Quantcast
Channel: Culture & Arts
Viewing all 18483 articles
Browse latest View live

Stop What You're Texting And Look At This New Emoticon

0
0

Hello, everyone. It is the year 2015. We still punctuate our emails and texts with little human faces; we've just moved on to emojis, where the faces are a little cuter. And there's one that looks like poop.


We're not too good for emoticons. They're just not the novelty they once were in, say, 2001. Some we never really figured out -- looking at you, weird dollar sign mouth (":$") -- so we stick to smiles and frowns. They're pretty old news, TBH.


But what if we told you there's a new emoticon? That you haven't seen? Even though you've seen all of them? 


Behold!



What? Where? Why? Glad you asked. 


What it is: An apostrophe, a comma, a colon and a closed parenthetical mark make up this new sassy smiley. ‘,:) 


Where it came from: We found it on someone's Tumblr, above the comment "10/10," and was originally posted by user failsyndrome. It is not listed on Wikipedia's list of emoticons. If you've been using it this whole time, congratulations on your genius, but no thanks for not sharing.


Why we need it: The human experience encompasses a wide range of emotions which are sometimes conveyed visually in the form of facial expressions. This one, to us, is the face you make when you go, "Really?" while you're trying to size someone up in a friendly way but you're right on the edge of getting real. Like this:








Also, we just want to point out that if it's 2015 and people are still discovering new ways to anthropomorphize punctuation, then there are probably some other emoticons out there waiting to be found. Happy hunting.


H/T inactiveblogger


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












A Look At Bernie Sanders' Spoken Word Album And Full Discography

0
0

We all know that Bernie Sanders recorded a spoken word album. But not a lot of people know that Bernie has a robust catolog of musical work. So I thought it was important to look at all of Bernie Sanders' albums and see where his spoken word album landed. Also, I'm sure you've been in one of those "What's your favorite Bernie Sanders song?" conversations at a party. Everybody is rattling off hits like "We Shall Overcome" and "The Banks Are Made Of Marble," and you're thinking, "Those are the only two I know!" Don't worry! This should help you out.



"We Shall Overcome" (1987) 


The album that put him on the musical map. Just great top to bottom. It speaks to his ability, and we get a sense of exactly who he is and what he's about. Very rare for a freshman album.


RATING: 4.5/5


BEST TRACKS:


"We Shall Overcome"


 "The Banks Are Made Of Marble"



"Bernie Sanders Live" (1988)


Bernie LIVE at the Forum. This release was a brilliant move by Bernie to simmer expectation after such a hot start. He decided to record a live album with everybody's favorite hits while sprinkling in a few new tracks. Also, some of the best mid-song banter OF ALL TIME! Guy took three to six questions from the audience between every song.


RATING: 4/5 


BEST TRACKS:


"The Top 1% Of Our Countries Wealth Governs The Bottom 45%"


"We're Living In An Oligarchy And Here's Why!"



"Bernie" (1989)


Bernie's true sophomore album fulfilled every bit of expectation. Bernie spends every track on this album taking on race relations and shining a light on topics that nobody was talking about at the time. With tunes to make you get up and get down. I mean the hook in "Institutional Racism Is Real And We've Done Little To Stop It" makes you want to jump on your bed and scream, "BERNIE BABY!"


RATING: 4/5


BEST TRACKS


"Institutional Racism Is Real And We've Done Little To Stop It"


"Minorities Shouldn't Have To Work Three Jobs To Make Rent" 



"The Banks Did WHAT?!" (1997)


A change from his usual beat. Bernie's first (and only) comedy album was met with confusion and disdain. Mainly because his audience knew him to be a soulful musician, NOT an angry Lewis Black-style comic. I'm sure you'll find some die-hard fans that say it's his best work, but they just don't want to accept that their hero miffed.


It happens.


RATING: 1/5


BEST TRACKS


"Not ONE Has Been Prosecuted!"


"The Differences Between Bankers And Middle Class Families"



"Self-Titled" (2013)


Magic. A return to form that felt new and alive. If you haven't heard this album, stop what you're doing and download it NOW. Not tomorrow. Not when it's convienent. NOW! 


RATING: 5/5


BEST TRACKS


"The Census Bureau Report On Income And Poverty In The US 1988-2013"


"Citizens United Has Done More To Divide This Country And Stagnate Reform Than Any Other Piece Of Legislation In Our Nation's History. This Is How We Must Address It."


 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











Hilarious Black Dude Answers White People's Most Burning Questions

0
0


"Have you ever had a question you wanted to ask the one black friend that you know, but refrained because you didn't want to run the risk of sounding racist?" 


That's the question Gabriel Green asked at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational finals  in March. Green, a student at Eastern Michigan University, gives hilarious responses to common mysteries he assumes white people are dying to solve. For example, why are black people so good at basketball? 


His explanations are funny, but also serve to demystify the black experience for his white peers.


On his list of questions is, "Do black people hate all white people?" to which Green says, "Of course we don't, we just hate the people who perpetuate or refuse to acknowledge the history of social, political, and racial f**kery placed against us."


And yes, Green reminds white audience members, if you have to ask if something is racist... it is. 


The competition included several other talented poets that performed pieces about the challenges of black experience. Head over to Button Poetry to watch those. 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











'Intimacy Art Show' Will Make You Want To Get Close To Somebody

0
0

"Intimate": It's one of those loaded words that can imply everything from meaningless sex to a revealing, heartfelt conversation. It can sound warm and inviting, but it can also awaken unsettling fears of risk and vulnerability.


Artists Aaron Tsuru and Kate Sweeney, in an August 22 pop-up show they've curated at Rabbithole Studio in Brooklyn, NY, lean in to the saccharine and the sharp-edged implications of the term. "Intimacy Art Show," a first-time curation collaboration from the two artists, who have been friends and collaborators in other forms for several years, captures their shared fascination with the human urge for closeness. "It may mean something a little different for everyone, but we've all experienced it in some way or another," Sweeney told The Huffington Post via email.



The show features photography by both Tsuru and Sweeney, which reveal the poignancy and risk inherent in getting intimate with someone else. But the curators also admitted that they were overwhelmed by the unexpected and revealing submissions they received from other artists.



"'Jewels from the Hinterland' ... addresses questions of place, belonging, and perceived cultural identity within the African Diaspora," said Sweeney of a photo series by Naima Green. "There is such a beautiful, deep sense of intimacy with nature." In her artist's statement, Green pointed out, "There is a dominant narrative that situates brown bodies in green spaces for work, never for leisure." Her photographs subvert this, showing black and brown people relaxing and connecting with their natural surroundings.


