Carl Craig: Party/After-party

By Simon Wu

MARCH 2021 | ArtSeen

Party/After-party (2020) is the five-year lovechild of Detroit-based DJ/producer Carl Craig and curator Kelly Kivland, a sound-and-light-installation that turned the basement of the former Nabisco packaging factory into a hologram of a night club.

Dear Friends and Readers,

By Phong Bui

JUL-AUG 2022 | Co-Founder's Message

In spite of the relentless and constant horrors that occur in our daily lives, both at home with the US Supreme Court officially reversing Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, which had been upheld for nearly half century, and the ongoing sagas of public hearing by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, seeking to lay bare the full magnitude of former president Donald J. Trump’s aggressive attempts to remain in power after the 2020 election, while abroad, members of the NATO military alliance welcomed Sweden and Finland to “accession protocols” as the Russia-Ukraine war in the outskirts of the Luhansk region intensifies, we have no choice but to re-ask ourselves what are the primary functions of liberal democracy’s two opposing parties, the party of liberty and the party of equality?

18. 1988/2019 and various times in between, England

By Raphael Rubinstein

SEPT 2022 | The Miraculous

Asked by a music writer at what point did he realize his band was going to be a success, a singer songwriter says that he knew instantly. "There were lots and lots of people ready to identify with what I was feeling. Hatred! Hating everything, but not being offensively hateful (chuckle). It was like hate from quite gentle people." After the band breaks up, he titles his first solo album Viva Hate. At first this seems like an extension of his famously combative personality, but in the years that follow, as he makes frequent anti-immigrant remarks, repeatedly criticizes those who speak out against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry and, during a performance on the Tonight Show, sports the logo of a notorious far-right political party, more and more of his fans (or, as they now have to think of themselves, ex-fans) conclude that the kind of hate he espouses has morphed from post-adolescent angst into pure cruelty. In short, it’s no longer charming.

Now You See It. Now You Don’t.

By Harry George

JUNE 2022 | Critics Page

Disappearance in the context of conjuring includes close-up magic, parlor magic, and stage magic. Close-up magicians, at a bar or table for example, are always vanishing coins, cards, cigarettes or handkerchiefs; in the bigger venue of the parlor (for example a magician performing in the family room at a child’s birthday party) they might be vanishing a glass of milk or a dove or rabbit; and, on a stage, they are famously able to vanish their traditionally female assistant, but now and then they vanish something even larger, like an elephant or the Statue of Liberty.