A weekly excavation by Prismatica
ARCHE
Week of August 16, 2026 · Resistance and Rebellion
Welcome Note
The Issue 4 Call for Submissions is officially live! The final issue of our inaugural volume addresses a topic both poignant and increasingly unavoidable: resistance and rebellion.
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Composer of the Week
Tips for deeper listening
Pauline Oliveros
What is relevant to her style is deep listening, a through line of the American avant-garde throughout the 20th century. For Oliveros, as for other artists like John Cage and Morton Feldman, listening was distinct from hearing; we "hear with our ears", says Oliveros in her 2015 Ted Talk, but "listen with our mind". To listen is to direct our attention toward that which we hear; it is an active rather than passive act, and it carries a psychological and, perhaps, spiritual benefit. Not that Oliveros was spiritual in her music-making (she does not seem to have appropriated that Cagean definition of music: "to sober and quiet the mind so as to open it to divine influence"), but deep listening necessarily entails the circumstances where one might encounter some type of spirituality if one so believes in it.
The reason for this is the nature of deep listening: attending to existence itself as it unfolds around us. This is an activity which is accessible to everyone; unlike the Gnosticism of religion which attempts to uncover the hidden textures of reality, deep listening concerns itself with the texture of reality as it is experienced, though often overlooked. Oliveros' conception is unique from the rest of the American composers working along similar lines, however, and it is important to understand how and why, for the sake of deepening our appreciation of her methods.
The notion of deep listening was not taught to Oliveros, though; perhaps appropriately, it was discovered over the course of her work. Deep Listening is, first and foremost, a pun, at least in its literal sense. The concept (for Oliveros) originated in her (willing) descent of the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, the purpose of which was to record music unrelated to the concept the descent inspired. Her experience in that cistern, however, birthed the expression and became a call to all composers and instrumentalists to take note of their environment as an active aspect of any listening experience. If you are like me, this may all begin to sound familiar, as John Cage pioneered a similar philosophy with his infamous 4'33 in 1952. Oliveros, however, approaches the environment from a different perspective, in that the environment becomes a conduit for the sound, rather than a mere representation of it. In this way, whereas Cage saw the environment as producing sound, Oliveros saw the environment as containing sound, both in the sense of holding and bounding.
Perhaps this is why much of Oliveros' work might be described as ambient; while Cage was more interested in sound as sound, regardless of the experience, Oliveros encourages us to actively listen to sound as it evolves and develops over long tones and harmonies. This is not dissimilar from Messiaen's work in Quartet for the End of Time, which may explain Oliveros' tribute to him with her Quartet for the End of Space. For Oliveros, this also means much of her recordings emphasize resonant and reverberating spaces; again, conduits for sound rather than producers of it. Sound, then, becomes almost meditative for Oliveros, enveloping the listener and encouraging them to listen with patient intention.
As the director of a multitude of nascent electronic and contemporary music centers throughout the middle of the 20th century, Oliveros established herself as a leader of the electronic avant-garde, something which no doubt influenced her later periods of sonic awareness and attention. Electronics allowed her a measure of temporal and architectural manipulation which emphasized presentness in sound rather than development. This is most notable in her creation of the Expanded Instrument System, a system of "reel-to-reel tape machines that allowed for an instrumentalist's or vocalist's improvisatory responses to various tape delays," (Liveness in Modern Music: Musicians, Technology, and the Perception of Performance, Paul Sanden). Oliveros states, "What I play in the present comes back in the future while I am still playing, is transformed and becomes a part of the past. This situation keeps you busy listening," (Sanden). We see in this the deep listening which was yet to be formulated explicitly: a focus on what sounds are occurring now instead of what sounds are yet to be.
