Taking Care

October 2, 2025

Since the beginning of our friendship, we have exchanged emails—long, meandering emails that rarely feel conclusive and are always part of one ongoing conversation we are having about everything from art to politics to the bad streaming television we sometimes watch.

When it came time to decide how best to introduce this publication project—which, as you will read, we are thinking of first and foremost as an art project—we decided that the form of email might best offer the most insight into how we communicate with each other and what we hope to achieve with COI.

Below is a glimpse into our personal inboxes—a series of email exchanges we had over the course of a month this summer. Like all of our emails, this exchange comes to an end only out of necessity; many of the things we talk about remain unresolved. But in keeping with the spirit of this project, we begin to trace the outline of some of the themes we hope to explore over the coming months (and if we’re lucky, years). This first season, Contours of Identity, begins with questions around this place, how those questions will shape this project, and what community it calls forward.

August 3, 2025

Dear Christina,

In trying to pinpoint the beginning of this project, I find myself reflexively looking at our time together at Blackflash Expanded, where we first worked together in this capacity—and where we met some of the writers that we will continue to work with at COI. But I think in reality the seeds for this project were planted much earlier, during the long and meandering conversations that have come to be such a big part of our friendship. Even during our first hangs, we were talking about art in relation to culture, art, and accessibility (in the broadest sense), and about the world we live in today.

One of the things that shapes how we both approach art as a practice and as an experience is that we do not separate it from the movies we watch, the books we read, the podcasts we listen to, the bad television we might stream late at night. We both ignore the arbitrary lines that try to separate, say, a local exhibition from an episode of Severance, because those lines don’t really make sense.

Over the last few years, I felt as if I was going through a crisis of faith around art. I struggled with what I thought it had become, with what I was making, and with what it all meant, if it meant anything at all. Then I read Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! and was renewed by a passage that comes near the end of the book:

“For our species, the idea of art as ornament is a relatively new one. Our ape brains got too big, too big for our heads, too big for our mothers to birth them. So we started keeping all our extra knowing in language, in art, in stories and books and songs. Art was a way of storing our brains in each other’s. It wasn’t until fairly recently in human history, when rich landowners wanted something pretty to look at in winter, that the idea of art-as-mere-ornament came around. A painting of a blooming rose to hang on the mantel when the flowers outside the window had gone to ice. And still in the twenty-first century, it’s hard for folks to move past that. This idea that beauty is the horizon that all great art must march. I’ve never been interested in that.”¹

There are so many things to take from this passage. But what I think I am most interested in—at least right now—is this idea of art as knowledge, art as a kind of telepathy that passes something from one mind to the next. One of my hopes for COI is that we create a space for “art as knowledge” to intermingle with other kinds of knowledge, other kinds of thinking, other kinds of storytelling, and see where that leads us.

August 10, 2025

Dear Zach,

Thanks for beginning with a reminder to look back. I feel like we’ve been talking about this publication for so long that it’s easy to forget how we got here. You mentioning our many “long and meandering conversations” reminds me of the importance of ongoingness—of taking time, of conversation, of visiting—and how I hope that these particular roots of the project and our friendship remain clear across the publication. These things are what excite me the most about art as well.

It takes time to get to know and understand an idea. And this idea you are working through of “art as knowledge, art as a kind of telepathy that passes something from one mind to the next” really helps to situate all the things!

You know that I’ve been stuck on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ text, Tell the Others (love it!). I’ve been reading it over and over with others every chance I get this year. The text reflects on crisis and disaster (in this case, hurricanes), and she speaks of the important role artists play as part of disaster response:

“And will those who hear tell the others? The extreme lack of media coverage of Hurricane Beryl’s devastating impact on Carriacou suggests that it will be left to the artists to respond and remember. As always, the artists have so much to teach us.” ²

And this sense of artists and artworks sharing, teaching, and telling others gets me very excited about art. Maybe what I mean is: it gets me very excited about art again.

