COVERS 2: ANNOTATING THE ARCHIVE OF HERESIES
MELINDA GUILLÉN
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY ANYA GALLACCIO
& ARCHIVO FAMILIAR DEL RÍO COLORADO
︎︎︎
new release, read about it here
*1st printing: sold out!
** 2nd printing: available in October 2026
︎︎︎$35
︎ Add to Cart
A feminist zine project, COVERS focuses on the recirculation of, and critical responses to, art-historical documents from a number of artist-founded publications.
COVERS 1 focuses on HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (1977-1993). The zine is an index of reprinted covers and tables of contents from HERESIES, a vast and complicated constellation of feminist critique in art.
COVERS 2 focuses on HERESIES issue 13, Earthkeeping/Earthshaking, and includes the work of Anya Gallaccio and the Archivo Familiar del Río Colorado in dialogue with the articles selected and annotated by Melinda Guillén.
︎ Extract from Melinda Guillén’s introduction to COVERS 2:
Nature Is Not Your Whore: Annotating Heresies #13
“From article to article in this issue we hear women of all races discovering that if you don’t do something yourself, it doesn’t get done—in the world as in the home.” This part of the editorial statement for Heresies issue 13, Earthkeeping/Earthshaking, is regrettably prescient for the realities of our world today, as climate change, natural disasters, and extractive capitalism threaten our ecological vitalities in increasingly alarming ways.
I decided to dedicate COVERS 2 to explore and annotate this issue of Heresies because, well, it’s pretty infuriating how much things have remained the same or gotten worse since the issue was published in 1981. At the time, Reagan was the newly elected president, and the neoliberal and pro-privatization policies that would form the core of his conservative legacy of trickle-down economics, or “Reaganomics”—which still haunt us today—unraveled environmental protections, opened up federal lands for oil and gas extraction and mining, and sidelined Environmental Protection Agency enforcement, just to name a few.
The Heresies editorial collective chose an image of the massive plume of ash from the May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption in Skamania County, Washington for the cover. The eruption was caused by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake, which collapsed the mountain’s north side, leading to the largest recorded subaerial (on or near the surface of land) landslide in history, which was then overpowered by an explosion of partially molten rock and high-pressured steam and gas, creating a deadly pyroclastic flow of extremely hot and fast-traveling gas, ash, and rock. It produced an eruption column reaching 80,000 feet into the atmosphere, sending 540 million tons of ash deposits across a dozen states and Canadian provinces in just days, and within two weeks, it had circled the entire globe. Approximately 57 people and thousands of animals were killed, and hundreds of square miles were completely devastated. [...]
︎
Melinda Guillén is a writer, researcher, arts organizer, and feminist activist. Her research specializes in contemporary art history, feminist theory, and social movements of the 1960’s through the 1980’s. She holds a PhD in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego. Her dissertation, "Don't Need You: Conceptual Art, Feminism, and their Discontents" explores the concepts of individualism vs. collective identity; rebellion and refusal; rage; sexuality and self-pleasure; and subject and objecthood in the lives and practices of Adrian Piper, Lucy R. Lippard, and Lee Lozano.
She has also written about and presented on socially engaged art criticism, art and technology, public art, urban studies and spatial politics, punk and DIY culture, and humor as a critical device for Art 21, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; College Art Association (CAA), Queens Museum, and Cambridge School of Art. She was a Visiting Scholar for the AIR program at the 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica (2021) and as an arts advocate and feminist activist, she was part of the organizing team for Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in January (2012) and served as a member of the City of San Diego’s Arts and Culture Commission’s Public Art Committee (2020-2024). She lives and works in San Diego and lectures at UCSD.
Golden spiral bound
48 pp
Digital printing
7x 9 inches
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY ANYA GALLACCIO
& ARCHIVO FAMILIAR DEL RÍO COLORADO
︎︎︎
new release, read about it here
*1st printing: sold out!
** 2nd printing: available in October 2026
︎︎︎$35
︎ Add to Cart
A feminist zine project, COVERS focuses on the recirculation of, and critical responses to, art-historical documents from a number of artist-founded publications.
COVERS 1 focuses on HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (1977-1993). The zine is an index of reprinted covers and tables of contents from HERESIES, a vast and complicated constellation of feminist critique in art.
COVERS 2 focuses on HERESIES issue 13, Earthkeeping/Earthshaking, and includes the work of Anya Gallaccio and the Archivo Familiar del Río Colorado in dialogue with the articles selected and annotated by Melinda Guillén.
︎ Extract from Melinda Guillén’s introduction to COVERS 2:
Nature Is Not Your Whore: Annotating Heresies #13
“From article to article in this issue we hear women of all races discovering that if you don’t do something yourself, it doesn’t get done—in the world as in the home.” This part of the editorial statement for Heresies issue 13, Earthkeeping/Earthshaking, is regrettably prescient for the realities of our world today, as climate change, natural disasters, and extractive capitalism threaten our ecological vitalities in increasingly alarming ways.
I decided to dedicate COVERS 2 to explore and annotate this issue of Heresies because, well, it’s pretty infuriating how much things have remained the same or gotten worse since the issue was published in 1981. At the time, Reagan was the newly elected president, and the neoliberal and pro-privatization policies that would form the core of his conservative legacy of trickle-down economics, or “Reaganomics”—which still haunt us today—unraveled environmental protections, opened up federal lands for oil and gas extraction and mining, and sidelined Environmental Protection Agency enforcement, just to name a few.
The Heresies editorial collective chose an image of the massive plume of ash from the May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption in Skamania County, Washington for the cover. The eruption was caused by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake, which collapsed the mountain’s north side, leading to the largest recorded subaerial (on or near the surface of land) landslide in history, which was then overpowered by an explosion of partially molten rock and high-pressured steam and gas, creating a deadly pyroclastic flow of extremely hot and fast-traveling gas, ash, and rock. It produced an eruption column reaching 80,000 feet into the atmosphere, sending 540 million tons of ash deposits across a dozen states and Canadian provinces in just days, and within two weeks, it had circled the entire globe. Approximately 57 people and thousands of animals were killed, and hundreds of square miles were completely devastated. [...]
︎
Melinda Guillén is a writer, researcher, arts organizer, and feminist activist. Her research specializes in contemporary art history, feminist theory, and social movements of the 1960’s through the 1980’s. She holds a PhD in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego. Her dissertation, "Don't Need You: Conceptual Art, Feminism, and their Discontents" explores the concepts of individualism vs. collective identity; rebellion and refusal; rage; sexuality and self-pleasure; and subject and objecthood in the lives and practices of Adrian Piper, Lucy R. Lippard, and Lee Lozano.
She has also written about and presented on socially engaged art criticism, art and technology, public art, urban studies and spatial politics, punk and DIY culture, and humor as a critical device for Art 21, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; College Art Association (CAA), Queens Museum, and Cambridge School of Art. She was a Visiting Scholar for the AIR program at the 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica (2021) and as an arts advocate and feminist activist, she was part of the organizing team for Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in January (2012) and served as a member of the City of San Diego’s Arts and Culture Commission’s Public Art Committee (2020-2024). She lives and works in San Diego and lectures at UCSD.
Golden spiral bound
48 pp
Digital printing
7x 9 inches
