Injustice to One is Injustice to All
August 2023 Issue
We recognize the intersectionality of all injustices
and hold the audacious belief that art helps create a more just world
PODER, PODER, PODER
(Power, Power, Power, in English)
It was 1964. Out with the old, in with the new. Except in this case it wasn’t merely a change of seasons, but a Brazilian military coup d’état instead. Adios Mr. President. Time to roll with the punches. Until, that is, democracy came into town again, circa 1985. The protest represented in this artwork couldn’t be more literal. Black empowerment in three words - Poder, Poder, Poder (Power, Power, Power). No getting around it. The photograph itself is Untitled, from the series Carnival. It was taken by Carlos Vergara in 1972, at the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Besides being emblematic of dissent, the artwork also challenges the customary depoliticized imagery usually associated with the Carnival, thereby adding even more vitality to this work.
Photograph of Carlos Vergara artwork by Tania L. Abramson. Poder, Poder, Poder by Paul R. Abramson
Tania Love Abramson, MFA, is a visual/conceptual artist, performer, videographer and writer/poet, as well as a Lecturer in the Honors Collegium at UCLA. She is the author of three art books, Shame and the Eternal Abyss, Concern, and Truth Lies, as well as the co-creator and co-instructor of the UCLA Art & Trauma class. More of her work can be found at tanialoveabramson.com.
Paul R. Abramson is the lyricist and lead singer of the band Crying 4 Kafka. Crying 4 Kafka has been memorialized in Erika Blair’s book The Sanctity of Rhyme: The Metaphysics of Crying 4 Kafka in Prose and Verse (Asylum 4 Renegades Press, 2018). Paul is also an artist of note, and an Editor at Breathe. Otherwise, Paul is a professor of psychology at UCLA.
By Osaze Osayande
Brett Story's film, The Prison in 12 Landscapes, confronts one with the consequences of our present-day Prison Industrial Complex without ever taking the viewer within the walls of a prison. The film effectively challenges conceptual ideologies of where the grasp of the carceral system ends and highlights how prisons have discretely influenced a plethora of aspects of our society. The film challenges the viewer to imagine what our world would look like, independent of the carceral system's influence. In the St. Louis County landscape, viewers watch how the PIC upholds the power of racial capitalism and discriminatory policing, impacting the daily lives of Black Americans far outside of prisons- a theme this zine further explores.