Art

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When art sparks outrage.





Cultural Currency is a bi-monthly romp through the intersection of art and capital with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. 





“Yes! We Have No Bananas” was a monster hit—a chart-topper before the advent of charts—when it came out in 1923. A giddily nonsensical tune, the song begins, “There's a fruit store on our street / It's run by a Greek.” This Greek produce man—inspired by an actual fruit vendor on Long Island—answers every customer’s question with a “yes,” even when out of stock: “We have an old fashioned to-mah-to / A Long Island po-tah-to / But yes, we have no bananas / We have no bananas today." Art, of course, resists interpretation. Frivolous and upbeat, the ditty captured the freewheeling spirit of the Roaring 20s; however, just a decade later, in the midst of a global economic crash, it was used as an anthem during the 1932 food shortages in Belfast. 





Meaning is in the eye—or the ear—of the beholder. Price, however, is a different matter. We know what money can buy. Today, most bananas in the United States cost between 50¢ and 75¢ per pound. However, one particular banana, duct-taped to a wall by artist/art world provocateur Maurizio Cattelan and titled “The Comedian,” commanded a staggering $6.2 million at auction late last month. 





Cattelan’s work has actively courted controversy for decades, whether depicting the Pope struck down by an errant asteroid or his functional gold toilet at the Guggenheim, cheekily titled “America.” However, the backlash to “The Comedian” has been a different breed. 





When “The Comedian” debuted at Art Basel Miami in 2019, it was sold as an edition of three: two of the works went for $120,000 each and a third was anonymously purchased and donated to the Guggenheim (where one cannot help but see it, as the curators say, in dialogue with Cattelan’s gold toilet). The press kit put out by Galerie Perrotin, which brought “The Comedian” to Miami, emphasized that the work was ironic; that it referenced the banana’s role in slapstick entertainment as well as its status in capital markets (more on that in a bit); and that the banana itself would, naturally, need to be replaced every few days, as would the tape. “The Comedian” had its fair share of critics—and Instagram photo-ops—but the press around the work only truly ramped up when, citing a skipped breakfast, a visitor to an exhibition of Cattelan’s work at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art ripped it off the wall and ate it. 





On the primary market, the media coverage of “The Comedian” garnered a giggle or perhaps an eye roll—at worst, mild to moderate confusion. On the secondary market, however, it bombed: not because of arguments over the work’s artistic merits, but because of a different controversy altogether. The initial New York Times coverage thought to give passing mention to the produce man—not Greek, but Bengladeshi—who sold the banana seen in the iteration of “The Comedian” on the block at Sotheby’s. A few days later, a second reporter decided to go back and interview Shah Alam, who had sold the piece of fruit in question for 35¢. Alam is a widower from Dhaka who used to work as a civil servant before uprooting himself to move to the States and be nearer his surviving family. He splits a basement apartment with five other men in the Bronx and, when the Times reporter informed him of the hammer price of the banana, he broke down and cried, saying, “I am a poor man…I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”





At this juncture, the story elicited what may be properly identified as the Three Stages of Internet Outrage: 1) a comments section choked with indignation; 2) voluminous posts across social media platforms; 3) multiple GoFundMe campaigns attempting to make things “right.” Cattelan, admittedly, did not help himself much in the article, writing the reporter, “Honestly, I feel fantastic…The auction has turned what began as a statement in Basel into an even more absurd global spectacle…In that way, the work becomes self-reflexive: The higher the price, the more it reinforces its original concept.” 





Cattelan added that he was “deeply” moved by Alam’s tears, but that “art, by its nature, does not solve problems—if it did, it would be politics.” Some internet wags quipped that art which solves problems would, in fact, be design; others simply told the artist to go fuck himself. Many seemed to willfully ignore the part of the article which emphasized Cattelan saw none of the auction’s proceeds himself, as artists on the secondary market never do. But somehow, it seemed besides the point. 





Like it or not, no one questions that “The Comedian” is art, as the mainstream art world and academia have come to define it. Cattelan is the inheritor of an artistic precedent set by Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917), which was essentially a signed urinal. Whether or not one cares for a linear representation of art history, the notion that a simple daily object could constitute a work of art and, also, really piss off (pun intended) a wider audience is well over a century old. And, whatever outrage Duchamp’s readymade may have sparked in New York, that reaction still paled in comparison to the riot that Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” had provoked in Paris four years prior. It was, however, Duchamp who, in turn, paved the way for artists to incorporate this media furor into their own works, a legacy which, in addition to Catellan and many others, includes Andy Warhol and his own bananas. 





The sad and sordid history of the banana itself is also nothing new. Nor is it new to me: my personal investment in the banana may be traced back to a book I co-authored with Johannah Herr in 2021. The Banana Republican Recipe Book elucidates how the CIA worked hand-in-glove with United Fruit (now known as Chiquita Brands) to effect regime change and keep Latin America friendly to US economic interests at catastrophic human and environmental cost. Most readers of Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez are familiar with the banana massacre, which happened nearly a century ago, in 1928. That shameful chapter has been repeated over and over in many Latin American countries, and also accounts for the strange phenomenon that, in New York City, an apple from nearby Dutchess County costs six times what a banana from, say, Ecuador or Honduras does. Similarly grotesque is the legacy of the pesticides that enable Ecuador and Honduras, countries two thousand miles apart, to grow the exact same banana. 





Art, after all, trades in symbols, and whether or not Cattelan intended it, this freighted meaning of the banana is baked into “The Comedian,” as much as Charlie Chaplin’s comedic interventions with the fruit. A banana is something silly and light with a quite rotten underbelly. But why was the outrage around this banana so fresh? 





This brings us to the final piece of the puzzle: the buyer. Rich people who make money in horrifying ways have spent their money on stupid shit since time immemorial, and indeed, a lot of that stupid shit has been art. Immediately after the auction, Cattelan’s billionaire collector went public with his purchase on X:





"I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve bought the banana 🍌!!! @SpaceX @Sothebys I am Justin Sun, and I’m excited to share that I have successfully acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work, Comedian for $6.2 million. This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana 🍌and look forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.





Additionally, in the coming days, I will personally eat the banana 🍌as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture. Stay tuned!"





Keeping his word, he ate. Moreover, in taking pains to kiss the ring (or ass, depending on your politics) of Trump oligarch-crony Elon Musk by tagging SpaceX, Sun drew the scrutiny of reporters who noticed that he spent nearly $30 million of his own money in one of Trump’s crypto schemes. 





For as tacky and crappy as I personally find crypto bro culture, I believe his purchase was incredibly apt for a crypto bro to have made. After all, cryptocurrency leverages the idea of fungibility into currency no longer tied to central banks or governments. The philosophical notion of fungibility was explored at length by Weimar Marxists and cultural theorists like Theodor Adorno, who wrote in Minima Moralia in a chapter titled “Auction”: “Unfettered technics eliminates luxury, not by declaring privilege as a human right, but by severing the possibility of fulfillment in the midst of raising general living standards…For in the middle of general fungibility, happiness clings without exception to what is not fungible.” As the world becomes increasingly commodified and the value assigned to goods collapses into their existence as data, the meaning of currency changes. Even art itself is a commodity that can be borrowed against. Indeed, why not get in on this pre-apocalyptic speculative action with a fun piece of fruit? 





For many of us, I would argue the most honest answer is likely a sort of moral jolt: this sudden proximity between the astronomical cost of one banana and the very raw, real pain of a man who lost everything to move across the world and live closer to his kin, was just too much for us to bear. It was, I believe, a glitch in the code (or the “shock” that collage and montage can produce, according to another Weimar theorist, Walter Benjamin). The juxtaposition was too close for comfort and too suddenly presented to us to process it as business as usual, which it absolutely is. This drama niftily encapsulated the consumer dystopia we have all bought into and no one can afford to leave—and forced us to see it for what it is. 





The question, then, is how do we simultaneously retain our humanity and our ability to use cultural tools to tell stories that matter, and keep ourselves sane? We must consider what is lost in this elision of meaning and worth. Goods and symbols will only continue to collapse into cold, hard, data-driven currency held at an ever greater distance from earthbound plebes too poor for the SpaceX shuttle ride. As they do, it only becomes more essential that we keep these stories of suffering alive enough in our brains to make better choices every day, and to be better to one another. 





We used to look to art for this sort of thing. I hope we still do, even if Cattelan’s flippant comments make it clear that, like his buyer, he’s officially too rich to give a shit about the rest of us. Until we can figure out how to center the concerns of those whom this ravenous global economy preys upon instead of the Suns and Musks of the world, “The Comedian”’s joke is on us.


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People react to the artist Maurizio Cattelan's piece of art "Comedian" during an auction preview at Sotheby's in New York. In the foreground, two out-of-focus people face away from the piece, laughing. In the background, in focus, is a yellow banana duct taped to a wall.

What Could One Banana Cost?

by Cara Marsh Sheffler

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On gentrification's canary in the coal mine, and the cultural cost when affordable cities cease to exist.





Cultural Currency is a bi-monthly romp through the intersection of art and capital with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. 





We all know the haircut, whether or not we know it by name. Usually the sides are shaved, the dye job is fluorescent or uneven, and the bangs are unflinchingly aggressive. The haircut is also, of course, not one haircut, but rather a whole genre of haircuts. A mullet is likely. It is something like medieval monastic cosplay by way of a Superfund Site. Glimpsed across the subway platform or at the local bodega, it is a haircut that strikes horror in the heart of the renter and joy in the heart of the owner. The haircut is gentrification’s own canary in the coal mine: It signals that your rent is about to go up.





Nowhere is the haircut more dreaded than in New York City, where no rent increase, no matter how minute the percentage point, is a casual one. The median monthly rent in Manhattan is north of $4,300. The cost of living is 128% above the national average. When Jimmy McMillan founded his political party, Rent Is Too Damn High, almost 20 years ago, it was described as a single-issue platform. Today, I would argue it’s anything but. Commercial rents have become unaffordable to the point that entire blocks have been emptied of ground-floor tenants. The ascendancy of Amazon and the price of rent have colluded to drive the commercial storefront vacancy rate in New York City north of 10%. 





The irony of the haircut is that it both heralds the appearance of artists and their imminent extinction. It also isn’t limited to Manhattan: The length of time between the sighting of the first asymmetrical neon mullet to large-scale, luxury residential development is accelerating in cities across the country, and more locally, has all but collapsed into a single gesture in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Brooklyn and Ridgewood, Queens. In the process, it’s also begun flattening the art world—and culture at large—with it.





