Black lines on white background with words 'Rimay Raiz'

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.

About a dozen uncooked dumplings sitting upon a white plate dusted with flower

Rima(y) Raíz is a community collective created by and for the Andean/Andinx1 diaspora community of the United States. Launched in 2018 in New York City and New Jersey, our collective now has members in California and Illinois. We are: <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/jamie_sa">Jamie San Andres</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/claudia.urd">Claudia Urdanivia</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sandycha">Sandy Enriquez</a>, Ben Kruse-Calla, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/layqakuna">Layqa Nuna Yawar</a>, and <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sbarretolastra">Stephanie Barreto-Lastra</a>, among others that come and go.

Rimay Raiz was created given the erasure and racist portrayals of Andean and Andean-descendant communities among both Latinx and white communities in the United States. Thus, our collective seeks to confront this discrimination and sense of dual exclusion by uplifting and sharing the stories and experiencies of our communities on our own terms, as a way of exposing and resisting the insidious ways that colonialism and imperialism continue to impose their binary and Western epistemologies on our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities, across time and across borders. This resistance is also represented in our name, which connects two sides of our cultural heritage by using the Quechua/Kichwa word ‘rimay’ (to speak) and the Spanish word ‘raíz’ (roots). We are speaking from our roots. Quechua/Kichwa is an ancestral Indigenous language of the Andes and remains one of the most widely spoken Native American languages in the Americas today.

Our goal is to (1) interview three generations across the US-Andean diaspora, from youth, adults, and elders, and include community leaders that have been carving spaces for our community for decades, be that cultural or political (2) archive the oral histories in a public website, (3) share and discuss our stories through multimedia, via a podcast, zine, public space installations, and Raymikuna or virtual parties in this pandemic era, and (4) organize gatherings to celebrate and unite Andean cultural advocacy efforts. Through these initiatives, we aim to reclaim a sense of identity, alter dominant narratives about our communities, preserve experiences and knowledge of our elders, and create a sense of solidarity across borders within the Andean diaspora.

Porque las historias nos llaman, las historias nos limpian y sanan, como el agua y neblina bendita de la montaña.

The last three years we have recorded 14 oral histories and published two zines, some of which are featured here.

 

Issue #1: Choclo y Chicha, self titled

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/listing/10/cover-10/Screen_Shot_2021-01-07_at_5.25.08_PM-original-489444.png"/>

In March 2020, Rimay Raiz launched <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/listing/choclo-y-chicha-vol-1/10">Choclo y Chicha</a>, a zine that shares the contributions of the Andinx diaspora through poetry, art, and storytelling. Both choclo and chicha are Quechua words for our ancestral foods of fresh corn and maize drinks, we chose them to reflect our cultural connections and create a space for a uniquely Andean zine. Chicha is also a type of music, Peruvian cumbia, that musicologists and sociologists claim emerged in the Amazon of Peru out of a sentiment of exclusion and otherness by dominant white, criollo elites.

We chose to include zines as part of our core mission because they would allow us to showcase creative, multimedia works from our communities on our own terms, without the need to compromise our vision through mainstream publishing. We also want to acknowledge the diverse ways that our communities express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, some orally, while others visually or through text. We hope to distribute the zines widely and inspire others in our community to value and share their own stories and experiences through this, and other mediums.

Our first zine featured profound stories such as “Camino hacia la Boca del Lobo-Simiatug” by Jimena Vega, powerful poems such as “Mama Negra, Mama Tierra” by Mónica Carrillo Zegarra, and art by colectivo member Layqa Nuna Yawar, Lenny Correa.

Initially, our zine launch was scheduled to be an intimate event with members of the collective and fellow contributors for the zine, with music, food, and dance. Once the pandemic swept the globe, we made the decision to transition to a virtual event that could replicate this celebration while holding space for our community during this immensely difficult time. You can watch our first two Raymikuna, virtual parties on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RimayRaiz" target="_blank">RR page</a> on Facebook.

