Missing Witches - WF - Vin Caponigro AKA Snake Hair Press： Telling Your Own Story

00:00:00.000 Join us and our amazing, surprising Missing Witches coven at patreon.com slash missingwitches. 1.00

00:00:09.500 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:16.040 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:19.180 Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Missing Witches podcast. 0.80

00:00:22.620 I'm laughing because Vin and I just spoke for about like 10, 15 minutes before I realized that

00:00:29.740 we weren't actually recording. So if you hear some kind of something in my voice, it's because

00:00:36.600 in my mind, I'm like, Amy, oh my goodness, Amy. But I think we can get it back. I think we can

00:00:42.920 recapture the magic. We're good. We're good. We're good. We're good. Thank you so much,

00:00:50.860 Vin Caponegro for being with us today in Circle and for your patience in repeating all of the

00:00:58.040 golden treasures that you laid down in the last 10-15 minutes. I really appreciate you being here

00:01:07.000 and you know our friend Christina Cleveland she wrote the book God is a Black Woman and

00:01:14.060 in her imagination of god um this god is welcoming christina calls it my sacred mess

00:01:21.280 so i'm going to be

00:01:24.140 allowing like that and just be okay with my sacred mess as we go forward

00:01:30.780 listen i'm so excited to be here um love you love the podcast love the book i'm like

00:01:38.200 having an extra 15 minutes it's not the worst yeah it's a blessing it is you know and sometimes

00:01:47.460 we find that so much in our lives that the things that go wrong sometimes we get the things that go

00:01:53.080 really right you know and so I want to talk to you about so many things I want to talk about

00:02:01.120 snake hair press. But first, when I was reading, this is going to happen a lot when I repeat

00:02:12.600 questions because my brain is like already moved on like a Russian futurist. Okay. So

00:02:22.240 years ago, you were involved in WITCH Chicago. You were a co-founder. Now, for those of our

00:02:32.140 listeners who don't know what WITCH is, and I say it like that to distinguish it from all us

00:02:37.380 witches, was an activist group in the 60s, a feminist activist group, and WITCH stood for

00:02:46.060 Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Can you tell our listeners about

00:02:54.580 your decision to co-found and to use this name? Yeah. So sometime in 2015, I had watched

00:03:07.660 She's Beautiful When She's Angry, the documentary, and I had first found out about

00:03:13.400 um, this group, which, um, and my immediate reaction was like, oh my God, how do they not

00:03:18.500 know that this group existed? It was so amazing. And I just sort of like started researching into

00:03:23.320 like every single thing I could find about them. Um, and at that time, two of my friends, um,

00:03:30.240 uh, Isimile Lara Ramos and Chiara Gallimberti, and I decided that we would sort of host these,

00:03:36.960 rituals outside in public spaces as a sort of reinterpretation of which, where we would take

00:03:45.580 some of the language that they were using from their manifesto and write our own manifesto that

00:03:52.220 was sort of updated for our uses, giving homage to the original, but also like noting the very

00:04:01.280 different things that we were, the different places that the world was in and the differences

00:04:05.900 as we are as you know human beings um and we would stage certain rituals where we would let

00:04:13.460 people know where we were going to be and what sort of topic we were going to be talking about

00:04:17.860 and we would show up with um like a ritual already pre-planned um and a spell that we could we would

00:04:26.180 all say together um we would look like candles and incense and each ritual had a sort of talisman

00:04:33.660 that somehow connected to what we were um what we were talking about so we did one for affordable

00:04:41.120 housing in our neighborhood and sort of called out the developers that were there um buying up

00:04:48.420 all of the homes and then turning them into luxury condos um and sort of gentrifying the

00:04:55.940 neighborhood and pushing out people who had been there for years um it was a neighborhood that we

00:05:00.280 at all lived in um ac mealy i think for like 15 years or something had had been in that spot um

00:05:07.240 and we created this um like cinder block that actually spray painted silver it was a clay it

00:05:15.220 was unfired clay cinder block that i had made and then spray painted silver and at the end of it we

00:05:20.740 smashed it so that everyone could take home um a piece of it with them and then every every ritual

00:05:28.900 that we um sort of facilitated people had the opportunity to like speak about how they were

00:05:36.000 feeling about this certain thing or like voice um the sort of like personal experience that they

00:05:41.760 had with it and then we we always wrote down experiences too and left them sort of taped up

00:05:47.120 with the remnants of the ritual that we had left behind so some people came intentionally to see us

00:05:53.060 but we also did them in like really public places so that people would sort of see that we were all

00:05:59.260 gathered and doing something and they would join in too. So like families, tourist families in

00:06:04.600 downtown Chicago with like their kids would come or like people would just be like, what is going

00:06:09.660 on here? And then we got to explain not only like, were we talking about gentrification or

00:06:16.440 the fundamental right to education or abortion rights. And then also talk about, you know,

00:06:24.500 witch itself and like why we were doing what we were doing.

00:06:28.000 And there's a quote from the Witch Chicago Manifesto that I would love for you to respond to.

00:06:38.180 Witches were the first guerrilla warriors and resistance fighters.

00:06:42.180 yeah so the manifesto um we wrote collectively also with like um we had found the i believe it

00:06:51.140 was from the new york chapter of which the original chapter um because there were um

00:06:57.700 there were a number of them like all over the country but the chicago one and the york one

00:07:02.140 were very um sort of they did a lot of actions i think it was i came from new york um but just

00:07:08.400 using the sort of as a reference point like the language that they were already engaged in and

00:07:14.260 then thinking about the history of witches and them really as the the type of the the

00:07:22.880 the person in the community that is looking out for the people who um need the most help right

00:07:31.520 like they're providing people with herbal care or you know they're they're taking away the evil eye

00:07:37.660 or they're, you know, like they're using talismans to like, you know, they're the ones that are

00:07:43.560 looking out for people. And oftentimes doing it in a way where the people in their community may

00:07:52.100 know that they're the ones to go to, but they're not sort of broadcasting. They were not using the

00:08:00.500 word witch because, you know, even to this day, depending on where you are, that can be a very

