Visibility
* Oksana Lutsyshyna *
Until recently, I have belonged to an invisible nation. The world saw Ukraine as part of Russia, and there was nothing to be done about it. But now, things start to change.
MQR Blog
Tim Powers: Below the Surface
* Robert Sparrow Jones *
“Tim Powers: Below the Surface” is a quiet meditation on the mundane and intimate space of sleep. His source of investigation is the philosophical and existential oppositions that manifest themselves in the industrial materials he uses. The theme of the unconscious is carried through in the ethereal hues inherent to polystyrene and latex, which collectively invite the viewer into a meditative space. But what stirs this exhibit are the oppositions Powers designates in the details. They are full of physically engaging contradictions that lure you inside the work. And while dreams themselves remain nameless; a sustaining eternal question about what makes our own landscape lingers.
Tim Powers: Below the Surface Read More »
What Stinks?
* Lillian Li *
I eat the stinky tofu on my second day in Beijing, passing up two metal carts before finally biting the bullet at a stand in Wangfujing. I hand over ten kuai and watch as the vendor first deep-fries the tofu, and then ladles the golden cubes into a grey gravy. Then he scoops the wet tofu into a cup, spoons a dollop of hot chili paste on top, and presents the nightmare sundae to me with a long toothpick as my only utensil.
Concrete and Stone
* Kevin Haworth *
This fluidity, this sense of a city always being built—all this became even more apparent a couple of weeks ago, as Tel Aviv welcomed a reported 100,000 tourists, mostly from Europe, for the annual Pride Parade.
Concrete and Stone Read More »
Team Melli and the Iranian Identity
* Kaveh Bassiri *
Team Melli, Iran’s national football team is playing in the World Cup, despite the adversity brought by sanctions, and it is presenting a unique picture of the country. The players come from all over Iran, from cities such as Tehran, Ahvaz, Mashad, Shiraz, Esfahan, Ardabil, and Kermanshah and from regions as far north as Bandar-e Anzali by the Caspian Sea and as far south as Bushehr by the Persian Gulf.
Team Melli and the Iranian Identity Read More »
I Was a Flower of the Mountain
* Gina Balibrera *
She seemed to have read everything, and thus I imagined that she lived, as Joyce wrote, near to the wild heart of life, in Ireland attending Joyce conferences in her fabulous boots, dipping down to Southern Spain to write in the sun with a bottle of wine and cavort with beautiful intellectuals, writing dazzling papers on international flights, and having her hair deep conditioned and brushed in the meantime. Hers was the life that would be mine in the next decade. In my thirties, I thought to myself, I will have read everything and I will have a chestnut mane. During one of her lectures I made an idle note to read every volume of In Search of Lost Time over the summer.
I Was a Flower of the Mountain Read More »
Difficult Poetry and Sarah Vap’s End of the sentimental journey
The subject of accessibility often frustrates me because, even as I’m incensed or impassioned by defenses or admonishments of “difficult poetry,” the surrounding discussion has ever felt like a red herring.
Difficult Poetry and Sarah Vap’s End of the sentimental journey Read More »
Big Questions, Little Questions
Slavery, it turns out, influenced everything about Brooklyn from its industrialization (sugar, tobacco, cotton) to the early racial makeup of its neighborhoods. Now that I work for a museum, I can’t become a visitor myself without asking: what are the questions that allow people to dig into unfamiliar material, to lose themselves in it?
Big Questions, Little Questions Read More »
On Being Bad
* Mary Camille Beckman *
Sometimes—too often—I forget what it feels like to be thrilled by poetry. So, every day I press the cold body of the guitar against my chest and stomach and feel again what potential feels like—how well I might come to know this body and neck in my arms.
Gustave Doré & Skewed Perspective
* Jeremy Allan Hawkins *
During his lifetime, a gallery was dedicated to Gustave Doré’s work in London, he was photographed by the one and only Nadar, and when he died at the age of 51, he was interred in Paris’s famous Cimetière du Père Lachaise. To posterity, one expert claims he left over one hundred thousand individual works, while even a conservative estimate puts it at over eleven thousand. That body of work has, in turn, been responsible for influencing countless illustrators—perhaps even inspiring our earliest comic books—and establishing visual tropes that still appear today in print and cinematic forms. There is no question that Doré sought to establish his legacy with a singular determination, and he succeeded in many ways, yet his greatest work may also be his most significant failure.
Gustave Doré & Skewed Perspective Read More »