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The Cooper Point Journal (June 13, 2018)
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13 June 2018
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the cooper point journal
The Evergreen State College Newspaper Since 1971|June 13, 2018
GRADUATING SENIORS
INTERVIEWS WITH OUR BEST +
BRIGHTEST
STUDENT DEMANDS
WHERE ARE WE NOW RE
SPRING 2017 PROTESTS
3
LITERATURE + CRITIQUE
WORK BY LUCIEN SPECT &
JASMINE KOZAK-GILROY
5
8
The Cooper Point Journal
STAFF
Editor-in-Chief
J a s m i n e K o z a k - G i l roy
Business Manager
April Davidson
News Editor
Mason Soto
C o mm u n i t y E d i t o r
Georgie Hicks
A r t s & C u lt u r e E d i t o r
Sally Linn
Comics Editor
Morrissey Morrissey
Writers
S eb a s t ia n L o p e z
Br itta nya n a P ier ro
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Students serenade audience at Evergreen’s first ever graduation ceremony.
Photographer unknown, courtesy of The Evergreen State College Archives.
CONTACT
O f f i ce
T h e E v e r g re e n S t a t e C o l l e g e
CA B 3 3 2
2 7 0 0 E v e r g re e n P k w y N W
O l y m p i a , WA
Email Us
cooperpointjournal@gmail.com
Call Us
(360) 328 1333
Visit Us
O u r We e k l y M e e t i n g
We d n e s d a y s a t 2 p. m .
C o ve r A r t B y
A p r i l D av i d s o n
WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
© 2018 the Cooper Point Journal
02 WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
HOW WE WORK
The Cooper Point Journal is produced by students at The Evergreen State College, with funding from student
fees and advertising from local businesses. The Journal is published for free every other Wednesday during the
school year and distributed throughout the Olympia area.
Our content is also available online at www.cooperpointjournal.com.
Our mission is to provide an outlet for student voices, and to inform and entertain the Evergreen community
and the Olympia-area more broadly, as well as to provide a platform for students to learn about operating a
news publication.
Our office is located on the third floor of the Campus Activities Building (CAB) at The Evergreen State
College in room 332 and we have open student meetings from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. every Wednesday. Come early
if you’d like to chat with the editor!
WORK FOR US
We accept submissions from any student at The Evergreen State College, and also from former students,
faculty, and staff. We also hire some students onto our staff, who write articles for each issue and receive a
learning stipend.
Have an exciting news topic? Know about some weird community happening? Enjoy that new hardcore
band? Come talk to us and write about it.
We will also consider submissions from non-Evergreen people, particularly if they have special knowledge on
the topic. We prioritize current student content first, followed by former students, faculty and staff, and then
general community submissions. Within that, we prioritize content related to Evergreen first, followed by
Olympia, the state of Washington, the Pacific Northwest, etc.
To submit an article, reach us at cooperpointjournal@gmail.com.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
We want to hear from you! If you have an opinion on anything we’ve reported in the paper, or goings-on in
Olympia or at Evergreen, drop us a line with a paragraph or two (100 - 300 words) for us to publish in the
paper. Make sure to include your full name, and your relationship to the college—are you a student, staff,
graduate, community member, etc. We reserve the right to edit anything submitted to us before publishing,
but we’ll do our best to consult with you about any major changes.
Students swarm the office of Evergreen’s president, George Bridges during protests Spring 2017. RICKY OSBORNE.
STUDENT DEMANDS:
UPDATE ON ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION ON
STUDENT ASKS FOLLOWING
SPRING 2017 PROTESTS
By Mason Soto
Last year The Cooper Point
Journal published a list of demands from student activists that
had to do with the specific events
that spurred protest last spring
as well as ongoing issues of inequity throughout the campus
community. The administration
provided written response to each
demand last year, but whether
their response has enacted change
deserves attention. Here, the demands are listed alongside explanations of what action and
inaction each has been met with.
1. We demand that no changes
to The Student Code of Conduct be
made without democratic student
consent. We demand consent as distinct and separate from input in the
process of revising the codes that
govern us. The coalition of black
students and students of color that
are submitting these demands will
nominate 5 black students to inhabit a Student Code of Conduct Task
Force by the end of Spring Quarter
2017. The Student Code of Conduct
task force will be an autonomous
body from the office of Student Affairs, will employ a consensus based
decision making process, and will
have ratifying and veto power
over all revisions to the student
code of conduct. The office of Student Affairs will submit revisions
of the Student Code of Conduct to
the Task Force and will not implement those revisions until the Task
Force gives their written approval.
The task force will do no labor other
than review changes presented and
say yes or no. The students placed
on that task force will each be paid
a stipend of $500 a quarter until
the Student Code of Conduct is approved. We demand that no one is
charged with a student code of conduct violation until these revisions
are finalized. No one is charged
for the demonstrations of the past
two weeks beginning May 14th.
After Evergreen hired students to help revise the Student
Code of Conduct over the summer, the school presented a draft
of changes to the Board of Trustees who has final say. The changes
paid special attention to sections
on disruption, sexual misconduct, and the conduct code violation appeal proceedings. The
Journal published an article last
October explaining the proposals and that students should see
a working draft in the next few
months, but public hearings
went on mostly under the radar.
An email from Vice President of
Student Affairs Wendy Endress
says that open forums during
winter quarter as well as discussions with the Attorney General
all weighed into the proposed
News
changes. Drafts can be found on
the school’s website, and after the
June 6 meeting, the next chance
for feedback will be July 11, at
1:30 P.M. in the Library 1005.
2. We demand that Officer
Timothy O’Dell be fired and (Suspended during the investigation)
suspended without pay while an
investigation takes place. We demand Officer O’Dell be fired if he
is guilty of using excessive force
and aggression when responding to
student protesting. When responding to the call made by Brett Weinstein, O’Dell did not ask questions.
