Monthly Archives: June 2022

Prof Dr. Emeritus Rik Coolsaet, Thomas Renard9 Jun 2022

Keywords:Zeitgeist, right wing extremism, populism, violent extremism

In the United States and across Europe, there is a broad recognition that right-wing extremism has become either the main terrorist threat, or at the very least a seriously growing concern. The racially motivated attack by an 18-year-old in May 2022 in Buffalo (NY), deliberately targeting African Americans and killing ten people before being arrested, was but the latest in a long series of lethal right-wing plots and attacks in the West. In parallel, a relative decline of jihadi activities in Western countries has been noted, resulting in a new balance of (perceived) terrorist threats.

Although recognising the intellectual appeal of such discussions, the very concrete policy implications to it are actually more critical. Any attempt at anticipating the evolution of the threat drives the allocation of counter-terrorism resources in a certain direction. In the UK, for instance, a leaked document revealed an hesitation regarding the desired priority focus of the Prevent strategy. Predicting the future of terrorism has never been an easy task, however, and a simple observation of recent trends and numbers is an unreliable method to anticipate a deeper structural evolution. In order to address this point, this short article revisits the concepts of terrorism waves and the Zeitgeist, with a view to reflect on what terrorist threat landscape may lie on the horizon.

The evolution of the threat

The rise of right-wing extremism has been in the making for some years, and certainly monitored by Western intelligence services for over a decade. In 2009, for instance, the US Department of Homeland Security identified the economic downturn and the election of the first African American President as unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment. A few years later, European intelligence services in countries such as the UK, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands similarly assessed the political turmoil accompanying the 2015 asylum crisis as a potential precipitant of right-wing extremism (and of left-wing extremism in response to it), and also observed an upsurge in anti-government sentiments.

The gradual rise of right-wing extremism occurred mostly in the shadow of the jihadi threat a threat that was particularly acute over the past decade. Arguably, a juncture point may have been reached. The jihadi threat in the West has significantly eroded since the peak of the Islamic State (IS) caliphate in 2014. The number of jihadi-inspired attacks or plots in the West has been declining for several years in a row. Most of these plots were relatively unsophisticated, prepared by lone actors with very limited skills and means. No rallying cause for jihadism seems at present able to mobilise large numbers of individuals worldwide.

Meanwhile, the number of attacks and plots linked to right-wing extremism in the West has increased according to many accounts, although methodological difficulties remain in measuring right-wing extremism and terrorism, leading to difficult interpretation of the data. Nonetheless, right-wing (violent) extremism is now receiving far greater attention than in the past. In most Western countries it is now a matter of real concern, although the sense of urgency varies from one country to another.

In the US, the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded in 2020 that far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of ideologies, including far-left networks and individuals inspired by IS and al-Qaeda. In the UK, in 2021, the number of far-right referrals to the governments Prevent counter-terrorism programme exceeded those for Islamist radicalisation for the first time, while the number of far-right terrorism arrests has increased significantly. In France and Germany as well, the number of right-wing extremists monitored by the intelligence services and the number of plots have been increasing.

The threat of right-wing extremism certainly reached a peak during the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, triggering fears of insurrection or civil war in the country, but also in other parts of the world. More broadly, the Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for right-wing and other anti-establishment movements who have instrumentalised the crisis to lure in broader audiences (notably among the anti-vax community and conspiracy-adepts), although the exact impact of the pandemic on violent extremism still requires more research.

As the jihadi threat is on the decline and the threat from right-wing extremism is on the rise, it opens discussions on the relative importance of these threats respectively. In some countries, notably the US, domestic terrorism (i.e. mostly right-wing) has been identified for some time already as the main terrorist threat. In Germany as well, right-wing extremism is considered the biggest extremist threat to our democracy. In many other European countries, intelligence services closely monitor right-wing extremism but still consider that the most likely and immediate threat of an attack would come from jihadi circles. Yet in other countries, the threats from jihadi terrorism and right-wing terrorism are considered equally likely. While things are clearly still in flux, a number of analysts are already predicting that right-wing extremism could become the dominant terrorist threat in the coming decade at least in Western countries.

On terrorism waves and the Zeitgeist

When confronted with terrorist campaigns, observers have at times overemphasised continuity and underestimated discontinuity. This has often led to overly dire predictions of terrorist activities or, at times, to the failure of noticing the emergence of an unexpected new wave of terrorism.

UCLA scholar David Rapoport made exactly this point concerning the new-left wave of the 1960s. Underestimating the cyclical nature of terrorism, scholars and officials alike ignored a burgeoning threat of rising political violence, that was to become a new terrorist wave. He popularised the notion of historical waves in modern history in a very insightful and influential article published in 2001.

Rapoport identifies four successive waves of global terrorism since the industrial era in a 2012 book chapter: the anarchist wave; the anti-colonial wave; the new-left wave; and the religious wave. Each wave, he argues, is driven by a common predominant energy that shapes the participating groups characteristics and mutual relationships and lasts about a generation each (at least for the first three waves). That is, according to him, a time frame closest in duration to that of a human life cycle, in which dreams inspiring parents lose their attractiveness for children (p.42).

An alternative, but relatively similar paradigm was already suggested by terrorism scholars in the 1970s and 1980s, according to which each global wave of terrorism can also be seen as reflecting the Zeitgeist, the defining mood of a particular epoch. As the late Walter Laqueur, one of the pioneers of modern terrorism studies, asserted in his book Terrorism (1977, p.181): Terrorism always assumes the protective colouring of certain features of the Zeitgeist, which was fascist in the 1920s and 1930s but took a different direction in the 1960s and 1970s.

His argument was largely shared by most leading scholars of the early years of Terrorism Studies, who considered that terrorism could not be studied in isolation from its political and social context. Social, political and economic conditions shape the lenses through which individuals perceive their environment. Since it is upon their perception of events that individuals act, it is often acknowledged that perception is often more important than facts and reality. This is where the notion of Zeitgeist becomes interesting, because it is meant to capture the essence of an epoch or at least how it is experienced. It contributes to framing the context, to articulate hopes and dissatisfactions, and to direct the various ways to act upon them including terrorism.

The Zeitgeist as a reflection of the major social transformations of an epoch may contribute to a better understanding of the emergence and demise of waves of global terrorism. Rapoports first wave, anarchist terrorism, emerged in the context of the industrial revolution and its social consequences. The American historian Barbara Tuchman named it as one of the symptoms of a society struggling with fever, caused by the most accelerated rate of change in mans history (p.xiv), in which the working class was looking for recognition and a place as equal participant in society, both politically and socially. Confronted with a social situation seemingly without any real perspective for change, a limited number of radicals thought no other solution existed to eradicate rampant injustice than a recourse to violence.