 

Issue #2: Family Portraits

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/listing/9/cover-9/Screen_Shot_2021-01-07_at_4.33.36_PM-original-483649.png"/>

Our <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/listing/choclo-y-chicha-vol-2/9">second zine</a> focuses on the intersection of stories and memory through family photos. In this section we feature excerpts from the incredible oral history of Analisa Freitas and the beautiful poem by Marisol Silva, “when I make chicha morada and play your huaynos full blast, and I carry a backpack on the 7 train from Queens to Brooklyn brimming with jars of aji panca, aji amarillos, rocotos, I hold onto Ayni when I can’t remember words in any language, I hold onto Ayni, when I remember that who we are as a people is much too strong to ever be forgotten,” she writes.
 
Additionally, inspired by our colectivo member Jamie San Andres’ call to action, we are excited to also introduce a new section to our zine entitled Andean Political Reflections, that speaks to the issues and uprisings the Andean region has experienced in the last two years. It is impossible to do cultural work without addressing the political.

We invite you to join our Choclo y Chicha Zine Vol. 2 Raymikuna, virtual zine parties, this Sunday, January 10th from 4-6pm, to hear from contributors of the Family Portraits section, and Sunday February, 28th from 4-6pm, to hear from contributors of the Andean Political Reflection section.

 

Conclusion

To learn more about our work and stay in touch, please follow us @RimayRaiz on <a href="https://instagram.com/rimayraiz/" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://facebook.com/rimayraiz">Facebook</a>. We will also be launching our website in Summer 2021 which will feature our oral history archive, zines, and other projects. If you would like to get in touch about potential collaborations or have questions, reach out to us at <a href="mailto:rimayraiz@gmail.com">rimayraiz@gmail.com</a>. We would love to hear from you.

Until then, tupananchiskama!

 

<hr/>

 

1&nbsp;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, and mestizo. 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.

Rima(y) Raíz is a community collective created by and for the Andean/Andinx diaspora community of the United States.

Choclo y Chicha: a zine for (and from) the Andean Diaspora

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

A short story about legacy, revolution, and obliquely, terraforming Mars. Also contains a dumpling recipe.

The morning of the ritual, my fathers assured me there was no need to be nervous. One reminded me I would have all the time I needed. The other said nothing, only tugged gently on my earlobe, to remind me of where I bit my grandmother the first time I met her and that we still laughed about it at family gatherings.

In truth, my nai nai, my grandmother, was a jovial woman who alleviated her rare bad moods with marathon cooking sessions that earned her a legendary status within the neighborhood. She promised me a simple conversation, but I knew it was more, this beginning of my journey into adulthood, the first time I would be listening to a story as its caretaker rather than its recipient.

The whole way to her home, I imagined what it would be like: solemn, I thought, precise, for certain. By the time I arrived on the third floor of a building set into the wall of the lava tube, I thought anyone might be able tell that I was not fit to begin. I hovered outside the curtain in the open doorway until a voice called out from within.

“Suying, no need to loiter. Come in, haizi.” I smiled, both charmed and worried that she would see me as a child no matter how old I grew.

I took a deep breath to brace myself, straightened out of the slouch the aunties in my building always hollered about and ducked through the curtain. I thought there might be incense, perhaps offerings to the ancestors and worried about the appropriateness of my simple smock. I even brought a notebook, real paper and a pen to help the words lodge within my mind. So I was startled to see my grandmother in the kitchen with an array of ingredients on the stone top island counter.

I paused in the doorframe, but my grandma smiled at me, corners of her eyes wrinkling up. She gestured for me to come to the counter and took the notebook from my hand. “Take notes another time. This time, you need only to listen.”

“I thought I was learning a story,” I said, hesitant, surveying the ingredients. A bowl of flour, already shifted, small dishes of spices, apportioned out, and a bundle of green onions, picked fresh from the hydroponic garden shared by the building. The large head of napa cabbage and a package of ground bean-based meat substitute made it clear that my grandmother was preparing to make our traditional family dumplings.

