Snakes, trees, devils, and also dams, vineyards, and Martin Bryant, a young man with hair like a Dogtown skater who murdered thirty-five people one day with an AR-15 machine gun. Of all these topics of conversation and others, the one that kept appearing in the most unexpected places was the Museum of Old and New Art, founded last year by a native Tasmanian who made millions designing programs for gambling, then sank his fortune into this passion project. More…
We thought we had signed an armistice with reality. Then it all started over. In Santiago, a group of art students go round and round the Moneda. They plan to keep this up for 1,800 hours, symbolic of the $1,800 million they think need to be injected into higher education. The street is taken over by Lady Gaga imitators, open-air nudity, and three thousand passionate kisses in front of the cathedral. More…
The champions of baseball’s offseason were the Miami (n?e Florida) Marlins, who not only got a hip alliterative name and fresh uniforms, but also moved into space-age Marlins Park this week. To complete the makeover, they made a host of pricey upgrades, adding the twin loose cannons of Chicago, manager Ozzie Guillen and pitcher Carlos Zambrano. More…
The Cycle Messenger World Championships are usually quite a lo-fi affair. In 2010 the race took place in Panajachel, a tiny town in the Guatemalan highlands, and resembled something from Mad Max. Guatemalans are allowed to carry guns as long as they’re kept on display, and a few messengers in Panajachel sported pistols alongside the radios and mobile phones they carried bandoleer style across their chests. More…
Those who once left for the West/ for stability/ for a normal life for their children/ to get away from this trash/ this Soviet mindset—/ are returning today to Russia/ where the local diumvirate has created a more or less/ decent environment for the middle class/ and reasonable conditions for business. More…
“Some twisted genius will stumble upon the ultimate solution to this art school chestnut: when it’s their turn to be critiqued they’ll just stand up and destroy the work of one of their classmates.” An excerpt from Paper Monument‘s “mischievous and nourishing” new book, Draw It With Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. More…
Vincent Gallo is one of the most disliked of current film actors, while George Clooney is one of the most admired, but most viewers of Essential Killing―American, Belgian, Sri Lankan, or Japanese―probably have more in common with Gallo’s “Mohammed” than they have with Clooney. Anyone can be targeted, victimized, have their eardrums blasted out, be forced to hide and kill in order to survive. More…
I have trouble talking about books because to me it feels like narcissistic display. I’m reading this great book because I’m so great. Now, that’s not what people really mean when they talk about books, but it makes it difficult for me. “What is a book you wished you had read earlier?” A book I had read earlier in order to do what? More…
That Murdoch would become a modern-day William Randolph Hearst seemed predictable, but Mel Gibson’s transformation into the raving id of the American psyche took the world by surprise; the culture is still recovering. Fittingly, Gibson’s story is reminiscent enough of Oedipus Rex that it leaves cinephiles with the desire to pluck out their eyes. More…
Slacker, though often canonized as a portrait of 1990s youth culture, is at root a local film. It was shot and produced entirely in Austin with local non-actors and musicians like the Butthole Surfers’ drummer Teresa Taylor. The fictionalized, documentary-style film doesn’t have a plot or recurring characters―long, omniscient shots track from one set of Austin hipsters to the next―but it manages to succeed on its own terms. More…
Cambodia is a desperately sad place anyway. Just in terms of the wetness of tears, which given your position as the only one in the room not losing your shit entirely, in combination with the heat, has your shirt soaked through and stuck to your chest. Being there is, in every way, very, very uncomfortable. Film in Khmer culture acts as an emotional release for all the hidden things these young people were never told about their history, their families, or their country. Cinema in Cambodia―the medium itself―is metaphor. It stands in for historical memory. It makes it tolerable. And unnecessary. More…
Despite the enormous emotional impact of the unending stream of images from Greece, it would be a mistake to treat the Greek case as an anomaly. It is now obvious that the Greek crisis is nothing other than the most striking manifestation of a European economic and political crisis―and it is as much a crisis of democracy and governance as one of sovereign debt. More…
Where does Godard take us in Film Socialisme or, more appropriately, where do we take ourselves? An anarcho-communist distrust of money and the state infuses the film. We are told that “money was invented so as not to look men in the eyes.” States, like money, are the enemy of the camaraderie and community which characterize socialism for Godard more than a particular social or political system. More…
