SPARK
SI-025, from issue 4, 2022.
Let Go of Control
Paul Soulellis is an artist and educator based in Providence, RI. His practice includes teaching, writing, and experimental-publishing, with a focus on queer methodologies and network culture. Paul is one of the founders of Queer.Archive.Work (QAW), a nonprofit library, publishing studio, and residency that supports artists and writers with free, open access to space and resources. Likewise QAW shares a space with Binch Press, a volunteer-run print and ceramics cooperative centering queer/trans artists and artists of color in Providence, RI.
PS Always energized because I gain a new perspective each and every single time. There is just a lot of sharing going on. Someone drove from Boston today because she is getting into her grandmother’s extensive collection of ephemera, photographs, and slides. Ultimately, she wants to organize the material as a collection, so she asked me how I started archiving my collection. I mentioned the idea of bad archives: collections that don’t necessarily do a good job of protecting or organizing the materials, but they have to exist. It’s a matter of survival because the collections form as evidence of life being lived. In a recent talk I gave, I talked about this space related to the AIDS epidemic and the early internet. How a network culture was forming during the 70s and 80s? What network culture means today?
UDÖ Wow. There is a lot to unpack there. How was being a gay man like during the AIDS epidemic?
PS It was terrifying. I was in high school when AIDS first appeared in the newspaper. I wasn’t even out yet. Imagine having to deal with sexuality, death, family, and the mystery of what was called the Gay Cancer in combination with a young teenager’s angst. Anytime I meet another gay man around a similar age, we always share a sense of terror. In a way, I still respond to those moments. One place I have been going is the archives, where a lot of the activist material from that moment has been saved. I can sit at my computer and look through meeting minutes from Act Up meetings. (Starting in 1988, Act Up was one of the major activist groups formed out of the AIDS epidemic. They would organize in public spaces to protest the lack of funding for AIDS research.) Those people may be gone, but the protests signs are still there in the archive. I feel a lot when I am browsing through those archives. But how can I connect that to the present moment? Queer Archive Work also has a political position because we collect and produce writing that doesn’t end up in conventional archives.
PS There are so many different techniques: refusal, resistance, confrontation, and making. Besides this being an archive, this is also a maker space. The studio is filled with equipment that allows you to make objects that distribute ideas. There is power in making and circulating. You can’t wait or be discouraged by a publisher not finding content “worthy”.
UDÖ How are ideas spread inside the studio? How are politics discussed?
PS There isn’t much focus on the specific work that is created here as much as the shared values. A collective communal understanding comes with sharing the responsibility of our studio space. We depend on each other.
UDÖ It’s so nice to see QAW as a place where many artists and ideas cross pollinates. How did it evolve from being your personal project to what it is now? Also, how did QAW start?
PS I learned a lot of values and a strong work ethic from my parents, specifically my father, about individual accomplishment. That was an essential part of my career or my artist practice. It was so extreme to the point that I wasn’t able to truly trust anyone. My father’s philosophy was: “Work is about you, providing for family, and accumulating wealth.” He was always rock-solid. Even though it came from my Greek father as an immigrant to the US, this approach was very American. While it was appropriate for running your business in New York, I was starting to question it around the time Trump got elected. As I slowly unlearned my idea of success,
I invited others to collaborate with me in publications; started sharing a studio. I formed an NGO solely to be able mentally to take myself out of it. Found a studio space that is more public so other artists’ can come and use the risograph. It was all baby steps. Two years later, we are now 40 people, and i am not leading or directing. That feels really good. This is perhaps the most important learning that I have ever done in my creative life.
UDÖ Wow, learning to let go of control or even learning to trust others.
PS It was a big shift for me; it felt political to let go of control. As soon as you ask someone to make a contribution, you don’t know what are they going to give you. What happens if it all comes together so that you never expected? In the past five years, the projects I have done have all been about making space for others.
UDÖ I also remember seeing an excerpt from your talk that artist book crossed out to re-write the publishing ecosystem. This gesture truly reflects the idea of letting go that we have been discussing.
PS The artist’s book is very much centered on the artist from its legacy to how it is celebrated today. Ed Ruscha and Sol Lewitt are classic examples of white men self-publishing to make their artistic practice more accessible. You know, I was obsessed with those books. But how do we get past the individual author? How do we move towards urgent yet collective work that results in a porous ecosystem that invites others? That’s how I see the future of Queer Archive Work.
UDÖ I can truly feel this philosophy in what you’ve established here in Queer Archive Work. Thank you so much.
Follow Queer.Archive.Work here
More about Paul Soulellis here
interview by Utkan Dora Öncül
Spark Interview-025