Selfies can be a lot more complicated than we think. Need proof? Long before Kim Kardashian began collecting material for Selfish, radical feminist artists like Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta, Francesca Woodman and Laurie Simmons were using self-portraits -- the word "selfie" hadn't caught on yet -- to take control of their image and put a stop to the male objectification of a woman's self.

And artists have been doing kick-ass things with selfies ever since. 

Today we're acknowledging 10 contemporary artists who do the selfie proud. Whether expressing radical self-love, subverting the selfie norms, providing visibility to marginalized groups, or fighting to make the art world a less snobby place, the following artists helped define the age of the selfie.  

1. Melanie Bonajo

Dutch artist Bonajo coined the term "anti-selfie" in reference to her penchant for capturing photographs that document periods of weakness and sadness. The images counter the now dominant selfie tradition of advertising pretty, happy subjects from flattering angles.

"Our generation knows the image of the self better then any other generation before, because of our access to cameras, media and sharing," Bonajo explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. "And also, the language of the image is no longer in the hands of specialists. We are all experts in reading images and we know how to control and manipulate the viewer through images."

"We have seen radical selfies before," she added, "like with women such as Amina, a 19-year-old Femen activist from Tunisia, who wrote 'Fuck your morals" across her naked chest and took a selfie. She was threatened with death. Those women were not trying to be just pretty, but were burning down the foundations of their culture and screaming their injustice through cyberspace. Just like being forced to hide, just being pretty is a one sided simplification of the self. It probably evokes the right kind of attention, but it's not very interesting to me."

 2. Petra Collins

New York-based Collins, at just 22 years old, has created somewhat of an army of babes; young women who, rather than allowing others to document their experiences with femininity, adolescence and sexuality, prefer to take matters (and cameras) into their own hands. Her photos, at once nostalgic and sweet and gritty and gushy, speak to the honest reality of being a girl, in all its gross and gorgeous glory. 

"If your story is being told by someone who doesn’t really know it, it’s not going to come out accurate,” Collins said to HuffPost. “A lot of it has to do with context. Whoever’s behind the camera or pen or whatever. It’s also, if we’re documenting women or girls, having them as subjects rather than objects. Really treating them as, like, human beings. And capturing them in a multifaceted way, not just on one level."

 3. Oroma Elewa

Elewa, the editor of Pop'Africana and the Instagram crush of almost everyone, was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. Through her biannual publication and a trove of Insta-selfies, Elewa strives to introduce the way-too-white fashion and culture circles to African culture and its many contemporary manifestations.

"A lot of people don't get it and I don't expect them to," Elewa explained to Vogue Italia, "unless you are African and have lived life as an African or have operated with that salient identity, it's quite hard to fully understand or wrap your head around the psyche, or know how to fully present who we are as individuals to the world."

She also devised the ever-quotable line, often falsely misattributed to Frida Kahlo: "I am my own muse. The subject I know best."

4. Molly Soda

Soda, a 26-year-old feminist artist with a predilection for web-based work, recently released a series titled "Should I send this?" comprised of nude selfies and flirty texts she'd been too scared to send. Her tattoos, body hair and natural imperfections are in full view. When the Internet responded to the series by slut-shaming Soda and dubbing her project "not art," she responded in a thoughtful Tumblr post:

If none of my photos had been nudes and there had only been the text I included in my zine (which is 50% of [the zine]) no one would be calling me vapid or trash. Doesn’t that have something to say about us as a society and the way we view women’s bodies [and our thoughts on] them having control over their bodies and the way they choose to share it?

5. Hobbes Ginsberg

Ginsberg, a 21-year-old artist based in Los Angeles, is known for her particular brand of tripped-out, confessional performances -- yes, you could call them selfies. Part '90s homage, part fashion expo, part meticulously staged color orgy, Ginsberg's photos offer a revealing glimpse into the life of a queer girl who, like everyone, gets sad from time to time. 

"It's a way for me to externalize those feelings and use them to create something," Ginsberg told HuffPost. "It's a way for me to create an icon out of myself -- a figure who is sad but the final impact is of positivity and something grandiose ... I think the power comes from being vulnerable about those parts of you and showing it can exist within the frame of grand, beautiful imagery, without being romanticized. I want my photos to look pretty and I want you to feel better after looking at them. I believe very heavily in the power of vulnerability and of tenderness, especially for marginalized people who are often not afforded such luxuries, as a tool for rebellion."

6. Vivian Fu 

Fu, a Bay Area-based photographer born and bred in the San Fernando Valley, snaps raw self-portraits of her daily life and all its lazy, sexy, boring moments -- vegging out in bed, emerging from the shower, napping with her partner. After growing up surrounded by narratives in which Asian women play sidekick to beachy blond leads, Fu crafts images in which she is both creator and protagonist. 

"I do think that people are using the selfie as a means of claiming ownership of their bodies, identities and lives, and also as a means of exploring and celebrating themselves," she said to HuffPost.

"When I'm taking pictures it's usually because I feel strongly about the people I'm imaging or because the light was beautiful or because I want to hold onto that moment in some way with this visual document. This freedom and privilege I have to make photographs combats the feeling I had growing up that I couldn't own my life or that I had to be a certain way or that my life had to turn out a specific way. In making photographs, I have a document of different moments in my life that I literally own." 

7. Iiu Susiraja

Finland-based artist Susiraja turns the domestic sphere into something both banal and utterly strange in her staged portraits. Using everyday props like stockings, high heels and breakfast tables in unorthodox ways, Susiraja creates jarring self-portraits with an eerie aftertaste. "My art, it is like playful anarchism with equipment and the rituals of taking back the power," Susiraja said to HuffPost. "Everyday life is my muse."

"I photograph me because it is the subject I certainly know the best," she added. "I make object of myself and my privacy, which is a moment of fame. To turn the privacy as a public is a shelter for me. I feel privacy very painful."  

8. Audrey Wollen  

Los Angeles-based artist Wollen creates conceptual work that revolves around the concept of female suffering as a form of resistance. Dubbed "Sad Girl Theory," Wollen's idea posits a woman's silent, sorrowful self-destruction as the feminized alternative to externalized, masculine violence.

"I perpetuate my own objectification every day," Wollen explained to i-D in an interview. "But I'm interested in the idea that objectification itself has radical potential -- we can use the products of oppression as the tools to dismantle it. I wish I could just be a person, and not a walking photograph of a naked girl. But I wasn't given a choice. I was being treated as if I was only a photograph of a naked girl long before I started taking photographs of myself naked." 

9. Jaime Warren 

Kansas City-based Warren is the brilliant mind behind life-changing artworks including "Lasagna Del Rey," "JonBeignet Ramsey," and, featured above, "Chicken Tikka Masalvador Dali." Her internet-savvy artworks cull from the trashiest, freakiest depths of pop culture to create something radically avant-garde and so wonderfully unpretentious. 

"For about ten or so years I was always taking self-portraits as a way to entertain myself living in a smaller city," Warren explained to HuffPost. "They usually involved some sort of low-budget silly costuming like dressing goth with friends at the local cowboy bar or a weird mermaid costume to crash an acquaintance’s wedding. They had a prank-ish sort of vibe and were about performance."

10. The Art Hoe Movement

Art hoe isn't quite a single artist but a movement, founded by 15-year-old artist and blogger Mars and 24-year-old artist Jam. The crusade implores young women of color and other marginalized individuals to take control of their image, shift paradigms and define blackness on their own terms -- via the selfie. 

The inclusive collective invites young people of color to pose in front of famous artworks or superimpose their faces on top of their favorite images, injecting themselves into the historically exclusive artistic tradition. Creative forces like Willow Smith and Amandla Stenberg are way on board, inspiring others to express their unique beauty all over Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter.

“We’re forcing ourselves to be included," Jam told BuzzFeed News. "We’re creating a new dialogue where we can be whatever we want in the art community because it’s finally on our own terms. People of color and specifically black women have historically been excluded from the art world or simply used as hyper-sexualized muses, whether it be in music, paintings, photographs, etc."

In an interview with HuffPost, Jam continued: "Seeing a disabled trans black woman superimposing herself over a white man's painting, saying, 'I am here, I have worth, and my existence and art matters!' is so wildly radical and revolutionary."

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When artist Ashley Oubre first began drawing, her subjects were often based on random photos she'd found online. In her own words, she was obsessed with perfecting her technical skill, so much so that she'd go on to place ads on Craigslist searching for models, or ask friends and strangers if she could snap their pictures.

From those shots, she would painstakingly draw her favorite parts -- a close-up of nostrils from one photo, the lips and hair from another. The resulting ink-on-paper works are hyperreal in their execution, yet they end up resembling slightly abstracted moments in time, frozen and zoomed in just enough to subvert the typical photorealistic trends. The negative space around her subjects swallows her images whole, infusing the portraits with what she calls an "airy quiet." Rather than producing a finished picture, she imagines scenes pulled from dreams both good and bad, her subjects part of some surreal narrative we're not yet privy to. 

That narrative, it turns out, is something of an underdog story. In a past interview with The Washington Blade, the artist mentioned that she was drawn to subjects "that are damaged in some way." She elaborated in an email to The Huffington Post: "I love a good underdog story. The triumph at the end is wonderful, but I prefer the part where the character is some place downing vodka or home alone and jaded. It might be morbid, but who hasn’t had nights like that?"

In her drawings, Oubre seems to be imagining how a person finds themselves in moments of duress, whether the reason is illness, shame, heartache, loss or living paycheck to paycheck. "I love that these melancholy things connect us all despite age, race and distance," she added. "It may be in the form of a defeated stare or slouched, faceless frame, but that loneliness and ugliness and that shame and those drunken, awful stupors are very real and very humanizing."

Oubre says she wants to make art that dignifies "the often unpleasant (and sometimes whimsical) things we all experience." She cites lost love, self-loathing, resentment, misery, loneliness, suspension and human indignity as points of interest. As she's honed her craft, her mode of expression has teetered on the verge of hyperrealism, a fitting technique for her fascination with humanity.

"My take is that hyperrealism isn't art that mimics photography. It’s art that inspires senses of familiarity and surrealism in addition to appearing photo-like," she said. "Am I a hyperrealist? I wish. I’d love to be considered that. But I think my works have too many small telltale marks and weird smudges that won’t let them look too photorealistic, they are impressions of something recognizable ... familiar."

Oubre's disciplined method comes from years of trial and error. After taking an art history class at the age of 19, she entered into a complicated relationship with art making, first painting abstractly, then dabbling in mixed media. Eventually she began drawing with pencils and "things just popped," but this revelatory feeling was shortlived. "Dead-end jobs, years of feeling like an unaccomplished bum and unresolved feelings thwarted my art career," she admitted, but she eventually tried again.

