’s visions of Black people resting in open green space, a democratizing landscape in which Mitchell continuously asks himself: “What are the things that I can do to lessen the inherent hierarchies in the photography-shoot structure of seeing and being seen?” Sara Knelman shows the freeing possibilities of the feminist collage works of Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Sara Cwynar, and Alanna Fields. Julian Rose speaks with the filmmaker Matt Wolf about his latest documentary, Spaceship Earth (2020), which follows the people who created Biosphere 2 in 1991. And Antwaun Sargent traces Black queer artists’ journeys into immersive desire. “Utopia” also includes compelling portfolios by David Benjamin Sherry, Allen Frame, and Balarama Heller, whose respective works span time and geography, from bohemian New York to a Hare Krishna retreat in India.

“The utopian imagination tends to stir when the world feels simultaneously wrecked and malleable,” the writer Chris Jennings notes, in a series of reflections by writers such as Olivia Laing and Nicole R. Fleetwood. Notions of utopia shouldn’t be restricted to the fantasy of a fully realized ideal society, or the outsize, often failed, sometimes disastrous schemes and social experiments of the past. Instead, we might consider utopia a mode of vision and thought that shields us from hopelessness.
Format: Paperback / softback
Publication date: 2020-12-08
Measurements: 9.25 x 12 x 0.6 inches
ISBN: 9781597114868


Significant support of Aperture magazine is provided by The Kanakia Foundation and by Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović. Further generous support is provided in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Aperture Foundation’s programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Table Of Contents

Front

Agenda
Gregory Halpern, Jo Ractliffe, Companion Pieces, Street. Life. Photography.

Day Jobs
Lou Stoppard on Koto Bolofo and Europe’s fashion world of the 1980s

Backstory
Rebecca Bengal on the making of Mary Ellen Mark’s The Book of Everything

Curriculum
Paul Graham on Garry Winogrand, green tea, and New York City

Words

Love for a Common Way of Life
Tyler Mitchell’s vision of Black utopia

Salamishah Tillet

Dream Worlds: Five Reflections

Utopia by Subtraction
Chris Jennings

Occupy the Moment
Olivia Laing

Abolition
Nicole R. Fleetwood

Towering Ambitions
Steven S. Lee

The Rot of Stars
Elvia Wilk

Spaceship Earth
What a new documentary reveals about Biosphere 2

Matt Wolf in Conversation with Julian Rose

Dreaming & Dwelling
The architecture that imagined a new society

Mimi Zeiger

Feminist Futures
The artists who find freedom in collage

Sara Knelman

Remains of the Day
Holding space in the Middle East, ten years after the Arab Spring

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

The Future Will See You Now
The private worlds of Black desire

Antwaun Sargent

The Black Fantastic
Speculative visions of the African diaspora

Ekow Eshun

Calling in the Spirit
For Latinx photographers, a search for belonging

Kiara Cristina Ventura

Pictures

David Benjamin Sherry
American Spirit
Yxta Maya Murray

Allen Frame
1981, NYC
Brendan Embser

Aikaterini Gegisian
The Suspended Real
Lauren Elkin

Gareth McConnell
Dream Meadows
Alistair O’Neill

Balarama Heller
Sacred Place
Pico Iyer

Back

Endnote
Five questions for the Family Acid


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