O’Dell started violently pushing
through students who were trying
to protect black students. O’Dell
was asked to stopped and students
expressed that they weren’t dangerous. O’Dell refused to listen. O’dell
continued to knock students over in
attempt to reach the black students.
O’Dell was targeting people of color.
Despite the allegations of
excessive force and discrimination, O’Dell still works for
the school’s police services and
holds the title of Defensive Tactics Instructor. The investigation
by the administration into allegations of excessive force last
spring reported earlier this year
that they found “no wrongdoing”.
3. We demand the immediate
firing of Andrea Seabert Olsen,
the Assistant to the VP for Student
Conduct, from all Evergreen State
College Positions. We request that
no transfer happen but a complete
removal. Seabert Olsen has shown
a consistent often violent flaw in
judgement when it pertains to the
needs and safety of Black students,
other students of color, Trans students, students with disabilities,
students who have experienced
sexual assault. Seabert Olsen has
been given an ample amount of
time to educate herself about the
needs of more marginalized students and has failed to show evidence of effort or effectiveness. We
believe that at this point there is
no way for Andrea Seabert Olsen
to redeem herself as her reputation directly influences her ability to do her job. The students who
are in the most danger in the current climate and culture of both the
Evergreen campus and the United
States do not view Seabert Olsen
as a safe person to seek help from.
Seabert still works for the college, at least as a faculty member, and she taught classes all
year. She also holds the position
of Grievance Officer for which
students are supposed to contact
when reporting sexual assault.
4. We demand no expansion of
police facilities or services at any
point in the future. We demand
that police services sell all of their
lethal and less than lethal weapons
and donate the money to manifestation of demands enumerated
here. This demand entails that at
no point in the planning stages of
any expansion of campus facilities should plans be articulated or
students, staff, administrators, faculty, or contractors be paid to work
on plans to provide increased office space, increased surveillance
technology, or more or expanded
holding cells to Police Services. We
demand for the institution to create
a student collective to develop and
implement alternative to policing.
In their response last spring,
the school made it clear they
would not reduce police services or even disarm them. “We
intend to retain a police force,”
President George Bridges said.
In the recent budget meetings,
George said that the state legislature actually has allocated specific
funds to be used strictly for police services, and those funds will
not be reduced amidst the budget crisis and cuts to academia.
5. We demand mandatory sensitivity and cultural competency
training for faculty, staff, administrators, and student employees.
Hire the Aorta Collective or a comparable anti-oppression training
collective to develop a plan for mandatory trainings for all Faculty,
staff, and student employees. We demand anonymous evaluation forms
for students to evaluate all faculty.
Bridges’ response said, “We
commit to annual mandatory
training for all faculty beginning
in fall 2017”, and at the annual
staff retreats last year training did
happen. Still, from the staff we
spoke with, some of the ways that
this training increased on campus
remains voluntary and how such
things are required and dealt out in
each department is far from clear.
6. We demand the creation of an
Equity Center in the 4th floor of
the Library Building. We demand a
remodel that will accommodate students and have movable walls for
caucusing spaces.This Equity Center
must be fully staffed and must have
an assistant director, innovative
program coordinator, case manager
and student advisors. We demand
that Equity Center have it’s own
budget and be connected to the new
VP/ VP for Equity and Inclusion.
Continued on page 5.
JUNE 13, 2018 / THE COOPER POINT JOURNAL 03
Community
The Evergreen State College graduation ceremony, 1983. PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN VIA THE EVERGREEN ARCHIVES.
MEET OUR
GRADS
BEAN SNYDER
What did you study?
I started studying theory and humanities stuff but then I decided
I could read books on my own
pretty well so I decided I was going to use as many of the big machines as possible while here so
I got a chemistry degree and did
some metal working and poetry.
What is the best part, what is the
most fun?
I really love pottery… and making things.. And painting them
and seeing how they change
when you out them in the kiln.
And also, I think it is pretty normal that you like your friends. I
love Gene Everhart in Academic
Advising. And I like to… I like
the rosemary bush next to purse
hall. You know what I love about
Evergreen— the rare books room.
What do you feel like you did or got
out of Evergreen that you couldn’t
have gotten anywhere else? What
is your most “Evergreen” or “Olympia” experience?
Oh my god do you work at admissions? I don’t think that I am very
good at those things, I have definitely had that feeling a lot. There
is definitely a certain way that everyone dresses the same and is on
the same wavelength about stuff. I
feel like… I did some pretty cool
stuff at evergreen that I probably
couldn’t have done anywhere else.
This one time we went on a field
trip to Yellowstone and then on
the way back we stopped at the
Grand Coulee Dam which was
wild— that dam was enormous
and so intense to be inside and we
got to go all the way to the top
and then all the way to the bottom. So stuff like that, where you
get to just get in a van and drive
around.
What do you hate about Evergreen?
I hate all the shitty things that
the administration and garbage
man Weinstein and all the trolls
that go here and the ways that
Evergreen pretends to be outside
of bad things but is. Just like how
it removes itself from culpability
by claiming its alt identity while
reinforcing the same stuff… like
cops on campus. Regular stuff,
it’s college. I mean… it’s a state
school, its college.
Vic’s or Oldschool?
Vic’s.
Eagan’s or Big Tom’s
Eagan’s.
Westside or Eastside?
Westside.
Capitol Forest or Capitol Lake?
Capitol Forest… that is no question.
Upper campus or lower campus?
For the forest, lower campus—
also the best place for after hours
snacks is on lower campus, the
pod. You can get a good ass frozen
meal or an orange or something...
it is honestly like the Co-op but
04 WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
By Mason Soto and Georgie Hicks.
Interviews with the cutest, brightest,
and sweetest that Evergreen has
to offer.
more expensive.
What is your favorite defunct Olympia institution?
I was never here for the bagel
shop that Nancy Koppelman
opened up but allegedly they had
good bagels.
JR RUTHFUSS
What did you study?
At Evergreen I have studied philosophy, sociology, and religion.