00:08:07.020 dangerous thing for like people's physical safeties so thinking about the sort of the witch

00:08:12.620 hiding in the forest or like you know waiting until the right moment to strike um being you

00:08:19.820 know like very community minded and like there to provide services but also not making it really

00:08:26.960 about themselves you know like making it more about like how can i quietly help the people that

00:08:32.320 need to be helped that that rings of the printing press too right especially what what snake hair

00:08:40.680 does um you might do the work in isolation the actual work of it but you're gathering and then

00:08:47.460 exporting for lack of a better word you know you're in in collaboration with the community

00:08:53.620 I do want to say listeners um because you brought up uh she's beautiful when she's angry um you can

00:09:00.240 watch it for free on YouTube it's a great documentary she's beautiful when she's angry

00:09:03.840 if you're listening right now you can go find it on YouTube otherwise I will put a link in the show

00:09:08.680 notes because like I say you can watch for free on YouTube and it's great that said when I spoke

00:09:16.660 to Star Goody she told me that the reason that they started their feminist newspaper in the 60s 1.00

00:09:23.420 was because they each um a group of women lived in a house and the only real rule was that each 0.99

00:09:32.020 one of them had to have a room of one's own and so you know they were just fostering each other

00:09:38.260 and fostering and fostering one of them happened to have a a printing press super old school you

00:09:44.040 know you put the letters in the uppercase lowercase that's where we get that by the way

00:09:48.440 people lowercase letters fascinating anyway so that was the reason they started their their 1.00

00:09:53.920 feminist newspaper was because one of them happened to have a printing press 0.97

00:09:57.560 so again I'll ask this question again listeners you've only heard it once 0.99

00:10:02.840 first of all I want to know how you got into printing but also I just want you to go off

00:10:10.100 on the history of the printing press and your perspective and and all of that like the cultural

00:10:15.600 context and absolute evolution of all of that printing press snake hair press yeah so um

00:10:23.800 just like a little bit of context again like my um i grew up triangulated between new york city

00:10:31.140 and philly um in a small city called easton which was colonized really early on um on lands like

00:10:38.320 literally stolen from the lenny lenape there's like docu documentation that like it was it was

00:10:43.040 very clearly taken um and um when I went to college I went right outside um of Philadelphia

00:10:53.240 to Bryn Mawr um which is a very sort of academic place even though I was taking I was doing a lot

00:11:00.980 of art classes um as a kid and like I was a very artistic child it was never even a consideration

00:11:09.540 that I would go into art for my academic career um and plus like I was one of the people I was

00:11:16.440 like we laugh about this I laugh about this with my mom because I was like I'm never I'm like I

00:11:21.360 can't draw like a chair or like a person or a sunset right I was the kind of kid who was like

00:11:27.320 collecting rocks and random garbage and making like sculptures um or just like wrapping things

00:11:34.220 and like doing like yeah doing lots of like quote-unquote crafting projects um and getting

00:11:40.560 into arguments with my like high school art teachers about like does do I need to know how

00:11:45.980 to draw a chair turns out I didn't but like you know so I when I went to school um art was not a

00:11:54.820 it was not something that was even a consideration of mine um for like a lot of different reasons I

00:12:01.520 think that um one of them was being so discouraged by art teachers um as someone who was um sort of

00:12:10.000 creating work that was not sort of valued in um in the way that they they value artwork um and

00:12:18.760 also because I think that it just wasn't seen as like a career choice that um was realistic

00:12:24.520 you know like um growing up like single mother two kids like my grandmother worked at a factory

00:12:32.540 my mom was a secretary um until she got a job at a candy company which um when I was in high school 0.95

00:12:40.000 they put her through college so and so her her degree is in like HR management or something you

00:12:45.540 know it's like so the idea that I could go for art was just like it wasn't a thing like no one

00:12:51.480 was going to be okay with that. So we can fast forward, like my second semester of my junior

00:12:57.920 year, I go abroad, I go to Rome. And I took my first printmaking class. And my brain just sort

00:13:05.500 of like exploded, right? Like I was like, Oh, my God, this is, I don't need to learn how to,

00:13:10.100 I don't need to know how to draw. It doesn't matter if I can't do this thing. I can still

00:13:16.360 create really, really thoughtful and effective art pieces. And I really liked the idea of the

00:13:26.500 multiple, like as soon as it entered into my consciousness, I was like, oh, these are not

00:13:31.960 precious. Like I can trade them with friends. I can, you know, like I can make a hundred of them

00:13:38.040 and give them away. Like that became something that was really important to me. Especially in

00:13:43.920 high school I was doing a lot of like poetry and writing and I was already making zines so the idea

00:13:49.960 of being able to make something um that sort of combined those two things became really interesting

00:13:55.340 to me so I um went from political science to political theory to aesthetics and then finally

00:14:04.620 ended up in art history which like everyone in my family laughed about because it's not really

00:14:09.820 that useful either but it was not studio art so like that was um and then I moved to Chicago

00:14:18.620 um to get an MFA at the School of the Art Institute so uh that in print making so that

00:14:24.280 was sort of my like trajectory at a certain point I was like there's no denying this this is the

00:14:30.300 thing that um that's giving me life like this is the thing that I want to dedicate my life to

00:14:35.980 um so I was in Chicago for about 10 years um you know like I'm an interdisciplinary artist

00:14:43.240 like printmaking is sort of like a small part of it like I also do a lot of like

00:14:48.540 video work and installations and lead like ritual performances with people um but it all sort of

00:14:57.300 ties into this idea of accessibility and the sort of non-preciousness of something, right? Like I

00:15:06.980 make rituals that get put on the internet and like books that cost $7 and are made in like the

00:15:12.240 hundreds. So that's like a sort of like fundamental, fundamental thing. So I was in Chicago for 10

00:15:21.080 years. And, um, when I moved to Boston, I suddenly had no place to print because in Chicago,

00:15:29.100 there's like a million, there's not a million. There's a couple, um, community print shops,

00:15:34.980 which are like amazing. There's like, you can go and you can rent time. And as long as you know

