Valeria Troubina

Aspects of the Soul-Fear

Volodymyr Hill, Kyiv, During Shelling
58 x 47 cm, Ink and gouache on paper, 2022

Fear – we are programmed to feel it, in order to survive. This is an obvious and common sense understanding. On the other hand, fear is also a lived and cumulative experience, and if we look into the eyes of a new-born baby, the first thing we glimpse is probably fear. But what has a baby experienced? A previous death? Or something it already can’t remember? Or what did it encounter while outside corporeal existence? In any case, the experience is undoubtedly transcendental, its trace remaining in the unconscious of every individual being and more broadly that of the collective. Fear goes unnoticed and is intangible under normal conditions; it is a phantom, or a latent horror film that each person creates for himself, if he is not able to keep his mind under control. read more »»

Natacha Nisic

Je n’ai plus peur de rien,

Cette carte m’a été donnée par la navigatrice Dee Caffari, dans le cadre d’une vente pour les associations de sauvetage en mer. Le jour de cette publication quarante personnes viennent de périr englouties.

This map was given to me by sailor Dee Caffari, as part of a sale for sea rescue associations. On the day of publication, forty people had just perished.

Kasia Ozga

Carry That Weight

Kasia Ozga, Carry that Weight, Digital Photograph, Pilot Mountain, Surry County, North Carolina, November 2024.

I looked up at this rocky ledge, layers of quartzite extending between me and the sky above and descending straight down into the valley below. The weight of the wall made my head spin, threatening to overpower individual polar-fleece-clad bodies scrambling along a narrow walking path. I could picture the stone crushing everything in its’ wake. Mass deportation.

Twice the population of Sweden. Removed.

Feeling like this rock or Antony Gormley’s Space Station or Richard Serra’s steel could fall on me (but probably won’t).

But the hammer has fallen on others before. It’s falling 6,117 miles away and will fall here again soon enough (after all, I am a woman in a “red” state).

The Cheraw people, also known as the Saraw or Saura, were a Siouan-speaking tribe of Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands that called this mountain “Jomeokee”, meaning “great guide.” On my drive home, I saw a bumper sticker with the words “No one is illegal on stolen land.” I made my husband stop the car so that I could take a picture.

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