I did the religion stuff in a long
course of ILCs, which was great.
What is the best part, what is the
most fun?
What I like best about Evergreen
is the ILC system, because it
gave me the opportunity to study
something that wasn’t really offered and I was able to go as deep
with it as I wanted to. And obviously it set me on my path to
grad school and I was really well
prepared when it came time to
apply. I also really appreciate the
diversity of people where at Evergreen, being in class with people
of all different ages and life experiences, especially in philosophy
programs where you get to seminar all together. Another of my
favorite things about Evergreen is
the rare books room. It is much
more accessible than other collections— we are just open, and
you can just come in without an
apontment and touch all of them
without gloves.
What do you feel like you did or got
out of Evergreen that you couldn’t
have gotten anywhere else? What
is your most “Evergreen” or “Olympia” experience?
The thing that really comes to
mind actually I wasn’t present
for but was when those people
flipped that cop car—that was before I came to Evergreen and was
just a person living in Olympia.
It was like— all those Evergreen
students, always fucking with the
cops. It was kind of big news in
Olympia at the time— it could
only happen here, where a bunch
of kids could flip or graffiti a cop
car and no one gets killed by the
cops.
What do you hate about Evergreen?
I don’t know how to describe it.
The feeling is something about
passivity or it feels like things
around here are really slow to
change… being an employee here
essentially everything moves really slowly. When I think about
programs there are a lot of dynamic stuff going on there but
in terms of how the curriculum
is formatted, it seems like it isn’t
working for everyone. Even some
really great radical teachers are really beholden to it... self reflection,
evaluations. And at times it really
felt like it was slowing me down
in a real way. Even though people
lodge complaints about some of
the structure of the curriculum it
i really unlikely to change unless
the whole school gets restructured or defunded.
What are you doing after Evergreen?
Going to grad school in upstate
New York, doing a Master’s program and then we are going to see
from there if I will do a PhD.
Vic’s or Oldschool?
I have been converted to Vic’s
I was hardcore Oldschool for a
long time, I worked right next
door and I knew everyone who
worked there.
Westside or Eastside?
Eastside. I have always lived on
the Eastside.
What is your favorite defunct Olympia institution?
Northern. There was also, years
before the Northern there was
a collectively run art and show
space called the Yes Yes. I only
went there once and I saw Mount
Eerie, when he first started being Mount Eerie from the Microphones. And we had literally
just moved there, and it was dying
but all the friends I made when
I moved here were involved and
mourning the loss of that space. It
was just a sort of punk and DIY
show and gallery space.
PHILLIP
ROBERTSON
What experience did you have here
that was unique to the Evergreen
environment?
My first Evergreen class was prob-
ably the most Evergreen class, titled The Empty Space and it was
a dance class and it was my first
quarter here and I was like I need
to take a class Spring quarter and
I don’t know what I need to take
right now and I ended up there.
The first half of the class was all
designated to the Procession and
I didn’t even know what that was
so I learned all about that and I
ended up building a puppet for it
and I ended up leading the parade
with this puppet for my first time
[at the parade] in my first Evergreen class and I also did this like
super hippie ass dance class which
was like dance Co-Ops which I
had never learned of either and it
was just like the most Evergreen
experience. It was like either the
best introduction or like the best
outro.
Ralph’s or Bayview?
Ralph’s just because they’re both
owned by the same people but
Ralph’s just feels cheaper.
Old School or Vic’s?
Vic’s, I like their sausage, and
their sauce actually has flavor to it.
East Side or West Side?
East Side just cause it’s closer to
me.
What are you the most proud of ?
I would say the project I’m currently doing which is like the
most ambitious film project I’ve
done in my career and it’s taken
a toll on me as far as pushing
myself to new levels and it’s the
most high quality and biggest
production I’ve ever done. I’m
really proud of it and excited to
show it. It’s an experimental horror that kind of combats the traditional slasher norm and survival
core and depicts racism and is
represented through characters
rather than actions and the main
character who is a person of color
going through this night trying to
deliver a package but who keeps
going against the odds. It kind of
like this view of the deck stacked
against you and like this idea of
oppression in different ways.
What will you miss the most?
All of the technology I get to use
the Macs, the cameras, the studios, the lights everything. The
$20,000 budget I always used to
have.
What’s the most Olympia thing
you’ve incorporated into your life?
I feel like if anything, maybe not
giving a fuck about...there’s moments I get so caught up in work
that I just stop caring about my
smell cause I know no one’s gonna trip about it I’m just like, oh
I’m a little musty, oh well that’s
Olympia, Olympia itself is just
musty so I’m just kind of like,
there’s day where I’ll get nervous
because I’ll think oh I stinK, you
know and then I’ll think about it,
tch, no one’s gonna say anything.
One a scale of 1 to 10 how full of existential dread are you?
I’m actually on like a fair balance
of a 5, I was able to I feel like I
was almost able to extend my
death bed because I found a job
on campus this summer that goes
until the end of july and that kind
of gave me a lot of hope because
I have something to rely on right
after graduation but after that’s
over it’s kind of like what do I do
now. I’m just kind of going as I
go. I am feeling senioritis but I am
also kind of dreading not having
this web to protect me. I guess,
you know, it’s also exciting because the reason I came here was
to learn in order to go into my
career and now I’m finally able to
break out into my career.
What does the future hold?
You know I think that the path
I would love to take is the path
of a motion picture director and
writer, script writer but i think
that will take a really long time to
get there and i just really want to
continue crafting and perfecting
my films and pursuing that and
hope that will break into a bigger
experience for me.
If you could go back in time what
would you tell your freshman self ?
It’s so weird because when I think
about things in my past that I may
have regret for, it usually leads to
something that I have learned
from and it’s weird because I feel
like I probably wouldn’t be who I
am right now if it wasn’t for those
experiences, so when I think of
time traveling back to tell myself
something, I think I would just be
like, I would tell myself to remember who you are and stay true to
what you want out of this life and
to remember your goals because
there were moments throughout
my career where I forgot about
those and it took an experience or
something for me to kind of fall
back in and I feel like if I had of
kept reminding myself of that it
probably wouldn’t have happened.