00:15:39.600 what you're doing, like it's, it's great. And you can take classes and everything, but, um,

00:15:44.940 there's not a single one of those in the Boston area in Providence. You can find a place to print,

00:15:49.420 but in Boston, you have to be connected to a school. And it was also the first time in 10

00:15:56.160 years that I wasn't teaching at a school. Like I wasn't adjuncting. So like I came here with the

00:16:02.040 intention of, oh, I'll just, I'll find a place to teach and it'll be fine. And that didn't happen

00:16:07.680 for four and a half years. So I found myself without a studio space for the first time in

00:16:17.360 10 years, um, without access to, um, any sort of printmaking equipment and in, um, like a thousand

00:16:26.340 square foot apartment, um, within an office, um, and a kitchen table. And I was like, okay,

00:16:34.440 uh, I'm just going to buy the shittiest laser printer I can find. And I'm going to start, uh,

00:16:42.100 press. Um, I think right before I had left, like I had, I had been making zines and artist books

00:16:51.960 for, you know, 15, 15 years at that point over that. Um, but I had taken a big break from them

00:17:01.080 as like a, a publishing model. Like I wasn't publishing things. Uh, but right before I left

00:17:09.100 Chicago one of the very last projects I did I did with my partner and it was a zine called um sort 0.83

00:17:15.780 of like a ton of tongue-in-cheek it was called white men are the worst which I mean like if I

00:17:21.800 had if I were going to write it now I probably would choose different language but like it is a 0.96

00:17:25.880 funny with all these microaggressions that white men had um sort of inflicted upon me and I I wrote

00:17:34.520 about them and my partner who is a white man um did all the illustration for them uh and we went

00:17:41.700 to a publisher's fair and that was the only zine that we brought and we just had sheets where

00:17:47.440 people could write out their their own experiences with white men and we like taped them all up um 0.91

00:17:53.940 which as you can imagine was like a total shit show because you have people like saying like 0.97

00:17:59.420 very real hurtful things like and like very sort of like um just like an unloading for people 0.96

00:18:08.000 because it was anonymous like when she wrote it you could put it up and walk away and then also

00:18:12.800 all the sort of like defensive feelings that were coming up from other people and there's like

00:18:19.000 arguing on the board and like um but that was like the project that I the last project I did

00:18:27.020 before I left Chicago. Um, and we did that a couple of times. The zine, we, um, generated money

00:18:32.400 for, um, Oh, what's it called now? It used to be called Chicago Rape Crisis Center, but they've

00:18:38.600 changed their name and I can't resilience. It's called resilience now. So we raised all the money

00:18:43.920 went, went to them. Um, and we did it a few times and documented all of the responses that people

00:18:51.780 left um and there's an archive of them on the internet and then we I took all of the physical

00:18:58.100 responses and we sort of um I lit them on fire like we just sort of like released all of it into

00:19:03.840 the into the ether um so you can still go and read the responses but all the physical ones are

00:19:11.140 of all that energy is gone um yeah so that was like the first project that we did

00:19:18.180 um where I started thinking like okay I could really I could really do this uh and then um I

00:19:24.400 was printing things in other places like I would go to residencies and I would use their

00:19:29.220 their equipment to print um and then in um I want to say fall of 2019 I want to say it was like the

00:19:40.540 Virgo new moon I can't remember now off the top of my head um I think I think it was the Virgo

00:19:49.760 new I put an intention out I was like I want and I wrote it down I have it framed in the office now

00:19:54.820 where it's like I want to find a prat I want to find a risograph that is not too far away

00:20:00.460 and in good working order and will allow me to publish sort of radical anti-capitalist

00:20:09.520 anarchist feminist anti-racist things and i can put out into the universe and also um sort of

00:20:17.220 generate some money for causes that i um really loved and uh it's like two and a half months

00:20:25.260 later found one in new inn so like a 30 minute ride from where i am at a at a church that was

00:20:33.300 getting rid of it so i rescued my risograph from the church we love a church yeah cleansed her

00:20:41.660 gave her all the purifications because who knows what she was doing before like we got our hands 0.95

00:20:46.660 on her um we named her octavia after octavia butler um and that really sort of like jump-started

00:20:54.540 um the process during covid like i'm in an office right now which is like amazing

00:21:02.200 um but during COVID up until literally a week ago I was in the kitchen so like the

00:21:10.800 reason graph like I was working on the dining room table the reason graph was right next to me

00:21:16.180 and it wasn't until this past week that like I've been able to move into this room because

00:21:22.520 my partner is now back at work um which is like amazing so like the room of one's own I'm like

00:21:29.960 yes I am no longer in the living room making all of this which was like you know a communal space

00:21:38.240 only shared by two people and three cats but the difference of being able to close the door

00:21:43.580 is enormous it's just so lovely I can't and I was thinking about Virginia Woolf the whole time I was

00:21:51.560 like I'm getting back my room um yeah oh and one of the first things we published actually was

00:22:00.880 witches in print so in um I can't remember all the years are blending together now I'm like the

00:22:08.340 last two years have been such like a a mindfuck I have no idea what year this is in totally sometime 0.73

00:22:15.140 time in the past two or three years we'll say yes um so sometime um the women's museum of

00:22:24.320 california asked me to write a blog post for them and i decided i was like oh like i'll do something

00:22:31.160 like halloween themed it's my favorite holiday for like obvious reasons you know like i i love

00:22:35.900 i love halloween um and i started looking into um the history of witches and the printing press

00:22:43.100 And that was one of the first things that we, for zines that I created was, originally it was a blog post. And then I did, I presented the research at an academic conference. And then I was like, you know what, this should really be a zine.