The anticolonial wave, as alleged by Rapoport, was moved by causes that were legitimate to many more parties than the causes articulated in the first wave. It grew out of the dissatisfaction with the continuing presence of imperial powers in overseas colonial territories, where they refused to grant self-determination due to particular political contexts, such as a significant presence of Europeans.

Whereas Rapoport suggests a relatively clear-cut delineation between this second wave and the third, or New-Left wave, with the agonizing Vietnam War in the 1960s as the defining marker, we would argue instead that, starting in the mid-1950s, a revolutionary Zeitgeist emerged, that would last until the beginning of the 1980s. A global left-wing political mood washed over domestic and international politics and linked together diverse developments such as decolonisation, the overthrowing of rightist governments in Europe and Latin America, the anti-Vietnam demonstrations and Palestinian liberation movements, liberation theology and euro-communism, and the birth of new social movements, reflecting youngsters dissatisfaction with post-war material growth (in this case, Rapoports reference to youngsters no longer sharing their parents dreams, fully applies). Revolution was in the air and Marxist-inspired revolutionary writings could be found in the most distant places. In this frenzied atmosphere, violent action was again suggested by some as the best way of advancing the cause of overthrowing capitalism and Western dominance, since it was accused of denying entire parts of the world (the so-called third world) their legitimate place in the hierarchy of nations.

Rapoports fourth wave, the religious (or jihadist) wave, once again intertwined global and local causes of dissatisfaction with the existing order. Global discontent with the Western-dominated post-Cold War order and the pervasive narrative of a clash of civilizations plugged into a diverse set of local situations of injustice, conflict and marginalisation, such as Palestine, the social and political malaise in the Arab world, separatisms and rebellions (such as in Afghanistan and Chechnya), and structural discrimination in Europe against migrants, considered as second-class citizens. Triggering events such as the wars in Afghanistan (2001) and in Iraq (2003) acted as catalysts and seemed to prove Islamist activists right that the West had declared war on Islam. Jihadism was a mobilising narrative, speaking to all those (Muslims) who considered themselves disenfranchised and the marginalised, offering a common perspective of revolt against the powers that be not unlike Marxism in earlier waves of terrorism.

A Zeitgeist conducive to right-wing extremism and terrorism?

Today, culture wars, or social and political polarisation around issues related to identity, form the essence of the new Zeitgeist. This has very much been the consequence of the major transformations the world has undergone since the late 1980s. The list is long the end of the Cold War and the rise of the so-called Rest (particularly China) signalled the return of great power rivalry, and replaced the familiar predictability of bipolar world politics by multipolar geopolitical uncertainty. Technological change has been impacting the daily lives of almost every individual in the world, at increasing speed, hence creating new gaps among countries and generations. Inequalities have proved to be enduring worldwide, particularly within societies, and were aggravated by successive economic and financial crises since the 1990s. Globalisation and regional instabilities have been increasing migration flows, creating successive waves of newcomers in many countries. Finally, the persistent threat of climate change has been exacerbating all other challenges, questioning deeply the global economic model of capitalism, creating an unsettling sense of existential threat among young generations, and directly threatening the lives of millions.

The accumulation and combination of these structural transformations (many of which are ongoing) have resulted in the current social malaise that has eroded peoples trust in the ability of governments to steer societies safely through uncertain times. It has also resulted in rising feelings of being lost or left behind, in particular among groups that already found it difficult to make ends meet something that could already be felt strongly with the yellow vests movement. Lack of trust in governments to respond effectively to ongoing challenges also created space for anti-government and conspiracy theories to grow. Similarly, the falling trust in the traditional media was accelerated by social media whose business-oriented algorithms pushed radical or alternative content, further nurturing general distrust and polarisation.

The Covid-19 crisis acted as the last push for many people the one crisis that fused all the others into one overarching narrative (with many variations, depending on who is preaching it). There is, in the Covid-19 crisis, a power of attraction or mobilisation that is not unlike the role that Afghanistan played for the jihadi wave in the 1980s, or Syria for ISIS more recently.

In times of crisis, scapegoating is never far off. Minorities, the elite, the European Union, migrants or more simply the Other are now the usual suspects for every wrong. Since the 2010s, rancorous populism has been on the rise, globally and in the West, with the mainstream of far-right narratives in normal political discourse. Narratives of a Great Replacement (or white genocide), white supremacy in the US, and analogous discourses in other places capitalise on the sense of bewilderment many feel in the face of rapid change. Such narratives combine the fear for an existential threat with nostalgia of an imagined past, when life was supposedly simpler and better.

Far-right populisms and extremisms have been on the rise. Yet, other forms of extremism can prosper in this Zeitgeist too, such as anarchism, or religious movements that offer easy answers to the complex problems of this world provided they can concoct an alluring narrative and credibly suggest that history is on their side. In fact, the pandemic seems to have coalesced several marginal forms of extremism under a single banner, with protests gathering members ranging from far-left to far-right marching in the same direction.

But a Zeitgeist by itself does not lead to terrorism. As Martha Crenshaw wrote in her 1981 landmark contribution on the causes of terrorism, terrorism is never an automatic reaction to conditions. For a wave of terrorism to emerge and to sustain itself, a conducive environment and a mobilising narrative are not sufficient. Mobilisation hubs and catalyst events are needed, that bring individuals and groups together around the belief that violence is the only credible solution to change existing conditions. For this to succeed, there is also an intangible factor at play: the feeling that now is the right time to act, lest an unique opportunity will be lost. This is where some polls and intelligence warnings become worrisome: in the US, 40 percent of Republicans now agree that if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions; in Europe, intelligence services have been warning for new activist groups, but also fluid contacts and ad-hoc coalitions, showing a trend to arm themselves and increasingly developing international contacts.

The current Zeitgeist, exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis and the mainstreaming of extremist narratives, has the potential to lead to violence through individual actors feeling empowered and encouraged to take action, but also through a malicious instrumentalisation of this context by pre-existing and new violent groups, believing that the time for action has come. However, this Zeitgeist seems potentially conducive to several types of violent extremism acts, not necessarily limited to the far-right. As said above, jihadi terrorism is still a serious threat that could again be revived, provided a new mobilizing opportunity emerges. Left-wing, environmental or anti-technological extremisms could rise as well. Overall, all these forms of extremism could reinforce one another, in a form of reciprocal radicalisation and in a context of broader societal polarisation.