Advice for incoming freshmen or
next years seniors?
My tip is for anyone in media and
that is don’t let the school limit
your creativity and don’t limit
yourself to what the school offers.
Keep researching and expanding
what you want. That’s what I’ve
had to do.
LINDY
VANDERPOOL
What did you focus on while you
were here?
My first three years were focused
a lot on video art and media theory and I took Media Works my
sophomore year which was sort
of like my foundational class, like
they made me read Benjamin and
Barthes and stuff, and I had never
touched anything like that when I
was nineteen.
What has Benjamin wrote about
film? I don’t know..
Well, The Work of Art is very
much about like mechanical reproduction, the apparatus, all of
that stuff, it has to do a lot with
not only media theory but also
like archives and just general documentation practices of works. So
that was that, and then my junior
year I did an electronic media internship. I was working in the TV
studio so, you know, when I was
in Media Works I developed this
really strong interest in TV forms
and liveness and public access,
and things like that, like live television. So I was really interested
in the technical and formal functions of a TV studio so I got in
there. I was just working in there
all year and helping students with
their projects, and doing a lot of
like technical AV support. This
year I did a full year studio art
program, and that was like kind
of shocking or whatever because
I hadn’t really developed anything
like a studio practice, because all
of the work I had done with video
in the past was very structured,
like collaborative production. So
this year I was working a lot more
in isolation, filming myself. I had
worked in the past with starring
myself in my work, but I focused
really heavily on that this year, and
just like operating the equipment
by myself and filming myself and
being alone.
What were some of the projects you
were most proud of, or your final
projects?
I did work with clones this year,
and it was all like clones of myself.
But the way I got started with
that was being really interested in
like infomercials and having two
hosts, and one knows more than
the other, like one is explaining
Community
something to the other person. So
I was interested in sort of creating that structure without using
any dialogue, and relying on affect and things like that to convey
authority and knowledge, and like
coolness and whatever. So I did
a lot of work with clones. I did a
multi-channel installation as my
final piece where I was doing sort
of different modes of cloning, reflection, false reflection, and split
spreen cloning.
What’s false reflection?
Like I took a mirror and I put a
piece of green felt on it and then
green-screened in my face, you
know, moving back and forth a
lot. And I did a lot of shots where
that exact same mirror was, you
know, real. So I was playing with
both of those in that space. My
parents came to my show and
said I looked like my dad in the
fake reflection, which I thought
was funny because I wasn’t wearing anything special or doing
anything. So that piece was called
“U Owe Me”. And then I did
another one where I had three
clones of myself sort of like just
all moving around one table. That
one was called “how can i help u”
and it was earlier in the year. So
yeah, a lot of my video work was
about clones.
What experience did you have here
that was unique to the Evergreen
environment?
I think this show [“we mutated
to such an extent”] was very specifically a unique experience. Our
professor was talking about it to
us yesterday about it being a very
Olympia thing, a very unique
thing for undergrads to be doing,
because the way that we found
the space was walking around
downtown and talking to random
landlords that we saw in buildings and stuff. And inviting our
friends who are performing in the
community and other community
members to show up and do performances and contribute other
work that wasn’t necessarily a part
of our program but we were able
to use program funds to take care
of it. I think that the opportunity
to do that was a very Evergreen
and Olympia thing, ya know. If
we were to be in a large city, if we
were to be at a different college, I
don’t know. And like I know a lot
of the upper division art classes
used on-campus spaces this year
but I know that it’s been done in
the past also. Just like being able
to really take a lot of curatorial responsibility is really unique.
Continued on page 9.
Continued from page 3.
The exact demands will not
be met, but a new lounge is being created titled the Student
Equity and Arts Lounge, on the
third floor of the College Activities Building (CAB). The lounge
will encompass the Student Art
Gallery, the Unity Lounge, and
the Trans and Queer Center, and
an email on June 12 from The
First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services Office says that
the move is to ensure that the
different functions will serve students with “a unified purpose”.
The Office itself will also move
to a “bigger and more visible”
space on the CAB’s second floor.
How staffing of the new sites will
play out has not been announced.
7. We demand for the coordinator
of the Trans & Queer Center to be
permanently hired full time. Currently, they are temporarily hired
and their contract ends in June.
This was the one demand that
the administration realized the
fastest. Amira Caluya was made
the permanent coordinator last
spring, and still holds that position.
8. We demand the creation
of a permanent position that
will support undocumented students. This position will have a
budget that will create scholarships, housing, and protections.
Evergreen’s website has a
homepage for Support for Undocumented Students, where
information
on
admission
and links to resources can be
found. Some staff information is listed but no permanent
positions or offices are named.
9. We demand that the video
created for Day of Absence and
Day of Presence that was stolen
by white supremacists and edited to expose and ridicule the students and staff be taken down by
the administration this Friday.
A source related to the video
let the Journal know that the
school and the legislature determined that the edited videos
were protected under fair use
laws, so no action was pursued.
10. We demand Bret Weinstein be
suspended immediately without pay
but all students receive full credit.
Bret Weinstein filed a lawsuit
against the school for allegedly
mishandling things last spring
resulting in the endangerment
of him and his wife. In the end,
the couple gained $500,000 after
resigning through a settlement.
JUNE 13, 2018 / THE COOPER POINT JOURNAL 05
Arts & Culture
APRIL
DAVIDSON
work and artist
statement by
April Davidson is a graduating senior at The
Evergreen State College.
06 WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
Arts & Culture
“The self, or some kind
of stable identity, is not
possible. In order to be a
fully realized self one must
stop eating or fucking.”
The earth is our home, violence or peace we have to
stay.
The earth is inherently violent and chaotic, it’s
reasonable to seek some structure to make it more
bearable.