00:22:58.640 and that was one of the one of the first like official snake hair um productions um so yeah

00:23:06.420 the printing press is something that like I I feel really strongly about because it's often

00:23:13.360 sort of we often see it as like this like great liberator right like there's this famous um

00:23:22.120 letterpress that um this print that's the people's foe the tyrants the tyrants foe the people's

00:23:31.200 friend um and you see all the time like the there's i think honolulu printmakers made the

00:23:38.120 this machine kills fascists and it's the it's a printing press um which is like the take on like

00:23:43.760 the guitar the woody guthrie guitar um but i just like constantly have to remind my students that

00:23:49.380 like the printing press is not always used for good, you know, like in its inception,

00:23:55.140 the printing press played a massive role in the witch trials and was responsible for the deaths of

00:24:03.420 like innumerable women and people who did not fit into society's sort of like expectations.

00:24:11.160 Like it was used to, to intentionally spread propaganda, um, and continues to be used in that

00:24:17.760 way um so it's really like the printing press is not an it's not a it's not always like a marker

00:24:23.940 for good you know like a lot of times we see all the amazing things that come out of like um other

00:24:30.280 or like marginalized groups when they have access to printing presses right like you see like the

00:24:36.120 Black Panther newsletters and like the Sea Red Women's Workshop posters and all of that is

00:24:41.160 obviously great um but there's also we have to pay attention to like who is actually behind the

00:24:48.740 presses and who has that power um and for a really long time the church had that power and really

00:24:55.740 rich noble men had that power and they were the ones that had the printing presses so like it was

00:25:02.300 used in a way that um in its inception was like very very harmful um and it's only now that

00:25:11.160 um you know like that more people have access to sort of equipment like this um or that the

00:25:17.540 means of production you know to to put things out into the world in their own voices with their own

00:25:23.800 words um that the sort of world of printmaking is able to sort of better reflect how people 0.95

00:25:31.980 actually live you know it's not just um martin luther talking shit on the catholic church

00:25:38.620 which was another like huge part of early printing you know yeah and gutenberg the

00:25:45.380 inventor is sort of almost more associated with the bible now than even with the machine right

00:25:52.640 just to speak to your point of this like yeah yeah yeah i mean it's also gutenberg like took

00:25:57.940 technology it's another like took technology that was like readily available in asian countries who

00:26:05.180 had been doing printmaking on like a massive scale for hundreds of if not thousands of years

00:26:10.760 and then took ownership of it was like I created I invented this

00:26:16.440 he's known as the inventor of it when in reality that's just like not the case like we don't have

00:26:21.120 the documentation but we know that they were printing presses in Japan and in China well

00:26:25.980 before Gutenberg decided that he was going to make one with his wine barrel olive oil barrel or

00:26:32.580 whatever but i love your background um in that you it seems to me that snake hair press sort of

00:26:44.180 exists at this intersection between like a poli sci degree and an mfa 0.98

00:26:48.360 right like there's no there's no shying away um you know one of your mottos is like pro slut

00:26:59.020 anti-cop like ACAB is like at the beginning of your bio so like why is it so important to you

00:27:08.040 let me ask it this way because I always get a fascinating answer to this question what radicalized

00:27:13.540 you oh you know I have thought about that a lot and I I think I have to I think it was probably

00:27:24.660 9-11. I was in high school as a senior in high school with, you know, like being an hour and a

00:27:31.980 half away from New York. A ton of my friends went to New York for school and just like watching

00:27:36.580 everything that was happening on TV. And I was actually, um, I was on the school paper

00:27:43.720 and I wrote an article about how like, we shouldn't really be surprised that this happened

00:27:53.000 because we have been in these countries destabilizing things. Um, and like, this is

00:27:58.820 retribution for the things that we have been doing to them for decades. Um, it was not well

00:28:04.660 received. They published it, but it was not a well-received article. Um, actually I think the

00:28:10.620 first time that we've ever, the, the, the newspaper ever got hate mail. Like I got, I have at home at

00:28:17.540 my mom's house somewhere. I have like a collection of hate mail from the school newspaper.

00:28:23.000 it was just like a little too much with all like the patriotism and propaganda that happened after

00:28:28.860 9-11 um having anyone be like hey like maybe we should be expecting some retaliation for the the

00:28:37.020 things that we're doing um in the rest of the world was not um the high schoolers the people

00:28:44.400 I was in high school with were not ready to receive that kind of um information but I think

00:28:49.540 it sort of point, like I have a really hard time, um, being in the middle of anything. I mean,

00:28:56.520 it's either like, it's all or nothing. Like it's a very sort of like, uh, um, if I'm going to do

00:29:02.440 it, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. And I'm going to go, I'm going to say exactly what

00:29:06.900 I mean. And I'm going to, and I may have a roundabout way of doing it, but there's no sort

00:29:13.600 of shying away from some, from some difficult truths, you know, and there's a lot of growing

00:29:18.900 that happens with that like it's it's sometimes scary because you know things I thought or said

00:29:23.880 10 years ago the way that you're like people change and grow and you know like evolve so I

00:29:33.220 think that there's um there's two sides to it right like there's yes I with snake hair especially

00:29:39.900 we're oh it's always very sort of um honest and upfront and um sort of not shying away from

00:29:49.520 from difficult conversations but I think part of that is because I don't really know any other way

00:29:55.000 to be you know like it's not a it's not a choice so much as it's a like I'm not sitting there

00:30:00.980 thinking oh like maybe I should tone this down a little bit I do have conversations my partner

00:30:06.380 we'll read things and be like are you sure you want to say that in this way so like I do get

00:30:12.860 checked a little bit because I am you know which is good it's good and it's healthy to get to get

00:30:19.260 checked um but yeah I don't know like I'm an Aquarius sign Leo moon Libra rising with an

00:30:29.480 Aquarius Mercury too so I don't know what that like that sort of like constant back and forth

00:30:36.020 makes for a difficult um human being who's like constantly trying to walk through the world and

00:30:47.260 cause like the least amount of harm as possible you know like harm to others harm to the environment

00:30:52.480 harm to myself like how do I um leave the world a better place than it was when I stepped into it 0.67

00:31:00.520 so how did you land on pro slut anti-cop as like an operational motto

00:31:06.440 what's funny I actually went to we were we were at an art book fair and we were put in like a

00:31:13.540 corner that was like kind of um dark and I ran across the street to find to try and find like