"Last year I was signed to the Robert Fontaine Gallery and so many doors have opened since," she said. "I’m showing at SCOPE art Fair and Miami Project during Art Basel this year and after that is my next solo show in Miami followed by a group exhibit in Paris, and who knows what more. I’m hoping for the best and enjoying the ride."

All images courtesy of Ashley Oubre

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A sweet photo project by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta helps kids with cancer go to their "happy places" -- whether they're imaginary islands or real places in the big world around them.

"For young patients battling childhood cancer at the Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center, the practice of 'going to your happy place' is more than just a catchphrase," the CHOA blog explains. "It’s a coping mechanism that can release endorphins and assist with pain management."

From the little girl who dreams of visiting a magical land of sparkles to the boy who simply wants to go home to his own room, these brave kids rely on their imaginations to help push through tough times. This photo series helps bring the places they imagine to life.

In time for National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, watch the video above and keep scrolling for photos of the stories of five little cancer fighters in their happy places.

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Imagine a post-Tinder world, a dystopian society where finding a partner is a life-or-death task. If that task isn't completed, the punishment is being turned into an animal. Welcome to the world of "The Lobster."

If you've seen Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos' 2009 film "Dogtooth," about a pair of sheltered sisters raised by their parents' absurd rules and fabricated truths, then you know just what you're getting into with the filmmaker's latest in "The Lobster." Colin Farrell plays a single man who checks into The Hotel, where singles must go find their partner within a 45-day time limit. But outside of The Hotel are The Woods, where we find a band of rebels, known as the Loners, who fight for their independence.  

The Guardian debuted the first trailer for the sci-fi romantic satire, which is rich with dark comedy and disturbing shocks of violence. The film also stars Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux and Ben Whishaw. "The Lobster" will definitely be the most delightfully bizarre film about dating you'll see next year when it hits theaters -- we've seen it, trust us.

For more, head to The Guardian.

"The Lobster" opens in the U.S. in 2016.

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This post is part of a weekly series celebrating #ThrowbackThursday with reflections of our favorite childhood memories, past pop culture moments and more!     

Janet Jackson is officially back.  

It's been four long years since Janet has been on tour and seven since her last album release. The 49-year-old superstar is promoting her new album Unbreakable on a world tour, which is currently in Canada and will be coming to the U.S. September 11. Janet fans know exactly what to expect -- hit songs, but also epic choreography performed by the queen herself backed up by world-class dancers.

From her classic slow jams to her uptempo hits over the decades, Janet's versatility as an artist and a dancer solidifies her place as one of music's all-time legends. Her signature dance moves have held the test of time. 

In honor of Janet's return, we've compiled 15 of her best dance moments that will bring you back. Enjoy!

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Does the idea of older people having sex make you squeamish? Does it repel or gross you out? Do you regard it with disbelief and worthy only of a joke? Do you think of older people having sex as anything but hot, sensual, arousing and real? 

Montreal-based photographer and filmmaker Jean Malek shot an image that may just change your mind. The photo was a piece of commissioned artwork for a calendar on challenging taboos: Old people having sex was one of them.

Malek told The Huffington Post that the man and the woman in the photo had never met before the day of the shoot. Malek met them both first privately to explain what would take place. "I wanted to show that older people having sex is a sensual, beautiful thing," he said. "Even though no actual sex would be occurring in the process of the photo shoot."  The man is 92 and the woman 74.

Malek, who is 32, took great care in styling the photo. He set a dish of peppermints in the scene "because older people always carry peppermints with them," and he used vintage wallpaper with clocks to suggest "time passing and aging."  To create the suggestion that even couples together a long time can feel passion, he shot a portrait of the fully dressed couple and framed it. It gets "knocked down" along with the rest of the objects in the passion of the (fake) moment. 

The reaction to the photo has been overwhelmingly positive, he said. "It's a beautiful shot where we show something that really happens," he said. Readers, your thoughts?

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 Peter Sloterdijk is Germany’s most controversial thinker and media theorist. He has dared to challenge long-established divisions in traditional philosophy of body and soul, subject and object, culture and nature. His 1999 lecture on “Regulations for the Human Park,” in which he argued that genetic engineering was a continuation of human striving for self-creation, stirred up a tempest in a country known for Nazi eugenics. At the same time, he himself has concluded that "the taming of man has failed” as civilization’s potential for barbarism has grown ever greater. His seminal books include “Critique of Cynical Reason” and his trilogy, “Spheres.”

At a recent Berggruen Center on Philosophy and Culture symposium on humans and technology at Cambridge University’s St. John's School of Divinity, The WorldPost discussed with Sloterdijk the end of borders between humans and technology, the cloud, singularity and identity in the age of globalization.

For years now, you have been arguing that a new type of being was coming into existence, as the human species fuses with its technological prosthetics -- “anthropo-technology.” In this new being, man and machine are becoming one integrated, operative system linked by information.

All these years later, our consciousness has expanded into the cloud and the cloud into our consciousness; we have also learned to read, write and edit the genetic code, giving us the knowledge to purposively amend millennia of evolution.

How does your concept of “anthropo-technology” differ, or how is it similar, to that of futurist and AI proponent Ray Kurzweil’s idea of “singularity”? Kurzweil sees not only an epistemic break with the past, but a new phase of evolution altogether that reaches beyond consciousness into being and biology.

The concept of “anthropotechnics” rests on the hypothesis that the current psychophysical and social constitution of the species Homo sapiens -- note the evolutionist emphasis of this classification -- is based substantially on autogenic effects. In this context, the term “autogenic” means “brought about by the repercussions of actions on the actor.” The human being -- especially in so-called “advanced civilizations” -- is the animal that molds itself into its own pet. While evolution means adaptation to a natural environment, domestication means, from the outset, adaptation to the artificial. 

What we call “civilizations” in moral and cultural-theoretical terms are, from the perspective of biological anthropology (which deals with the animal/human distinction), the result of a long sequence of auto-domestications. Tens of thousands of years before the Greek oracle could write the motto “Know thyself” above the place of encounter with the truth, the great mothers, chieftains and sorcerers had applied a different one to the lives of their own kind: “Tame thyself!” This led to what would become known much later as “education” -- in Greek paideia, in Latin humanitas, in Sanskrit vinaya, in Chinese wenhua and in German Bildung.

While evolution means adaptation to a natural environment, domestication means, from the outset, adaptation to the artificial.

The term “anthropotechnics” points to the fact that the process of the humans’ domestication by humans, which began very early on, retains an open future. Firstly, it describes the largely unconscious secession of humans from pure animality -- whereby they became not only members of the “symbolic species,” a “ritual animal” (as Wittgenstein remarked on occasion), indeed a mythological narrative animal, but also a technical creature. Secondly, it points to future possibility of conscious self-shaping through forms of training of the mind, through chemical modifications, perhaps even through genetic impulses.

The concept of “anthropotechnics” thus refers to the entire autopoiesis, or self-creation, of “mankind” in its many thousands of cultural specializations. It is empirical, pluralistic and egalitarian from the ground up -- in the sense that all individuals, as heirs to the memory of mankind, are free to surpass themselves.

Ray Kurzweil’s idea of “singularity,” by contrast, contains futuristic, monistic and elitist elements. Although “singularity,” according to its logical and rhetorical design, is meant to integrate mankind as a whole, it is evident that it could only encompass a tiny group of exceptional transhuman individuals.

Kurzweil argues that expanding our minds into the cloud and vice versa will create more diversity and less uniformity because we will have access to almost infinite information with which to fertilize our imagination and construct our personality. Do you agree with this line of thinking?

In speaking of the “cloud,” Kurzweil positions himself in a field that is preformatted by traditional philosophy. With his concept of the “objective spirit,” Hegel outlined the formal premise of a “cloud”: these consist in the “expressions” of the spirit, which have solidified into institutions. Institutions are programs for cultural transmission handed down to future generations.

It should not be especially difficult to develop the concepts of “spirit” and “institution” into the concept of the cloud. Clouds are liquidized institutions, as it were, in which the mass of prior experience that is capable and worthy of transmission is made available for later interested parties.

The difference between a cloud and a school reveals itself in the fact that in the former, the autodidactic (and eo ipso auto-domesticative) factor increases -- whereas schools, as prototypes of formal institutions, are principally heterodidactic (authoritative) and conservative (hetero-domesticative) in their structures.

We don’t know today whether the clear sky, or the cloud that covers it, is the information.

What clouds and schools have in common is that both wrestle with a nonsense problem: schools can never be entirely sure of passing on what is worth knowing, and cloud visitors are all the more incapable of distinguishing with certainty between nonsense and no nonsense. One part of the modern-postmodern situation is the instability of the difference between institutionalized and de-institutionalized knowledge.

 In this respect, one must take the cloud metaphor seriously in a literal sense: clouds cover up the clear sky. The current infospheric encasement of the human field is the continuation of the “objective spirit” by other means -- and today, those are digital means.

It had already become evident in the 19^th century how far the “objective spirit” can transform into an ideology and communicative plague (propaganda). The first half of the 20^th century belonged entirely to the conflict among (pre-digital) ideological clouds. The second half of the 20^th century brought -- in the form of the Cold War -- a form of ceasefire in the war of clouds.

To counter the new empires of lie and perspectival distortion, a renewal of the idea of enlightenment is indispensable.

It is unforeseeable whether the hyper-cloud of the 21^st century will end the regional immersion in institutionalized untruths that was typical of the 20^th century. Nor do we know today whether the clear sky, or the cloud that covers it, is the information. 

Anyone who uses the word “cloud” in the singular risks falling prey to mystification. At present, once more, there are several cloud systems, and what we once called the Cold War now returns as the war of clouds. One of the nasty surprises of the incipient 21^st century is that the demons of propaganda have returned in a digitally updated form. To counter the new empires of lie and perspectival distortion, a renewal of the idea of enlightenment is indispensable.

Perhaps a better phrase than artificial intelligence would be “intelligent artifice”; and for humans in this future, “artificial humans.” In other words, the “authentic self” and being-in-the-world is no longer separated from our tools. It is “the world-in-being” as well as vice versa?

“Artificial intelligence” is a hybrid term for the long-familiar phenomenon that in artifacts (tools, works and institutions), the intentions of the producers survive almost independently of their products. That is precisely what was expressed in Hegel’s concept of objective spirit. What is objective is the intelligence invested in tools, works and institutions by their producers, which subsequently separated from them to be absorbed and applied by other intelligences (subjective spirit, pupils, users).