Deep listening evolved into Sonic awareness, a philosophy of listening embodied by a symbol: a circle with a central dot. This philosophy began dichotomous, split between attention (represented by the central dot) and awareness, both reflecting the aspects of listening. To be attentive is to direct oneself toward a specific moment, feature, or action, while being aware meant recognizing the context in which that specific moment occurred. This is, again, reminiscent of Cage's early works which emphasized structure and rhythm (awareness) as the ground for individual moments, or "Gamuts" as he called them. Oliveros would expand this philosophy, however, quartering the circle into the following quadrants: actively making sound; actually imagining sound; listening to present sound; remembering past sound. Again we see the concept of temporality etherized upon the musical table (cf. Varo's Harmony from 1956), along with the active and passive elements of hearing and listening.
Oliveros offers us a few practices on cultivating this philosophy of deep listening in her book, Sonic Meditations (1971):
- 1. Listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it.
- 2. [for a group] Sit in a circle with your eyes closed. Begin by observing your own breath. Gradually form a mental image of one person who is sitting in the circle. Sing a long tone to that person. Then sing the pitch that person is singing. Change your mental image to another person and repeat until you have contacted every person in the circle one or more times.
- 3. [for a group] Each person finds a place to be, either near to or distant from the others, either in doors or out-of-doors. Begin the meditation by observing your own breathing. As you become aware of sounds from the environment, gradually begin to reinforce the pitch of the sound source. Reinforce either vocally, mentally, or with an instrument. If you lose touch with the source, wait quietly for another. Reinforce means to strengthen or sustain. If the pitch of the sound source is out of your range, then reinforce mentally.
- 4. Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.
If Cage transformed the way we hear music, Oliveros transformed the way we listen to it. Perhaps we can become better listeners in all aspects of our lives if we follow Oliveros' example.
Further Listening
- Deep Listening, 1989
- The Roots of the Moment, 1988
- Quartet for the End of Space, 2011
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Artist of the Week
parangón surrealista
Remedios Varo
Considering her background (her mother was Catholic and her father was a Universalist with a bent toward science), her scholarship (she studied in Madrid where she discovered Dali), and her social context (she experienced the rise of fascist Spain, including the bombing of Guernica that would inspire Picasso's painting of the same name, and was part of a Barcelonian artist collective known as "Grup Logicofobista"), that she was drawn to surrealism is no surprise. Its world offered her something few other artistic institutions did: freedom. Her imagination, which in and of itself is a powerful tool for those enmeshed in oppression and chaos, became the conduit for her paintings, and in several of them we can see a subtle autobiography, like in Emigrantes from 1962 or in her reputed final painting Naturaleza Muerta Resucitando which displays the "forbidden fruits" variously attributed to Eve's demise in the biblical Book of Genesis, all revolving around a candle flame, a recurring symbol of curiosity and intellect (cf. The Fable by El Greco for an oppositional symbolism). In light (pun intended) of Varo's life, we can see in this painting the fruits of her work revolving around her continued curiosity and creativity.
Further explorations of her own psyche can be seen in paintings like Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst which shows a woman, social mask dropped after a psychoanalytic session, holding an image of her father which she prepares to drop into a well. According to Rachel Gould of The Art Tourist, this might best be interpreted as the subject's dropping of patriarchal chains, along with the various neuroses (seen in the basket held in the subject's other hand) effected by familial and social traumas.
Despite the trauma of forced expatriation, Varo found some solidarity in the aforementioned las tres brujas, which, preceding the LaVeyan curiosities in San Francisco, celebrated a shared fascination with the occult. Many of Varo's paintings from this time reveal an artistic spirit exploring the metaphysical, as in 1956's The Juggler. However, we should not believe Varo's story is a fable on pursuing one's dreams in spite of challenges. To view her in this light would be to reduce her imagination to a mere goal, rather than the foundation of her ontology. Instead, Varo's importance lies in the core of her creativity, which she used not as a ready-made dream but as a way of living in a world increasingly unfree and oppressive. Surrealism is too often relegated to escapism; it is an artistic practice of imagination, yes, but of imagination for imagination's sake, so say critics. Varo reveals a surrealism that is more than this; it is a surrealism which commits its artist to the life being lived, through the imaginative. It is, to borrow admittedly metaphysical phrasings, alchemical in its process.
