The Arts Archives - Page 32 of 36

Feature

The Controversy Over Democracy in Chains

A Review Essay

July 18, 2017 • by Andrew Seal

You may be aware that the new book by Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Viking, 2017) has received a lot of notice over the past week or two. Some of this notice has been very positive, but much more has been ...

The Controversy Over Democracy in Chains

Feature

The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization

Poetry, Art, and the New Spirit of Capitalism

July 16, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Updating Walter Benjamin -- whose famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' on which the title of his book riffs -- poet and critic Jasper Bernes seeks nothing less than a complete reconsideration of poetry and art over the past 50 years, coinciding with the ...

The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization

Feature

Practice Makes Practicable

From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art

July 11, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Clocking in at nearly 900 pages of dense text plus index, Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art, edited by artist and researcher Samuel Bianchini and curator and critic Erik Verhagen, is a door-stopper of a book. Its ambition is equal to its mass -- it proposes to rewrite postwar Western ...

Feature

Revisiting the Scourge of Human Folly

A Review of Charles Ludlam’s ‘The Artificial Jungle’

June 22, 2017 • by Dara Levendosky

“A theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a madly farcical manner without losing the seriousness of the theme. Show how paradoxes arrest the mind. Scare yourself a bit along the way.” – Charles Ludlam During the 1960s, New York City experienced a surge in ...

Feature

Homesteading the Lower East Side

A Review of Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

June 7, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016) The Lower East Side has long been an object of fascination for those who study New York. It has been a location for bohemia, from the early 20th century to the Beats and ...

Feature

Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

May 31, 2017 • by Lisa Aslanian

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...

Education

Fame, Truth, and Justice

A Review of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro

May 17, 2017 • by Simone Lewis

“…The general reaction to famous people who hold difficult opinions is that they can’t really mean it. It’s considered, generally, to be merely an astute way of attracting public attention, a way of making oneself interesting...”- James Baldwin, No Name in The Street James Baldwin was more than a writer and ...

Reviews

Uncovering Freakonomics Radio

A Review

April 19, 2017 • by Tracy Varites

Freakonomics Radio, a podcast produced by WNYC Studios, explores the “hidden side of everything.” Inspired by the book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economics Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, written in 2005 by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist, Stephen J. Dubner, it touches on a range of topics from crime ...

Reviews

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

A Review of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s Media Events

April 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Twenty-five years after its publication, Dayan and Katz’s classic study of ceremonial television, Media Events, has continued relevance for understanding the politics of media. With the proliferation of cable television and digital media explosion, television is no longer the hegemonic media form it once was, and the media events they ...

Solidarity, and the Rise and Fall of the Public Sphere

Feature

Get Out & The Horror of White Pleasure

An Examination of Jordan Peele’s 2017 Film

April 12, 2017 • by Ella Myers

The terrific film Get Out -- which writer and director Jordan Peele aptly dubs a “social thriller” -- is a smash hit and critics’ favorite. Many glowing reviews converge on a key claim: the film is a gripping exposé of “white liberal hypocrisy.” And it is. But it is also, and ...

Race

America As It Really Was

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967 – 1975

April 7, 2017 • by Ryan Ross

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967 – 1975 (2011; Producer: Annika Rogell; Director: Göran Olsson) is a collection of largely unseen and unused footage captured by Swedish photojournalists during the Black Power movement. Their aim, as stated in the beginning of the documentary, was “to understand and portray America – ...

Feature

Review of Jodi Dean’s Crowds and Party

On Collectives, Communicative Capitalism, and Suspension of the Individual Ego

March 23, 2017 • by Luke Mergner

Nowhere was this sense more palatable than in Zucotti Park, where the #OccupyWallStreet protesters set up camp. It was a moment when, especially for the Left, the world paused as if the railroad switch of history might suddenly direct the country on a new, more equitable track. Six years later, even ...