00:31:18.700 a light that I could like use batteries on and I found one of those like little like light like

00:31:24.040 ones where you have like it's um you have like little letters that you put in to like form

00:31:29.780 something. And I was like, what can I write? And like, that's nine, 10 letters across and 10

00:31:35.320 letters across. And I don't know, it just like popped into my head. And I was like, all right,

00:31:39.920 I guess this is what our science is going to say, you know, and we already had a few things that are

00:31:44.560 like, similar to that. But maybe not as succinct. But it just it just came as a download. And I was

00:31:55.040 like all right here I guess this is our new slogan and how about how about the naming I mean

00:32:01.280 obviously snake hair for me anyway conjures Medusa is it Medusa yeah obviously like a

00:32:08.720 symbol of feminism and witchcraft and righteous anger yes absolutely I mean I love I've always

00:32:17.660 loved mythology and it took a um a big step away from it for a long time because i think

00:32:25.200 in this thing i did the same with like like some of the ritual catholicism that i was raised with

00:32:30.720 too because it was just like so patriarchal and so messed up um and it's only been maybe within

00:32:38.900 like the last 10 years that I've found ways to um sort of take the pieces that make sense to me

00:32:48.220 um and look further back and say oh like how was how did um sort of white supremacy and patriarchy

00:32:55.920 and misogyny influence these things and how can I sort of take a step back to maybe what was

00:33:02.940 happening before that you know um and sort of acknowledge the ways that these um histories

00:33:10.460 have changed or histories have been rewritten you know um so medusa is like a very uh like i i'm i'm

00:33:18.880 a huge medusa fan huge gorgon fan um so that that's sort of where the name the name came from

00:33:24.760 can you talk a little bit about the overlap between ritual and performance you talked about

00:33:30.780 a bit with w-i-t-c-h chicago and you know the smashing of things you know um to combat

00:33:37.500 gentrification but can you talk about it more broadly and less specifically like as a theory

00:33:42.200 yeah i mean i think that they're

00:33:45.140 they're so connected they're so like deeply intertwined for me um you know like i grew up

00:33:54.840 in a household that was um Sicilian and Italian American full of Catholicism but also like

00:34:04.000 Italians have a way of being Catholic while also being very pagan about it you know like

00:34:09.540 my grandmother believed fully in Jesus but also that like people come back as dead birds and you

00:34:16.720 know like there's there's all of these like layers layers to it you know um like I remember

00:34:24.100 being like 12 and I I never really got into Catholicism like that was not my jam

00:34:31.160 but I remember being like 12 in history class and um like reading the history book like

00:34:39.680 it was like a real like I distinctly remember I was like oh um that's a real person I thought

00:34:44.540 this was like all all made up but like I guess um but with the sort of with going to church and

00:34:54.720 going to catechism classes and all of that like you see all of this ritual and all this performance

00:34:59.620 that we know that I know now didn't know then was like taken from earlier versions of it and

00:35:07.180 more pagan sort of practices and then changed into what became the catholic church and all of 0.58

00:35:14.840 its like horrific atrocities it has created across the globe um so growing up there was a lot of 0.75

00:35:22.380 ritual in everything not just religiously but like you think about like the rituals of cooking

00:35:28.660 and then of like cooking was a huge one obviously for an italian-american family it's like

00:35:34.280 that was cooking and eating and just sort of like being together is another really big one

00:35:39.160 um and for a long time I sort of tapped those two places like um artistically separate um

00:35:50.520 and I don't I'm I think it's probably just like um at a certain point you realize that or at least

00:35:57.980 i did that like the the sort of like artificial line that i had drawn between what's an artistic

00:36:05.500 practice and what's just like uh um another type of practice like what's like my what what are the

00:36:13.340 things i'm ritualizing um that it's a really arbitrary line that i've created and that binary

00:36:19.840 wasn't it's not serving me you know so like dipping in here and here sort of bringing

00:36:26.560 bringing sort of bringing some of like the the rituals that I had already been doing

00:36:35.880 into the performance pieces um with something that came slowly but very naturally um and then

00:36:44.300 it just sort of they've intermeshed in a way that um I think feels really good like it feels very

00:36:51.860 um I don't know like they have a very good relationship with each other so I have a hard

00:36:59.120 time separating them I don't know if I even could separate them back out now if I wanted to

00:37:03.240 you know um but a lot of them are like things that either like I grew up around or I've just

00:37:11.020 like taken on slowly over the last like 15 years and you brought it up a couple times um first that

00:37:20.700 you were in rome when you were william blake style bestowed with a new mode in a dream and i know you

00:37:31.700 recently returned to your um your heritage is italian as you mentioned you returned to sicily

00:37:38.960 to italy can you tell us a little bit about that trip and and your connection to this culture i

00:37:47.020 mean beyond what you just talked about yeah I mean my so my great-grandparents um came from

00:37:53.820 Campania Calabria and um Sicily so um um 2018 I had been to Italy a couple times for for various

00:38:06.200 projects and things um but I'd never been to Sicily and in 2018 I went to um a residency

00:38:12.820 an artist residency in Tusa which is um maybe like 10 kilometers from my one of my ancestral

00:38:24.480 villages so like where my Nona's parents came from like I could like see it from where I was

00:38:30.300 standing you know like there's like a mountain and then a valley and a mountain I could like just

00:38:33.920 gaze at it um and it was a really sort of transformative moment for me just like being

00:38:42.280 in that land feeling like there's there's just like a feeling that I got where I was just like

00:38:48.360 wow like this it just felt so right there for me um I did not I have family that still

00:38:58.180 lives in Sicily that did not particularly like me it's just really difficult I think they just

00:39:06.280 like got one look at me like they like my my cousins had been before and they're very sort

00:39:11.500 like conservative traditional like they've married have kids real jobs you know like a real air quote

00:39:17.940 job you know like they're they're just like a different they live different lives and they all

00:39:24.340 got along really well and they took one look at me and they were just like we don't know what to do

00:39:28.420 with you we're gonna run away so like that part of it was really difficult you know like to come

