[water] acknowledgement

Issue #167 brings with it some exciting changes in the video essay and cinepoetry realm of TriQuarterly. As the year turns and the journal welcomes Jess Masi into the position of Managing Editor, Sarah Minor will step away from her role as video editor after six years of curating and writing about video works at the journal. Jon Bresland served as the inaugural editor of our now ten-year old video section, which boasts an archive of over a hundred carefully selected video works. Bresland was succeeded by Kristen Radtke, then Sarah Minor, and in 2025 writer and film critic Hannah Bonner will join the TQ team to take over curation of what is now the longest running video section at an American literary magazine. We look forward to seeing how Bonner shapes this section and invites readers and writers to the screen in years to come. In this issue we present works by Caitlin Lenz, Lee Hodge, and Josh Corson.

Josh Corson’s [water] acknowledgement is a dynamic polemic against environmental pollution and the corporations responsible for fossil fuel production. Though the film isn’t subtle in its messaging (the opening shot is a litany of words like “contamination,” “radioactive waste,” and “chemical spill” against a black background), Corson’s editing and soundtrack pulse with hypnotic urgency. Cutting between images of storm water drainage, advertisements, archival footage, and aerial footage of industrialized landscapes or phosphate extraction, Corson’s pace evokes a racing heartbeat as indictments against companies like Mosaic accrue. At times, Corson superimposes images over one another, as if they’re various layers of mining sediment sifting to the surface of the frame. Fervent in its pace and messaging, [water] acknowledgement is a transfixing cinematic clarion call for environmental concern.