Revisiting the Catholic Worker Movement: Dorothy Day and Anarcho-Socialist Christianity
Kaya Oakes07.21.10
Dorothy Day was a radical socialist single mom who founded the Catholic Worker movement. Catholic Workers are more likely to be found cooking food at your local punk house or at meetings of the I.W.W. than at the Vatican. Should she be nominated for sainthood or your next tattoo? Here, Kaya Oakes, author of Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, makes a strong case for the tattoo.
Revenge of the Soccer Bridesmaids: The 10 Most Interesting Stories from The World Cup
Pete Hausler07.12.10
Now that the World Cup is over and a winner has been crowned, it’s time for us to count the ways we the viewers have won or been cheated. Pete Hausler recaps and reviews the 10 most memorable moments and events of the 2010 World Cup tournament, with a trenchant and critical eye, aimed particularly at soccer, er football’s governing body FIFA. Like lots of us Americans watching the World Cup, Hausler has no shortage of examples of FIFA’s woeful inadequacies to keep the world’s game an honorable one. But there’s more than just an excoriation of FIFA: there’s the fairytale storyline of two teams who met World Cup-less in all their history, the implosion of France, the laziness of the Italian squad, the (near) rise of the United States in International competition, the let down of the home country, and of course, the persistent vuvuzela buzz still ringing in our ears. [Also, according to my calculations, my cousin owes me $2400 from a bet on the final. —mkl]
Showtime’s Encore
Adam Underhill06.19.10
Now that the NBA Finals are finished, with the Lakers taking their fourth title of the decade, it’s already time to look ahead to next year. What makes a team great this season creates an outline for the other 29 teams looking to capture the same magic, or just make the playoffs. Adam Underhill recaps what the Lakers did right in the Finals and spells out what the league’s other superstar players need to do to step up and do the same. Does what makes great players in the ’70s and ’80s still apply? Is it possible for another dynasty? Of course. Is it probable? Well, that’s another story for the likes of Lebron James, poised to become the league’s next heir to the crown.
How Do You Say ‘Three and Done’ in Afrikaans?: The Quadrennial and Funtastic Fanzine World Cup Preview
Pete Hausler06.11.10
In this highly anticipated preview of the highly anticipated quadrennial event, Pete Hausler breaks down the group stages before the inevitable drunken, adrenaline-overdose frenzy that inevitably acompanies such matches. Here, in the safety of the Internet, you won’t need those Stab Vests in team-colors you can get at Protektorvest to get our insight and predictions. So grab a couple cold pints and read on. [Edit: Protektorvest isn’t selling those team-colored Stab Vests anymore, so you’ll have to shell out some more cash ($240) for an all-black kevlar one.]
The Life You Save May Be Bill’s: An Interview with Tom Bissell
Matthew Simmons06.06.10
A phenomenally talented writer with a strong sense of logic and history, Tom Bissell has often explored war and its moral complexities in his writing, including as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last few years he has also become the veteran of "eight- or nine-hundred digital wars." As he confessed in a recent excerpt from his book Extra Lives in the UK Observer, Bissell spent three years high on cocaine and playing video games while his formerly prolific writing ground to a halt. Videogames have recently become not only his obsession but his subject. Along with his recent book he has become The New Republic‘s resident video game critic, a first for the magazine. Following the firestorm surrounding Roger Ebert’s comments about why video games are not art, Bissell and Simmons hazard the opposite opinion and discuss the conflict between interactivity and narrative, as well as their possibilities.
When Marina Abramovic Dies
Alexandro Segade05.12.10
Okay so you’ve just read about Marina Abramovic’s ongoing performance at MoMA here on Fanzine from Olena Jennings. Meanwhile, Art Fag City has pondered what she does with all that pee everyday (my bet is Chris Burden is the one changing the catheters nightly, but then that’s whimsical thinking); and now we have take 2 on the artist, from the perspective of a fellow performance artist, Alexandro Segade (himself interviewed on Fanzine recently), focussing on a biography about what will be Abramovic’s last perfomance.
Rituals of the Body: Marina Abramovic and Yara Arts Group
Olena Jennings05.08.10
Olena Jennings recently attended two performances, Yara Arts Group’s Scythian Stones at La MaMa E.T.C. and Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, which is still running at New Yok City’s MoMA until May 31st. Viewers flocked to Abramovic’s show to witness the arduous physicality of her task (and perhaps some to experience a titillating squeeze through a couple of live, naked, statuesque women). Jennings, whose work focuses on Ukrainian tranlations, explains some of the ancient ritual body symbolism in the the two pieces that are culled from various ethnic origins, from Abramovic’s native Serbia to Turkey and beyond.
A Real Boy At Last: A Discussion with Artist Oscar B. De Alessi On Youth Culture, Representation, and Suicide
Jesse Hudson05.02.10
Baudelaire once claimed, "Woman is the opposite of the dandy." Artist O.B. De Alessi begs to differ. By combining figures like Oscar Wilde, Goethe’s Werther, Michael Jackson, Hamlet and a cat with the ability to predict death, De Alessi has crafted herself into a highly accomplished dandy with the added modern accoutrements of internet celebrity and suicidal ideations.
Pottymouth
Kevin Sampsell04.15.10
The oral aspect of sex can’t be overestimated and here Kevin Sampsell presents several case studies of the way we talk during the act. Sampsell is the author of the recent memoir A Common Pornography and proprietor of Future Tense Press. Art by Danny Jock.
Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century
Jesi Khadivi04.05.10
A plentiful supply of images, music and video are offered by the bandwidth you’re using right now and so contemporary art seems increasingly interested in offering something that the internet cannot: experimental settings in which face-to-face community can occur. If the marketplace, the church and the school have been traditional public gathering places, school is certainly the model that has been most readily adapted for art experiments. With an array of contributors, this collection presents rad examples of school-as-art-project as wells as challenges to the underlying assumptions of accredited art schools. While the collection’s purview is primarily community projects and MFAs, it seems worth noting that, with state budgets strapped across the country, public school arts education — like the perenially murdered Kenny of South Park — is once again on the chopping block.
