It’s been a wild week in the world of sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, and more genre fare. The return of Doctor Who for its 60th anniversary, burning Mandalorian questions, and our epic first looks at Fallout and Furiosa all made the list of our most read stories—but here’s a few more highlights you might have missed—James Whitbrook “Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI Unlocked 10 Original Movies That Make Prime Video a Must for Horror Fans Totally Killer Image: Prime Video If you’re a horror fan and you have a Prime Video subscription , your streaming options are vast —especially if you don’t mind ads (via Freevee ) or paying a couple bucks to rent the title of your choice. But you also shouldn’t overlook the original films gaming that get distributed through Prime Video—including these 10, a creative, artistically interesting bunch that just so happen to have the power of a massive streaming platform behind them.—Cheryl Eddy Read More Amazon’s Fallout TV Show Reveals Its Armor, Apocalypse, and Walton Ghoul-gins Image: JoJo Whilden/Prime Video Fallout makes its global premiere on Prime Video April 12, 2024—and it’s a series that fans of Bethesda’s popular post-apocalyptic video game have been eager to learn more about. Today, we finally have fresh images to share, and they’re full of jumpsuits , power suits, and at least one missing nose .—Cheryl Eddy Read More We Finally Know When the New Alien Movie Takes Place The Queen Alien from Aliens. Image: Fox When Ellen Ripley said “Get away from her, you bitch,” she apparently wasn’t talking about the latest Alien movie. Turns out, Fede Alvarez’s 2024 Alien movie is actually much, much closer to the originals than anyone could’ve guessed.—Germain Lussier Read More Damn, What Does Disney Have Against Nia DaCosta? Photo: Jesse Grant (Getty Images) The Marvels is likely going to end up one of Marvel Studios’ worst-performing films in a considerable period of time—and at a time when people are largely questioning the direction of a franchise that has dominated cinema for 15 years , that’s not an ideal bit of publicity. Also not ideal? The weirdly public way Disney has decided to paint director Nia DaCosta in the wake of its release.—James Whitbrook Read More Godzilla’s Gorgeous New Design Is Getting an Equally Gorgeous Action Figure Image: Super7 At the end of the week, Godzilla stomps back into theaters with the release of Godzilla Minus One, one of the best movies of the year . He’s doing so with a slick new look , evoking the King of the Monsters’ classic design with some gritty, grotty detailing and a whole lot of threatening dorsal fins—something captured in Super7’s slick new action figure.—James Whitbrook Read More Taika Waititi Wants His Star Wars Movie to Recapture the Joy of the Original Trilogy Image: Lucasfilm Willem Dafoe teases his Beetlejuice 2 character. Get a look at the next Doctor Who anniversary special. Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu teases its Count Orlok. Plus, Monarch teases a new monster in what’s to come. Spoilers, away!—Gordon Jackson and James Whitbrook Read More David Zaslav Says Universally Unpopular Movie Scrapping Was Brave, Actually Photo: Michael M. Santiago (Getty Images) Running a movie studio has proven to be challenging for reality television mogul turned Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav . As 2023 comes to an end, he looks to the upcoming year to continue to answer for the choices being made.—Sabina Graves Read More Oh, Doctor Who, We’re So Back Image: BBC Human drama suffused with alien weirdness? A shotgun blast of emotional sincerity to sweep you away from barely coherent sci-fi technobabble? The power of love, specifically encapsulating queer love? David Tennant and Catherine Tate running around the place having the time of their lives? Do not adjust your clocks friends: it is indeed 2023 rather than 2008. But for one November night, Doctor Who certainly made it feel that way.—James Whitbrook Read More Furiosa’s First Trailer Is Here, Oh What a Lovely Day! Furiosa is here. Image: Warner Bros. Mad Max: Fury Road was a game-changing , rip-roaring, masterpiece of filmmaking and now we finally have our first look at Furiosa, its follow-up. Today is a lovely, lovely day indeed.—Germain Lussier Read More This Mandalorian Star Doesn’t Agree Your Theories About Her Character Is the Armorer supposed to be mysterious? The actress isn’t so sure. Image: Lucasfilm From the very first episode of The Mandalorian , you wanted to know about the Armorer. She was fierce. She was mysterious. And she was wise beyond her years. As we’ve learned more about her in subsequent seasons, that mystique has only grown . Is she honest? Does she have ulterior motives? What’s her deal?—Germain Lussier Read More Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .
sabato 2 dicembre 2023
33 Must-See Exhibitions to Visit This Winter – ARTnews.com
Winter is usually a sleepy season for museums across the world. Fall exhibitions remain on view with the hope of luring visitors during the cold months while curators typically prep big retrospectives for the spring. But that will not entirely be the case this time around. In Germany, a year-long celebration devoted to Caspar David Friedrich, the Romantic painter born 250 years ago, is set to kick off, and Latin America is set to get one of its biggest shows ever devoted to the Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña in Buenos Aires. Retrospectives are also in the offing for Yoko Ono, Emily Kam Kngwarray, and more. New additions to the canon will also share the limelight. The little-known Renaissance master Pesellino is getting a fresh look in London, and Anu Põder, an Estonian sculptor who appeared in last year’s Venice Biennale, will receive a survey in Switzerland. And a blockbuster exhibition at the Met devoted to the Harlem Renaissance looks to initiate new understandings of African American art history. These shows and more figure on the list below, featuring 33 must-see museum shows and biennials opening across the world between the beginning of December and the end of February. “Prelude – Rayyane Tabet. Trilogy” at Mudam Luxembourg Image Credit: Photo Walid Rashid/Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler, Beirut and Hamburg Technically, Rayyane Tabet’s latest exhibition is the first part in a series of three shows, each of which will continue his exploration of histories that are just barely visible. He has plans to cloak Mudam’s I. M. Pei–designed pavilion in curtaining that once appeared in his grandparents’ Beirut apartment. He’ll also cover the structure’s overhead windows in deep blue film, an allusion to a practice used by Lebanese people during the Six-Day War in 1967 to avoid being seen by those conducting air raids above. Tabet has also directed his attention toward more recent tragedies, too. In these darkened spaces, he will show jugs crafted from shards collected after the 2020 blast that rocked Beirut. December 1, 2023–May 12, 2024 “David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive” at Art Institute of Chicago Image Credit: ©The David Goldblatt Trust/Yale University Art Gallery Many bore witness to the horrors of apartheid in South Africa, but few recorded them with the clarity and precision that the photographer David Goldblatt did. He pictured racism, segregation, class differences, and more, and also created essential documents of the AIDS crisis as it impacted his home country. Some 140 of his pictures will be assembled for this show, one of the biggest devoted to Goldblatt since his death in 2018; these works will appear alongside works by other South African photographers, including Lebohang Kganye, Zanele Muholi, and Santu Mofokeng. December 2, 2023–March 25, 2024 “Karlo Kacharava: Sentimental Traveler” at S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium Image Credit: Courtesy Karlo Kacharava Estate, Tbilisi, and Modern Art, London Although he died of a brain aneurysm at 30 in 1994, Georgian artist Karlo Kacharava produced thousands of artworks. His paintings riff on images found in arthouse cinema and allude to a post-Soviet youth culture that was still taking hold when his career was cut short, and while these works and his writings have earned him cult status in Georgia, they have only recently found an audience outside his home country. His S.M.A.K. show—his first museum exhibition ever staged outside Georgia—will place an emphasis on Kacharava’s transnational lifestyle, which took him far beyond Tbilisi, to European metropoles like Paris, Madrid, and Cologne. December 2, 2023–April 14, 2024 Emily Kam Kngwarray at National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Image Credit: ©Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency/National Gallery of Australia Within Australia, the Anmatyerr painter Emily Kam Kngwarray is well-known for abstractions that envision the natural world via dazzling blasts of color and coolly arranged lines. Some have sold for vast sums, both in and beyond the continent; dealer Larry Gagosian and actor and collector Steve Martin are among her fans. But beyond simply viewing her as an abstractionist with mass appeal, the curators of this retrospective—Kelli Cole of the Warumunga and Luritja peoples and Hetti Perkins of the Arrernte and Kalkadoon peoples—specifically position her as an Aboriginal artist whose work was rooted in her people’s culture. Tellingly, the show spells her name in accordance with the preferred Anmatyerr stylization, not the more widely used Anglophone one (Emily Kame Kngwarreye). December 2, 2023–April 28, 2024 “Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art Image Credit: Photo ©Musée de l’Armée/RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York These are tough times, with simultaneous conflicts in many different parts of the world making headlines regularly—and, as this exhibition goes to show, this was also the case a little over the century ago, when the Great War had engulfed the world. How that conflict was pictured in the media and art forms the basis of this 200-object show, whose offerings include posters advertising wartime efforts with an eye toward gender equality and a Félix Vallotton painting that abstracts the carnage of the Battle of Verdun. December 3, 2023–July 7, 2024 “Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists” at the Bass, Miami Image Credit: Photo Silvia Ros/Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Among the top institutional offerings during Art Basel Miami Beach will be this solo show by Hernan Bas, a painter native to the Florida city. In the past, he has taken up 19th-century modes in service of explicitly queer tableaux that belong to our moment. He’ll return to that style for the 35 works included in this show, which focus on a character who undertakes activities that Bas believes fall under the umbrella of “conceptual art,” such as persistently chewing gum and other rituals. December 4, 2023–May 5, 2024 “Ahmed Morsi in New York: Elegy of the Sea” at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami Image Credit: Courtesy the artist This Egyptian-born painter has been a quiet giant of New York ever since he moved there in 1974, and now his surreal imagery, featuring many-eyed humanoids and upturned horses, will find new audiences with this