It’s hard to reflect on the past year without feeling like we’ve entered a fictional tale. And yet here we are: not only has COVID-19 taken root around the world, but wildfires have raged across the Arctic Circle, Brazil, Australia, and the western United States; people have risen up to stand against racial injustice, and it feels as though we're witnessing only the beginning of a deep fracturing of this civilization. We do not yet know the changes that will come to light locally and globally.

Volume II of our print edition speaks to the multiple crises and opportunities unfolding around us: plague, extinctions, and loneliness grip us ever tighter even as they affirm our connection with the living world. Across 400 pages—and through essays, photography, adapted multimedia, poems, and original artwork—this collection considers the stories that we want to seed in these mythological times. Contributors include Pulitzer prize winners and finalists Forrest Gander, Richard Powers, Elizabeth Rush, David Haskell, and Linda Hogan; acclaimed writers, poets, and artists Robert Macfarlane, Camille T. Dungy, Jake Skeets, Brenda Hillman, Katie Holten, Sheila Pree Bright, Paul Kingsnorth, and many others.

Ubikwist Issue 11- Expose Issue-Press Release

Guest Editor: Euzhan Palcy

After 10 issues and a global pandemic that altered the world, we’ve managed to launch a brand new issue – Expose. This latest edition of Ubikwist assembles a wide variety of activists, cultural luminaries, and artists from fashion, film, art and music, chronicling their respective journeys, heartfelt art forms, and 2020 in their own words. Amidst a health crisis, we adhered to mandatory safety precautions in conducting our interviews, capturing the beautiful images found in these pages. We had the pleasure to collaborate with the trailblazer, director, producer Euzhan Palcy as our first guest editor.

The first year of the decade exposed us to a wide variety of events: a country more deeply divided continuous merciless police killings of Black people, Black America’s rally cry for egalitarianism, a tumultuous political climate, and the implications of COVID-19. The conversation is shifting and we feel a sense of responsibility and obligation to not only contribute to the dialogue but initiate a deeper analysis of it. The fascinating paradox of art lies in its ability to alert our moral conscience while serving as a medium of escapism. Expose perfectly embodies that.

Professor Angela Davis and Kendrick Sampson lead the dialogue on civil disobedience, the new America, and what’s next. Talent giants Euzhan Palcy, Ruth Carter, Andrew Dosunmu open up about how they overcame obstacles along the way. Atlanta-based artist Codi Maddox is unfiltered in her disdain for gentrification and the systemic racism that is sweeping our big cities. Fashion’s newest it-girl Angeer Amol shares how TikTok landed her on the glossy pages of fashion. Other prominent features include Art Comes First, Assa Traoré, Baroness Valerie Amos, Gianni Lee, Mathieu Bitton, Mounia Orosemane, Danny Lyon, and Sean Waltrous. Rainbow Blonde Records, an independent label by artists, for artists is compelling in their unwavering belief in why art comes first. What makes this version of Ubikwist a particularly special one is how we’ve combined a broad range of ideas and works into a powerful message – that our experiences matter.

With every issue, we strive to capture the cultural climate of what’s relevant and necessary. Expose highlights 2020 in a unique way that intertwines dynamic art forms, triumphs, truth, and the profound personal stories of people. To produce this issue has been very challenging work, and we hope you are inspired by the diverse representations, collaborations, and activism as we look into the new year.

Borshch – Issue 6

coming home

Lately, everything’s been weird. The feeling of vulnerability, fragmentation of time, space and memory, lack of solid ground. Many of us went back to the old ways of listening to music — glued to the speakers in your room. Is it daytime, or is it dark already? Remember your room was your whole universe? Feels like it’s time to return to where you started, to come back home. Remember what mattered to you before you grew up. Were you naive and unlearned? Or did you know yourself better before someone told you how to think of yourself and what to want and what to call for?

In our conversations, Lanark Artefax, Lyra Pramuk, Nazar, Hiro Kone, Bill Kouligas, Amnesia Scanner, Farwarmth, Helena Hauff and Racine review pieces and bits of their memories, values, and intentions with creating music. When you return to where you started and remember the days when the world was big, and you were small, and nothing was impossible, you start to play again. You free and protect your inner child. You are at home.