Sublevel Issue 2: The Speculative Launch Party at ICA LA

The launch of Sublevel Issue 2: The Speculative takes place tonight (Friday, Oct. 12) at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). The event features a poetry reading by Will Alexander, a screening of works by visual artist Nicole Miller, and a conversation between Miller and CalArts Creative Writing faculty Tisa Bryant.

Sublevel magazine, which is housed in the CalArts MFA Creative Writing Program, is devoted to the nexus of literature, poetics, art, criticism, philosophy, culture and politics.

A note from the editors on The Speculative issue:

As we see it, to speculate is to call into question not only what could be, but: what is, might be, or might have been. Within the eight features of our magazine, we will explore: the defamiliarizing of the familiar as a crucial tactic for investigating reality; how science fiction, fantasy, and horror not only pervade media but influence collective political and social efforts; the ways in which new technologies are pushing us toward a slippage of communication, dislodging language from reality; the space that the speculative and speculation provide for an intersection of academics and autodidacts alike; how speculation has shaped, and continues to shape, the current economic climate, specifically in relation to Los Angeles.

The L.A.-based Alexander, a poet, aphorist, playwright, essayist, philosopher, visual artist and pianist, was awarded the prestigious 2016 Jackson Prize for poetry, which is among the most substantial given to an American poet.

Bryant makes work that often traverses the boundaries of genre, culture and history. Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), her first full-length book, is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them.

Miller, a Southern California-based artist, received her MFA from the Roski School of the Arts, University of Southern California. She has been the recipient of the: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award (2018), Rome Prize (2016), William H. Johnson Prize (2015), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2013), Artadia Award (2013), Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2012), among others.

The second Sublevel issue also includes: a roundtable on “the speculative” with artist Kelly Akashi, the collective FICTILIS, author Margaret Killjoy, and editor and anthologist Ann VanderMeer; a conversation between artist and CalArts School of Art faculty member Martine Syms and Jenna Wortham, a culture technology reporter and staff writer for the The New York Times Magazine; a virtual exhibition featuring 57 Cell, Sascha Braunig, Loretta Fahrenholz, Kiki Kogelnik, Nicole Miller, Christina Quarles and Tiger Tateishi.