Vol 4 No 3 | Summer 2023

Since Bait/Switch began in 2018, it has been headquartered in Jamaica Plain, the very best neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Lu and I met there, and this project was born there. So one way to look at it, particularly legally, is that Bait/Switch is located in Boston. We began with local artists, but we quickly stretched to incorporate contributors from much further away, across the US. As all the people running this thing are Americans, one could safely say that Bait/Switch is located in the United States. Of course, it wasn’t long before we were able to feature creative individuals in other parts of North America, as well as South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Our contributors are from anywhere and everywhere. We’ve featured a piece by someone living in incarceration, which feels like a separate country, and whose residents deserve to be heard. I suppose that means Bait/Switch is global.

I haven’t counted how many countries we’ve represented, but it’s a lot. And it’s not enough.

Our goal is to share these chains of creative expression, exploring the space between the links. And to get the richest experience possible, we need to include the perspectives of every kind of person (except those who engage in any kind of hate speech, whose voices should not be amplified). Even within these varied countries are countless cultures and subcultures that further shape the art we produce. We aim to span races, ages, genders and orientations, religions, and physical and mental ablednesses, in every region, city, and household, as well as the intersections between each of those qualities. And we want to hear from everyone through fashion, video, stories, sculpture, textiles, architecture, poetry, painting, puppetry, photography, food, dance, design, drama, music, mixology, and every other creative outlet I haven’t listed here. To be very abstract about it, Bait/Switch is located in the imagination of every person with a point of view and a drive to express it.

I think my actual answer to the question was that while our HQ is in Boston, yes, I can easily work remotely from Minnesota. After all, Bait/Switch is located online.

How’s your summer going? If you asked me, my answer would probably be “epic.”

Apart from a bunch of other amazing things I’m working on this summer (including the two flamingo sculptures that are currently dominating my studio), this wonderful project is undergoing some very exciting changes as we prepare to reorganize as a nonprofit. I am absolutely thrilled to see Bait/Switch move to the next level and can’t wait to see what happens next as we continue to organically grow and change.

The theme for this issue is Flora/Fauna. We found that the natural world was a theme that kept coming up in a lot of the artworks in this issue, and it also feels very relevant for the season, since summer can be such a wonderful time to be outside.

Of course, the “natural world” is an expression that can start to feel a little empty the more you think about it. The earth is a closed system – everything we know (with the exception of moon rocks) comes from this planet, no matter how much we, as humans, have changed it. Lately I’ve been reading about the idea of “unspoiled wilderness” as a myth created by colonizers to continue the cultural erasure of native peoples. But that doesn’t change the fact that the imprint of our experiences with plants, animals, and the elements is deeply meaningful and hard to shake.

In this issue there are artistic explorations of mushrooms as well as bones. Butterflies, lush greenery, and stolen flowers. The experience of hunger and eating, as well as other bodily processes. Water, stillness, and that “animal” that we can’t really understand, AI.

For the first time ever, there is a “hidden track” in this issue. Remember hidden tracks? They were those little extra songs that bands would secretly stick into a record in between things. We’re including one in this edition – see if you can find it.

The summer isn’t over. Take time for adventure whenever you can, even small adventures. Eat ice cream and go swimming and pick flowers and soak it all up.

Map of Works in This Issue

Bait/Switch is an interdisciplinary exquisite corpse project. Every work is a creative response to a piece made by another artist. The project is divided into three branches: cyan, magenta and yellow. This map/diagram shows how the works in this issue fit together, and what came before. You can see the entire corpus on our maps page.