Now, Cecil Rhodes’ dictum “Expansion is all” only applies to the sphere of the political with significant qualifications. For the current worlds of money and information, by contrast, it is all the more valid. The spheres of artificial intelligence and intelligent artificiality develop of their own accord an expansionist constitution that has increasingly permeated all aspects of existence. In this sense, existence in the technical world per se is characterized by ever-greater artificialization. Modern and postmodern humans not only live in the “house of Being” (as Heidegger called language), but increasingly in the abode of the technosphere.

Identity in the Age of Globalization

You have noted that, since the rupture that gave birth to modernity, human civilization has moved from the era of “humanism and the nation state” to “ecology and globalization,” from the “agrarian patriotism” in which identity is tied to the earthy virtue of place to the “global self.” What is the locus of identity for the global self if it has been de-territorialized? Not in the heavens, but in the cloud? 

 More than a few contemporary thinkers have defined the 20^th century as an age of global mobilization. Actually, this period -- or rather, that beginning with the Industrial Revolution of the 18^th century -- saw the dissolution of the immemorial alliance between humans and territory (Oswald Spengler spoke of culture and landscape) that had defined the age of agrarian sedentarism. Thus begins the adventure of post-sedentary life forms -- and eo ipso of liquidized identities. These not infrequently appear in a costume of nomadic romanticism. It feeds off the notion that the moderns’ constant state of transit is accompanied by the return to a deeper truth about human beings.

In this respect, the philosopher Vilém Flusser probably hit the mark when he stated that humans do not necessarily belong to a territorialized nation (a “home”). This was exemplified by the Judaism of the diaspora era -- but they need at all times and in all places a suitable home in which to anchor themselves existentially. Homelessness constitutes a worse fate than statelessness. What we call a residence is the place in which one gains relief through habituation.

This (Heidegger-inspired) interpretation of the human being as a residential being corresponds to the concept of “connected isolations” developed some decades ago by the American architectural firm Morphosis to describe the modus vivendi of post-sedentary “society.” The phrase points to the modern challenge of creating a balance between isolation (literally: island formation) and connectivity (context formation).

Isn’t the dialectic of yearning for belonging in such a vacuum of community creating a backlash? We see it today with religious fervor and nationalism all around. Is this a search for the security of identity and recognition in the “womb” of the volk, or your “bubbles” which are the containers of identity and meaning? What ought to be the response to this new tribalism?

The same applies to the traditional tension between the will to independence and the will to belong. So-called “new tribalism” is a virtually inevitable reaction to the progressive individualization of modernity. It tries to generate synthetic social bonds where the natural ones have been broken. Only future historical experience can show whether such bonds can be produced without regressive fictions.

'New tribalism' is a virtually inevitable reaction to the progressive individualization of modernity.

The most malign form of regressive political factionalism manifests itself today in the new terror tribes, which are termed, in some cases rightly, a return of fascism. Fascism (as it emerged in Europe in the shadow of World War I, as a rejection of demobilization) is a martial tribalism whose ambition is to reform the whole of “society” on the model of a combat league.

Order and Chaos in Modern China

Finally, a question on East and West in this context. You have argued that the “excess reality” mobilized by modern energies outstrips any narrative of origins and continuity that can tie a globally synchronized world together. The steady disruption of these energies has led to persistent asymmetry and disequilibrium, a lack of balance. “All that is solid melts into air.” All attempts at re-founding legitimacy and narratives of origin are frustrated.

Thus, there is only a kind of corrosive entropy away from order that saps “cosmological confidence.” I wonder how true this is in China? You might say the Chinese Communist Party (like the “institutional civilization” that preceded it throughout many dynasties) sees its main task as resisting the flow of entropy by seeking to establish and maintain equilibrium -- a political rudder, so to speak, to keep the ship from capsizing amid the swells of unleashed modern energies.

To do so, it aims above all to prevent any counter-hegemony (or worse, no ideological hegemony) from arising out of the chaos by grafting the narrative origins of the present system’s legitimacy and continuity -- Mao -- to the narrative of China’s millennia-long Confucian and Daoist cosmology. This bound the Chinese together as a civilization long before the nation-state and mass media.

There is great disorder under Heaven, and the situation is excellent.
Mao

Unlike the West, in China today there seems to be a kind of inner-civilizational confidence -- not a lack of cosmological confidence -- that prevails. Perhaps the West is only experiencing something new that China has experienced over and over again for 2000 years -- many episodes of upheaving change over centuries have led to an obsession with order.

China, perhaps, has learned to maintain civilizational continuity after perennial bouts of disruption. In more recent times, remember Mao: “All under the heavens are in disorder; the situation is excellent.” Mao was the deluge. Now China authorities are attempting to refound legitimacy and continuity by linking the future to the past. Circular time still maintains in China, and so does balance against asymmetry.

Might all this suggest that in the East, the old patterns of symmetry, balance and circular time remain? Perhaps the “myth,” the noble lie close enough to the truth, still works in China? Maybe the modern West is just too young yet to gauge the whole picture?

As a non-Sinologist and admiring observer of the “Chinese phenomenon,” I tend to be restrained with judgments about the course of events in that part of the civilization universe.

It seems to me, however, that my statements about the growing asymmetries in the process of modernity are also applicable to China. China may have averted a demographic disaster in the last half-century, but its contribution to environmental disasters -- local and global -- seems immense.

It could be that in the longer term, China will form the decisive counterweight to the Jurassic Park of Western modernity.

For the political and cultural intelligence of the future, one can say with a degree of certainty that, in the coming century, it will develop a conceptual system of coordinates based on the difference between the sustainable and the non-sustainable. It is reasonable to assume that China’s vote will be of increasing importance in this context. The rest of the world will learn to see China not only as the paradigm of cunning despotism, but also as a civilization that affords the principles of symmetry, balance, circularity and continuity an appropriate status -- in contrast to Western nations, which are less and less in control of their great experiment with asymmetry, imbalance, irreversibility and discontinuity. It could be that in the longer term, China will form the decisive counterweight to the Jurassic Park of Western modernity. 

At the same time, it cannot be overlooked that China itself has incorporated many motifs from the Western civilization of asymmetry. These, as China’s political leadership has evidently recognized, contain a high explosive potential. In light of this, it is a sign of the civilization-critical wisdom of tomorrow to remain alert as a “comparatist” of the Western and Eastern paths.

This interview was translated by Wieland Hoban and is part of the WorldPost Series on Exponential Technology.

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Here's a sight for sore eyes. 

China held a military parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Thursday, commemorating the 70th anniversary of its victory over Japan in World War II. The event was widely seen as a way for China to flex its muscles in the international arena.

Photos revealed a highly aesthetically pleasing event, with bright colors, sharp lines and perfect symmetry contrasted with the red stands, from where Chinese officials, foreign dignitaries and members of the public watched the parade. 

The approximately 90-minute long spectacle was the largest military parade in Chinese history, according to CNN, and featured 12,000 troops from more than 15 countries, 200 fighter jets, and 70,000 doves and balloons. Over 41,000 people, most of whom were from the military, took part in the event, The Guardian noted in its live-blog. 

The impressive show didn't come without strings attached, however. To ensure clear skies in the otherwise heavily polluted country, the government closed down Beijing's international airport for three hours on the day of the parade and limited the number of private vehicles that could enter the city starting two weeks prior to the event, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The government also cut off entries and exits to the streets and closed down subway stations the night before the parade, leaving many residents and tourists stranded overnight and unable to return home, according to a CNN video shot on Tuesday.

Thirty foreign dignitaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir, attended the event. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not go, per The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post reported Wednesday that almost all European leaders declined to attend. Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair was seen in the audience, however, according to The Guardian. U.S. President Barack Obama also declined his invitation, but sent Max Baucus, the ambassador to China, in his place. 

See more photos of the event's perfect symmetry below:

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Wim Wenders is a name that signals an immediate flow of love and admiration from cinephiles and road movie fans. From the road films that defined much of his career, including 1975's "Alice in the Cities" and Palme d'Or winner "Paris, Texas," to his most revered masterpiece, 1984's "Wings of Desire," to documentaries "Buena Vista Social Club" and 2011's "Pina," one of the first 3D arthouse films, the filmmaker has made sure to continually reinvent himself throughout his 40-plus years in the business. Whether it was embracing the spontaneity of filming on the road, adopting HD video or implementing 3D into his work in unconventional ways, Wenders' creative appetite has always been satiated by the unexplored.

His upcoming drama,"Every Thing Will Be Fine," starring James Franco and Rachel McAdams, is attempting to change the conversation and reception of 3D filmmaking, something Wenders is a strong advocate of. "I have to talk so much about convincing people it will be worth it because it’s in their mind that 3D is not for them, especially in the art house," Wenders told The Huffington Post.

The filmmaker sat down with HuffPost to discuss his hopes for the medium while reflecting on his career, which is currently being celebrated at IFC Center's monthlong touring retrospective. "Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road" will screen 12 films, including 11 restorations of his classics and rarities, in New York before traveling across 15 states. Here's our full conversation with Wenders:

This retrospective is so exciting, since it’s touring across the country. Traveling through America has been a major theme in your work.

True. It reminds me, the first time I traveled with my films was in 1978. We went through the entire Midwest at a dozen universities. That was the first time I toured with any of my films in America. We actually had the prints in our truck. Lots of Q&As. Stayed in lots of fancy, or not-at-all fancy little hotels, because you didn’t have all that much money at the time. At the time, we traveled with a three-pack of “The American Friend," "Kings of the Road” and “Wrong Move.”

So much of your filmography focuses on the wanderer searching for themselves throughout their travels. What first drew you to the the misfit traveler and how do you think it’s evolved over the course of your career?

I didn’t start out like that. I was a little unhappy because I felt I was, strangely, imitating other movies. My very first film, “Summer in the City,” looked like a Cassavetes movie. “The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick” looked like a Hitchcock film. And the next one, “Scarlet Letter,” looked like a historic epic. Then I said, “Wait a minute. If this is what it’s all about, filmmaking to imitate other movies, that’s not for me, then.” I really wanted to find out what I could do on my own without any model. That’s when I shot -- I said, “If this movie’s going to be one that nobody else could have made except me, then I’d continue filmmaking.” That became “Alice in the Cities” and that was my first road movie. And I really discovered it innocently on my own. I think I didn’t know you could make a film on the road, traveling and changing as it went along. That was a big discovery. I kept shooting like this for almost a decade on the road. That became, in a way, my trademark. At least for a while.

Were you conscious of it becoming your trademark at the time?