Tsuru commented on a rather shocking photograph, by Molly Broxton, of herself with her late dog's fur. "It was just so beautiful and touching and exactly the kind of atypical thinking I was hoping to see," Tsuru told HuffPost. "Intimacy is many things, it's letting people or other beings or things into our lives in a deeper more personal way." 



Intimacy seems like a self-evidently desirable experience, as the loving smiles and tender embraces in many of these works suggest. But it's also a fraught process for many people, one that invites the possibility of heartbreak, loss and betrayal. At best, intimacy can be weird, occasionally intrusive, exclusionary to those on the outside. Tsuru told HuffPost they want viewers to confront the more difficult aspects of intimacy as well. "We'd love if some of the viewers even felt a little uncomfortable, in a good way, like feeling a bit broken open."


"In a good way," of course, is still the operative phrase. "We hope people walk away from the show with more of an open mind about being intimate," Tsuru added. "The risk is worth the experience.


View more selections from "Intimacy Art Show" below, and if you're near NYC, head to Brooklyn to enjoy the one-night-only show Saturday, August 22 at Rabbithole Studio. For more from Aaron Tsuru and Kate Sweeney, check out their personal websites.


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Lily Tomlin May Be A 'Grandma,' But This Is Her Year

0
0

It's been 39 years since Lily Tomlin's first Oscar nomination and 44 years since her first Emmy nod. But if headlining a film is what makes someone a movie star, then Tomlin is only now earning her due. And if top billing on a series makes someone a television star, then Tomlin didn't accomplish that either, until just a few months ago. Now she has a lot to show for it: Her film, "Grandma," which opened this weekend, has attracted glowing reviews and Oscar buzz since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and the first season of her Netflix series, "Grace and Frankie," led to Tomlin's umpteenth Emmy salute


"I’ve never thought of myself as a movie star," Tomlin said when I sat down with her at a Manhattan hotel during the Tribeca Film Festival, where "Grandma" screened in April. "I’m considered a little eccentric in a way."  


It's not hard to pinpoint the origins of Tomlin's self-assessment: Her breakout stint on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" in the early 1970s included such characters as fast-talking, nasally 5-year-old Edith Ann and the condescending telephone operator Ernestine. She smoked pot with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton in the 1980 feminist comedy "9 to 5" and became a fixture of Robert Altman's sprawling ensemble films about the idiosyncrasies of the American experience ("Nashville," "Short Cuts," "A Prairie Home Companion"). "Grandma" fits in nicely with that catalog. Tomlin portrays a crusty, weed-smoking lesbian poet who assists her teenage granddaughter in cobbling together $600 for an abortion. And in "Grace and Frankie," she plays a breezy, weed-smoking painter whose longtime husband leaves her for another man.



These eccentricities don't always extend to Tomlin's real life, however, as much as her reputation may assume otherwise. She and Fonda, who portray "Grace and Frankie's" title characters, did take peyote to prepare for a pilot's hallucinogenic scene, but Tomlin has repeated time and again throughout the "Grandma" press cycle that she rarely smokes pot and certainly doesn't consume heavier drugs with any regularity. ("I’m too wacky and nutty and foggy anyway," she told The Daily Beast. "I don’t need to get too blissed out.")


What does factor into Tomlin's real life is the excellence of her "Grandma" performance, which the actress said is the closest she's come to playing herself onscreen. 


"I don’t know why I didn’t think of this a long time ago," she said of portraying a semi-analogue. "I identified with many things in the script: the fact that she was a lesbian. I’m not a poet, but I kind of wish I was."


I told Tomlin that comedy could be considered a form of poetry. She beamed.


"Well, that’s true," she responded. "Thank you! Bless you. You sound like Diane Keaton. She said, 'Comedy deserves something good,' and then she got an Oscar for 'Annie Hall.'" 


Part of the reason "Grandma" hit home may be that Paul Weitz, who directed her in the 2013 Tina Fey-Paul Rudd comedy "Admission," wrote the script with Tomlin in mind. (The same goes for "Grace and Frankie," which "Friends" scribe Marta Kauffman co-created for Fonda and Tomlin.) She's shared the screen with the likes of Bette Midler ("Big Business") and Steve Martin ("All of Me"), but this is the first movie in which Tomlin is the one true lead. At 75, that sounds like a feat, especially when she reveals that "not very many" scripts drift her way anymore. 


"It’s an age thing for me right now," she said when I asked why more casting directors aren't ringing her up. "What’s going to come across your desk is not going to be a lead role, and you’re not going to be a romantic interest in a conventional movie. I didn’t get a romantic lead when I was 30, though. I was thought of as a comedian."



She doesn't see herself as the lead of "Grandma" either, though. Tomlin was "over the moon" when she learned that Julia Garner had been cast as her granddaughter, Marcia Gay Harden as her stuffy daughter, Judy Greer as a doting ex-girlfriend and Laverne Cox as a tattoo-artist pal. Oh, and she got to clobber "Paper Towns" star Nat Wolff with a hockey stick in one scene, too. 


But "Grandma" is Tomlin's movie. Perhaps she's taking a modesty cue from her own mother. I asked whether the film's family dynamics resonate, and Tomlin launched into an account about sometimes needing to act as a parental figure while growing up. Like that time she called a door-to-door salesman who'd duped her mother, too intimidated to tell him no, into purchasing 10 vacuum cleaners at about $300 a pop. She ordered him to come to their home and refund her mother's money. 


"I was all piss and vinegar," she recalled. "I was just cursing him and telling him that if he didn’t come I would throw it in the street. He finally came out and said, 'Your mother bought that vacuum cleaner' and all this stuff. And I pitched it out off the stairs. I was forever doing stuff like that. I just railed against it. In the early years, my mother would have been more concerned about what the neighbors -- or the relatives in the South -- would think. I was a Detroit kid, a street kid, so I was kind of tough. I would stand up for myself."


That resolve worked in Tomlin's favor over the years, including the many times she's said she has no regrets about turning down an offer to reveal her sexuality on the cover of Time magazine in 1975. The same forces that prevented her from accepting the deal -- potential career suicide at the time -- would have stymied a pro-choice, pro-weed, pro-sexuality, pro-aging movie like "Grandma" from being made even a decade ago. 