exhibition featuring works produced between 1983 and 2012. The show explores Morsi’s repeated use of the sea, which he uses as a symbol for the places between nations and worlds that many, including himself, have crossed. December 5, 2023–April 28, 2024 “Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed” at National Gallery, London Image Credit: ©National Gallery, London Francesco Pesellino is certainly not a household name in 2023, but more than five centuries ago, in Renaissance Italy, things were very different. His commissions by the powerful Medici family made him a star, and scholars of his day prized his abilities to paint small figures that were rich in detail. Seeking to rescue Pesellino from semi-obscurity, the National Gallery’s conservators have spruced up The Story of David and Goliath (ca. 1445–55), a sprawling battle scene cramped with dueling soldiers, and are now ready to present the results of their work alongside other pieces by Pesellino, whose oeuvre is small because he died at 35. The show is among the very few major Pesellino shows ever mounted, making it a must for Renaissance fanatics. December 7, 2023–March 10, 2024 “Cecilia Vicuña: Dreaming Water” at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires Image Credit: Courtesy the artist In the minds of many, the 2022 Venice Biennale may be synonymous with Cecilia Vicuña, the Chilean-born artist whose fantastical imagery was used to advertise the show, which that year gave her its lifetime achievement award. With their emphases on feminist cosmologies, Indigenous knowledge, and worlds beyond our own, her paintings spoke well to the exhibition’s themes—and have continued to hold the attention of many in the year since it closed. More than 200 works by Vicuña are headed to Buenos Aires for this retrospective, which aims to explore how South American politics and culture have influenced her art since the ’60s. December 8, 2023–February 26, 2024 Thailand Biennale Image Credit: Photo Stephen J. Boitano/LightRocket via Getty Images The itinerant Thailand Biennale, now in its third edition, has returned, this time in Chiang Rai, a province in the country’s northeast region. With two prominent artists—Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong—at the helm, the show takes its name, “The Open World,” from a Buddha sculpture at the ancient site of Wat Pa Sak, but its ambitions exceed the local. “Can we imagine the possibility of a better future?” the curators ask in a statement that alludes to centuries of shifting borders, both in Thailand and beyond. The participants include a number of acclaimed Thai artists, including the collective Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts, which memorably placed a functional half-pipe in a museum for Documenta 15 last year, but biennial superstars like Ho Tzu Nyen, Ernesto Neto, and Haegue Yang will also be on hand. December 9, 2023–April 30, 2024 Leda Papaconstantinou at EMST, Athens Image Credit: Photo Dimitris Papadimas/Courtesy the artist Within Greece, Leda Papaconstantinou is well-known for her risk-taking performances, which, during the ’60s and ’70s, destabilized the binary between male and female. Appropriately, EMST is feting her in a feminist-minded series called “What If Women Ruled the World?” But the offerings in this retrospective will extend beyond Papaconstantinou’s explicitly feminist art and will also address her work on the island of Spetses, where, between 1971 and 1979, she ran a theatre company that enlisted locals alongside professional actors in its productions, which sought to understand what truly constitutes a community. Opens December 14 “Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age” at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany Image Credit: Photo Elke Wahlford/©Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk/Hamburger Kunsthalle To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich’s birth, several German institutions are partnering for a series of exhibitions devoted to the Romantic painter, whose era-defining images of people standing before grand vistas evoke awe and terror in equal measure. First up is this exhibition featuring 50 paintings, including Monk by the Sea, his 1808–10 masterpiece depicting a tiny figure before a stormy ocean, which rarely leaves its home in Berlin. Some 90 works on paper by Friedrich and others in his circle will also be on hand, attesting to his influence on German art history. December 15, 2023–April 1, 2024 “John Chamberlain: THE TIGHTER THEY’RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL” at Aspen Art Museum Image Credit: ©John Chamberlain/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Photo Don Stahl/Courtesy Dia Art Foundation, New York This exhibition, billed as the first institutional survey devoted to John Chamberlain in a decade, is a meeting of minds: the artist Urs Fischer, himself a maker of grand sculptures, has curated it. With loans from New York’s Dia Art Foundation, Fischer’s show will bring together early works and late works by Chamberlain, who is internationally recognized for his assemblages of crushed cars. Fischer, seeking to draw out some lesser-known sides of the artist’s oeuvre, has a stated focus on the folds of Chamberlain’s sculptures, with a special section devoted to his photography, which abstract interiors and his own body into wavy lines and blurs. December 15, 2023–April 7, 2024 “Ay-O: Hong Hong Hong” at M+, Hong Kong Image Credit: ©Ay-O/Courtesy the artist The endlessly creative artist Ay-O found fame in the ’60s with his rainbow-colored prints. By then, he had already helped shape the Fluxus movement with creations that ranged from lightbulb sculptures to “Tactile Boxes,” whose insides viewers were invited to finger and feel around. Assembling works from the 1950s to the 2000s, this survey for the nonagenarian is the first in a new series of monographs devoted to Asian artists of note at M+. Opens December 15, 2023 “Lacan, The Exhibition: When Art Encounters Psychoanalysis” at Centre Pompidou Metz, France Image Credit: ©Latifa Echakhch/Photo Archives Mennour/Courtesy the artist and Mennour, Paris Jacques Lacan, the famed French psychoanalyst, had a thoughtful understanding of the human subconscious, but it turns out he was a perceptive art lover, too. He once owned Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866), whose subject matter—a close-up of a woman’s genitals, rendered in fine detail for all to see—was so provocative that even Lacan couldn’t find the words to discuss it publicly. But discuss it publicly, many have done since the Courbet painting entered the French national collection, and it will once again become a topic of conversation when it heads to this show surveying Lacan’s impact on art history. Pieces about kinky desires and reflectivity dating from many centuries, from Caravaggio to Maurizio Cattelan, have been brought together for an ambitious look at how the ideas guiding Lacan’s theories have been visualized. December 31, 2023–May 27, fitness 2024 “Anu Põder: Space for My Body” at Muzeum Susch, Switzerland Image Credit: Photo Stanislav Stepashko/Art Museum of Estonia Split-open bodies and gangly tongues are two of the recurring elements in the sculptures of Anu Põder, an Estonian artist whose work explores corporeal states that are hard to describe via representational means. Informed by her own experience as a mother and as a woman living in a post-Soviet Estonia, Põder, who died in 2013, sculpted in ways that did not adhere to the artistic trends of her day. They still felt like objects flung out of the future when they appeared at the 2022 Venice Biennale, whose curator, Cecilia Alemani, has returned to organize this retrospective, which dwells on how Põder utilized materials that acted as surrogates for body parts and visually evoked senses beyond sight. January 3–June 30, 2024 “Tetsuya Yamada: Listening” at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Image Credit: Courtesy the artist With a stated focus on the “question of who I am and how I want to exist,” Tetsuya Yamada has worked with a light touch, producing sculptures crafted from old newspapers, thumbprints, branches strung up with knotted rope, clay, and more. Drawing on sculptures by Eva Hesse, Constantin Brancusi, Isamu Noguchi, Ron Nagle, and others, the Tokyo-born artist has proven a key figure in the Twin Cities, where he is now based, with works that explore how people shape time and nature. This 60-work show, his first major US museum exhibition, looks to cement his reputation in the Midwest. January 18–July 7, 2024 “Zanele Muholi: Eye Me” at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Image Credit: ©Zanele Muholi/Bader + Simon Collection Photographer Zanele Muholi has described themselves as a visual activist, and with good reason—their work has repeatedly shed light on the lived realities of queer people in South Africa, the country where Muholi was born and is based. The 100 works assembled for Muholi’s first West Coast museum survey will span documentary photography and other less classifiable modes of working, including their acclaimed “Somnyama Ngonyama” series, in which the artist poses in ways meant to recall—and subvert—historical portraits of Black subjects. January 18–August 11, 2024 “Tobias Spichtig: Everything No One Ever Wanted” at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland Image Credit: Courtesy the artist; Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin; and Jan Kaps, Cologne Tobias Spichtig’s 2021 Swiss Institute show in New York was set within a mirrored gallery and lined with empty display cases that he obtained from closed stores. The show, with its off-putting air, encapsulated the creepy vibe of the Swiss artist’s work, which frequently undoes the glamour of high fashion. In new paintings, sculptures, and installations making their debut this season at the Kunsthalle Basel, Spichtig will turn his chilly gaze on the culture of the 1950s. January 19–April 28, 2024 “Loie Hollowell: Space Between, A Survey of Ten Years” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut Image Credit: Photo Feuer Mesler Gallery/Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery Two years ago, Loie Hollowell explained the experience of childbirth as “leaving one version of yourself behind and moving toward another”—a description that could just as well apply to her paintings, which depict fleshy forms that seem to split apart and transform anew. Working under the sign of modernists like Agnes Pelton and Neo-Tantric painters like G. R. Santosh, she has translated interior states into paint, at times even bringing her abstracted breasts and buttocks into the third dimensions via foam extensions. Those paintings will be included in her first-ever museum survey, which will mark the public debut of works on paper from her archive. January 21–August 11, 2024 Leonard Rickhard at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo Image Credit: Photo Thomas Widerberg/Christian Bjelland Collection Leonard Rickhard, one of Norway’s most important living artists, has gained a following for his spare paintings depicting still, calm structures, sometimes with people looking on at them. Beneath these paintings’ serenity, disquietude lurks—some depict military barracks in allusion to the relics of Germany’s occupation of