On Earth we have to die, that is the cycle and we
have to respect that. We must rot and decay. Entropy is
necessary to keep life and joy.
You could say I have an earth based spirituality but
all that means is that I trust the patterns of the sun,
moon and all the visible planets.
The patterns of the sun and moon provide a structure
that we cannot deny
We cannot deny our need for protection and
nourishment for ourselves.
The self, or some kind of stable identity, is not
possible.
In order to be a fully realized self one must stop
eating or fucking.
Food is evidence that violence in inevitable.
Food is evidence that we are connected to each other.
In order to find your true identity one must stop
consuming and to never touch another living being
ever again.
Who we are is not decided by oneself alone but on
the settings and contexts we find ourselves in, which
will change over time. Some parts of us will die and
some will be born and all of it will be surprising to
everyone including ourselves.
Is the inability or unwillingness to form a consistent
and cohesive self a crime?
May the powers that be always fall and may those
without power know that their resistance to false power
and immortality will be evident in every small refusal.
One time we all knew when to commit and when to run
away, it wasn’t confusing. We know that commitments
could evaporate without calling them failures, we
didn’t even know about failure. We had fantasies that
someone could save us but we didn’t expect it. Where
are we now? What myths are potent enough to bind
together this eternal “we”?
I’m being cradled in the web, the fabric that
constitutes the bag.
(Image: a person is labeled “me” and they are standing
in a reusable grocery bag labeled “my generational
trauma”)
At any of my bleakest points, my least proud
moments I find myself still living and breathing, I
know that I am being held.
I cannot hold myself all the time.
If you were a circle and all the facets of your life were
point of light or texture around the perimeter of the
circle, all the sediment is down on the bottom. Down
below the earth, in the water table. New dreams and
possibilities are waiting, the roots have spread wildly
and they are holding you up no matter how cold or
toxic they are. Turn the wheel. Move the earth under
your feet.
Lacan says that because of language the Real is
unknowable. It might be the condition that animals
exist in, wanting to brush up against feathers and fur.
To have you and your predator taste you blood and
theirs at once, the pleasure and fear all wrapped up
in the same experience. If both parts speak to us at
once which to you prioritize, the body or mind? If I
understood Hegel, and there’s a strong chance that I
didn’t, he asserts that all true art comes from the mind.
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. Maybe the mind doubts
but the body is sure.
What’s something you can depend on? The sun will
rise, the moon will get fat then thin then disappear
and then appear again. There will be clouds and rain,
leaves will fall and flowers will bloom over and over
again. Our house, the bag we are held in, is filled with a
cyclical monotony that is inescapable.
JUNE 13, 2018 / THE COOPER POINT JOURNAL 07
Literature & Critique
&
UP
COMING
Students sleep on Red Square as an act of protest. PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN VIA THE EVERGREEN ARCHIVES.
THU. JUNE 14
NANCY
The Coors Light Lounge
8 - 11 p.m.
GOF Record Release Show
by lucien spect
The Evergreen State College
4 - 8 p.m. til June 15, SEM II E4115
Multiple Dimensions Art Exhibition
Evergreen Valley
Lavender Farm
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
2018 Season Opening Day
FRI. JUNE 15
Le Voyeur
10 p.m., Free
GEMINI Dance Party
522 Capitol Way
7 - 10 p.m., Free
Omni Photo Show
SAT. JUNE 16
Cascadia Brewing Co.
8 p.m., $5-10, NOTAFLOF
Nomadic Recombination Show
Paragon Productions
10 p.m.
The Last Reboot: Ovoid, Loom In
Essence, Emuh
THU. JUNE 22
Ben Moore’s
8 p.m., $12 General Admission
Andre & Bryson Comedy Benefit
FRI. JUNE 23
Le Voyeur
10 p.m., Donations, 21+
Fruitopia presents NIGHTSHADE
Benefit For NWDC Resistance
Speakeasy
8 p.m., $10 pre-sale $12 at door
Make America Gay Again
Drag Show
SAT. JUNE 30
Le Voyeur
6 - 9 p.m., All Ages
Barren Altar, Methczar Show
I am Nancy, and it is rare that the
amount of sleep I get is right. Recently,
I’ve asked people who know my sleep
patterns and they say I have trouble;
this is after I tell them I haven’t been
able to sleep much. I also remember, at
times, being proud of my sleep hygiene.
I remember (in a cave like house with
an English bulldog) that when I lived
with my mother, I felt as though the
amount of sleep I got each night, for a
time, was not too much, nor too little.
I can still feel . . . or perhaps it is only
now that I feel again that sleep is possible. Sleep is something that I’ve wanted to control, as I’ve wanted to control
time, and this makes me feel evil, because I’d like sleep to be, and I think
it could be, a sanctuary from time, uncontrollable—but then I remember, my
need to control comes from, not evil,
but having been controlled with sleep,
not in sleep itself but in the place of
sleep, of having to sleep alone in a room
with my thoughts. And later that was
translated to and projected upon me
as worrying. I became a worrier, which
was also a prison. A word that stuck
through trembles. The Band-Aid was
more like a blanket all of us who have
trouble sleeping wore. What is underneath might not be adult, although
like a child it is expected to be. Really
there is a nugget of an idea, maybe only
a phrase beneath, mostly blank space,
which will trod along as a body with
habits and behaviors ready to encounter, sticky for recognition, recognizant.
It is only light that shines through
the keyhole, it glitters sharp like a
flashlight through the metal. Its size
says nothing of its hospitality, which
is open, free, wanting to be described.
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This desire is my own. To walk up the
stairs which spiral and are tiled. Here,
sun is abundant. We welcome the darkness in the house. There is a miniature
metal bench on the cabinet, and two
skeletons sit there, smiling—but do
skeletons always look as though they’re
smiling?—each wearing a hat, dressed
formally, matching floral patterns on
one pair of shoes, one dress, one inside
of a suit jacket. They see the candles in
front of them on the table, collected
from around the house the night before, after the power came back on,
which they didn’t notice. Light comes
in from skylights and the plants eat it,
the brightness looks like color on objects, a wall, concrete tile, a glass table,
round, with a light layer of dust. With
many decorations this house.