"I just feel like so much progress has been made on those fronts, although a lot has been a pull-back, too, in certain regions," she said. "And I know that because my family is Southern. My generation has come around tremendously. My mom’s generation, they’d just be negative, negative, negative: 'Did you hear about that Mary Jean?' That's my real name. My mother would be 100 years old by now, and even though my mother came to terms with my brother and me both being gay, my relatives would have been gossiping about us for days. But my younger relatives are much more lenient, much more tolerant, much more accepting. Their minds are just open to things. And yet I can’t even talk about this in a way because so much other stuff is so horrible in the world -- the inequities and the prejudice and the hate and the killing." 


She's right, of course, but "Grandma" is a phenomenal signpost of the incremental progress this country has seen in recent years. It's also one of the year's best indies to date -- a yarn about old connections resurfacing and disparate generations merging their value systems. In an ideal world, Tomlin would add an Oscar nomination to her list of 2015 successes. 


After our 20-minute chat, the publicist said it was time to part. I instantly protested, not wanting to end a great conversation. Tomlin stood and threw her arms around me for a hug. She would never admit it, but somewhere, she must know, 44 years after her first Emmy nomination, that this is her moment. 


"Grandma" is now in limited release. 


Also on HuffPost:



For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This Artist Is Using 'Artivism' To Break Down Queer Stigma And Stereotypes

0
0
A Venezuelan artist is making a bold statement about queerness and art's power to aid in the breaking down of stereotypes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identity.

 

The "I'm Not A Joke" campaign from Daniel Arzola is a series of images inscribed with compelling truths about human diversity that encourages individuals to live as their authentic selves. He wants the images to eventually appear on buses and subways, exposing audiences to the realites of queer experiences in an attempt to breakdown prejudice in a form of activism that he calls "Artivism."

 

Much of Arzola's work comes from personal experience as an LGBT person growing up in Venezuela. "I had an violent adolescence because of [Venezuela's intolerance]," he told The Huffington Post. "When I was 15-years-old they tied me to an electric pole and tried to burn me alive. I was able to escape that but I spent six years not being able to draw because they destroyed all of my drawings. After escaping that I transformed everything into lines and colors instead of returning the violence -- I wanted to break the cycle."

 

The Huffington Post chatted this week with Arzola about "Artivism," his artwork and what he hopes to see accomplished through the "I'm Not A Joke" series.


Want to see more from Arzola and his "I'm Not A Joke" series? Head here to check out the artist's Tumblr.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

ISIS Destroys Temple In Syria's Historic Palmyra, Activists Say

0
0

BEIRUT (AP) — Islamic State militants have destroyed a temple at Syria's ancient ruins of Palmyra, activists said Sunday, realizing the worst fears archaeologists had for the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city after the extremists seized it and beheaded a local scholar.


Palmyra, one of the Middle East's most spectacular archaeological sites and a UNESCO World Heritage site, sits near the modern Syrian city of the same name. Activists said the militants used explosives to blow up the Baalshamin Temple on its grounds, the blast so powerful it also damaged some of the Roman columns around it.


The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday night that the temple was blown up a month ago. Turkey-based activist Osama al-Khatib, who is originally from Palmyra, said the temple was blown up Sunday. Both said the extremists used a large amount of explosives to destroy it.


Both activists relied on information for those still in Palmyra and the discrepancy in their accounts could not be immediately reconciled, though such contradictory information is common in Syria's long civil war.


The fate of the nearby Temple of Bel, dedicated to the Semitic god Bel, was not immediately known. Islamic State group supporters on social media also did not immediately mention the temple's destruction.


The Sunni extremists, who have imposed a violent interpretation of Islamic law across their self-declared "caliphate" in territory they control in Syria and Iraq, claim ancient relics promote idolatry and say they are destroying them as part of their purge of paganism. However, they are also believed to sell off looted antiquities, bringing in significant sums of cash.


Al-Khatib said the Baalshamin Temple is about 500 meters (550 yards) from the Palmyra's famous amphitheater where the group killed more than 20 Syrian soldiers after they captured the historic town in May.


The temple dates to the first century and is dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and fertilizing rains.


The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said Friday that Islamic State extremists in Syria and Iraq are engaged in the "most brutal, systematic" destruction of ancient sites since World War II — a stark warning that came hours after militants demolished the St. Elian Monastery, which housed a fifth-century tomb and served as a major pilgrimage site. The monastery was in the town of Qaryatain in central Syria.




News of the temples destruction comes after relatives and witnesses said Wednesday that Khaled al-Asaad, an 81-year-old antiquities scholar who devoted his life to understanding Palmyra, was beheaded by Islamic State militants, his bloodied body hung on a pole. He even had named his daughter after Zenobia, the queen that ruled from the city 1,700 years ago.


Meanwhile in Iraq, at least 23 soldiers and government-allied militiamen were killed Sunday in an attack by Islamic State militants in the turbulent Anbar province west of Baghdad, Iraqi military and police officials said, in the second heavy death toll suffered by the Iraqi military and its allies in recent days in the vast Sunni region.


The officials said Sunday's attack, which killed 17 soldiers and six Sunni militia fighters, took place in the rural district of Jaramshah, north of Anbar's provincial capital, Ramadi.


The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.


They said the Islamic State fighters used suicide bombings and mortar shells and that chief of army operations in Anbar, Maj-Gen. Qassim al-Dulaimi, was lightly wounded in the attack.


News of Sunday's attack came two days after up to 50 soldiers were killed by the Islamic State group in two ambushes elsewhere in Anbar province, much of which is under militant control, including Ramadi and the key city of Fallujah.


Government forces and allied Sunni and Shiite militiamen have been battling the Islamic State militants in Anbar for months, but, hampered by suicide bombings and booby-trapped buildings, they have only made modest gains.


___


Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.


 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Visionary Japanese Artist M'onma Creates Drawings In A Trance

0
0

With graphite and ink and colored pencil, Japanese contemporary artist M'onma drafts densely layered visions of melting hallucinations. Intricate cross-hatchings muddle and reveal deformed clowns, divine Buddhas and animal-beast hybrids, wrapped up in a narrative accordion that's constantly in flux. The convoluted visions feel like a code without a key -- rich with meaning yet blissfully unknowable. 


"Looking for a cohesive narrative in one of M'onma's drawings is like telling someone about a dream and then realizing that you are losing and changing the thread of the experience as you tell it," curator Randall Morris teases. "The further in you get into the telling, the further you travel from the original way you remember it."


