Runner Magazine Presents…

This morning on my way to work, the air was cool, which was a relief from the 90+ degree temperatures that Detroit has been experiencing since the summer started. The long morning drive gave me a chance to mentally unpack some contemporary circumstances that intimately affect my life, and others that broadly affect the communities that I am involved in. The stream of news coming out of my radio that morning was discussing developments of the global climate crisis. They mentioned the US Supreme Court’s vote to limit regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency can place on power plant emissions around the country. I remembered that just the prior week, Roe v. Wade was overturned, causing millions of women to lose their rights to have an abortion. Then, after a few more mass shootings, SCOTUS voted to expand gun rights in various states. I began to feel sick. My soul left my body and entered into the body of a character in a fictional story; the endlessness of these national and global catastrophes could simply not be real. 

My new perspective watched the landscape go by through what felt like a TV screen conveying a first person perspective. I began to notice things I hadn't noticed before, as if I had not driven this route every Monday through Friday for the past three years. I was more closely observing our society, which is becoming increasingly similar to worlds in science fiction stories like Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell or The Fifth Element. Like ours, these worlds have been shaped by industrial revolutions that brought with it a sweeping proliferation of corporate power, the exploitation of laborers, nature overrun by industry, wars, and finally feats of interplanetary colonization. The most recent chapter of the Earth-based human species was narrated live by the voices in my speakers, illustrated by me and everyone else around. 

During these moments of contemplation, my mind will often lift off into a daydream, which happens when I try to make sense of things that are difficult for me to wrap my head around. Like a cat playing with a ball of yarn, I pull ideas apart, stretch them, and entangle them with other ideas until the pre-formed shapes become abstracted, ready to be reorganized into something new. The out-of-body experience, however, was relatively new to me. It reminded me of a term I recently learned about from the world of psychotherapy. The term "dissociation" is used to describe an episode of being out of the body that is triggered by a traumatic event. It is a response brought on by our subconscious mind that allows us to involuntarily ignore information that may be too traumatic for our brain to handle. The compounded amount of traumatic news in recent months seems to have triggered something similar in me, resulting in an involuntary reframing of my surroundings into a fantastical reality. 

In recent years, the term Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become extremely relevant in the field of psychotherapy; this is when challenging information is neurologically re-framed to assist with comprehension, digestion, and acceptance. As an artist, I find both dissociation and CBT to be conducive to my work, and I think many artists consciously or subconsciously engage in these practices, in order to somehow utilize the circumstances around them as inspiration to produce. Patrons of this work benefit from these practices as well by observing how someone is able to turn harm into something that is healing. By sharing thoughts and feelings and expressing innovative ideas, some artists share their intimate perspective, while others help us see the world through the lens of a perspective that is more encompassing and expansive. Through this opportunity to work with MDW Atlas as an editorial partner, I have been collaborating with three different people who actively utilize challenging experiences to fuel their practices. Their work responds to societal concerns, offers solutions, and positively influences the world around them. 

While driving in the car through this "fictional" world, I recalled Occupy Mars, which is the newest campaign initiated by the richest man on the planet. Because of climate change, there has been more and more discussion about whether one day we could call the red planet of Mars our home. Of course, my perspective as a character in this story was not surprised by our hopes for this interplanetary occupation, as this sort of thing is a dime a dozen in science fiction-type worlds. This allowed me to further link science fiction writers like Nisi Shawl to our contemporary reality and highlight the growing relevance of their work in this day and age. Making Amends by Shawl is an eight-part series that illustrates advanced efforts to colonize an interstellar planet through the use of artificial intelligence and prison labor. Science Fiction is a genre that uses its platform to directly critique our history, highlight its tendency to repeat itself, and predict the infinitely creative ways we will continue to dominate territories in the future. Shawl participates in building future visions that simultaneously act as catharsis for traumas and fears. They remind us of the history of penal colonies around the world, and they touch on contemporary efforts to establish a homeland on other celestial bodies. Although science fiction is often placed in a realm separate from reality, it has proven time and time again to actually be writing screen plays for reality’s future. 

