Deep Routes: The Midwest in All Directions collects essays from the Compass Collaborators and their extended networks of colleagues and conspirators. Compass Collaborators grows from an association of 14 artists and activists who have been exploring the ties and relationships between global economic trends and on-the-ground lives in disparate neighborhoods, cities, and rural regions. This book is their second editorial investigation of the radical Midwest, a record of encounters, regional knowledge production, and gestures toward reciprocal self-recognition.
Deep Routes: the Midwest in All Directions is a collection of stories about learning where we are – by inhabiting, traversing, and exchanging narratives in the expansive region that some people call the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor. Emerging from a geologic territory shaped by retreating Pleistocene ice sheets and further carved by generations of plant, animal and human habitation, these essays contemplate another planetary shift that has transformed our very existence: global neoliberal capitalism. The authors critically reflect on the nature of territory, citizenship, mobility and the possibilities for a more just and egalitarian society. Drawing from sites within the the Midwest (such as parts of Minneapolis, Detroit, Rockford, Madison, Southern Illinois) and excursions far beyond it (locales as distant as Togo, China and Argentina) the twenty-seven contributors explore the wealth of associations these many journeys have nurtured.
With contributions from: Nicholas Lampert (Justseeds), Dylan Miner (Justseeds), Phil Bellfy, Jen Blair, Rozalinda Borcil, Nicholas Brown, Alan Corbiere , Jill Doerfler , Bonnie Fortune, Ryan Griffis, Abbilyn Harmon, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, Sarah Lewison, Jenna Loyd, Don Lyons, Faranak Miraftab, Shiri Pasternak, Claire Pentecost, Ryan Rice, Matthias Regan, Sarah Ross, Kristin Schimik, Heath Schultz, Daniel Tucker, Dan S. Wang, and Mike Wolf.