One man dances on the rooftop patio. We see that he is dancing after we
get curious about what sounds to be
a treadmill. It looks like he oscillates
between a routine and improvisation.
His leg moves parallel to the ground,
perpendicular to the rest of the body.
What of the fine furniture on the patio,
sculptures immobilized by his movements. The rush of small black birds,
noise only audible with their multitude, sounds we say like music. The
sense of joy, he can only accept it in
the free movement. Two shadowy riders hover above the patio, fucking on
their broomstick. Their clothes, manylayered, stay on, they hump each other
fiercely, sometimes the broom rotates
and they hang on, one on the inside of
the other, and the broom.
Mist is only in the memory, as here it
is not misty. Not a single curtain could
hide the broad day. There was a desire
to eat melon, which we didn’t have. By
the side of the house I saw him out the
window carrying a large duffel bag. I
was left to rot, so uncanny. After 6 days
the frayed outlines of his figure hurled
me out of bed, and I collapsed on the
rug which had gotten very crumby over
the week. I sensed and the products of
this played with each other, my becoming relied on their play. Can you smell
the rot? Please don’t come in here, I
begged him, we’ll have to let time tear
its way before I want you again.
What would I do on the rug? Outside was a fun place to play, I knew, but
I grieved this. Darkness, are you here
yet? I can’t see, so you must be. And
then, somehow or other, I thought—oh
fuck—and felt—oh fuck—. It baked a
cake throughout my entire mouth. I
do return phone calls, etc. Outside, I
know there is another body sleeping
now, but it’s not mine. Sleep is always
something that I’ve wanted to control. It’s terrible that I can’t, and some
people have no bed. I have a bed, and a
hunch that if I go to sleep, I will truly
be alone. But I always find somebody.
The rustling oaks and maples make
kisses, I am Nancy, the product of the
rustling oaks and maples, who are not
my true parents. Their eyes did shine
so brightly that my eyes stayed open.
Into a black hole we go and we see that
it is not black. Above us I feel spiders
and rid myself of the tingling fear they
cause. I fear nothing in the black hole
which is not black but brown, and I say
to myself, I am no worrier, I don’t worry
much, over and over again, until I fall
asleep. The pupils go on stage to sing of
their freedom.
Literature & Critique
Students enjoy the computer lab at its inception. PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN VIA THE EVERGREEN ARCHIVES.
CONSUMING VIRTUAL BODIES
social media and the un-waged work of
reproducing the world
By Jasmine Kozak-Gilroy
Under capital, both the literal reproduction of our lives and the reproduction of our identities are constituted
through the consumption, and thus embodiment, of objects produced through
capitalism. In turn, the global world
that is built and maintained by capitalism is reconstituted and re embodied
through our consumption. Lazzarato
declares, “Consumption under capital
is more than just an adherence to supply and demand, but instead functions
as an adherence and manifestation of
to the world’s built and maintained by
the forces of capital.” In the act of consumption capital becomes physically
manifest and reproduced, “realized in
the body”. This realization and manifestation, “take place when the ways of
living, eating, having a body, dressing,
inhabiting a place get incarnated in the
body...” This constitution of the world
can be taken as a form of work as defined by Hannah Arendt, work as, “the
activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which
is not embedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species
ever-recurring life cycle. Work provides
an artificial world of things, distinctly
different from all natural surroundings.” Work, then, is the creation of the
man made world in which we reside.
Consumption, the absorption and/
or destruction of a product, good, or
service, is the physical act of adherence to a world, a world that is in turn
manifested by said adherence. The
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qualitative nature of the world as such
can be taken in and explored through
its creative expressions, which most
often take the form of advertising, a
creative form suited to new conceptions of creativity– most suitable to the
worlds of capital. Advertising takes an
aesthetic form as well as the form of
an event, or instance in time in which
the body is taken in by the aesthetics of advertisements and the desires
of the worlds of capital are taken into
and incorporated by the body. Publicity or advertising are meant to inspire
desires as to build worlds from the
inside of bodies outwards, complicating the disciplinary relationship between the world and bodies in which
bodies build explicit structures that
then confine bodies. Instead of bodies being reformed by disciplinary
Discussions of immaterial, or affective, labor, often conflate two distinct
forms– one, more like labor, that is explicitly work or a ‘job’, that happens in
or outside of a factory or office building
and is based on methodological repetitions, and two, the work of worlding.
This displaced, un located mode of labor, is in its waged form increasingly
attended to culturally and academically was described first by Maurizio
Lazzarato as putting that same vital
breath to work breathing life into other
unanimated vessels, defining immaterial labor as, “the labor that produces
the informational and cultural content
of the commodity.” Explaining, “The
particularity of the commodity produced through immaterial labor consists in the fact that it is not destroyed
in the act of consumption, but rather
it enlarges, transforms, and creates the
“ideological” and cultural environment
of the consumer.” And while Lazzarato
follows in the Marxist tradition of calling it “labor”, I am interested in exploring it as a form of work, the creation
and maintenance of the artificial world.
This work is first and foremost a
production of value; “transformations
[that] produce (or would like to produce) first and foremost a change in
sensibility, a change in our way to value
and perceive.” This ‘value’ is not a colloquial monetary value but a value and
assertion of worth and desire. How
much we want, a non- translatable nonobject, becomes falsely concretized
as currency– labor time spent, space
provided, hard cash given. Consumption under capital is more than just an
adherence to supply and demand, but
instead functions as an adherence and
manifestation to and of the world’s
built and maintained by the forces of
capital. This belonging is built and managed by a kind of work which takes the
metaphysical body, the aforementioned
‘soul’, as the basis for its production.