According to Morris, M'onma made art throughout his early life, but he was never satisfied with his creations. This changed in his 40s, when he says he was drawing a still life and an invisible presence took over his hand, guiding his drawing. During the uncanny encounter, M'onma claims his entire body glowed and he could not see. The ordeal was the first instance of what the artist now refers to as "visitations," the visionary mode through which his dreamlike artworks come to be. 


"M'onma's work came to us from a Japanese friend who made ceramics," Morris explained to The Huffington Post. "M'onma is one of the artists who reminds us of why we do this stuff. We knew he was important from the very first second we saw the work. It is completely comfortable in its own mystery. He draws in a trance."



For almost 20 years, M'onma fought against the visions. He eventually quit his job and moved to the countryside, walking between Shinto temples in his downtime. So when the visions returned, he was ready, and he surrendered control to the creative force. "He is a visionary artist. His drawings are like layers of dream impeccably drawn but never fully revealed,"Morris added. "He is an immediate old master like [Martin] Ramirez or [Adolf] Wolfli and others but he is contemporary. It speaks to the dream time we live in now."


The recent discovery of M'onma's style -- according to his CV, he showed his work for the first time in 2012 -- has prompted a wider exhibition of Japan's art brut at Cavin-Morris Gallery. M'onma's lucid dreams are interwoven with Tae Takubo's brightly colored architectural doodles and Hiroe Kittaka's flocks of calligraphy like birds in the distance.


Here's what Randall Morris has to say about the visionary makers of Japan's art brut scene:


How would you define art brut? Is there a distinction between this and outsider art


Art Brut is actually undergoing a sea change right now. I can't accept it as a concept until it rethinks and reworks how it will include non-Western self-taught and/or vernacular artists. I would say that a better phrase than "outsider," which we hate with a passion for its racism and its acceptance of a mainstream smaller than itself, is non-mainstream. Non-mainstream doesn't describe the artist. Neither does art brut or the less orthodox form the Europeans call l'art singulier.


Outsider is colonial and, yes, we recognize that it has become a brand. The Outsider Art Fair is a necessary fair to push those parameters. But the irony is that if you look at the book by Roger Cardinal that named it "outsider," all the artists in that book are art brut artists. Outsider has come to mean everything that isn't seen as art brut. This is a shame for the discourse.


Under what conditions are most of these artworks made? Are there studios for artists facing barriers to the art world like there are in the West? 


Japan's workshops are a bit different. They are havens where a person with physical or mental disabilities can receive materials and a place to work. Most then go home at the end of the day. Some continue to work at home. This is all still pretty new for Japan and for the families of the artists to accept a more public face to what their artist offspring achieve. That is a major thing in a culture that values privacy and not rocking the boat as a major concept. 


I think there is a lot of work, great work, coming from the workshops, and I think the people that staff the workshops do pretty well in allowing the artists to find their comfort zones and creative expressions. An indication of this to me is the sheer variety of forms and recognizable personal styles that are manifested. But, keep in mind also that a lot of this first wave out of Japan is not restricted to ateliers and workshops. It's like anywhere else in the world. M'onma is not from a workshop, for example, he is a seer.



What are some of the defining characteristics of Japanese art brut? How do they differ from Western self taught artworks? 


I would say the only places where they differ from the Western is where they directly manifest their own culture. Popular culture is taken more seriously in Japan as is calligraphy.


Theres no real definition of it. It is art that comes from not only the need for a finished product but also the experience of the process of making the art. Look at Judith Scott. The end result was important, yes, but not as important as the process of making the work. There are many many self-taught artists who share this. Art becomes a way to take measure of the world, define a personal space, and to participate in a way of making words and statements out of a cultural language.


What aspects of Japanese culture and history are made visible through these works? 


I think that in the art brut workshop work, a lot of it is about language. It is synesthetic in that it is reflective of cultural noise you don't always hear much of except in movements like Gutai. But it isn't in a dialog with art history. That's what makes it art brut. It springs out of a iconoclastic relationship with its culture. "I am different. I am making this work to visually verbalize my state of being."


Japanese culture is obsessed with visual beauty and integrity of the word and its calligraphy. It isn't surprising that so many non-academic artists engage it. They break it down. They rebuild it differently.


For a viewer who is unfamiliar with art brut, how would you recommend encountering a work? 


Make no excuses on any level for art brut. Don't excuse badly made work, but don't judge it in mainstream terms. Avoid it if it seems generic. It exists on two planes, that of the artist and that of the art world infrastructure. That of the artist establishes its authenticity, originality and, yes, that bad boy word modernists so detest, intentionality. But all these stories about the artists don't mean a damn if the work isn't masterful on a formal level.


So we need to apply that form of appreciation to it as well. But our appreciation has to become unstuck from the dictates of the art world.  We can't use the mainstream to qualify the art. We have to use everything we know, from the caves to the spirit world to the firsthand expression of joy and pain. 


Encounter it as art. We look for work where the artist lives it as he makes it. The difference between a hack rock guitarist and, say, Hendrix [is] when you watch him and realize anything could happen because he was living the solos right there on stage. You want that immediacy from the work, that encounter with a universe, that power.


Enjoy an introductory tour through Japan's art brut makers below.



-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


A Tiger Posed In An Abandoned Factory, Or When Ruin Photography Becomes Exploitation

0
0

A viral story about a tiger getting loose during a photo shoot in an abandoned Detroit factory was untrue and overblown, photographer David Yarrow said, but the incident has still sparked criticism in the local art world.


Video posted on social media last week showed Tony Barchock, a Detroit-based photographer helping with the England-based Yarrow’s shoot, shaking a noisy weed wacker at a tiger in a stairwell of the Packard Plant.


Although some reports indicated Barchock was doing this to force the escaped animal back in its cage, he said the nonviolent tactic was actually an attempt, at trainers’ instructions, to make the leashed tiger continue moving down the stairs. The trainers, Barchock and Yarrow have all insisted the animal was safely chained during the entire shoot.


The Packard Plant is a crumbling, 3.5 million-square-foot former auto factory that was recently purchased by a developer and is in the process of renovation.



Yarrow booked the building for two days, but was kicked out last Monday morning after several hours of shooting when Packard Plant Project Director of Development Kari Smith learned the crew was using not only the tiger, but two wolves and another wildcat. She told The Huffington Post she had signed off on the shoot but was not aware that animals would be present, and said the setting wasn't safe for wildlife.  