No. I felt like a fish in the water because I finally knew something that really corresponded to me and that I felt I didn’t owe to anybody else. And you know, road movies are really a modernized version of Westerns. I’d grown up with Western movies, I loved them. But of course I wouldn’t want to shoot any because today a Western would be a historic film. And I’m not so much friends with horses. I like cows and I like rock ‘n’ roll. Road movies, they just combined everything I liked: driving, traveling, listening to music and sort of going into the unknown. I didn’t know it was going to be a trademark. Then I think it was critics and the audience who sort of classified it.   

How do you feel about that? Would you prefer your work to not have labels?

As soon as you realize you’ve been classified, you want to get out of that. So I did get out of that, but I still made another road movie. I think I made the ultimate road movie in 1991 with “Until the End of the World” where we traveled once around the globe in many, many different cars and ships and trains and planes. Then I realized there were other kinds of movies to make.

What you said about going into the unknown in your films, did that at all reflect your approach to making them?

I like the kind of filmmaking where you as a filmmaker and your team would sort of make an experience and go on an adventure, and not just pretend to have an adventure. I think the audience knows if the filmmakers really are on an adventure or produced an adventure. I was much more in favor of going for the adventure with my team and actors, and being involved in it. I always felt this was more intoxicating than pretending. That’s why I’ve been doing a lot more documentaries lately over the past 20 years, because it seemed in the documentary field it was easier to uphold that maxim to have an adventure.

You’re also an avid photographer. That medium has changed so much as digital photography has become ubiquitous and entire films are being shot on iPhones. What do you think of those changes in relation to filmmaking?

It would’ve been unimaginable 20, 30, 50 years ago that you would say people walked around with phones that had cameras in them and give them access to any encyclopedia and movies and music. I mean, it was science fiction. I actually showed that phenomenon in my only science-fiction film in “Until the End of the World.” People were running around with these mobile phones that had screens on them and they actually saw their own dreams on them -- we’re not quite there yet. Today, it’s amazing: every person is tied to their machine. It’s scary. So making movies on these machines now is natural. I’m also teaching films and my students and I make lots of movies on iPhones. I’m aware of the medium, and at the same time it’s still a little painful for me when I see people using it to actually watch movies that were made with an intention to show images that were supposed to be seen on the screen. But then again, [points to his Apple Watch] I can go tinier. 

Would you watch a movie on there?

I wouldn’t for the hell watch anything else, but sometimes news. It’s scary that it gets even smaller.

But you have embraced some new technology, such as 3D.

I always loved technology. I was always a geek. I was the very first filmmaker who adopted high-definition video. “Until the End of the World” was the very first film that used digital cinematography, period. And “Buena Vista Social Club” was the first all-digital documentary out in theaters. And “Pina” was the first 3D film. So I always loved technology when I had the impression it allowed us to do things we weren’t able to do before. Sometimes that’s true, sometimes that’s not. 

Looking back on your career, what would you had done differently if you had access to advanced technology at the time?

I don’t know. I’ve always tried to work on the cutting edge of what was possible. Sometimes the cutting edge was also a strange link to the past. Like “Wings of Desire” was shot in black and white. The director of photography [Henri Alekan] was 80 years old and had started his career in the silent movies. But on the other hand, it was cutting edge in terms of how you can move cameras. We invented cranes that didn’t exist yet and Steadicam didn’t exist yet. We moved the camera in ways that nobody had seen before. But at the same time, it was very old-fashioned aesthetics. So sometimes it’s a mixture of what’s possible and what one would like to conserve of the past.

How else do you want to innovate moving forward?

I’m a big defender of 3D cinema and I’m shocked and sad about what is actually being done with this fantastic medium, and how much is going to the dogs because there’s not enough good stuff produced with it. A lot of people are now turned off and think a 3D movie by definition must be garbage. I just shot the first intimate drama in 3D in “Everything Will Be Fine.” [...] There’s this huge prejudice against one of the greatest inventions in the history of cinema. Now the industry is either ruining it or not accepting it as language. They just use it as effect and that drives me crazy. I really, really hope it still has a chance to catch on and be used by documentary filmmakers, authors and independent filmmakers. I don’t know why everybody is shying away from it. Everybody thinks it can only be used for effect.

Is that why you chose to use it in a drama?

Yeah, because I was convinced it is a medium that gets you much closer to people. It’s a medium that you can use for very intimate purposes. Acting in front of a 3D camera is a whole new territory. In most 3D films you see, almost all of them, there is no real serious acting happening. Most actors in 3D movies are caricatures. Even somebody as great as Johnny Depp as a pirate is just caricature. But 3D acting is really unbelievable because they see so much more and see so precisely. They see every tiny moment of over-acting, they see every mistake. They’re almost like x-rays, you see through to people’s souls. That is a propensity that is not really being discovered in cinema. 

Will you use it again in your next film, “The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez”?

As long as it’s still possible. I’ve now shot five films already in 3D. Well, two features and three short films. “The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez,” that’s the third feature now in 3D but I didn’t count it in because I’m still editing it. It’s a drama. Only two people. It’s the last dialogue of a man and a woman before the end of the world. 

Jean-Luc Godard is one of the only other art house filmmakers to use 3D besides you.

Yes. And he used it in his very own way. You can always count on him to be quite … destructive at the same time, on the medium.

You wouldn’t employ 3D in the ways he did in “Goodbye to Language”?

I think it’s a great medium for narrative film, and his film is more like an essay film. And “Pina” was really a documentary. I think really as a narrative medium, it still needs to be discovered.

 This interview has been edited and condensed.

"Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road" is now playing at IFC Center in New York. Head to their website for the full schedule.

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The WorldPost's "Through Your Lens" series brings you mesmerizing photos taken by social media users in different countries around the world every week.  

Cats may be known for their quick reflexes and flexible bodies, but they're probably most universally valued for one thing -- their companionship. The photos below show our favorite cats are heavily involved in our daily lives. You'll see them perching atop a fence playing with an elderly man in Ireland or lounging in an outdoor chair in Tokyo. They'll also respect your me-time. You'll also see them wandering alone, perching on rocks by the sea in Greece or crawling across rooftops in Italy.

Instagram users from all around the world submitted photos of adorable cats against equally stunning backdrops. Whether you're a cat or a dog person, we're sure these photos of these adorable kitties will warm up your heart.

London, England

Hydra, Greece

Chefchaouen, Morocco

Vietnam

Ireland

Paris, France

Scotland

Athens, Greece

Italy

Moscow, Russia

Cuba

Istanbul, Turkey

Tokyo, Japan

Check out the WorldPost on Instagram for more vibrant photography and tag your Twitter and Instagram photos with #WorldPostGram so we can feature them in our next post. 

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Polish photographer Anna Mika knows how to get the most out of an abandoned setting. The crumbling buildings in her work look beautiful and inviting, despite the creepy nature usually associated with vacated spaces. 

Mika told The Huffington Post that her photos are mainly of mines, hospitals, factories and palaces in Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic. "I graduated with a degree in history and love the architecture of the older buildings," said Mika. "My favorite thing to photograph is hospitals, because in some place you can find hospital stuff and patient cards still! I like it when things are still there -- like furniture or photos."

In one of Mika's photos of St. George's church in the Czech Republic, it seems like some ghosts were left behind. "An artist [Jakub Hadrava] made [these sculptures] to save this church. Everyone who visited left some money to rescue the church from destruction."  

While Mika says she wants people to see the beauty in each building, she also wants them to remember the locations for what they once were. 

"People forget the history of older places. Everyone is looking for something new --new connections, gadgets, relationships, etc," says Mika. "I think it is worth reminding people where they come from, reminding them of the history of their cities, their factory, coal mines. These places are still beautiful -- even if they are almost gone.

See more of Mika's beautiful work below: 

H/T Bored Panda

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Joan Rivers left this world one year ago today, but it still feels like we'll see her next resurgence any day now. Surely she's about to make another return to "The Tonight Show," where she'll unleash barbs about Donald Trump's campaign and North West's soon-to-be baby brother. Obviously Stephen Colbert will invite her onto "The Late Show" in lieu of her frequent quips with David Letterman. It's about time for new episodes of "In Bed with Joan" and another tour, right? And, of course, any day now I'll glimpse her fur coat prancing through the halls of HuffPost Live, where she was a regular guest.  

For anyone else who pretended Rivers would spring back to life after last August's botched throat surgery, her absence is just now setting in. As much as I'd like to think she's on an extended vacation, anyone familiar with Rivers' career knows that she takes no breaks. (After all, she was still winning Grammys after her death.) But things are happening in the world that demand commentary from the first female comic to headline Carnegie Hall. This is the first presidential election she won't commentate in who knows how long. Instead of lambasting the Emmy red carpet's fashion choices in a few weeks, she'll presumably be part of the show's In Memoriam segment. And who will tell us what to think when Oscar season boots up and there are umpteen award-show faux pas to parse through? 

When beloved actors or musicians die unexpectedly, we find a shred of consolation in whatever fresh material will be released posthumously. Many argued that Paul Walker's death, for example, is part of what made "Furious 7" the most lucrative installment in that behemoth franchise. Twenty-one years after Kurt Cobain's suicide, fans still eat up any of his lost music that surfaces. But the ever-transparent Rivers, whose insightful 2010 documentary showcases the elaborate filing system she used to catalog every joke she wrote, isn't someone who'd keep a secret comedy album buried within her Marie Antoinette-inspired Manhattan penthouse. There is nothing to keep Rivers alive but the remains of her cultural impact. That leaves the rest of us to endure 17 Republican nominees sparring about anchor babies without the respite of Rivers' quick-witted scorn. 

What's suffered the most without Rivers is undoubtably "Fashion Police," the E! snark-fest that Rivers was the face of since its launch in 2010. The show underwent a brief hiatus until Kathy Griffin -- long considered Rivers' comedic heir thanks to her likeminded infatuation with celebrity culture -- took over hosting duties. The show saw one implosion after the next: Griffin, who reportedly angled for the job while Rivers was on her death bed, lasted a mere seven episodes before calling it quits. Kelly Osbourne, one of the program's original moderators, dropped out shortly thereafter. Rumors of feuds swirled. "This never would have happened if my mother was alive," Melissa Rivers, the show's executive producer and new co-host, said in June.

This is all a distended way of saying that life is no fun without Joan Rivers' biting, business-savvy persona around to hand us things to argue about. For better or worse, I wonder whether she'd land in hot water over Caitlyn Jenner zingers, having called Michelle Obama a "tranny" last year. Would she ease up on her pal Trump, having won "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2009, or would she go all in on, say, his recent interview with Sarah Palin, whom she called "stupid" in 2011? And oh, the things she could have said about Miley Cyrus' wardrobe at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards. ("Every time this girl twerks in public, an angel gets knocked up," Rivers scoffed after the singer's VMA performance with Robin Thicke.)