Conclusion

Terrorism can never be considered outside its social and political context, and outside the broader Zeitgeist. Looking at these different contexts suggests that indeed a new wave of terrorism is possible conceivably dominated by right-wing groups, but maybe more of a melting pot of extremisms. The importance of the Covid-19 pandemic in accelerating the emergence of this potential wave is undeniable. What is less clear is whether this wave could sustain itself without a catalyst such as the Covid-19 pandemic. As in past waves of terrorism, attention must be given to the complex interplay of all the causes of violent extremism. Extremism particularly when prone to violence is not simply a security issue, but also a broader societal issue. Failing to recognise this would be recipe for counter-terrorism failure.

Prof Dr. (em) Rik Coolsaet is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Ghent University (Belgium) and Senior Associate Fellow at the Egmont Institute in Brussels. In the 1980s and 1990s, he served as deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Belgian Minister of Defence and of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was appointed a member of the original European Commissions Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation (established 2006) and the subsequent European Network of Experts on Radicalisation (ENER). His latest research dealt with the origins and shortcomings of the concept of radicalisation and includes When do individuals radicalise? (In: Diego Muro, Tim Wilson (Eds), Contemporary Terrorism Studies. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Dr. Thomas Renard is Director of ICCT. His research focuses on (counter-)terrorism and (counter-)radicalisation in Europe. His recent research has focused on the evolution of counter-terrorism policy in liberal democracies since 2001, on (returning) foreign fighters, on radicalization in prison and on terrorist recidivism. His latest book is The Evolution of Counter-Terrorism since 9/11(Routledge, September 2021), whereas his research has been published in many journals and think tanks, including:International Affairs, Perspectives on Terrorism, CTC Sentinel, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ICCTorRUSI.

Related Readings:

Baumann, Z.Bidens National Security Strategy: Domestic Threats Take Centre Stage. Perspective, The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 8 April 2021

Van Dongen, T.Assessing the Threat of Covid 19-related Extremism in the West.Perspective, The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 5 August 2021

Van Dongen, T. and Leidig, E.Whose side are they on? The diversity of far-right responses to Covid-19.Perspective, The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 18 August 2021

Van Dongen, T., Wentworth, M., Rigault Arkhis, H.Terrorist Threat Assessment 2019- 2021. Threat Assessment, The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 03 February 2022

Read the rest here:

What the Zeitgeist can Tell us About the Future of Terrorism - ICCT - International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague

NEW YORK -- Hamilton opened the door for more musical history lessons. Now Six, the Musical is taking full advantage.

Staged like a rock concert, it presents the six wives of Henry VIII as divas (The Real Housewives of the Renaissance) who want to know who had it the worst. In something of a sing-off, they tell their stories in song and dance like Destinys Child, never missing a moment to make like Beyonce.

Just looking at the Broadway cast, its easy to see who might play the roles in a big-screen venture. There are places for Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Rihanna and Bey. But this is such a forgiving show it could be populated by anyone and still be a crowd pleaser.

Created by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, it grabs with a Chicago-like opening number, then lets the queens sass and sashay their ways into the hearts of theatergoers. Thanks to stadium-like lighting and a sound system that would make Adele drool, Six pulls you into the story of those who were divorced, beheaded, died; divorced beheaded, survived. Theres more than a little contemporary spin on the circumstances, but this is hardly a Masterpiece entry on PBS.

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Purists, in fact, may be put off by Marlow and Moss storytelling. Teens will love it.

Largely, thats because the songs are so good. If you havent heard at least one of them by now, you havent been in the cultural zeitgeist. All You Wanna Do has been a favorite since it first came out. And why not? It moves, it tells a story and it lets Samantha Pauly dis and dish with the best of them. Shes Katherine Howard (in case youre keeping score), the pink wife (yup, theyre color-coded) who sings the number like its the big seller a rock group would do just before the encore.

So much, in fact, has been massaged into place, youll marvel at how slick Moss and co-director Jamie Armitage manage to make the show. This is timed and toned to within an inch of its life and yet theres still an opportunity to play with the audience. Under these conditions, Six likely could run forever.

As good as the six are (theyre backed by an all-female band), they could be swapped out without notice and nothing would suffer. (On the night I saw it, Keirsten Nicole Hodgens was Anne of Cleves and she had the moves to pull off the rap, Get Down.)

Abby Mueller (as Jane Seymour) gets the big power ballad; Adrianna Hicks (as Catherine of Aragon) sets the shows tone and Joy Woods (as Catherine Parr) has the duty to pull it all together.

Andrea Macasaet (as Anne Boleyn) gets to be the funny one with Dont Lose Ur Head. When the others share their boo-hoo moments, she always pulls it back to her plight. The show is so clever you almost want to see how Moss and Marlow turned a doodle during a poetry class at Cambridge University into this.

While Six wont be everyones cup of tea, it should please the TikTok crowds sense of pace. It never lights too long on a subject and reaches a conclusion that, oddly, isnt far off from ones other reminiscent musicals (like A Chorus Line) have offered.

Six hits the #MeToo movement as well and best of all suggests you just might want to go back to those dusty history books and see how juicy the content was. This drips with drama and, as kids on American Bandstand used to say, has a good beat and you can dance to it.

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REVIEW: 'Six' brings out the rock star side of Henry VIII's wives - Sioux City Journal

This is part of the Biennial Artist Project, a series on the stars of the biennial circuit. You can also read our critics take on the list and a report on the economics of being a biennial star. The full list of biennial artists (and which galleries represent them) is available to Artnet News Pro members.

If you could somehow see every biennial or triennial in the last five years, what patterns would emerge? Which stars would shine brightest?

For this project, we analyzed the artist lists for 211 recurring international art events that have happened or been announced in the five years since the opening of Documenta 14 in April 2017. This is a somewhat arbitrary time period (the 2017 Venice Biennale is not included, since it opened in February 2017, while the 2017 Skulptur Projekte Mnster is, since it opened in June of that same year). However, with Documenta 15 about to open, it gives a convenient window to look at the figures who have defined the zeitgeist of this particular half decade in art.

The resulting list looks at figures in big events like the Venice Biennale and the So Paulo Biennial. But it also takes into account many new biennials that sprung up in this period (and that may or may not carry on), as well as hard-to-classify events like Bienalsur, which is technically based in Argentina but seeks to create a simultaneous art conversation about the Global South in far-flung venues, from Houston to Riyadh.

Chronologically, the final artist list included in our tally comes from the upcoming 2023 Sharjah Biennale, which was announced years ago; delayed by the pandemic, it is the final show organized by the late Okwui Enwezor. For the sake of providing some kind of limit to the selection, we didnt include architecture, design, or photo biennials, focusing on shows dedicated to art (admittedly a somewhat arbitrary disciplinary distinction).

