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three fold

upcoming events
Sunday, November 10
The Night Lives of Bats
A lecture by Vanessa Rojas, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
4 pm | free and open to the public
Trinosophes, 1464 Gratiot Ave., Detroit

Join us to learn more about how bats benefit our ecosystems. See and hear their recorded echolocation sounds and learn to look for unique characteristics to identify bats by sight and sound.

Vanessa Rojas has been studying bats for over 15 years, beginning with her graduate research at University of Michigan–Flint. She then continued her work as a bat educator and researcher, splitting her time between Detroit and the Smoky Mountains National Park. Her work studying bat habitats continued with a PhD in Wildlife Ecology. She is now an Associate Professor at a State University of New York campus based in the Adirondack Park.


flier design | Matthew Conzett, 2024
scans sourced from screenshots of sound wave files of bat sonar recordings, courtesy Vanessa Rojas

Peruse our archive of previous Three Fold events 








Nabil Harb, Osama, 2018


Lake of the Clouds in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park | Photo courtesy of Pure Michigan

issue no. fifteen—summer 2024
The Strain Relief Cord by F.F.
Three Fold Commissions Paul Schwarz
Inheritance, Chapter Three by Nabil Harb
Imaginary Dinner Party, Part Fourteen by Lynn Crawford
St. Augustine Confessing by Vincent Perrone
Poetry by Eléna Rivera, Vanessa Place, Benjamin Paloff, E. Tracy Grinnell, Philip Metres
Further Reading
The state of Michigan has approved $50 million in support of a new copper mine in the Upper Peninsula, with extraction occuring near the shore of Lake Superior. 

Click here to read from our archive, an excerpt from the book-length libretto:
SMOKEPENNY LYRICHORD HEAVENBRED
by Jennifer Scappettone | issue no. six, spring 2022
 
“The book in progress from which this fragment hails began when I discovered that the copper-rod mill across the street from my childhood home on Long Island, whose unregulated dumping practices were in great part responsible for the community’s cancer cluster, had extracted and smelted its copper in the Peruvian Andes—through decades of labor manipulation that led the area of origin to be listed among the world’s most polluted sites. [...] 





Nabil Harb, Taba, 2018
Related Events
Ancient Prayerz
An exhibition of archival prints c. 1989-92 by M. Saffell Gardner and Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts  
Trinosophes, 1464 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit
Exhibition runs through April 7, 2024

special section—december 29, 2023
In the wake of Artforum editor-in-chief David Velasco’s firing in October over an open letter signed by artists and scholars supporting Palestinian liberation, thirty-two writers retracted their pieces from the December 2023 issue, among them Adriano Pedrosa, Amy Taubin, Brontez Purnell, Catherine Lacey, Çağla İlk, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Claire Bishop, David O’Neill, Erin Christovale, Erika Balsom, Gordon Hall, Gray Wielebinski, Hal Foster, Huey Copeland, Jace Clayton, James Quandt, Jason Moran, Jennifer Krasinski, Jensen Leonard, John Kelsey, John Waters, Meg Onli, Michael Fried, Nicole Eisenman, Rachel Kushner, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Sasha Geffen, Tiana Reid, Tiffany Sia, Tim Griffin, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Weyes Blood.

Three Fold extended an invitation to several of those who pulled their writing, and to punctuate 2023, we are publishing withdrawn Artforum contributions from Claire Bishop, Erika Balsom, and Weyes Blood. As genocide continues to unfold in Gaza and epistemicide and McCarthyism proliferate globally, Three Fold Press firmly stands in solidarity with all writers and artists who oppose the atrocities and war in Gaza.
–Jonathan Rajewski, Editor, Visual Art

Top Ten, 2023
By Claire Bishop
By Erika Balsom
By Weyes Blood
Weathering, Faye Driscoll, New York Live Arts, April 2023. As featured in Top Ten, 2023 by Claire Bishop. All rights reserved.