“I am going to tell you a story and I will teach you a skill,” my grandmother said as she directed me to the sink. She said nothing else until I cleaned my hands, dried them upon a dish towel she embroidered with a dancing fish, and rolled my sleeves above my elbows. When we stood over the ingredients, my fear of having to learn multiple things obvious by the way my eyebrows pulled together, she said, “This story will be yours to keep and preserve. One day, you will choose how to pass it on. Today, we do things this way.”

First, we mixed the dough, one part water to four parts flour. I put my hands into a heavy stone bowl and pressed the clumps of flour into each other, rolling and kneading to pick up the dusting of powder that remained. As I worked, beads of sweat building on my temple and an honest ache building up in strange parts of my arm, unused muscles stretching and pulling from the strain, my grandmother began to tell her story.

You already know that your three times great grandparent Zhou Daitan participated in the revolutionary struggles. I will not speak about that today. Instead, I will tell you of their life before the revolution, what made them the sort of person willing to stand arm in arm with their neighbors, the world that shaped them and that they shaped in turn. And though I did not know your three times great grandparent, this story comes to me from their daughter, to her daughter, and down to me. Through them, I bestow it upon you.

Once I punched the dough into a smooth ball, my grandmother declared the task done and we set it aside to rest. Then, I added soy sauce, salt, white pepper, as well as an egg to the meat substitute. With rhythmic, circular motions, I folded these ingredients together.

Daitan grew up on earth, on a patch of sparse and harsh land set aside for refugees. They were a rambunctious child, creative in inventing games and new ways to attract trouble. Though they received the mandatory years of education, provided by the international government for all refugee children, they were not an attentive student. Still, they read widely and thought freely, a difficult thing to do. And someone must have seen potential in that for they received a scholarship to university, sponsored by companies eager to showcase their generosity. They studied as widely as they read and meandered out of university two years too late with a degree in food science. Without sufficient social capital to obtain a posting in a lab, they returned to and worked in the packaging factory next to the camp where they grew tall and strong.

Under my grandmother’s watchful eye, I minced a handful of wood ear mushrooms, the slivers sticking to my hands, as well as a few shitake mushrooms, their unami infused scent filling my nostrils. These I deposited into the marinating meat substitute along with a dollop of sesame oil. Again, I accepted the wooden chopsticks my grandmother passed to me and mixed to integrate the dark pieces of seasoning.

Daitan’s time in university turned them quiet and contemplative. But working in the factory alongside childhood friends and strangers turned into family by proximity and shared struggle, they found their voice again. That voice spoke against exploitation and it wasn’t long before they drew the ire of those who hoped a heavy hand could crush dissent before it bloomed in full.

Then I went back to the bamboo chopping board, passed down through the generations, lovingly cared for by each. I recalled running my hands across the surface as a toddler, feeling the marks left it in by use, some sanded down or covered by newer marks over the years, and wondering when I’d get a chance to use it. Now that I was older, I didn’t have quite the same fascination with chopping vegetables. Still, I found the crunch and thunk of the knife through the green onions and the napa cabbage satisfying. I thought I’d have trouble listening and avoiding injury, but the rhythmic motion proved no distraction.

And so it was that Daitan found themselves cast out, blacklisted, unable to obtain even the meanest of jobs. Their fellow refugees knew what it was to be forced to the margins of society and offered them sustenance. For a time, Daitan was able to do good work within the camp, using what they learned in the factory to rebuild the hastily raised residences, repair the solar still that produced water. These odd jobs also allowed them to distribute the revolutionary literature published by friends within the factory. And when the operation was discovered, Daitan volunteered to take the fall.

The green onions went on top of the mixture and the cabbage went in a separate dish with salt to pull out water. While both rested, my grandmother upended the ball of dough onto a dusting of flour and put me to work pushing it across the counter until it tightened. With one smooth motion, she twisted the dough in half and began to roll her half out, until it resembled a snake.