Varo transformed life around her through her paintings, not to escape but to explore. In this way, her work can be seen as a type of rebellion against the modern world. It is not in turning away, but in turning toward, that Varo's work reveals to us the brilliance of imagination.
Further Viewing
- La Pianiste Masque
- Modernidad
- Ojos Sobre la Mesa
- Still Life Reviving
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From the Prismatica Desk
Issue 4, Resistance and Rebellion, is now accepting submissions. For full details and to submit your works, click here.
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Until the Next Excavation
Resist through creativity; rebel through remembrance.
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A weekly excavation by Prismatica
ARCHE
Week of August 9, 2026 · Engaged Art
Welcome Note
This week's excavation reveals two grossly underrepresented figures in 20th century art, both of whom had direct connections to prominent 20th century avant-gardeists (though to different degrees).
We also look ahead to next Saturday, August 15th, when ENPRI opens its Issue 4 call for submissions! More details on that below.
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Composer of the Week
1970
The Engaged Artist: 1924-1990
Luigi Nono
Nono was well-acquainted with the high modernism of the 20th century, having married the daughter of Arnold Schoenberg. It would be a mistake, however, to reduce Nono to a derivative of serialism. As his style evolved in the latter half of the twentieth century, he became uniquely political and experimental, influenced by but distinct from the semi-political works of Schoenberg from the early twentieth century.
The famous Darmstadt school of the 20th century (the avant-garde collective of Nono, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and more) was coined by Nono in a 1958 lecture, and a year later Nono established himself against the aleatoric and chance-based compositional practices then in vogue (especially in the United States). Nono viewed aleatoric and chance works as neglecting the duties of the time (similar to Sartre's dictum against literature for literature's sake). While the motives of much of this avant garde was not necessarily music for music's sake, its lack of political commitment seemed collaborationist to Nono, who eventually broke even with Stockhausen for what Nono perceived as "fascist tendencies" in Stockhausen's works (Stockhausen's structures appeared to Nono to be oppressive in nature).
Especially in the 1960s, Nono's music exemplified engaged art. He began using emerging technologies to explore new forms of expression, though unlike other modernist composers Nono did so to explore the ways music could respond to issues of the time. This included works like La Fabbrica Illuminata which utilized tape recordings of factories and factory workers (and which was performed in factories) to comment on the plight of mid-century factory workers. His most literal piece, Al Gran Sole Carico D'amore, presents a history of communism and, especially, its failed revolutions and their impact on the future of communism. Further pieces in the 60s and 70s responded to, were dedicated to, or commemorated various left-wing intellectuals and leaders, in ways not dissimilar from Sartre's travels abroad to Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Throughout the last decade of his life, Nono began exploring new ways of presenting music, expanding on the processes first hinted at in some of the late works of Charles Ives. In these late works, the most important of which is Prometeo (1981-1985), Nono imagines music as being dramatic in itself, that is, relaying the action of a typical opera or stage performance through the manipulation of the sounds themselves and the space(s) in which they are heard. Prometeo, for example, required the construction of special structures to alter the sonic dimensions of the performance, alongside typical (for the time) electronic manipulation.
Nono's last few years were dominated by an aphorism he saw on the wall of a Franciscan monastery: "Travelers, there are no trails; you make your own path as you walk." This directly influenced Nono's last composition, derivatively titled "Hay Que Caminar" sonando. That path, for Nono, was one of direct political and social engagement, ever attached to creativity and expression itself. For Nono, art must be engaged, or else it risks abetting the very forces threatening to condemn the artist.