Of course, in the meme-able version of the gentrification story, the haircut is the mark of the villain. But it was not always so. In postwar New York City, when industries abandoned downtown areas and developers like Robert Moses threatened to raze entire neighborhoods to make way for cars instead of people (usually at the expense of racial minorities), creative classes stepped into wastelands like Soho and not only repurposed entire neighborhoods but spawned a class of creators as diverse as Eva Hesse, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hannah Wilke, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, Donald Judd, Nam June Paik, Fred Eversley, and too many others to name. 





This cohort—living among one another in constant creative conversation and competition—produced work that helped articulate a fully formed idea of American cultural expression. Today, even adjusted for inflation, none of them would have been able to afford the rent on a closet in Soho. 





When artists are priced out of any given city, the consequences resonate far beyond the neighborhood in which they can no longer afford to live. The attendant deracination makes art less tethered to real places, real communities, and real people. Art becomes less human, and derives worth from one thing only: capital. (While many question their artistic merit, NFTs are a sublime manifestation of this conflation.) In New York today, artists are barely hanging on and bled dry for studio space, while writers essentially have no value in a marketplace that has opted for AI. Musical artists are getting raw deals from streaming services and have fewer venues to play in because of soaring rent. Ditto dancers. The city faces a severe housing shortage, but no one will come forward with an honest number for overall vacancy rates, suggesting that the real estate market is falsely inflated to the detriment of all who call the city home (except landlords). Creatives who work as adjunct professors are often overworked, always underpaid, and almost never promoted to tenure-track positions. Having a family in this city on an artist’s salary is essentially fiscal suicide. 





Simply put, New York’s artistic community is in danger of no longer existing, and we’ve watched it happen in real-time. Downtown New York used to be a byword for a hotbed of American culture, the same way that Chelsea is now the byword for the most prestigious (read: expensive) gallery district in the country. But while art has thrived on patronage since time immemorial, what sort of art is produced in a city artists cannot afford to live in, and where a commercialized, gentrified simulacrum of diversity signals luxury? The answer is probably an NFT.





A healthy city should contain a diversity of artists, precisely because it also contains a diversity of people. No less an urbanist than Moses-archenemy Jane Jacobs wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “Everyone is aware that tremendous numbers of people concentrate in city downtowns and that, if they did not, there would be no downtown to amount to anything—certainly not one with much downtown diversity.” In other words, downtown areas are desirable precisely because of the diversity that is priced out by their own desirability. This is also ultimately what leads to their downfall: What is the point of living in a city stuffed with billionaires but starved of human capital? And who can even afford to, anyway?





Of course, art and money have always been intertwined. Rich people have nice things. Art is often considered one of those nice things. However, the more art is commodified—and this certainly bears itself out historically with regard to art as a status symbol or reflection of power—the less of an ability it has to be critical, independent, or introspective. You know, interesting.  Gradually, it also has less to say, until art is reduced to a price tag alone—like any other commodity, like currency itself. Art that is only for the mega-rich yields an entire culture that is much the same. Is it any surprise at all that a New Yorker profile of mega-dealer Larry Gagosian from earlier this year took pains to point out that his most lucrative investments were probably in real estate rather than in art? 





As a small-m materialist, I am well aware these questions long ago migrated from the urban grid to Instagram’s. Our insatiable need for convenience and connectivity has destroyed our physical social networks in a variety of ways—and dictated how we continually buy into our own dystopia. It’s also sped up our isolation, both from art and from each other: The commercial tools that have warped real estate values and the basics of human interaction all flourished, of course, online. The connectivity and convenience that lured us toward our screens at all hours of the day have robbed us of storefronts, tax revenue, and chance encounters in exchange. And now, the way in which consumerism has displaced our sense of belonging in communities has manifested in urban real estate in such a way as to rob us of a creative class by destroying its habitat. As the world continues to move online, artistic communities will continue to vanish, too. 





In an information economy and a literal economy that always prizes the shortest distance between two points—collateral damage be damned—artistic expression is a luxury afforded only to the idle rich. The arts will further retreat into a career path available only to those who can afford to go into them. (That is, if we aren’t basically already there, as the conversation around middle class cultural values and downward mobility seems to indicate.) All counter-culture will be co-opted, sanitized, and sold back to us by the algorithm. The resulting culture will be by the rich and for the rich only, a trend handily encapsulated by the vacuous and nauseating never-ending parade of “fashion X art” collaborations that provide little more cultural expression than a vapid launch party planned purely to be splashed across the aforementioned Instagram grid. (So long as corporations are people, I fear we are stuck with Koons’ and Kusama’s “viral Vuittons,” as their respective creators secret themselves far from any “scene” in either a mega-mansion or psychiatric hospital.)





Meanwhile, as the rich clamor for a front-row seat to this circle-jerk, rents will continue to skyrocket. The National Arts Endowment can protest that “a great nation deserves great art” until it is blue in the face, but where the fuck are the artists going to live? 





Again, I return to Jacobs, who also wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “Our failures with city neighborhoods are, ultimately, failures in localized self-government.” This is absolutely true: the polis of any diverse city exists in a patchwork of political microclimates. But how can self-government take hold when no one who comes up in the new generation can afford to live in the neighborhoods that most need self-governing? Those who survived the lean years as owners cash out on once-affordable homes so their children can live better lives elsewhere. New developers buy out landlords who evict renters, and suddenly, the neighborhood is gone. The gaps left behind will be filled with coffee shops selling $7 matcha lattes and pilates studios with $45 classes, and the people who can afford to buy them. 





Artists as a whole will surely still have the fire to create something, somewhere, but can already only afford to do so far from one another. The dissipation of any urban culture is its death: Downtown cannot exist as a diaspora. The point is the concentration of its energy, a sum far greater than its parts. 





In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs also chides us: “We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.” Culture is not a commodity that can be counted. Yet, it has the power to enfranchise and empower just as much as any vote towards affordable housing or raising taxes on the rich. To preserve it, we must look to an inclusive path forward that prioritizes not just people and their work output but also the character of their communities—communities that contain multiple dimensions of diversity and creative expression that should not have to be commodified to prove their value. No developer, no bank, no corporation will do this for us. We must organize ourselves.







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An illustration of a yellow canary with a pink mullet sitting on a tree branch. Below, two birdwatchers are looking at the bird from below, one pointing at the bird and the other looking through binoculars. In the background, there is a construction on what appears to be a new luxury high rise building. To the left, is a row of brownstones; on the right, is another luxury high rise.

“Where the F*ck Are the Artists Going to Live?”

by Cara Marsh Sheffler

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On the endless proliferation of art weeks.





“That’s an awful lot of money to go into a shop,” my friend, a creative director and no stranger to event planning, mused as we traded Paris Art Week VIP passes like baseball cards. In a single, whirlwind long weekend last October, we wended around the aisles of no fewer than five art fairs: The Paris Internationale, THÉMA, Design Miami/, Offscreen, and, the main attraction, Paris+ par Art Basel, having its second-ever iteration in France. Had we not shared and swapped those passes, we each would have been out upwards of €500, to say nothing of the fact that some of the passes were invite-only—priceless bits of currency during Art Week, where €500 is more or less considered pocket change. It is a rigamarole that would be repeated in another couple of months, at Basel’s next iteration, which would bear a striking resemblance to the version we’d seen in Paris. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that Basel just stayed put in Basel. 





Before we go any further, “Basel” here refers to Art Basel,  an art fair held in Basel, Switzerland each June. But these days, in addition to Paris, Basel is also in Miami, where there was another art fair earlier this month, and in Hong Kong, where there will be another fair in March. Indeed, like the British Empire, the sun never sets on Basel, a town of 171,000 otherwise known principally as the home of Roger Federer and Erasmus. And Basel isn’t alone: Miami’s Art Week empire has expanded, too. The sinking tax haven—where, Lenny Bruce once said, “neon goes to die”—has its own Basel, Design Miami/, which now, in addition to Paris, meanders annually to Shanghai and, aber natürlich, Basel itself. At first glance, Basel (the city) and Miami (the city) might not seem to have much else in common, except for these never-ending art fairs—and, of course, the money required to go into the proverbial shop.  





Why should any of this matter? Why should we care if largely the same group of egregious polluters—art collectors with private jets, influencers, hangers-on, DJs of inscrutable provenance—stomp their carbon footprints across continents to attend art fairs perennially named after the city they just left behind? As the old saw goes, it’s always five o’clock somewhere—and now, apparently, Art Week, too. Globally, Art Week now happens somewhere about as frequently as Independence from the British Empire is celebrated. And while the world that populates it might seem insular and frivolous to the point of farce, the sort of top-down, endlessly replicating model of speculation and monetization it represents should worry all of us: Those art fair carbon footprints are a garish harbinger of the death of a creative class, and of a wealth gap that will likely never close. 





Like Fashion Week, which now takes place approximately 30% of the year, Art Week is inhabited by its own roving “world”—quite literally, a moveable feast—but the homogeneity of the art world is more profound than its cast of characters might suggest. Contemporary art, like high-end fashion, is largely the same in every major city on the planet, thanks in part to the strangle-hold of blue-chip galleries like Gagosian and Zwirner. None of it is really about art anymore. It’s about luxury. It’s about branding. 





The point of all this globetrotting is the maintenance of a robust marketplace—and, at least as importantly, the very flashy appearance of one. The 2023 Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report makes for some eye-watering reading: 





Global art sales increased by 3% year-on-year to an estimated $67.8 billion, bringing the market higher than its pre-pandemic level in 2019…[but] there was also divergence in market segments, with the highest end continuing to be the driver for growth. In the auction sector, the highest-priced works of over $10 million were the only segment to show an increase on aggregate, while in the dealer sector, those at the higher end performed significantly better than their peers in the lower tiers. These trends continued to dampen any hopes of significant restructuring of old hierarchies in the post-pandemic art market, and sales continued to display the more familiar pattern of outperformance at the high end, buoying aggregate values but creating a denser concentration at the top. 





Perhaps these numbers account for some of the manic laughter in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, when video artist Knox Harrington picks up the phone and announces to Julianne Moore’s Maude, “It’s Sandro, about Biennale.” And it’s only gotten crazier in the 25 years since the film came out. The art market is still behind luxury fashion’s $111.5 billion annual take, but not by all that much, especially when one considers how many fewer galleries, art fairs, and auction houses there are in the world, as opposed to the sheer number of luxury fashion stores and online platforms.   





