family dinner: an introductionto 3rd language 3rd Language started from a place of gentle idealism: that queer artists could come together to discuss the issues of our time in a space that was simultaneously nurturing and critical, non-hierarchical and structured. As we have evolved and developed, we have gained a clearer picture of our posi-tion within the realm of queer art. We consider it an important part of our mission to feature artists from outside of our collective who we feel are creat-ing relevant work. However, as we have come into our fourth year of existence, with so many of our members reaching important milestones in their lives, we believe it is an important time to step back and feature our own work. We are not just curators and organizers—each one of us has a breathing, vital practice that is the lifeblood of our commitment to 3rd Language. Within the pages of this publication is a collection of work that allows the reader to get to know each collective member more inti-mately, such as the stunningly gentle and observant photographs Amina Ross took in her grandmothers house, the nostalgic dreamscapes captured in film stills by Joel Mercedes and Emily Schulert’s beaded curtain sculpture that invites us to examine the cultural space of a young girl. As a collective our practices are varied, but the intermingling of the

deeply personal—within the context of wider meaning making created by culture—is what connects these works. It is important to thank long time supporters of 3rd Language who have shared our vision with us as we have grown, and to those just discovering us, we hope that this is a good intro-duction to who we are. —Allie Shyer.

In this publication is work by Allie Shyer, Amina Ross, Ashley McClenon, Camille Laut, Emily Schulert, Joel Mercedes, Molly Berkson, and Nic Kay.

Cover design by Emily Schulert, layout and design by Molly Berkson.

allie shyerMuch of my work is about the process of physical transformation of the self that leads to a new understanding of the body. My understanding of my physical self and my relation to it has been shaped by early and ongoing experiences of illness. In many ways it is difficult for the conscious mind to come to terms with the mysterious functioning of the physical body, and this gives our imagination the space to create metaphors and myths of the self. I desire to understand this met-aphorical relation to the physical self

as it translates to the queer body the desiring body, specifically to my queer desiring body.  Through my poetry I aspire to attain a multiplicity of trans-formations and myths of the self in an attempt to construct my own body, my own history, my own myth. I need myths to create a space in my body that is intelligible and innate beyond the answers which science can give me, I am granting myself permission to mythologize and misinterpret my own body as a means of liberation.

How to Not Die

Thinking of ways not to die is not necessarily a way to live—this implies that life and death are not opposites or more my thoughts of death are inextricable from my ownaliveness.

On the winter beach you gave me concrete and said it was a rock,we were wearing thin layers of denim—you may as well not have given me anything.Now I brush my teeth threetimes a day which is more than the dentist recommended twice and you are still concretemasquerading as a rock.

Being in love is a way to stay alive according to popular lore.Surviving is different thenstaying alive but they bothrequire gumption.You told me you could haveseen yourself collecting rocks as a child;I told you to invent your own autobiographybut still all the facts would bemissing,and there is a tangible differencebetween concrete and rocks although one is indelible from the other and all the small rocks in concrete are still rocks.If you adore me then you do not love me but concrete is made of rocks.

 

St. Agnes

I dreamed I saw St. Agnes She lay me down in a field.

I dreamed I saw saint Agnes— She told me to lay still, I lay still as a corpse She took off my shoes.

I dreamed I saw St. AgnesI lay down still as a corpse She traced my body in flowers—a chalk outline.

I dreamed I saw St. Agnes In her right hand was a bouquet made from the eyes of rapists.She lay me down in a field with her left hand she took off my shoes.

I dreamed I saw St. Agnes In her right hand was a bouquetmade from the eyes of rapists.With her left hand she took off my shoes, And she told me to lay still.She traced traced my body in flowers—a chalk outline.She whispered “close your eyes.”

St. Agnes

Excerpts from A Rose for Ana

amina ross Amina Ross is a Chicago-based transdisciplinary artist and organizer. Amina is committed to seduction, playing with the tropes of contem-porary hip hop music videos and the consumable black feminine body. By using visual abstraction of the femi-nized form, Amina creates palatable tensions of repulsion and seduction. The conceptions of black visuality and the sexualized image are combined through a blending of image, video, performance, curatorial and instal-lation work. Through Amina’s work with 3rd Language queer art collective

they have received the Propeller Fund Grant administered by Gallery 400 & Three Walls, funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Davis Foundation’s Projects For Peace award. Amina has participated in panels and taught workshops at numerous venues includ-ing the Black Artist Retreat, College Art Association Conference, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Allied Media Conference. She is currently a teaching artist at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center.

