Arts
Video Star
Emma Chamberlain and the Relatable YouTuber
At the end of the video “REVIEWING YOUTUBE’S HQ *insane*,” YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki joins YouTube star Emma Chamberlain on screen …
In the Making
Examining the legacies of the Gorham Manufacturing Company
A silver spoon the size of a Great Dane immediately confronts anyone exiting the elevator on the third floor of the …
Scrutinizing the Self
Exploring implicit bias through Self, Made
The dark walls of "Self, Made" crept upward until they became indistinguishable from the ceiling, the disorienting scene complete with exposed …
Making Dough
Thoughts on Mika Rottenberg’s surreal videos
A kneaded piece of dough slides through a hole in the wall. Flattened bright-red fingernails are flattened. Human tears drip through …
The Fire to Release You
A conversation with Providence songwriter La Neve
On “A Pretty Red,” the opening track of her debut LP The Vital Cord, released October 14, La Neve sings over …
Self-Made Men
Wanting and getting in Mad Men
Wanting to be a man, or a certain kind of man, animates most of the heavy-hitters of ‘prestige TV.’ These shows …
Within One Frame
Human closeness in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Vive L’Amour
content warning: suicide Last month, the film Joker won the Golden Lion—top honors—at the Venice International Film Festival. That the comic-book …
Eat, Play, Sing
The Highlander Center and the practice of cultural organizing
Woke up this morning with my mind, set on freedom Woke up this morning with my mind, set on freedom Woke …
On Desire & Being Desired
King Princess, Hayley Kiyoko, and queer representation in pop music
I easily lose myself listening to Mikaela Straus’s (a.k.a. King Princess) “Pussy is God.” Beyond its lyrics (which I know by …
The Year of Yeehaw
Cowboys making space in music
A John Wayne movie may obscure the history, but the cowboy began from a Spanish imperialist practice: Spanish colonialists forced Indigenous …
Disney To Dust
Cultural nostalgia and cynicism in live action remakes
In 2019, the Walt Disney Company became the very first studio to release five films that each grossed over one billion …
Arriving Before the Light
Notes and reflections on the life and legacy of Toni Morrison
I walk to work that morning. It’s a Tuesday. Something mellow is playing in my headphones, and my phone vibrates, and …
Queering Bollywood
LGBTQ representation goes mainstream
The last time a mainstream Hindi-language film featuring a lesbian lead was released in India was in 1996. The movie, Fire, …
Rhode Island is Famous for You
Crimetown, and the problem of Providence's mob narrative
My Italian-American father tells one of our family’s best stories. I heard it again recently after I asked him, mostly in …
The Individual Uniform
Sartorial representation from the fig leaf to the turtleneck
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable …
Tidy Futures
The work of decluttering with Marie Kondo
As we entered 2019, a push for dispossession caught the nation by storm. Brendan Hurley, manager of Goodwill Industries in the …
Unliving Color
Colorization and popular history in Peter Jackson's director's cut of the First World War
About a half an hour into They Shall Not Grow Old, the new documentary by Lord of the Rings director Peter …
Cybernetic Ghost Towns
New pathways of communication, histories of warfare, and the practice of listening
Norbert Wiener first outlined the theory of cybernetics in his 1950 book The Human Use of Human Beings. Cybernetics describe a …
The World as Picture, Exhibition, and Target
Angkor Wat, neo-colonialism, and opacity
Postcard for the Angkor Wat Pavilion, 1931 I want to talk about some phenomena in the violence against Southeast Asian peoples, …
Do I Know You?
Bryan Singer, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and brushing up on your history
The most erotic film I’ve ever seen was made in 1950. It’s a silent French film that lasts all of twenty-six …
"Solving" Translation
Women's labor on the page
“In Urdu, the only language she knew, all things, not just living things but all things—carpets, clothes, books, pens, musical instruments—had …
Dirty Funding
Warren B. Kanders at the Whitney Museum and Brown University
On December 9, 2018, Hyperallergic, an online arts magazine, posted an image of four members of the Fire Department of New …
Freedom for Whom?
The reflexive photographs of Danny Lyon and the stakes of critical curation
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Sit-In, Atlanta, 1963 Who’s the real Danny Lyon? The year was 1969 and Lyon was an …
Gross National Cool
Objects I found in Tokyo
While researching my trip to Japan, I was surprised to find that “Gross National Cool” was an actual governmental concern. A …
Slowing Food
Using and watching Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Being a foodie is most definitely entwined in my DNA. My mother famously recalls only eating noodles for about two months …
WHY AM I LONELY FOR LONESOME LOVE?
Emotion and spectacle in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy
I remember a particular moment from my first night on Brown's campus this September when my entire body was enveloped by …
To Be a Composer is Not Enough
The life and music of Julius Eastman
The last known recording of composer Julius Eastman is his performance in 1981 of an original song cycle entitled “Taking Refuge …
We Don't Live in That Kind of World
Revisiting Thelma and Louise in the second “Year of the Woman”
content warning: sexual violence Last week, we hosted a dozen women at our house for a screening of Thelma and Louise. …
Some Notes on Weather, Potentialities, and Limitations
Roni Horn and the Icelandic abyss
Preface I recently acquired my first raincoat. It happened at the foot of the Vatnajökull glacier in Southeastern Iceland. “If you …
Vocalizing Whiteness
Reversing Minstrelsy in Sorry To Bother You and BlacKkKlansman
Within a week of Spike Lee’s autobiographical drama BlacKkKlansman being released, Boots Riley, director of absurdist dark comedy Sorry to Bother …
The New School
Expressionistic recollections of a night in virtual reality
The worst part about virtual reality is how flagrantly interesting it is. You bring it up and everyone within earshot turns …
Soft Power
Petra Collins and the problem with the female gaze
Two women press their cheeks together, with dark hair falling in their faces and lips parted to reveal the radiant white …
The Shame of the Cities
Renderings, reality TV, and obsessive urbanism
There’s an image of the proposed Providence streetcar that keeps me up at night. It depicts the corner of Empire and …
Night of the Four Moons
Crumb, Lorca, and Harmony with Space
Every US president since the 1970s has announced some new plan to send humans back into space. Besides ‘inspiring millions,’ those …
Irona Pop
The strange popularity of Randy Newman
I think it’s going to rain today The lyric might be understood any number of ways. Though the promise of rain …
Looking Like You
A review of the 2018 RISD Faculty Exhibition
One time, during the bizarre event that is my primary studio course at RISD, we spent two hours thinking hard, in …
On Layli Long Soldier's Whereas
On November 28th, 1795—a chilly day in Bristol, just weeks after the French Revolution began grinding its wheels—English poet Samuel Coleridge …
"Hold Fort for Love Forever"
Björk’s Utopia, and ours
It’s November 2017, and I’m shuffling through wintry New England weather, the chill biting through my half-zipped parka. I am aware …
Bodies of the Water
The Bogotá River and Tequendama Falls
Pollution Two great floods are burned into my memories of those days. Memory, for a child immigrant, often feels like a …