Yarrow said in a statement last week that his team did have city officials’ permission to bring in animals and use them in their shoots, which a city spokesman confirmed to the Detroit Free Press.


Some have protested possible mistreatment of the tiger and other animals, but Yarrow stressed his commitment to conservation in his statement, saying he “uses his imagery to draw attention for the critical need to protect our wildlife” and that animals in his shoots are “cared for by the very best and respected animal experts in the world.”


Many people criticized the idea of using a building that’s often served as a shortcut symbol of Detroit’s decline as a backdrop for a wild animal photo shoot.


“At the end of the day, it’s exploitative,” said Tiff Massey, a Detroit artist. “It seems like everybody wants to come to the Packard Plant or [other popular abandoned buildings], and that’s what used to define Detroit and what’s happening. They’ll never show the neighborhood that’s sitting behind it.” 





Yarrow, a wildlife photographer, conservationist and hedge fund manager, told HuffPost he and his team spent several days photographing in the city. The shoots with animals were only a small portion of the work they did during an otherwise uneventful trip.


He said he believed what happened during the Packard Plant shoot had been misconstrued because a resentful former staffer tried to “get a social media storm going.”


Barchock quit the project after the team was forced to leave the Packard Plant. But the photographer, who does work with an animal rescue organization, said he hadn't wanted to publicize the incident himself, and said he wasn’t happy with how he came across in the video that had been shot and spread around social media.


Barchock agreed that the shoot had been misrepresented in reports.


“Nothing ever was out of control, the tiger just got tired and didn’t want to move,” Barchock said, adding that “for such a high-production thing, with animals and people and the locations involved, it was just very unorganized.”


Barchock spent several weeks coordinating with Yarrow's team and helped select the Packard Plant and other locations, per their specifications. Model Gia Genevieve and several local men were used in the shoot along with the animals, Barchock said. 



“It’s a great canvas on which to paint, Detroit,” Yarrow said Friday. “It would have been nice to do more work against some of the canvas, of the iconic buildings.”


Massey, whose recent sculpture work deals in part with reverse white flight, said she feels her majority black city is becoming a “white wonderland.”


“I think it basically goes along with the new narrative … that you can do whatever you want to do here, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are -- if you have the money, the land is hot and ready for the taking," she said. “There’s a total disregard for the natives.”


Vince Carducci, an art and culture critic and dean of undergraduate studies for Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, compared Yarrow’s shoot to colonialist ideas and said he was tired of artists constantly using a former auto factory to make a point about post-industrialism.


“The whole idea of Detroit as kind of this wilderness, jungle, post-Modernity [symbol] is, for those of us who live here, really kind of miscast,” he said. “It’s kind of the way Europeans romanticize some kind of primordial wilderness, the noble savage ... that idea is 300 years old.” 


Yarrow disagreed with the charge that the shoot was exploitative for including images of urban decay, a pervasive presence in Detroit. 


“Maybe on that basis, [the Eminem movie] ‘Eight Mile’ was exploitative,” he said. “I think ‘Eight Mile’ was good for the city, so why should we be doing anything different?”



Yarrow has previously worked with ruins, shooting a wolf and models in a Montana ghost town for photos that appear in a section of his site titled "Story Telling."


The Packard Plant has long been an irresistible destination for urban explorers, skiers, dirt bikers, graffiti-writers, ravers, scrappers and squatters, not to mention photographers, installation artists, bands and filmmakers. It appears as the dystopian setting of a number of movie projects, including a Korean boy band’s music video, a steampunk short film and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”


But where some see beauty or an inspiring backdrop, others see harmfully romanticized views of urban decay and “ruin porn.”




Dora Apel, art historian and author of the recently published Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline, said she finds the “porn” label unhelpful and instead focuses on how imagery is used politically and culturally. 


Throughout history, artists have made images of ruins as an attempt to control their anxiety about ruins by fetishizing them and making them aesthetically pleasing, said Apel -- something she views as a natural human impulse. But what happens when the fetishized view is continually perpetuated, and photographs of Detroit’s abandoned buildings outnumber and obscure actual residents?


Work like Yarrow’s “feeds into a global idea of Detroit that really doesn’t have much to do with the real effects of poverty and the disenfranchisement of people living here,” Apel said. “The poor who are the victims of ruination bear the brunt of it, and bear the cost of it.”


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

ISIS' Destruction Of Palmyra Temple Is A War Crime, UNESCO Says

0
0

Islamic State's demolition of an renowned ancient Roman temple in the Syrian city of Palmyra is a war crime that targeted an historic symbol of the country's diversity, the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO said on Monday.


Ultra hardline Islamic State militants blew up the temple of Baal Shamin on Sunday, Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said, describing the destruction of one of the most important sites in the central city.


"Such acts are war crimes and their perpetrators must be accountable for their actions," UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement.


She also condemned the killing of Khaled al-Asaad, an 82-year-old archaeologist who had looked after Palmyra's UNESCO World Heritage ruins for four decades.




 Abdulkarim said last week Islamic State had beheaded Asaad and hung his body from one of Palmyra's Roman-era columns. Before the capture of Palmyra by Islamic State, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern the militants would destroy them.


Islamic State, which holds parts of Syria and Iraq, seized the desert city of Palmyra in May from government forces but had initially left its ancient sites undamaged.


In June it blew up two shrines that were not part of its Roman-era structures but which it regarded as sacrilegious. It had also used Palmyra's Roman amphitheater as a place for killing people it accused of being government supporters, according to a Syria monitoring group.


The Baal Shamin temple was built nearly 2,000 years ago and its inner area was severely damaged by the explosion, which also caused surrounding columns to collapse, according to UNESCO.


"The art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, is a symbol of the complexity and wealth of the Syrian identity and history," Bokova said.


"Extremists seek to destroy this diversity and richness, and I call on the international community to stand united against this persistent cultural cleansing." (Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

AfroPunk 2015 Festival Goers Tell Us What Black Beauty Really Means

0
0

If there is any music festival where black men, women, boys and girls can be their carefree, cool and creative selves, it's at AfroPunk Fest


The annual festival this past weekend attracted thousands of innately stylish people from all backgrounds to Brooklyn's Commodore Barry Park, where they grooved to the sounds of Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Kelis, Lauryn Hill, Gary Clark, Jr. and other big acts. 


These proudly pierced, tattooed, braided and Afro-wearing individuals also had the opportunity to express their unique voices freely on "Activism Row," where non-profit organizations set up booths to educate attendees on political, racial and gender equality issues.