This wasn’t always the case. We have come a long way from the progenitor of the contemporary art fair, the so-called 1913 Armory Show, an exhibit designed to introduce Americans to Fauvism and Cubism, and artists not yet well known in the US, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The show was a watershed cultural moment, modernizing and commercializing an outdated European salon model. It also could only have happened in America. Originally hatched during the Royal Academy shows of the 17th and 18th centuries, the salon model had already matured into something more commercial during the 19th century, commensurate with the acquisitive tastes and expansive budgets born of the Industrial Revolution. Presciently, during this era, British art dealer Joseph Duveen observed, “Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money.” 





A total of 87,000 New Yorkers saw the show before it decamped to Chicago. It heralded the ascendancy of art that pushed beyond the academic and the staid—where concepts of beauty and even the purpose of artistic expression were called into question. (Fashion Week would not come to the US until 1943.) At the New York fair, Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” sold for $324, or $10,172, adjusted for inflation. At Art Basel (Basel) this past June, one of Louise Bourgeois’ “spider” sculptures sold for $22.5 million on the first day of VIP previews. 





So what caused the over 2,200% increase? To quote James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The percentage, while jaw-dropping, mirrors others with which we are all too familiar, such as executive compensation and urban real estate. Quite simply, it’s yet another manifestation of an incomprehensibly large and probably irreversible wealth gap. However, the art world cut a slightly different economic curve. After the contemporary art market crashed in the early 1990s—slumping in a series of scandals along with the rest of the country—large and institutional collectors shunned the sector. But by century’s end, it had begun creeping back, after the Clinton Years (featuring a star turn by none other than Carville) saw the first dot-com boom and bust: Not incidentally, works of art, beyond serving as status markers, are also fabulous places to hide and launder money. At around the same time, auction prices went up in late 19th-century and 20th-century art to unprecedented numbers. 





It wasn’t until 2002 that Art Basel, an industry staple on the calendar since 1970, launched a fair in Miami, in part to nudge contemporary art back into the spotlight, financially speaking. (Some also credit the establishment of new major contemporary art institutions, like the Tate Modern in 2000, with the comeback.) And it worked. This resurgence of the market was so robust that it survived even the 2008 crash largely unscathed, reaching new heights with the emergence of an online market in the 2010s. The fair phenomenon only grew from there, naturally migrating to Asia as new billionaires were minted amid China’s boom—just as Joseph Duveen might have predicted. 





Which brings us back to Art Week, the brand. Luxury is predicated on branding, and branding must maintain a consistency that, when achieved, is known as an “identity”—a handy euphemism for what Walter Benjamin famously defined as the aura of a work of art: equal parts authenticity (or uniqueness) and locale (within a physical space or culture). In fashion, Chanel sports its iconic chains and camellias; in contemporary art, a Gerhard Richter canvas damn well better look like a Richter. This identity, regardless of product, fulfills the Benjaminian equation: authenticity + locale = aura. The market then determines what price tag it can bear. 





In 2023, the proliferation of locales (via the cultural and commercial context of an art fair) and the authenticity of the work it draws (a unique yet consistent group of A-list galleries and artists) creates an aura for the art world to the tune of many billions of dollars, if UBS is to be believed. To merit that sort of return on investment, the commodity must be recognizable; its identity, or aura, must be strong. This is attained through predictability, which—you probably don’t need Walter Benjamin to tell you—is rather inimical to artistic expression. And the easiest way to make the aura predictable is by an onslaught of art fairs, with little time between them for artists to actually create—well, art.





No matter what way you see it, there is great currency in this homogeneity for those who can afford to trade in it. Ultimately, the art, much like the people at each of the art fairs, is pretty much the same. Commodification demands it. Fittingly, the VIP attendees often turn out in regalia from the same dozen or so luxury fashion houses whose brick-and-mortar presence signifies a wealthy neighborhood anywhere in the world. As for the fair-goers, the barrier to entry is high at these events, too. Aside from travel, a gallery must put up around $20,000 for even a medium-sized booth at Art Basel and even more for shipping fees—and do so at multiple fairs per year. And you probably don’t need Karl Marx or Ronald Reagan to tell you very little of this money is trickling down to the artists themselves. It’s a content farm, with souvenir tote bags and champagne. (And, as my companion at Paris Art Week likes to note, the champagne sponsor for the art fairs is almost always the aptly named Ruinart.)





This exhausting, transcontinental treadmill has led to a contemporary art market that varies little fair to fair. How could it not? Who would spend all those millions on an unknown commodity they won’t be able to offload down the line? What kind of an investment would that be? The art world has never shied away from being self-referential, but a market is iterative. If one were dropped blindfolded into one of these art fairs, the chance of being able to tell in what city or at what event they had found themselves would be a longshot. 





And that’s the point: Basel is everywhere. It’s all the same.


    [post_title] => It's Always Basel Somewhere
    [post_excerpt] => On the endless proliferation of art weeks.
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MIAMI, FLORIDA - DECEMBER 06: Atmosphere during Art Basel Miami Beach Art Fair 2023 VIP Preview at the Miami Convention Center on December 06, 2023 in Miami, Florida. In the photo, a man and a woman take photos on their phone of a portrait on the wall, a square painting of a man in a hat, largely in shades of blue. (Photo by Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

It’s Always Basel Somewhere

by Cara Marsh Sheffler

WP_Post Object
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    [post_content] => 

How can any institution be ethical when it's an obsequious representation of the values of its extraordinarily rich funders?





Follow the money. That was the dictum that propelled Woodward and Bernstein in All the President’s Men; it was also the hunch Andrea Fraser followed when she published 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics—essentially the museum world equivalent. This latter work touts a cast of familiar characters—Basses and Sacklers and Kochs, oh my!—navigating finger food in evening wear, far from the madding pillories of MSNBC, but still dedicatedly pushing the same agenda through their presence on museum boards. This is America: Perhaps it’s only natural that Harlan Crow, the same hand that greases Clarence Thomas, has built a Dallas museum of Asian Art (to say nothing of his so-called “Garden of Evil”). Or that it took Laura Poitras’s 2022 documentary about Nan Goldin’s crusade against the Sackler family getting all the way to Oscar season for their misdeeds to actually come to light. Follow the money—at any museum or in any national political campaign (because yes, it’s the same money, as Fraser deftly and exhaustively points out)—and it will only lead to one familiar place: disappointment. 





Or, in this case, a multimillionaire’s doorstep. 





Shelby White, whose money built the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greco-Roman wing, visited by more than 3 million people annually, is in a pickle. An avid collector of antiquities, White is no stranger to law enforcement, having previously cooperated in repatriating artifacts she had purchased to their countries of origin, including Yemen, Turkey, and Italy. Yet little could have prepared her for the sublime institutional irony of the scandal that unfolded in her living room earlier this year. According to The New York Times: 





[The police] showed up, unannounced, with a search warrant at her spacious Sutton Place apartment in Manhattan at 6 a.m. The rooms inside were filled with antiquities, some of which had been purchased from dealers who would later be accused of trafficking in illicit artifacts. Many were displayed in their own nooks or cabinets, and set off by lighting that enhanced their appeal. “It is literally a museum,” said Matthew Bogdanos, the head of the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which visited the apartment several times.





The collection removed from her apartment included were four stolen sections of an Anatolian columned sarcophagus valued at $1 million, a bronze statuette of the emperor Lucius Verus valued at $15 million, and a Roman bronze bust of an unknown man valued at $3 million—by any definition, a veritable trove. Rather than marvel at the secluded museum she’d amassed, however, I found myself wondering: What is a museum if not a rich person’s living room someone deigned to open to the public? And what, exactly, is the point of putting all of this stuff in one place? 





Most of the objects we see displayed in museums grapple with the Big Mysteries. Whether oriented toward art, culture, ethnography, or science, a museum enshrines systems of understanding it all. These institutions collect, constellate, and disseminate a narrative of perceived truth. The problem inherent to any of this is the same as with any narrative: the limitations (and biases) of the narrator. Humans are blinkered by the boundaries of their own perception and countless barriers to understanding imposed by the context and times in which they live. Heap on top of this the basic problem of who has the privilege to curate or collect in the first place, and—last but not least—who holds the aforementioned purse strings that keep the lights on at any institution in question, and the narrative gets muddy. Joan Didion famously wrote that we tell ourselves stories in order to live, but what are we keeping alive?  





At its core, an art museum is essentially a narrative of empire. If, as Napoleon quipped, history is a set of lies agreed upon, a museum is their physical manifestation. Aptly, the Met—the grandest, most august museum in a city that likes to think of itself as the center of the world—boasts all the baubles that connote having made it, including a few once owned by Napoleon himself. Cleopatra’s needle, the Temple of Dendur, Greek goodies faded polychrome or ghostly blanched, Persian carpets, Old Masters, Estruscan jewels, Japanese lacquer, South Asian sacred sculpture, Chinese vases, Senegalese masks, Polynesian canoes. The good, old stuff! All in one place, the best of it all from every corner of the globe. 





But the best according to whom? The Met is a museum of objects rich people, like Shelby White, value; it is a narrative of wealth and what signals it. Accordingly, the place has no shame at trafficking in stolen goods, and enlisting lawyers to stonewall the looted parties (e.g., Greece) with reams of contracts and receipts to establish provenance. It’s a Red State mentality with Blue State wall text. The institution has the dirty opioid money and the dirty oil money. Its worldview is unabashedly human-centric, each wing featuring a different culture trying to figure out what the hell it all means—most often, a whole lot of fucking, being born, and dying. Religious fanaticism is rife. Social hierarchy abounds. Women are mostly subjugated and objectified. The Hall of Arms and Armor would make any 2nd Amendment enthusiast blush with delight. Inveterate elitists, the Met celebrates the winners. It doesn’t have time for the downtrodden or the poor because they didn’t leave nice enough shit behind. Or any shit at all. 





This is the tale nailed literally and metaphorically by Andrea Fraser in her book and throughout her career as a performance artist. As a writer, similar institutional critique has been my own stock and trade: Recently, I was engaged by artists Caitlin McCormack and Kat Ryals to write text for their exhibit at Elijah Wheat Showroom, Souvenirs of the Wasteland. The show imagines what a museum would look like after the apocalypse, specifically imagining objects more akin to the Met’s cousin across Central Park, the American Museum of Natural History. In a sense, the show is a museum of unnatural history—a curated glimpse of the world left behind after human intervention. In this installation, microplastics have usurped the Hall of Gems; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch drifts triumphant as a continent—terra firma on a planet mankind has rendered uninhabitable. McCormack and Ryals offer a survey of what thrives in the Anthropocene’s wake: mutant lifeforms melded with garbage, eerie radioactive hues, and dark odes to effluvium, ephemera, fast fashion, and immortal trash.





