Archive Articles
256 Items
PA
Articles
Laurie Anderson: Stories from the Never-Ending War
Philip Bither
Oct 2012
Amid the clamor of Super PAC–powered politicians duking it out on a whole new level this election season, Laurie Anderson’s Dirtday! offers a timely, quietly powerful rejoinder. An artist who normally steers clear of directly addressing politics in her work, she recently discussed her motivations in applying the “sharp tools” of her art to the topics of peace, politics, and never-ending war.
EC
Articles
Kickstarting Cultural Production
David Kennedy-Logan
Oct 2012
Beyond fundraising statistics, Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler is gratified to see creative projects—from a new indie album to a documentary about chess champs growing up in poverty—expand from just a good idea to fully realized. “These things exist in the world just as creative projects alongside all others,” he says. “There’s no core difference, like it’s just some weird Internet thing.”
EC
Articles
Commons Census: Surveying the Field
Shanai Matteson & Colin Kloecker
Oct 2012
Using tactics from Participatory Action Research, the authors reflect on their wide-ranging alternative assessment of Open Field’s first iteration, including interviews with Walker staff and off-site think-tank discussions.
VA
Articles
Homeland Security: Erik van Lieshout Searches for the Iraq War
Brooke Kellaway
Oct 2012
Four years after the Iraq War started, Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout and a friend set out on a mission of their own: to track down evidence of the war. In LA, New Mexico, and, ultimately, Israel, the duo trekked, videotaping their often bawdy encounters at border checkpoints and holy sites. The resulting video, Homeland Security, presents an unsettling and incisive alternate report on war.
PA
Articles
“Only the Sky Will Stop Me”: African Women Changing Contemporary Dance
Joan Frosch
Oct 2012
Where do we begin the conversation about the extraordinary contemporary dance movement afoot in Africa and some of its stellar young leaders? Will entrenched biases distort even fresh discussions about the continent? Dr. Joan Frosch looks at the work of choreographers Kettly Noël, Nelisiwe Xaba, and Mamela Nyamza.
FV
Articles
Filming at the Site of Urgency
Ben Stork
Oct 2012
The opening of Jem Cohen’s Occupy Wall Street newsreels—shot through the window of a Brooklyn subway car—uncannily echo a series of videos from two years earlier. Cell phone footage of an Oakland train platform documents the 2009 shooting death of Oscar Grant III by transit police. For Ben Stork, this citizen videography captures the spirit of works in the Walker’s Cinema of Urgency series.
FV
Articles
A Bulwark Against Erasure: Jem Cohen’s Occupy Wall Street Newsreels
Dean Otto & Paul Schmelzer
Sep 2012
On September 17, 2011—the day the Occupy movement was born—Jem Cohen was there filming what would become his Gravity Hill Newsreels: Occupy Wall Street, which screened at New York’s IFC Center. A day after the movement’s one-year anniversary, Cohen discussed the project and how these “newsreals” served as a “bulwark against … erasure” by mainstream news outlets intent on declaring Occupy dead.
EC
Articles
Lewis Hyde: In Defense of the Cultural Commons
Sarah Peters & Sarah Schultz
Sep 2012
“Art is what we do,” Carl Andre once said. “Culture is what is done to us.” Cultural critic Lewis Hyde, invoking the quote, adds, “It’s the ‘done to us’ part I’d like the citizen to avoid; let us be the constant makers of our cultural world.” In a recent conversation about creativity and copyright, democracy and the commons, Hyde expanded on the ideas in his book Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership.
FV
Articles
Surreally Yours: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinematic Journey
Kathie Smith
Sep 2012
As a student in Chicago, Apichatpong Weerasethakul saw some of the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse drawings and, upon returning home to Thailand, used them as an inspiration for his first film, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000). Since then, his career has traversed dreamlike and surreal terrain, from Blissfully Yours (2002) to his Palme d’Or–winning Uncle Boonmee (2010).