Norway. Seeking to explore the ways Rickhard has explored the post–World War II Norwegian consciousness, the Astrup Fearnley Museet is mounting a full-dress retrospective, marking the second time in the 21st century that the museum has done so. January 24–May 19, 2024 Lagos Biennial Image Credit: Courtesy Lagos Biennial FESTAC ’77, the 1977 arts festival held in Lagos that highlighted the richness of African culture, continues to loom large nearly 50 years on; its influence is one of the focuses of this week-long biennial in the Nigerian city, now in its fourth edition. Under the title “Refuge,” this week-long festival will focus on how African artists of all kinds can gather anew in a time when climate change is disproportionately impacting the Global South. The offerings span architectural presentations, talks, and an art exhibition called “CAPTCHA,” curated by Sarah Rifky and Kathryn Weir, which “reflects on regimes of seeing and strategies of taking refuge in plain sight,” according to its description. February 3–10, 2024 “Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Art, Colonialism and Change” at Royal Academy of Arts, London Image Credit: Photo Stuart Whipps/Courtesy the artist and Ikon Gallery A spread of London art institutions have begun to place due attention on their role in British colonialism, most notably Tate Britain, whose rehang earlier this year put a focus on the country’s painful conquests in Africa and the Caribbean—a topic that had rarely made it into the permanent collection galleries previously. The latest museum to do so is the Royal Academy of Arts with this 100-work show, whose checklist spans multiple centuries and artists of many nations. On view will be J. M. W. Turner’s paintings of disturbed seas, Kara Walker’s provocative meditations on slavery, and Hew Locke’s Armada (2017–19), an installation composed of 45 suspended models of boats, some of which are accompanied by sculptures of Portuguese colonialists. February 3–April 28, 2024 “Harold Cohen: AARON” at Whitney Museum, New York Image Credit: Courtesy Whitney Museum The abstractions that Harold Cohen began producing with the help of a computer called AARON during the 1960s may seem quaint by today’s standards, but their squiggly lines and striped swatches were just about unthinkable before the software spit them out. The Whitney, seeking to underline Cohen’s place in the canon, will survey AARON’s output with a sampler of paintings and drawings. Yet not all of the offerings are static, fixed things. In something of a landmark moment for art-and-tech enthusiasts, AARON’s process will be enacted live in the galleries at various points in the show’s run. February 3–June 2024 “Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon” at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York Image Credit: ©Stanley Whitney/Courtesy Stanley Whitney Studio/Photo Lisson Gallery/Private Collection Think of an artwork based on a grid, and you might conjure the colorless, austere kind that recurs throughout Minimalist art. Stanley Whitney’s grids stand in stark opposition to those ones, with bright hues, unevenly arranged forms, and divisions that slant out of alignment. The joy Whitney has taken in returning over and over to the grid, showing where order breaks down into controlled chaos, will be on full display in his 150-work retrospective, which supplements his paintings with works on paper that attest to his process. February 9–May 27, 2024 Outi Pieski at Tate St. Ives, United Kingdom Image Credit: ©Outi Pieski/Photo Tor Simen Ulstein/KUNSTDOK The Sámi artist Outi Pieski, who is based in Helsinki, has become a star of the biennial circuit, with recent showings in Venice, Sydney, and Gwangju, South Korea, under her belt. At these shows, she has exhibited textile works composed of hanging threads in bright hues and wood, all harnessed in the Sámi tradition of duodji, which holds that objects contain powers of their own. Her Tate St. Ives show, one of her biggest solo outings to date staged beyond the Baltic region, will include paintings and installations focused on Indigenous rights. February 10–May 6, 2024 “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” at Tate Modern, London Image Credit: ©Yoko Ono Back in 1971, Yoko Ono held a solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which she rechristened the Museum of Modern [F]art. The show didn’t really exist, even though she advertised in the Village Voice and produced a catalogue—it was mostly a performance that involved releasing butterflies into the museum’s sculpture garden. In the half-century since, Ono’s work has entered institutional galleries in sanctioned ways, and this 200-work show acts as proof. Her Tate exhibition will feature work from her Fluxus days during the ’60s, including documentation of her famed 1964 performance Cut Piece, in which spectators were invited to snip away at her clothes, as well as more recent installations and sculptures that speak out against war and urge peace. February 15–September 1, 2024 “René Treviño: Stab of Guilt” at Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, New York Image Credit: Courtesy the artist René Treviño has researched Mayan and Aztec history, explored his own experience as queer person of Mexican-American heritage who grew up in Texas, and cast his eye toward the heavens, focusing on solar flares and more with awe. All of these interests fuse in his prints, sculptures, and paintings, which look to the past to gaze into the future. Some 200 of his artworks will figure in this survey focusing on 15 years’ worth of his art. February 17–June 14, 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Image Credit: ©Christine Fenzl This winter’s most high-profile biennial bears an ironic name, given that it is set in a desert: “After Rain,” a reference to the hope that change will come, as its curator, Uta Meta Bauer, has said. The 92 artists include a mix of locals and foreigners. Saudi Arabian artist Ahmed Mater is set to work with Armin Linke on a project that tracks the growth of the oil industry, while the Oslo-based Senegalese restaurant NJOKBOK—here participating as an artist of sorts—will set up a functioning juice and tea bar. Also on tap will be works by artists such as Ibrahim El-Salahi, Alia Farid, Sopheap Pich, Tomás Saraceno, and more. February 20–May 24, 2024 “Janet Sobel: All-Over” at Menil Collection, Houston Image Credit: ©Janet Sobel/Photo ©Museum of Modern Art, New York/Licensed by SCALA, Art Resource, New York/Museum of Modern Art A flurry of support for Ukrainian artists last year spurred new interest in Janet Sobel, an Abstract Expressionist painter who was born in what is now the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and enjoyed a fruitful career in New York—even as male critics sought to denigrate her output. A pioneer of a style known as “all-over” painting, in which drips are flung around a composition, Sobel’s embrace of unusual materials like enamel and sand have proven influential, especially among feminist scholars, who view her as a woman ahead of the men in her circle. Her work will only continue to grow in prominence with this small show, which assembles 30 paintings and drawings. February 23–August 11, 2024 “Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery” at Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Sharjah Art Foundation The Ethiopian artist Henok Melkamzer produces abstractions that are in dialogue with telsem, a talismanic form of art-making that typically exist as scrolls or writing. But this show, curated by art historian Elizabeth Giorgis, asserts that Melkamzer’s art cannot only be couched in Ethiopian tradition, even if it does draw on the zodiac, Orthodox Christian symbolism, and other Ethiopian subject matter. It also has a lot to do with modernism, Giorgis suggests. The 100 works on view will suggest the ways that Melkamzer reinterprets non-representational painting of the 20th century. Among them will be his paintings that make use of the hareg (vine), a twisting form that snakes around and around in Melkamzer’s hands, producing eye-popping compositions that the artist has designed to be viewed by starting in the center and moving outward. February 24–June 16, 2024 “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Image Credit: ©2023 Estate of Archibald John Motley Jr./Bridgeman Images/Howard University It has been more than three decades since the Harlem Renaissance has been surveyed by a New York museum—the Studio Museum in Harlem was the last one to do so, in 1987—and with this show, the Met aims to take a fresh look at the movement, which kicked off in the ’20s and has influenced many generations afterward. As writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were reshaping literary prose to account for new Black subjectivities, artists like Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, and Meta Warrick Fuller were revolutionizing painting and sculpture, producing images of African Americans in ways they had rarely been depicted before. The movement produced a litany of memorable works, some 160 of which will be assembled here, with many on loan from museums operated by historically Black schools. Among them in will be photographs of stylish Harlemites by James Van Der Zee, whose vast archive was recently acquired by the museum in collaboration with the Studio Museum. February 25–July 28, 2024 “Isabel Quintanilla’s intimate realism. Retrospective” at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Image Credit: ©2023 VEGAP, Madrid/Photo ©bpk, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen/Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich Ironically, although Isabel Quintanilla was Spanish, many of her realist paintings are better known in Germany than they are in her home country. That may soon change, however, with this retrospective, the first ever devoted to a Spanish woman at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Some 100 paintings and drawings will be brought together for the show. Many will be the still lifes for which Quintanilla is fondly remembered: glasses on tables, arrangements of fruit, and small vases stuffed with flowers, all gently lit and rendered with a piercing sense of naturalism that is unusual for 20th-century painting. February 27–June 2, 2024
Britney Spears Rushes to Vet in Medical Emergency During Birthday Celebration
Britney Spears got super upset Friday night, after her dog had an apparent medical emergency … TMZ has learned. Britney was out in L.A. for a pre-birthday celebration — she turned 42 today — at her manager/best friend Cade Hudson ‘s home, along with her brother Bryan and several others. At 2 AM, Britney, Cade and Bryan left Cade’s home and got in a car. An agency photog at the scene says she had her dog in the car and they rushed to a 24-hour veterinary clinic. We never see the dog, but the photog claims they brought it in. BACKGRID Britney and crew then went to a gas station convenience store on the Sunset Strip, and from the photos you can tell this was some sort of emergency. Cade is in his PJs with no shoes. They then went back to the vet, and it’s travel unclear whether they had the dog when they left. Bryan seems to be the only family member with whom Britney has a face-to-face relationship. He’s been with her fairly regularly over the last few months.
