Animating Life in the City
by Sheila Regan
The short films collected for "Friction Fiction" offer a diverse survey of global work - from socio-political commentary and first-person narratives to more atmospheric studies. Taken together, they make for an inviting entry point to the range of contemporary work by Black animators.
Though I stopped by Friction Fiction on its opening night a few weeks ago at the Soap Factory, I knew I’d want to come back in order to experience the featured animated films prope…
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Still from Tim Portlock's 11th Street Symphony, courtesy of the Soap Factory.
Bookish: No Apologies
by Hans Weyandt
Our books columnist is back from a year-end slog and reading up a blue streak: essays by Dana Goodyear and Charles D'Ambrosio, new novels by Dave Eggers and Matt Burgess, plus a slew of books by Joan Silber.
2014 ended as a real slog for me, at least in terms of my reading life.…
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A Dance is More Than Intellectual Property
by Anna Marie Shogren
You can (under very specific circumstances) copyright a dance - but is that the best way to protect an artist's "intellectual property"? Freely sharing kinesthetic thought and image is common among dance makers - but it's not an ethos broadly shared in other art forms. Should it be?
Steve Paxton’s…
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Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Rosas danst Rosas, performance in 2009. Photo: © Herman Sorgeloos
"Coyote Dreams" in Dark Fairy Tales
by Veronica Kavass
Buffalohead’s sweetly drawn woodland creatures inhabit a charming, storybook world that belies the serious challenge just below the surface of the work - on issues of race, gender and the complex tangle of pop imagery and Native culture.
Julie Buffalohead’s coyotes are more domesticated than the ones from the early Nat…
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Julie Buffalohead, If You Make This World Bad and Ugly, acrylic, ink, and graphite on mulberry paper, 2014. Image courtesy of Bockley Gallery.
Use Your Illusion
by Sean Smuda
Sean Smuda on Eric Frye's series for Midway Contemporary Art on "compositional epistemologies," an erudite survey of the fusion of technology, composition and performance exploring the intersections of time, knowledge, self-hood and sonic space.
Eric Frye’s modular synth performance at Midway Contemporary Art last March totally did it for me.…
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All photos by Sean Smuda. (Dedicated to Hito Steyerl)
A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life - His Own
by Michèle Campbell
Beloved MN expat and NYT media critic, David Carr, died February 12, 2015. This quote from a 2008 interview for Mn Artists feels both poignant and apt: "I now inhabit a life I don't deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon."
Editor's note: David Carr died suddenly February 12, 2015. We'll sorely miss reading him.…
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Photo of David Carr by Ryan Pfluger (drawn from the New York Times website)
More Than Skin Deep
by Sheila Regan
Shá Cage's now nationally touring, one-woman show, "U/G/L/Y," fearlessly takes on the thorny issues of body image and beauty, violence and heartache in an array of characters and stories bringing to life the particular, persistent ugliness faced by women of color.
In solo performance, Shá Cage has found the perfect vehicle to showcase her many talents.…
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Shá Cage. Photo courtesy of Intermedia Arts.
