Finding Flow

Issue 13

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

The eleven contributors to the final issue of New Suns are all awardees of the Disability Futures Fellowship, a three cycle initiative that asked the question of “What comes next?” at the time of its creation six years ago. Now at its conclusion, having awarded sixty incredible Fellows, we are again, of course, at the crux of that question. So how do we as a community of creatives best attempt to answer it? 

The artists here offer a stewardship of the past to the present, and as you maneuver through the contributions you can find openings to paths of futures we need and want. Finding Flow, the title of the issue, suggests that we are doing just that — reflecting on the passage of time to find our way in, with, and through it to wherever it takes us next. To create a present and future memory, artists are tapping into ancestral and land-based knowledge, digging deeper into archives to tell stories that have not been told, blurring and stretching time in collaged sound through recordings, and reflecting on how we spend our time in creating, making, resting, nourishing — alone and in community. 

As the Disability Futures Fellowship sunsets, we can grasp that the wisdom flowing through Disability Futures Fellows’ sharing will ripple out in our worlds, towards the feelings and futures we want to find ourselves in.

Ezra Benus
Disability Futures Manager / Guest Editor

Disability Futures aimed to increase the visibility of disabled creative practitioners across disciplines and geography, and amplify their voices individually and collectively. Launched in 2020 by the Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative supported 60 disabled creative practitioners throughout its duration with unrestricted funding.

A note on the art direction in this issue:

This issue’s art direction uses form finding as an expansive foundation for discovery. Sifting through a book, divergent yet connected tectonics are revealed. Pages give way to a fleeting gesture — a hand impressed in sand, a metaphor for artmaking and the elusive flow of time. Deeper into the issue, abstracted pages become a lattice of potential destinations. The shapes are derived from the contours of a book, but move beyond this solitary space and into the collective flow of living. With the abstract shapes situated onto the sand motif, the viewer is quietly asked to make their own impression, both physically and metaphorically.