While we are bound to have left out some events, the overall pattern is striking enough that it is not likely to change considerably. Overall, 1,599 artists emerged who had appeared in more than one of these big survey shows in this time period (the full list is available to Artnet News Pro subscribers); 591 appeared in three or more; 260 in four or more; and so on. The list, in other words, follows the classic superstar distribution, with attention becoming more concentrated the higher you go, and narrowing to focus on an elite with many times the exposure of the rest.

Below are this eras 17 biggest biennial stars, comprising all the artists we found who appeared in eight or more biennials in the past five years.

Korakrit Arunanondchai. Photo: Benjamin Bechet.

Born: 1986

Based in: Bangkok and Brooklyn

Appeared in: Athens Biennale 2018; Baltic Triennial 2018; Biennale de lImage en Mouvement 2018; October Salon/Belgrade Biennale 2018; Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Whitney Biennial 2019; Istanbul Biennial 2019; Performa 2019; Singapore Biennale 2019; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Biennale Gherdina 2020; Gwangju Biennale 2021; Kathmandu Triennale 2022

Notable Works: No History in a Room Filled With Funny Names 5 (2018)

Arunanondchai is a globe-trotting contemporary-art polymath, working between painting, installation, film, and performance. Since graduating from Columbias MFA program in 2012, Arunanondchai has become best known for immersive video installations like No History in a Room Filled With Funny Names 5, shown at the Biennale de lImage en Mouvement in 2018 and then in Venice in 2019, weaving together personal narrative, current events, Thai folklore, queer club aesthetics, and more.

In Western white spaces, the work often sits in a neutral ground where a life lived doesnt really enterits like life contaminates the space of art, he told the White Review last year, explaining his method. And when life is allowed to enter, it suddenly dominateshow the work can be read. I wanted to find a type of storytelling where all my interests could come together, without these limitations.

Like many artists on this list, Arunanondchai is also a quintessential collaborator, creating works alongside a recurring cast of colleagues including performer boychild and director and installation designer Alex Gvojic. Ubiquitous on the global biennial scene in the past five years, Arunanondchai has also organized his very own biennial-type event: the Ghost Festival, which brought a cohort of other biennial stars to Thailand in 2018, including Ian Cheng and Samson Young.

Uriel Orlow, Cmo se llamaban las plantas antes de que tuvieran nombre (Guatemala) (2020-2021). Photo by Hugo Quinto, courtesy of Alexia Tala.

Born: 1973

Based in: London and Lisbon

Appeared in: Manifesta 2018; Moscow Biennale 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Taipei Biennial 2020; Coventry Biennial 2019; Lubumbashi Biennale 2019; Bienal de Arte Paiz 2021; Momentum Biennial 2021; Thailand Biennale 2021; Vienna Biennale for Change 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; British Art Show 2022; Kathmandu Triennale 2022; Mardin Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Wishing Trees (2018), Learning from Artemisia (2019)

The Switzerland-born Orlow is known for honing in on specific locations and micro-histories, often using botanical knowledge to explore the notion of plants as political actors, and elsewhere the legacies of colonialism, spatial manifestations of memory, and blind spots of representation.

Spanning film, drawing, photography, and sound, his work is particularly well-suited to the biennial format because it speaks to both the local context and universal themes. It stresses long-term collaboration and often involves relationships that persist beyond the time-frame of the biennial, gallerist Arthur Gruson told Artnet News. Orlows anchoring of his projects in a particular place whilst addressing translocal issues and his commitment to finding meaningful image regimes and modes of representation result in artistic contributions that have a socio-political grounding and are valued by local as well as international audiences.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan poses for a portrait during the ceremonies for the Turner Prize 2019. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Stuart Wilson/Getty Images for Turner Contemporary)

Born: 1985

Based in: Dubai

Appeared in: Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2017; Biennale de lImage en Mouvement 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Bienalsur 2019; Coventry Biennial 2019; Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts 2019; Sharjah Biennial 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Sydney Biennale 2020; Havana Biennial 2021; So Paulo Biennial 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; Toronto Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Walled Unwalled (2018); After SFX (2018)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan famously styles himself a private ear (as opposed to a private eye). His artwork and research often involve careful investigations of sounds and voices as witnesses of violence and injustice. He works in video, audio documentaries, installations, and workshops to examine the thresholds of sound and voice, often leaning on sound as a vehicle for truth in the absence of visual information.

Recent subjects include the trial of Oscar Pistorius and the recollections of survivors of Saydnaya prison who were kept in darkness at all times. In 2019, Abu Hamdan jointly won the Turner Prize for his exhibition Earwitness Theatre and for his performance After SFX, which was also seen at the 2021 So Paulo Biennial.

Members of the Danish collective Superflex [left to right] Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjornstjerne Christiansen pose with their Turbine Hall installation at the Tate Modern. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Based in: Copenhagen

Appeared in: ARoS Triennial 2017; Gwangju Biennale 2018; Qalandiya International 2018; Desert X 2019; Thessaloniki Biennale 2019; Vienna Biennale for Change 2019; Desert X AlUla 2020; Thailand Biennale 2021; Vienna Biennale for Change 2021; North Atlantic Triennial 2022; Riga Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Deep Sea Minding (201821); The Mammoth Rehearsal Sessions (2021)

The Danish art group Superflex has spent more than a quarter century creating their hard-to-categorize, sometimes humorous, always socially engaged art. The collectivewhose founding members are Bjornstjerne Christiansen, Jakob Fenger and Rasmus Nielsenworks collaboratively, both among themselves (no one member ever gets credit for an idea) and with bureaucratic institutions and larger research institutions of various kinds. We like to engage with systems by going inside to challenge them, Christiansen told the New York Times. When youre inside, you can stir things up much more.

Multiple works created between 2017 and 2022 spun off from their larger, three-year initiative Deep Sea Minding, an ambitious melding of science, art, and environmentalism that involved a series of voyages aimed at researching the possibilities of new types of marine habitats that respond to a warming world. Their climate-change drive-in movie installation, Dive-In, at the 2019 Desert X Biennial was made of the coral-pink material they have created for this purpose, in anticipation of a possible future desert flooded by rising seas. For The Mammoth Rehearsal Sessions at the Thailand Biennale in 2021, they set up a group hypnosis session where art lovers were prompted to imagine themselves as wooly mammoths being driven to extinction.

