Art
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Art Should Make Things Worse
Art shouldn’t be mere normalizing sublimation or queer desublimation, which amounts to the same thing. Should actually make your problems worse. Only then can the fantasy of endless role-playing and analysis be traversed. Art is, in this way, less delusional…
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Can Creativity Be Taught?
Is creativity something we are born with? Can it only be nurtured, or can it be taught? Scientist discuss this age-old question for PRI.
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Artists as Activists
I was recently asked by a young interviewer if writing, with all the time it takes and its use of paper (though I compose on a computer) is not antithetical to what is needed now, the speed that is, to…
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Art as a Tool for Action
Over at NPR, Molly Crabapple discusses her new memoir Drawing Blood, her involvement in Occupy Wall Street, and how she became a political artist: …for a long time I felt like going to protests was the same as—you know, when people…
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A Conversation with Ivan Vladislavić
Tristan Foster interviews South African writer Ivan Vladislavić on the importance of art in his writing, having a large body of work, and the appeal (or lack of appeal) of cities: Our love for cities is always unrequited. Johannesburg is not…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Valuation Methods
In some of my fantasies, I make a pitch for art or for truth, defend them like commodities.
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Paris Forever
That’s not to say being informed isn’t important—of course it is—but I suddenly felt a more important calling. I remembered the words of Marlon Brando in the wake of 9/11: “This is exactly the time for poetry!” Over at Lit…
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Belize’s Art Revolution
At Electric Literature, Monica Byrne discusses the ongoing art revolution in Belize, and how artists create works that represent a diverse and beautiful country dealing with the trauma of postcolonialism: If an artist isn’t interested in protest per se, how…
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Nudes of Wall Street
Writing for Broadly, Stassa Edwards has this profile of Nona Faustine, a photographer whose nude self-portraits aim to expose New York’s history of slavery. Faustine’s “White Shoes” is a series is a kind of memorial to that history, an attempt…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Song in the Subjunctive
Perhaps the city looked more poignantly lovely because I was conscious of its tragic history.
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A Library in an Abyss
A Swedish artist has converted an old mining shaft into a library that disappears into an endless abyss. The library is actually a sculpture, part of a 55-piece show, Sculpture by the Sea, located in Denmark. Colossal takes a look…