THE WRECK

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
—from Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck,” 1973

ON MAY 11 of this year, the Los Angeles gallery JOAN opened a solo show by Sofía Córdova called “The Wreck and not the Story of the Wreck.” As the artist Carmen Winant writes in her appreciation of the show in this issue, “Like the Adrienne Rich poem from which it draws its title, Sofía Córdova’s solo exhibition . . . visualizes the process of sifting through the underground ruins in pieces and parts.” The fragment of Rich’s poem that provides the show’s title appears on one of Córdova’s painted canvases; by combining the text with a thirteenth-century map of the world with Jerusalem/Al-Quds at its center, she gestures toward the role of both language and material artifacts in the construction and maintenance of colonial projects in those lands, such as Palestine and her native Puerto Rico, where diverse communities have long coexisted (for differing reasons and under differing circumstances, to be sure).

I spoke to Córdova two days after Donald Trump was reelected president of the United States, and eleven days after a “comedy” podcaster stood onstage at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.” Unlike Rich’s anonymous diver, Córdova explained, she doesn’t need a flashlight to explore the wreck, because she lives there—not on an “island of garbage,” but in the wreckage of the transatlantic slave trade and the ideological systems that produced it. Needless to say, we Americans—and the peoples we have colonized—have inherited these systems as part of our DNA, making it impossible to disown the vile bigotry that portends destruction like a monster rising from the depths.

The wreck, and not the story of the wreck: How do we survive and build in the wreckage that palpably surrounds us? How do we continue to fight for the security of minoritized people, let alone advocate for the ideals of democracy or justice, under a second Trump presidency, when we already have to imagine that his administration will deport immigrants, threaten trans lives, destroy queer families, disregard the disabled, further limit abortion access, hollow out public education, gut regulations, tilt the courts, criminalize dissent, arrest political opponents, compromise elections, abolish term limits, and abet foreign despots . . . among countless other horrors cooked up by his advisors and mega-donors? 

In our January 2017 issue, after Trump was elected for the first time, Artforum editor Michelle Kuo observed that he seemed motivated by neither power nor ideology but image, evidencing that “the power of the visual has ascended to ever-greater heights, even in a world of invisible networks of control.” Thus, in opposition to the worldviews offered by the alt-right, “art must counter image with image—constructing pictures but also precipitating their undoing, their disruption, their unmooring.” In Córdova’s show, an installation of taxidermied birds colored with green Manic Panic hair dye (including the resolute dove that glowers from the cover of this issue) invited viewers to reconsider our anthropocentric panic over climate change, which Trump will now accelerate: What if we viewed climate-induced mutation as a form of adaptation, resulting from the ongoing process of “metabolizing harm,” as Córdova suggested to me? If American “revolutions,” including the MAGA revolution, often take the form of heroic narratives driven by white male protagonists, perhaps communal “evolution” might provide another model.

Of course, imagining otherwise through art and images is only one strategy, and must be pursued alongside organizing at the community level and fighting for meaningful structural change. But if advocating for art in the same breath as social justice sometimes felt like a luxury that few could afford, the triumphant return of fascism—which targets artists and intellectuals for a reason—has now made it a necessity. As I noted in my first editor’s letter back in June, my model of politics, based on my understanding of how power operates, is to throw everything at the wall, from protesting to organizing, building new models, and making art. We also need criticism—not as a distraction from the hard work of protecting our communities and working towards change, but, as I noted in my November letter, “as an active and even activist practice pitted against historical amnesia, superficial engagement, and ironic detachment (all of which further the most dangerous ideological agendas).” Think about who stands to benefit most from the withering of creative and critical practices; let’s not give them what they want.

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
—from Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck,” 1973