As there were few places to exile someone who was already a refugee, Daitan found themselves on a one-way trip to the stars. They were still terraforming the planet then and Daitan, like many who grew up in the camps, found it difficult to breathe on the red planet. Even so, they tended to the legume fields for though they did not choose to come to Mars, they were forced to work off the cost of the fuel.

Slowly, so I could copy each step, my grandmother lifted the length of dough and pinched the top of it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. With her left, she twisted off pieces of dough. Mine were nowhere near as uniform, some small, some large, most torn off with great force rather than the deft and precise motions I failed to copy. When I grimaced at my collection of however, my grandmother only reached out to wipe a bit of flour from my chin and continued.

Daitan was hardly the only one who came to the planet unwillingly. Except for the youngest, taken in by a flashy recruitment poster and the promises of an unscrupulous earth-side recruitment center whose manager sated himself on kickbacks, all of their bunkmates fell afoul of one planetary power or another. And all of them dreamed of something different.

In synchronized motions, we crushed each knob of dough flat and tossed them in the flour so they would not stick together. Then I tipped the cabbage into the rest of the filling and mixed one last time, trying to ignore the ache in my arm and flinging a bit of filling onto the table in the process. Without

skipping a beat, my grandmother swiped the filling into a pan and set it atop the induction stove. Almost immediately, it began to sizzle and pop. She snatched it up with a pair of chopsticks, blew on it, and offered it to me. I closed my eyes as I considered the flavor and layered textures, to see if it needed anything else. When I decided it needed a bit more salt, I picked up the shaker, an old porcelain vinegar bottle repurposed and passed down.

During the day cycles, they rode lifts to the surface, where the vast legume fields blanketed the red dirt of the blossoming planet and fantasized about escaping over the horizon. At the end of their shifts, they urged the bovine herds that consumed the legumes into the shelter of the lava tubes and contemplated letting the animals loose. During their night cycle, they lay in their rickety three-layer bunks, six workers to a room, and traded stories or comfort.

My grandmother handed me a rolling pin, not much wider than my finger. She took one of the knobs of dough and brought the edge of it underneath the pin. In practiced motions, the pressed the dough from the outside in, turning the disc after each stroke. I ended up with an oblong shape of uneven thickness that made me wince when I compared it with her thin circle of dough. She took the wrapper from me without comment and began to fix it, gesturing for me to start another.

Life went on thus and though it seemed as if nothing changed as they repeated the same work against their ever-mounting debt, Daitan came to understood that they were building community. People who might have been enemies on earth taught each other their languages. No mode of living seemed all that strange from two meters away. Games and song and dance from different cultures passed back and forth, used to speed the trickle of time. And in these ways, large and small, sedition spread.

We continued rolling and pressing until we piled the wrappers high, dusted flour between each layer. I used chopsticks to position a dollop of filling in the middle of a wrapper. I set the chopsticks down and gathered the wrapper into my palm, watching my grandmother draw the edges together in folds that held the weight of her experience. Perhaps that’s what kept her dumplings closed because mine invariably peeked open at the edges, bits of filling threatening to burst out or the wrapper simply gaping wide.

At the factory, Daitan learned to play a game of make believe and magic. It was fantastical and fanciful and so no one took notice when they began to teach it to their friends. For diversion and escape, yes, but also to pass messages best left unsaid in rooms owned and operated by people who held debt over them like blades. And some things were better conveyed through simulation and practice than through explanation anyway.

My grandmother said that skill would come with time and practice. And I thought that this too, was a lesson she meant to impart. So I kept at it, crimping and folding and often failing, yet in the end, producing a precious few dumplings I would be proud to present to my fathers. Finally, we dropped them into the boiling water atop the stove, easing them into the roiling water one by one so that the hot water did not splash.

So it was that when the revolution began, Daitan knew what to do. They were part of a community once more, indebted to it, embedded within it, reliant upon it. Because what makes a person is not just who they are but what they do, the people who raise them, the society that shapes them, the atmosphere they breathe, the horizons they see. So it was with your three times great grandparent. So it will be with you. That is why we tell these stories, why we ask you to remember them, why we hope that you hold them to your hearts as we did, so you will make different mistakes, and so you will know what was freely given and what was taken to make a better world.

