Talking to Mariusz Olszewski is like opening the door to a very crammed closet. Ask one question and everything comes tumbling out: ballroom dance, cultural anthropology, anecdotes about Martha Graham, philosophy…

Just between you and me, I have an aversion to suburbs — a strong one. I try not to make a big thing about it, and I don’t want to offend anyone (learned that one the hard way!), but I do find myself going to great lengths to avoid them.

Where to begin? With a body in space. The body breathes; it’s flexible, beautiful. But it has a thorn or splinter, an abscess or excess, that makes it rise and writhe in light.

IF THE NEW YEAR’S FESTIVITIES ARE OVER, THE CHAMPAGNE IS FLAT and the chill has set in, then it must be time for Out There, the Walker Art Center’s twenty-three-year old January festival of the emerging, the risky, and bizarre in performance. The name’s always amused me. I picture a committee spinning their pencils, debating the merits of Weeks of Wackiness and Weird!! before settling on Out There…

AS A LONGTIME BOOKSELLER, DESIGNER, AND LOVER OF ALL KINDS OF PRINT, I always swore I’d never own an e-reader (not counting a couple of times I wavered while hauling yet another box of books in yet another move). But times and technology, storage space and reading habits change, and just before embarking on a few months of frequent business travel, I finally succumbed to the allure of electronic…

LAKE SUPERIOR, ONE OF THE LARGEST LAKES IN THE WORLD, DOMINATES thousands of miles in not one, but two countries, creates its own climate, and nurtures and kills daily. But today, in the age of lakefront condos, virtual landscapes, and tweets about Republican presidential candidates, the Great Lake’s power is easily overlooked.  I confess: I myself tend to the lake for granted. But Duluth author…

ABOUT THE PODCAST: You Are Hear is a literary podcast production of mnartists.org. Each monthly edition will feature new, original work by a Minnesota writer or two. The show is available on our site, of course, but also mnartists.org’s Audioboo page (for ease of sharing and downloading). Stories, poems, humor pieces, spoken word performances and whatever else talented folks can do with nouns and…

WHAT, DO YOU SUPPOSE, IS THE SINGLE MOST BELOVED PIECE of artwork in the city of Minneapolis? “Belovedness” is pretty subjective (in addition to not being an actual word), so the metrics for determining this sort of thing are admittedly a little shaky. But there are a number of ways to consider the question: What piece of art, were it to disappear or be otherwise deaccessioned tomorrow, would provoke…

“EVERYONE KNOWS THE SENSITIVE TOPICS,” says Twin Cities-based Chinese artist Meng Tang. Taiwan, Falun Gong, Tibet, the Uighurs - all are strictly off limits to artists in China. But as artist (and international cause celebré) Ai Weiwei discovered this spring, those who challenge the Chinese government on other issues can just as easily find themselves in the government’s crosshairs. After the “Arab…