“The Mighty Phin” is a story that introduces us to one of the incarcerated individuals in the Amends universe. Phin is an artificially intelligent being whose biological body was broken down and recreated, similar to Masamune Shirow’s agent Major Motoko Kusanagi’s character in Ghost in the Shell. Nisi Shawl welcomes the reader into the intimate experience of Phin, who grapples with challenges related to body, gender, memories, guilt, skepticism, confusion, and isolation. This story is a look into the world of someone who is a sentient soul despite having the body of a machine. Through this story, Shawl has been able to provide insight and response to imprisonment, body and gender politics and histories of colonization throughout our history on Earth. For MDW, Shawl presents My Recipe for Making Amends, which is an overview of their creative process while developing the Amends Universe and unpacking reasoning and decisions that make this series a go-to for science fiction connoisseurs. Interestingly, this universe touches on lived experiences of the other two contributors in this MDW series, Kenneth Tello and Kirsten Kirby-Shoote. 

Kenneth Tello, also known as Bear, is a poet. He is a human being who writes poetry. He used to be in prison; he has always been a writer. His work tells his story, which is from the perspective of a person who, despite having spent time in prison, which can be numbing, has also always experienced love, pain, sadness, grief, and joy. Tello utilizes writing as an opportunity to access these emotions, investigate them, learn about them and express them openly in order to help others access them for themselves. While spending time at the Macomb Men’s Correctional Facility, Bear participated in the Writer’s Block Writing Workshop, which is a program that presents a platform for incarcerated individuals to practice self-expression. The founders of this workshop recognize that “writing is a medium through which those in the system can cope and have a voice in a space where they often feel voiceless” and by offering the opportunity to engage in these creative practices, which also act as cathartic and therapeutic experiences, the participants' experience of humanity within that system is at least partially restored. While reading Bear's poem “Titles,” we have a chance to enter the Yard. We are greeted from the bench that he sits on while he listens and responds to his own inner monologue. The meandering abstraction and following paragraphs clearly state his investment in the act of writing and acknowledge its presence within penal institutions, as well the benefits it has had on him since an early age and through his incarceration. Kenneth Tello's sentient experience is mirrored by Phin's, as both of their stories touch on complexities of existence within advanced societies, and the multifaceted methods of perseverance employed to gain freedom. 

Linking Kirsten Kirby-Shoote to the mighty Phin and the Amends Universe is a way to discuss historical and contemporary methods of colonization. In Shawl's "Like the Deadly Hands," one of Phin's incarcerated community members employs their knowledge of native plants to gain freedom. There is scientific evidence that we are what we eat, and indigenous farmers like Kirsten Kirby-Shoote understand consumption to be not only a survival tactic, but a spiritual and sacred experience as well. Kirby-Shoote dives deep into their ancestry to continue implementing a plethora of ancient agricultural wisdom. They are an urban farmer, a seed keeper, and a member of the Tlingit Nation, and they believe that plants have agency and autonomy. Kirby-Shoote recognizes the lack of consideration for the sacredness around growing and eating food, as they reflect on the experience of their community and its culture in relation to the resourcing tactics of colonialism and capitalism. “Once settler colonialism came in, our life and our ways were treated as a resource. When people pin something as a resource, it removes the connection you feel. When water becomes a resource, it’s no longer alive.” Kirby works with an established network of growers around the country to sustain the sovereignty of Indigenous food, while supporting and protecting community through nutrition. For MDW, Kirby-Shoote presents a short recipe book that teaches us how to prepare some Indigenous meals. As the final part of this Michigan collaboration, they bring a renewed sense of awareness around the life that exists in the food that we eat, which ultimately extends to the water that we drink, the air we breathe, the fabric of the clothes we wear, and so on. Each of these contributors' work reframes and helps us get through challenging circumstances and experiences, encouraging us to reconnect to our bodies, our feelings, and our surroundings, all to better comprehend the holistic nature of what it means to be alive. 

In April of 2020, I founded Runner Magazine shortly after returning from my three-year stay in Geneva, Switzerland. I was encouraged by friends and colleagues in Europe to start a publication for the city of Detroit, in order to highlight contemporary culture here. Because of my experience as one of the directors of Detroit-based exhibition project North End Studios from 2009-2014, I had already had experience collaborating with many Detroit-based locals, which gave me the confidence to begin Runner Magazine as a project to further investigate creative endeavors in the city. Since its start, Runner has published work and ideas by artists, thinkers, and cultural producers, in order to prompt active discourse, expand the reach of locals, and highlight their voice in local, national, and international conversations. I am proud to say that since 2020, the magazine has featured the work of over 50 contributors, publishing digital content on a weekly basis, as well as an in-print collection once a year. The opportunity to participate as an editorial partner for the MDW Fair Atlas has encouraged me to investigate the work of people who live outside of Detroit City proper, further expanding the magazine's collaborative reach.