Chiharu Shiota, artist, working on a huge installation in the foyer of the Gropius Bau, June 2019. (Photo by Ralf Hirschberger/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Born: 1972

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Jakarta Biennale 2017; Oku-Noto Triennale 2017; OpenArt (Sweden) 2017; Socle du Monde Biennale 2017; October Salon/Belgrade Biennale 2018; Shenzhen Biennale 2018; Honolulu Biennial 2019; Manifesta 2022; Setouchi Triennale 2019; Bangkok Biennale 2022; Oku-Noto Triennale 2020

Notable Works: Becoming Painting (1994); The Key in the Hand (2015)

The Japanese-born artist is best known for creating immersive installations with interwoven skeins of thread. Her massive nets hold small personal objects like keys and spring from desks, boats, or bed frames. Born in 1972 in Osaka, Shiota studied painting at Kyoto Seika University before moving to Berlin to train with Marina Abramovic.

Her artistic breakthrough came in 1994, when she staged Becoming Painting, a performance in which she poured toxic red enamel paint over her body, burning her skin in the process. The work marked her break with painting and the beginning of her quest to place both the artist and the viewer inside her own creations. Perhaps her most famous installation, The Key in the Hand, was her contribution to the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She transformed the exhibition space into a web of red yarn; at the end of each thread was a key.

Portrait of Naeem Mohaiemen. Photo by Abeer Hoque, courtesy Turner Prize.

Born: 1969

Based in: New York

Appeared in: Bucharest Biennale 2018; Front Triennial 2018; Industrial Art Biennial (Croatia) 2018; Lahore Biennial 2018; Liverpool Biennial 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Kyiv Biennial 2021; OFF Biennale (Hungary) 2021; Front Triennial 2022

Notable Works: United Red Army (2011); Tripoli Cancelled (2017); Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)

Now teaching at Columbia University, Mohaimen participated in the Visible Collective in the 2000s, an important group that agitated around the persecution of Arabs and Muslims at the height of the U.S. War on Terror. In the 2010s, he became celebrated for ambitious, expansive film installations like Two Meetings and a Funeral, premiered at Documenta in 2017, which concentrates on the Non-Aligned Movement of countries that tried to escape the bipolar order of the Cold War as the seed of a potential alternate political history, featuring Marxist historian Vijay Prashad.

I say what I do is a critique imbricated with love for this movement, he told Bidoun when he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2018. But it is not naive. The story is tragic, but its more Shakespearean than Greek. Failure was not inevitable.

Taus Makhacheva. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.

Born: 1983

Based in: Moscow

Appeared in: Ural Industrial Biennial 2017; Liverpool Biennial 2018; Manifesta 2018; Riga Biennial 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Lyon Biennale 2019; Bangkok Biennale 2020; Lahore Biennial 2020; Yokohama Triennale 2020

Notable Works: Tightrope (2015); Quantitative Innity of the Objective(2019)

The artist made a splash in the international art world with Tightrope (2015), a video that captured a tightrope walker carrying 61 copies of works from the collection of the Dagestan Museum of Fine Art across a Caucasus ravine. Like much of Makhachevas work, the videowhich was included in the 2017 Venice Biennaleexplores the factors that shape national identity and what happens when two cultures collide. (The artist grew up in Moscow but her roots are in Dagestan, which came under Russian control in the early 19th century.)

Since then, Makhacheva has moved away from work focused on specific geographies to explore physical and emotional transformation. At the 2018 Liverpool Biennale, she set up a fully functioning spa with custom beauty products and ASMR video backdrops. At the Yokohama Triennale, she presented Quantitative Innity of the Objective (also shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize), a room full of offbeat gym equipment that was activated by live gymnasts.

Artist Zheng Bo leads visitors in an Ecosensibility Exercise during his exhibition entitled Wanwu Council at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)

Born: 1974

Based in: Lantau Island, Hong Kong

Appeared in: Manifesta 2018; Taipei Biennial 2018; Thailand Biennale 2018; Yinchuan Biennale 2018; Yokohama Triennale 2020; Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021; Liverpool Biennial 2021; Hawaii Triennial 2022; Venice Biennale 2022; Sydney Biennale 2022

Notable works: Pteridophilia (2016); Le Sacre du printemps (Tandvrkstallen) (2021)

Born in Beijing, Zheng now resides on Hong Kongs largest outlying island of Lantau, one of the financial hubs last vestiges of nature. This choice of habitat is almost a mirror of his socially and ecologically engaged art practice.

Zhengs ongoing research, performance, and video art investigates human-plant coexistence, inviting us to rethink our positions and relationships with nature, ecology, and social aspects in our world, independent curator Angelika Li told Artnet News. The notion of interconnectedness among all living beings explored in Zhengs work resonates especially strongly in the wake of the pandemic, Li added: His projects create space for us to breathe and meditate, bringing us the awareness of the meditative and spiritual qualities from nature, the qualities that we once were not aware of.

Eyal Weizman, the director of Forensic Architecture. Courtesy of Forensic Architecture.

Established: 2010

Based in: London

Appeared in: Ural Industrial Biennial 2017; Manifesta 2018; Moscow Biennale 2018; Shanghai Biennale 2018; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2019; Whitney Biennial 2019; Bienal de Arte Paiz 2021; Berlin Biennale 2022; Biennale Warszawa 2022

Notable Works: The Long Duration of a Split Second (201819); Triple Chaser (2019)

Formed in 2010 under the auspices of the art school Goldsmiths, Forensic Architecture has grown into a hybrid research center, watchdog organization, and art collective with powerful allies like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The group of data analysts, architects, sound engineers, and even smell specialists use everything from cell-phone video to detailed reenactments in order to uncover lies, human rights violations, and crimes committed by some of the worlds most powerful.

One of the groups most impactful projects, The Long Duration of a Split Second, began as a means to clarify what exactly happened on the night hundreds of Israeli policemen raided a Bedouin village to demolish a few houses and two people ended up dead. Compiling footage and sound clips recorded by witnesses, as well as interviews, models, and press clippings, Forensic Architecture was able to prove that police had, indeed, opened fire first. Its video installations, which have been displayed at museums and biennials around the globe, stubbornly refuse to aestheticize these investigations, and instead lay out in clear-eyed, methodical fashion how the collective arrives at its conclusions.