Contributing wall text for this show gave me the chance to think about how the AMNH presents another model of institutional storytelling: What, one may ask, is a museum of natural history attempting to catalog? And why and how is this very peculiar blend of objects in it? How do we get from, say, a tree stump from the Redwood Forest to a Chinese wedding chair? The museum-hopping visitor will notice the same object that is considered “art” on the east side of Central Park becomes a “craft” once it has migrated to Central Park West. “Folklore” presents a thorny problem as a catch-all term when it refuses to elevate a cultural practice to literature, organized religion, or art, thus othering whichever culture it is attempting to include. The AMNH is a blind spot, enshrined. And despite seeming more innocent than the Met, the AMNH is also on the take from the Brothers Koch; Richard Gilder, for whom the museum’s new wing is named, specialized in short-selling. 





Still, the AMNH attempts a more science-centric—ergo, necessarily progressive—worldview. True to progressive form, it also cannot see why its stances are problematic. It is a paean to preservation full of dead, endangered animals. There are literal dinosaurs. Its Hall of Human Origins is named for the family of an unevolved former NY governor. Everyone claims they are there for some granola story of the Earth’s origins, but really, the whole operation is funded by the Hall of Gems—containing some of the bloodiest of diamonds and other problematically sourced stones in the world, much of it tracing back to America’s echt-capitalist, J. P. Morgan.





AMNH is also a core sample of outmoded notions of progressivism layered on top of one another and bisected in vitrines, from problematic conservationist Teddy Roosevelt (whose hats are on display downstairs) to present patron saint of PBS and New York native son Neil deGrasse Tyson. It makes one wonder not only about the vastness of the universe but how our own NPR perspective on it will soon become invalid. Margaret Mead was undoubtedly what would have passed as “woke” in her own time, but her legacy is displayed in a way in the AMNH that means the only name and face in the whole area of the museum that concerns Oceania is that of a white woman. She is further celebritized in a warren of rooms strictly about her, and while there are attempts to correct the narrative, they are inconsistent and frequently at odds with one another. On the first floor, the diorama of Peter Stuyvesant meeting unnamed Leni Lanape (Hackensack) has an incredibly powerful treatment of corrective scholarship on the glass. Meanwhile, upstairs, we find “exotic” cultures othered in dioramas depicting far reaches of the globe from Tashkent to Timbuktu; but we don’t see, for example, a diorama populated by a blonde Swedish family arguing over which allen wrench to use in front of some IKEA furniture.





Both the Met and the AMNH are flawed. One model tells the story of the human perception of meaning and our quest to make the mortal coil a bit more bearable; it is a story of status and hierarchy, and the ugly, inescapable truth that inequality and the suffering of most are the cost of beauty and luxury for few. The other model tells the story of the impact of humans on Earth, with the great caveat that it’s the world’s most unreliable narrators telling it: humans. (And, again, the ones footing the bill to even tell the story in the first place are arguably some of the worst among us—many of whom directly profit from the planet’s degradation.) 





No matter how intricate or well researched a palimpsest—at any cultural institution—it will never solve the problem of perspective. We can never escape ourselves or the times in which we live. Maybe this is the best we ever do—and maybe that’s fine. Maybe seeing museums as deeply flawed but instructive monuments to that attempt at understanding, rather than as definitive catalogs, is the best way to allow them to teach us about ourselves. Sometimes, we need the reminder not to believe something just because it’s written on the wall.


    [post_title] => There's No Such Thing as an Ethical Museum
    [post_excerpt] => How can any institution be ethical when it's an obsequious representation of the values of its extraordinarily rich funders?
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A close up of a piece of embroidery artwork, depicting off-white dinosaur skeletons emerging from and tangled up in a tree.

There’s No Such Thing as an Ethical Museum

by Cara Marsh Sheffler

WP_Post Object
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    [post_content] => 

The Phosphoros Theatre makes plays with, for, and by asylum seekers in the UK. Its amateur actors travel all over the country to perform, telling their own stories in the form of a fictionalized narrative. 





__





“On a chair on a ship in the middle of the ocean.” 





“The bed I shared with my grandfather at home.”





“A sofa-bed in Belgium that I could hardly fit on.”





The characters on the stage have all been forced by their circumstances to sleep in uncomfortable places. As the lights come up, the audience learns that the actors are all asylum seekers and refugees who have come to the UK. In All The Beds I Have Slept In, produced by Phosphoros Theatre, they describe their perilous journeys from their dangerous home countries to a place they hoped would offer them freedom and safety.





Phosphoros’s plays emerge from the minds of its actors. To create this production, the company got together over a weekend, played drama games, and brainstormed. They had stories to share but needed a theme to anchor them. They realized that what their stories had in common was beds, in that all of them had once slept on proper beds at home but then, during their long journeys, they had moved from one strange bed to another. Often, they had had nowhere to sleep but the cold ground. On stage, that theme became a prop that was central to the action—sometimes a bed on wheels that served as a place to sleep or a place to talk. Sometimes, the bed was even a boat.





By the end of the creative weekend playwright Dawn Harrison had a wealth of material. During the writing process she checked in with the actors by WhatsApp to verify what kinds of expressions they might use, to make sure the dialogue reflected their voices accurately.





“A charpai on top of my roof in Afghanistan when it was too hot to sleep inside,” is how one of the performers, a young man named Syed Haleem Najibi, described his bed.





Syed is studying to be an engineer, while simultaneously touring with the theater company—which makes productions with, for, and starring refugees and asylum seekers. In theory one’s bed is a “place of comfort,” but this has not been the case for many of these refugees. “I've slept on the street, and I've slept in forests and fields,” Syed said. Going into this project “I understood the value of a bed,” he said, adding that the stories were “very personal. All the actors, he said, wanted to tell their stories in their own voice and “not the way the media or the politicians are showing it.”





Syed has been with the company since its first production in 2016, but All the Beds I Have Slept In has been his most emotional acting experience . Refugee audience members often approach him after his performance and tell him that they heard their own story in his words. “I'm representing all these people who don't have the opportunity to be standing on a stage like this and tell the stories the way they want to,” Syed says.





All the actors in the production came to the UK as teenage asylum seekers. They are used to telling their stories, but usually to lawyers, social workers, and interpreters who then retell their stories for them. Syed wants people in the UK to get to know refugees and hear their stories directly.





The message he wants to convey is that  “nobody would be willing to leave their family, leave their homeland, leave their friends, just like that for no reason. You don't leave home unless home is not safe for you.”





Missing home





“A blanket in the rescue ship that pulled me from the sea.”





When he arrived in the UK as a teenager in 2012, Syed was full of hope. He believed he had arrived in a country that would respect and recognize his human rights. But like his character in All The Beds I Have Slept In, who glosses over the difficulties of his life in the UK as he describes it to his brother back home over the phone, Syed’s experience was not what he had hoped.





Once in the UK, he discovered that he was at the start of another journey, this time through the bureaucracy—the asylum system, the care system, the education system. It was a “hostile” experience, he said. He had to fight for his rights, and his battle continues.





Being part of a touring theater company has changed Syed’s experience of living in the UK. He’s met people in every part of the country and has come to know a huge range of organizations that support refugees. And he has made new friends. He says he now has a new family called “Phosphoros.”





Nevertheless, said Syed, Britain does not feel like home. “I am constantly reminded that I don't belong here, by the system and by society,” he says. Compounding that feeling, the House of Commons recently passed the controversial “Nationality and Borders bill,” which, if approved by the House of Lords and passed into law, would make it harder for people to claim asylum in the UK. This bill could even allow the government to strip people of their citizenship without notice.





“It's shocking to hear that even somebody with British citizenship can be removed and sent back to their country of birth,” Syed says.





On a 2019 visit to Afghanistan Syed realized that his country no longer felt like home. People there saw him as a foreigner rather an Afghan. “I realized that I'm just a tourist in Afghanistan and I don't belong there,” he said. “I don’t belong anywhere.”





Afghanistan from afar





“In a stranger’s flat in Nice.”





During his previous life in Afghanistan, Syed went to school. But there was no future for him there, with seemingly never-ending war all around him. The extreme instability was impossible to bear, and so he decided to leave





In August, tensions in Afghanistan increased again when the U.S. pulled its remaining troops out of the country, leaving a power vacuum that the Taliban filled within days. Syed found it “heartbreaking” to watch this unfold from abroad, knowing his family was still there. He says that people he knows are now going weeks without their salaries and, unable to buy food, have become desperate.





Towards the future





 “A carpet in church the night before a spiritual celebration.”





Syed no longer sees a future in Afghanistan and is now focused on building his life in the UK. He’s studying sustainable energy engineering, and hopes to contribute toward ending the climate crisis.





But he’s also hoping that those who follow his path will have a better future. “I'm hoping to see a system, not just in the UK, but all around the world, treating migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers with dignity and respect,” he says.





Syed wants to continue acting with Phosphoros even as he starts his engineering career. He’s proud to use his personal experience as a piece of art, and education, to help people see refugees as human beings. To treat them with the dignity and respect they are so often denied.





In the play, a stranger offers kindness to a boy called Mohamed, who is continuing his journey towards the UK. He offers him a place to stay for the night. He buys his train ticket. It is this kindness that allows Mohamed to travel without fear. But the stranger doesn’t wait to be thanked. Instead, he said that he was going to get a coffee and strolled away.





“When he said he was getting a coffee, he meant goodbye.”


    [post_title] => 'In our own words': refugee actors share their stories on stage
    [post_excerpt] => The Phosphoros Theatre makes plays with, for, and by asylum seekers in the UK. Its amateur actors travel all over the country to perform, telling their own stories in the form of a fictionalized narrative. 
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‘In our own words’: refugee actors share their stories on stage

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_date] => 2021-11-11 12:08:43
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    [post_content] => Throughout her journey, the 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl-puppet was greeted by both loving crowds and anti-migrant protesters. 

A huge crowd gathers outside the National Theatre in London’s Southbank. Children run around during the last moments of daylight. A choir stands ready. They are waiting for Amal. Heads turn and people point, as a giant puppet rounds the corner. As she walks into the courtyard, a solo voice sings out her name. The audience is silent.

Amal tentatively explores the crowd, peering into the faces in front of her. She bends down to touch a child’s hand, and an elderly woman appears to give her words of heartfelt comfort. The mood is electric. When Amal finally leaves the National Theater, the crowd follows her across Waterloo Bridge, accompanying her as she continues to her next destination. 

