LTTR #2: LISTEN TRANSLATE TRANSLATE RECORD
August 2003
LTTR is a feminist, genderqueer artist collective originally based in New York that produced an annual art journal and series of performances, screenings and collaborations in the early 2000s. “LTTR catalyzed a vibrant queer community in formation through collaboration, organizing, explicit discourse, journal making, and distribution. The journal, half work of art, half political event, took on a new guise for each issue, ranging from spiral notebooks with golden inscriptions to manila envelopes to LP covers. LTTR constantly created new dialogues and challenged given forms, including their own.” – Tensta Konsthall
LTTR #2 is LP-sized and unfolds into a series of posters with texts, photographs, and other works by Boots, Charlotte Sims, Craig Wilse, Hanna Liden, Leah Gilliam, Mary DeNardo, Sara Thustra, Silka Sanchez, Wynne Ryan, and XYLOR Jane. It includes a CD with songs, an interview, and other audio pieces by Boyfriend, EE Miller, Jennie C. Jones, Jenny Hoyston, Joint Collaboration Productions, Lesbians on Ecstasy, Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, Pauline Boudry, James and Math, Rhythm King and Her Friends, Sarah Shapiro, Ulrike Müller, Wikkid, Wynne Ryan. Artist multiples by Astria Suparak, Fereshteh Toosi, and Free Dance Lessons are included with each copy.
Dimensions: 12.5 x 12.5 in, folded
Edition: 1000
Notes: Unpaginated
PRESS
ARTFORUM:
Excerpt:
In a political climate tinged by anger, defeatism, and the persistent shaming of unruly forms of queerness, LTTR objective is a generosity based in exuberance. It is, in other words, with a purposeful critical promiscuity that LTTR puts itself forward…
LTTR’s critical promiscuity emphasizes bringing different bodies together across race, gender, and generation. Likewise, the contents of the journals do not conform easily to categories, and often blur the lines between art, criticism, and fiction. In the four issues produced to date (each produced in a limited edition of one thousand copies and distributed mostly in independent bookstores), contributors have included emerging artists, transgender activists, punk musicians, and established scholars. Authors have ranged from Eileen Myles to Lisa Charbonneau, Anna Bloom to Matt Wolf; and artists from Mary McAlister and Zara Zandieh to Gloria Maximo and Lynne Chan. To get a concrete sense of the publication’s wide-ranging forms of production, consider the second issue (called “Listen Translate Translate Record”), which included a CD with audio tracks by Sarah Shapiro, Wikkid, and Boyfriend, as well as an altered tampon by Fereshteh Toosi, a poster by Silka Sanchez, “mood charts” by Leah Gilliam, poetry by Mary DeNardo, an essay by Craig Willse, and a small, stand-alone exam book, complete with a reproduced sticky note and scrawled notes to the instructor, by Astria Suparak. With every issue, LTTR draws on the resources of friends and colleagues, sharing the labor according to skills and energies; as much as the journal stems from do-it-yourself impulses, it is always a finely wrought object.
– Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Repetition and Difference: LTTR,” originally published by Artforum in Summer 2006 and re-produced in Art Practical December 4, 2013
DN (DAGENS NYHETER)
Excerpt:
En del har hänt på 13 år, både identitetspolitiskt och genom att de medverkande i dag är framgångsrika konstnärer. De fem numren, ett per år i en upplaga av 1.000 exemplar, är både fulla av konstnärliga artefakter och konstverk i sig själva…
Materialet fungerar också som ett kulturellt minne. LTTR uppstod före sociala medier, då den fysiska adressboken fortfarande var ett relevant verktyg och e-post printades och sattes i pärm. Tidskriften gavs ut då fanzinekulturen ebbat ut, men förebådar dagens DIY-våg (do-it-yourself).
LTTR är också ett inlägg i dagens svenska debatt om konst, verklighet och uppbygglighet. Den är ett lysande exempel på hur en politisk och social kamp kan vara en estetisk och konstnärlig drivkraft.
– Julia Svensson, “Here we LTTR: 2002–2008″ på Tensta konsthall, May 28, 2015
SVT: Danjel Nam, “Kollektiv queerkonst,” May 26, 2015
X-TRA CONTEMPORARY ART QUARTERLY:
“Curator Berin Golonu devoted the largest amount of real estate to a reading space for LTTR, a queer-centered collective founded in 2002 that produces a journal, events, and exhibitions. In front of several reading tables, a large wall mural is emblazoned with A Wave of New Rage Thinking, the title of the installation. LTTR showcases the work of recognized artists and writers while at the same time highlighting and amplifying voices that are often silenced by mainstream culture.
[…]
The Way That We Rhyme emphasizes the fluidity of feminism as an ongoing project. From the first piece of ephemera in the first box of Restricted Access to the last viewer, the exhibition builds on top of the work of women artists before us and around us, and makes room for those who will come after us.” – Aimee le Duc, “The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics,” Winter 2008
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EXHIBITIONS
May – Sept. 2015
“Here We LTTR” curated by Maria Lind @ Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden
Sept. 2013 – Jan. 2016
“Alien She” curated by Astria Suparak and Ceci Moss
Sept. 21, 2013 – Feb. 16, 2014 @ Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
March 7 – April 27, 2014 @ Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 24, 2014 – Jan. 25, 2015 @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Feb. 15 – May 24, 2015 @ Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
Sept. 3, 2015 – Jan. 9, 2016 @ Pacific Northwest College of Art: 511 Gallery & Museum of Contemporary Craft, in conjunction with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, Portland, OR
March – June 2008
“The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics” curated by Berin Golonu @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Jan. 18 – April 29, 2007
“Exile of the Imaginary: Politics/Aesthetics/Love” curated by Juli Carson @ Generali Foundation, Vienna
Jan. – March 2007
“Locally Localized Gravity” @ Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
May 7, 2006
“HOT TOPIC” curated by Amy Mackie @ Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY
2006
“Eat The Market” curated by Sam Durant @ LACMA Lab, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
May 27 – September 3, 2006
“The ‘F’ Word” curated by Elizabeth Thomas @ The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
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COLLECTIONS
Lesbian Herstory Archives
Fales Library at NYU
MoMA special collections, New York
Stichwort Archiv der Frauen- und Lesbenbewegung
Generali Foundation, Vienna
Bildwechsel, Hamburg
MAKE, Goldsmith’s Women’s Art Library, London
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RELATED
- ELUSIVE QUALITY, curated by Astria Suparak and Lauren Cornell for the release of LTTR issue #3
Astria Suparak 