Hito Steyerl, artist, in the art collection K21. (Photo by Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Born: 1966

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Skulptur Projekte Mnster 2017; Bienalsur 2017; Jakarta Biennale 2017; Busan Biennale 2018; Ghost Festival 2018; Kyiv Biennial 2019; OpenArt (Sweden) 2019; Venice Biennale 2019; Art Encounters Biennial (Romania) 2021

Notable Works: Liquidity, Inc. (2014); Factory of the Sun (2015)

The Munich-born artist is known for videos and installations that explore financial systems, surveillance, migration, and militarization through a mix of barbed humor and dogged research. Shes not afraid to bite the hand that feeds her: she declined the German governments Federal Cross of Merit to protest its failure to support artists during lockdown, and created an augmented reality app for her show at the Serpentine that erased the Sackler familys name from the facade. (The gallery has since done the same IRL.) One of her contributions to the 2019 Venice Biennale was Leonardos Submarine, a video installation targeting the arms manufacturer Finmeccanica, which has supplied weapons used by the Turkish armed forces against civilians in Syria and sold war planes to Saudi Arabia.

Marwa Arsanios. Photo: Nada Zgank. Courtesy of the Onassis Foundation.

Born: 1978

Based: Berlin and Beirut

Appeared in: Gwangju Biennale 2018; Lule Biennial 2018; Qalandiya International 2018; Biennale Warszawa 2019; Sharjah Biennial 2019; Berlin Biennale 2020; Lahore Biennial 2020; Documenta 2022; Mardin Biennial 2022

Notable Works: Who is Afraid of Ideology (201721)

Architectural models, magazine back issues, topographic maps, first-person interviewsthese are the materials that fuel the work of Marwa Arsanios. Born in Washington, D.C. and educated at the Lebanese American University in Beirut and the University of the Arts, London, Arsanios creates films, installations, and even textiles that emerge from a rigorous research process.

Much of her work examines dynamics at the intersection of feminist politics, resistance movements, and struggles over land. Her ambitious film series Who is Afraid of Ideology (201721) knits together the experiences of Indigenous farmers and organizers in Colombia, Mexico, Syria, Iraq, and northern Lebanon, as well as activists from the Kurdish autonomous womens movement.

Monira al Qadiri, Orbital (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.

Born: 1983

Based in: Berlin

Appeared in: Asia Pacific Triennial 2018; Athens Biennale 2018; Lule Biennial 2018; Aichi Triennale 2019; Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2021; Venice Biennale 2022; Sharjah Biennial 2023; Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan) 2021; Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021

See more here:

The Biennial Stars: Meet the 17 (Perhaps Unexpected) Artists Who Have Defined Our Current Era of International Art Shows - artnet News

The problem is, how do you have some kind of emotional catharsis when you know youre too old for it? Nevada, Imogen Binnie

The Perks of Being a Wallflower was first published in 1999. I was five years old. At least one copy likely sat on a shelf at my local Barnes & Noble throughout my childhood and adolescence. The book is targeted at teens, so I could have picked it up at any point once my age entered double digits, which was when I began reading books targeted at teens and adults.

But I didnt.

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower during my last semester of high school. A new friend who had gone to the same school as me for twelve years and had loved this book for many of them gave me her copy.

By the time I read Stephen Chboskys coming-of-age tale, I was old enough to be dismissive. I hadnt read anything considered YA in years, and I looked down upon a book I could finish in the time Id take with a more pretentious short story. And yet, despite my hesitance to give this book praise, it overwhelmed me with recognition. I knew that if Id read it four years earlier, my entire life would be different.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about Charlie, a 15-year-old who has spent the last year in a mental hospital dealing with clinical depression, the suicide of his best friend, and the death of his aunt. Hes starting high school a year late and is anxious about fitting in until he meets two seniors, the beautiful and troubled Sam, and her step brother, the gay and fabulous Patrick. Charlie falls madly in love with Sam and enters their world of drugs and drama and cool music like The Smiths.

I felt like Charlies story was my story. I was sensitive. I had clinical depression. I only had older friends. I had a sister who had bad experiences with boys. I felt drawn to gay people and community without being gay myself. I had a close relationship with one of my teachers. And I spent many nights in my feelings listening to The Smiths. The voice in my head that had prevented me from aligning too much with Holden Caulfield was silenced by the reveal that Charlie and I even had the same birthday Christmas Eve.

Three days before Charlie turns 16, he has the same first kiss I had at that age. Even more than our shared birthday, this was what unsettled me. After exchanging intimate holiday gifts, Sam kisses Charlie. She tells him she wants his first kiss to be with someone who loves him. It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud, Charlie writes. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.

The specifics were different, but as I read this moment, I realized my close friend and older crush had done the same thing as Sam. They loved me for how I saw them, they loved me for my innocence, they loved me for who they thought I could someday be, but they couldnt love me how I wanted. Like Sam, they told me that. Like Sam, they warned me not to get too close. And like Sam, they still kissed me so my first could have the joy so few firsts are granted. Or at least that was my interpretation as I read about Charlie and Sam less than two years after I was given my own moment of tender evanescence.

When I finished the book, I wondered what choices I would have made had I read it earlier. I was certain I wouldnt have followed the book so closely had I known. Maybe I wouldve made different decisions about my friends or my teachers or my music taste or how I acted with my first love. As a desperate-to-be-cool 18-year-old, I imagined I wouldnt have let my life be modeled after a popular piece of young adult lit.

Now I see the fault in that analysis. My life would have been different had I read the book at 14, but only because I wouldve modeled my life after it more. I didnt drink or do drugs in high school. I think I might have. I took two years to make a move with my crush. I wouldve done it sooner. And, most importantly, I would have watched Rocky Horror Picture Show.

At 18, I didnt know about my biggest adolescent regret, but I know it now. Had I followed this book more closely, I mightve gone to a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, I mightve been immersed in a more public queerness, I mightve realized what I was trying so hard to hide from everyone and myself.

Or maybe it would have done nothing. Who knows.

Of course, if youre a fan of sci-fi or comics or physics, multiverses have been in for some time. But now theyve entered the mainstream. Whether youre going to the latest Marvel movie, the pop-arthouse title of the year, or catching up on the new season of Russian Doll, it feels like everyone is imagining alternate timelines as we grapple with our untenable reality.

But before Dr. Strange, there was Gwyneth Paltrow. Before multiverses entered the zeitgeist, we had sliding doors. Ive never actually seen the movie that gave us that phrase, but I have seen Krzysztof Kielowskis original Blind Chance and Run Lola Run, another 1998 film inspired by the premise. For many years, I thought about the concept of sliding doors on a near-constant loop.

I didnt know I was trans until my early 20s. I also didnt know I had OCD. One of the ways my OCD manifested was in thought patterns around innocuous choices. Maybe inspired by Blind Chance and the cultural presence of Sliding Doors, this was especially acute with the subway. Every time I rode the train several times a day I felt consumed with what line I took and which car I entered. Sometimes the thoughts were concerned with my timeliness, but since I often left plenty of padding for my anxieties, they moved on to more unlikely outcomes.