A virtual work then, “takes the
mind, language, and creativity for the
production of value,” the soul at work
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No experience necessary, seeking active and engaged students interested in broadening their writing, editing, and
formatting skills. Affection for research work and pop country preferred but not required. Send in your applications for
writing positions starting right now and editorial positions for the fall.
JUNE 13, 2018 / THE COOPER POINT JOURNAL 09
Literature and Critique
building the worlds of capital, breathing life into other unanimated vessels;
networks, goods, services. This is the
work of conceptual worlding– “the
informational and cultural content
of the commodity” and is largely unrelated to the commodity itself, but
instead to the way we interpret the
commodity and the world around the
commodity. The animation of commodities is an animation of worlds;
The company producing a product
or service produces a world. In its logic,
the service or the product, just as the
consumer or the worker, must correspond to this world; and the world in
its turn has to be inscribed in the souls
and bodies of consumers and workers.
This inscription takes place through
techniques that are no longer exclusively disciplinary. Within contemporary
capitalism the company does not exist
outside the producers who express it. Its
world, its objectivity, its reality merges
the relationships enterprises, workers,
and consumers have with each other.
The social quality of the internet
is so overt that it often overwhelms
any other discussions of the content
or context of the internet– discourse
around the internet is consumed with
an abstract, clickbait construction of
“alienation”, “closeness”, and “distance”
that mostly conform to binary critiques
that either imply that the internet is
making us lonely, that the internet is
making us more connected, or that the
internet could connect us, if we only
learned how to use it properly. These
critiques, although based on what
could be taken as far off relatives of
materialist conceptions of ‘alienation’
and ‘estrangement’, forget the economic context of the internet, imaging
the internet as a ‘place’ where advertisement occurs, instead of as inherently an
object for or location of valorization.
Social networks take interpersonal
networks to a place of capitalist productivity, making money off of interaction and engagement. Social media
is a mechanism for capitalist valorization, and it is a method that fundamentally dissolves the boundaries
between work and play, allowing subjects to work, to produce value under
the guise of play, allowing subjects to
work, to produce value while existing
in what has become a major plane of
existence. Content consumed on the
internet— be it major blockbusterstyle hits funded and disseminated by
Netflix or vague-booking produced
from your casual acquaintance on
Facebook— produces the same kind or
quality of value regardless of the source,
making engagement with social media a profitable source of engagement.
While this is most obvious on YouTube, as the only major platform that
rewards content creators directly for
their work, this model stands across
all social media platforms, visible most
clearly on Facebook in the uproar following the elections, with digi-citizens
using the platform itself to threaten
boycott after realizing that their perfectly tailored timelines were just the reproduction of their own political views
and fake news a million times over,
alleging that the algorithmic bubble
perfected by Facebook handed Donald
Trump the election and allowed for the
infiltration of paid Russian trolls. Despite some users who likely rolled of
the ship—either on the left for Facebook’s role in the election results, or
on the right following Facebook’s public apology and reaction—Facebook
made money off of the scandal, just as
YouTube makes money when you, or
someone with the same binary identity
categories or age range or geographical context or fascist sentiments as you
watches a TED Talk espousing the
perils of social media, the death of sociality, or how the toxic electronic waste
created in the process of minting the
very iPhone you are watching the video
on is going to kill us all. The nature of
the internet is content for the sake of
value it does not matter what quality
of content is produced. The content
produced could be the Unabomber’s
manifesto, espousing a return to a time
before technology, for all the internet
cares. It’s uploading and dissemination still espouses money and, more
abstractly and more crucially, value.
In “Sexuality As Work”, Federici
discusses the way in which productivity
relates to the ways social relations are
organized and identities are formed by
productivity even outside the confines
of waged work explaining that, “sexual
contact with women is forbidden because in bourgeois morality anything
that is unproductive is obscene, unnatural, perverted.” By framing productivity
in terms of private life and establishing
that sexual contact between women is
taboo due to its lack of productive quality—as it does not reproduce the work
force—Federici allows the discourse
of the relationship between productivity and identity to exist outside of the
sphere of the “working day”. Her use of
sapphic contact as something “forbidden” may seem out of date in a world
in which Pride month has become the
greatest advertising event of the year,
but in fact the uptake in acceptance
10 WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
of queerness or “the LGBTQ community” illuminates important questions. If nothing that is unproductive
is permitted, then for sexual contact
between women—or really, any form
of queer sex or identity—to be normalized, it must be producing something.
The most visible forms of poststructuralist, post-marxist, and postcolonial resistance rely on the concepts
of narratives, of ‘telling and retelling
our own stories’, of visibility, and at
their most neoliberal, of inclusion. And
although counter narratives can serve
as powerful tools for diverting attention, truly contemporary conversations
surrounding their application often ignores the reality that these narratives,
to the unknowing and unintimate glom
of capital, present themselves simply
as content which provides both a literal monetary value and a social value.
This is hyper visible on Instagram,
where the emergence of minor queer
celebrities whose popularity is based
on their willingness to expose their
personal lives on the internet, espousing the grimey details of their depressive disorders and their love for their
friends. In 2015, the term “radical softness as a weapon” flourished on Instagram, the often un-cited product of
artist and poet Lora Mathis. The phrase
was presented originally in a photo in
which the quote is spelled out with
plastic beads printed with letters and
swaddled in a string of plastic pearls—
a visually childlike, bubbly femininity
contrasted by a variety of thick black
weapons and plastic costume jewelry. “Radical softness” espouses the
idea that openly sharing your feelings with the world holds liberatory
potential, and that sharing your pain
can be weaponized against hegemony.
Mathis explains that,”radical softness
is the idea that unapologetically sharing your emotions is a political move
and a way to combat the societal idea
that feelings are a sign of weakness.”
Discourses around “tenderness” have
proliferated seemingly as a response to
the intensity of conversations around
entrepreneurship and self actualization that dominates the mainstream.