venerdì 1 dicembre 2023
Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93
“I didn’t know lawyers and judges. We were cattle ranchers. That wasn’t — we didn’t know people like that. So I didn’t know what I was getting into, and it never entered my mind that there wouldn’t be opportunities for women lawyers. It just never occurred to me. Should have.” Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. During her tenure on the high bench, she was the crucial swing vote, the decisive force in cases that shaped history — from states’ rights to sex discrimination, voting rights to religion, affirmative action to abortion. For nearly a quarter-century, the law was basically what Justice O’Connor thought it ought to be. The onetime housewife from suburban Phoenix came to be known as the most powerful woman in America. It all began one day in July 1981. O’Connor, who was just a mid-level state judge in Arizona at the time, was working in her chambers when she got a bolt from the blue, a telephone call from the White House. President Ronald Reagan wanted to appoint her to the Supreme Court. “Why do you think you were chosen?” “Well, when Ronald Reagan was running for president, he was eager to have some support from women and it was a little dicey for him. There was an abortion issue out there, so women were somewhat skeptical. And he said during the course of his campaign, if I get a chance to put a qualified woman on the Supreme Court, I would like to do that.” For nearly 200 years, the high court was a domain reserved for men. Even the mere suggestion from Reagan made front-page news. “My name surfaced on that list. I’m not sure how or why, except that there were not many Republican women judges. There weren’t many women judges anyway — federal or state. But I was a Republican, I had served in all three branches of Arizona’s government. And unbeknownst to me, they sent a couple of people to Arizona to make inquiry about me. They had a big paper trail to review and see if they thought they approved.” “Perhaps it didn’t hurt that Ronald Reagan was a cowboy at heart.” “I think that was what he most liked, was the fact that I’d grown up on the back of a horse.” Sandra Day was a trailblazer from the beginning. Born in 1930, she was raised on the Lazy B Ranch in a remote corner of Arizona. “We were 35 miles from the nearest town. An adobe house that was plastered and it had a big screen porch around it, where the cowboys slept. No indoor plumbing, no running water, no electricity. It was rather primitive.” “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?” “A cattle rancher. I liked it. It was wonderful. That was the only thing I knew anything about. I think I was the only student in my graduating class who went away out of state to college.” At Stanford University, the cowgirl met the person who would inspire her life’s ambition, a professor named Harry Rathbun. “He had a spiritual quality almost. He was the first person to really tell the students this is a huge, complicated world we’re living in.” TV Announcer: “Let us face without panic the reality of our times. The fact that atom bombs —” “It’s a dangerous world. We have to learn how to live together in peace in this world. And a single individual, even in this complex world of ours, can make a difference. Because of Prof. Harry Rathbun, I decided to apply to law school.” “Weren’t you told that there was no way for a woman to be a lawyer back then?” “I was not told that. In fact, it was true. And if I had known that, I perhaps wouldn’t have applied.” At Stanford Law School, O’Connor met two men who’d play a big role in the rest of her life: William Rehnquist, her future colleague on the Supreme Court — “I knew him well. He loved to play a card game, or charades or go to the movies. He was really so much fun.” — and John O’Connor, her future husband. “John was a year behind me. I was graduating that year and he had another year to go. One of us had to work and that was going to be me. And I placed calls to many of the firms, and they wouldn’t talk to me. I was female. They didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t realize that I was going to have trouble even getting an interview. I had an undergraduate friend at Stanford whose father was a partner in a big California law firm. And he said, ‘Oh, Miss Day, you have a fine resume here.’ He said, ‘The problem is this firm has never hired a woman as a lawyer and I don’t see the time when we will. Our clients wouldn’t stand for it.’ And then he said, ‘Well, how well do you type?’ I heard that the district attorney in San Mateo County, Calif., had once had a woman lawyer on his staff, so I made an appointment to go see him. He was in the old San Mateo County Courthouse, which now is an historic building. It had a big, stained glass dome. It was fabulous. But he said, ‘The fact of the matter is, I don’t have any money to hire anybody right now.’ I said, ‘I can work for nothing until you get funding.’ And I said, ‘I know you don’t have an empty space, but I met your secretary and she’s very nice. And there’s enough room in her office to put another desk, if she’s willing to have me.’ That was the deal we struck. So it all turned out for the best, but it was sure hard to get that first job as a lawyer.” “You once wrote, ‘If society does not recognize the fact that only women can bear children, then ‘equal treatment’ ends up being unequal.’ After you moved back to Arizona, how did you manage to both practice law and raise three sons?” “It’s not easy. It was 1957. I was pregnant with my first child at the time I took the Arizona bar exam, and we had a little boy. None of the law firms in Phoenix had yet decided to hire women lawyers, so we opened our own little law office out in a suburb. And it wasn’t the kind of work usually handled at news the U.S. Supreme Court. But I couldn’t go to work every day if I didn’t have adequate and reliable help at home, and I didn’t. So I had to give up my little neighborhood law firm and I stayed home for close to five years.” O’Connor’s law career stalled, but she became a rising star in local Republican politics. “The Republicans managed to elect the attorney general of Arizona and he hired me as an assistant attorney general. Well, the problem was I was the only woman and he didn’t know what to do with me. So he sent me out to the Arizona State Hospital for the mentally ill, and said you can have space out there for your office. I said, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ‘Well, whatever they need.’ Maybe the most important thing I did there was to start legal aid clinic for the patients. They were losing their homes, their children, everything. They were locked up. The attorney general decided, gee, maybe we could use this woman back down at the headquarters. So, he brought me back. And then I had some very good clients, like the governor and the Legislature. I really enjoyed that work and I certainly got to know state government from the ground up.” When a state senator got elected to Congress in 1969, O’Connor was tapped to fill his seat. “It was great. You could decide what problems you wanted to work on and develop legislation to do something. I had enough of a voice that I could normally get those things enacted. My colleagues, to my shock, elected me as majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. That was the first time in the United States that a woman had ever held a legislative leadership post of any kind. Isn’t that amazing? It had never happened before.” State Senator O’Connor was a loyal Republican, except when it came to issues involving women, whether it was backing the Equal Rights Amendment or avoiding the anti-abortion battles taking hold across the country. After two years at the helm of the Legislature, O’Connor returned to the law, this time as a judge — first on a county court and later, a state Court of Appeals. She’d served on the bench only seven years when that fateful phone call arrived in 1981. “So today I’m pleased to announce the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O’Connor of Arizona Court of Appeals for confirmation as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.” The press and the public were quite taken by Reagan’s revolutionary nominee, but there was opposition from right-to-life conservatives. “Some 200 of them picketed the Senate building.” “We see it as a total repudiation of the views made public by President Reagan.” “They’re already pressuring U.S. senators to vote no on Judge O’Connor to try and block her nomination to the Supreme Court.” “Judge O’Connor, there has been much discussion about your views on the subject of abortion.” “My own view in the area of abortion is that I am opposed to it as a matter of birth control or otherwise. The subject of abortion —” Despite the opposition, the Senate voted 99 to 0 to confirm the nomination. “Do you have any trepidation?” “No, it should be very interesting.” When O’Connor arrived for her first day on the bench, the world was watching to see how a female would fare. “There was neither comment nor ceremony as Mrs. O’Connor took her seat for the opening argument.” “We’ll hear arguments first this morning in No. 1464, James G. Watt, Secretary of the Interior, against the Energy Action Education —” It took almost 40 minutes before she gathered the nerve to pose a question in oral arguments. “If the government complies with what Congress intended — in other words —” “Mr. Silard, may I —” “May I just finish your thought? The congressional —” But just when it seemed the first lady on the high court might wilt under the pressure, the cowgirl found her voice. “It isn’t clear, is it, whether even if California were to win here, that the secretary would be likely to use the bidding systems that California —” With her bold stature and piercing gaze, Justice O’Connor proved herself a force to be reckoned with — not only in oral arguments, but also in chambers. “The most electrifying moment of my first week on the court was that first time I sat in our conference room at the table to actually discuss and resolve cases that had been heard and argued. That was the moment of truth, the rest was grandstanding. That was the real thing.” Right away, the divide on the court endowed O’Connor with the power that defied her position. “We were seated, nine of us, around that table discussing the merits of the cases argued that week. And the discussion starts with the chief justice. And the chief explains how he thinks the case should be resolved and why, and then the next most senior, and on around the table, ending with the junior justice. That was me. The very first case that we discussed came to me 4 to 4. It wasn’t that I was seeking that role, but very often the court was divided in that fashion.” That made the first woman justice the key pivot point, the swing vote who single-handedly decided if the four conservative justices or the four liberals prevailed in a case. In time, it became clear Justice O’Connor valued balance and pragmatism over purity. From her experience in life and local government, she believed impacts mattered. And in case after case, she was willing to reconsider preconceptions and to ally with opposing factions on the court — even on abortion. Initially, she took the side of conservatives, backing laws limiting abortions and attacking Roe v. Wade. “Whether the state may reasonably regulate in the area of abortion in a manner designed to ensure an informed decision by a pregnant woman —” “Counsel, is the city relying on all four of the alleged state interests that you described in this instance?” “That’s correct, your honor.” “OK.” But O’Connor refused to join conservatives when they tried to overturn Roe v. Wade. Twice, she single-handedly had the chance to outlaw abortions and she refused. First, in 1989 — “— require women to have abortions after so many —” “I surely do not.” And again in 1992, with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a landmark 5 to 4 decision that Justice O’Connor delivered for the court. “We conclude that the central holding of Roe should be reaffirmed. Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that can’t control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” “Do you think the issues decided in Roe v. Wade are now settled a matter for the court?” “It’s always possible that the Supreme Court of the United States can conclude that in some earlier decision it made it’s — it ought to be reversed, that it’s no longer valid. The court certainly did that in a very dramatic way in the 1950s in Brown v. Board of Education, but it is not easily done or lightly done.” When it came to affirmative action, O’Connor began as a skeptic, but became a defender in 2003, with the polarizing case of Grutter v. Bollinger. “Petitioner Barbara Grutter is a white Michigan resident who was denied admission to the law school.” Justice O’Connor cast the decisive vote in the 5 to 4 decision that upheld affirmative action in university admissions. “Showing that such diversity promotes learning and better prepares students for an increasingly heterogeneous workforce, for responsible citizenship, and —” “You wrote, ‘Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized.’ Do you think this principle is in danger?” “I think it’s a very important principle. I hope it isn’t in danger. It shouldn’t be. We’re a nation comprised of people from many different countries, backgrounds, religions. When I went to law school, 1 percent of the law students were female — today it’s 50. We’ve had what amounts to a revolution in this country, and it’s been all to the good.” “Over the years, is it fair to say your opinions became more moderate? Did the court become more conservative? Are both things true?” “I don’t think either of them are true. The fact of the matter is the Supreme Court considers an amazing array of issues. Amazing. I just don’t think it’s accurate to say somebody has this great unified theory and that’s how everything has to be decided. It’s not that way.” When she retired from the court in 2006 to care for her husband, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Justice O’Connor seemed to have no regrets, even about what was probably her most controversial decision: Bush v. Gore. “An election in turmoil, a presidency in the balance.” “A recount in the Sunshine State is now underway.” “Per the Secretary of State’s request to stop the recount on her term.” In December 2000, Justice O’Connor was part of the 5 to 4 majority that gave George Bush a victory in the disputed presidential election when the Supreme Court ordered four Florida counties to stop recounting votes. “Some of the ballots came out with one hanging chad, and some with two hanging chads, and some with three hanging chads. The counties didn’t have a uniform rule. They just let the vote counters do whatever they thought right. Well, that’s not equal protection. I mean voting matters, doesn’t it? It was a close election. And so we like to think that the ballots are going to be counted, according to some set rules so that it isn’t just the whim of whoever’s counting the ballot. The popular vote count went for Mr. Gore, the Electoral College went the other way. And I think that’s what really bothers people. The Supreme Court didn’t change that.” But O’Connor always remained willing to rethink her preconceptions. In 2013, she told the Chicago Tribune editorial board she had misgivings about the Bush v. Gore decision. She said it ‘stirred up the public’ and ‘gave the court a less than perfect reputation.’ “We were hearing more unfortunate remarks about judges than I remembered in my very long lifetime. Activist judges — godless, secular humanists trying to impose their will on the rest of us. It’s shocking to me because when the framers created our form of government, they created three branches of government. And the framers thought it was terribly important to have a judicial branch that had the capacity, ability and independence to enable them to impartially decide issues of law, even if it meant holding a law unconstitutional or an act of Congress unconstitutional. That was their vision.” “I’m going to ask you a question you were asked at your Senate confirmation, which is: How you would like to be remembered?” “Oh, I said the tombstone question. And I said I would like it to say, ‘Here lies a good judge,’ and I haven’t changed my mind.”
