The Arts Archives - Page 24 of 38

Democracy

Troilus and Cressida and a Diseased Body Politic

Reading Shakespeare in a time of plague

May 28, 2020 • by Emily Pitts Donahoe

We are perennially curious about what Shakespeare can teach us about our own world, hoping to find instruction and solace in his plays, poems, and exemplary turns of phrase. Recently, this curiosity has produced a score of tweets and articles speculating about Shakespeare’s productivity during periods when the plague ravaged London, ...

Troilus and Cressida and a Diseased Body Politic

Art & Design

The Urn

How I Stopped Loving Design

May 21, 2020 • by Marcin Wicha

Despite the disappointment, something very valuable was salvaged from our conversations. We had been sharing our enthusiasm for the writers Jerzy Pilch and Olga Tokarczuk when Pawel introduced me to the work of Marcin Wicha. Wicha is as sardonic as Pilch and Tokarczuk, and like them, he writes about politics. ...

Reviews

Void Bitches

To be trans is to be already left out of the design of the world.

May 21, 2020 • by McKenzie Wark

If trans writers have an affinity for the disaster of the world, maybe it’s because our bodies are a disaster already. Now that the whole planet has some kind of dysphoria, maybe it’s our time to shine. It’s a ludicrous idea, I know, but one reads in these times with a ...

Reviews

Whose Home? Whose Rule?

Nandita Sharma’s Home Rule and the politics of autochthony

May 21, 2020 • by Mat Cusick

Nandita Sharma, Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press: 2020) In February 2002, five months after Narendra Modi became chief minister of Gujarat, an anti-Muslim pogrom erupted in his state. In three months of violence, Hindu nationalist rioters raped and murdered hundreds of Muslim ...

Interviews

Hope, Revolution, and Survival

An interview with Morgan Parker

May 11, 2020 • by Masha Shollar and Morgan Parker

Masha Shollar [MS]: You’ve said that you trick yourself into writing by making yourself laugh. This collection is so intense and not one I would automatically think of as humorous, even though poems like “Matt” and “Brooklyn” for instance are, in ways, very funny. But they still had these dark ...

Fashion

Killing It

TV’s Killing Eve as fashion epiphany

May 6, 2020 • by Susan Yelavich

Eve, whose sense of style borders on grunge, is the foil to Villanelle’s haute couture. The government agent’s closet is a study in neutrals, while her counterpart’s is as highly keyed as her sociopathic personality. Villanelle fears nothing, certainly not color. Her wardrobe is as eclectic as Eve’s is predictable. But ...

Art & Design

5 Charts that Explain COVID-19 Impacts in NYC

Social Vulnerability Indicators Predict Inequity in NYC COVID-19 Cases

May 4, 2020 • by Timon McPhearson, Ahmed Mustafa, Luis Ortiz, Zbigniew Grabowski, Pablo Herreros Cantis, Christopher Kennedy and Claudia Tomateo Chang

Once again frontline, low income and communities of color are most impacted. At the time of this writing, there have been 147,297 confirmed cases and 15,869 deaths in New York City, with the City on mandatory “P.A.U.S.E” until May 15, 2020. In early March, the Urban Systems Lab team asked the question, ...

Body & Mind

The World Is Absolutely Full of Wonder

An interview with Mary Ruefle

April 30, 2020 • by Mary Ruefle and Gina Chung

In Dunce, Mary Ruefle examines death, endings, and our relationship to the everyday objects and rituals that remind us, even while they provide comfort and solace, of the fundamental frailty and uncertainty of life. We spoke recently by phone (the “Contact” section of Ruefle’s website states, wonderfully, that she does not own a computer and that ...

Fashion

The Meaning(s) of Medical Masks

Hygiene, fashion, solidarity — and care

April 27, 2020 • by Tina Sikka

It is startling to see the ways in which medical masks have taken on a multiplicity of meanings: They were initially objects of confusion (to wear, or not to wear?), they have been in short supply -- and now, in many states, citizens by law must wear them in public. ...

Art & Design

Evoking Artist As Mother

An Interview With Myla Goldberg

April 23, 2020 • by Myla Goldberg and Hayleigh Santra

Hayleigh Santra [HS]: How did you come up with the idea for Feast Your Eyes? Myla Goldberg [MG]: For me, the book started with a question: Is it possible to be both an excellent artist and an excellent parent, or to be one of those, do you have to kick the ...

Interviews

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

UTA’s Byrd Leavell calls Caroline Calloway “unwell” and regrets his association with the President

April 21, 2020 • by Alexa Mauzy

Leavell is a literary agent, currently at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of Hollywood’s most powerful agencies, representing artists and other professionals in the entertainment industry. Based in Beverly Hills, it has divisions focused on film, television, digital, video games, and music, in addition to books. As the agency’s mission statement puts it, “We help ...

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

Music

David Bowie’s Future Revolution

Why the music made us feel so alive — and his death is still so hard to take

April 21, 2020 • by Simon Critchley

On the title track of Blackstar, released just a couple of days before his death, Bowie sings, “I’m not a pop star.” For me, and for his millions of fans, he was much more than that. He was someone who simply made us feel alive. This is what makes his ...