Visual Arts - Colleen Zickler

Colleen is many things, including a brilliant photographer. But you have to look fast, because she frequently removes herself from social media, so when she appears again you take a deep breath and cross your fingers and articlee in, eyes wide, in a hedonistic visual binge of everything she's let you see. Colleen's images have a consistency which comes from darwinian vernacular - it's a natural selection, what she shows. What comes across in these images is an emergent personality; an incredible, vibrant, vibrating, living, energetic energy field; a true snapshot - one clicking instant frozen that exists perfectly in and of itself, with innate composition and intelligent timing; but a moment that leaks around the edges, so you can sense the activity that happened the moment before her capture, and you can feel each still moment dissolving again into action, the second after the shot. I don't think Colleen has ever shown her work offline, or not to me at least. My hope is that one day she will make a book of everything so I can hide it under my bed and look at it with a flashlight when I find myself in times of trouble.

Sometimes Colleen can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/pollyknockers/

Writing - Charles Mudede

If I were a sculptor I would make a bronze statue of him being a genius while giggling, but I'm not a sculptor, so instead he gets a lottery ticket every month. We are the lucky ones, though, because we get to read his thoughts for free, no ticket necessary.

I've always wanted a Charles Mudede Anthology, so I could hold his writing in my hands and experience it through pure density, its physical weight matching the emotional and mental significance it holds for me. I want to flip through the book, letting it fall open where it will, and close my eyes and point, reading whatever sentence I touch, jumping around through his writing in a non-linear way so that the only bridge between phrases is his forward-momentum prose, this one-in-a-billion combination of pure brand-new thought, funneled through a tactile use of syncopating consonants and resonant vowels, that propels you onward through his sentences, grabbing what you can of his ideas as you go, until he's done with you and you're released with a period or a question mark or a phrase unfolded.

You can read much of Charles' writing at The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/authors/237/charles-mudede

Performance - Claire Buss

Claire Buss is very present. Not just stage presence, which she oozes and spews and secretes; but immediacy. She is focused, and active, even in stillness. If you can possibly see a live performance of The Future is 0, you'll get oozed on and spewed upon and secreted all over with her charm and perfectly bottled spontenaety. She's just so damn funny!

For more of Claire, let your fingers do the walking: http://www.claire-buss.com