Doctor Who Releases Official Recipe For Sylvia’s Tuna Madras
When Doctor Who returned to our screens this past weekend in “ The Star Beast ,” it brought with it all sorts of weird and occasionally fearsome threats, from the mischievous Meep to the insectoid Wrarth Warriors . But perhaps nothing could send you scurrying behind the sofa than one single joke/threat: a fish curry made by Donna’s mom. “Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI Unlocked When we reunite with Donna and her family in “The Star Beast,” the Nobles are having a bit of a rough time. Having given away the lottery earnings the Tenth Doctor had surreptitiously gifted her with just before his regeneration, Donna is struggling to make ends meet with her husband and daughter, having lost another job herself. One area she remains enriched though, whether she wants to be or not, is the help of her mother Sylvia, who has taken to preparing meals for her daughter’s family to help lighten the load. While we hear legendary tales of a truly gigantic sausage roll, only one of Sylvia’s food experiments has captured the hearts and minds, for better or worse, of Doctor Who fandom in the last week: her perfectly-comedically-timed explainer of what’s on the menu before everything goes sideways in Doctor Who’s trademark style. A tuna Madras curry!
It’s one of the funnier moments in an already funny episode. Jacqueline King’s delivery of the simple line is pitch-perfect, and it’s the perfect microcosm of writer/showrunner Russell T. Davies’s worldview for Doctor Who, the bizarre mundanity of human life clashing with the bizarre, alien world of adventuring in Time and Space. But also: the idea of a tuna curry is just bizarrely gross to a lot of people, hence why Doctor Who fans have become obsessed. Remember, this is the fanbase that willingly tried Fish Fingers and Custard after the Eleventh Doctor snacked on it in his debut episode. A canned tuna curry is practically fine dining in comparison. But while “The Star Beast” left Sylvia’s tuna Madras behind in its alien mayhem, have no fear, culinarily curious Whovians: the BBC has provided an official recipe so you can make it at home. Check it out below! Ingredients 2 teaspoons of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
Half teaspoon of turmeric
1 teaspoon of hot chilli powder
1 teaspoon of ginger
Salt (to taste)
1 onion
Chopped 5 cloves of garlic
Chopped 2 tins of tuna
Drained 1 tin of tomatoes
Half a jar of black olives Method Fry the onion for five minutes until golden brown.
Add the garlic, stir for two minutes.
Mix in the spices, stir quickly, add in two tins of tuna.
Stir again twice.
Add the tin of tomatoes and the olives.
Bring to a boil until the sauce thickens.
Turn down low for ten minutes.
Serve. Although largely unheard of (perhaps for good reason, looking at this ingredient list), the tuna Madras is apparently a staple in Davies’ family, according to the commentary track for “The Star Beast.” So whether you want to either feast on the fuel behind one of the most influential minds of British television, or you need something to eat when Doctor Who returns this weekend … maybe you’re brave enough to try this and see what the Nobles missed out on? Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film fashion and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .
giovedì 30 novembre 2023
Salvadoran Rural Communities Face Climate Injustice — Global Issues
Luis Aviles, standing on a segment of the rock embankment that protects riverbank communities from the overflow of the Lempa River in southern El Salvador, points to the part of the river that makes a turn in its course and hits the levee hard, undermining it. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPSLuis Aviles, standing on a segment of the rock embankment that protects riverbank communities from the overflow of the Lempa River in southern El Salvador, points to the part of the river that makes a turn in its course and hits the levee hard, undermining it. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS by Edgardo Ayala (tecoluca, el salvador) Thursday, November 30, 2023 Inter Press Service TECOLUCA, El Salvador, Nov 30 (IPS) – For farmers in the valleys below the 15 de Septiembre hydroelectric plant in central El Salvador, the rains bring floods. Now that the rains are more unpredictable, the loss of crops and disruption of fishing are even more devastating as they deal with erratic climate-change-induced flooding. For decades, poor fishing and farming communities in southern El Salvador have paid the price for the electricity generated by one of the country’s five dams, as constant and sometimes extreme rains cause the reservoir to release water that ends up flooding the low-lying area where the families live.
Dozens of communities located in the Bajo Lempa area in southern El Salvador suffer year after year from flooding during the May to November rainy season, when the river overflows its banks and floods corn, beans, and other crops, as well as affecting fishing and other livelihoods.
The ecoregion is the lower stretch of the Lempa River basin, which runs through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until flowing into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country.
The Lempa River basin covers 18,240 square kilometers, shared with Honduras (30 percent) and Guatemala (14 percent). In El Salvador, it stretches across slightly more than half of the territory of just over 21,000 square kilometers.
An estimated 5,000 families live in the 900-square-kilometer Bajo Lempa area. They are dedicated to subsistence farming and fishing and non-intensive cattle ranching, although there are also some families from other regions of the country, with more money, who have acquired land to grow sugar cane. Celina Menjívar (R), a resident of San Bartolo, one of the ten settlements located in the Bajo Lempa area near the mouth of the river on the Pacific Ocean, participates in a neighborhood meeting. She makes the case that the Salvadoran government ought to reimburse local families for the crops they lost as a result of flooding from an upstream dam. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS “In the 32 years that I have lived here, I have been affected just like the rest by many floods,” Celina Menjívar told IPS. She is a farmer in San Bartolo, one of the settlements or communities of Bajo Lempa.
“I plant corn, sesame, and cushaw squash (Cucurbita argyrosperma) on a small family plot, but when the floods come, everything is lost, and in the end we are left with nothing,” said Menjívar, 41.
In addition to subsistence farming, a group of some 50 families set up a cooperative for the organic production of cashew nuts, which they were able to export to the United States, France, and the United Kingdom after achieving certification as organic producers. An aerial view of the state-owned 15 de Septiembre Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest in El Salvador. The reservoir discharges when rainfall exceeds its storage capacity, causing the Lempa River to overflow and flood dozens of farming and fishing communities in the Bajo Lempa area. Credit: CEL But rising production costs and competition from cheaper prices, especially from India, have hampered exports in the last two years. The cooperative is therefore looking to promote new products, such as pistachios and peanuts.
“We have made an effort to ensure that the farmers can at least sell their cashew seeds” on the domestic market, the cooperative’s administrative coordinator, Brenda Cerén, told IPS. Impact on the Most Vulnerable Most of the residents of Bajo Lempa were part of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, who settled on the riverbanks after receiving land in the region as part of the demobilization process at the end of the civil war in 1992.
El Salvador’s bloody civil war (1980–1992) left some 75,000 people dead and 8,000 missing in a country that currently has 7.6 million inhabitants.
“Most of the flooding is not due to the rains per se, but to the discharges from the reservoir,” said Menjívar, referring to the state-owned 15 de Septiembre hydroelectric plant, the country’s largest, located upstream between the departments of San Vicente and Usulután, in central El Salvador. Manuel Mejía is one of the former guerrilla fighters who received a hectare of land in Bajo Lempa in southern El Salvador, to settle there as part of the demobilization process of the rebel forces at the end of the 12-year Salvadoran civil war in 1992. Now, when the area is flooded by the overflowing river, he says everything is lost, even household goods. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS Another resident of San Bartolo, Manuel Mejía, added: “When there are floods here, everything is lost: crops, livestock, even household goods, everything.”
Mejía, a 77-year-old former guerrilla fighter, told IPS that this year’s rainy season did not produce flooding because the storms began late, and this meant that the drainage channels, located along the road leading to the area, did not fill up and were able to handle the rainfall at the end of the rainy season in November.
Increasingly unpredictable and extreme rainfall periods, due to climate change, generate intense storms in short periods of time, and, as a consequence, the reservoir’s capacity is easily exceeded and water releases are authorized.
Hence, the poor families of Bajo Lempa pay the cost of the dam’s ability to generate electricity for other parts of the country, including those that generate the most income, such as industrial groups and real estate consortiums, whose business activities are among those that have the greatest impact on the environment. Part of the levee that has been undermined by the force of the waters of the Lempa River, near the Rancho Grande community in the Bajo Lempa, a coastal ecoregion located in the municipality of Tecoluca in southern El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS This situation falls under the category of climate justice, or, actually, climate injustice: vulnerable groups are more heavily impacted by extreme weather events fomented by others, whether at the national or global level.
