February 13, 2008

Numbers.

In 2002/03, when I was amassing the fourth (and last, although I didn't know it at the time) issue of Chase Park, I decided to have an all-women's issue without drawing attention to the fact. I felt at the time, and still do now, that highlighting such issues as special or Other only works to reinforce the marginalization that happens in mainstream culture. Ask a Chinese artist how easy it is for him to negiotiate with a museum right after the museum has had their once every ten years "Chinese Art in the 20th Century" show, and you'll get my meaning. The culture game is replete with tokenism. In the case of Chase Park 4, no one noticed the fact that all the writers were women, not even the writers in the issue.

I think that's how it should be.

Why should an all-women writers issue be special? When it's only men writers, no one thinks twice. Why should the obverse be special?

I don't know what to draw from this, but know that CP4 happened.

CP4: Eula Biss, Anne Blonstein, Kristin P. Bradshaw, Valerie Coulton, Gagan Gill, E. Tracy Grinell, Teji Grover, Sawako Nakayasu, Amrita Pritam, Elizabeth Robinson, Kerri Sonnenberg, Anne Tardos, Aidan Thompson, Stephanie Young & Arlene Zide.