The crisis of faith you mention, I feel that. I don’t think I feel it in the same way, but I feel a sense of frustration when considering the role and effectiveness of art. From the beginning, this sense of frustration is something that has bound us together in conversation. And I think you’re right to locate that sense of frustration in the bigger discussion around art in relation to culture, art, and accessibility. Responses to and reflections on culture are an important part of what gets me excited about artmaking because we live in a world that deserves to be discussed, contemplated, critiqued, and reimagined, and I believe that artists are uniquely equipped to do so.

I think a lot about the separation of visual culture and artistic practice within the confines of academic institutions in this country—and let’s be honest, the driving centre of contemporary art in Canada is dictated by the academy. In many art programs, visual culture is separated from the practice of making art and left to the historians to consider (and it shows).

And as I think about the lack of visual culture being taught across the country as a foundation for practicing art, I remember too that —media culture— is even more lacking within many foundational institutions. And as you note, the movies we watch, the books we read, the podcasts we listen to, and the bad television we stream are all important shapers of culture. It’s important to me to articulate this relationship to media and culture because, for me, this is how I also come to consider and love artistic practice.

Thinking about visual and media culture necessarily implies considering communication. Sharing ideas, telling stories, sharing knowledge—it’s that “art as a kind of telepathy that passes something from one mind to the next” that you’re thinking about. Taking time to build and nourish relationships is a critical part of knowledge sharing, and I see this as a goal of COI as well. Not to solely exhibit or describe artistic works, but to prioritize conversations around them, to highlight and build relationships within and across them, and to help activate our thinking about them.

These days, there is so much—so much news, so much politics, so much war, so much genocide, so much horror, so much crisis, so much grief, so much content, so much art. It feels necessary to take time considering it all if we’re to try and find ways through it. One hope I have is that COI helps us all take time together—time to truly get to know some artists, some writers, and one another. Time to think things through together—it’s something that isn’t so easily afforded, but time that is necessary to take.

xoxoc

August 20, 2025

Dear Christina,

This letter is late—a fault that is only my own. I first read your email when you sent it, and then life carried on as it does. I intended to write this reply with plenty of time to meet our self-imposed deadlines, but now here we are.

This slippage of time has got me thinking about structures. With this project we are endeavouring to build something—a project, a magazine, but also, to some extent, a business. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to resist capitalism from within capitalist structures and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not impossible but it is very hard. The bottom line, as it is so often referred to, becomes the axis upon which everything else pivots—including care, consideration, and the treatment of others. We see this all the time.

As we build this thing, as we fill it with ideas, I think we both also aspire to structure it in a way that is both sustainable (I choose this word in place of profitable) and considerate. We have both encountered structures, conditions, and people in the art world who espouse the values I’ve mentioned about but do little to ensure that they are practiced or prioritized.

As artists, we are both in our own way business owners. It’s something that I think doesn’t get mentioned enough. When people ask my partner what he does for work, his reply is to say that he runs his own massage therapy business. His answer is very intentional. He wants people to know that he is both a massage therapist and a business owner. He wants it to be clear that he does both, in part so that they are aware of the true scope of what he does.

COI is an artistic project and a business (or perhaps at some point a not-for-profit). We both, as a result, will wear many hats. One of the things I am looking forward to is reconsidering what the bottom line means and how rethinking some of the structures that shape how we think about a business might also change the way we think, the kinds of writers, artists, and readers we attract, and what we make.

I’ve been thinking about how you so often sign your emails: take care. It is such a lovely sentiment, in part because it can be read as an invitation. Here. Take care. We have it to give.

August 22, 2025

Dear Zach,

Slippage in time, indeed! This is something that I also think a lot about and I’m laughing to myself thinking that your email was promptly met with an “out of office reply” from me. It’s a new strategy of mine—I’m here (as evidenced by my actual prompt reply in defiance to my own auto-reply!) but I’m trying to find strategies to better balance work and art and life and all the blurriness between. The summertime always seems like the perfect season to test out such strategies—we’re collectively conditioned to better understand slowness and non-work time at this time of the year, all while knowing it could easily continue throughout the year.

