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X-TRA Online publishes articles and media that you won’t find in print. Here, we present more intimate and immediate content in the form of artist’s writing, writers reading, conversations and special projects—all commissioned for this Online platform.

LivesSylvie Robinson

Headless Heritage

Heritage is always for sale and being sold, illicitly or not—something of which Rayyane Tabet is hyperaware.

LivesSierra Komar

A Few Fragments, Mid-Explosion

Most every figure that appears in Sibylle Ruppert’s work is multiple: an array of incomplete beings, momentarily but precariously fused.

LivesJulia Tcharfas

Basements and Things

An architecture of basements and minds. This is the system by which Norman Klein’s library takes shape. The well-appointed front room where we meet conceals a deluge of thinking, reading, and writing.

LivesEzequiel Olvera

Rancid Clock Epiphanies

By the time a meth addict stole three of Lina Viste Grønli’s sculptures from the park, the Seiko wall clocks with melting truckles of Camembert cheese had decayed over the course of four days.

LivesJuliana Halpert, Dont Rhine, Nick Angelo

Clean Needles Forever

“All of this comes with a devil’s bargain. What ends up happening with any nonprofit—even art ones—is that the more money you get from the state, the more they ask of you. Your responsibility is now to manage scarcity and the expectations of the state. That’s your number one job.” Dont Rhine, in conversation with Nick Angelo and Juliana Halpert, on 30 years of Clean Needles Now.

LivesSuzy Halajian

Reflections on a failing star

Political movements and disasters heavily influenced Heather O’Brien’s time in Lebanon: the artist arrived just after the waste crisis of 2015, witnessed the massive protests of 2019, and experienced the country’s dire economic collapse. Her first child was born on the tragic day of Beirut’s port explosion.

LivesCarolina Lio, John Malpede, Henriëtte Brouwers

Changing Skid Row’s Story

“In other words: how much suffering are you going to create while you are making a ‘world-class downtown’?” John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers of LAPD in conversation with Carolina Lio.

LivesAmelia Groom

Genius Vs. Lesbian

On Emma Wolf-Haugh’s Eileen Gray and the queer arts of reappropriation.

LivesJackson Davidow

How AIDS Activists Queered Christmas

The carolers, indeed, made the yuletide gay. But the sad reality was that none of their troubles were miles away. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was escalating at alarming rates in LA and across the country.

LivesWolfgang Tillmans

Sister Corita, Between Bridges

Wolfgang Tillmans contributes three installation views of an exhibition of Corita’s work he staged at his project space, Between Bridges.

LivesJason Simon

Diary of an LA Visit

When Liza moved West from New York last year, I gave her a silk-screened image by Corita, harness the sun (1967), as a kind of California welcome from the East.

LivesPoli Marichal

Sister Corita Kent’s Legacy

As a graphic artist, Sister Corita contributed a signature style to the political art of the ’60s. Poli Marichal considers her legacy.

LivesNao Bustamante

Voice Memos Vol. 4: Notes on TABLEAU and Fufu

This installment continues the focus on Fufu, her dog, notes-to-self, but also contains several notes about her film TABLEAU(2013).

LivesNao Bustamante

Voice Memos Vol. 3

More songs!: Songs about dogs, songs about love, and songs about how you absolutely should not fuck with her kids.

LivesNao Bustamante

Voice Memos Vol. 2

These short verbal sketches are too brief to be entirely diaristic, but through their wry humor manage to be disarmingly personal, and reveal Nao as an amateur songwriter and lover of folk music.

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