“Certainly there is climate injustice: richer people or sectors of the country, who live in urban areas, benefit more from energy, while poor families, who live on the banks of the rivers, take the hit,” environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, director of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, told IPS.
The Center is a local affiliate of the international NGO Friends of the Earth.
A light rain that falls for two or three days generates releases from the dam and the overflowing of the Lempa River, which floods the settlements. But of course, the most tragic floods have been caused by tropical storms or hurricanes, such as Hurricane Mitch in October 1998. The Lempa River flows through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until it flows into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS Mitch, a category 5 hurricane, the most lethal, caused such heavy rains that the hydroelectric dam filled in a matter of 36 hours and went from discharging 500 cubic meters per second to 11,500 cubic meters per second, according to a study on flooding in the Lower Lempa.
“During Mitch, I lost 40 heads of cattle; they drowned,” Luis Avilés, a farmer from the Taura community, told IPS.
“Where we live is like living with a chronic illness; year after year we have this anxiety: wondering whether it will flood a lot this year, if I’ll lose my crops, not knowing whether to plant or not,” said Avilés, 53. The Lempa River flows through three Central American countries: it originates in Guatemala, crosses part of Honduras, and then enters El Salvador, where it meanders from the north until it flows into the Pacific Ocean in the south of the country. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS Embankment on the Verge of Collapse A crucial issue in the impact of the floods is the damage that has been suffered over the years to the levee built with Japanese aid funds years ago and which has not been repaired since then, residents of Bajo Lempa told IPS.
The elevation made of different materials on the river bank to contain the overflowing waters runs 18 kilometers along the right bank of the river, from the Cañada Arenera community, in the municipality of San Nicolás Lempa, to the community of La Pita, near the river’s mouth.
“We are in the most vulnerable area of the riverbank, the one that receives the strongest impact of the Lempa, because up there it makes a turn and then it flows down with force,” said Avilés, standing on the damaged infrastructure: a wall of rocks tied together with wire, about four meters higher than the level of the river. Drainage ditches can be seen alongside the road leading to Bajo Lempa in southern El Salvador, to drain the water that accumulates with the rains and floods that occur almost every year in this coastal region of El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS This segment of the five-kilometer-long levee is indeed the most damaged; the flow of the river has been undermining the base of the wall more and more.
“This wall protects the communities of Santa Marta, San Bartolo, Rancho Grande, Taura, Puerto Nuevo, Naranjo, and La Pita, and if it were to collapse, it would be a great tragedy,” said Avilés, also a former guerrilla fighter.
The deterioration of the stone embankment is clearly visible along its five-kilometer length. The production of cooking bananas is one of the most profitable in the coastal area known as Bajo Lempa, although floods frequently swamp crops and ruin the harvests on family farms. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS The rest of the dike is not a stone wall but an earthen elevation about two meters high, and it is also damaged.
The repair and maintenance of the embankment is one of the main demands of the inhabitants of Bajo Lempa, but it has never been efficiently addressed by any of the past governments. Brena Cerén, administration coordinator, shows part of the organic cashew nut production just out of the ovens of the cooperative set up in San Carlos Lempa, in the Salvadoran municipality of Tecoluca. Cashew nut production in the coastal area of the country has a growing market in the United States and European countries. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS Compensation for Damage Avilés said it is obvious that the country needs to generate electricity “because many sectors, factories, industry, and homes depend on it, but we should also consider the cost that we pay down here,” referring to the energy produced by the 15 de Septiembre power plant.
This dam and the other four in the country are managed by the state-owned Comisión Ejecutiva Hidroeléctrica del Río Lempa (CEL). For this reason, he and the other people interviewed argued that the government should take responsibility for the damage and losses caused to gaming the families of Bajo Lempa and create an indemnity or compensation fund.
Avilés said that last year, when there was light flooding, he lost his crop of plantains or cooking bananas, which he had planted on a two-hectare plot. He went to claim compensation from CEL for the 15,000 dollars he had invested.
“They told me that they had nothing to do with it, that the dam was above us and the flooding was below,” he said. Sugarcane monoculture, practiced by families that have invaded and grabbed land in the coastal area of Bajo Lempa, in southern El Salvador, has damaged the fragile ecosystem of the area as it encourages the intensive use of agrochemicals and the burning of sugarcane fields, which often reach the crops of riverbank communities. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS Environmental activist Gabriel Labrador, of the NGO Salvadoran Ecological Unit (UES), told IPS that these families have every right to demand an economic compensation fund for losses and damage.
“It is an injustice—the discharges, the vulnerabilities to which people and territories are exposed—which is a systematic practice that is unjust and ends up burdening the most disadvantaged people with more damage and losses,” he said.
Meanwhile, the residents of Bajo Lempa, already accustomed to the floods, know that they have no choice but to continue fighting, despite the adversities.
“It would be fair for CEL to say, ‘We are going to help you, at least with 50 percent of what was lost’, but it doesn’t give anything. However, we have no choice but to keep working hard,” said Menjívar.
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Elon Musk to Boycotting Advertisers: Go F*ck Yourselves
“Go fuck yourself.” Thus spake Elon Musk during a really weird chat with Dealbook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday night. At the New York Times sponsored event, the increasingly unhinged Tesla CEO said that he wouldn’t be “blackmailed” by advertisers who—in response to his recent, controversial comments —might pull their money from his flailing social media platform, X. Instead, Musk advised that any advertisers who were concerned about his most colorful ideations just consider fucking off instead. Amongst this newly christened demographic, Musk specifically singled out Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose company recently pulled its ads from X over a comment Musk had made that was widely deemed antisemitic: “Hi Bob!” Musk trolled, waving into the audience, after telling a bunch of potential revenue sources to just fuck right off. “Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI Unlocked The whole episode was hilarious in the weird and terrible sort of way that only Musk-related events can be. Sporting, for some reason, a leather jacket that looked like it was culled from some sort of 1980s action movie, the edgelord billionaire proceeded to go off after Sorkin questioned him about his recent comments, asking him whether his more outlandish thoughts might be, you know, hurting his business interests. The conversation proceeded to go like this: MUSK: “I hope they stop.” SORKIN: “You what?” MUSK: “Don’t advertise.”
SORKIN: “You don’t want them to advertise?”
MUSK: “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.” SORKIN: “But—” MUSK: “Go…fuck…yourself.” I’d say I was shocked but, to be honest, Musk’s comments are very, very on-brand for him. In recent weeks, the unrepentant billionaire’s mouth has caused X (formerly Twitter) a good deal of trouble. In addition to a tweet that kicked off widespread accusations of antisemitism , he also, just yesterday, decided to tweet about pizzagate , which raised more than a few eyebrows. Advertisers have, in the case of the “Jewish” episode, responded by pulling their ads from the platform , thus costing the struggling site important financing.
But, as ever, Musk clearly isn’t interested gaming in a mea culpa (or, apparently, in salvaging the wounded cash flows of his company). Instead, he wants to stick to his guns—even if it tanks X as a result.
Weill Cornell Medicine to move into Sotheby’s Headquarters in New York – ARTnews.com
Sotheby’s will cede around half of the space at their Manhattan headquarters to a new neighbor, Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), Cornell University’s medical school and research body. As first reported by Artnet News, WCM will begin moving in early next year with an anticipated opening date of late 2026. Sotheby’s has been the only entity in 1134 York Avenue since 2020, after billionaire Patrick Drahi bought the storied auction house in 2019 for $3.7 billion and took the company private. According to Artnet News, Sotheby’s has a lease on the 10-story building through 2035 with a yearly rent of $42.1 million, paid to a holding company set up by Drahi after the Sotheby’s purchase, which owns the news building. Related Articles Weill Cornell will lease 200,000 square feet of 1334 York Avenue, replacing Sotheby’s galleries on the fifth through the ninth floors with cutting-edge medical research equipment and laboratories. A source familiar with the arrangement said there will be no overlap between the Sotheby’s staff and the Weill Cornell staff. By the time WCM will have moved in, Sotheby’s will have relocated to the Breuer Building, which it purchased from the Whitney Museum of American Art earlier this year. The Breuer will serve as Sotheby’s new global headquarters. The real estate developments at 1334 York Avenue are part of a financial restructuring for Drahi, who has lately been evaluating his assets in the face of a $60 billion debt and significant tax charges in Switzerland. Drahi’s money troubles are compounded by allegations of money laundering and tax fraud by a fellow executive at his telecom-slash-media company, Altice. A spokesperson for the auction house told ARTnews that “the leasing of some of our space at 1334 York Avenue is a continuation of the strategic transformation of our operational process and client experience in New York. Sotheby’s will continue to host exhibitions and auctions without disruption at 1334 York Ave until 2025.”
mercoledì 29 novembre 2023
Rihanna & Drake’s ‘What’s My Name’ Video Reaches 1 Billion Views – Billboard
Rihanna and Drake’s sultry “What’s My Name?” music video has officially reached one billion YouTube views, 13 years since its release in 2010. In the clip, the rumored ex-couple gets cozy in a convenience store, before cuddling up in a New York apartment, drinking wine, holding hands and even having a little pillow fight. RiRi and Drake’s collaboration topped the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart upon its 2010 release, and also hit No. 1 on Digital Songs. Over the years, the two R&B powerhouses have collaborated a number of times on songs like 2016’s “Too Good,” 2016’s “Work” and 2011’s “Take Care.” Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “What’s My Name?” was featured on Rihanna’s November 2010 album, Loud, which was certified 3x platinum news by the Recording Industry Associated of America and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. The album also topped Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Watch Rihanna’s “What’s My Name” music video featuring Drake below.