These discourses emerge especially
among queer and communities of
color, both communities that are of-
ten excluded from or ‘do not fit’ into
mainstream discourses surrounding
success and productivity. These counter narratives make space for folks to
live and produce value within capitalism, instead of abandoning the world
all together. Both discourses around
tenderness and around entrepreneurship create value by being discourses
at all, much less by being discourses
around which content production blossoms, creating both literal content and
the content of identify niches around
which moral unity can be maintained.
No matter how contrary to the status quo content produced may be, the
internet absorbs it only in the abstract
sense as value, taking even resistance as
feed. In the most sinister sense, Facebook and venues like it do nothing but
make money– Facebook in particular
made money in 2011 when protest
and then revolution erupted in Tunisia,
they made money when users shared
video footage of the 2014 strangling of
Eric Garner by police, when Michael
Brown was shot by a cop in Ferguson,
and with coverage of the “unrest” that
followed. They make money when users mourn those left dead after terrorist
attacks in Paris, as well as when users
resist eurocentrism by mourning the
deaths of Palestinians at the hands of
the Israeli state. Regardless of whether
users abandon one social network for
another– most recently, Snapchat for
Instagram and historically, MySpace
for Facebook– use of any social network engenders value, commitment
to a virtual world. The internet, like
all capitalist constructions left liberally to run amuck, swells with value
and bursts, drooling out asinine little
replicants to swell in its place. If work
once was, “a sort of temporary death
from which they could wake up only
after the alarm bells rang, announcing
the end of the working day.”, then the
ubiquitousness of forms of unwaged
value production integrated into our
daily lives abolished a waking world
away from work, only a total death of
the worker as anything besides worker.
In this way, work subsumes even creation that does not appear as work, taking in almost any content production as
a reproduction of the world or worlds.
Letters and Opinion
Continued from page 5.
What are you going to miss the most?
Probably Media Loan. Media Loan is like,
not only awesome or whatever, but no other schools have anything like media loan
either. Yeah, Media Loan is really really
awesome and I wouldn’t have been able to
do a quarter of what I did this year without
Media Loan and like also just media labs
on campus, spaces, equipment, support.
What are you going to miss the least?
I’m very jaded at this point and moment in
time, I think. What am I going to miss the
least? I don’t know, I think that critique at
Evergreen is generally, as a rule very wishy
washy. People don’t really… it’s very hard to
pull aggressive pointed critique out of people that isn’t just sort of like banal observation and like whatever. My professor was
willing to give me a lot of that this quarter
which was really good, but it’s really hard
to get people to be like very formally like,
well you said you were gonna do this and
you didn’t do this, and hold you accountable.
What’s the most Olympia thing that you’ve
incorporated into your life?
Jeez, I obviously dress very differently than
I did when I moved here from Seattle.
Okay, the most Olympia thing. I’m trying to think about it. My roommate buys a
lot of saurkraut and I eat that, all the time.
And I tried to raise a scoby one time and
it molded. Ya know, I’ve lived at a lot of
houses that have indoor furniture on the
outside. You can sort of amalgamate those
answers.
Old School or Vic’s?
Oh my god, Old School, duh. Take that
question off here.
In a back-to-the-future scenario, what would
you tell your freshman self ?
I would tell my freshman self not to take
any of the classes I took freshman year. I
would have tried to take some of those stupid art programs probably. I think if I had
gotten started thinking about like theory
and art and things like that earlier that I
would have, but I kind of tried to, ya know,
do it at the last minute. Oh and I would tell
myself to stop paying for haircuts sooner.
GREY
What experience did you have here that was
unique to the Evergreen environment?
I’ve fallin love with being alive and nobody
told me not to.
Ralph’s or Bayview?
Neither they’re both overpriced activities
to human beings.
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East or West side Co-Op?
Eastside I don’t like feeling like I’m shopping in a closet, I love the Westside but I
don’t like the feeling of shopping in a closet
or being in the closet in general.
Evergreen woods or beach?
Definitely I feel less weird being naked on
the beach then being naked in the woods.
What are you the most proud of from your
time here?
Learning how to show up for the work so
the work can show up for the world.
What are you the least proud of from your
time here?
Not having a real gay bar to throw my ass
in a circle at.
Evergreen woods or evergreen beach?
Evergreen woods. Yeah, I like the treehouses, climbing.
What will you miss the most?
Well I’m not really leaving so…
What does the future hold?
I’m thinking about moving to Portland
next month for music stuff. I don’t know,
I’m not a particularly ambitious person. I
know I’d like to do more video work, but
I don’t know what that will look like right
now. When I was like in high school I really
thought I wanted to make documentaries.
And I still think that would be something
cool but it would have to be very meaningful and worth it. I don’t know. But short
term, I think I’m gonna move to Portland.
I’m moving in with my friend’s parents,
and I’m gonna be in her sister’s room and
only pay like $200 a month.
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Old School or Vic’s?
Definitely Old School, they hook it up. I
love blaze-ze-ze, you’ve never lived until
you’ve eaten eggplant pizza.
420 Carpenter or Green Lady?
420 Carpenter just because it’s in a beautiful location.
On a scale of 1- 10 how filled with existential
doom are you?
Right now, 7. But earlier this quarter it was
like off the charts, I’m like good now.
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Most Olympia thing you’ve incorporated into
your life?
The L word? McCoy’s? Fuck this is hard...
I guess like knowing that everything is
always falling apart but deciding that I’d
rather everything be falling apart then pretend like everything is put together.
On a scale of 1-10 how full of existential
dread are you?
Jake’s vegan hotdog? Used to always be a
ten but now a ten feels like a three.
What does the future hold?
The future is not vast enough to hold me.
If you could go back in time what would you
tell your freshman self ?
Fall in love with Anne de Marcken sooner,
she’ll change your life.
JUNE 13, 2018 / THE COOPER POINT JOURNAL 11
12 WWW.COOPERPOINTJOURNAL.COM
cpj_20180613.pdf