But Nono's legacy poses a greater question, especially important for Prismatica: must art be political in order for it to be engaged? Prismatica attempts to offer an answer, but we by no means believe we have the answer. Many times, in fact, we find ourselves wondering if our work is doing enough, considering the amount and variety of sufferings in the modern world, and the sufferings which have been perpetuated for generations (cf. The Wound That Speaks by Taven Strickert in Volume 1, Issue 3). The perils of the 21st century, however, are different than those of the century before, and many of them involve non-political threats: the threats of restlessness, of apathy, of consumerism, are connected in ways beyond mere political misgivings, and as such require a new type of engagement alongside the traditional forms of political critique. We hope we have, in the very least, made an earnest attempt at addressing these contemporary issues as well. What type of art this requires remains to be seen and remains to be the type of art ENPRI seeks. Whether the aleatoric abstraction of the 20th century can count as engaged remains debatable; what counts as engaged in our time remains for us to realize.
Further Listening
- Intolleranza 1960
- Al gran sole carico d'amore
- Il Canto Sospeso
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Artist of the Week
Circa 1938, Photographer Unknown
From Mrs. Pollock to Miss Krasner: 1908-1984
Mrs. Jackson Pollock
How many artists, thinkers, philosophers, musicians, humans, have been reduced to this single honorific epithet? How many have been shamed further into having their entire name erased (e.g., Mrs. John Smith, where the husband's name is the only name which matters)? This is tragic, certainly; but what is more tragic may be: how many of us notice?
Perhaps it is a testament to progress that most of you reading this cringed at the title: Mrs. Jackson Pollock. We've come a long way since the 1950s when such a demonym existed without a second glance. But this distance is precisely why I chose such a title for this week's artist. It is almost impossible to recognize how normal this was only a few decades ago; the outrage you now feel is only a fraction of the outrage felt by those whose names were erased in favor of their partner's (read: husband's), and that outrage should not be overlooked.
It is one thing to say, "Lee Krasner was unfairly overshadowed by her husband." That might fill us with an intellectual annoyance, or perhaps an ethical frustration. But to read her overshadowing, to feel her minimization, is to experience outrage, not merely to rationalize it. How easy it is for major publications to talk about her mistreatment (even if their own editors would have done the same only 50 years ago); it is much more difficult to force readers to experience the discomfort associated with that mistreatment. If you are outraged now, the title has done its job. Krasner was not unaware of this; in an interview, she said, "The first approval is: 'This is so good you can't tell a woman made it.'" If that isn't an indictment on the state of art in the 20th century, I'm not sure what is.
Of course, we would be doing her a disservice if we reduced Lee Krasner's legacy to misogyny-as-reminder. Her work stands on its own and deserves to be appreciated as such. What is difficult and exciting about such a task is her perpetual evolution; we find in Krasner's work classic portraiture, cubist sketching, abstract expressionism, and, eventually, neo-abstraction in her late works. Even if you dislike Pollock (which, admittedly, I do), Krasner probably has an artwork, or even a period of artworks, which will resonate with you.
Her artistic process is, much to my admiration, quite spontaneous. Not that she waits for inspiration; instead, she allows inspiration to reveal itself even in the ruins of previously discarded work. This is a process which should be familiar with many modernist artists, especially those of the American school who are used to using the discarded remnants of failed projects to create new pieces. She established an oeuvre distinct from Jackson Pollock, and even in her mature works, which reveal an influence from Pollock, her fingerprint remains indelible. Works like Night Creatures from 1965 echo a neo-post-impressionist aesthetic, while Imperative, from 1976, reveals her interest in collage, not dissimilar from the paper-cut works of Matisse. Mysteries, from 1972, is an amalgamation of various 20th century styles, and shows Lee Krasner as an artist capable of creating in a variety of genres and mediums (this particular piece is painted on cotton duck, a thicker form of canvas, showing her ability to work with a variety of materials as well). All of this together discloses an artist comfortable creating art in whatever mode or medium feels right, which is, unfortunately, a potential reason for her obscurity (besides the obvious as mentioned above).