Id stand in front of the train cars, convinced that the one to my right held my soulmate and the one to my left held my murderer. Or the other way around. Or the way around. Or the other way around. Or the other way.

This didnt prevent me from getting on the train what good would that do since the next train would have the same dilemma and also what if I missed my soulmate but I would spend the subway ride looking around at people awaiting my outcome. These impulses werent helped when my anxieties found validation. I never met my soulmate (I dont believe in them) and I was never murdered (Im writing this essay), but I did have less dramatic encounters. How could I quiet my obsessive thoughts after ending up in the same train car as a classmate and striking up a flirtation? How could I quiet my obsessive thoughts after a man put his penis on my shoulder and pissed down my back as he laughed?

The problem with my thought patterns wasnt their validity it was their use. The reason we find multiverses and sliding doors so compelling is because every small decision we make does have the potential to alter the course of our lives. Every time we leave the house, we may encounter our soulmate or our murderer or, more likely, someone we have mediocre sex with for a few months or a car that runs us over.

Its why fate is such an attractive notion. If we miss out on our destiny with one small choice, another small choice will come around soon to fix it.

Choice itself becomes an illusion.

I tweeted this on March 11, 2020 at 9:04pm. Id had my last electrolysis appointment and gone to the grocery store to buy three weeks worth of food. A brief quarantine was predicted and, since I worked from home, I figured I might as well start slowing the spread early. I couldnt yet comprehend the next two years, but even three weeks at home felt daunting. So fuck it. I started Glee.

The pilot of Glee aired on May 19, 2009 toward the end of my freshman year of high school. I did not watch it. I loved musicals, but my reluctance to embrace anything feminine, gay, and mainstream prevented me from checking out a buzzy TV show on Fox about showchoir.

Since I was in theatre, I mustve known people who were Glee fans Gleeks, if you will but I dont remember much beyond a resurgence of Journeys Dont Stop Believin. I wouldnt think about Glee again until I started writing for Autostraddle and all the queer TV nerds around me insisted I check out the first 2.5 seasons. One viral clip that revealed Jewish mommi icon Idina Menzel guest starred, and it got added to my ever-growing list of queer TV Id missed while hiding in my translucent closet.

My plan was to watch Glee until quarantine ended. I assumed this would get me through the first season, maybe the first two. Of course, quarantine didnt end, and I watched all six. It became the only thing I could get myself to do, a task both thoughtless and thoughtful as the world asked so much of us all.

I already said I loved musicals, and you know I am gay, but I cant articulate how much I wouldve loved Glee if I watched it as it aired. I was too desperate to be cool to have turned into a full Gleek, but privately it wouldve consumed me.

Like most queer shows Ive caught up on since coming out, Glee is full of contradictions. At its best, its a sharp musical about adolescent queerness and the suffocating culture of American suburbia. At its worst, its a white man rapping Bust a Move to his teenage students.

For better or worse, I wish Id watched Glee while it aired. If Perks showed me elements of the life I did live, Glee showed me the life I didnt. While I was having stolen kisses and confused angst, the Glee kids were having lady kisses and dramatic realizations. They went from bullied and closeted to a post-Prop 8 fantasy of liberal acceptance. They came out in song, declared their love in song, experienced heartbreak in song, got married in song. True to both its genres teen soap and musical everything that happened to the kids on Glee was as big as the feelings I stuffed deep inside.

Im not sure what effect watching Glee in high school wouldve had, but I have to imagine watching a show this gay about characters on the exact same high school timeline as me would have done something. And while the trans representation was bad, it was at least better than any other trans representation I saw. Its also yet another opportunity I might have had to become obsessed with Rocky Horror.

Watching the show as an adult, I felt affection for my queer self who attended suburban public school from 2009 to 2012. She experienced so much bullying and so much brainwashing. She fought so hard to escape and so hard to survive. I also felt affection for an alternate self who knew about that queerness. A version who could have experienced these fights with more clarity and a stronger sense of self.

Closeted me wouldve quietly loved Glee, but that girl? She wouldve been a Gleek.

By the time I moved to LA and stopped seeing her, Id been practicing these new habits for over four years. My brain wasnt perfect, but I felt like Id achieved what I could with those tools. And so, when my new therapist suggested we try EMDR, I said yes.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a technique where you recreate the eye movements of REM sleep to retrain your mind and bodys relationship to trauma. The way an EMDR session worked for me is as follows: Wed start with the same painful memory, my eyes would follow my therapists finger back and forth as I thought of the memory, then I would say the new memory my brain jumped to, and so on and so on. It was a bit like writing a braided personal essay in real time so, of course, I loved it.

For me, EMDR functioned as a sort of physical time travel. If the (misguided) goal of every time travel story is to change the past, this process allowed the internal change without all the external side effects. I couldnt go back in time and stop the bullying I faced or grant myself an earlier self-awareness, but I could massage the pain of that timeline to change my future. Its nostalgia as action.

This is how it feels to come to art too late. Its no longer an experience of immediate connection, but one of processing, of rewriting. By imagining earlier exposure, we get to create that alternate timeline. Were watching the show, reading the book, as our present self and our past self. We may only get one timeline in our universe but it can feel like weve lived many lives. We experience these works of art as those different lives. We imagine the person we couldve become. We imagine the people we can now someday be.

They become a part of us. Inside our singular body exists a multiverse of madness and, within that madness, healing.

Okay, I had heard about Nevada. After all, I approached transitioning like a straight-A student with a self-made syllabus. Nevada was on the notes app list I brought to bookstores alongside Redefining Realness, Little Fish, and Shes Not There. But Ive always preferred reading actual books, and I held off on the titles I could only find online. By the time I gave up and read PDFs of Stone Butch Blues and Torrey Peters novellas, Id been to all those support groups, and Id lost interest in Nevada.

The same impulse in me that didnt want to watch Glee, didnt want to read the book my peers worshiped. After all, I barely considered most of them peers. They were consumed by their oppression, while I thought we were luckier than most. They seemed to romanticize their chaos, while I yearned for calm. They found new ways to hurt themselves, while I felt like the world hurt us enough. This condescension was misplaced while I wouldnt quite copy the aesthetic or swagger, I was just one breakup away from the chaos and self-destruction. And, of course, had I read Nevada, I wouldve known that feeling superior to other trans girls is the biggest clich of them all.

I finally read the book last year and, while I found echoes of that post-breakup self, what I really observed were those other girls I met early in transition. Oh this is why they acted that way. Oh this is why they said those things. I suddenly felt affection toward the qualities that annoyed and alienated me years ago. We were all just looking for reference points as we did this thing we had no idea how to do. This is what they found.

