About LOW: Forthcoming November 5, 2024, this debut volume of essays, performance art instructions, and photo collages delves into the places where art and trash intersect. Borrowing from memoir, criticism, poetry, and conceptual art, Johnson calls attention to ugly, stinky, difficult places, lingering on the artistry born of cruel circumstances. This genre-bending book delivers smart, felt commentary on a range of works, from Merle Laderman Ukeles’ “Touch Sanitation” performance to political activist Emma Goldman and Shakespeare’s tragedies. Johnson’s nuanced investigations lead readers through low places teeming with art and vitality—from landfills to prisons and from impoverished, rural towns to the sidewalks of New York City—and brings them along on her journey as a working-...