00:39:34.100 to terms with the fact that you have family in this place that doesn't want to have anything

00:39:38.160 to do with you because you're outside of what they um feel like is okay um but I just recently

00:39:48.680 got to go back um and it was another sort of like amazing transformative experience where

00:39:56.280 got to travel a little bit in parts of the island I hadn't been on and then I got to um participate

00:40:03.600 in this sort of like group workshop where we learned sort of the magical medicinal

00:40:09.380 roles of certain plants of the island and went to all of these sort of like religious sites and

00:40:17.500 it with like 10 amazing other human beings who were like invested in this sort of like

00:40:23.260 ancestral reclamation and how to like you know like obviously all of us on my trip were American

00:40:31.940 but how do we go and sort of acknowledge that so many like millions of people left southern Italy

00:40:39.640 and Sicily in you know the late 18 early 1900s and always intended to go back you know like their

00:40:47.600 goal was to make enough money to buy a spot of land so that their family could return and then

00:40:56.300 in the early 1920s this the so-called united states needed workers so badly to sort of

00:41:05.440 run this capitalist machine that we were creating um that they trapped them here they they wrote

00:41:13.180 new laws they said we we don't really want you but since you're here now you can't go back um or

00:41:20.900 you can go back but you can never come back so like they created this structure where

00:41:25.800 um people weren't able to return even if that had been their intention um and it's like my mom

00:41:35.380 didn't get to go back but like we are of the generation like I'm almost 40 years old um being

00:41:41.740 able to really reclaim some of that ancestry um which was really ingrained like I grew up in an

00:41:49.820 enclave. So it's surrounded by Italians all the time, you know, and, and actually surrounded by

00:41:57.400 people who, even though like my grandmother was born here, um, surrounded from people who came

00:42:05.000 from their same villages in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties. So like people who

00:42:09.400 were born in Italy, I grew up around them. So it was a very, um, sort of very formative, um,

00:42:18.060 experiences in a lot of ways and then to get to go back um learn all of these things visit all

00:42:25.640 these new places and then I got to spend a week at the artist residency just writing

00:42:31.160 so um overlooking like this beautiful vista you know I'm like going every morning to get my

00:42:39.680 groceries and to chat with the people at the cafe and then just like coming back and really

00:42:43.380 having the time to to to focus on this writing project that I've been working on for um a couple

00:42:50.880 of years it's just the privilege to be able to do that um yeah that was amazing so you you publish

00:42:59.260 your own work but I definitely don't want to even begin to wrap up until we dive into occult studies

00:43:05.480 and specifically once again I want to thank you for publishing the bio art coven manifesto

00:43:11.080 so can you talk about this this gathering of uh of occult studies you're two volumes so far

00:43:19.160 there's two so far yeah so part of what I do I do publish a lot of my own um writing and rituals

00:43:26.660 and spells and I also publish um different so one of the collaborators in which is

00:43:33.480 a simile is an amazing poet published one of her chap books and um I had a pen pal who's

00:43:39.400 incarcerated and we published some of his drawings as a way to like help him sort of get on his

00:43:44.180 feet because he's on parole now um and there's a few other projects that I've done or in the works

00:43:49.640 with like people who um who sort of align with our core values and who maybe wouldn't have the

00:43:58.520 opportunities to publish something or to get it out into the world um if not for working with us

00:44:04.820 and it's a really sort of lovely process for me too because it's a way where um I get to publish

00:44:13.100 something I get to collaborate with someone to decide like what what what way will best represent

00:44:19.200 the work that they've created um and then after production costs we split the profits 50 50 which

00:44:26.860 is really important to me um because a lot of things that you give your work to like as an

00:44:32.620 artists I've submitted things to so many places and they're like here's one copy and I'm like but

00:44:38.300 what but what are you doing with all of this extra with with all the money that's being generated

00:44:44.380 from this so all the profits get split 50 50 and then we always as part of snake hair some

00:44:52.940 percentage off the top of everything goes to an organization whether it's black and pink or the

00:45:00.020 Trans Emergency Fund, or there's a number of places, National Bailout, we give to you.

00:45:05.920 So whoever I'm collaborating with chooses the organization that their publication is helping

00:45:12.900 to fund. Occult Studies works a little differently because there's, I think there were 35 people in

00:45:19.360 the first one and 20 in the second. We got submissions from all over the world, which was

00:45:26.800 really exciting. The first issue, we accidentally made the call for January of, I think all the

00:45:38.260 submissions were due in January of 2020, but the theme of it was just unbeknownst to us. I chose

00:45:44.960 apocalypse as the sort of the theme for the first issue. So I ended up printing it in March and

00:45:54.820 April of 2020, like right at the beginning of, um, you know, like our awareness of COVID and

00:45:59.940 everyone was in lockdown and it's like a really, it was a lot. Uh, so, um, yeah. And then the next

00:46:08.600 one, um, we did the call and, um, you know, I want to be able to do one every year. Um, they are

00:46:16.600 really draining, um, just like physically and emotionally. Um, you know, I say like we a lot

00:46:23.480 for snake hair when snake hair started out it really was like a 50 50 thing with me and my

00:46:30.400 partner and as it sort of changed and evolved and grown like my partner who's a graphic designer

00:46:36.980 an artist in his own right and like an amazing human being copy editor problem solver designer

00:46:45.280 really does not really do anything with snake hair anymore aside from like sit and help me

00:46:51.260 art book fairs and like sometimes help judge my layouts um but like 90 of it 99 of it is me

00:46:59.140 um so collecting all of the submissions editing things laying out the zine printing it and then

00:47:07.940 mailing it um it takes it just takes a lot of like energy for for one person to do so the goal is

00:47:15.780 once a year once every other year um and I end up getting um way more submissions than

00:47:23.500 than I can um that I can ever put to a book and the with with occult studies too because there's

00:47:32.880 so many people um what we do is I give them copies I think I gave the last one um we did

00:47:40.760 i did two copies and then um they get a snake hair gift so like one of our zines they get to

00:47:46.680 choose which one they want um and then they'll all split the profits between all 20 of us if i