Lee Krasner reminds us that art exists in many forms and can take the mode of whatever is necessary for its expression. Our duty, as artists, is to express what must be expressed, regardless of our proclivities, without fear or shame. Her vigilance of Jackson Pollock's works after his death also reminds us of love in spite of the stereotypes surrounding it. Though others were quick to suspend Mr. Jackson above her, she was not one to allow that to taint her opinion of him (he did enough of that on his own, but that's another story for another week). Instead, she chose to focus on her work, letting it speak for itself, with a voice we are all forced to hear.
What a voice it is.
Further Viewing
- Imperative, 1976
- Night Creatures, 1965
- Mysteries, 1972
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From the Prismatica Desk
We are less than a week away from the opening of our fourth call for submissions! The theme of issue 4 is our most important yet: resistance and rebellion. We want works which inspire, challenge, and imagine otherwise; works which resist structures and ideas, the mundane and the ordinary. Stay tuned for the official launch.
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From the Collective
One of our contributors reached out for help identifying a surrealist photographer whom they recalled after reading about Hannah Hoch. They provided the following details:
- Did a lot of work in old stadiums and amphitheaters
- Worked after the prime of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
- Similar in style to Ralph Meatyard
Any suggestions or help would be appreciated!
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Until the Next Excavation
Join the official ENPRI discord to stay up to date with the latest news and collaborate with fellow readers and artists.
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Week of August 2, 2026
A weekly excavation by Prismatica
ARCHE
Week of August 2, 2026
Welcome Note
Sometimes we need a reset; a time of revitalization after a period of storm and stress. This is true of any vocation, not least editing a literary journal. Atop the regular wear and tear of publishing quarterly issues, all three of us support Prismatica through our regular jobs, which often interferes with the time and energy we can devote to ENPRI. When you account for relationships, health issues, and global entanglements, that time becomes even thinner.
And yet, we persist. In fact, we more than persist: we evolve. In spite of ourselves, we want ENPRI to become more than a mere literary journal; we want it to be a community of engagement. To that end, we happily announce the (re)launch of our weekly newsletter, ARCHE, as well as an official ENPRI Discord server! The link to join the Discord can be found here and on the Collective page (information below).
We have made it this far because of our passion, yes, but also because of your passion. We thank you for your commitment and hope you will remain with us as we build a space for engagement, collaboration, and exploration. There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours. Let us make it mean something.
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Composer of the Week
Born 1942
Meredith Monk
There is, of course, the fact of her inclusion in one of the most popular films of the 90s: The Big Lebowski (listen: Walking Song). But plenty of musicians have featured in films and fade into obscurity after the initial fame of the movie. Moreover, while films can catapult composers into stardom (see: John Williams and Hans Zimmer), these usually involve films which rely on soundtracks to elevate their aesthetic. It is hard to imagine The Big Lebowski as a soundtrack film in the same way Star Wars or Interstellar are soundtrack movies (lest we forget, the Coen brothers create a specific type of film which does not have the same populist appeal as those which feature composers like Williams or Zimmer; not to their discredit, of course). This is evinced by the fact that Monk is not primarily known as a film composer; her music has merely been included in films.
Perhaps we can attribute her legacy to the fact that her music, while certainly not as approachable as Williams, retains a certain harmonic language which is not dissimilar from other minimalist and ambient composers (e.g., Brian Eno or Max Richter); indeed, many of her pieces fall neatly into the ambient space which has become increasingly popular in the last two decades. But while ambient artists like Eno rely on soundscapes, Monk's music, more often than not, supplants the ambience by focusing on the emergence of the voice as instrument. Music for Airports sits quietly beneath the vocal incantations of a tortured spirit.
Perhaps that is the key to her enduring status, however; not that her music is quintessentially ambient, or that it appropriates its success from popular media, but that it is, at its core, universal. The voice, after all, is the one instrument (and Monk ensures the voice is an instrument) which most possess indiscriminately and without reserve. Of course, this is no new discovery; but whereas other composers, especially those canonized in the Western tradition, have supplanted the voice with harmony, Meredith Monk has decided to excavate the voice from its tonal constraints and reveal it as it is. While Whitacre mastered the choral arrangement, and Schubert perfected the form of the lieder, Monk has evolved the voice as a pure instrument in and of itself. It has its own timbres, its own rhythms, its own sonorities, its own cadences, its own "rules", as she has said. For her, the voice is "like a spine", able to bend and twist and rise and fall.