She might just be a puppet, but Amal represents something very real. She embodies a nine-year-old Syrian refugee, who has taken the same journey as many unaccompanied minors across Europe. Her name is Arabic for “hope.” Amal started her journey on the Turkey-Syria border, kicking off Good Chance and Handspring Puppet Company’s travelling festival, The Walk, and journeying 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) to find a home in Manchester, UK.

We were all invited to join Amal as she traveled across Turkey, Greece, and Italy, where she was met with both love and hostility. Amal has finally arrived in the UK, just as its government is proposing potentially hugely consequential changes to its immigration system, changes which could actually land those making dangerous journeys like Amal’s in jail. 

Thankfully for Amal, as she made her final steps across Europe, she was welcomed and given a home. Will the same be true for real migrant children?

Amal’s next steps in Europe

As Amal left Italy, to begin the final leg of her journey, she took her first steps through south-eastern France and into Switzerland. In Geneva, she played in the fountains outside the United Nations Office, and placed her hand on The Broken Chair, a 12-metre sculpture of a seat with a snapped leg, designed to raise awareness of the victims of landmines. There were many such poignant moments during The Walk.

“The fact that this journey is based on a real route that many thousands of children have walked, and some have lost their life on, means that we are entrusted with a great responsibility to represent their stories in an honest and complicated way, showing the hardship but also the beauty of their journeys,” Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk and Good Chance, told me. 

“We take this responsibility very seriously, because we know that as big as Amal is, so is the impact of her journey.”

Amal moved on from Switzerland, stepping next into Germany, home to the EU’s largest population of displaced people. When she arrived in Stuttgart, she made friends with a giant robotic puppet, part of the Dundu Family of German puppets that have brought together audiences internationally since 2006 with spectacular light and music shows. As nighttime arrived, Amal met more of the family, as they lit up the darkness.

When unaccompanied minors like Amal first arrive in Germany, they’re taken into the care of the local youth welfare office, explains Jonathan Sieger, head of the Bürgerzentrum community center and executive board member of NGO Kölner Spendenkonvoi, which assists newly arrived refugees.

These young people are then placed with relatives, a foster family, or a suitable facility, and they must be given a legal guardian, as is the case—although not necessarily the reality—across much of Europe.

One of the main risks young refugees face, Sieger says, is developing long term trauma. “What we are lacking in Germany is general psychological treatment for refugees. Especially for unaccompanied minors, this help is crucial,” Sieger says. This same sentiment has been echoed by organizations across the continent. 

Organizations like Bürgerzentrum are supporting young refugees to settle into their new homes. From its base in Cologne, Bürgerzentrum offers cooking workshops, theater classes, cultural events, and trips. Amal’s journey did not end here, but if it did, perhaps she would have found a warm welcome.

As Amal bid farewell to Germany, she continued across Belgium, and then into France.

Walking through France

In the mountain region of Briançon, Amal embarked upon the treacherous path that many refugees have used to cross from Italy into France. She gazed at an exhibition of artwork made from the objects and clothes left behind by those who had traveled before her. In Paris, she saw the Eiffel Tower, and in Lyon she walked through the park with new friends. There was music wherever she went: brass bands, accordions, drumbeats.

Amal was treated with dignity and celebration, but this is not always the reality for refugees in northern France. Police use violence and tear gas, which has been documented by Refugee Rights Europe and others.

Safe Passage International is an organization helping child refugees reach safety and reunite with family, and it works across the UK, France, and Greece. In France, most of the people they support are sleeping on the street when they first come into contact with them.

“Having fled war and persecution, there are thousands of children stuck on the streets or in refugee camps across Europe—nobody can call that safe for a child. Children are at serious risk of violence, exploitation and trafficking. These are children left in limbo and exposed to incredibly dangerous situations,” says the organization’s CEO, Beth Gardiner-Smith. 

Amal then made her way to Calais flanked with cheers and flags. This is often the spot where people cross over to the UK. It was the people of the Calais Jungle, a refugee camp that the French government had destroyed in 2016, which served as the original inspiration for Amal. It was also the birthplace of an earlier Good Chance production, The Jungle, about the people who gathered at an Afghan café in the refugee camp. Despite all this, the Mayor of Calais objected to Amal passing through the area and refused to approve a permit.

Like many young refugees before her, Amal crossed the English Channel to the UK. But unlike fellow young refugees, the company of Good Chance actors accompanying Amal crossed the water safely, with passports in hand and comfortable places to sleep on either side of the journey.

Arriving on UK shores

On a grey day toward the end of October, Amal finally stepped onto the shore in Folkestone, Kent, in the south-east of England. The actor Jude Law, who is an ambassador for The Walk, held her hand as she walked down the pier, where schoolchildren welcomed her and gave her a passport, blanket, and cookies.

The day after Amal’s arrival, supporters flocked to Parliament Square in London to join the Refugees Welcome Rally, organized by a collective of refugee organizations. The protest took place in opposition to the government’s new “Nationality and Borders Bill,” which parliament is currently considering.

The Conservative government has stated three objectives for this bill: 

    
 	
  • “To make the system fairer and more effective”;
    • 
 	
  • “To deter illegal entry into the UK”;
    • 
 	
  • “To remove from the UK those with no right to be here.”
    • 


In her opening speech for the bill, Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “The British people have had enough of open borders and uncontrolled migration[...] Enough of dinghies arriving illegally on our shores, directed by organized crime gangs.”

She went on to outline some of the proposed changes, which include a maximum prison sentence of four years for those “entering the country illegally” and additional powers for the Home Office’s Border Force. 

The policies outlined in the bill contravene the UN Refugee Convention, which states that refugees should not be penalized for the manner in which they enter a country if they are coming from somewhere where their life or freedom has been threatened. 

According to Safe Passage International, the UK government’s bill is aimed, foremost, at deterring migrants and refugees who wish to enter the UK, but fails to address the reasons people leave their countries.

“The UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill will cruelly punish refugees who turn to us for compassion and safety, whilst doing nothing to break the business model of smugglers who exploit the lack of safe passage to the UK,” says the organization’s CEO, Beth Gardiner-Smith. “We urge this government to tear up these cruel plans and instead open safe routes for refugees seeking sanctuary in the UK.”

There are currently no visas that would allow a person to travel legally to the UK and claim asylum. 

“It’s deeply concerning that virtually the only way now for child refugees to reach the UK from France—regardless of their age, vulnerability, family links or community ties—is to risk a dangerous journey in the back of lorries or on dinghies across the Channel,” Gardiner-Smith added.

If passed, the bill could see many asylum seekers deported to a third country, particularly those who have already traveled through what are considered “safe nations.” The government will introduce “reception centers,” which could resemble the controversial Napier Barracks, criticized for their “squalid” conditions. The bill also paves the way for keeping refugees offshore, where they are detained in so-called processing centers in a third country.

Safe Passage International is calling on the UK government to allow entry to people seeking asylum in cases where they already have family in the UK. They also say the situation for refugees has worsened since Brexit because the EU’s Dublin Regulation, which provided the criteria for defining which country is responsible for examining a refugee’s asylum application, has not yet been replaced with a UK equivalent. 

Thankfully, there is a strong network of local organizations across the UK supporting young refugees, like the Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN). Daniel and Osama are two of KRAN’s youth ambassadors. They are also refugees; now they support people who are making the same journeys that they did. 

Three years ago, KRAN started a Youth Forum, where young refugees meet to discuss different issues that affect them—like accommodation, education, and mental health. Youth ambassadors like Daniel and Osama act as a bridge between these young people and the organization.

In the forum, young people often describe the contrast between their expectations and their experiences in seeking asylum in the UK. In most instances, they’ve faced challenges at every stage. These stories also highlight the essential role of organizations like KRAN and the Refugee Council, and Refugee Action.

Despite the challenges he’s faced, Daniel has felt welcomed in the UK and does not believe the country’s new immigration plan represents the sentiment of the wider public.

The bill is now in the report stage and awaiting its third reading, after passing its second reading by 366 votes to 265. With a Conservative majority, it seems likely the bill will pass. But there could be legal challenges to Priti Patel’s plan for a Border Force to push back boats carrying refugees.

Meeting Amal

Both Daniel and Osama met Amal in Kent. They described it as an extraordinary experience.

“It really represents our stories, it represents the suffering that we have been through,” Osama says. “You have this emotional feeling when you see that people are coming just [to see] a puppet and [to give] their warm greetings.”

At the beginning of this month, Amal finally found a home in Manchester. Local schools, refugee communities, and the Manchester International Festival created a spectacle for her arrival: a flock of puppet birds. As Amal moved among the crowd, a flight of swallows acted as her guide, their wings illuminated and flapping gently around Amal. These birds know migration too, making dangerous journeys every year between the UK and South Africa.

“I know that the arrival into the UK specifically, though not only the UK, is not a simple one. Amal and the children she represents only start a much longer journey once they reach their final destinations,” The Walk director Zuabi says.

Zuabi, nonetheless, has hopes for Amal, a puppet who represents all young refugees: “We are not born refugees, it is a circumstance, and this circumstance should be as short as possible.” 

If the Nationality and Borders bill is passed, the future could look bleak for asylum seekers hoping for refuge and welcome in the UK. Already, the Border Force has been spotted practising sea push back techniques. Napier Barracks is still operating. But the open arms with which Little Amal has been welcomed and the persistent work of grassroots refugee organizations show that the British people care, and will stand up for their new neighbors. It’s there in Amal’s name—there is hope.
    [post_title] => Little Amal arrives in the UK as parliament considers a bill that would see her deported
    [post_excerpt] => Enthusiastic crowds greeted the 10 year-old unaccompanied Syrian refugee girl, even as parliament considered a bill that would make thousands of refugees ineligible to stay in the UK. 
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Little Amal arrives in the UK as parliament considers a bill that would see her deported

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_date] => 2021-09-22 03:32:26
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    [post_content] => Her message to the world: please don't forget the refugee children.

A little girl is walking alone from Syria to England. She is 11 feet and 6 inches tall.

Little Amal (Arabic for “hope”) is actually a giant puppet. She represents the thousands of refugee children who have been displaced from their home countries. This nine-year-old Syrian girl is now journeying from Turkey, across Europe, and to the U.K., as part of an 8,000 kilometer (5,000 mile)  travelling festival titled The Walk.

At the end of July, Amal began her journey as a “refugee” in Gaziantep, Turkey, home to half a million Syrians. People holding lanterns aloft surrounded her, lighting up the night. As she moved through the streets, Amal reached out to balconies where children stood watching, and gently touched their hands as they smiled down at her. Orbs of light sparkled overhead, and a choir welcomed her with song. Many of the people participating in the street theater were themselves refugees.