00:47:52.220 ever see any profits so we'll see the opportunity is there but um we'll see if that happens i have

00:48:02.220 a feeling it's going to be a very small small paypal deposit for somebody we used to we used

00:48:09.300 to do this like sort of fly by night show we called it like a comedy punk cabaret kind of

00:48:15.860 thing and uh it's i think we would pass the hat and then we would divide it up equally it didn't

00:48:21.320 matter who you were and this one it was a duo they were like a little electronic duo and we paid them

00:48:26.940 like four dollars and 25 cents or whatever it was and they were so happy they were literally like

00:48:33.680 we have never been played to make paid to make music before this is the first time that we

00:48:38.380 actually like have bus fare home from the gig even so don't demean the small the small paypal

00:48:45.840 transactions because just getting paid to make art or to write obviously we need to

00:48:52.120 do a better job like you're doing of paying contributors to things but never ever demean

00:48:59.040 the small paypal transaction for sure i don't mean to do it i'm also like i'm very as someone

00:49:05.920 who gives a lot of work to things that I believe in just like writing and and art and whatever like

00:49:16.300 I I know that people would give us things without the expectation of payment but it feels really

00:49:23.920 important to me to even if it is four dollars to make sure it's an equitable exchange that like we

00:49:31.780 are participating in something where you're like I don't know if I will ever be able to make snake

00:49:40.560 hair my full-time job you know like right now I have up until recently I had three three part-time

00:49:46.620 jobs you know snake hair being one of them um but for me knowing that the people who are

00:49:58.180 contributing to the the things that are being published by the press knowing that they um

00:50:06.660 are at least getting a piece of what their labor of of the the monetary value of their labor

00:50:15.360 um is important to me and that's sort of the unfortunate situation of living steeped in

00:50:23.440 capitalism is that you know you have to make choices between doing the right thing I'll use

00:50:30.120 scare quotes even though I don't think I need them doing the right thing and paying people fairly

00:50:34.760 and properly and also like you say you know making your labor of love something that can actually

00:50:39.900 sustain your life I think a lot of us are on that tightrope right now and if we could if we could

00:50:46.860 eat validation and good feelings then it would be no problem right yeah I mean I've done projects

00:50:54.920 before where I've like crowdfunded and made sure that like everyone got paid like a certain amount

00:50:59.760 of money for their for their writing and it's just the amount of energy that things like that take

00:51:05.080 it's just really it's really hard because you know it's just really hard but I do think it's

00:51:12.700 important you know um so the the second volume that we did was um is revolution and um

00:51:20.860 so taking sort of um building on the apocalypse and being like how can i

00:51:27.900 the apocalypse was an accidental coincidental you know um theme for the time but um then thinking

00:51:37.400 about like how can we how can we acknowledge all of the changes that have happened and all of the

00:51:44.100 sort of necessary um the necessary things that the the different things people have done to make

00:51:52.640 um the sort of really horrible and ongoing trauma of the world that we live in more

00:51:59.160 livable and more joyful and um I thought that revolution was like a really good

00:52:08.560 um sort of jumping off point for that um which is how the bio art coven manifesto ended up

00:52:16.320 in the zine which I was like super super pleased to be able to publish that yeah especially because

00:52:23.440 um the the bio art carbon manifesto is like an evolving document it's organic it's it's uh

00:52:29.620 collaborative and it's always changing so you snake hair you yeah let's stop saying we like

00:52:35.480 you do 99.9 percent of the work you have captured it in a moment in time and published that and i

00:52:44.920 and i love i love that idea i love zines in general um distinct from magazines because they

00:52:52.340 in my definition anyway are you know underground independent as soon as you put a MAGA in front of

00:52:59.920 it I go whoa I never put that together once you put a MAGA in front of it it changes the whole

00:53:08.680 world but to me like zines are super magical especially I mean you said you're almost 40 so

00:53:15.740 you might have like a a glancing memory of the time before the internet like that's how we got

00:53:22.620 our underground information that's how we got our you know outsider art and you know we learned 0.95

00:53:29.920 about punk bands was through these like photocopied so shitty like the shittier the better

00:53:36.440 I can almost smell the thing and they were often again at this at this intersection between

00:53:44.580 poli sci and an mfa they they really exist oh for sure like making art out of politics so again like

00:53:53.220 i don't think print will ever go away but i just really like want to like be an appreciation of

00:54:01.080 your work with like material materials in addition to digital materials nothing against digital we

00:54:06.580 love it we're here for it this is the world but again there's something political about even just

00:54:12.980 using that word zine to like categorize what you do no for sure it's also like thinking about like

00:54:19.840 all of the hours i spent is like a youth at kinko's like trying to like see how many copies i

00:54:26.840 could i would have to pay for and how many i can get away with like not paying for

00:54:30.360 it's it is really interesting too because there is such a supportive community for independent

00:54:40.820 publishing too right now especially like um and I think that it may be the sort of something that's

00:54:49.940 happened in the way that we and there's always been like communities of zine makers and independent

00:54:55.660 publishers but I think the further like normal society I mean quotes like you know normal society

00:55:03.020 gets the away from the physical and into the digital the more important um the the underground

00:55:13.300 physical creation of things becomes you know like I think about we people think about technology is

00:55:20.260 like this this this thing that just like exists it's like the ultimate archival thing but in

00:55:28.340 reality like there are websites that like you you can't run anymore but like the technology has

00:55:33.460 outpaced it but like we have books from 1487 you know like so there is this sort of longevity

00:55:39.880 and this there's something that you know like the physical zine especially because it's

00:55:49.820 usually made by someone who's telling their own story it's published by someone who's like

00:55:55.360 embedded in the community it's not someone telling someone else's history so the there's

00:56:02.480 something really important about that and I think they're just so magical like they're just like

00:56:07.920 they're the best super magical like super magical this is not the first time that I've had a

00:56:14.000 conversation with a zine maker about like the absolute high magic of zine making I want to

00:56:20.960 open the floor. I know Satlean is here and Mackenzie is here. Do either of you have a