The Inevitable You: Live Life by Design
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3 Tips for Hair Growth #shorts
3 Tips for Hair Growth #shorts
Dr. Janine shares three tips for hair growth. She explains that you should wash your hair often enough to wash out the DHT that builds up on news the scalp and causes hair loss. She talks about optimizing your minerals levels, especially iron and magnesium. Lastly, Dr. Janine explains that you should not tie your hair up too tightly, the scalp needs circulation and blood flow around the hair follicles to help hair growth. Follow for more natural health tips. Watch the Dr. Janine Show Live -Online every Tuesday at 11am EST -And chat with Dr. Janine live during the show.
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martedì 28 novembre 2023
Suicides, Another Face of the Crisis in Venezuela — Global Issues
Suicide rates doubled in Venezuela during the harshest years of its humanitarian crisis. Males between the ages of 30 and 50, a productive age when it is very hard to be left without employment and income, are a group particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted violence. CREDIT: Ihpi by Humberto Marquez (caracas) Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Inter Press Service CARACAS, Nov 28 (IPS) – In the wee hours of one morning in early November, Ernesto, 50, swallowed several glasses of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in the apartment where he lived alone in the Venezuelan capital, ending a life tormented by declining health and lack of resources to cope as he would have liked.
In the last message to his relatives, which they showed to IPS, he wrote that “I can’t stand what’s happening to my eyes, I can’t afford an ophthalmologist, my molars are falling out, it hurts to eat, I can’t afford a dentist after years of being able to pay my expenses, now my dreams, plans, goals are disappearing…”
Years ago Ernesto, a fictitious name at the request of his family, was a successful salesman in various fields, a breadwinner for family members, a supporter of causes he found just. In his last note, he scribbled rather than wrote: “I did what I could, for my family and my country, but I will not continue being dead in life.”
The cascade of crises that have placed Venezuela in a complex humanitarian emergency have given rise to many complicated cases like Ernesto’s, reflected in an increase in suicides, especially in the sectors most vulnerable to lack of resources and to uncertainty and hopelessness.
The suicide rate “doubled between 2018 and 2022 compared to 2015, and it is very likely that the complex humanitarian emergency has been a determining factor in the increase,” demographer Gustavo Páez, of the non-governmental Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), told IPS.
This country of just over 28 million people went from a rate of 3.8 suicides per 100,000 people to 9.3 in 2018, with slight declines to 8.2 in 2019 and 7.7 in 2022, according to the OVV.
The annual average number of cases registered in the last four years is 2,260.
Rossana García Mujica, a clinical psychologist and professor at the public Central University of Venezuela, told IPS that these rates, although lower than the world average of 10.5 per 100,000 inhabitants and low in relation to other countries in the region, may nevertheless conceal underreporting.
The expert pointed out that “added to our complex humanitarian crisis, the last official yearbook (on the issue) came out in 2014,” and said that the decrease in the rate “could be due to the apparent economic improvement, but 2023 has been a difficult year and most probably these figures will not remain steady.” A man carries a few items in his market bag in Caracas. The situation of poverty, of being unemployed and without the possibility of bringing home enough food and other products is recognized as a determining cause of crises leading to suicide. CREDIT: Provea Humanitarian emergency The HumVenezuela platform, made up of dozens of civil society organizations, says the crisis in the country classifies as a complex humanitarian emergency due to the combined erosion of the economic, institutional and social structures that guarantee the life, security, liberties and well-being of the population.
Starting in 2013 Venezuela suffered eight consecutive years of deep recession that cost four-fifths of its GDP, more than two years of hyperinflation, and collapsed local currency and wages, health and basic services in much of the country.
The multidimensional crisis also triggered the migration of more than seven million Venezuelans, according to United Nations figures.
In 2021 and 2022 there was a slight recovery in the economy, especially in consumption, partly due to the influx of remittances from hundreds of thousands of migrants, which came to a standstill this year.
The suicide rate “fluctuates at the pace of the complex humanitarian emergency,” said Paez, because “as the macro economy deteriorates, so does the family’s ability to access food, services, recreation and medicine. This leads to mental disorders associated with suicidal behavior.”
R. was an impoverished young woman who recorded a video that she posted on the social networks. She lived in the interior of the country, coming every month to Caracas to seek chemotherapy treatment in medicine banks provided by the government. She said that the last time, like other times, “they sent me from one end of the city to the other.”
“They were providing chemo until three in the afternoon. I arrived 15 minutes late. They refused to give it to me. I went to sleep at a relative’s house. I climbed about 200 steps (the steep hills in Caracas are crowded with poor neighborhoods). I’m so tired, my legs hurt, I give up, I don’t want to fight anymore,” she said in a quiet voice.
Paez said that another reason that may influence frustration and depression leading to self-harming behaviors is the grief in families due to migration, associated with the humanitarian emergency and impacting millions of families. Clinical psychologists observe an increase in anxiety and depression disorders associated with suicidal behavior in adults. Among young people, self-injury and eating disorders are frequent. CREDIT: The Conversation Ages and networks In Venezuela “the economic issue, for those over 30 and especially for men between 40 and 50, is a determining factor,” psychologist Yorelis Acosta, who works with groups and individuals vulnerable to depression and fear, told IPS.
Acosta, who also teaches at UCV, said that “self-harm or the decision to take one’s life is closely related to ‘I don’t have a job’, ‘I’m out of work’, or ‘I have a disease and I can’t afford my treatment’.”
“During economic crises, suicides go up,” she said.
García Mujica said that “when we stop to look at which are our most vulnerable groups, men between 30 and 64 years old and young people between 15 and 24 lead the way.”
“In my practice I have observed a subjective increase in anxiety disorders and depression in adults, both closely associated with suicide and self-injury in young people, along with eating disorders,” said García Mujica.
Along with suicide, “self-harm is a way of coping with emotional pain, sadness, anger and stress that could have to do with intolerance of frustration and the immediacy associated with social networks,” said the expert.
“In my opinion, apart from our complex humanitarian crisis, we do not escape the problems also inherent to globalization and we have a very severe problem at the family level of face-to-face communication,” she added.
In this regard, she said that “it seems that family life takes place more on the phone than live, leaving the field open for adolescents to be nourished more by social networks than by real interactions.”
Between 2019 and 2022, of the cases of suicides reported in the media, 81 percent involved men and 19 percent women, according to the OVV; between 50 and 57 percent were adults between 30 and 64 years of age.
Teen suicide, meanwhile, has increased: there were 20 cases in 2020, 34 in 2021 and 49 in 2022. And 17 of the victims were under the age of 12. View of an elevated viaduct (bridge) linking two parts of the Andean state of Merida. Authorities protect its sides with metal nets, to prevent it from being used by people to commit suicide, a phenomenon in which this mountainous region stands out since the beginning of the century. CREDIT: Government of Merida Suicide in the mountains One particularity is that Mérida, one of Venezuela’s 23 states, located in the Andes highlands in the southwest of the country, which has abundant agriculture and is home to some 900,000 people, has had the highest suicide rates for 20 years, reaching a peak of 22 per 100,000 in 2018.
“One of the reasons may be the character of the Merideños, especially in rural areas. They are introverted, quiet Andean people, who have a hard time letting things out, they bottle up a lot of negative feelings and thoughts or family conflicts,” said Paez.
Paez, coordinator of the OVV in Merida, also mentioned as a probable cause the widespread consumption of alcohol, and “in this state specialized in agriculture, the easy access to agrochemicals, often used to commit suicide.”
In the country 86 percent of the suicides registered last year by the OVV were carried out by hanging, poisoning or shooting.
Mérida continues to have the highest rate, 8.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the Capital District (west of Caracas) with 7.6, and Táchira, another Andean state, with 6.9.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are at least 700,000 suicide deaths per year worldwide, with the most affected territories being the Danish island of Greenland (53.3 per 100,000 inhabitants), Lesotho in southern Africa (42.2) and Guyana on the northern tip of South America (32.6)
In the Americas, the countries with the highest rates, after Guyana, are Suriname (24.1), Uruguay (21.2), Cuba (14.5), the United States (14.1), Canada (10.7), Haiti (9.6), Chile (9.0) and Argentina (8.4); and the lowest rates are in the small Caribbean island states of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Grenada (0.4 to 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants). Another aspect of the multidimensional crisis in Venezuela is the severe lack of face-to-face and family communication. According to some specialists, it seems that family life takes place more on the phone than live, leaving the field open for teenagers to feed more on social networks than on real interactions. CREDIT: The Conversation Waiting for the government to take action The experts consulted agree that in order to curb the rise in suicides, it is necessary to strengthen public health systems – “they are in fashion crisis, if you call to make an appointment, you have to wait several months,” said Acosta – develop prevention programs and identify vulnerable groups or individuals with greater precision.
Paez added the need for the government to produce and maintain “updated and relevant statistics, disaggregated nationally and regionally by age, sex and other data that identify vulnerable groups and areas,” and more education “so that the issue is no longer stigmatized and taboo.”
García Mujica pointed out that “we need to direct our resources towards rescuing family values and preventing domestic violence in order to protect one of the most vulnerable groups, which are young people.”
“It is vital to take into account any comments regarding taking one’s own life and refer them to a specialist. In addition, we need to train more people in psychological first aid, so that the public is aware of the early signs of suicidal behavior,” added García Mujica.
These early signs may be followed by what become farewell messages received too late, a piece of paper or a video, traces of a humanitarian crisis. © Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights Reserved Original source: Inter Press Service
Man Claims His Big Toe Was Infested With Spider Eggs
Just in case you needed a new fear to keep you awake at night, here’s this possibly fanciful tale of arachnid infestation. A UK man claims to have gotten a gnarly swollen toe while on a cruise from having a wolf spider lay eggs inside it. Though the toe injury appears to be real enough, some experts have already cast doubt on the egg-laying part. Like It or Not, Your Doctor Will Use AI | AI Unlocked The man, identified as Colin Blake, seems to have first told his story to BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime . He and his wife had been celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary with a cruise to France when his big toe suddenly swelled up overnight (here’s a photo if you want to see it for yourself). Sometime earlier, he recalled being bitten while eating a meal with his wife outdoors in Marseille. Blake visited the cruise ship’s doctors, who reportedly told him that the swelling was caused by a wolf spider.
