In der mit is an artist book project created in collaboration with Yael Horowitz, begun during our time at Incahoots Residency. The book features Horowitz’ original short story about Communist, Yiddishist chicken ranchers in Petaluma, California and is accompanied by letterpress prints of the story’s central quotes paired with eight silk aquatint and copperplate etchings. The full short story is printed on loose kozo sheets and slides out from pockets behind each illustrative page.

The book’s narrative took root in the specific local history of Petaluma and gestures outwards to broader narratives like the impact of McCarthyism on the Jewish left. In the process of writing and drawing and printing we tried to imagine the utopic dreaming of this community, and to look directly at the many causes of its disintegration, from without and within. Speculative writing and art-making allowed us to venture beyond a defeatist narrative of inevitable failure and imagine other possible outcomes that might inform our cultural organizing work today.