“Adam and Eve Driven Out of Paradise”, from The Story of the Bible by Charles Foster. Illustrations by F.B. Schell by Legacy Russell The cultural practice of the “perp walk” is a form of social performativity. The perp walk itself is not a performance, singular. Rather, it is a myriad of happenings, spectacles that are…
Read MoreClaire Danes as Carrie Mathison, Homeland, Fox 21 by Bobbi Lurie Homeland is an inside look into who is keeping America safe from terrorist attacks. Answer: it’s a 33 year-old woman named Carrie, whose sex life is under surveillance. Carrie, played by Claire Danes, was 21 when 9/11 happened. For some inexplicable reason, she can’t…
Read MoreThe Simpsons, Fox Broadcasting Company by Justin E. H. Smith I have declined, and continue to decline, to reply to many of the diverse points of criticism directed against my profession of faith, which I released into the world a month or so ago. I had thought it would be clear that there is a…
Read MoreRichard Blanco reads “One Today” at Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, January 21, 2013. by Harris Feinsod In Gawker’s, wry estimation, most of the U.S. simply didn’t “get” Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem “One Today.” In the Washington Post’s absurd trollgazing account, Blanco’s poem merely signals the “death of poetry.” Perhaps this is because the Post imagines…
Read MoreFigure 1 Copyright © by Guerrilla Girls, courtesy www.guerrilla.girls.com by Rachel K. Brickner and Laurie Dalton Abstract This article describes a collaboration between a Gender and Development professor and the Director of the Acadia University Art Gallery in designing an activist visual art project based on an exhibit of the Guerrilla Girls. We argue that…
Read Moreby Brian Kim Stefans Introduction Creators of electronic literature are progressing toward a more pervasive employment of the “ludic” — of the spirit of play inhabiting not just the writing, and not just the programming, but both in an elaborate, symbiotic combination. The tradition of “ludic” writing is well-rehearsed in criticism of electronic literature, for…
Read MoreLouis Riel by Justin E. H. Smith This is a translation of Louis Riel’s Mémoire sur les Monades, composed in prison while awaiting execution. Riel was hanged in Regina in November, 1885. To read the original French, go here. For a brief biography of Riel, go here. Riel’s version of the theory of monads is…
Read MoreSteven Jungkeit by Matt Bieber Steven Jungkeit is a Lecturer on Ethics at Harvard Divinity School. He holds a PhD in Modern Christian Thought from Yale, and he is the author of Spaces of Modern Theology: Geography and Power in Schleiermacher’s World. Jungkeit is also an ordained Presbyterian minister and a father of three. This semester, Jungkeit…
Read Moreby Christopher Baker This project was created by combining images, dating back to the mid-1800s, from every US patent containing the phrase “toy pistol”. This video shows the compositing process. About the Artist: Christopher Baker is an artist whose work engages the rich collection of social, technological and ideological networks present in the urban landscape.…
Read MoreAndrea Fraser by Andrea Fraser Andrea Fraser’s art practice has consistently and rigorously engaged in institutional critique aimed at the very institutions supporting her. Her most noted works include posing as a museum tour guide, stripping as part of a welcome speech at an art foundation, and taking a disputed amount of money from a…
Read More“Escape Clause”, The Twilight Zone, CBS, November 6, 1959 by Christopher Cappelluti Reason dictates that the devil does not exist. As sophisticated 21st century people agree, it is absurd to put stock in the magical power of trinkets, ritualistic dances and incantations. While evil is apparent in the world — war, genocide, prejudice, hatred — few…
Read Moreby Michael Z. Newman In which: Atari, Ms. Pac-Man, TV Fun, early cinema, my seven year-old son, George Plimpton, Urban Outfitters, Lynn Spigel, International Center for the History of Electronic Games, Computer Lib/Dream Machine, Blip, Pilgrim in the Microworld, the Internet Archive, J.C. Penney, home economics, Harvard, the Business Periodicals Index, an orange Odyssey 100,…
Read Moreby Adam Staley Groves American political narratives failed this election.[1] It seems the political media was befuddled as sayers and intelligentsia failed to provide wise counsel (save Nate Silver’s 538). Yet the failure is not just ‘they’ it’s ‘we’ machine users, participating in this representation process and sharing in derision. How to read what was…
Read MoreDaphne Guiness by Elias Tezapsidis Who is Daphne Guinness and what does she do professionally? Why does Ms. Guinness merit to be profiled by The New Yorker, a staple of intellectually respected literary journalism? The responses to the aforementioned questions are controversial. Ms. Guinness is a “persona.” In 2011, that might be a legitimate profession.…
Read More12 March 1933 My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking—with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell…
Read MoreSaguaro National Park near Tucson, Arizona. Photograph by Jorn Napp by Emily Anthes If you had to be an endangered animal, you’d be better off as a tiger than a toad. If you were a tiger, filmmakers might cast you in wildlife documentaries and journalists might write heart-rending stories about the disappearance of your kind.…
Read MoreShulamith Firestone by Sianne Ngai Shulamith Firestone’s Airless Spaces (1998) has been sitting in one of my bookcases since 2000. I bought the postcard-sized Semiotext(e) book mostly out of surprise from seeing the name of its author in print: one I realized I hadn’t seen for a very long time and which I didn’t associate…
Read MoreTV Static Abstract #8, Rick Doble by Nicholas Rombes 1. Throughout his career, but especially in writings from the 1950s gathered together as the essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” film critic André Bazin praised the potential of the cinematic image “not according to what it adds to reality but what of it…
Read MorePaulo Afonso Hydroelectric Powerplant in the State of Bahia, Brazil by David L. Levy Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy, by Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 222 pp. Can capitalism effectively respond to climate change? This is the timely and critically important question posed by Peter…
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