When we speak about art, we often verbally partition off our field: we say art world, art scene, art community. Each of these words carry different meanings and connotations. World implies an independent entity that functions according to its own ecosystem. Scene conjures Artforum’s “Scene and Herd”—defining our cohort via parties, shoes, or hairstyles. The latter distinction though, community, has a more robust association, conjuring collective motivation and cooperation.

Across this issue, community is explored in its various guises—communes, utopias, cults, genres. I wonder how we might, in the L.A. art community, work together to strive for more familial conversations and interactions in order to better offer communal support to one another.

–Lindsay Preston Zappas