Excerpt from A Rose for Ana

ashley mcclenon My work includes sound pieces, video & written essays and prose poetry that implement field and voice recordings, animation, found material and fragmented storytelling. With a great interest in science, history, race, gender politics and post trauma rec-lamation, research about the physical and psychological self within us, the physical world and larger space around are essential cohesions with recorded autobiographical accounts, fiction and poetry. Rhythmic structures are ma-nipulated from everyday and obscure environments, from the grocery store

to the Houston Space station. Within these highlighted tensions there is space left for humor, invented worlds and the blurred lines between fact and fiction. Originally from the Riggs park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Ashley now lives in Chicago, where she enjoys having long distrance conversations with her grandma and writes and creates amongst her own challenging, joyous and beautiful and deranged and absurd navigation through life as a Black queer woman.

giving dark color to the structure or across the space separating

35 miles west of the bog

Quagmires helpful

in finding a believable place like under burrows where there are sound pieces

with the voice of apathy

like I am 13 again

and I see Bill’s ghost

teaching me how

to use squidfor bait.

Broken acne and delayed.

Somebody brought mea green electric guitar

from the catalogue book.

Tone effective

and moredistance for thinking

inside of the resonating parts.

A bit more background

like affection made into

fluid texts.

My grandpa almost died and nobody knew why.

Light articulations when he learned how to stop the stutters.

A negation of space or extended time choreographed into a landscapethat I plan tovisit.

Maybe I’ll seesomebody else’s face there paying attentionto the small things.

Excerpts from A Rose for Ana by Amina Ross

in between a paragon where no body is perfect by Ashley McClenon

Excerpt from Il Faudra Combler La Distance by Camille Laut

Lil blk research by NIC Kay

camille laut My work appeals to the physical and emotional distance created by the decaying urban and mainstream web spaces. These ideas are strongly tied to a commentary on the privileges and exclusions produced by the normative social and gender structures of our capitalistic society. I believe now is the time to pursue a political time-based media practice. The U.S. urban landscape and its industrial horizon have been the subject of many artistic works. However I desire to explore the poli-tics of interpretation and translation of the new urban layout: how it allowed greater misunderstandings, and wider gaps between people while letting the massive institutions of consumer-ism, to spy and assure the patterns of incarceration. In experimental forms, by investi-

gating editing as time-based collag-es and with GIFs and 3D animated models; or writing scenarios, and directing non-professional actors, I want to pursue an expansive cinematic experience. I previously approached stranger encounters through canvass-ing, gratifying the dissatisfaction of will, want and desire; while the lining up of Google images, intended to re-mind the vastness and limits of its own potential. Most recently, the enclosure forced upon youth of color, victims of patterns of re-incarceration created by the American prison system, and dic-tated by the overall strings of suprem- acist mode(s) of consumption has been the core of my work. Camille Laut is a French visual art-ist and aspiring filmmaker graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Excerpts from Il Faudra Combler La Distance . Il Faudra Combler La Distance is an 11 minute video piece combining 3D, 2.5D animation and real footage. The work explores distance in the Chicagoan landscape, a physical distance establishing an emotional one.

emily schulert My current work explores the aes-thetics, content and identity building of American teen and tween girl culture. This work celebrates youth -ful sexuality as a powerful thing exist-ing outside of capitalism, in a fantasy utopia. This location rejects consumer-ism’s habit of exploiting teen girl emotions like obsession, sexuality or desire in order to turn profits. I use plastic beads, acrylic yarn, sequins, sculpy, paper maché, gel-pens, glitter and girls magazines. These “amateur” or “young girl” materials are reclaimed in a fine art context that would typi-cally reject their connotations, escaping the consumer market of their intend-ed use. My work evokes a feminine, humorous perspective. This perspective utilizes cuteness and girliness to pro-test conceptions of young femininity and sexuality, as shown in my nude

dancing figure animations. These girls seem to revel in being watched, com-fortable and playful in their nudity. Recently I have been creating sculp-tural props that would be present in the bedroom space of a young girl who uses consumer objects and popular American culture to practice identity forming. With a beaded curtain, I play with the self-consciousness of being watched that is present in the lives of young females. I construct spaces that deflect and attract gaze, revel in the self, and elevate gendered and low-craft materials. Emily is a New Englander cur-rently based in Chicago with a BFA with emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies from S.A.I.C. She is an in-terdisciplinary artist also interested in self-publishing, community organiz-ing, and writing.

