Columns
-
How Western Pop Music is Being Used as ‘Touchless Torture’ by the American military
From Frieze Magazine: “As reported by the BBC, the Guardian, the Associated Press, Newsweek, The Nation, Mother Jones, SPIN and others (while mocked by right-wing columnists from the Chicago Tribune and The New York Sun), Western pop music has been…
-
Dominoes for Pyros
In 1987 Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss used common household items and the laws of nature to form a 100-foot-long chain reaction. They lit it, filmed it, and called it “The Way Things Go.” More weekend project ideas…
-
Stencil Nation
A subdivision of the spray-can Graffit isubversion is stenciling. Requiring less skill and less time, stencil artists simply put down a piece of paper with text or images carefully removed, and lay down a coat of paint. This offshoot of…
-
The Eyeball, a New Blog by Ryan Boudinot
Introduction I think the best criteria for judging the quality of a film is whether you’re still thinking about it a week after you watched it. Then there are those films we return to in our thoughts time and time…
-
Death Gets a Ticket on Guerrero
El Muertorider is born: watch artists Artemio Rodriguez and John Jota Leanos trick out a 1968 Chevy Impala.
-
Swinging Modern Sounds #1: A New Blog by Rick Moody
Introduction Everybody knows the book business is in dire straits these days. The news comes in awful fusillades from the daily press. But in part the book business looks so dire right now because it has mainly been indemnified against…
-
Docu-fantasia
My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s ‘docu-fantasia’ film about Winnipeg, Manitoba, should be out on DVD soon. Apparently there’s a book in the works as well. If you don’t know Maddin’s work, it might be described as Canadian ice cream noir, blending…
-
A Staggering Amount of Brilliant Free Television
The PBS investigative documentary series Frontline presents some of the best television produced in America. At its web site (here), you can watch over 70 episodes of the program, all for free. In one recent installment (available in full here),…
-
Brief Thoughts on Alvaro Mutis’s “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port Of Call”
There is a line of James Wright I have always loved: “Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness of the Midwest?” Re-reading one of the great modern sea stories, “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port of Call,” by…
-
Seen at Dusk
Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn’s new installation, “Language of the Birds,” at the intersection of Broadway, Grant and Columbus in downtown San Francisco is a flock of solar-powered books in flight with words and phrases embedded in the ground below…
-
Rumpus Original – A Review of Cadillac Records
Good music usually has a story. At 26 Beethoven lost his hearing. Bach had issues with authority. Sid Vicious’ parents were hippies. Sometimes these details explain the nature of the art, other times, they’re just interesting anecdotes that are nicely…
-
Chicago Cop Blog, by Anonymous
Almost everybody who knows anything about Chicago can tell you that it is notorious for its stifling summers and bone-chilling winters. What they probably don’t know is that not all crappy Chicago seasons are created equal. In fact, in my own…