Needless to say, it wasn't hard to get the crowd talking. The Huffington Post interviewed festival goers at AfroPunk 2015 on what black beauty really means. Read their remarkably candid responses below. 



More on AfroPunk:




Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

What Happened When This Woman Included 'Feminist' On Her Tinder Profile

0
0

No matter which way you swipe, misogyny comes from all angles on Tinder. 


The Instagram account Feminist_Tinder is bringing these dudes into the limelight by highlighting the sexist messages one woman received when she put "feminist" in her Tinder bio. 


Created by Laura Nowak, the account includes screen shots of different conversations Nowak has with men on Tinder and their reactions to her "feminist" About section. Nowak's quippy and smart retorts make the account educational and entertaining.


Nowak told The Huffington Post she wanted to "learn what it meant to navigate tinder as a feminist." 




"As feminists, we hear all the time that we've already 'reached equality,'" Nowak said. "And I think that publishing these conversations proves that, at least as far as dating goes, we definitely haven't."

 

The Instagram account definitely hit a nerve, amassing over 21,000 followers. The messages highlighted on the account range from curious to blatantly sexist and threatening.

 

Nowak received one message that read: "Why are you on Tinder if you're a feminist?" Her response? Perfection: "Why are you suggesting that casual sex and respect for women are mutually exclusive?"

 


"I think it's important to talk about these perspectives on feminism and highlight that misogynistic double standards are rampant and active in our culture," Nowak told HuffPost.  

 

We couldn't agree more. Scroll below to see some of the terrible messages Nowak receives on Tinder and her hilarious, praise-worthy responses. 


Keep on fighting the good feminist fight, Laura. 


Head over to Instagram to check out more of Nowak's awesome feminist comebacks. 


 Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Here's What The Oscar Nominations Should Look Like If They Were Announced Today

0
0

We are days away from the unofficial start of Oscar season, which routinely begins around Labor Day with the Telluride, Venice and Toronto film-festival triumvirate. That's where much of the year's awards bait will premiere before staging months-long campaigns leading up to next February's Academy Awards. In other words, say goodbye to the summer's high-octane blockbuster season, which produced some of the most lucrative box-office figures in history, and say hello to prestige (and, as always, a lot of pastiche masked as prestige). 


As the story goes, a least a few viable Oscar contenders typically emerge while folks are still permitted to wear white. This time year last, "Boyhood" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" were already on the path to becoming two of 2015's most-nominated films. But when it comes to 2016's shortlist, we may be facing a drought akin to the one seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road," easily the year's likeliest Oscar candidate. Can a dystopian feminist missile disguised as a rowdy action blockbuster keep its torch lit come January's nominations? Vulture's Kyle Buchanan wrote favorably about its odds last week, and whether or not his prognostications hold up, it's undoubtable that "Mad Max" would have quite a lovely day indeed if there were such a thing as midyear Oscar kudos. In keeping, we've rounded up a list of what the nods should look like were that the case. Most of the titles will face an arduous battle to maintain such momentum, but one can hope that Paul Dano and Lily Tomlin, for example, won't be upstaged by showier turns that accompany the big-boy studios' costly awards campaigns.


The only movies considered for this list are titles released theatrically by the end of August. That means Sundance standout "Brooklyn," which opens in November, doesn't qualify yet, nor do Cannes highlights like "Carol" and "Youth." We'll continue handicapping the Oscar race throughout the year, so stay tuned to see which of these potential nominees become true players in the 2016 derby.



BEST PICTURE
(The Academy recently debated whether to return to five Best Picture slots, but voted to keep the field open-ended. There can still be anywhere between five and 10 nominees.)


"The Diary of a Teenage Girl"
"The End of the Tour"
"Ex Machina"
"Inside Out"
"It Follows"
"Love & Mercy"
"Mad Max: Fury Road"
"Tangerine"



BEST LEAD ACTRESS


Elisabeth Moss, "Queen of Earth"
Amy Poehler, "Inside Out"
Bel Powley, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"
Charlize Theron, "Mad Max: Fury Road"
Lily Tomlin, "Grandma"



BEST LEAD ACTOR


Paul Dano, "Love & Mercy"
Jake Gyllenhaal, "Southpaw"
Ian McKellen, "Mr. Holmes"
Jason Mitchell, "Straight Outta Compton" 
Shameik Moore, "Dope"



BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS


Elizabeth Banks, "Love & Mercy"
Rose Byrne, "Spy"
Kristen Stewart, "Clouds of Sils Maria"
Mya Taylor, "Tangerine"
Kristen Wiig, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR


Michael Fassbender, "Slow West"
Nicholas Hoult, "Mad Max: Fury Road"
Oscar Isaac, "Ex Machina"
Ezra Miller, "The Stanford Prison Experiment"
Jason Segel, "The End of the Tour"



BEST DIRECTOR


Joel Edgerton, "The Gift"
Alex Garland, "Ex Machina"
George Miller, "Mad Max: Fury Road"
David Robert Mitchell, "It Follows"
Alex Ross Perry, "Queen of Earth"



BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY


Olivier Assayas, "Clouds of Sils Maria"
Sean S. Baker and Chris Bergoch, "Tangerine"
Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, "Mistress America"
Patrick Brice, "The Overnight"
Josh Cooley, Pete Docter and Meg LeFauve, "Inside Out"



BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY


Jesse Andrews, "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"
Jeffrey Hatcher, "Mr. Holmes"
Marielle Heller, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"
Donald Margulies, "The End of the Tour"
David Nicholls, "Far From the Madding Crowd"



BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE


"Amy"
"Best of Enemies"
"Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief"
"Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck"
"The Look of Silence"


 The Oscar nominations will be announced on Jan. 14, 2016.


Also on HuffPost:



For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Don't Put Uzo Aduba In A Box

0
0

Uzo Aduba smiles as she walks into Cafe Mogador in Manhattan, revealing the gap between her two front Crest-commercial-white teeth. She now affectionately refers to the space as "my gap," but that wasn't always the case. In sixth grade, Aduba begged her mother for braces in vain. "It's a symbol of beauty in Nigeria," her mother had said, confused why her daughter would ever want to change it.


Years later, faced with a potential agent who wanted Aduba to close her gap, she balked in the same way her mother had during her requisite middle-school-era awkward phase.


