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Dreaming Undreamt Dreams with Lara Kramer
In her 75-minute performance Eating bones and Licking bread(2020), Lara Kramer returns to a recurring dream that has periodicallyvisited her since childhood: she is standing in a long line waitingto enter a huge dome-like glass house. Soldiers filter who can get in.The dream is a thicket of nostalgia, scarcity, and otherworldliness,and basking in those—at times…
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Birds at War
“Birds Aren’t Real” read massive billboards in Memphis and Los Angeles.On TikTok, the satirical Gen Z meta-conspiracy movement says birds aredrones. The US government has killed all the birds, replacing them withbio-replicas that spy on its citizens. The movement’s followers know thatbirds are, in fact, real. The social parody is meant to satirize a post-truth…
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Vertigo Sea et Typhoon Coming On, récits obliques d’un sublime aquatique
Un banc de méduses en suspens, des migrant·es entassé·es sur un radeau de fortune en mer tourmentée, les passagers et passagères d’un voilier solitaire qui profitent du spectacle du coucher de soleil, ce sont là trois scènes qui se juxtaposent dans Vertigo Sea (2015), une installation vidéo de l’artiste britanno-ghanéen John Akomfrah. L’œuvre de 48 minutes se déploie sur trois écrans…
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Blue: A Somatic Archive of Pain
Alongside a close analysis of the short-movie Blue (2019) by Manitoban artist Laura Magnusson, this article engages with the pain that comes from sexual trauma. Blue attests to the ongoingness and cyclical nature of traumatic pain, one that is negated by the legal apparatus that frames sexual assault trials. Through an understanding of the body…
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Tremble Staves: Listening to the Voices of Water
Tremble Staves is a performative score created by Navajo composer Raven Chacon. Guitar player, percussionists, narrator, and viewers all congregate on a ruin site, near a large body of water. In its 2019 iteration, the score was played at the abandoned Sutro Baths bordered by the Gulf of the Farallones; setting the stage for a…
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Entre menace, perte et existence : la glace à l’ère des changements climatiques
L’oeuvre de l’artiste inuvialuk Maureen Gruben, Moving with joy across the ice while my face turns brown from the sun (2019), est une installation de land art éphémère, fixée par la photographie représentant 14 traîneaux faits à la main, disposés côte à côte. Moving with joy nous présente le passage furtif d’êtres humains dans la…
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Cannibal Actif: The Artist Book as Threshold for Material Encounters
Two feet emerging from a pool of black oil touch the edge of a bathtub. The dark ink contrasts with the shimmery copper highlights. These feet belong to a bather in Baku, Azerbaijan, where bathing in crude oil — rich in naphthalene — is said to have healing properties. On the left, a white page…