But thats not to say Nevada is wholly removed from my own early transition experience. After all, the book itself is concerned with the very things Ive been writing about.

Maria feels like she transitioned too late to be anything but fucked-up. She struggles with expressing emotion, fakes her way through sex, and cant even remember to take the hormone shot a past version of her coveted. She talks a lot about self-improvement, but her clearest actions are on behalf of others. While she often treats the people in her life with selfish cruelty, shes generous online with her blog. She writes about transness so others can connect with her experiences and find answers even though she has no answers for herself.

Enter James.

Part two of Nevada, shifts the third person limited omniscient narrator to another lost trans girl with many of the same issues as Maria. Except James is about ten years younger and about that much further behind in his transness. When Maria meets him at the small town Walmart where he works, she decides he is the reason for her reckless cross-country excursion. If shes too late to heal, maybe she can at least save another trans girl from the same fate.

Except, of course, shes not too late. Nor is she equipped to help this other person before he is ready to receive it. Maria loves to monologue with an air of self-awareness but as revealed when the novel slips into James perspective or briefly into Marias girlfriends perspective, Marias knowledge of herself and her defense mechanisms is limited.

Despite its reputation, Nevada is an accomplished work of fiction, not a wayward guide for lost trans girls. Maria is not a role model. And not even in the way Maria would tell you shes not a role model. Theres a reason the dedication says this is a sad book. The misery of Maria and James is understandable, but it is not inevitable. The versions of them we meet are not the only versions that can exist and hopefully are not the only versions that will exist.

When I think about the times I mightve read Nevada, I feel conflicted. If Id read it when it first came out, I might have come out, too. I think back to who I was my sophomore year of college and the impact it would have had on that confused girl. I like this narrative, because it gives me a few extra years.

But far more likely, I wouldve read it upon first coming out. I would have related to Marias dissociation, her feelings of being trapped in her theoretically good relationship, the ability to express emotions in writing she can never express in life. I wouldve embraced her draw toward chaos and understood the fact that coming out as trans was the first change she ever actually made to her own life that felt like it was leaving the map that was laid out for her at birth.

I wouldve related to these things, and I wouldve felt repulsed by other things. And maybe it would have caused me to lean into my chaos, and maybe it wouldve scared me away. But, ultimately, I dont think it wouldve changed much at all, because while I didnt read Nevada, two other people did.

Casey Pletts Little Fish and Torrey Peters Glamour Boutique were my Nevada. They were the portrayals of realistic, self-destructive trans women I latched onto with relief and pain. Both authors have mentioned Nevada as a pivotal moment in their own artistic development.

The only reason reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower in middle school wouldve changed my life is because nothing else I was reading presented alternate views of masculinity. The only reason watching Glee in high school wouldve changed my life is because nothing else I was watching showed contemporary adolescent queerness. The only reason reading Nevada in 2013 wouldve changed my life is because nothing else I was reading acknowledged trans people exist.

Art is meant to connect with us on levels far more complex than introductions to basic aspects of our identity. Its special when something is able to have that impact, but its more indicative of a failed society than successful art. In fact, its an unfair burden placed on artists who have loftier goals than representation.

In a world where every train car has your soulmate, it doesnt matter which one you choose. In a world where trans people are safe to live openly and trans literature is allowed to thrive, it doesnt matter when you pick a single book off a shelf. The best way to ensure that representation doesnt matter is to have a lot of representation.

Later, Marias friend echoes a similar sentiment: Hey stupid, did you ever stop to think that that pattern, that coping mechanism, was actually a brilliant strategy to keep yourself alive?

The first time I visited my family after coming out to myself, I stayed in the closet. I took off my nail polish, put my boy clothes back on, and let my mom make comments about how I needed a haircut. A week in my hometown reminded me of the suffocating suburban culture, and I returned to my girlfriend in New York with a revelation. If I had transitioned as a teenager, in my hometown, with my family, I wouldnt have survived.

It was a nice thought. Id spent months getting angrier at myself with every gender epiphany. How could it take me so long to figure out? Why didnt I realize sooner? Why didnt I start transitioning sooner? But now there was a new narrative. I almost didnt survive high school in the closet I certainly wouldnt have outside of it.

I wrapped myself in the warmth of this narrative for years. I took comfort in this morbid thought as I started hormones at 23, as I paid money I didnt have to remove a beard that shouldnt have grown, as I embraced my own delayed adolescent chaos. I believed it until the pandemic slowed me down. I believed it until I was once again visiting my parents, once again in that same suffocating suburb.

That first trip home, I had all the serious talks with my parents Id never had the courage to broach. Maybe it was because the pandemic had reminded me of our mortality. Or maybe it was just because I hadnt seen them in so long. Either way, there was no small talk that week.

One night while walking their dogs, I stated my oft-repeated narrative to my dad. I told him that if Id come out in high school, I dont think I wouldve made it. Really? he replied. Thats all it took.

No, not really. I was depressed in high school, but so much of that depression was due to my inner confusion. I was a feisty and political kid, and if Id had language to describe myself, I wouldve done so with fury. I fought so hard for gay acceptance at my school without even knowing where I fit into that. If I had known, not only would I have been happier, but I wouldve had a clearer sense of purpose. I see videos of kids giving eloquent speeches to their state legislatures and I think, That wouldve been me.

Maybe Maria did have to stay in the closet. Maybe, for her, that defense mechanism really was necessary. But its just as likely it had more to do with the misinformation she believed than her ability to withstand being an out trans teen. I know thats the truth for me.

What can we do with that knowledge? What can we do with the fact that we got on the wrong train car? Or, more accurately, that the right train car never arrived at our station?

I cant believe in fate. I cant believe I was meant to have those years taken from me. Instead, I can fight for a world where other people have it better. Marias impulse to help James wasnt wrong. She just needs to help herself first. Maria is not too late to live the life she deserves. I wasnt too late to live the life I deserve. Theres no such thing as too late. Theres just later than what shouldve occurred.

Each one of us has an infinite number of versions we couldve been. We can long for those other versions, we can hope the lives of others have more ease, but we have to accept the version that exists. Do whatever it takes. Read the books you shouldve read earlier, watch the shows you shouldve watched earlier, find a therapist who does EMDR, or just get out of your own head for five fucking seconds so you can take your estrogen shot and tell the people you love how youre feeling.

If every choice we make determines who well be in the future, we owe that acceptance to our future selves. We cant change the choices we made, we cant change the choices we were offered, but we can make new choices today.

Our future self is almost here. Go ahead. Pick a timeline. Who do you want them to be?

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"Nevada" and the Multiverse of Sadness - http://www.autostraddle.com