Within the Fold

I was right there with you in your mission statement, about feeling the dual exclusion from both Latinx and U.S. heritages. I've felt that so much growing up as a Peruvian in the United States, and I'm so glad that this organization exists 🙏I resonated so much with Marisol's poem, with the mixture of Spanish and English, and with the connection to your grandfather and thinking about future generations' connection to their heritage.I resonated with Elena's piece, when you spoke about going to Peru and the eagerness to fill a hole made of solitude.I was right there with Analisa in so many parts of her story, riding on the swerving bus with the sheer drop to the ocean, when you met your brother for the first time, and forgetting how to speak in any language.Super appreciate all that the contributors shared during both of your events. Congrats on this publication, looking forward to the next one 🙂

I absolutely love this! This checks so many of my boxes; Social justice, Science fiction, Humanity and food.

<a href="/artemiosans" target="_self">@Artemio Morales</a> thank you so much for your poetry of a mesaage! it's an honor to have pieces of myself living on this online community.

Everyone

United States

Ireland

Bolivia

Peru

Ecuador

Wales

Android

Kindle

Digital Comic

Zine

Poetry

New Media Literature

Drama

Politics

Millennial

Visual Art

Essay

Guide

Experimental

Letter

Sci-Fi

Slice of Life

Perzine

Aymara

Quechua

Andes

Asian American

English

Spanish

A few minutes

Paxsi's Instagram

Exhibition URL

Listen to Analisa Freitas' oral history

Apple App Store

Google Play

Ebook

A cover image with the text "Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide", & a cute character at the summit of a mountain alongside a flag.

Blue text on white background: "These are the things they took from us, They left us bare These are the things they couldn’t"

The title "Cultural Correspondence" along with the illustration of a hands holding uprooted plants and dirt

Portrait of a child with night sky and plants in the background

Poem with pink graphic above and a picture of a mother with a baby.

Text with light blue graphic depicting a sister and brother hugging.

Group of friends peering through a wire fence

Left: a cute blob with a speech bubble saying, "Hi! I'm an artist who wants to use AI in my work!" Right: 4 icons with the text "You'll need: 1) Dataset, 2) Model Code, 3) Training resources, 4) A publishing plan"

A page with the title "dataset". On the left, an illustration of files and papers drifting down from a cloud into a large stack of papers.

A page with the title "Model Code". On the left, an illustration of a stack of blocks, and another block about to be placed on the pile of blocks.

A young person in three different stages of life, in three different outfits

A person playing a guitar opposing a portrait of another person looking at the camera

Latinx

**SHORTLISTED for the New Media Writing Prize 2017** **SHORTLISTED for the Opening Up Digital Fiction People's Choice Award 2017** **FEATURED in the upcoming Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 by ELO** **FEATURED in the Babycastles Art Gallery Wordhack Anthology**◇ ◇ ◇"Above the mirror, small and low, hung a fluorescent bulb whose light shone through my skin..."People we love often fade away. As time goes on, how do we remember our relationships, and what insights does that distance afford us?Featuring an original soundtrack, 22 photo illustrations, and a few innovative surprises, A MODERN GHOST explores a young man's memories of a love that was never realized.A prototype story, it is the first release by Artmayu Studios.

A Modern Ghost

African American

Surviving and Diving is a short book of poetry based on Brian Walker's experiences as an African American professional and creative. The book includes commentary about the 2020 Election, BLM, 2020 Pandemic and Racism. Walker started to write the book on his 32nd Birthday in October and wrote a poem each day for 32 days. Surviving and Diving is a reflective piece that describes hope, struggle, and sociopolitical unrest in America.&nbsp;