issue no. nine—winter 2023
Event: Film screenings by Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martinez, Sky Hopinka, New Red Order and Miguel Hilari | ThousandSuns Cinema through January 30, 2023
Life After Prison: The First Three Months by James D. Fuson
Sweet Extinction by Francis McKee
Imaginary Dinner Party, Part Eight by Lynn Crawford
Poetry by Jena Osman, Charles Bernstein, Robert Laidler, Brenda Coultas and Norma Cole
Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martínez, A Song Often Played on the Radio, 23 min, 2019. All stills, photographs, and artwork courtesy © Raven Chacon & Cristóbal Martínez. Screening co-presented with San Francisco Cinematheque and Three Fold Press, Detroit


issue no. six—spring 2022
In Dedication: Rico Africa, Old Miami, Detroit
When Life Was a Gay Bar
A dossier by artist and writer Michael Conboy (Los Angeles) on the 1970s-80s Detroit scene of his youth, featuring paintings and illustrations, memoirs, drag photos, club fliers, and a short story
Three Fold Commissions: Nancy Mitchnick, Patrick Hill
Telephones by Paul Elliman
Excerpts from a pre-history of that moment when the human voice is first cut from its source in the body
Guess Where I Am by Paul Elliman
The Last to Figure It Out by Michael Jackman
Imaginary Dinner Party, Part Five
Forms of Engagement by Lynn Crawford
Poetry by Aaron Shurin, Stacy Szymaszek, Nathaniel Mackey, Norman Fischer, Jennifer Scappettone
Fiction by Evelyn Hampton, Rick London
Photo for Menjo’s advertisement, c. 1980s by Michael Conboy

issue no. five—winter 2022
On the cover: Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, Tracey Moffatt, 35mm︎digital, 1990, courtesy of the artist © Tracey Moffatt and Women Make Movies.

Our winter 2022 issue was presented in partnership with Media City Film Festival, a trailblazing festival for film and digital art based in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. Since 1994, the festival has engaged such artists as Yoko Ono, Michael Snow, Alvin Lucier, and hundreds others. The 25th Anniversary virtual edition ran February 8 through March 1, 2022, featuring 70+ films from 30+ countries, in full open access globally. In conjunction, Three Fold profiled eight artists whose moving image work was celebrated in a Spotlight Series. [Read more ]
Artist In Residence In Exile, Megan O’Connell, 2021
Doom and Glory in the Cass Corridor
Part two of a dossier on Detroit visual artist Cay Bahnmiller—dream diaries, Gilbert and Lila Silverman, Der Imker (the beekeeper), mail art, communiqués, a secret spy network, Structo-vision, photography, books, and a kaddish for Cay by Cary Loren
Three Fold Commissions: Ruqayyah Alzona Al-Baari, Jim Chatelain, Chris Riddell
Bringing Detroit by Ian John Solomon, Jay Orellana and Crystal Mioner
Ruminations on Beauty by Rochelle Marrett
My First Stroll Through Eternity by Stephen Paul Trimboli
Imaginary Dinner Party, Part Four: Possession by Lynn Crawford
Poetry by Alice Notley, Peter Gizzi, Quincy Troupe, Rachelle Rahmé, Maureen Owen
Fiction by Garrett Caples, Jose Padua, Robert Lopez
Corazón Sangrante, Ximena Cuevas, México, digital, 4 min, 1993

issue no. one—fall 2020
On the cover: Say Translation is Art (excerpt), Sawako Nakayasu
In Dedication: Meditation Device by Hannah Jones & Rebecca Mazzei
What’s Been Done and What’s Been Won by Bob Ostertag with Maureen Taylor
Integral Whirls: A Dossier on Ephraim Asili by Greg de Cuir Jr
Making a Making: Jonathan Rajewski in Conversation with Bill Dilworth
Black Lives Matter? by Fred Williams
What is in a Name by Imani Mixon
Art, Ritual & Theory in Mandenka Historiography by Nubia Kai
Wild Gardening & Improvisation by Thollem
Heal Ourselves by Peter Sparling & Thollem
Hear That Snap: Joel Peterson in Conversation with Hakim Jami
The Orgasmic Space Poetry of Henry R. Lewis by Cary Loren
Malayeen by Leyya Tawil
Poetry by Laura Moriarty, John Sinclair, Khaled Mattawa, Sawako Nakayasu, Tyrone Williams
Fiction by Owólabi, Lynn Crawford
Maureen Taylor, drawing by Hannah Jones, 2020




Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.