I read a great deal about Rivers in the wake of her death, but one sentence that Phillip Maciak wrote for Slate struck me in particular: "The central irony of Rivers’ face, as it’s evolved over the years, is that the more artificial and mask-like her appearance became, the fewer and fewer shits she seemed to give about what anybody thought of her." She lived to the ripe age of 81, but she deserved another decade to bathe in the heyday she hadn't experienced since before Johnny Carson blacklisted her in 1986. She deserved to let her already sparse boundaries lend her even more brashness and more relevance. In a way, Amy Schumer is carrying some of Rivers' torch. Either way, it won't burn out. She is our dearly departed guardian angel of truth.

"That's what's so wonderful about life -- you must always have something else you want to do," Rivers said on HuffPost Live in 2013. Her list included a return to Broadway, her own late-night show (again) and getting laid. Whether those things were feasible doesn't matter. Rivers was always one of our most aspirational celebrities, constantly seeking a new trail to blaze. If only we could see what the next one had looked like. 

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Imagine this: one day, you open Instagram to post a photo of your cat snoozing on an armchair, only to find a crop of dazzling new filters: Picasso, for example; van Gogh; Kandinsky. What if rendering your everyday surroundings in the familiar, yet strange, palettes of famous artists was as simple as selecting one from a menu?

Of course, such a task is far from simple, but a recent paper from a German research team suggests it's not entirely impossible. 

In the paper, "A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style," Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker and Matthias Bethge demonstrate a visual model meant to allow the content and style of an image to be separated and combined in various iterations. Inputting a photo of a row of houses, the researchers used their model to blend the content of the photo with the distinctive visual styles of famous artists such as Edvard Munch and Wassily Kandinsky. 

This process, of course, by no means mirrors the quick, easy application of an Instagram filter. As The Observer's Ryan Steadman points out, "the process takes about an hour to complete."

What's more, the authors write, "image content and style cannot be completely disentangled [...] there usually does not exist an image that perfectly matches both constraints at the same time." 

The model works not through a simple filtration -- the authors point to non-photorealistic rendering and texture transfer as methods for stylizing photos in a more straightforward vein -- but by processing each input image in layers, extracting characteristic visual components in a hierarchy.

In other words, the authors weren't simply applying a filter, but making choices about which input -- style or content -- to weight more heavily in creating the composite image, and aiming for a balance between the two.

The results, as demonstrated in the paper, are stunning, and it's tempting to quickly leap to the possibility of an app that could make us all look like the next Picasso -- or at least give us a hint of what it would look like if Picasso painted our cat sleeping on the armchair. "The group should probably try to set up a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg," advised Steadman. 

In the age of Instagram, we’re all talented photographers -- or at least we’re a little better at convincing ourselves we are. Throwing a Valencia filter on a snapshot may make your amateur pic look a little more polished, but it’s a faint imitation of the care and craft that professional photographers infuse into their art. Blending "The Scream" with your own photo, on the other hand, may bear little resemblance at all to how the real Edvard Munch would portray that scene, and it certainly wouldn't be an expression of your own creativity.

The original authors aren't necessarily making such startup-friendly claims. Their stated goals lean more academic, as they write that their model "provides a new, fascinating tool to study the perception and neural representation of art, style and content-independent image appearance in general." The lab has previously geared similar studies toward ends that should delight art history nerds, such as a paper on using a similar model to determine the artist of a particular work using algorithmic stylistic analysis.

Not as kitschy-fun as remixing your selfies through a Kandinsky filter, perhaps, but in the long run, probably a lot more beneficial for the art world.

H/T The Observer

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SEOUL, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Weeks after South Korea began blasting K-pop and anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border with the reclusive North, a decades-old propaganda war may have erupted on a new front - South Korean karaoke parlors.

Socialist sing-songs are unlikely to resonate in the liberal, capitalist South, but Seoul's National Security Law has since 1948 penalized people for distributing North Korean propaganda and lawmaker Hong Moon-pyo, of the ruling Saenuri Party, said the songs were like poison.

North and South Korea are still technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

"Long live, long live, general Kim Jong Il!" goes one of songs available on select karaoke machines in the heart of Seoul, Hong told Reuters.

 "Dear leader" Kim is the late father of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, part of a dynasty that is considered divine in bellicose North Korea, which has threatened to destroy Seoul in a sea of flames.

"These karaoke machines have the power to break down our mentality and ideas. They are like a poison mushroom that can infect 50 million South Koreans," Hong said.

His office said it was not sure how widespread the use of the karaoke propaganda was - it had only found two so far, both in areas of the capital frequented by ethnic Koreans from northeast China and North Korean defectors. People on the streets do not seem too concerned so far.

But the fact that the songs, which include propaganda classics such as "Glory to the Dear Leader" and "Living well in the People's Paradise," could be sung in the South was almost as "shocking" as the North's nuclear weapons program, Hong's office said in a statement.

Hong said he had hired ethnic-Korean Chinese immigrants to secretly visit karaoke bars in areas where he believed the machines were in use.

"Like water soaking through a sponge, singing songs that praise North Korea can slowly penetrate our minds and make us weak," he said. 

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If you have a cat, you probably already know that those sneaky little fuzzballs are living far better lives than their human friends. They nap in the sunny patch on the carpet, they nap on your nice new sofa, they chase catnip-stuffed toys and eat hearty meals twice daily. It's never their turn to do the dishes.

So who better than cats to advise us humans on how to live our best lives?

Though he's not a cat himself, writer Francesco Marciuliano, who's previously penned kitty classics such as I Could Pee on This and Other Poems by Cats, has the necessary insight into the feline mind. In his new book, You Need More Sleep: Advice from Cats (Chronicle Books), Marciuliano reveals the simple secrets that allow cats to reign as emperors over their tiny domains.

We've excerpted a few tidbits of this advice.

All images from You Need More Sleep: Advice From Cats by Francesco Marciuliano, courtesy Chronicle Books. 

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Of all the colors in the rainbow, I can’t think of one that holds more captivating baby name possibilities than the royal color purple. From the soft Lavender and Lilac to the vivid Violet and Plum, many baby names show a real passion for the various shades of purple. 

Violet

By far the most popular of the purple names, the sweet and lovely Violet is now in the Top 75 on the U.S. Social Security list -- rising from a low of 996 in 1981 -- and Number 7 on Nameberry! Some credit must go to Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck for choosing the name in 2005. It’s a favorite of kidlit authors and other celebrity parents.

Mauve

The gentle, sentimentally nostalgic Mauve, similar in sound to the growing-in-popularity Maude and Maeve, gave its name to a whole decade: the 1890’s was known as the Mauve Decade. Its Spanish translation is Malva -- offering another purple family possibility.

Magenta

The strong purplish-red Magenta was seen in Harry Potter as Magenta Comstock, an experimental artist whose portraits’ eyes could follow a viewer all the way home and who was ‘Wizard of the Month’ in 2007. The color was named for the town of Magenta, Italy, and would fit in well with other Mag-starting names.

Lilac

The fabulously fragrant Lilac could be in line to be come the next Lila or Lily or Violet. Actor Stephen Moyer has already chosen it for his daughter. The floral lilac has ties to Greek mythology, is considered a harbinger of spring, and in the language of flowers symbolizes first love.

Fuchsia

With its tricky spelling, Fuchsia has not found many takers as a baby name, though singer Sting did use it for his now grown daughter -- who currently goes by Kate -- inspired by a character in the Gormenghast trilogy. The name Fuchsia is derived from a plant named for early German botanist Leonhart Fuchs, becoming an official color name in 1892.

Amethyst

Gem names like Pearl and Ruby are beginning to be joined by more exotic ones like Topaz, Sapphire and Amethyst. The purple birthstone for February could make a unique choice for a girl born in that month. Never in the Top 1000, it is now Number 798 on Nameberry. Trivia tidbit: It’s the real first name of Australian rapper Iggy Azalea.

Lavender

A lacy vintage name that has the Nameberry stamp of approval, it’s now at Number 527 on on the site.  This is one of the many nostalgic names we can thank J. K. Rowling for reviving, via the Harry Potter witch Lavender Brown. Lavender is also a best friend to Roald Dahl’s Matilda and a character in Anne of Green Gables.

Indigo

The appealing and evocative Indigo, which is a deep blue-purple dye from plants native to India, is a particularly striking choice for both boys and girls. Lou Diamond Phillips used it for his daughter. It’s especially popular for girls in England at the moment, where it ranks at Number 577.

Orchid

One of the most exotic of blooms, Orchid is a shade of purple, even though the flower itself appears in different colors. With many parents seeking O names, some might consider this striking choice. In the Language of Flowers, the Orchid symbolizes love, beauty, refinement, thoughtfulness, mature charm and having many children.

Plum

Pretty plum is showing up more and more frequently as a middle name choice.  It was first noticed on Brit-born novelist Plum Sykes, who was born Victoria and given that nickname via the variety of fruit called the Victoria Plum.  Also the nickname of novelist P. G. Wodehouse, it wasn’t identified as a color name until 1805.

Iolanthe

The romantic Iolanthe is derived from the Greek words for violet flower, as is Ianthe, which was used by the poet Shelley for one of his daughters. Iolanthe is a comic opera by Gilbert & Sullivan and also a character in the X-Men universe. The Spanish version Yolanda is yet another dramatic twist on Violet.

Aubergine

No, we neither expect nor advise you to name your child Eggplant, but the French version of the word does have a nice ring to it, a la the food-related Amandine and Clementine.  But since it’s used as the vegetable word in England as well as France, we don’t recommend it for use in those countries.

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In a recent ARTnews essay, Wangechi Mutu -- the artist of the work above -- implored her fellow feminists to not only think deeply about the amount of women artists active in the contemporary art world, but also the way women are portrayed in artworks themselves. 

“How often do women appear in art, and how do they sit and perform in the works?" she asks. "Is the figure always represented as docile, inactive, sexualized, or subordinate? Does she have an inferior role in a larger narrative that emphasizes the superiority of the male protagonist? Is her appearance stereotypical in terms of weight, skin color, hair texture, and facial expression?"

Do you know what Mutu's talking about here? Shall we take a five-second tour through art history to refresh our memories? 

In part inspired by Mutu's words, Rhia Hurt and Mary Negro, directors of Trestle Gallery, set out to exhibit a show that puts the nonconforming body on display. Bodies of color, queer bodies, bodies with disabilities, bodies that don't conform to societal norms and conventions.