Amal is now halfway through this theatrical journey created by Good Chance, a theater company founded in the Calais refugee camps in 2015, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. Communities in Turkey, Greece, and Italy, where she’s continued her journey, have found different ways to welcome her — sometimes with love, and sometimes with hostility. But how close is Amal’s experience to that of real refugee children?

Setting off in Turkey

The rest of Amal’s journey through Turkey was likewise filled with celebration and theatrical wonder.

In Adana, a flock of model birds accompanied her across the Taşköprü stone bridge, held up proudly on long sticks by both children and adults in the local community. She played with the children of Tarsus, who crowded in together for a chance to touch her hands. In the Kaleiçi Bazaar in Denizli, portraits of refugees who had journeyed through Turkey were projected onto walls as she appeared.

“I think the most common reaction is wonderment, followed by curiosity. People have been receiving her very warmly in many places,” says Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk and Good Chance.

“One of the most astonishing things for me as artistic director on this project, was the true generosity and creativity that this evoked from people,” he says. “This project is only possible because of a network of thousands of people that have devoted time, energy, and their creativity to create these welcoming events along the way.”


Turkey is a poignant place for this journey to begin. It hosts the biggest population of refugees in the world. The “best interests of the child” principle, part of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, is enshrined into law here, which means that all unaccompanied young refugees must, in theory, be given suitable accommodation and a guardian. But according to the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), many children are in fact abandoned by the state which doesn’t offer the protections they are promised. AIDA has also pointed out the state sometimes appoints inappropriate guardians, such as people without the right qualifications, or who aren’t a relative, leaving refugee children with no other choice but to beg in the street.

Were Amal settling in Turkey, accessing education could also be a real problem. Approximately 400,000 Syrian children residing in the country are not receiving an education, according to Human Rights Watch and Turkey’s Ministry of Education,

Amal, however, is not settling in Turkey. On her last day in the country, she stood on the shores of Çesme as the sun set, ready to take a boat to Greece. In these waters, many refugees like her have lost their lives. Zuabi commented on the potency of that moment, as Amal looked into the horizon, almost motionless.

Hostility in Greece

Little Amal’s journey in Greece was, at times, quite tumultuous. It began with music, with a whole community arriving to meet her off the boat in Chios and welcome her with song. But in other towns, she faced fury.

“In a city called Larissa in Greece, she became a symbol of the refugee problem, she was shouted at and even violently attacked,” says Zuabi. Protesters threw stones at Amal. And in Meteora, people voted to ban Amal from walking through their village, because they did not want a Muslim child walking through a Greek Orthodox space. More violence was threatened against Amal in other towns and villages along her route.

“From that moment, her appearances in Greece created a strong sense of solidarity. I think the reaction she induces is specific to the context of the country we are in, and even more specific to the city and the population we meet,” Zuabi says. “One thing I know for sure is that nobody stays indifferent.” 


In spite of the threats against Amal, people still came together to welcome her in Athens. While some events had to be cancelled, Amal took to a rooftop in Athens to meet locals. From this vantage point, Zuabi says, he could see people wiping tears from their eyes. On the Walk With Amal Instagram account people responded to the video of the violence with an outpouring of love and solidarity—more than double the number of comments than their other popular videos. There were messages like, “I'm so proud that I walked with you Amal, hand in hand with my children!” and “We want to welcome you, celebrate you and keep you safe.” 

In Ioannina, Amal walked between the Katsikas refugee camp and the city centre. In the camp, Zuabi says there was a sense of pride; people felt celebrated. As she walked on, the local community presented lightboxes filled with messages of hope: “You are our rainbow” and “Step by step,” they said. 

When unaccompanied minors arrive in Greece, they are detained in reception centres until they’ve been processed and a place in a shelter found for them, but backlogs mean they can be left waiting for months. Their accommodation is often unsuitable, and spaces are limited. Human Rights Watch has witnessed young people living amongst the general population of Greece’s Moria Camp, because the areas designated for children are beyond capacity. Some children have to fend for themselves, sometimes sleeping in the open despite the fact that, under Greek law, unaccompanied children should be placed in safe accommodations and placed under guardianship.

Irida Pandiri is responsible for shelters for unaccompanied minors through her work with the Association for the Social Support of Youth (ARSIS), a Greek NGO that assists young people in difficulty or danger. She says the larger reception centres in which people are detained are simply not appropriate for children, in part because they cannot leave the facilities to go to school. Meanwhile, the guardianship promised to these young people is not provided. 

“Guardianship, it is almost a joke in Greece,” she says. “When they are in the detention facilities, there are no guardians.” This, for ARSIS, is a crucial issue. Education is also a major problem, with Greek schools often reluctant to register refugee children; even in cases where registration is possible, Covid restrictions often prevent them from leaving the camp to attend.

In order to make it to these reception centres, young refugees must come face-to-face with authorities hoping to send them back to Turkey. Their “welcome” to Greece is full of violence: their belongings are confiscated and they are frequently turned away, in clear violation of their human rights. Many such experiences have been documented by organizations like the Border Violence Monitoring Network and Refugee Rights Europe.

Just as the response to Amal’s reception in Greece was mixed, so has ARSIS found its ability to do its work challenged by uneven support in various communities.

“In the years since 2017-2018, in the areas where we are trying to establish shelters, unfortunately, the communities weren’t so welcoming,” Pandiri says.

But ARSIS continues to support young refugees as best it can. The organization has eight centres for unaccompanied children across Greece, and they operate safe zones in some of the larger camps. Other NGOs also offer child protection services, legal advice, and recreational activities.

As Amal took her final steps in Greece toward Piraeus Port, she was guided by more singing and live music. The protests in Greece were loud, but the welcome was louder.

Walking through Italy

Little Amal is now walking through Italy. She arrived in Bari, where an Italian nonna, or grandmother, arrived to give her guidance. This nonna, a puppet just a few inches shy of Amal’s height, pulled her for a hug and imparted upon her some words of wisdom.

[caption id="attachment_3195" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Little Amal greeted by an Italian nonna, or grandmother, in Bari, Italy.[/caption]

Italy has welcomed Amal warmly, but this experience might be far from the reality for actual young refugees. Andrea Costa is president of Baobab Experience, an organization supporting displaced people who have arrived in Italy. The organization is also a humanitarian partner of The Walk.

“Italy—and I’m very sad to say this, because I love my country—is changing,” Costa said. Although it has traditionally welcomed foreigners, negative media coverage of migration and the rise of far-right politicians have led to a changed country, he said, adding: “It's pretty difficult for unaccompanied minors to make their way in Italy.”

In Italy, solidarity with refugees has now been criminalized in a number of ways. In June 2019, Italy banned NGOs from carrying out search and rescue operations. In the area of Ventimiglia, several people have been charged for giving food to refugees, after a municipal decree outlawed the practice.

“Before, people felt ashamed to be racist,” said Costa. But now, people who want to help refugees must do so surreptitiously. 

Like Turkey and Greece, Italy has policies and procedures in place that are designed to protect unaccompanied children. They are given a permit to remain until they are 18 years old. They can’t be pushed back to other countries, they must be accommodated, and they cannot be detained. 

But in practice, these rights aren’t always respected. As the coronavirus pandemic swept through Italy, the government used private ships to quarantine incoming refugees. According to a report from the Italian Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI), some children were held on these ships for 10-15 days (although some people report this is far longer) before their ages were assessed. Human Rights Watch reported that children were being illegally pushed back from Italy to Greece, another abuse of rights. These are young people who have most likely already faced tremendous trauma.

Costa describes Italy as a transit country for refugees. While many young people choose to move through the country rather than claim asylum, they are at risk.

“We have an extremely high number of unaccompanied minors who don't want to stay in Italy, but want to go directly to France, to Germany, to Holland, to Belgium, because they know that even for minors, just like for all the other migrants, it's much better organized in other European countries,” Costa said.

According to Human Rights Watch, many young refugees cite a lack of access to education and poor reception upon arrival in Italy as influencing them to move onto other countries instead.

Baobab Experience is an organization composed of volunteers who care for young people at risk of falling into the hands of smugglers or human traffickers while they’re in Italy. They make sure these refugees have somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and are clothed. Recently, they joined a network of organizations helping to create safe passages so that, if those young people do choose to cross borders, trusted organizations can help on the other side, including in finding travel tickets at the best prices, rather than turning to smugglers.

But there is another problem for unaccompanied minors in Italy—a cruel gift on their 18th birthday. As they make the difficult transition into adulthood, far from their home country and family, they are no longer guaranteed accommodation. Many of them lack the skills to make their way safely in the world, with no access to language or professional skills.

“There are a lot of young people that really lose important years of their lives,” Costa says. This is why Baobab Experience provides English and Italian courses for young people.

Despite all this, Costa remains optimistic about the future of refugees in Italy. He’s seen a change in younger Italians, who seem to be more understanding about their plight. Perhaps a new, more welcoming Italy is on the horizon.

Meanwhile, Amal is continuing her journey through Italy, before she crosses into France. She’s just finished exploring the ancient landmarks of Rome; in Vatican City Pope Francis met with Amal, along with the children accompanying her on this leg of the journey. 


Amal’s welcome across Turkey, Greece, and Italy varied from country to country and village to village. Like the refugees whose experiences she’s enacting, Amal’s journey has only begun. Her last stop is the U.K., where the government is currently pushing through legislation called the borders and nationalities bill, which would deny asylum or aid to any refugee who enters the country through an unofficial port of entry—for example, by crossing the channel in a small boat. Under the provisions of the bill, Afghan refugees forced to escape from the Taliban could be jailed in the U.K. because they reached the country by routes that the U.K. government has decided are “illegal”—although, according to international law, there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker. What kind of welcome can Amal expect when she arrives in October?

In spite of the government proposals, many British communities promise a warm welcome to Amal and to refugee children. Camden Town has planned a birthday party for Amal, while several choirs will sing for her in the port town of Folkestone on the day she arrives in the U.K.. Anti-refugee sentiment has become more pronounced since Brexit, but many people have also become more vocal about their support for refugees. In the face of racism, changing government policy, and dehumanizing tabloid headlines, compassionate communities are needed more than ever.
    [post_title] => This is Little Amal, the puppet refugee girl on a European odyssey
    [post_excerpt] => Ferried from country to country by volunteer puppeteers, Little Amal has been greeted by choirs and dancers. In Vatican City, she was greeted by Pope Francis. 
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This is Little Amal, the puppet refugee girl on a European odyssey

by Katie Dancey-Downs

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    [post_title] => How the Soviet Jews changed the world: a graphic tale of tragedy and triumph
    [post_excerpt] => Soviet Jews played a critical role in the history of the USSR and, by extension, the trajectory of the Cold War and the history of the twentieth century. 
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How the Soviet Jews changed the world: a graphic tale of tragedy and triumph

by Miriam Libicki

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    [post_date] => 2021-05-26 00:54:57
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    [post_content] => The ability to intuit the feelings of an emotionally uncommunicative man can make a woman feel strong—or not.

