Trials teach us who to fear and who to pity. By putting Pussy Riot on trial, Putin taught his supporters, the “simple people,” that the “creative class,” the urban, well-educated, artistically inclined elite that comprises much of the political opposition, was just a bunch of Foucault-quoting radical feminist witches . . . He taught the world to feel sorry for Russian protesters and prisoners—at least, for the pretty, famous, cool ones. More…
People from Johannesburg might be fearmongers and lunatics, but we’re not mere fearmongers and lunatics: there’s a story to how Ponte came to earn its jittery status. To begin with the end, the inner city is, at present, slowly moving back into money again. It’s been at the task haltingly for a decade or so, but gentrification is reaching the point of inevitability now. More…
Goals are so rare in the playoffs; teams can go for periods at a stretch without scoring one. You begin to think: the ice is so clogged up with giant defensemen, hockey sticks, linesmen, goalie pads, goalie helmets, bodies of fallen men with broken legs from blocking shots . . . how is anyone ever going to score? It’s going to go on like this forever, 0-0, am I even going to have time to get up and go to the bathroom? More…
For email, using Riseup.net is good news. The solutions they offer are integrated with Tor as much as possible. They’re badass. Whereas Google inspects your traffic as a method of monetization. I’d rather give Riseup fifty dollars a month for the equivalent service of Gmail, knowing their commitment to privacy. And also knowing that they would tell the cops to go fuck themselves. There’s a lot of value in that. More…
Pereira (his courage stimulated by the fictional courage of the detective) at last closed his book and asked, simply asked the woman if she was in fact eating a sandwich made of raw meat. The red-haired woman swallowed. Yes, she said, but why do you ask. I was curious, said Pereira, after all it’s not every day that you see someone eating raw meat. More…
This month’s episode of the n+1 podcast features an interview with Moira Weigel on “Sadomodernism” in the films of Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier, a profile of Russian poet-activist Kirill Medvedev, and a conversation with Associate Editor Dayna Tortorici on second-wave feminist Shulamith Firestone. More…
Ephemerisle was its own little beehive of decadence, a floating pillow fort saturated in sex and soft drugs. It billed itself as a “gathering of people interested in the possibility of permanent experimental ocean communities,” but felt more like Burning Man, if Burners frolicked in the tears of Ludwig Von Mises. More…
At 6 PM on Friday, March 15, the online poll for the NYU Faculty of Arts and Science vote of no-confidence against President John Sexton closed. It was the highest-profile vote against a university president since Larry Summers was forced out of Harvard in 2006. It was also one of the first major acts of faculty opposition to the top-down, corporate model of university governance that has been gaining prominence for the last four decades. More…
“Oh yeah?” Kari says, wanting to open the door, afraid of what her father will say next. Jovita, she thinks, the sick one. She pictures the photo her father brought back with him and showed them that night. The two girls, wearing matching white dresses, stand on a road somewhere. Identical, and yet, not. Jovita like a shriveled version of her clearly developed sister; their smiles pretty; deep black eyes. More…
James: In Patrick you look at the face and you think / Egyptian portrait mask / Then you look at the hair and think / Where did the artist study? / Gallery Attendant: Considine did his graduate work at Yale University / Roger: I see early Lucian Freud here / here and in the work of / Peter Stitchbury / James: There have been no decent British painters / thus far in this century More…
The department’s fellows and one new hire, insular as a Greek chorus, sit at a nearby round table and glance over intermittently. Nola holds her palm above the table’s candle. Sleet mud streaks the ankles of her stockings. A short solemn skirt. A plastic barrette. In certain moments, he’s convinced she needs gifts. Last year, he bought her a computer, a set of dishes, many books . . . More…
Despite our generalized faith in their power to predict, when systemic disaster strikes we continue to accept experts’ claims that the cataclysm was an unforeseeable “act of god”. … But this extrapolation overestimates our ability to statistically manage reality’s irreducible complexity and to eliminate uncertainty. The result is a world well prepared for the regularly occurring dangers of modern life, but woefully fragile to the rare, extreme events that drive history. More…
Cunningham’s own notes on choreography often look like cave paintings. Stick figures march unevenly across the page, followed by diagrams and phrases, some barely legible, scribbled beside leaning columns of numbers. They communicate the inspired tremor of the hand more than they convey information. More…
