Noon
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Date
2023
Authors
Center for Art Research, University of Oregon
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Abstract
Noon may be the least romanticized phase of a day. Not a beginning or an end, but a quiet tipping point. The lighting does not swoon as dawn and dusk, the energy does not pulse. But one can move without the deep shadows of other times — a body alone without the complications of its drawn shell. This time for our world may be noon. Soft noon, lower case, not to slide into the hard High Noon of Western pastiche. We find ourselves just past history-making periods for racial justice, social networks, and women’s rights. After such upheaval, these spaces are changed but not by any means resolved. Restitution has hardly begun. Sickness lingers. Losses of ground around every corner. Wars draw on with faltering attention. There is a sense still of the day ahead, but not many markers for what it will bring. Aren’t we close enough to dusk for urgency? Our project, of commissioning and gathering art writing into bound books, holds evidence of this epoch. Writers are still hit by COVID, again and again. People are torn: their attentions, families, lives of joining adjunct work with writing work with editing work, curating. They are tired from pressing very hard through the past two years, with less time even in the face of days that are far more domestic. To return to the image of the body alone without shadow: at this noon, we are more able to see each other as we are. The writing of the hour has less arch, less bass, but more authenticity, be it a look back at an artist-run space of decades ago or a futuristic journey. These writers are working confidently, with their voices and their propositions clear.
Description
84 pages
Keywords
art, body, racial justice, social networks, women's rights, visual art