Recently I rewatched Bridget Jones’ Diary. It was one of my favorite films when I was a teenager, and now that I am 32—Bridget’s age in the movie—I’m more impressed than ever with the way the film and eponymous book capture the comic conundrums of the average woman. But there was one character that I viewed with new eyes: our leading man, the ever-diffident Mark Darcy.

I was a Jane Austen fan growing up, so I found his demeanor very appealing. The way he expressed feeling through actions rather than words, combined with his utter inability to demonstrate affection, struck me as thoroughly classy, strong and “masculine.” Now, another term sprang to mind: emotionally unavailable. 

My therapist asked me recently whether or not I have a tendency to gravitate toward emotionally unavailable men, and I told her that I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between “emotionally unavailable” and reserved. It seemed she didn’t know either, so we just stared at one another uncomfortably over Zoom for a moment. 

Truth be told, I’m not sure the modern take about people who are unable to express themselves emotionally—i.e., that they lack feeling—is accurate. My ex-boyfriend was (surprise!) a lot like Mark Darcy. The closest he ever came to being effusive was when he looked at me over the corner of his newspaper and gave a “Oh, very nice” nod. When we broke up, I was certain that he had never actually cared about me; I only changed my mind because his best friend told me that he didn’t leave his room for six months and subsisted on deliveries of beer and fried chicken. 

My father is (again, surprise!) another classic example. The man physically stiffens at any attempt at a hug, and I can count on one hand the number of times he’s said something affectionate. In fact, I’m not sure I remember him saying anything at all to me throughout my childhood other than, “You hungry? You want something to eat?” But if I called him at 3 a.m. to tell him I was stranded in Sheepshead Bay he said “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” no questions asked. My father is also an alcoholic in recovery. During a recent relapse, he sobbed and said he’d always loved me but didn’t know how to show it, and I could see the pain that inability had caused him. 

I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for Mark Darcy. I feel sorry for many of the men I’ve dated, and I feel a little like Wendy in Peter Pan, when she tells the Lost Boys that they’re all just little boys who didn’t have a mother. I feel as though my natural urge to nurture will compensate for whatever hole their mothers left, which it sometimes does and sometimes does not. When it doesn’t, I wonder if I’m falling into the classic Narcissist—Empath relationship, and whether I should feel a little sorry for myself as well, for once. 

Society often portrays women like me, who choose to deal with these men, as a little pathetic. People say we lack self-esteem, that we are tragically conditioned by our toxic upbringing and the unhealthy attachment styles it wrought. Some of that is (unfortunately) true. But I have to say—as someone who does a fair amount of deep digging into her psyche on a daily basis—it doesn’t feel that way. It feels the opposite. It makes me feel strong. 

Culturally, we only seem to acknowledge traditionally masculine forms of strength: power, money, status. I was raised to believe there are also equally important traditionally feminine forms of strength: patience, forgiveness, understanding. It gets tiresome, sometimes, to deal with the men that I deal with, and it frustrates me that the patience and understanding aren’t really a two-way street. I’m expected to be inherently “better” in some ways, more immune to proclivities, because I am a woman—a belief that has no logical basis in reality. But it certainly feels like a form of strength and it gives me a sense of pride.

I will also continue to argue, as I have done in the past, that people are a tradeoff and men like this have certain upsides that are difficult to find in today’s society. They take forming attachments very seriously, so you don’t have to worry about them love-bombing you and then promptly ghosting you the way some of the more “modern” men seem to have a tendency to do. They also feel a firm sense of responsibility and obligation toward a woman—you never have to worry about them waking up one morning and telling you that they’re moving to Thailand for a year to find themselves and that you’re both just on different journeys right now. 

I went to a book reading for Helen Fielding’s long-awaited third installment to the series, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and someone asked her why she (spoiler alert) killed off Mark Darcy. “I needed Bridget to be single,” she responded, “And Mark would never leave her.” There’s a sense of security to men like this that isn’t all that easy to find these days. 

Still, I find myself wondering how much of their actions comes from a place of love and how much of it stems from a sense of obligation, and whether or not there’s a difference between the two. 

I watched another movie recently that gave me pause: My Fair Lady. I’ve always adored Henry Higgins, so I texted a friend joking that it seems like my love affair with emotionally stunted, confirmed bachelors who try to mold a woman into their version of “the perfect woman” began early. Men like the ones I’ve described tend to get a lot of flak for being very controlling, and it is–truth be told—more than a little depressing to feel you will only be loved if you are a very certain way all the time. But I don’t mind it so much so long as we’re aligned on what that vision is, because I welcome any extra motivation to be my best self. I think there’s strength in that, too, because God knows it takes a lot of effort. 

And—try as I might—I can’t help but always find the ending scene romantic. Eliza leaves, and Higgins sings a song called “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” which seems to be the closest to admitting that he loves her that he can manage. He walks into his drawing room, and puts on an early recording of her because he misses her. She walks in at one moment, turns it off and says the last line out loud. “Eliza?” he rises from his chair, then settles back in, puts his hat over his face, and says, “Where the devil are my slippers?” 

It’s pathetic, really, the sexist statement and the fragility of his masculinity–the fact that he can’t simply tell her how happy he is that she’s back, and needs to lower his hat in order to hide his emotional response. It shows a lot of strength and self-esteem—I think—that she recognizes precisely what’s happening. It’s not a healthy form of love, for sure. But it is, nonetheless, love. 
    [post_title] => Mark Darcy and the allure of taciturn men who love with actions instead of words
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Mark Darcy and the allure of taciturn men who love with actions instead of words

by Diana Bruk

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    [post_content] => An exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum challenges conventional wisdom about the role cities play in modern society.

We tend to focus on cities when we look for the sources of creativity and learning in our modern civilization. Think Paris and Milan for fashion; London and New York for literature and theatre; Los Angeles and Mumbai for films. The countryside, meanwhile, seems to represent a simpler time, when most people lived off the land. But a provocative new exhibition at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum suggests that some of the most radical changes affecting global society are, in fact, taking place in the countryside. 

In Countryside, The Future, Dutch architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas challenges the widely held belief that the city is the future. In the catalogue for the exhibition, he rejects the idea of total mass migration to urban centers, asserting that “the countryside must be rediscovered as a place to resettle, to stay alive.” 

This message is particularly urgent with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which of course means that the Guggenheim, like all museums and most public gathering places, is closed— although part of the exhibition can be experienced online. 

In the age of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sheer concentration of people that once made cities so attractive is now a threat. The rapid spread of the virus between people who live in close proximity has raised awareness of the divide between the city and the countryside. This is why Countryside, The Future is both highly relevant and completely inaccessible. 

Koolhass and Samir Bantal, with whom he co-directs the think tank OMA, created an exhibition that begins with a single premise. According to the UN, more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities today. This number is difficult to comprehend. The Earth is vast but, according to estimates, only around 20 percent of its surface area is habitable. Out of that area city dwellers are living in what accounts for only 2 percent of the landmass. What is happening outside of those urban territories, on the rest of the planet?

Koolhaas decided to tackle this issue when he realized that the Swiss village in which he has been vacationing since the mid-1980s had undergone a drastic change. Old houses were being renovated with a certain aesthetic to appeal to a wealthier clientele in search of quietude. There were no cows to be seen wandering around the village’s green pastures. Most of the farmers were not locals, but people from different backgrounds and ethnicities who had become disillusioned with big city life. The village was growing in physical size, but its population was dwindling, even with newcomers who had migrated from urban areas. 

To understand what is going on globally outside of cities is a complex process. Along with the Harvard School of Design, Koolhaas and his team looked at diverse case studies and anecdotes from around the world in the past, present, and future. In a style reminiscent of his seminal book, Delirious New York (1978), Koolhaas created a narrative that is highly personal and non-linear. It’s based on facts and research, but the exhibition feels like the creative documentation of a dissertation with an abundance of text, images, and graphs covering up the spiraling walls of the museum.

In some respects, the exhibition suggests, the way we live now has not changed significantly in 2,000 years. Even as far back as the 2nd century BCE, major civilizations had separated the city and the countryside by social function. The Greeks and Romans called the countryside otium, a place for contemplation and cultural endeavors, and the city negotium, the opposite of otium, a place for work and commerce. The Chinese term xiaoyao denotes “the liberation of an individual’s spirit, a state of wandering in absolute freedom, of living in tune with nature, and of blissful repose.” The difference between now and then lies in the fact that the countryside is no longer a refuge. It’s either a peripheral territory subjugated to meet the escalating demands of the city or a place of leisure that only the wealthy can afford. 

Over the centuries, there have certainly been attempts to bridge this gap by bringing certain elements of both the city and the country together. Charles Fourier, the nineteenth century French philosopher who founded utopian socialism, built factories based on the blueprint of Versailles in an attempt to improve the living conditions of the working man. These “social palaces,” as he called them, were precursors to the 1960s hippie communes. Machines did most of the work in Fourier’s factory, leaving workers plenty of time to enjoy leisure activities, and follow “liberated passions,” which included sexual relations unrestricted by marriage or monogamy.

Fourier’s utopia did not last long, but Countryside, The Future tells the stories of various twentieth century leaders who attempted to restructure rural areas and mobilize residents for national economic enterprises. Some, like the Soviet Union’s plans to turn the Russian steppes into farmland, failed. But others succeeded: the Autobahn network that the Nazi regime built to to connect urban and rural areas is still in place; and so is the Jefferson Grid in the United States.

In the twenty-first century, technological advances and social change are transforming rural regions.

In China, farmers living in urban-adjacent skyscraper farms grow fresh produce to feed tens of millions of people. Customers can connect to the farmers and see the produce they are purchasing in real time. 

In Kenya, the solar and wind-powered town of Voi just outside of Nairobi is one example of ruralization. The town, which is connected to nearby urban and rural centers via railroads; is one of several tech hubs that have become a magnet for recent university graduates. 

But what about nature, the most prominent aspect of the countryside? Twenty-first capitalism offers one solution in Patagonia, where the eponymous outdoor equipment brand has purchased vast swaths of land and made them into protected lands,  in order to stave off deforestation. 