The medical staff reportedly then cut open the toe, causing a “milk-like” pus to spew out. Within this pus, Blake claims to have seen spider eggs. Following his return to the UK, Blake received further care at a hospital where he was given antibiotics. In a report given by Blake to the hospital, the potential egg-laying arachnid was specifically referred to as a Peruvian wolf spider, according to the BBC .
Bugs laying eggs or larvae inside our skin health are unfortunately not just the realm of science fiction. Certain species of flies do it often enough that it’s recognized as a distinct medical condition, called myiasis (in other words, a maggot infestation). Some species of mites—microscopic arachnids—also live their entire lives on our skin, which includes laying eggs underneath it.
But thankfully, this story may have not happened the way Blake says or believes it did. The man did share images of his injured toe with the BBC, which definitely looks worse for wear. But several experts told the outlet that a wolf spider laying eggs inside a human toe simply doesn’t pass the sniff test. “I can’t possibly see how it could be true at all because I know about their biology,” Sara Goodacre, an evolutionary biologist and geneticist who studies spiders at the University of Nottingham, told the BBC. “[The egg sacs] take quite a while to spin. The spider venom is not necrotising, it is designed to paralyze a fruit fly.”
The British Arachnological Society also told the BBC that the claim was “implausible.”
As for Blake, he’s expected to make a full recovery. And if the spider toe is indeed more fable than fact, it’ll join an illustrious line of bug-related urban legends. Case in point: Have you ever heard about the girl whose swollen jaw was filled with cockroach eggs that she got from eating Taco Bell??
Hauser & Wirth and Nicola Vassell Unveil New Partnership Model – ARTnews.com
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. A little over a year ago, just as the art world was emerging from the pandemic, Marc Payot, co-president of mega-gallery health Hauser & Wirth, and dealer Nicola Vassell started having conversations about the challenges of the current gallery ecosystem. Vassell had opened her eponymous New York gallery in 2021, after stints working for Deitch and Pace galleries, and as an independent consultant. As Vassell recalls it, the conversations led to the question of the challenges faced by galleries of different scales. Was there a way. they wondered, that galleries could work together to support a thriving ecosystem, rather than one where artists left galleries like Vassell’s for those like Hauser? Related Articles “We all had a lot of time to think during the pandemic,” Payot told ARTnews recently, “and I came to the realization that the art world is in a state where the few very large successful galleries are becoming more and more successful and larger, and for the rest of the ecosystem, things are very tough.” In the meantime, Payot became interested in an artist Vassell represents, the painter Uman. The two dealers decided to give a new arrangement a shot: a full partnership that will be the first in a new initiative for Hauser & Wirth modeled on a framework of collective impact. Collective impact is a model that became popular in philanthropic circles around 2011. It refers to an intense partnership between organizations (often ones of different scales) to accomplish a shared goal. The criteria for such a relationship are a common agenda, a shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a backbone organization. In the case of Hauser and Vassell, they’ll be leaning on transparency and “intensive resource sharing” to develop the partnership. “It’s an entrepreneurial way of thinking differently in order to develop the career of an artist, on one hand, and, on the other hand, to support a smaller gallery in its development,” Payot said of Hauser and Vassell usage of collective impact. Vassell started working with the Somali-born, Buffalo, New York-based Uman shortly after opening her gallery, and the works have caught on with collectors. Uman started out selling art on the street in New York in the early 2000s, before graduating to group shows in small downtown New York galleries and, in 2015, a solo show at the alternative space White Columns. Vassell sold out a booth of Uman’s paintings at the Independent Fair last year, and had a successful solo show with her in the spring. Uman in the studio, 2023 Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Nicola Vassell Gallery Photo: Luigi Cazzaniga “She is a remarkable artist,” Vassell told ARTnews. “A once-in-a-generation talent. And her work has this capacity for evolution. She needs an outlet to express that that reaches far and wide. But that gives fuel to the capacity to evolve.” Fiercely protecting such artists from the incursion of larger suitors, Vassell said, is not a good way to further their careers. “When you have a talent like Uman in your stable the reflex might be to build a wall,” she said, “but I’ve been in the business long enough to understand that you can’t challenge a talent that may not stay in place. So you widen the circumference, recognizing the global forces of the market.” The idea, Vassell said, is to have the best of both worlds: the important context of the smaller gallery, and the support system of the mega. Move to a mega too soon, and a young artist can get lost; stay too long with a smaller gallery and an artist can start to feel suffocated. “It’s the ability to have the sum total of two different, but potent support systems, to create an amplified advantage.” Artists having more than one dealer representative is, of course, nothing new. When an artist is represented by more than one gallery, things often split along geographical lines: one gallery in Europe, for instance, and another in the U.S. The artist decides which artworks go to which gallery, and for each sale the artist makes a set percentage—50% is standard—and the gallery that sells the work gets 50 percent. (Alternatively, one gallery, the artist’s main representative, can consign work to the another, and take a ten percent profit on the sale.) Under the collective impact arrangement, Hauser & Wirth and Vassell will work as a single team for Uman, sharing their respective networks of collectors and museums, and jointly deciding which artworks go where. The financial split is 50 percent to the artist and 25 percent each to the galleries. Historically, Hauser & Wirth has taken on numerous artists for worldwide representation, and Payot said that won’t necessarily change . But he sees the non-competitive partnership framework as a step toward mitigating the paradigm where young, modestly sized galleries with rigorous programs, like Vassell’s, risk losing their more successful artists to a larger shop. “This is not something we will do with every single artist,” he said of the Uman deal. “This is one option among many.” Such dynamics are hardly new. Around 2016, there was a spate of gallery closures in New York, and many blamed mega-galleries like Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Zwirner and Gagosian for hoovering up artists from younger galleries’ programs, putting them at financial risk. Shortly before the pandemic, certain measures were put into place to help smaller galleries along, like David Zwirner’s suggestion, at a New York Times arts conference in 2018, that the megas help to subsidize their smaller colleagues’ participation in major fairs like Art Basel. Basel implemented the idea just a few months later. The pandemic may have hit pause on some of these concerns, with art fairs on hold, financial support packages from the government, and the increased ease of selling art online, but recently there has been another round of closures, such as that of Lower East Side favorite JTT, and those concerns about the mega-galleries are back in the spotlight. Payot says that over the next few months Hauser & Wirth will reveal more of these collective impact relationships. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you overhear some booth-to-booth conversations between Payot and Vassell at Art Basel Miami next week: both galleries are bringing works by Uman, priced at around $80,000. The galleries will unveil their first jointly organized exhibition of Uman’s work in January at Hauser & Wirth London.
lunedì 27 novembre 2023
OnePlus 12 Will Confuse Your Hands With New Alert Slider
A phone is a big brick of plastics, aluminum, and wires. There’s nothing particularly natural about it, but OnePlus’ latest iteration on its mainline phone, the OnePlus 12, is returning to nature thanks to a unique colorway that looks chiseled out of a rockface. More importantly, the company’s next phone will move the beloved alert slider from the left to the right side to make way for a type of game-streaming antenna. OnePlus Open is the ‘Phablet” We’ve Been Waiting For According to a new teaser trailer the company dropped on Monday, OnePlus wants you to run through scenic grassland and cross mountains with its upcoming OnePlus 12 smartphone. They want you to sprint to the top of that hill and bellow in a strange, bird-like “caw” as you hold your phone by your side. Oh, and eventually you can use the phone to snap a new picture of those grand natural vistas, we can assume. OnePlus 12 – Inspired by Nature There are very few actual details about the new phone in that video nor on the company’s product page . If you pause the video, you’ll notice the alert slider, which lets users toggle from mute to silent with the flick of a switch, has moved from the right to the left side of the phone. Some dedicated OnePlus fans might be annoyed by the change, but it’s not like companies like Apple haven’t been sticking their mute toggle on the left side of their phones for years.
The shift is reportedly due to a new focus on game streaming for OnePlus phones. The company told The Verge there’s a new antenna on the right side that’s supposed to reduce latency for game streaming. Whether that focus on streaming ends up being a selling point of the new phone is still to be determined, but it doesn’t really fit into the company’s whole “nature” advertising. Gizmodo reached out to OnePlus and we’ll update this page if we hear more, but we may need to wait until next week for the full reveal.
According to Yahoo Tech HK , the new phone will be sporting a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor , which isn’t much of a shock considering the OnePlus 11 ran on the Gen 2. The new phone should also have a 2K display by Chinese manufacturer BOE. It will also support wireless charging and “infrared remote control functions.” Interestingly, the new phone might also get “rain touch,” which is featured in the company’s China-only Ace2Pro that will prevent ghosting when trying to use a phone in wet conditions.
The large Hasslebrand circular camera array remains virtually unchanged, though it will be getting a pretty big upgrade with a Sony-brand 50 MP main sensor and a 64 MP, 3X periscope telephoto lens. We were big fans of the telephoto lens on the OnePlus Open , so we’re hoping for similar output from the company’s next phone.
The company, owned by the China-centric Oppo, also shared the opening colors for the upcoming phone through Chinese social media app Weibo. These colors include “blank” white, as well as black plus a more jade-tinged green. That green is a particular standout with an interesting marbling design on its rear that would be a real shame to cover up with a case. The black seems to have a kind of brushed steel finish that’s also pretty pleasing to the eyes, the same as the OnePlus 11.
While OnePlus is more known for its back-to-basics, no-frills smartphones, we were particularly enthusiastic about the company’s entry into the foldable market. The fashion OnePlus Open was easily one of the best foldables of the year thanks to its limited crease and smooth folding/unfolding action. With a new focus on game streaming and additional features like “rain touch,” OnePlus may be trying to angle its Android phones toward the more premium market to take on giants like Samsung and Google.