Though she is not a film composer, she is no stranger to film as a medium and has composed a variety of videographic performances. In fact, like the New York School of the 20th century, Monk does not shy away from exploring aspects of art beyond pure music, creating films, dance, and dramatic performances, both with and without words. All of these, moreover, without ever being explicitly political, which may seem anathema to Prismatica. Her reasoning, however, reveals a distinction often overlooked when discussing the purpose of art. She readily admits that some artists engage the world politically; they address contemporary social issues, cultural missteps, and economic perils. But there is, for her, another type of artist who is no less engaged: the antidotic artist. This is the artist who creates in order to show the world an alternative to the mundane. This is the artist who forces others to see different perspectives, not necessarily in the hope of changing a current situation, but in the hope of reminding people that there is an alternative. While this may not be engaged in the traditional sense, we do not believe this is all too different from the goal of engaged literature. In the very least, it is not all too different from the goal of Prismatica.
If nothing else, Meredith Monk reminds us that the voice can be used for more than just protest, and it often must be used for more if it is to have any kind of effect. To criticize is one thing, but to elicit an alternative to that which is protested requires a different type of courage, a different type of imagination, and a different type of discipline. Monk may not be as political as Yoko Ono or Luigi Nono, but she is no less creative because of it.
Sometimes creativity is exactly what changes the world.
Further Listening
- Turtle Dreams
- Nyems
- Quarry
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Artist of the Week
1889-1978
Hannah Höch
Yet how apropos considering Höch's struggles within the Dada movement itself. If anything, her lack of recognition is evidence that the discrimination she faced by her peers (something well documented by the dadaists themselves) has not been rectified in the decades since her passing. While unfortunate, this also adds a bittersweet irony to her collage work. Just as collages combine disparate elements into a larger work, Höch's legacy reveals the hidden composition of artistic movements. Rather than singular figures working together as in the workshops of ancient masters, many art movements function through the disparate actions of their associated members, often with mixed and oppositional results. The dada movement owes part of its existence, even if only a fraction, not only to Höch's works themselves, but to the creativity she inspired in her compatriots. But like collage itself, the disparate pieces of a movement are so often overlooked for the grand narrative of the movement itself and so become amalgamated into the movement's story. Höch, then, becomes a footnote to Dada because Dada is more important than any of its individual members, just as a complete painting is given more attention than an assembly of individual pieces.
Add to this the fact that Höch was a collage artist and a woman, and her exclusion from canonical art courses and histories is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. All this despite the fact that her work directly influenced the punk movement, ingeniously criticized social structures of interwar Germany (for example, she signed her artworks by pasting a picture of her head on a map of countries with women's suffrage), and exposed the fragmented quality of modernity through her intentional use of the collage form (see: Cut with the Kitchen Knife...).
In this disappointment, however, perhaps lies Höch's most important contribution to modern art: a reminder that grand narratives rarely reveal the entire composition of their plot, and the pieces which get remembered are often determined by their own status in the greater cultural milieu. If Dada is remembered, it is only because of the artists who contributed to it; but which artists get remembered? Only those the public cares to remember. So, Hannah Höch suffers that great indignity: shaping a movement which has become canonical while yet being erased from the canon, only because she chose to embody that which makes any movement possible. Until collage is seen as deserving the same praise as sculpture or painting, and until attention is paid to the legitimate discrimination that occurs in even the (supposed) most progressive circles, Höch's legacy risks languishing under the generic. Perhaps our duty, then, is to reject the simplicity of broad labels and remember that in every creation there lies a multitude of voices, all harmonizing to create that which lands itself on the marquee.