The final part of the exhibition employs technology to ask if we can liberate ourselves from our Cartesian way of thinking. Instead of focusing solely on efficiency, can we make a shift toward healthier cultivation of the land? Can pixel-farming robots invoke ancient Mayan traditions to be easier on the soil by planting crops that are beneficial to each other? Will photosynthesis scanners be able to grow equally perfect produce by making sure each plant is receiving enough light? How will architecture adapt in designing spaces solely for robot workers? 

As I wandered through the thought-provoking exhibition, I had no idea that, in just a few weeks, the Covid-19 pandemic would force the museum to close. New York is now the epicenter of the global pandemic; at the time of writing, over 100,000 Americans have died of the virus. In Delirious New York, Koolhaas proclaims, “Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.” Now as I type these words from my bed, quarantined for over two months in Brooklyn, distracted by the relentless ambulance sirens and the constant news updates, that sentence strikes a deeper chord. 

The global lockdown was caused by a catastrophe, but it also brought some hope for a better future. With the decline in travel by car and by plane, the air is cleaner and the water clearer. For many, being forced to work from home has brought the welcome corollary of having more time to spend with family, or to just slow down and think.  

I wonder, when this ends, how many of us will continue living in cities, especially in metropolises that are hit the hardest by this outbreak. How many of us will try to become more self-sufficient by learning about permaculture and growing our own food? How many of us will slow down, stop fetishizing travel, and lower our carbon footprint by taking fewer trips? Will architects keep furthering urban sprawl and putting more strain on existing infrastructure? Will we keep eating animal products and ignore the deforestation perpetrated by cattle ranchers in the Amazon? 

The message brought by the virus is that we are all connected to one another and to nature in ways we have never even been aware of. If we fail to internalize this understanding, we will not have a future as a species on this planet—whether we live in the city or in the countryside.
    [post_title] => Are cities really all that? A provocative exhibition takes a new look at the countryside
    [post_excerpt] => An exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, now closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, asks if the future lies in the countryside. The question now feels prescient.
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Are cities really all that? A provocative exhibition takes a new look at the countryside

by Hande Oynar

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    [post_content] => In times of repression and despair, art plays an essential role — politically, intellectually, and spiritually

What do Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and a giant penis on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg have in common? 

Both tell us something about the importance of art in political life.

In societies that place a high value on monetary wealth, and which regard not having money as a moral failing, artists, whose careers are precarious, are marginalized. In contemporary America, we like to think that people with the most brains and ambition go into finance, or head to Silicon Valley. 

The truth about artists and their function is far more complicated. Russian art is a good example here, because the oppressive mechanisms used against people in Russia are disturbingly similar to those employed by the current U.S. administration and its powerful supporters. The power of these reactionary forces could become even more entrenched after the 2020 election.  

It’s undeniable that the current U.S. president’s penis occupies its own space in cultural lore. With that in mind, recall the penis drawing that Voina, the Russian art collective supported by Banksy, drew to taunt agents inside the St. Petersburg headquarters of the FSB, the notorious state security agency. That drawing famously won a state-supported Russian art prize in 2011, despite the official uproar.

[caption id="attachment_809" align="alignnone" width="300"] A Dick Captured by the FSB, 2010, Liteiny Bridge, St. Petersburg. (photo: Voina)[/caption]

The FSB is one of the most feared institutions in Russia. Art critics understood that taunting the successor to the KGB with an enormous image of an erect penis drawn on the bridge outside its headquarters makes an interesting statement. Is that statement juvenile? Yes, it is. But it also identifies the fact that power in Russia, and power in general, is a dick-measuring contest.

Art as catharsis

The immaturity of the gesture is also a statement. In a chaotically repressive country like modern Russia, where self-expression can be an exhausting maze of dead ends because officials have power to make capricious decisions like cutting off an organization’s funding for political reasons, or having someone arrested on trumped up charges, waving a dick at an official organ of the state is catharsis.

Catharsis — and the fearless desire to shock — brings me back to Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, with his tight combination of laughs, parodies of racist fantasies of blackness, unflinching gun violence, and so much more. The song and the video for This Is America unspool into a dissertation’s worth of political commentary. But what ties Glover’s work together is how it elevates surviving malevolent, oppressive conditions into living; it flips the experience of being caricatured into owning the narrative. If you’re looking for ways to understand how important art is to real resistance (not the hashtag kind), this is it.

[caption id="attachment_810" align="alignnone" width="300"]Childish Gambino (This is America, screencap) Childish Gambino (This is America, screencap)[/caption]

In an oppressive political framework, the artist occupies an interesting position — and we shouldn’t always assume it to be subversive. All art can be co-opted by a repressive state apparatus, but its meaning and role in history can also change over time. 

Art as resistance

One of the most interesting, and sadly overlooked, examples of artistic resistance in practice was the husband and wife team of Arkadiy Aktsynov and Lyudmila Aktsynova. These two talented painters met and fell in love in the Soviet gulag; like millions of other Soviet citizens, the state had sent them there in the 1930s for imaginary crimes. Miraculously, they survived well into the 1990s and left behind a treasure trove of both joyful and contemplative work; their landscapes, which they frequently collaborated on, are a particular favorite of mine. Having been forced out of the Soviet cultural mainstream by the legacy of the gulag, they dedicated their lives and their work to provincial Russia, where they found recognition.

“We were saved by our faith in people and in kindness, and by an immeasurable fury in our work,” they recalled in their jointly authored memoir. The fury was both a symbol of their productivity and their desire to carve out a space for themselves, to create their own landscape, even while they were prisoners hemmed in by barbed wire.

[caption id="attachment_812" align="alignnone" width="300"] Landscape by Arkadiy Aktsynov and Lyudmila Aktsynova, 1962. Oil and cardboard.[/caption]

The nature of state oppression is such that it penetrates into all levels of society and all factors of daily life. It seeks to demonstrate that you do not “own” yourself, and do not have a right to any damn landscape — be it outside or in your head. In the Soviet Union, oppression had a totalitarian aspect; it was bloody and brutal at the beginning of the USSR and lackadaisical toward its end. In Putin’s Russia, oppressive measures are frequently random and chaotic, their goal more psychological than ideological, creating a gripping unease that allows a small group of people to casually plunder the country. Yet the mechanisms in both instances remain the same: your life can be changed at any moment, because an official stomped his foot or waved her hand, and you will have little to no recourse in the aftermath. 

For Americans who follow Donald Trump’s tweets — i.e. for Americans who until recently had not considered the unpredictable nature of marginalized existence as captured by Childish Gambino — that feeling of instability might suddenly seem familiar. 

Art as a teacher

The passage of time meanwhile has a salutary effect on the interpretation of art that was originally created as an act of subversion. The Aktsynovs created art in the gulag as an act of survival. But after the state rehabilitated them in the post-Stalin era, their work became woven into the history of the Soviet nation as a cautionary tale. The message was, “These terrific painters were forced to suffer because our government made terrible mistakes!” 

Today, I’m sure that many of the people who admire the Aktsynovs, collect their paintings, and help organize their exhibitions, are also Putin supporters. Putin wouldn’t be a very good authoritarian if he didn’t know how to harness collective complicity. As for what meanings can be gleaned from the Aktsynovs work in the future — and what kind of cultural space they will come to occupy — only time can tell. 

The history and fate of dissident artists under repressive regimes might sound discouraging, but it need not be. In fact, it should inspire. An authoritarian can tell you to look or not look at a certain work of art, and tell you how you should feel about it. For example, when Vladimir Putin was elected for the fourth time, Russian graffiti artists co-opted the classical ballet Swan Lake to express a political statement about the decline of Russia’s democracy. 

[caption id="attachment_813" align="alignnone" width="300"] Swan Lake graffiti by Yav Zone art collective, (Moscow, 2018)[/caption]

In Nazi Germany, the Nazis banned as degenerate some of the most important art and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But you are the one who is responsible for what you feel when you look at a moody rural painting by a repressed artist. I’m specifically using the word “responsible,” because authoritarianism, due to its controlling nature, is ultimately infantilizing; this is something that Childish Gambino captures brilliantly in “This Is America,” by demonstrating how oppressive infantilization was practiced against generations of black people. 

In Russia, the late artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe acted as a kind of bridge between the stuffy paternalism of the late Soviet era and the shiny cynicism in the age of Putin. Most people gravitate toward Mamyshev-Monroe’s depictions of male political leaders in bold makeup, and search for very serious political meaning. Mamyshev-Monroe was indeed a serious artist, but my admiration for his work stems from how much fun he had — how expressive, vulnerable, and powerful in his vulnerability this man was, whether dressed in drag to shock the elderly or poking fun at the celebrity cult embraced by Russia’s younger generation.

[caption id="attachment_823" align="alignnone" width="300"] Russian Questions and Life of Marvellous Monroes shining with gold and silver foil. (New Museum)[/caption]

Art to bind communities

Once, the West exported capitalism to the post-Soviet countries. Now, the former Soviet Union is selling capitalism back to the West in a purer, more vicious form. Donald Trump, the sleazy real estate man who would sell state secrets for the opportunity to build a dubious casino on the banks of the Moskva River, is a good example of this exchange. But this phenomenon is bigger than one individual. It is present in greater social atomization, in greater political extremes, and in our fetishization of voting as a purely individual, consumerist act. 

Today, Mamyshev-Monroe is a good artist to turn to if we’re looking for creative ways to respond to seismic changes and growing rifts in our society. He knew how to poke fun while maintaining compassion toward his subject matter, inserting himself into his work not out of narcissism, but a sense of intimacy. In other words, Mamyshev-Monroe observed extremes in society — Soviet bureaucracy, the extravagance of crony capitalism — and sought to contain them, and forge something new out of them. In this light, politically engaged artists are not just cool or interesting. They work to repair the common threads that run through society.

In good times or bad, art is not an escape. It’s about being present. The world being what it is, we end up being present for a lot of crap. Some people will sell you on the idea of art as transcendence, but I think of it as wading through the thick mess of existence alongside other people, reminding them that they are not alone. It’s a silly-sounding issue that is deadly serious: if we’re to make it through our current troubles, and the troubles yet to come, we must connect. We must be there for one another.

Natalia Antonova is a writer, journalist, and editor of Bellingcat. She is currently based in D.C. Follow her on Twitter @nataliaantonova.
    [post_title] => This is your mind on art
    [post_excerpt] => 				In times of repression and despair, art plays an essential role — politically, intellectually, and spiritually		
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Russian Stardust, by Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe (Moscow Museum of Modern Art)

This is your mind on art

by Natalia Antonova

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