00:56:27.580 question that you want to pose to Vin? And in the meantime, I want to thank you, Vin, because

00:56:36.300 I was in conversation with White Feather Hunter and somehow it came to pass that I said, 0.93

00:56:42.820 blessed fucking be, and I didn't think about it at all. And then you came and you were like, 0.96

00:56:48.420 I want to make a poster of this is that cool with you and again I'm like I just put three words

00:56:54.080 together I don't own those words at all but um I think the deal we struck that was like you sent

00:56:59.140 me a couple for our patrons so I could give them away of this whole spirit of like let's make things 0.98

00:57:04.840 and give them away and then this has sort of become like our unofficial motto bless you fucking 0.98

00:57:10.760 be it's how we end every episode now bless you fucking be I think it's sort of like really 0.98

00:57:15.720 encapsulates like yes we're we love love and light but also like we love swears and you know 0.98

00:57:23.040 hate the patriarchy listen I was at the upstate art book fair this past weekend and someone was

00:57:29.880 going through our posters and laughed and I was like I'm always curious like which one is it going 0.99

00:57:35.460 to be because we have some they're like and it was the blessed fucking bee poster he bought one 0.94

00:57:41.660 And I was like, there you go. 0.97

00:57:44.320 Spreading the word, spreading the missing witches all over the world.

00:57:51.860 So again, thank you so much for that.

00:57:53.860 I think, yeah, our coven here today just wants to give compliments and heart-shaped hearts.

00:57:59.240 So no questions, but I will have one final question for you.

00:58:02.660 It's like, you are a messenger.

00:58:05.120 what is your message today that you want to deliver to the missing witches coven

00:58:12.000 I think maybe like

00:58:18.140 I tell this to my students all the time too but I think it sort of it applies here it's like the

00:58:28.300 everyone is an artist you know like everyone has creative potential and everyone is

00:58:40.460 also capable of making magic and

00:58:46.000 don't let anybody scare you into not being the best and truest version of yourself

00:58:55.620 i feel like that's and i i love that instead of framing it like just be the best version of

00:59:03.280 yourself you said don't let anybody scare you into not i mean i think we're living in really

00:59:10.600 scary times you know like we are the world continues to get shittier and shittier and

00:59:16.800 scarier and scarier and the only way that we um that people that good people I don't like the

00:59:27.620 word good that's a that's a bad that good is bad um is by clinging to each other and

00:59:36.760 not letting the people who have all this power wield it against us yeah to recognize how much

00:59:45.920 power we have and figure out ways to wield it against them because they are the minority

00:59:51.300 i feel like it's gorgon season 0.99

00:59:54.580 mackenzie just couldn't resist because he couldn't resist we started talking about gorgons and then

01:00:07.560 mackenzie was like i gotta get in on this kens do you have a question for vin yeah it's half a

01:00:14.040 compliment and half an experience that I wanted to say because it's this conversation about

01:00:18.960 materiality and the printing press is like I'm fucking here for it and recently um the local

01:00:26.860 cultural museum where I am at put together a exhibit on witchcraft and uh witchcraft in the 0.96

01:00:34.400 middle ages and I was like exciting and I went and it was the most atrocious thing I've ever been to

01:00:39.180 naturally but they had on display in the middle like the epicenter of the display

01:00:46.140 was a an actual copy of the maleficarum from like an original printing from like the 1500s or

01:00:57.180 something right so just to jump in really quickly this was basically like a how-to witch hunting

01:01:03.580 book from this like original witch hunting era for those of you who are listening the maleficus

01:01:08.460 Maleficarum I always trip over that but yes carry on Mackenzie and it was like lit and in a glass

01:01:15.600 case like given prime center stage in this horrendous display and it had I went up to it

01:01:23.260 and looked into it and you could see the place where someone had handwritten notations into it

01:01:29.920 and underlined sections and I hexed the fuck out of that thing like I stood there and claimed space 0.98

01:01:39.700 in this for like five whole minutes of people being like what the fuck is this girl doing 0.70

01:01:43.200 I like sat there and like hexed over it and I it occurs to me that now through your work 0.99

01:01:53.420 there are all these little witches with all these little zines underlying shit and casting spells 0.91

01:01:58.500 and that your reclamation of the printing press is like the ultimate counter hex to the like the 0.92

01:02:07.800 the founding the founding blood that was shed around this and I just I appreciate you for that

01:02:13.000 I love all of your work thank you so much for what you do please respond please respond to the

01:02:19.480 compliments. I also love that. What a great, if I ever find myself in, in the presence of that book,

01:02:30.760 I will definitely follow your lead. There'll be some hexing going on. Yeah. Hex the Malifus.

01:02:40.580 So again, I mean, I want to thank you for everything. I want to thank you for your big

01:02:47.660 gorgon energy that i know is like extending to all of our coven and all of our listeners as they

01:02:53.860 listen to you speak and and create and describe your process i'm inspired i hope all of you who 0.81

01:03:02.360 are listening will start thinking about what weird outsider shit that you can make with the stuff you 0.59

01:03:08.760 have around the house and i mean as we end every episode in in large part to vin themselves 0.98

01:03:18.320 blessed fucking be blessed fucking be thank you so much for having me this was such a joy 0.85

01:03:26.020 thank you you are joy incarnate and i can't wait to talk to you again and i'm so looking forward to 0.98

01:03:32.340 following all of the rad shit that you do and again listeners just like don't let anyone

01:03:38.560 scare you out of being the raddest possible version of yourself because 0.99

01:03:42.240 there's no reason to be afraid the power is ours this blessed fucking be 0.97

01:03:49.180 this gorgon power this is what i'm taking away from today 0.99

01:03:54.960 go brush on your snake hair or don't let it fly freely we love you and blessed fucking be 1.00

01:04:02.480 You must be a witch. 1.00

01:04:07.700 Join us and our amazing, surprising Missing Witches coven

01:04:12.600 at patreon.com slash missingwitches.

Missing Witches - September 29, 2022

WF - Vin Caponigro AKA Snake Hair Press： Telling Your Own Story

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