"She was was like, 'The gap, is that something worth keeping?' As if she and I both have gaps and were deciding whether we were going to keep them," she snorted, raising her eyebrows. "I said, 'Yeah, we're keeping it.' And I didn't go with her." 



One of the most difficult things about this industry was getting people to understand that I'm okay with me, that I don't see anything that needs fixing or changing.



That was just one of the times Aduba refused to make alterations in exchange for Hollywood prospects. She was asked to fix her nose, to wear lighter makeup. As she put it, "the list goes on and on." But Aduba's gap, and her pride in it, endures as a symbol of her staunch decision that she is who she is, and that's damn well good enough.


"One of the most difficult things about this industry was getting people to understand that I'm okay with me, that I don't see anything that needs fixing or changing," she said. "I'm just fine the way I am." 


It's the kind of interview-ready statement that might sound rehearsed coming from another actor. But Aduba locks me in her gaze when she says it. Staring out from beneath the silvery blue eye shadow left over from her Glamour photoshoot before lunch, it's clear she feels the weight of every word she says -- for herself and all the young women who look up to her.



To be clear though, Aduba's being herself includes lots of very hard work. That's the second part of her philosophy.


When Aduba's mother dropped her off in New York at the end of September 2004, she took her by the shoulders and said, "Uzo, all I ask is that you work hard. I never heard of nothing coming from hard work. I don't know what will come for you, but something will come if you just work hard."


Aduba holds back a giggle doing an impression of her mother, the thick Nigerian accent stretching over vowels, dropping consonants into pointy staccato.


"My mom said that to me my entire life, really," she admitted. "I don't know why, but in that moment, I finally believed her."


For one thing, she already had the proof that hard work pays off. Aduba's mother and father were both Nigerian immigrants who earned the kind of income -- with jobs in finance and social work -- to raise five kids with enough financial stability that they could confidently send their middle daughter off to art school.


The more typical scenario is something closer to the theater kid nagging parents who are reluctant to invest in something that doesn't end in a "real job." That was never a struggle for Aduba. Her parents, along with many of the adults who touched her life growing up, seemed to know there was something special about her.



"I think my mom just knew I could sing," she said. "Out of five kids, she sent me to the church choir. Only me." That was the first time Aduba performed at an adult's insistence, and it launched a pattern that continued through college.


Aduba's second grade teacher volunteered her for the one student part in a Theater For Young Audiences play when the troupe performed at her school. (The character was a dog in a dramatization of "Rip Van Winkle.") Aduba's middle school music teacher held her after class and convinced her to perform in the talent show (with Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You").



I never heard of nothing coming from hard work. I don't know what will come for you, but something will come, if you just work hard.



By high school she was confident in her singing, though she never considered it a potential career. "I just thought I'd be a lawyer," Aduba explained, her eyes widening, as she laughed at the idea of law as a "back-up" career. "Like there's no LSATS or law school or bar exam. 'Oh yes, I'll just be a lawyer!'" she said, tossing her hair.


She was preparing to apply to colleges when she got her final push toward show business. Aduba's creative writing teacher asked about her plans after senior year and urged her to think about art school. It hadn't been something Aduba had even considered an option.


"It was something I had never even given pause to," she said, almost still surprised by her former self's lack of foresight. "But the second -- and I do mean the second she asked me that  -- a lightbulb went off in my head and I was like, 'That’s what I’m going to do with my life.'"


"I wish I could say I had done everything single-handedly, entirely by myself. I really wish I could say that, but that just really is not the truth," she continued. "I feel like I am a living example of what a village raising a child looks like. Teachers, family members and neighbors have convinced me I could find my passion and my direction."



Aduba eventually went to Boston University's College of Fine Arts, running track to help cover the cost. She fell in love with her voice as an instrument of expression and began to more seriously explore acting through the core classes in her program. Over her four years at BU, Aduba began to think of herself not so much as a singer or actor, but a storyteller, who used singing and acting as her tools.


"What I knew for sure was that I didn't like to do one thing," Aduba said remembering  her senior recital. The assignment required a minimum of 60 minutes. Hers ended up running an hour and 45.


"There was just so much music that I loved. I love musical theater, I love to write music and I love music on the radio," she explained. "I was like, 'That is all of me, so this box of 60 minutes feels too small. That's not who I am as an artist. That's not who I am as a musician.'"


By graduation, she had decided to move to New York to pursue some fusion of acting and singing. After three months of auditioning (and waiting tables at City Lobster in Rockefeller Center) Aduba got her first role as "some kind of bar wench" in "Pyrates! The CourtShip Chronicles" at the Theater for the New City.


"It's so funny we're eating at Cafe Mogador," she said, talking about her bond with the cast and crew. They promised they would meet at the East Village staple once each fall, every year after the show ended. That was in 2005.


Aduba appeared in a few more New York theater productions, working with Danielle Brooks (Taystee) and Lea DeLaria (Big Boo) long before they met behind the scenes of "Orange Is the New Black." After a series of stage roles, she got an an agent who pushed her to pursue film and TV. She landed a part as a nameless nurse on "Blue Bloods," along with roles in several short films, but she soon grew frustrated with the demands of Hollywood. After one too many awful auditions, she decided it was time to quit.



Aduba was on the train back to her apartment in tears when she decided to give up. There had been moments when she'd questioned or doubted the profession she chose for herself. This was the first time that she'd really quit.


"I hadn't seen any images in the medium reflected back to me to know there was a place for me," she said. "I started to feel like this was a journey that wasn't even worth the try, because where was I going to fit in? I was trying and being told, 'No.'"


It was a Friday. So, she picked up a bottle of wine and went home, planning to call her agent and manager after the weekend to tell them she was done. As is now the stuff of legend, 45 minutes later, Aduba got the phone call that she had gotten the part of Suzanne on "Orange Is The New Black."


"I didn't know when I said, 'I'm giving it up,' [that] what I meant was, 'I'm giving it up,'" she said, looking up to the ceiling, holding her hands high with the kind of reverent theatricality she might have incorporated into her role in the church choir. 


Of course, everything changed with "Orange Is the New Black."



I hadn't seen any images in the medium reflected back to me to know there was a place for me.



Aduba describes the process behind crafting the character of Suzanne with an excitement that makes it clear how she stands out even amongst such a talented ensemble cast.


"Suzanne was first described to me as being 'innocent as a child, except children aren't scary.' What I cooked into that, once she started her infatuation with Piper, was the motivation of love," Aduba said.


