Through June 30, Bitter Pill Press, a nascent, experimental press for zines, is accepting submissions for Volume 1 of Apple a Day – a zine about disability, mental illness, and complicated relationships with food. The press was created by local multimedia sculptor, photographer, and zinester Lee Niemi, who recently graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Studio Art.
Apple a Day seeks to serve as a platform for how people’s relationships with food are impacted by disability, neurodivergence, health complications, and other factors that tend to be stigmatized or excluded from mainstream food-related content and dialogues.
“I started working on this zine because I deal with a lot of different food-related health issues,” wrote Niemi on his website. “Although it’s an experience many of my peers relate to, I haven’t been able to find many resources that really made sense to me as a trans + ND [neurodivergent] person, so hopefully, this can be that!”
They are looking for contributors to provide art, writing, recipes, resources, and anything that could be helpful to others who might be struggling with these issues. Writing submissions must be under 2,000 words and can include poems, essays, letters, short stories, interviews, product reviews, and/or advice. Art submissions can include comics, illustrations, photography, etc., and must also come with an artist statement under 250 words.
The submission form can be found here. All contributors will receive a free copy of the zine – which is tentatively planned for a release date in August – and are welcome to send multiple submissions.
Exploring Care, Stewardship, and Responsibility Through Live Music Performance: On Friday, June 24 at 8:00 p.m., Bend-based interdisciplinary artist and activist MOsley WOtta – a.k.a. Jason Graham – will be bringing the live release of his new album, “IT’s NOT THE YEAR IT’s YOU”, to Corvallis at the Whiteside Theatre.
Unlike more conventional music shows, Graham’s multimedia performance will be a combination of hip-hop, spoken word, digital animation, and live video production that invites the audience to participate in engaging with the album’s themes of “radically inclusive care” – encompassing ecological stewardship, interpersonal responsibility to one another, and community care that is actively inclusive and transformative.
“The kind of care I’m talking about is basically less sword and shield and more needle and thread,” said Graham. “Radically inclusive care is revolutionary – or at least countercultural – because it literally includes all of us, which is not a popular idea… This kind of care doesn’t wait on policy or religion or revenue. It shows up in service to the needs that are apparent.”
Attendees will be provided space after the performance to explore these topics together.
“It’s participating in making space for folks to be in community and conversation, utilizing the show itself rather than each other as a centerpiece for critique and discussion,” said Graham.
Tickets for the show can be purchased at the door for $20 or in advance for $15 through the Whiteside Theatre’s website.
Local Showtimes for Crucial Documentary: The Darkside Cinema is currently showing Cane Fire, a documentary that takes a critical look at the American economic and cultural forces that not only entrench popular images of Hawai’i as a paradisal destination for predominantly white tourists, but also contribute to the colonial dispossession, exploitation, exoticization, and erasure of Native Hawaiians.
Through a diverse assemblage of sources, the documentary uplifts the perspectives and frustrations of Natives and working-class locals burdened by the ongoing legacies of the tourism, real estate, and plantation industries – as well as stereotypical depictions in American films and pop culture – while also highlighting activist groups currently working to reclaim sacred ancestral lands and cultural practices.
“The Hawaiian Island of Kauaʻi is seen as a paradise of leisure and pristine natural beauty, but these escapist fantasies obscure the colonial displacement, hyper-exploitation of workers, and destructive environmental extraction that have actually shaped life on the island for the last 250 years,” reads the film’s summary. “Cane Fire critically examines the island’s history – and the various strategies by which Hollywood has represented it – through four generations of director Anthony Banua-Simon’s family, who first immigrated to Kauaʻi from the Philippines to work on the sugar plantations.”
Showtimes for the film can be found on the Darkside Cinema’s website.
TEK Summit Recordings Now Accessible: If you missed the 2022 National Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Summit that was hosted by Oregon State University’s TEK Club last month, you can now access the recordings for most sessions through the club’s YouTube channel.
Taking a fundamentally intersectional approach to urgent issues of environmental conservation and restoration, the summit includes a vast array of Indigenous keynote speakers whose talks highlight the imperativeness of centering Indigenous ancestral knowledge, histories, value systems, and worldviews to address the climate crisis; supporting Indigenous-led movements for land and cultural reclamation, sovereignty, and liberation; and recognizing colonization as a systemic framework that continues to impact Indigenous peoples and communities worldwide.
For a deeper understanding of more local Indigenous histories and how they’re inseparable from ensuring the recovery and future viability of local ecosystems, viewers can watch OSU professor David Lewis’ (Kalapuya, Chinook, Santiam, Takelma) talk, “Changing the Valley and Removing the Tribes”, which addresses the detrimental environmental changes that have been made to the Willamette Valley through the strategic dispossession, genocide, and forced removal of Kalapuyans by European settlers. Dr. Lewis argues that for current valley restoration projects to successfully bring about necessary changes, they need to be led by active historical studies of the valley’s traditional environments that were disrupted by colonization, confrontations with settler-colonial notions of human relationships to and valuations of land, and the knowledge and stewardship of its original Tribal caretakers.
A Growing Harm Reduction Project: For a little over three months, a small group of community members have been running a mutual aid project known as Corvallis House Show Harm Reduction, which has been providing harm reduction services to house shows and other events of Corvallis’ underground DIY music scene.
The main goal of the group is to help cultivate a safe space at as many local shows as possible through supply distribution, overdose prevention and response, pointing people towards helpful resources, and other services. Supplies, which attendees can freely take, include earplugs, contraceptives and safer sex products, Narcan, fentanyl test strips, menstrual care/hygiene products, and more.
The group currently runs on donations from bands, venues, and community members for assistance with supply acquisition. They can be contacted for donations, event booking, safety questions, volunteering, etc., by sending them a direct message through their Instagram page. Additionally, if event organizers would like to obtain supplies for an event/show that the group would not be able to attend, they are encouraged to send a message ahead of time.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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