On August 16, the Hikianalia, a seventy-two-foot dual-hulled Polynesian voyaging canoe from Hawaii set out across the Pacific for California, powered by the winds, tides, two solar-charged propellers (for emergencies), and a thirteen-person crew.

It’s rare that as a writer I am left speechless by a performance. Writing becomes like swimming for the first time: relearning how to breathe. What can abandonment by words afford a writer besides drowning? Perhaps a lesson in listening. 

For Marwa Helal and me, the histories of our two countries—Egypt and Sudan—are inextricably linked, our shared Nile both the most obvious and fertile metaphor.

From Andrei Tarkovsky to Lucrecia Martel, Peter Hutton to Nathaniel Dorsky, entire aesthetic philosophies, genres, and approaches to filmmaking have been rooted in the elements. 

Invited to examine the human geography of lower Louisiana for the 2017 Prospect New Orleans triennial, Jeff Whetstone set off for the batture, a patch of land that separates the Mississippi from the city’s levee. 

A pose recurs in Christos Ikonomou’s Good Will Come From the Sea: one character after another finds themselves on their knees, waiting. For the dawn, for mercy, for love. 

The author and translator of Brother in Ice confront Romantic notions of genius, dysfunctional family expectations, and other challenges to self expression.

Notions of ecological precarity and technological mediation enfold in the degraded landscape; the video artist surveys her decades of prescient and pressing work.

Two artists drawing from punk, graffiti, and traditional Native American aesthetics, talk about protest art and the notion of the “Post-Smithsonian delinquent.”

Beading images of deadly viruses and bacteria into enticing designs, Cuthand makes visible Indigenous communities’ exposure to disease from first colonial contact to today.

The paintings in HumidGray and ShadowLake evoke synesthetic colors, remembered landscapes, and the physical performance inherent in marking a canvas.

The final part of a performance trilogy on climate change, Falling Out fuses puppetry, Butoh, and Flex, to reflect on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

The musician delves into the sonic properties and generative caprice of resonating bowls of water and melting blocks of ice—instruments that propel her latest album, Musique Hydromantique.

The poet and artist invokes ancient matriarchal cultures, Indigenous folkways, and the speculative capacities of language so that we might rediscover our kinship with nature.

Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir mines the land and seascapes of her country to create sparse and delicate works.

From 1975 to 1979 I grew up in a temporary company town made up of trailers in the boreal forests of northern Manitoba. My father was one of the hydroelectric engineers working on a joint project between the Canadian and Soviet governments to dam the Nelson River at a place called Jenpeg.

Anja skidded down the slope, which was becoming muddy from overuse by feet. It still hadn’t been paved or even scattered with gravel, since Finster didn’t want to admit that the state of the pathway could no longer reasonably be called temporary.

As we entered Arezzo, the guide pointed out the prostitutes lining the road. The women looked like awkward, flashy birds, teetering in bright spandex and spiked heels, cheap gold jewelry flashing in the summer sun.

coffee cups / stirrer sticks / napkins and cookies / on the tray top / satellite tv / an office in the air

A recording plays from somewhere high, / or low, through the falling dust-light: / I can’t tell you anything new about the river— / you can’t tell a river to itself.

A CAST of eight: ACTOR, CHEF, COMPOSER, DANCER, FILMMAKER, PAINTER, and siblings: SISTER and BROTHER. If necessary, ACTOR may be played by a PHOTOGRAPHER.

Painted on Yupo paper with water-soluble crayon, watercolor pencil, water brush, paper towel, and Q-tip.

Far away from any coastline. Where the wind strikes the water for the first time. Where waves start to grow. A young wave stretches its quivering back, reaching for the wind.

Two years back, in the midst of anthropological research about the science and culture of wave monitoring and modeling in the Netherlands, I joined in an event called Waterwolf 2016, a flood preparedness exercise staged in the small municipality of Marken, just twenty kilometers outside Amsterdam. I

Sto Len is a printmaker, painter, and installation and performance artist. He cofounded the alternative arts space Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn.