Imagine enjoying a nice, sunny day and listening to equally cheery music: that’s the feeling Tennis has exuded since 2012. The light and airy pop music in their second studio album, Young and Old, enhanced with just a hint of jazz, proved to be hard to hate. From the fuzzy riffs of “Origins” and the jazz-infused “Petition” to the sheer happiness that leaps out of “High Road,” that album tweaked the generic indie-pop sound.
Working closely with producers like Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, the husband-wife duo of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley attempted to mature on their third and latest studio album, Ritual in Repeat. While the instrumentals on their past albums offered a clean sound that complemented Moore’s high and vibrant vocals, Tennis’s new sound adds layers and layers of noise, at times creating a muddled effect.
Moore and Riley have gone too far to beat critics who have claimed that their sound is too simple. If they took a couple of layers of sound off each song, they might find themselves with a much crisper and better product.
Ritual in Repeat still contains some highlights and songs that deserve to be heard. The album opener, “Night Vision,” is a stunner; I admit that it left me with chills the first time I heard it.
It sets a surprisingly dark and brooding tone for a band that is known to be light and cheerful. The track, defined by its sultry and seductive chorus, instantly grabs the attention of the listener. The heavy bass contrasts beautifully with Moore’s soaring vocals, and the breakdown in the last third of the song introduces a dynamic guitar that is unfortunately missing from much of the rest of the album.
Out of any track on their third album, “Never Work For Free,” the record’s first single (originally released in June), is the most reminiscent of Young and Old. The fuzziness of the synth that opens the track harkens back to “Origins,” while the light electric guitar brings back memories of “It All Feels the Same.” The song makes you bop up and down, bringing a smile to your face as Moore’s disjointed “ah” and “way” sounds serve as an interesting complement to the vocals in the chorus.
Unfortunately, after the first two tracks, Ritual in Repeat becomes monotonous. A couple of songs are capable of grabbing the listener’s attention for a few moments. Certainly, the little hook in “I’m Callin’” is interesting, but since that sound disappears quickly, the rest of the song disappoints.
“This Isn’t My Song” does the best job at retaining the listener’s focus: An interesting keyboard melody kicks in during the chorus, and the last minute of twangy guitar is pure gold. “Wounded Heart” is as close to pure folk as Tennis has ever gotten, but at less than two minutes long, it is simply dull.
This is the problem with the majority of Ritual in Repeat: While part of the lyrics or instrumentals might catch your attention for a minute, most songs lack the ability to keep the listener’s attention. Whereas Moore and Riley’s past endeavors exhibited some quirkiness, the duo has lost much of their flair on Ritual in Repeat. In the past, the slight peculiarities of their otherwise simple instrumentals could be heard and appreciated, but now their new production just covers that up.
Jeff Tweedy is a Rock n’ Roll artist. He makes Rock n’ Roll music. He sings Rock n’ Roll songs about Rock n’ Roll subjects, plays Rock n’ Roll guitar, and sings with a husky, smoky, scratchy, Rock n’ Roll voice. He is known primarily for the great Rock n’ Roll music made with his Rock n’ Roll band, Wilco. His son, Spencer Tweedy, is an 18-year old Rock n’ Roll drummer. Together, this father and son duo are here to bring you a Rock n’ Roll record called Sukierae under their collective Rock n’ Roll last name, Tweedy.
I like Jeff Tweedy. I like the way his voice sounds the way bourbon tastes. I like his skill with a melody, and I like his ability to fearlessly traverse the forbidden hipster territory of country music. That being said, when I heard that he was making Sukierae, a 70+ minute, 20-track collaborative album with his son, I was skeptical. It felt like a father/son gimmick; giving a musician a fair chance simply because he’s the progeny of someone fairly successful in the music business. My skepticism was quickly dispatched.
Sukierae is grittier, bolder, more fun, and more interesting than it has any right to be. The opening track, “Please Don’t Let Me Be So Misunderstood,” is explosive and brief, a blast of discord over rolling drums that breezes by. It is a lean and muscular song, left in a perpetual state of unease with Jeff’s repeated refrain of “I don’t want to be so fucking boring.” From the get-go, this album proves itself to be more than just “Jamming with my dad!”
The production on this record, too, is truly excellent. It is thoughtfully put together, with warm, full-bodied instrumentation mixed for maximum impact. There’s a lot of ambient noise and sound experimentation, like the blasts of guitar on the track “I’ll Sing It,” the weirdly hissing yet compelling piano tone on “Pigeons.” However, the production shines not for of its strangeness or density but because of the way it decompresses the sound, each piece fleshed out and comprehensible in a way that guitar-focused music sometimes lacks.
Spencer Tweedy is a good, interesting drummer. At 18 years old, he already seems to have cultivated a Modest Mouse-type feel: slightly out of rhythm, deeply rooted in jazz, and always in control. This album is full of raw, hissing snares, slick, serpentine drum patterns, and some great, pounding straight ahead beats. Songs like “Diamond Light Pt. 1” would not work without Spencer’s stuttering, patient drum patterns. It’s the best track Tweedy has to offer: jagged and experimental but still melodic and playful, all rooted in the persistence of the drumming.
Jeff Tweedy, too, flexes a lot of muscles that he doesn’t get to use often. As he is usually relegated to rhythm guitar, we usually don’t get to hear him play with the dexterity that he wields on the beguiling “Honeycomb” or the jagged “World Away.” His guitar is nimble, weaving itself around corners through interesting fingerpicking, strumming patterns, and chord progressions. It’s clear that while the great lead guitar work on Wilco wasn’t necessarily played by him, Jeff Tweedy is still truly the mastermind behind his own music.
With 20 tracks of music, this album is a bit overwhelming. It is not particularly cohesive, nor does it have any melodic or thematic through-line like some of Tweedy’s finest work. But there is a bit of everything here: punk, ambient, ballad, folk, groove-heavy, bass-heavy, down-tempo, and up-tempo. Sukierae is more of a collage than anything else: tiny bits and pieces of really good songs thrown together with no true organization or connection. This is one of the album’s great strengths and great weaknesses. The lack of organization means that it can be enjoyed more casually than, say, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Summerteeth (which, if you haven’t heard, are absolutely worth your time), but it also means that listening to the album all the way through doesn’t yield many more benefits to the listener.
Sukierae is too long-winded and overstuffed to be something truly great. But it is far, far better than it needs to be. It’s a good Rock n’ Roll record.
I was immediately struck by just how many windows there seemed to be in the Zilkha Gallery. Landscape, greenery, and sky met me from all angles, and it took me a moment to recognize that, while the facing wall was actually lined with windows, the other supposed “windows” were in fact paintings. Paintings as windows, windows as landscape, and landscape as a looking glass: welcome to Tula Telfair’s world of dreams.
On Tuesday, Sept. 16 the Center for the Arts (CFA) unveiled an exhibition two years in the making: Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s premiere of “A World of Dreams: New Landscape Paintings” in the Zilkha Gallery. This was likely one of the most heavily and diversely attended exhibitions that I have seen on campus. Perhaps most interesting was just how many professors were in the room, particularly those not associated with the Art and Art History Departments, representing instead the Biology, Astronomy, and Classical Studies Departments, to name a few. It became very clear to me that this exhibition went beyond one medium and subject to become a truly multidisciplinary installation.
Though the idea for the exhibition was conceived over a year ago, Telfair has physically worked on these pieces since January, when they quickly became her babies.
“I haven’t done a lot in this time apart from paint, perhaps write a few letters, and teach,” Telfair said.
As an artist, Telfair has experimented with a variety of styles and subject matters, but of late she has been renowned for her modern landscape paintings, as highlighted in this exhibition. Her landscapes are monumental in scale and vibrant in color. Some aspects of her landscapes call to mind the grandeur of historic landscapes while others can be likened to photographs.
Telfair describes these places as being fictive and an expression of her imagination. She emphasizes the role of creativity in her artistic process.
“I enjoy the possibility of creating something from nothing, which is something that you don’t get to do all of the time,” Telfair said. “These paintings are made up places; they are collages of ideas and experiences. Some I’ve only imagined.”
An integral part of the exhibition, apart form the works themselves, was the Zilkha Gallery space and the manner in which it interacted with the works. CFA Director Pamela Tatge described this component, underlying its unique addition to the final show.
“What excites me most about this show is that it is a site-specific installation,” Tatge said. “The paintings were scaled to the size of the bays and walls. Tula [Telfair] had the idea of painting the white bays gray to work against the notion of verticality and to feel the idea of horizontal.”
In the Zilkha Gallery, these paintings were quite idyllic, boasting views larger than life. This property, juxtaposed with the gallery’s huge windows revealing the New England greenery, created a heightened sense of drama.
Telfair also noted this intended pairing.
“I wanted to highlight what I appreciate so much about this space,” Telfair said. “And look at the way [CFA architect] Kevin Roche framed nature through these beautiful limestone walls, and the glass veils that separate us from nature, but allow us to access it.”
The orientation of the room in combination with the largely proportioned paintings created a sense of inclusion in which the landscapes envelop the viewer.
Emery Frick ’18 observed this drama and sense of mystical transportation.
“It made you feel like you were actually there,” Frick said. “It was really breathtaking. I just kind of stopped and didn’t know what to do.”
The interdepartmental dialogue emphasized by the diverse visitor demographic was strengthened through the support of a varied group of University faculty. Professors from many departments wrote essays to complement the exhibition catalogue in which they reflected on Telfair’s body of work and related it to themes within their own field of study.
There is a preconceived, utterly ridiculous notion that art exhibitions are about looking at something directly in front of oneself, heaving a “hmm” or “ha” in appreciation, and then moving on to whichever piece is adjacent.
But here the viewer is connected with the artwork. This exhibition forced participation by being a multi-sensory installation that questioned not only “art,” but also biology, language, and astronomy. It transported us as the audience into different worlds within our imaginations, thus pushing the confines of art and beauty and exhibiting an increasingly more pertinent interplay between disciplines.
Tula Telfair’s “A World of Dreams” will be on display until Dec. 7, and I encourage all to stop by. Telfair will also be giving an artist talk on Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. in the CFA Hall.
“They will draw you in,” Tatge said. “They are beautiful, they are evocative, and they are disturbing, and they invite you into a world that you have never been before.”
Tony Soprano sat down in the booth of an ice cream shop in Montclair, NJ, his massive physique and formidable stare filling the frame. Then there was darkness.
Even though I became a follower of “The Sopranos” after its 2007 conclusion, I imagine fans must have been left in shock, paralyzed by the show’s uncertain end. In addition, a more deep-seated fear must have emerged soon after the final credits rolled: What’s next?
It’s no secret that “The Sopranos” revolutionized television and set a new standard for quality drama on TV. A wave of networks such as AMC and Showtime joined HBO to compete in the quest for prime-time dominance, ushering in a Golden Age of Television. Despite the success of these networks in capitalizing on the trend started by “The Sopranos,” many critics and viewers alike felt empty as they waited for the next “big thing.” “Breaking Bad” certainly attracted praise during its run and the anticipation of its finale mirrored what unfolded during the culmination of “The Sopranos.” Other shows, such as “Mad Men,” continued to push creative boundaries. However, the chasm left by “The Sopranos” never seemed to be fully sealed. Eventually, HBO attempted to recreate the magic of its finest creation by enlisting those who knew it best. They handed “Sopranos” writer Terence Winter a copy of the book, “Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City,” and told him to get to work.
Winter emerged with “Boardwalk Empire.” The expensive period piece stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson, the treasurer of Atlantic City and mastermind of its criminal underworld during the Prohibition Era. With Prohibition, Nucky sees a distinct opportunity to create an illicit liquor trade by opening Atlantic City’s ports to an unadulterated flow of alcohol. Nucky enlists his brother Eli (an underrated Shea Whigham) and together, they pump liquor into a growing city that has never been thirstier. As one might expect, conflict ensues over who will control the city, and by extension, the lucrative liquor trade.
Over the past four seasons, “Boardwalk” has expanded its scope beyond Atlantic City to other gangster havens of the 1920s such as Chicago and New York. There is Al Capone, played by a ferocious Stephen Graham, who has yet to create his own criminal empire and instead associates with Chicago mob boss Johnny Torrio (Greg Antonacci). Meyer Lansky and Mickey Doyle (Anatol Yusef and Paul Sparks), members of the Jewish Mafia, are recurring figures, as is New York boss Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and a young Charlie “Lucky” Luciano (Vincent Piazza).
Indeed, the show’s commitment to a generally accurate portrayal of the history of East Coast organized crime is one of its most thrilling aspects, as well as its greatest crutch. Any 20th century American history or mob buff will love watching the rise of famed mobsters like Luciano and Capone, as well as the way the police, government, and institutions such as the newly formed FBI respond, or fail to respond, to the threat against Prohibition posed by organized crime in America. However, critics of the show complain about the multitude of story lines that develop at a glacial pace. Even fans of “Game of Thrones” or “Mad Men” will have trouble keeping track of a cast that is as extensive as the show’s budget. In addition, because the show must adhere to history, it is somewhat limited in what it can do with characters such as Capone, Luciano, and Lansky, who we know will arise in a new age of gangsters.
When HBO announced that Season 5 of “Boardwalk Empire,” which premiered Sept. 7, would be the show’s last, it was clear the stakes had to be heightened for a show that had been received warmly by critics but had failed to capture the level of mass adoration of other HBO hits. Winter responded by accelerating the show’s timeline to the year 1931. This seven-year jump will allow the show to conclude as Prohibition is dying out, a smart way to wrap a bow around a story only made possible by the 18th Amendment. Like all of the show’s previous season premieres, the first episode of Season 5 does little to explain how much the landscape has changed. Nucky has traveled to Havana, where he is meeting with the head of Bacardi and an influential U.S. Senator, evidently trying to get out ahead of rumors that Prohibition will be repealed. Nucky’s apparent wish to “go clean” once Prohibition is terminated is an unsurprising development for a man who has always put his business first. Unfortunately, like “The Godfather” has taught us, just when you think you’re out, they pull you right back in. These past four seasons have seen Nucky battle death threats and traitors in his ranks. It’s clear that he will not emerge from Prohibition unscathed, or without some more blood shed first.
We all know Terry Gilliam for who he once was. For some, he is the soul behind the visual folly of the Monty Python films. For others, he is the visionary director of the ’80s and ’90s, when he directed such milestone films as “Brazil” (1985), “12 Monkeys” (1995), and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998). In any case, Terry Gilliam’s name and career seem to be adding up to something. Without a doubt, Gilliam once was a master.
So what is left of him today? What does his work respond to in modern society? Does he still have something to say?
“Everything adds up to nothing” seems to be the guiding line of his latest opus, “The Zero Theorem.” During the entire movie, Christoph Waltz’s character Qohen Leth wants to find an answer to this question: Can the zero theorem be proven? He searches and searches; he loses himself inside a giant black hole that appears out of nowhere. Qohen struggles with mathematics and at the same time looks for the meaning of life. He waits for a phone call which we all know will never come, tries to find love, learns to be a friend, and rebels against the Orwellian society he lives in. A bit too much, isn’t it?
That is just how the movie feels. Just like its main character, the film never seems to find its true identity or its consistency. The script wanders off here and there. The plot is cliché and unreadable at the same time. As an audience, we don’t just struggle to figure out what the heck the zero theorem will add up to; we struggle to keep our eyes on the screen.
First of all, the story doesn’t seem to be saying much of anything. Gilliam constantly covers up the lack of substance with visual gimmicks, which sometimes are absolutely brilliant. For example, he compares solving an equation and designing a building. We are left wondering, “does Terry still have something to say?”
If we compare this film to “Brazil” (which I consider to be a visionary work of art), we find many parallels. The plots are basically identical. An individual crushed by a totalitarian system fights back and then finds refuge in an illusion. So, in 30 years, the plot has not changed, and neither has the point of view. This is probably the most disturbing, fundamental issue with “The Zero Theorem.” Terry Gilliam depicts society in 2014 in the same way he depicted it in 1985. Our society has changed. It is no grand statement to say that phones, computers, iPads, and other technological devices are integral parts of our lives today. Everyone knows it. Not everyone agrees with it. However, that is another matter. Gilliam seems to denounce what he foresaw thirty years ago. But now that the future is here and present, we need a point of view that takes our modern lives into account, not a voice from the past yelling, “I told you so.” Now that it’s here, what do we do with it? Do we crash it with a hammer like Qohen does, or do we think properly and have a real discussion about it?
The feeling that also arises when we look at these two films simultaneously is comparable to the one I had when watching “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It’s the feeling of a director trying to do the same film he did thirty years ago, but worse. If “The Wolf of Wall Street” is a pale copy of “Casino,” “The Zero Theorem” is a pale attempt to modernize “Brazil.” It’s the feeling of a director losing his breath, working with people who try to “sound like” their mentors.
The second issue I would like to raise about “The Zero Theorem” is its aesthetics. It is widely known that Gilliam had extreme financial difficulties in building up the project. Producers backing out, actors refusing roles, and a terrible promotion did not guarantee the film to be successful. The film, shortly said, is cheap, and that is far from being a crime. However, the film also looks terribly cheap. This is not a question of high or low budget: Some of Hollywood’s biggest productions waste millions of dollars on expensive effects and still manage to look ugly and cheap, while some micro-budget films manage to look strong and sophisticated. “The Zero Theorem” suffers from a lack of depth: all the sets look weak, fake, and inconsistent. The actors are horribly dressed, to the point where all the costumes seem to come straight from a Craigslist sale. The film tries to be big and somehow epic, but it’s betrayed by cheap looks. For example, Gilliam constantly uses the same camera movements and angles, with the purpose of making everything look more grand and distorted. “The Zero Theorem” ends up looking more like a promising thesis film than a work by a great and accomplished film director. It’s interesting to consider that Terry Gilliam’s old films seem unbelievably modern today, whereas his 21st century efforts look so terribly outdated.
Yet, it is impossible for me to completely dislike the movie. While it has many problems, it manages to retain a certain charm. It may be a bad Terry Gilliam film, but it still is a Terry Gilliam film. It has a little something that keeps you from hating it, although you may still find it terrible. Christoph Waltz’s performance is brilliant; he carries the entire movie on his shoulders. His rendition of Qohen is challenging, disturbing, and odd, yet utterly charming and touching. His weirdness adds to the film’s weirdness, and quite surprisingly, it does add to something, contradicting the film’s guiding line. As chaotic as it may be, “The Zero Theorem” still manages to make you feel like you haven’t wasted your time. You will think about the zero theorem. You will try to figure it out. And maybe you will watch it again, just to be sure that you’re not completely lost, even if Terry Gilliam seems like he might be.
You have to give Netflix credit: in the two years since it first explored the realms of Internet-distributed original programming, it’s done a good job of hedging its bets. So far it’s dipped its toe into essentially every genre out there, putting tremendous resources into comedies, political thrillers, horror sagas, and even kid’s cartoons. With that in mind, it was probably only a matter of time until the site decided it needed its own adult-oriented cartoon, especially in the wake of the immense success enjoyed by the FX and Adult Swim animation blocks. “Bojack Horseman” is Netflix’s entry into this weird territory, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t make some pretty interesting choices.
Set in a world populated by both humans and anthropomorphic talking animals, the show follows a washed-up actor by the name of Bojack (voiced by Will Arnett), who also just happens to be a horse. Back in the ’90s, Bojack was the star of the hit sitcom “Horsing Around,” but now he’s nothing more than an alcoholic has-been, struggling to write his memoirs and restart his career. His only real relationships are an on-again, off-again affair with his agent Princess Caroline, a cat (voiced by Amy Sedaris); a strained friendship with Todd, a human freeloader living on his couch (voiced by Aaron Paul); and a rivalry with another ex-sitcom star, a dog by the name of Mr. Peanutbutter (voiced by Paul F. Tompkins).
In the pilot episode, Bojack’s publishers, desperate for a hit book and tired of his dilly-dallying, assign him a ghost writer, Diane Nguyen (also a human, voiced by Alison Brie). With Diane’s help, Bojack tries to finish his book, a process that ultimately forces him to come to terms with his past and his immense collection of inner demons.
At the heart of “Bojack Horseman,” two kinds of shows operate simultaneously. On the one hand, there’s a misanthropic Hollywood-centric comedy, sort of a cross between “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Entourage.” The early episodes tend to lose themselves in trying to grab for relevance in modern celebrity culture. There’s the obligatory episode where Bojack offends somebody and the media completely sensationalizes the incident; and where would a show about Hollywood be without one of the “Horsing Around” child stars returning as a drugged out hyper-sexualized pop star, looking for someone to enable her habits? While these episodes are reasonably funny, they feel like they’re trying too hard to rehash points we’ve all heard before. Admittedly, the animated style does allow the show to take these tropes to a more surreal and anthropomorphic place. Yet turning certain characters into their animal equivalents often feels like the only way the show tries to keep itself aesthetically interesting.
As the show continues, however, it manages to find its focus in a study of its protagonist. From the beginning, Will Arnett does a great job voicing the character, but it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch for the undisputed king of TV jerks. Without giving too much away, in the fourth episode Bojack does something that goes beyond the normal realms of a comedy and enters the regions of being downright irredeemable. This is where things start to get interesting, becoming essentially a redemption story, minus the redemption at the end. Over the course of the season, Bojack suffers a dark, downward spiral, and at the end of his journey, the only real revelation he finds is that maybe some people just are incapable of changing and acting like good people.
The more the study of Bojack’s psyche progresses, so too does the complexity of the supporting characters. At first Diane seems to be present solely for a love triangle between herself, Bojack, and her boyfriend, Mr. Peanutbutter. The show moves to reveal that she, too, is really struggling to find happiness, even if that means settling for a relationship she doesn’t really care about. Likewise, Todd, who at first just seems like a stereotypical slacker, steadily starts to become aware of both his own propensity for failure and the way Bojack repeatedly manipulates him for his own schemes. Even Mr. Peanutbutter, who’s annoying at first because of his naïve stupidity (in a respectable, dog-like way), eventually stands out as the only character not completely consumed by narcissism and cynicism. As different subplots develop, an ultimate unifying factor between all the main characters emerges: the oddly depressing realization that the happiness they’re trying to find in what they do might just be out of their reach.
“Bojack Horseman” is a show worth sticking with because it gets funnier as it gets bleaker. The jokes become sharper, the plots more interesting, and they even pull in a handful of pretty impressive guest stars (Stephen Colbert, Patton Oswalt, and even Naomi Watts make appearances). At the same time, however, it’s willing to take its characters to dark and irresolvable places, which in turn makes the humor stand out even more as a relief from the depressing moments of nihilism. This is the show’s greatest saving grace. It’s one thing when a comedy makes you laugh; it’s another when that laughter is followed by some very sad contemplation. Not bad for a sitcom about a talking horse.
“Not of This World,” a diverse display of East Asian art at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, officially inaugurated the new interdisciplinary College of East Asian Studies on Wednesday, Sept. 10.
Originating in a class last semester, the “Not of This World” is composed of works selected by students from the Mansfield Freeman collection. The course, EAST253: Practicum in Exhibition of East Asian Art taught by Adjunct Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Curator Patrick Dowdey, introduced eight students to the literature of museums and the process of curation in general, but with a focus on East Asia.
This spring was Dowdey’s first time teaching the class, a long-time ambition of his. While Clare Rogan, Davison Art Center Curator, teaches a relatively similar course on museum practicum, Dowdey’s was the first to specifically focus on East Asia.
“I wanted to complement that, not repeat it, so we made this exhibition on East Asian art,” Dowdey said.
The course covered the growth of East Asian art collections in the U.S., as well as various exhibitions throughout the region, exploring the differences between the philosophies of exhibition in the Western market as opposed to the different East Asian ones.
“Exhibition is such an important part of our art world, but exhibition is not a part of Asian art worlds.” Dowdey said, “Usually images are seen singly or in a private setting.”
Kaitlin Chan ’17, a College of East Asian Studies major, found most interesting the class’s reach beyond the mere history of the artwork.
“[It’s] about the way art is collected and stored, curated and exhibited,” Chan said. “And how that influences taste and how it influences people’s ideas of culture and how they perceive other cultures.”
Chan and her fellow classmates first learned how to examine artwork in a database before learning how to archive and store it. While its main objective was to exhibit art from East Asia, “Not of This World” is informed by more than just common location.
“We couldn’t have an exhibition that was just [about] Asia.” Chan said. “We had to ideologically examine the artwork.”
The exhibition also explores the mysteries of alternate states, which are widely present in various East Asian cultures. An initial decision to display all the exhibit’s art in pairs allows a deeper look into the present themes of religion, mythology, and narrative through both comparison and contrast.
In one instance, a mid-19th-century Chinese painting is juxtaposed with a painting from 2012, both of which depict fish, a crucial motif in Chinese culture.
“It’s a very mystical and folklore-guided exhibition,” Chan said. “A lot of talk about China, Korea, and Japan that people hear about in the newspapers is very politically and economically dominated.”
As a student, Chan explained that the importance of the exhibition lies in the uncommon opportunity it provides the campus community to actually explore East Asian culture beyond its often limited and narrow representation in the media.
The exhibit challenges these depictions through artistic diversity, showcasing photographs, masks, sculptures, and paintings conveying a wide range of topics from daily Chinese life and nationalistic Tibetan narratives to alternative contemporary Japanese dance.
Running through Dec. 5, “Not of this World” is not only critical for those excited by the brand new College of East Asian Studies, but for anyone with a serious interest in exploring foreign culture through its mythology and religion.
Xaviera Simmons sits on a stage, fully dressed. She places a pair of scissors on the ground and invites the audience to come up, cut off pieces of her clothing, and take them.
Simmons is performing “Cut Piece,” a conceptual art piece created by Yoko Ono, almost 50 years after its original 1964 performance. The occasion is “Performing the Precarious: Day Into Night,” a two-evening series organized by the Danspace Project in New York City. This series hit the stage last December.
Before it could happen, though, someone had to clear it with Ono. That someone was Lydia Bell ’07 M ’12, who approached the famous Fluxus artist with a pitch planned: a thesis around the meaning of Simmons’ “reperformance.” Ono, of course, said yes, but with one caveat: She couldn’t use the word “reperformance.”
That threw a wrench into Bell’s vision for the event, but no matter. As a performance curator, her job is to work with artists not just in the theoretical but in the practical realm, turning ideas into realities. They just take a little finagling sometimes.
For that ability, she has Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance to thank. After three years and more than 30 students (Bell included), the one-of-a-kind program is transitioning to become a fully formed Masters degree, aiming to train the next generation of dance, theater, and performing arts curators.
Presenting the Ephemeral
The Institute first launched in 2011 as a 9-month certificate program, spearheaded by Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council president Sam Miller ’75. Born as a collaboration between the CFA, arts faculty, and outside practitioners, the Institute was designed to combine intensive study and fieldwork in a previously unexplored manner.
“There are many places to go in the United States to study curating in the visual arts, but there’s no place to go to study how to organize performance,” Tatge said.
After graduating Wesleyan with a degree in theater, Miller spent years in the arts world organizing conferences and workshops and working with artists and presenters at places like the Jacob’s Pillow dance center and the New England Foundation for the Arts. He helped found the Center for Creative Research, which paired established choreographers with universities to create original projects.
Wesleyan and the Center for the Arts, under Tatge’s direction, were enthusiastic pioneers of Miller’s program. But Miller soon began asking about the future of such collaborations: Who would lead the way in supporting contemporary performance? And how would they gain the knowledge and tools to do so?
If any place could provide that education, Miller decided, it would be Wesleyan.
“Wesleyan has a historic commitment to interdisciplinary work, to contemporary artists, to different traditions and aesthetics,” Miller said. “It’s the right ground for this to grow in.”
Other curation programs only dedicate a course or two at most to curating dance, theater, or performance art, but Tatge said Wesleyan is in a unique position to offer a deeper discussion.
“We have always studied the arts in their social, cultural, [and] historical contexts. And in terms of making good curators, they are people who have…the multiple lenses through which to see a performative event, to be able to reach back and look at the influences of that artist, to that artist’s interaction with the current contemporary world,” Tatge said. “That’s how we think at Wesleyan.”
Performance curation is an odd beast: Like visual art, performance art can be situated in cultural and historical movements, and within the larger portfolio and background of an artist. Yet performance art also comes with a unique set of challenges foreign to visual art.
“Performance work is ephemeral; it exists in a moment and then doesn’t exist anymore,” Tatge said.
Bell suggests another way of thinking about performers: “Their bodies are the artwork.”
With that definition, a large part of performance curation understandably revolves around the curator developing a long-term relationship with an artist.
“There’s a whole set of responsibilities when that’s a live, living person,” Bell said. “To me, it means really putting the art and the artist first.”
Curators, Tatge said, take on the role of advocate: They maintain connections to artists even after a single show wraps up.
When Miller began at Jacob’s Pillow, he started working one-on-one with artist-choreographer Bill T. Jones over the course of a number of years. Phil Bither, Senior Curator of Performing Arts at Minneapolis’s Walker Arts Center and ICPP instructor, has commissioned choreographer Ralph Lemon to the Walker time and time again. And Tatge, through the CFA, not only commissioned playwright Leigh Fondakowski to write the play “SPILL” in the aftermath of the Gulf Coast oil disaster, but she also worked with presenters and theaters to bring that performance to venues across Louisiana.
Curator-artist relationships are mutually beneficial, both allowing the artist to grow and providing the institution with quality art.
“Maybe that work has only reached one level and could reach another level, and so maybe it’s bringing that artist back, or finding another place for that artist to take the next phase of that work,” Tatge said.
Being able to understand, organize, and support an artist’s work requires a wide variety of skills, from research to management and entrepreneurship.
“What are the resources that artist needs to realize their vision? Do they need a dramaturg? Do they need a technical person to come in?” Tatge said. “And then, how do I position this work for and offer it to a community, so I can maximize the engagement and participation of the community in that work?”
Considering the Community
ICPP walks its students through everything they see necessary to navigate the contemporary performance art world.
Students in the Institute come for an intensive two-week summer session, and for two additional weekends in the fall and spring. The classes they take include Social and Cultural Context, looking at the major art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries; Perspectives In Performance as Culture, considering the effect of personal biases and experiences on art and curation; Entrepreneurial Strategies; and Considering Site, taught by Associate Professor of Art Elijah Huge, about how architecture and design factor into performances.
Tatge’s question of community involvement plays a huge part in the thinking going on at ICPP. For Jaamil Kosoko M ’12, Assistant Curator in Humanities and Engagement at New York Live Arts, performances were one way to bring together a community.
“Early on, it was really just a sincere need for me to present work and to fulfill what I saw to be some serious cultural malfunctioning,” Kosoko said.
Performance events provide venues to inform and challenge viewers and participants about the ideas and issues fueling the art, which Kosoko must also take into consideration for the structures—the scheduling, the marketing, even the time and place—surrounding the performance itself.
“We use words like ‘feminism,’ ‘African American studies,’ ‘queer theory,’ and ‘afro-futurity,’ but these are pretty unstable signifiers,” Kosoko said. “They mean a lot of different things and have a particular connotation to various people and various communities. Something that I am really interested in is creating opportunities to situate interviews, conversations, panels, various dialogues, and opportunities for education into institutions that otherwise, because of various reasons, may not be able to put as much focus on that practice as probably they should.”
Practice is the constant companion to theory in the ICPP. Much of the program focuses on walking students through the process of curation, whether for a single event or project, an artist’s catalog, or even an arts festival. That’s also where distance learning, built into both the certificate and the Masters program, comes in.
All students undertake a field practicum—or two, for Masters students—where they spend time going deep into an original project, either with an artist or placed at an institution: the Danspace project, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis’s Walker Arts Center, and the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] are all partners.
“They’ve done interesting projects in Stanford, Ohio State, Montreal, San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia,” Miller said. “There’s already a body of work that we’re proud of.”
And because many students come to the Institute already with a position at an arts organization, those projects can go right back to the institutions where the students work and be realized. Megan Brian M ’13, Education and Public Programs Coordinator at SFMOMA, spent her practicum on a series on the relationship of humor to performance that SFMOMA then presented.
Masters students, appropriately, will have one more hurdle to clear: a thesis, which will be the major written work that many undergraduates are familiar with, and a creative output, like a festival or catalog. For professionals looking to advance in their careers, the Masters program is a much-needed credential, and the thesis is the capstone to tie together their learning.
The program, it’s interesting to note, is budget-neutral. ICPP takes no money from Wesleyan and instead self-funds entirely from tuition—around $8,000 for the certificate and $28,000 for the Masters, not including room and board—and grants.
One of ICPP’s aspirations, Miller said, is to construct a unified vision of best practice in the performance world, establishing performance curation as an independent academic field. Discussion and community play a role in this, as well: on July 25, the ICPP brought in curators from across the country for a public unveiling of the Masters program, live-streaming panels online and hosting viewing parties in Boston and San Francisco.
Kristy Edmunds, director of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, said in her keynote address that art institutions have a responsibility to invest in creativity, not simply for a profit, but as an end in itself. If curators are the gatekeepers of art, as Miller described it, it is leadership’s responsibility to help them make better, educated decisions about how artists are supported and presented to the community.
“Curate, in Latin, means the protector of the soul of something,” Edmunds said. “That to me is the fundamental job description, in our case, the ephemeral and extraordinary life of what artists make and do as a singular gift into our heritage.”
I have a lot of strong, positive opinions about a lot of things, music most chief among them. Have a conversation with me, and you will get half a dozen album recommendations gift-wrapped with glowing hyperbole and praise. But even I, with my immediate attachment to pieces of music and art that I like on first listen, try to be very careful with what I call “best.” It’s very easy to make grand statements about something being better than everything else, but it’s just too hard to back up a claim like that. Such categories are reserved for a critic who has truly approached a genre from every angle and can’t find a piece of work better.
Well, I have listened, I have felt, I have done the research, and I only have this to say: Sun Kil Moon’s Benji is the best damn album of the year, maybe the decade.
This is a bold claim, but I believe it with every fiber of my being. I didn’t care much for Mark Kozelek’s long-running folk project until this album came out. Over its 11 songs, Benji sweeps, swoons, begs, laughs, and crawls under the skin.
There are familiar elements, sure. Nylon guitar strings are plucked and strummed and buzz with a warmth that is almost tangible. Everyone has heard drum patterns like the ones played on this album. Everyone has heard a saxophone. The music throughout is very pretty. But being pretty does not make a great album. It’s the words that matter.
Songs have always been stories. It’s what engages the listener. But on this album, Kozelek doesn’t really tell stories. He narrates life itself, dropping all metaphor and artifice and just telling people’s stories in details so intimate they have to be true. Take the first line of the album. On the amazing “Carrissa,” Kozelek practically whispers in his warm-whiskey voice, “Oh, Carissa, when I first saw you, you were a lovely child/ And the last time I saw you, you were 15 and pregnant and running wild.” There is no flourish here, just beautiful detail.
Kozelek has developed a singular voice as a songwriter. The singer is always a character in his own stories, the guy in the middle trying to make sense of this world, like in “Carissa,” when he is coming to terms with the sudden death of his distant relative. Making his voice the only one the listener truly hears gives Kozelek the ability to deal with the intense complexities of his stories in the most personal, powerful way possible.
There’s an immediacy to these songs, as if he’s writing about these events while they’re happening, like in the lovely, brutal “Jim Wise,” in which Kozelek and his father visit an old friend while he awaits trial for manslaughter, or the absolutely astounding “I Watched the Film The Song Remains The Same,” a 10-minute long personal epiphany that devastates me every time I listen. Every detail (“Kentucky Fried Chicken was served,” to name one) adds to this effect. As listeners, we are directly wired to the brainwaves of one sad, smart, observant, empathetic, and beautiful storyteller.
I could certainly say more about this album, but I will just le aave you with this: Benji makes my skin hum and vibrate, alive with the beauty, the energy, and the empathy of Sun Kil Moon.
Saturday night’s show at Eclectic was an interesting spectacle: the performance of headliner Nguzunguzu (pronounced en-GOO-zoo-en-GOO-zoo) was beset with problems, although they were met by the organizers with an admirable tenacity. But it helped that the immense crowd present was already in such a good mood from the party atmosphere established by the opening acts.
The concert kicked off at 10 p.m. with a set by student DJ Calhoun Hickox ’15 under the name DOXA. His music was an interesting start to the show; it was much darker and techno-heavy than the rest of the night’s sounds. His music started out slow, building in tempo as time passed yet still retaining a haunting, almost discordant feel.
A performance by Jaime de Venecia ’15, also known as JDV+, followed DOXA. His work was far more energetic and fast-paced, lending itself well to the growing crowd that filled Eclectic. Unbeknownst to most of the audience members, however, a series of crises was unfolding behind the scenes.
The first major issue had occurred about a week earlier, causing a last minute rescheduling.
“Basically, they were trying to make a show in New York at 3 a.m.,” said Jacob Rosenbloom ’15, the show’s organizer. “Originally, I had them set to play from 12:30 to 2 a.m. I never said this was an early show; I had said this was something that would go until 2 a.m. and I expected to have them booked until 2 a.m.”
Rosenbloom navigated around the issue by having Nguzunguzu stay on until 1:15 a.m., with Saarim Zaman ’16 playing a set for the remainder of the show. Just hours before the start time, however, another crisis emerged.
“I was supposed to pick up the artists of Nguzunguzu at 6 p.m., but by the time I got to the airport, their manager texted me saying that they had missed the plane,” Rosenbloom said.
After leaving the airport without the group he was supposed to meet, Rosenbloom then received another text from Nguzunguzu’s manager, telling him that duo’s luggage was on the plane and waiting at Hartford Airport. By this time, however, Rosenbloom was already back on campus. Ultimately, the group managed to catch a train to New Haven and make it to campus around 10:40 p.m. They started playing just 10 minutes later than originally intended, at 10:50 p.m.
Nguzunguzu played a diverse mix. Almost every song had a strange double layer to it. At the forefront were the songs they were mixing, mostly consisting of fast-paced hip-hop and R&B samples, even incorporating a little Rihanna at one point. However, these were all accompanied by some of Nguzunguzu’s own produced work: synth-heavy, slow-paced beats that gave the songs a dreamlike feel. It was this blending of a fast-paced overlay with a much moodier background that made the music so unique.
At 11:50 p.m., the ballroom suddenly lost all power, much to the confusion of both the audience and the two musicians on stage. As it turned out, the electricity to the ballroom had been deliberately cut; somebody most likely flipped the fuse in the building’s basement. Rosenbloom suggested that competing parties, jealous of the show’s large audience, might have been to blame. At any rate, the power was switched back on after just a few minutes, but it was too late to save the evening. Rather than play for another half hour, Nguzunguzu decided to call it quits.
“I was like, ‘Well you signed up for a 90-minute set,’ but they were a little pushy,” Rosenbloom said. “I didn’t want to aggravate them too much because I really did like what they had done. I realized that it was pretty out of their comfort zone; they’d had a pretty stressful day, losing their baggage and missing their flight. So I cut them some slack. I was like, ‘Fine, you ended up playing an hour long set. Zaman could play an hour and fifteen at the end.’”
Zaman DJed a loud and frantic set of remixes, managing to regain some of the momentum lost in the chaos. By this point, however, the ballroom had unfortunately cleared out.
Yet looking back, it would definitely be unfair to say that this series of obstacles stopped it from being an enjoyable night. Throughout the concert, audience members were letting themselves go, even jumping on the stage and dancing with the performers. DOXA and JDV+ deserve a lot of credit for playing excellent sets in the face of the looming issues.
And, despite the crises, Rosenbloom still felt positively about how the show went.
“Last year I planned a show in the WestCo basement, and I thought it was a great show, everyone who came thought it was a great show, but the problem was there were only 10 people who came,” Rosenbloom said. “This time it was the complete opposite, and I had a good time. Seeing 400 people excited for something I organized really means a lot to me.”
We all know Terry Gilliam for who he once was. For some, he is the soul behind the visual folly of the Monty Python films. For others, he is the visionary director of the ’80s and ’90s, when he directed such milestone films as “Brazil” (1985), “12 Monkeys” (1995), and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998). In any case, Terry Gilliam’s name and career seem to be adding up to something. Without a doubt, Gilliam once was a master.