To curate the exhibit, titled "Body Utopia," they enlisted queer, feminist Brooklyn-based painter Clarity Haynes. Haynes, who has worked continuously on "The Breast Portrait Project" since the 1990s, focuses her practice on fondly visualizing the beautiful figures that are so often rendered invisible by mainstream culture. In Haynes' words: "I think of my portraits as a cultural intervention -- 'before' pictures lovingly drawn and painted, meditative descriptions of specific bodies that need no correction."

For Haynes, it was crucial to include both a diverse array of artists and a wide range of represented subjects. "Often we think about the nonconforming body as being represented from the outside, an external view," she explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "And that is important. But I’m also interested in how we (and by we, I mean all human beings) experience embodiment in an internal, felt way." 

"As Mutu points out, prejudices and constrictions regarding the kinds of bodies we’re allowed to see and create are strongly entrenched in the art world, just as in society at large," Haynes continued. "I believe we need imagery and artwork about the nonconforming body because it expresses a totality -- a depth -- a truthfulness in our experience, that patriarchal mandates do not permit us."

So, she selected five artists to join her in displaying their body positive work, projecting their own images the ways they want them to be seen. The following six artists, merging the personal and political, render bodies that are willful, active, and dominant. Superior. Nonconformist. Free. 

Get to know the artists, with introductions provided by Haynes, below. 

BODY UTOPIA runs from September 25- October 30, 2015 at Trestle Gallery in New York.  

Also on HuffPost: 

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The gender gap pervades every industry and measurable statistic of modern life, except maybe roundups of gynecology patients. The theater is one of our worst examples. "But! But! ... " a dude might stutter, on the verge of some real A+ mansplaining. "There are plenty of ingenues and women complicating the plot for male leads!"

That's true-ish. And yet the lack of women behind the scenes allows for a Tony Awards season dominated by white men (see: most directing and writing categories in most years of the Tony Awards). While festivals like Fringe work to include a wider range of voices, overall far too little progress has been made in terms of gender parity. Or, to be a bit more specific and cite a study from the U.K., we've only made around one percent of progress in 10 years.

With this daunting history in mind, The Huffington Post focused on work written (and often also performed) by women at the 2015 Fringe festival in New York City. Here are eight wildly talented female playwrights on the process of creating their shows, the theatrical iteration of institutionalized sexism and what they're doing to change it. 

Lisa Lewis, "Schooled"

Do you know how in the beginning of "An Education," Carey Mulligan is all bright yet naïve and Peter Sarsgaard is strangely charming yet predatory (because Peter Sarsgaard is strangely charming yet predatory in literally every role he plays)? "Schooled" is decidedly the opposite of that troubling dynamic. Lisa Lewis's play works within the structure of the pseudo-romantic teacher-student relationship, and then flips it on its head. She sends up a complex reading of the well-trod power play, in which there is no predator or victim, but an intricate intertwining of ambitions from which no ego emerges unscathed. 

There is undoubtedly a boys' club, and in order to 'penetrate' it, I've got to adopt a persona at times that plays by their rules.

What inspired you to write "Schooled"?

The idea for the piece came from the experiences that myself and my peers had studying playwriting and screenwriting at NYU, both inside the program and in our interpersonal relationships, and how that affected our abilities to have opportunities. There was a fair amount of student-teacher activity going on in my college program. And the characters in the story are composites of people I knew, as well as who I was when I was 22. I started writing the play out of a real place of confusion, guilt and anger about what I saw going on, both in school and in the first jobs I had in film and publishing. From a young person's perspective, the desire to please, to make connections, to advance their career in a very competitive environment, to want that stroking from a teacher or boss is really high. I do believe that female students get sexualized more often then straight male students by their teachers, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes very actively.

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

My ideal is that audiences will feel torn. I want them to see that the relationships in "Schooled" are complicated. They're not explicitly predatory. I don't believe that the teacher in the piece is predatory and I don't believe that the young woman in the piece is a victim. Nor do I think that she is a predator. I want audiences to see that she is trying to find a way to make her relationship make sense within her boundaries.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in your industry?

You know, one of the companies I worked for was a very male-driven environment. It just was. To get the kind of opportunities that were available, you had to, as a woman, sit yourself down at 7 p.m. with a glass of whiskey and be able to shoot the shit with the men. If you wanted them to say, "Hey, you wanna take a look at this script?" or "Hey, wanna take a look at this project?" You know, if you wanted to be in the room, you had to acquire a persona that made you feel comfortable. I think that's the major disadvantage to women -- and this is sort of what my play is about -- so much of opportunity is based on relationships. 

There is undoubtedly a boys' club, and in order to "penetrate" it, I've got to adopt a persona at times that plays by their rules. The language you use, both body language and verbal, the willingness to be a part of a conversation where you might be condescended or sexualized, to walk the line of participation without giving too much of yourself away ... that's a hard thing to do, and I've found it entirely necessary in a world where relationships are just as much a key to success as actual merit.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

Every day we hear about something going on in the industry. You'll have a theater build a season around only white men. There's bursts of that backlash, but ideally in the theater we're looking at a season and being conscious of who is included. I mean, you shouldn't accidentally have a season without any female or minority playwrights. We should be consciously trying to expand the opportunities available. I'm not saying there's some kind of quota to it, but I do think that if you're telling stories, you should be telling all kinds of stories. There are so many great writers and artists out there. There's no reason not to have that opportunity, to give people that voice and that space.

Ann Starbuck, "Tiananmen Annie" 

Ann Starbuck's play is a trip back to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a glimpse at a China that doesn't exist anymore -- and is illegal to talk about -- from the perspective of a young woman trying her best to understand it. "Tiananmen Annie" unfurls a bildungsroman in the context of a historical portrait. It takes on a sort of "This American Life" mode of storytelling, like what would happen if your exuberant third grade teacher was pretending to be Ira Glass on a field trip. Well, that, but with a lot more impressions and the occasional fat joke.

Men just have a lot more opportunities to go into writer’s rooms than women. It's probably one of the most sexist businesses out there.

What inspired you to write "Tiananmen Annie"?

I actually started working on this show a couple of years ago. Just writing and trying to figure out how to tell it. I had been thinking about it for probably about a decade, since around 2000. I'd done one-person shows before, though never one on my own. I'm a performer and a writer, but primarily a storyteller. The experiences I had working and studying in China were so important to me, I knew it was a story I had to tell. Around 2012, I set myself a deadline for the 25th anniversary of the protests. 

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

I want audiences to go on a journey with me. I want them to feel like they’re living the story with me, like they can see what I saw.

How was it received over the course of the festival?

We sold out almost every performance. We were 10 tickets shy of selling out the entire run at the Fringe. The last performance, I had little old ladies hitting each other with their hand bags to get into the show, screaming, “My ticket! My ticket!” My box office manager said it was the only show where people were jostling to get in. But I still think a producer would look at it and say, “Oh, I don’t know if I could make money off this show.” I don't know if they'd want to take the risk on something historical written by a woman.

Why not? In general, how do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

You know, I'm not a producer, but they’re probably more willing to take a risk on a male playwright or maybe on a playwright that is hyper-sexualized.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

I'm part of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative. It’s really fascinating. There are a lot of famous television writers who are part of it. I’ve met a number of women writing for television who were writing for Fringe because they wanted a kind of freedom they don’t get in a TV writing job. You know, in writers' rooms, the ratio of men to women is a joke. There are so many more men than women. Men just have a lot more opportunities to go into writers' rooms than women. It's probably one of the most sexist businesses out there.

 Christine Howey, "Exact Change"

Christine Howey catalogs her transition in the one-woman show "Exact Change." Sharing photos of her childhood as Richard, through her failed marriage and struggles with fatherhood, she threads the emotional core of her story with the bright, cutting sense of humor she has established now 25 years after coming out. Howey explores the self-doubt she left behind (in the form of an unnervingly Hulk Hogan-esque bully), the man she once was, and the woman she wanted to be, presenting an honest narrative of finding out who you are.

I think many men who run theaters don’t take female playwrights seriously, they often can't relate to stories told from a female perspective.

What inspired you to write "Exact Change"?

"Exact Change" began as a series of poems about my experience as a transgender woman. I eventually turned it into a play by maintaining the compression of poetry while keeping the narrative easy to follow. I wanted to compile my poems into a roughly chronological journey through my life as a transgender woman, transitioning at age 45, accompanied by photos of myself at various ages. 

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave theater?

My goal was to help the audience experience what it feels like to be a transgender person, the confusion, the anxiety and the joy. So many people say they can’t imagine what it feels like to be in the wrong gender. That is what I set out to accomplish with this show. And during every performance, I try to make sure the audience stays with me so they can experience something new without feeling alienated or mystified.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

I have been fortunate to work with theater companies -- Cleveland Public Theatre, Playhouse Square, None Too Fragile Theater -- that are very open to women playwrights. I think many men who run theaters don’t take female playwrights seriously; they often can't relate to stories told from a female perspective. This has a negative effect on women who want to pursue a career as a playwright.

I have an anecdote from another industry that might be illustrative: When I transitioned in 1990, I was the creative director of an ad agency. It was all so new for all of us, we hadn’t really talked about what would happen the “day after.” Anyhow, the day after I started living as a woman, the agency called me in to work on a project, which was great. But in the creative department meeting, I was talking and a couple men interrupted me at a couple different times. This had NEVER happened when I was a man in that same position, a couple days before. I was shocked. Afterwards, I realized the men weren’t trying to be mean or offensive, it was just natural for them to interrupt a woman who was speaking. What I was saying wasn’t as important as what they were about to say. I think that unconscious attitude applies in the theater world as well.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

I think if theaters took a more proactive role in encouraging female playwrights, such as sponsoring workshops for play readings and play development, it might help change the atmosphere for women. In order to speak, it helps to know that you will be heard.

[Editor's Note: This is just an excerpt of HuffPost's interview with Howey. Stay tuned for a full-length feature focusing on her and her work.]

Tessa Keimes, "The Bad German"

In Tessa Keimes' "The Bad German," the playwright uses her one-woman show to chart self-doubt around her sexuality and nationality, combatting anguish over her inherited connections to the Holocaust and asking the strangely complicated question of what it means to be a good person. She has taken the reality of German guilt and universalized it, letting the anxiety and neuroticism we usually associate with Woody Allen and his so-specifically New York storylines flourish. While most of us have not had panic attacks centered around "tiny Jewish hats," surely we can understand the fear of not being accepted.

We need to focus on telling stories that women want to hear, that are not two women just talking about a guy in a scene.

What inspired you to write "The Bad German"?

I took a workshop on playwriting and the teacher encouraged us to start with the subject we least wanted to write about. This was the thing that came out!

How did you deal with the anxiety and neuroticism around your German-ness in writing the play?

I was a super anxious kid, so I have always tried to look at things in an abstract way because otherwise it just gets too dark. That's just how I've always dealt with things, and I channelled that for "The Bad German."