I was meeting with a group of artists based in Calgary recently, discussing “sustainability” in practice and as a goal for public artworks. One artist reminded us all that the term “sustainable” is itself a low bar in terms of a goal. She offered the example of friendship: if you were to describe our friendship, for example, as being “sustainable” (as in: hey what’s your friendship with Zach like? Oh, it’s sustainable…) it’d be read as a matter of concern – as not a very strong, caring, or worthy relationship at all. And yet, when it comes to work, to life, to artistic practice, we are somewhat tricked into thinking it should be a goal. She offered instead other terms: “regenerative” or “generative” and I really appreciated this reminder to continually question the language we use to describe what we want and how we want things to go (in art, in work, in life).³

I’m also thinking about the conversation you and I had a couple days ago with Nic—around what defines “success” as an artist.⁴ You and I have also talked about this numerous times. I wonder if we are sometimes preoccupied by the notion of the term because we both “work as artists.” That is to say, we both run small businesses that hold art at their centre. I love thinking about Jordan reinscribing this fact into the language describing the work itself. I was also thinking about this a lot when I took my bookkeeping certificate alongside other small business owners. Most of our small business examples were of lawn and snow removal companies, and I was thinking about how easy it is for everyone to imagine that sort of work as a business…and how even I often struggle to remember that art and culture is also a valuable and acceptable business.⁵

I don’t know when I started to sign my emails with “take care,” I’ve been doing it so long now. I vaguely recall being concerned with just how to sign my emails—“best,” or “yours,” the usual signoffs, never felt right or accurate to me. My dad always used to sign letters “with mutual respect,” and I always admired that as a way to also indicate one’s approach to life and relationships. These days I think a lot about how I always type out – t a k e c a r e – as opposed to adding it to my email signature. It’s important for me to take the time. It’s a reminder for myself that I mean it.

I got caught again in the slippage of time. I initially wrote this email response on Wednesday just after receiving yours…but found myself not sending it until now…later. I got caught up in other things. It’s summertime so there are too many things.

I went outside to clean up some garlic and think more about all this. Growing garlic reflects back to so many of these ideas—thinking about the time it takes and how slippery the timeline itself is to remember: planted last fall, harvested and hung up in the garage to cure in July. As well as the indescribable value the garlic holds—not in a monetary sense (though I was looking at how expensive organic garlic is at the moment – $3.99 per bulb?! Yikes!)—but with regard to the process itself and the time it takes. This garlic I grew has a unique sense of value by helping me to slow down and consider all of these things. There wasn’t a lot of garlic this year, who knows why (not enough water over winter? Not an ideal temperature?) and there were a few that failed to develop fully. That sense of failure is also of great value.

And now it’s even a few more days later—I’m gonna send this before I get caught in the slippage of time.

Take care,
Christina

September 2, 2025

Dear Christina,

It’s funny how many times I’ve encountered the word sustainable since receiving your email. Over and over again it keeps showing up, and I keep reframing it with this email in mind. As you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about maintenance, as both an idea and a practice. It’s something I define broadly, meaning it can just as easily refer to a relationship as to a piece of equipment. One of the questions I try to answer is, What is the difference between maintenance and conservation, maintenance and sustainability? In some ways, they mean the same thing, but really they all mean something very different. I am partial to maintenance over those other words because of its etymological root—to hold in the hand. Somehow that meaning is so simple yet so hard. We can only hold so many things in our hands at one time, as you note when you talk about balance. There is also something about holding something in the hand that makes me think about art—about a kind of action, not just an idea. I say that not to come down on ideas—some ideas are great—but to recognize the work that goes into things. Again, this comes through in how you take the time to type out “take care” each time you send it. Holding that action in the hand (or under the finger).

I’ve been thinking about our recent reminder that this project is just that—a project, an art project. As we think about success and business and about making this thing that invariably lives inside a capitalist system because we do, I wonder how we do things differently.

