A collage of a woman in summer clothes beside one in winter clothes; three authoritative-looking women; a girl against a night sky; a woman with her eyes closed; a colorful pattern of sacred geometry; a Chinese water color of birds; a sleeping woman; a woman wearing a poncho; a woman holding a gun.

Echoes of our ancestors,
Heard across time and space,
We find the key to our future
As we look into the past.

Calling all Andean and Asian American folks! AltSalt is creating two multidisciplinary collections of work — and we want you to be a part of it.

Who: Zinesters, writers, artists, designers, game developers, videographers, musicians, and more who identify as Andean or Asian American.

What: Team up or work solo to submit a publication based on the following prompt: “Envision a future in which your culture, history, and values have guided the world to an alternative reality — and harnessing that energy, create a piece to resonate with our times.”

When: Work can begin as soon as you read this message. We’ll hold a workshop weekend July 17-18th (schedule available here) to spend time together and share progress (the workshop weekend is over!), with a final submission deadline of Sunday, August 15th. The date will come fast — let’s get started!

If you’d like to get involved, please…

Join our Discord server (optional, highly encouraged).

We also welcome folks doing cross-community collaborations. Want to team up and combine Andean and Asian cultural influences? Do it! We’ll have special sections for cross-community projects in both collections.

Brainstorm ideas, form teams if applicable, begin work



Saturday, July 17th — Sunday, July 18th

Workshop weekend to connect and share progress (full schedule available here)

 

Sunday, July 18th — Sunday, August 15th

Continue working on and submit final projects



Our Broader Vision — Our purpose is to envision and create an alternative world through our collective creativity. To grow in community, we must become curious on how we can not only grow as one, but with the multitudes we intersect with. We hope that this can be the first of many initiatives to create solidarity across communities and share knowledge. Let’s transcend artificial boundaries; let’s connect.

Why these two communities? They’re the ones us, the organizers, are most familiar with and the ones that we belong to. We hope to offer a similar space for other communities on AltSalt in the future!

Open To All Creatives — No matter where you are in the creative process, whether your work is free or commercial, you can get involved:

Have you already created work and want to list it in the collections?



Have you started working on creative projects but haven’t had the capacity to finish them?



New to zine-making or creative publications? 

You are welcome to participate! Just fill out the participation form, then join our community of creatives on Discord for inspiration, collaborators, or guidance, and get involved with our upcoming events.

The Andean collection aims to highlight creative and artistic works in diverse mediums/publication styles from self-identified Andean creators. We utilize the term ‘Andean’ to embrace and honor our shared history before colonization, although we recognize that today many of us are accustomed to identifying by nationality (such as Peruvian or Peruvian-American). We appreciate the rich complexity of identities represented in our community and welcome anyone who has ancestral or social ties to the Andes (whether Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, etc), and its diasporas, to participate. Andean identity is also intersectional and extends beyond an Indigenous, Spanish, mestizaje, or Latinx/Latine dichotomy; therefore, we wish to be inclusive of diverse diasporas such as Peruvian Nikkei and Afro-descendiente communities.

This collection is by and for us, our ancestors, and our future generations. Our goal is that it feel both intimately familiar and, at the same time, entirely new because it encompasses diverse perspectives within our shared cultural repertoire, which is so rarely represented in the dominant narrative.

This is an experimental place to explore your individual identity, your creativity, and be a part of our community. We invite you to visit, contribute, and collaborate with us in whatever ways are most inspiring to you.

A S I A N   A M E R I C A N   C O L L E C T I O N

The Asian American collection seeks to explore the many facets of Asian American’s experiences and varied cultural heritages through creative mediums and publications. This collection is for and by Asian Americans, including those whose backgrounds encompass East, Southeast, and South Asian, Pacific Islander, multi-ethnic and diasporic Asian identities.

