Tag: 03.15.17

The Magician Who’s A Conceptual Artist

“[Derek] DelGaudio devises performances that combine sleight-of-hand with more theoretical preoccupations drawn from performance art, conceptual art and what’s known as relational aesthetics … [He] likes to nod to well-known conventions (pick a card, any card), only to slyly deconstruct them, in a manner that either heightens or thwarts their payoffs. His animating goal is not for observers to ask, ‘How did he do that?’ but, ‘Why?'”

Why Are There So Few Contemporary Novels About AIDS?

“Do today’s young writers, who live in a time when it is regarded more as a chronic condition than a death sentence, feel unqualified to approach the subject? Is it akin to the recent debates around cultural appropriation in writing, most recently stoked by Lionel Shriver: are writers uncomfortable with their right – or perceived lack thereof – to fictionalise experiences not their own?”

 

Religious Belief And Analytical Thinking Don’t Necessarily Cancel Each Other Out

“In 2012, several media headlines touted the narrative of what seemed like a groundbreaking study, which claimed that techniques used to make people think analytically can make them less religious. Half a decade on, however, the study’s findings are being brought into question with multiple papers that suggest its underlying methods were flawed – and, what’s more, the authors agree.”

What To Do About The Subterranean Knowledge Of Harassment And Exploitation In The Literary World?

An essay in “Tin House” from a few weeks ago opened the floodgates. But still, no names are out there. For instance: “A former visiting professor was still the stuff of legend for, in the words of one woman, ‘trying to fuck everyone.’ Years later, that man had a regular NPR slot and every time I heard his voice I thought, ‘The guy who tried to fuck everyone is telling America what books to read.'”

George Will: Hell, Ya, Let’s End The NEA (What Is “Art” Anyway?)

Let’s pretend, counterfactually, that the NEA no longer funds the sort of rubbish that once immersed it in the culture wars, e.g., “Piss Christ” (a photograph depicting a crucifix immersed in a jar of the artist’s urine) and “Genital Wallpaper” (don’t ask). What, however, is art? We subsidize soybean production, but at least we can say what soybeans are. Are NEA enthusiasts serene about government stipulating, as it must, art’s public purposes that justify public funding? Or do they insist that public funds should be expended for no defined public purpose?