Surviving and Diving

Machine learning tools provide the potential for unprecedented creative expression, but also the potential to cause unintended harms.“Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide” is an illustrated zine composed of questions and case studies to help AI artists use AI techniques responsibly and with care. We suggest that artists using AI should consider themselves part of the broader responsible AI community. As a result, it is important to consider factors such as consent of people represented in your datasets, labor involved in the model development and pre-existing codebase/tools, and AI infrastructure and environmental costs of training machine learning models. We hope that artists will attend to the potentially unintended harmful consequences of work as understood in domains like information security, misinformation, the environment, copyright, and biased and appropriative synthetic media.With this guide, we believe that by reflecting on what is “responsible” for their own creative works, artists can push forward best practices employed by all AI practitioners.Doing so can ensure that they harness the expressive potential of AI, responsibly.The Responsible AI Art Field Guide has been featured by Gray Area, DISEÑA, and Mozilla Festival.&nbsp;

Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide

Part of the Kiona Ligtvoet’s solo exhibition “These Are the Things” at <a href="https://www.latitude53.org" target="_blank">Latitude 53</a>, this document is collaborator Paxsi's contribution to this gentle attempt at navigating intergenerational barriers to grief, tenderness and longing, in the presence of enfranchisement and personal displacement.In their essay, Paxsi, an Aymara and Welsh-Irish writer and artist, reflects on their Aymara roots as it relates to family connection and their trans non-binary identity.From the author:“I am honoured and privileged to be contributing to this collaboration with this piece of writing which expresses my grief and longing for the things that were taken from me, as well as a celebration of the things that cannot and will never be.“As you reflect upon and consume my words and Kiona’s work, please consider contributing reparations to Kiona’s home community, Michel First Nation, for the legal fees required to reclaim their land and status rights. Reparations can be sent as e-transfers to kionaligtvoet@gmail.com, which will be forwarded to Michel First Nation.”

Letter to Miguel, from “These Are the Things”

Indigenous

First Generation

Andinx

Philippines

China

Cantonese

A creative game of telephone, this was created for the <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/community/project/alternative-worlds/1">Alternative Worlds</a> shared collection and contains poetry, artwork, and reflections on our creative processes as they relate to our Andean and Asian cultural heritages.

Located across the United States, each person passed the project to the next, who then responded to the previous piece, building up the collaboration via long distance in a way befitting of our times — digital, cultural correspondence :D

Cultural Correspondence

Huancavilca

Kichwa

Ancashina

SGI Buddhist

The theme of Choclo y Chicha Vol. 2 is ​family portraits​. Our goal was to inspire our communities to re-explore and revisit their family histories, as demonstrated through pictures, while we sheltered-in-place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked that all submissions include two pictures (one from the past and one from the present) and an accompanying text to draw connections between the two. Folks were invited to submit their pictures and text however they wished, whether as separate pieces or as collages or other works of art. In this section we feature pieces such as excerpts from the incredible oral history of Analisa Freitas and a beautiful poem by Marisol Silva, “when I make chicha morada and play your huaynos full blast, and I carry a backpack on the 7 train from Queens to Brooklyn brimming with jars of aji panca, aji amarillos, rocotos, I hold onto Ayni when I can’t remember words in any language, I hold onto Ayni, when I remember that who we are as a people is much too strong to ever be forgotten,” she writes. Additionally, inspired by our colectivo member Jamie San Andres’ call to action, we are excited to introduce a new section to our zine entitled ​Andean Political Reflections.​ When we first started dreaming up our zine series, we had no idea the state of the world we would be in. Since November 2019, we have seen unbearable violence and injustice across our diaspora, from the protests, uprisings, and government repression in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, the U.S., and most recently, Peru, we know that it is important now more than ever to continue building spaces for solidarity, dialogue and discussion. Those of us Andeans living in the belly of the beast must find it our moral duty to take a stand in solidarity. This position is a principle that has guided our work since the beginning, and it is impossible to do cultural work without addressing the political. Hence, this section will be a space for community dialogue with our friends, compañerxs, partner organizations, and others to share their perspectives and reflections on important political and historical moments in the Andean diaspora. &nbsp;

Envisioning an alternative world

Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide

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