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

I want people to be able to recognize themselves and realize they are not alone in not fitting in or not feeling good enough. I definitely want them to have a good time, I want them to laugh, but I also want them to think about how they look at others. Sometimes it’s not a given. People think they’ll be looked at the way they [look at] themselves, but if you come from a totally different background, things that are totally natural to you might be interpreted as creepy or dark by somebody else.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

You know, I’m in this group called Shooting Jane and we’re trying to address those issues. Our founder is a casting director and she was able to see it from the other side. People in casting will really say things like, “You know, there are no attractive women that can be funny.” After sharing stories like that, 15 of us from the Kelly Kimball studio started writing together. 

As a group, what do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

I think the way to go about it is giving women the chance. It’s not often women are given the opportunities. I mean, obviously there are tons of actresses out there, but in terms of really taking the reins, we’re definitely way behind. So, with this community we need to focus on telling stories that women want to hear, that are not two women just talking about a guy in a scene. So, we are going to give women the chance to do that in our production company. The other thing is to just do good work, because if it’s a good story and good work, it will speak to everybody. It’s not like we’re anti-men. It’s just about the quality of the work that you produce.

Monica Giordano, "Hand Grenades"

A lot of queer narratives, especially those centered around women, are overly simplistic in their need to be outwardly empowering. See: That godawful Katherine Heigl movie "Jenny's Wedding" (which includes multiple renditions of Mary Lambert's "She Keeps Me Warm"). With "Hand Grenades," Monica Giordano pushes back on the reductive representation of non-heteronormative relationships. She weaves intimacy between three characters that sets up a poetic look at the transience of love, with emphasis on the nuance and complexity so infrequently seen in queer spaces.

It takes a lot of will power to stay true to your authentic voice, knowing that in all likelihood, it’s a man’s authentic voice that people are going to produce.

What inspired you to write "Hand Grenades"?

The story came from a combination of my complete frustration with how relationships are portrayed onstage. I feel like when the relationship is one that is straight, there are so many colors and shades and nuances and mistakes -- which, good, this is very accurate to life, and necessary to theater. That's not the case with queer relationships.

Why do you think that is?

I think there was a time when we needed plays to show that non-heteronormative relationships were also full of love, that queer people are not evil, heartless people. Because of that, though, I think we’ve ended up almost idealizing queer relationships on stage, putting them on a pedestal, in which the participants in the love have one or two colors, in limited shades, with very few nuances, who make very limited mistakes. And in order for there to be equality, we have to embrace the fact that the relationships are equally messy, equally fraught, equally worthwhile. Equal can’t be synonymous with better, because I don’t think that helps anyone. 

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

I want them to feel moved enough to discuss it after they leave, and not so moved that they distance themselves from it. I think the lack of a “villain” is really perplexing to a lot of people, and it’s been interesting to hear which characters members of the audience left angry with or empathized with or hated. I want people to think about the characters' choices and wonder if they would have chosen differently.

How have you experienced the gender divide in the theater industry? 

I’m very young, and still relatively new as a playwright, so I think thus far I’ve been quite, I don’t know if I’d call it “lucky,” in that most of the issues I’ve run up against have seemed to have been more about my age. I do also act, and I’ve run into nearly countless issues there with how people talk about my body, or, well, I’ve been the recipient of a lot of unwanted advances. 

As a playwright, I obviously really value words, and the power of words. I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed so far are the words used to describe my work, especially in comparison to my male counterparts. I remember being in my writing class in college, listening to men workshop their plays, and anytime they wrote about emotions, or revealed something about themselves, there was this huge outpouring of support and it was always heralded as “brave.” And I want to be clear that I do think it’s brave -- I think it’s brave anytime anyone does that. Where I got lost, though, was when I would do the same thing, and then would be told that I wasn’t really marketable because I was “writing plays for women.”

This has carried over into reviews where these same men have been hailed as “fresh,” “innovative” and listed as “compelling new voices,” and I … have been compared to Sarah Ruhl. The first time this happened, I cried because I love Sarah Ruhl. I love her plays, I love her voice. The fifth time, I also cried, because it was still a compliment, still an honor, but I did wonder why there weren’t ways to describe my plays, my voice, without comparing me to, and therefore in an intrinsic way, putting me against, another woman. 

I’ve also noticed it in the way I edit myself -- it’s just such a constant presence hanging over me, the fear, the knowledge that the gender gap exists, and so I find myself having to not give in to the voice in my head that says “You write plays for women and therefore no one will produce you” when I’m writing a love scene between two women, or I’m writing in heightened language, or even when I’m just thinking. In this industry, it takes a lot of will power to stay true to your authentic voice, knowing that in all likelihood, it’s a man’s authentic voice that people are going to produce. 

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

I think that as playwrights, as women, as people, owning our voices is so important. I won’t apologize for the poetry in my plays, and I’ll keep writing them because that’s my voice, that’s my power. And so I won’t change my voice to make it more marketable, or more “masculine."

I think the best thing we can do is to be allies with other minorities in our field -- to realize that racial issues are women’s issues, that discrimination against the LGBTQ community, against the differently-abled community -- these are all women’s issues. And to make sure that we are using our voices to lift up those communities as well. To lift up each other and, in essence, ourselves. 

I think it’s also up to the audience to listen. If you go to the theatre, and the majority of the plays that they’re producing are by male playwrights, ask yourself why. Ask the friend you brought with you why. Ask the theatre why. I think now we see, or at least are starting to see, that things need to change. That’s great. It’s up to everyone to change it by not shutting off our brains, or blindly accepting what is as what should be. We need to use our voices.

Maryedith Burrell, "#Ouch"

When Maryedith Burrell was violently knocked over by her dog Butters, she fell, broke her leg and tumbled into the nightmarish rabbit hole of bureaucracy that is the American healthcare system. With limited mental and physical acuity in the wake of her accident, Burrell began writing as a form of therapy. She set out to compose and perform an hour-long portrait of her orthopedic adventures as a means of nursing herself back to health and ended up with "#Ouch:" an accidentally hilarious look at the struggles of battling insurance companies while trying to survive trauma. 

Just working and writing in theater is a feminist statement.

What inspired you to write "#Ouch"?

Well, the accident was a couple years ago. One of the things that I allude to in the show is the fact that I had a scrambled brain and I couldn’t read at first. I started my career in theater years ago, and it took about 10 or 11 months before I could really write or retain the information. It was serious. One of the ways I decided I was going to retrain my brain was to write essays. From there, I thought I could try to write an hour of theater and practice memorizing it and working on it, and it would be a way to get me back to where I was before the accident. That’s really the reason I did it, for physical and mental therapy.

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave theater?

"#Ouch" is a cautionary tale and a call to action. I hope it inspires people to get their personal affairs in order, so that if tragedy should stirke they’re prepared. You know, people don't think about they day they’re going to need a doctor or a hospital. We’re not raised to be proactive about healthcare. It’s something you use in an emergency. But for women who are on their own, especially with families, I think it’s important to get all of that together, because it impacts their finances and their independence, and you don’t want to wait until you need it. I hope that’s the takeaway from my show.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

You know, one of my favorite quotes comes from Rosie Shuster. She was one of the original women who wrote for “Saturday Night Live" and she had this quote where she says, “Women will work or not work in comedy based on who has to laugh.” Now, if guys are the ones that have to laugh, there won’t be a whole lot of women in the comedy business.

TV, movies and theater have always been a huge boys' club, because guys like to work with guys. Men don’t want to work with women, because men don’t want to be distracted and they think women belong at home. It’s still that way. Twenty or 35 years after I started out in the business, it’s gotten only a little bit better.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

Women have to be proactive. It’s like my show, you know, you’ve gotta take care of yourself. Theater-wise, women have to write more plays. Women have to be motivated to do the work. They have to realize it’s going to be harder for them to get noticed, to get grants, to get backing. Women have to network with each other.

For example, at one point in my career, there had been a big class-action suit against Hollywood and the federal government told them they had to start hiring women. There I was sitting with my little script, and they had to find a woman that could walk and talk and, you know, write. So, the door was kicked open for me a little bit, but there were no other women in the building. That meant I had to get along with a bunch of guys. So, I had a choice. I could walk in as a victim or I could just say, “Hi, I’m your little sister, treat me right.” And I would tell my agent I wanted to get paid as much as the highest paid man in my position. Once I was told a man was being paid more than me because he had a wife and a family. I said, “Well, I do too. I have a husband and a family that I’m supporting.” You do have to stick up for yourself. Just working and writing in theater is a feminist statement.

Tess R. Ornstein, "Cherubim"

Set in 1992,  Tess R. Ornstein's two-act play opens on a Los Angeles near implosion. The Rodney King trials run in the background, in the form of a TV churning through the images that led to the riots. The true story of King functions as a metaphor for the oppressive and enduring nature of institutionalized racism. His narrative runs parallel to the more pressing, open-ended drama of Ornstein's creation: the interracial Carmichael family struggling to stay sane as they search for their newly missing youngest, Kea. As tensions mount in and outside of their microcosm, what emerges is a troubling and (hopefully) galvanizing glance at the realities of bigotry and privilege. "Cherubim" is historical fiction that is not nearly historical enough, proof that art as activism is not limited to "very special episodes."

When I walk into a room, I have to prove myself out of the gate. Not because of some internalized discomfort about my place in a male dominated world, but because of how I’m treated.

What inspired you to write "Cherubim"?

I actually started writing [it] years ago now. In preparation for my senior thesis at Hampshire college, I started trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do. My background there was in theater for social change, focusing on politically charged theater, using it as a tool for reform. I kept coming back to systemic racism and systemic police brutality. Now, and even a couple years ago when I first started writing, there’s a lot of hope for some actual reform, and yet somehow that’s not happened at all. I wanted to tap into the cultural prescience of 1992 Los Angeles and sort of examine that particular catalyst. And I then I wanted to come at it from the perspective of a family, from a character-driven place as a way in.

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

I wanted to make sure the audience is engaged from a political perspective, to have them come away being moved to some degree. I wanted them to be able to see themselves in the characters, whether through one of the family members or either of the detectives on Kea's case. Wanting people to come away invigorated is the dream. I want them to leave the show and be like, “I need to be more active or, at least, be more open to these conversations in my day-to-day life."

The combination of activism and art is important to you, but can be tricky to combine the two.