I’ve already mentioned a period recently where I had a sort of crisis of faith when it came to art. What I didn’t say is that I also had a crisis of love. Photographs, a medium that I have such love for, seemed to bore me. I didn’t like my own—not that I was taking many anyway—and I struggled with most of the images I saw. I eventually realized that I was trying to force my photographs to be something. To be art, rather than just allowing them to be whatever it is they are. Letting that feeling go has allowed me to find this satisfaction—this love—for the medium again. It also taught me a lesson about trying to force something, trying to mould it into a successful shape. Things take time, they grow at their own speed. They become what it is they are going to become. This, too, is art. And perhaps this is where I will sign off for the evening, at a place of patience, where we can watch this thing grow into whatever it is going to be.

September 8, 2025

Dear Zach,

Since reading your email I’ve been stuck on (and kinda livin’) this:

“We can only hold so many things in our hands at one time, as you note when you talk about balance. There is also something about holding something in the hand that makes me think about art—about a kind of action, not just an idea. I say that not to come down on ideas—some ideas are great—but to recognize the work that goes into things.”

Now that I finally have a minute to sit and respond, I’m thinking about it even more. I’ve been thinking about all of the work we’ve been doing to get this publication going, and the juggling we’ve both been doing trying to do it alongside all our other many things. And how, often, this is also how I feel about artmaking. One of the amazing things to me about artists (and being an artist) is this drive we all have to do things, to make things, to try things, to share things with others. It truly does blow me away to think about how much time it takes and how important it is. We live in a society that pretends to not understand art and artists (I say pretend because as you noted in your first email, as a species we’ve valued art for a very long time), a society that chooses not to value all that art and artists contribute. Despite this, we continue to juggle our time and to hustle our lives so that we can create more of it. Artists know the value that art offers. We sometimes get caught feeling like we have to explain this value to others, but we know it (as do they, really).

We are also living in a time and a place of book bans, constitutional violations against the trans community, and a tripling down on the dying oil & gas industry even as it breaks our own budget and cripples us with a contaminated future. That shit’s exhausting. And it deserves to have a space (and time) where we can discuss it together as artists.

Considering art as an action within the confines of this reality is a powerful thing, and I hope that this publication helps to shape new strategies for making sense of it all. When we talk about COI as an art project (as opposed to a magazine, for example), it helps to define the parameters of its potential. We live in a time when we need new responses to old recurring threats, and I hope that COI’s focus on shaping a community around what it’s like to live within this region can help. It will take time, but as you note: “Things take time, they grow at their own speed. They become what it is they are going to become. This, too, is art.”

xoxoc

Zachary Ayotte is a writer and visual artist living in Treaty 6, Edmonton, AB. His work explores themes of care and maintenance and how they are juxtaposed by the temptation toward consumption, accumulation, and control. He has published multiple book projects, including I Wish U Were Here, Notes on Digging A Hole, and At the Same Time. His writing has appeared in publications like The Walrus, Culture Study, and Canadian Art. www.zacharyayotte.com.

Christina Battle is an artist, curator, and writer based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Her practice focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster: its complexity, and the intricacies entwined within it. She looks to disaster as a series of intersecting processes including social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic, which are implicated not only in how disaster is caused but also in how it manifests, is responded to, and overcome.

Battle’s practice prioritizes collaboration, experimentation, and failure; she has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries as both artist and curator. www.cbattle.com.

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Footnotes:

1
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), 310.
2
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tell the Others (Ways of Repair, 2025)
3
Shared by Mia Rushton during a conversation and presentation by Alana Bartol for CADA’s Public Art for Sustainable Futures Residency on August 11, 2025. Mia also shared that questioning sustainability as a goal was gifted to her and collaborator Eric Moschopedis during an earlier conversation with Harun Morrison, another artist friend.
4
Conversation with Nic Wilson, August 19, 2025
5
I’m writing this between sending out friendly reminders for unpaid invoices…surely a task that the snow removal businesses also share! Thinking about how so much of the time it takes to be “successful” really comes down to chasing after money.