In defining a collection, the distinctions of who is included in ‘we’ and ‘us’ remains slippery. Within our communities, there are often inequalities of power between groups. Differences within ‘Asian American’ across class, color, gender, sexuality, religion, immigration status, history, and national origin produce asymmetrical and uneven histories, and encounters with state violence. Additionally, calls for community might strategically offer unity yet conflate the differentiated effects of racialization and colonization under one umbrella term. Rather than demand inclusion, our collection offers a space for sharing narratives that speak to different intersections of histories and experiences, within those who identify as Asian American.

This collection seeks to provide a space for identity exploration, community building and a creative well, to come to nourish ourselves, refill our cup and continue to explore without boundaries, to stretch the limits of our imaginations — using our creative practice to puzzle through the times we’re in together towards a future of collective liberation.

To envision an alternative world.
Because representation matters.
Sharing knowledge and consciousness,
Let’s create the future.




From left by row: Artwork by Jessica Tin, Jamie San Andres of Rimay Raiz, Layqa Nuna Yawar, Lia Coleman, Felix Kar-wah Fok courtesy of Shirley Man-Kin Leung, Sandy Enriquez, Adina Farinango, and Angela DelosReyes. Background pattern by Artemio Morales with gratitude  to the teachings of Zadir Milla Euribe. Music by Jonathan Morales. 

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

Everyone

Andes

Asian American

A few minutes

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 1

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 2

Free

Resonate

The Andean diaspora* community in the United States is confronted with discrimination and a sense of dual exclusion from both Latinx and white US heritages due to histories of colonialism and imperialism that continue to impose Western epistemologies across time and borders. Rima(y) Raíz, an Andean diaspora collective based in NYC, NJ, IL and CA, confronts these issues by documenting and sharing inter-generational oral hxstories of the Andean diaspora in efforts to reclaim a sense of identity, alter dominant narratives about their communities, preserve experiences and knowledge of their elders for the next generation, and create a sense of solidarity. &nbsp;We are inspired by Andean notions of time, space, and community such as pachakutik and the ayllu and we choose oral hxstory as a medium due to its inter-disciplinary, borderless nature. Oral hxstory also acts as a way to decolonize the production of knowledge. The main components of the project are (1) interview three generations across the US-Andean diaspora, including community leaders (2) archive the oral histories in a public website, (3) share and discuss the stories via a podcast, zine, public space installations, and virtual Raymi or parties, and (4) organize gatherings of Andean organizations and leaders to celebrate and unite cultural advocacy efforts.Coloniality may have traversed time and space, but so has our resistance.*The Andean diasporic community includes people with South American heritage from Andean countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Hence, Rimay Raiz utilizes the term Andean to refer to this region of South America, as opposed to folks that are strictly from the highlands. We remain inclusive of the many nationalities in the Andean region, and recognize that people that may identify with diverse backgrounds, such as that of the coast and the Amazon, Black, Indigenous, mestizo, and we welcome all people who identify with our mission and background, whether they are recent immigrants, second generation, or have not connected to their ancestral countries for generations.

I am gardener and composter passionate about equity in the food system. Quinoa scholar and oral history and community archive enthusiast. Runasimita yachapakuq. Member of the Rimay Raiz colectivo.&nbsp;

Ecuadorian-American sociologist, of Huancavilca and Kichwa descent. Bi-coastal, born in Queens, NY and raised in both NY and CA. Musician, community activist, project coordinator at an immigrant and workers rights org, and co-founder of Rimay Raiz.&nbsp;

Imanalla! I'm Sandy, a zinester librarian in sunny southern California. I started making zines as a way to practice and maintain Quechua, my ancestral language and one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages of the Americas. I now feel like I have too many zine ideas and too little time, but I try to make it work!&nbsp;I participate in several Andinx community projects like the annual May Sumak Quichwa Film Showcase and oral history collective Rimay Raíz. I love creating spaces for our community to share our cultures, languages, and experiences in the diaspora.&nbsp;In my spare time, I enjoy reading/watching things in the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror. I also like to weave and garden (especially with, you guessed it, Andean potatoes!).&nbsp;

Envisioning an alternative world

Layqa Nuna Yawar

@layqakuna

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