It's definitely complicated. I think you can be political with your art without being overt with the message. It doesn’t have to be, “Hey, this is an activist piece.” To me, there are many forms of political expression through art. If you’re an artist and you’re in a position of privilege, I do think intersectionality is really important to consider in how we move through our day to day, but especially if we have the luxury of creating art for work. I think being aware and being edjucated is most important. For me, that also takes the form of wanting to see other women flourish in this industry that is undoubtedly dominated by men.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

As a female director, writer or showrunner -- and I was all three for this particular show -- when I walk into a room, I have to prove myself out of the gate. Not because of some internalized discomfort about my place in a male-dominated world, but because of how I’m treated. There’s always some sort of inherent othering there. People are so accustomed to this idea that a director is a man, that a showrunner or a writer is a man. My mom has always encouraged me to not be apologetic for my powerful place as a woman. That’s something that I’ve tried to instill in my work.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

What I try to do is be really really good at my job and really on top of everything. Especially for people who are coming at me with any sort of questioning attitude. I try not to give them the opportunity to have their experience with me on a professional level feed into their very, very incorrect assumption about women in production.

Unless I have a relationship with the person where I can have a real dialogue about sexism in the work place, the best that I can do is work as hard as I can. So that, also, God forbid, if those people have that really central way that they hire people, if it is like, “Oh, another chick, I don’t know if I wanna hire her” or whatever, that if they’ve had a good experience with me, they will then be inclined to hire more women.

Hannah Moscovitch, "Little One"

It's a strange thing for a play to be scary, a difficult, highly psychological feat which requires much more than just atmospheric lighting. Outside of dramatic adaptations of The Turn of the Screw, there's not much in the way of thrillers set on stage. But Hannah Moscovitch's play is far more terrifying than anything a hysterical Henry James governess could ever dream up (or, you know, anything a malicious, real-life ghost could do to a perfectly sane governess). "Little One" is at once deeply poetic and unnerving, a meditation on sibling relationships, the nature of love and the dark horror of upper middle class existence that is '90s suburban life.

I don’t know how to fight it other than to write plays with strong, complex female characters, to just continue to make those plays and hope the world changes.

What inspired you to write "Little One"?

I was interested in a bunch of things that all kind of together made a play. I was interested in thrillers, ‘90s nostalgia and sibling dynamics -- something which is largely ignored in psychology -- and the question of how our identities are shaped within a family and whether those identities are true. A question I was interested in asking was: is there a limit of love? You know, is love really unconditional or is there a point where it becomes conditional?

What do you want audiences to feel when they leave the theater?

It’s meant to be a little unsettling in terms of people’s expectations of which of the siblings is the monster and then it’s meant to be unsettling because it’s a thriller.

It's hard to maintain a sense of fear on stage. How did you build that tension with "Little One"?

We don’t do that very often in the theater! It’s hard because in theater you can’t conceal and then reveal in the same way you can on film. It’s much harder to scare the audience. I worked very hard on that.

How do you see the gender gap playing out in the industry?

You know, there was just a big study in Canada, which indicated that since the 1980s there’s been no improvement in terms of equality, that female playwrights are still down in the 20th percentile and men in the 80th percentile in terms of which plays are being produced. It’s really hard to to know what impact my gender has on my career, but the statistics definitely suggest that it has one, right? And that it’s insidious! Like, it’s hard to know why my plays are picked up or not picked up for a particular season. No one has been quite so overt as to say, “You’re play is not getting picked up because you’re a woman,” but it definitely has an effect.

The vast majority of artistic directors are male and anyone making decisions about producing is a man, with one or two exceptions. I think bias and the desire to see yourself represented on stage play in unconsciously. One of the things I’ve noticed about my career is that when I write plays about male protagonists they get picked up more often, which is sad. And then I don’t know how to fight it other than to write plays with strong, complex female characters, to just continue to make those plays and hope the world changes.

What do you think is the best way to combat the gender gap?

I wish I had all the answers. For now, I do all the things that we think might work. I mentor young women. I have four or five women and I really push for them. I mention their work to artistic directors when I get asked, and I have recommended them to my agents and have worked with them on their plays. That’s something that I do specifically with younger women and emerging writers. So, I do those kind of things and write as many female roles as I can, and I think about that. I think about the breakdown of my plays and female roles. I mean, it doesn’t come hard to me, I’m a woman, right? So, I want to see myself represented on stage, and I write women who are authentically real and not coming into the play to mess things up for men.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.

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"Ideas alone can be works of art," Sol LeWitt explained in his epic "Sentences on Conceptual Art," a pretty brilliant primer on the ins and outs of modern art making.

Ideas "need not be made physical," he continued. "A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s." There's the possibility that the idea may never reach the viewer, or that the idea may never leave the artist’s mind. But all ideas are art, he posits, "if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art."

I was reminded of this quote after watching a recent episode of "The Art Assignment," a weekly PBS Digital Studios production hosted by curator Sarah Green (whose husband is -- yes -- YA lit darling and sometimes "Art Assignment" co-host John Green). In the wonderful series, she visits working artists throughout the U.S. and solicits assignments that viewers can complete from home. Think of it as a "3-2-1 Contact" for artistically-inclined adults.

In a video posted last month, Green tackled the storied art phrase, "I could do that." As in, "Hey, what's with that piece of conceptual art. I don't get it. Like, I could do that." We've probably all heard it. Hell, we might have said it ourselves. But instead of dismissing the quirk as a tired reaction only amateurs would dare to utter, Green attempts to investigate exactly why this phrase is a less-than-helpful way to digest art.

Let's break it down. You're looking at a piece of art. You're entertaining the idea that you could have made said artwork, and therefore that lessens the value of the work or delegitimizes its claim to being art at all. What can be made of this stalemate? Green has a few suggestions.

Take a moment to think -- could you really do that? 

"Much as we may know that it's not as easy as it looks to create a decent artwork, there are times when we come across something so simple, so unimpressive, and so devoid of technical merit that we just can't help believing we could have done as well or better ourselves," Julian Baggini wrote last year for The Independent. This is not a crime. In fact, it can be a kind of performance in itself; you, staring at an artwork, imagining yourself as the maker. But how far do you go with this hypothetical scenario? 

Green uses the work of artist Piet Mondrian as an example. She prompts you to really contemplate creating the smooth, balanced, crisp lines of his De Stijl paintings. Could you map out the framework of "Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow," mix the paint colors, and painstakingly apply the oil on canvas? Could you then hand over the artwork to a gallerist, curator or buyer, and await the criticism that will inevitably come your way? Could you defend and explain your decisions to writers and curious observers, maybe even ponder the idea of questioning your own motives and engaging in real conversations about what it means to express yourself, your ideas or the ideas and perspectives of others in creative ways?

All right. You've decided you could do that. But why are you doing it? 

So, you've decided that you could do all of these things and more! Now to Green's next question: why are you doing it? Or, better yet, since you're not short on hubris, let's reframe our focus and think about the artist again -- why did he or she do that before you? What are the social, political and economic circumstances, as Green puts it, that led to another person creating and displaying this particular artwork, moving from idea to execution to showcasing the results and becoming a topic of discussion for more than a few people caught in this crazy dance we call art criticism.

Let's use one of my favorite artists, Alighiero Boetti, and his work "Lampada annuale (Yearly Lamp)" from 1966. The pieces consists of a single lightbulb, placed inside a mirror-lined box, that randomly switches on for only 11 seconds at a time each year. "OK, it's a barely functioning lightbulb in a box," you might say. Let's try to think about those circumstances Green suggests though.

Why would an artist make this? Boetti was a part of the Arte Povera movement, consisting of a group of individuals largely interested in creating art from commonplace materials. Their inclusion of everyday bits of life -- like lightbulbs and clothing and rope and metal -- was a way to address the consumer culture at the time, ever-changed by the industrial revolution. Arte Povera artists were especially obsessed with how society perceived the passing of time after the industrial age, how we'd embarked upon a never-ending race toward the future, and this inevitably affected the ways we interact with the objects and people around us. How had modernization changed, say, our concept of memories, artists like Boetti wondered.

"Lampada annuale" cleverly packages all of these concerns in one little box. Materials emblematic of the industrial age -- lightbulbs and mirrors -- are frozen in time, locked away in a box that onlookers can open whenever they please, shading the object from the passing of time while physically harnessing energy into one tiny, preserved space. Most intriguingly, the chances of a viewer actually seeing the lightbulb alit are so slim (remember, 11 seconds a year), the possibility itself becomes precious and delicate. Suddenly, the way we value this lightbulb changes; the way we relate to its purpose and function changes too. Instead of directing you to this kind of contemplation via words or verbal directives, Boetti pushes you to think deeply about your surroundings, your history, by simply putting a lightbulb in a box. Which is pretty wild.

Let's think deeply about art.  

Admittedly, if you didn't know anything about Boetti or Arte Povera, the lightbulb might just remain a lightbulb to you. "But if you think a work of art should tell you everything you need to know without the help of wall labels or the like," Green offers, well, you seem to fundamentally disagree with the purpose and pleasure of art. 

"Every object is created within circumstances that are important and is distributed in ways that add to its meaning," she says. Art that is not technically or aesthetically exciting to you can still make you question things like dominant art trends, the concept of value, commercial systems, or, as Green notes, the separation between art and life.

As many have noted before, the goal of an artist is not always to make you wonder at the sublime beauty of precise craftsmanship. More often than not, the goal of an artist is to elicit a response. And if your response remains as shallow as "I could do that" (or, for that matter, "this isn't art") maybe you should dig a little deeper. It's as easy as asking yourself a few more questions. 

To circle back to Mr. LeWitt, it's important for us to remember that "the artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others." And that's pretty comforting. 

What's actually discomforting is how much art can actually cost and the systemic challenges engrained in the market. But that's a subject for another day ...

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The boys of Well-Strung: The Singing String Quartet are closing out their busy summer with their latest pop-classical confection.

First violinist Edmund Bagnell, second violinist Chris Marchant, violist Trevor Wadleigh and cellist Daniel Shevlin are Fifth Avenue subway buskers in the black-and-white clip, which mashes Lorde's smash "Royals" with the Karl Jenkins composition, “Palladio.”  

It's yet another taste of Well-Strung's sophomore album, "POPSsical," which will be released Oct. 2. Last month, they dropped the whimsical video for their mashup of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" and Johann Sebastian Bach's "Partita No. 3 in E Major (BWV 1006)."

Meanwhile, their video for "Chelsea's Mom" racked up over 200,000 views on YouTube after being featuring on The Huffington Post, MSNBC and People, among other media outlets. That song, which repurposes Fountains of Wayne's "Stacy's Mom" as an ode to Hillary Clinton, was shared by the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate herself on social media. 

The group's latest show, "Summer Lovin,'" wraps Sept. 12 at The Art House in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They'll also travel to Rome to play a mass at the Vatican on Sept. 6. 

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