Dancing girl

Tuo Peek is a beaded sculpture of a curtain. The cur-tain places the viewer within a bedroom, as the words of “Keep Out” are flipped, locating the viewer inside the room looking out through the curtain. The curtain is made of pink plastic beads and resembles young girl’s

bedroom bead-cur-tains. The character of the young girl associ-ated with this object is important, as it rep-resents some-one who is just start-ing to play with identity formation and con-struction. She uses the bedroom because it is a private space she can claim

ownership of. It is a stage for setting up this play and practice of identity. The curtain is also a bit futile. The beads don’t actually succeed as a barrier, and the space beyond it is only partially obscured.

joel mercedes Through the employment of sound, video, text, raw materials and collage, Mercedes’s work aims to locate the nectar of saudade (writer Manuel de Melo defines saudade as a “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy”). Saudade is mostly used in describing a person or group’s deep longing for a homeland that they can no longer access. In constructing sonic emotive landscapes, video es- says and ephemeral sculptures, Mer-cedes’s work functions as a measure-ment of distance, that slowly unpacks metaphors in milk beverages and cake frostings.

In Bizcocho (cake) an excerpt of an analog home video shot in mostly fish eye lens, displays a homemade Mickey and Minnie Mouse theme Birthday party (given to my sister from before I could barely speak). This footage is then overlayed with water from a fish tank as a preservative, as well as, scored with edits of bird sounds, a humpback whale’s song and digital instruments.

Joel A. Mercedes is a Pájaro Afro-descendiente originally from The Bronx NYC, currently situated in Chicago.

Sister, sister

joel mercedes

Stills from Bizcocho. Within the Dominican Republic a lot of food and desserts have these unusual, metaphoric and onomatopoeic names. Names given to milk beverages like Morir Soñando which translates to die dreaming. Or Suspiro which is the meringue cake frosting primarily used in Dominican Birthday cakes, translating to sigh.

The practice of undoing

detail of Permeable

molly berkson My work explores storytelling—and reclaiming and re-imagining stories—as a practice of resistance. By exam-ining alternative and herbal healing modalities as rebellious traditions, my work explores healing, remembering, and useful anger. I investigate stories of rebellion and plant mythologies through a multi-layered practice, employing print, paper and book as well as underground media and craft-based practices. I break down complex and personal histories into simple,

symbolic gestures that have the poten-tial to speak to more pervasive issues. By both utilizing and transforming the histories within my materials, I aim to make ties between present and past manifestations of oppression and opposition. Molly Berkson is a multi-dis-ciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. She recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Build me up

nic kayNIC Kay is an transdisciplinary artist whose work straddles performance, video, installation, collage and print- making. Obsessed with the act and process of moving, the change of place, position, and the clarity/ meaning gleaned from said activ-ity, NIC’s current projects explore movement as a place of reclamation of the body, history and identity. Born and raised in The Bronx, New York, NIC graduated from Professional Performing Artist School in 2007 and was a Hemispheric Institute EMERGENYC Fellow in 2009. Now residing in Chicago, they are a founding member of 3rd Language,

queer arts collective. They gave the 2013 Keynote Speech at The Trans, Gender Non Conforming, Freedom Picnic and Rally in Chicago, and they have taught for About Face Theatre, Woman Made Gallery, Free Street Theater and Broadway Youth Center. In 2014, they were awarded the Chances Dances - Marc Aguhar Memorial Grant. They have shown work, spoken on panels and host-ed workshops at numerous venues throughout New York City and Chicago. They are currently in resi-dence at Links Hall and will attend the ACRE residency this Summer.

Lil blk research

Prisoner of hope sketch

thank you for reading 3rd Language would like to thank everyone who has given us support throughout the years that we have been a collective. Since 2012, we have put out several publications featuring work by queer artists, hosted a variety of events, and curated exhibitions. Additionally, we run a small zine dis-tro in which queer artists and zinesters of all kinds can consign their work. We are immeasurably grateful for the incredible art and awesome people

that our work with 3rd Language has connected us to. If you are interested in learning more about 3rd Language, we en-courage you to visit our website at 3rdlanguage.com or send us an email at 3rdlanguage@gmail.com. Our past artist publications as well as zines from our distro can be purchased on our etsy page, which can also be found through our website.