Letter from the Editor – Issue 18
Autosarcophagy, or self-cannibalism, is the practice of eating parts of one’s own body. It’s a word that feels apt for our moment: autosarcophagic capitalism, self-cannibalistic nationalism. We’re watching systems eat themselves, the future devour itself, proudly and in front of our eyes. Harvard-trained economists, who often seem to know less about the relationship between American dollar dominance and its balance of trade than they could glean from a halfway-thoughtful Instagram reel, are imposing tariffs that serve no one except, perhaps, pump-and-dumpers in the crypto markets and those fantasizing about a hot war with China. Every federal agency has been hollowed to a starved standstill in the name of efficiency. Years of bad-faith cries of antisemitism by defenders of Israeli policy have perversely fueled real antisemitism towards diasporic Jews and led to the illegal detainment of their fellow citizens. Europe is rearming. Like, yikes.
The art world, as seen from Buffalo, and filtered through podcasts, magazines, and social media, seems trapped in an exaggerated version of its usual double-bind: loudly tallying offenses against its institutions while quietly behaving as though everything is still business as usual. Galleries seek out buyers they openly disdain. Representation—the go-to refuge of the first Trump era—has become the art world’s default setting, recycled ad nauseam despite its proven inability to deliver real change. Meanwhile, Trump’s proposed 2026 budget just put the NEA on the chopping block. Every community and every industry is understandably paralyzed.
I keep thinking about a passage from Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, where she reflects on the long, tangled history of conspiracy theories, especially antisemitic ones, and their utility to elite power. In discussing the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, Klein describes the Jewish Labor Bund, a socialist party whose core idea was doi’kayt, or "hereness." The Bundists believed Jews belonged exactly where they were: in their cities, neighborhoods, and workplaces. They fought for dignity and justice not in some distant promised land, but in the here and now, alongside their neighbors.
Hereness feels urgent again. Not just for Jews, but for anyone invested in the survival of real communities. Hereness in Buffalo. Hereness in Toronto. Hereness wherever you find yourself, stubbornly insisting that this place matters, that its people matter, that art and culture and shared meaning aren’t just escapist luxuries but the very tools we need to survive the spectacle of disintegration.
Each contribution in this issue offers a version of hereness—not just as geography, but as a refusal to drift into abstraction or escape. Kyla Kegler writes from Buffalo, where the absence of a dominant art market has created space for an ethics of attention and care, even as it risks stasis. Alexander McMillan’s account of The Shape of a City at Franz Kaka traces how cities inscribe themselves into our bodies and memories, and how those inscriptions shape what kind of art feels possible. Salma Ragheb’s essay on Evan Penny’s sculptures explores the dissonance between what is seen and what is felt, challenging us to consider how spatial, historical, and material context shapes the reception of every image. Evan Moritz’s reflection on The Van Gogh Shogh documents a lo-fi, deeply embodied performance that insists on confronting art’s economic realities in the room, not in theory. And Ashley Culver’s profile of Danica Pinteric’s Joys makes a case for staying put and building something playful and thoughtful from the ground up, rejecting the cerebral chill that often defines arts institutions.
Hereness is a discipline, a demand, to stay where you are and still see clearly, to make work in the present tense, and to pay attention—not just to what’s visible, but to what’s been buried under years of repetition, appropriation, and silence. The world may be eating itself, but we’re still living in it, and the summer is coming soon. A final note: if any Buffalonians were living exemplars of hereness it would be Mickey Harmon and Jordan Celotto. This issue is dedicated to their memory and to a commitment to carrying out the work that they lived every day.
Nando Alvarez-Perez
Editor-in-Chief
Published by
The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art
Editor-in-Chief
Nando Alvarez-Perez
Executive Director
Emily Ebba Reynolds
Copy Editor
Emily E. Mangione
Design
Mark Yappueying
Production Assistant & Photo Editor
wavy
Contributing Writers
Ashley Culver
Kyla Kegler
Alexander McMillan
Evan Moritz
Salma Ragheb