"It made me ask the question, how far, then, would she go for love? In Season 2, I got my answer, as we saw with Vee, another more maternal kind of love evolved," she continued. "It really has nothing to do with the object of desire. It has everything to do with how Suzanne expresses love, and that's through loyalty."


She moves through the shifts in her reasoning behind Suzanne like a beat poet, connecting each thought rhythmically, a certain emphasis automatically endowed by her deep, reverberating voice. 


It's especially interesting to hear Aduba's process, since we know so little about her character. She's shifted from the other-ed "Crazy Eyes" to the nuanced and complex Suzanne so gradually over the past three seasons, while remaining one of the few core women at Litchfield Correctional Facility without a concrete backstory. 


Asked what Suzanne might have done to land herself in prison, Aduba clamps a hand over her mouth.  


"I can't say," she gasps, and, for a second, it's unclear if she's afraid of spoiling the narrative or finding it out herself.



Aduba understands the importance of her role specifically on "OITNB," but also holistically as a woman of color in an industry with blatant race and gender issues. 


"Growing up, there were not many images of women of color," she said. "The only two I had were Claire Huxtable and Oprah Winfrey, and only one of them was real."


With that understanding of what it's like to watch television searching for an image of yourself, Aduba takes the part of Suzanne very seriously. 


"My wish, my hope is that I’m dealing with it with a level of sensitivity and care," she said. "I never want anyone to feel they’ve been misrepresented or that their community has been done a disservice."



If you’re choosing to create something and be an artist, you should want to take pause to see, ‘What am I doing for the cause, for the human cause, as an artist?’



As she understands it, art and activism are not mutually exclusive. What's important is telling stories -- real, authentic stories -- that are true to the people they represent.


"If you’re choosing to create something and be an artist, you should want to take pause to see, ‘What am I doing for the cause, for the human cause, as an artist?’ There is some responsibility there."


Now, in terms of diversity, TV is better than ever. Aduba sits down with her niece and sees things she couldn't have dreamed of watching as a young girl; a lineup of shows which makes her feel more and more like she is deserving of this career. She references "How to Get Away with Murder," "Empire," "Scandal" and "Blackish," thrilled that they are all on the air at the same time as "OITNB." But what's really important to Aduba is that this wider range of voices is getting to share good stories.


"A good story is a good story is a good story," she said. "I think audiences are smarter than we give them credit for! If a story is good, then we will follow the protagonist, regardless of her or his makeup."


There's a pleading in her eyes. She makes the statement with such clarity and confidence, it's hard not to wish a straight, white, male representative of Hollywood was there to listen, to figure it out already.


Aduba places her hands on the table and sighs, her tone softening a bit. "Just tell me the truth of who I am, as a woman, a black person, a gay, straight or transgender person, whatever the thing," she says. "Just tell the truth. That's what people latch on to. That's what we need."


And then she smiles, offering up another glimpse at her beautiful gap.


Also on HuffPost:



For a constant stream of entertainment news and discussion, follow HuffPost Entertainment on Viber.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A Simple Way To Know When It's OK To Ask A Woman If She's Pregnant

0
0


Mom Carrie Saum was fed up with people assuming her "squishy" belly was a "baby bump," so she made a helpful video and flowchart to let people know when it's OK to ask a woman if she's pregnant.



According to Saum, there are only two scenarios when it's appropriate: If she tells you she's pregnant and you respond, "Really? What? You're pregnant?" or if you're in the room where she is giving birth and see the baby crowning or witness the C-section taking place.


"The bottom line here is that women's bodies are not your business," the mom explains, adding, "If a woman wants you to know, she'll tell you." 


H/T The Stir


Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Brazil's Coolest Graffiti Is In Grajaú, São Paulo

0
0


main
Alexandre Orion/Matias Picón/Tinho




“The outskirts are in a constant process of transformation and ruin,” said visual artist Mauro Neri, one of Grajaú’s 500,000 inhabitants.

Grajaú is São Paulo’s most populous district, and one of the farthest from the capital’s city’s center, located 27 km (about 17 miles) from Sé Square. Neri’s statement is easy to prove here; every street corner, convenience store, shop or house looks unfinished. The is part of the district’s aesthetics -- but ultimately, it’s a product of its dire financial conditions.

Over a green and pink background, a black-haired youth spreads letters out randomly. “Here, I used paintbrushes, rollers and spray.” As he talks proudly about how he executed one of his murals in Jardim das Gaivotas, Mauro notices a pile of bricks lying unused a few meters to the side. He doesn’t think twice. Interrupting the conversation, he goes over and makes yet another doodle. For him, this work is part of any everyday walk, always carrying his rucksack filled with paint, brushes, spray cans and caps. He’s always in a perfect state of readiness.


daang
Enivo, Jardim Lago Azul




Maybe this is why it’s so easy for someone living in the capital city to recognize his work. From the Radial Leste to Guarapiranga, the challenge “Ver a Cidade”/“veracidade” (a Portuguese play on words: “See the City”/“authenticity”) appears on the mountains.

Graffiti and pichação (a unique form of graffiti native to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, consisting of tagging done in a distinctive, cryptic style) are umbilically linked in that end of the southern zone that faces the Billings reservoir. On the other side of this immense body of water, it is possible to see, from afar, Diadema and São Bernardo, other municipalities that border the reservoir. Wellington Neri, or Tim, is Mauro’s younger brother, who also has art in his DNA. He shares his brother’s quick-paced style of talking. “Grajaú is the place with the most graffiti artists and artists per square meter in São Paulo. You can check it out.”


hands
Mauro Neri and his latest creation




So who is responsible for sparking street artists' interest in Grajaú? In Tim’s opinion, the great trailblazer was Alexandre da Hora, also known as Niggaz. In 1995, at the age of 13, Niggaz was already pushing the envelope. The quality of his technique and his sensibility made him an important bridge between the outskirts and the more central neighborhoods where street art was appreciated. He was also one of the first graffiti artists to collaborate with newspapers and magazines.

His tragic departure –- Niggaz drowned in the Billings reservoir in May 2003, at the age of 21 –- left a profound mark on those closest to him. Every year, artists both within and outside the region get together to pay him homage. The most recent event hosted 500 people, who spoke, reminisced and created art. Over the years, at least 1,600 artists have participated. “He was that kind of an incredible artist who died early. The graffiti in São Paulo at the time was highly influenced by the New York style. He broke away from that,” says Tim.


hands
Tim plays the “sincere yet funny” part




The seed, planted decades ago, insists on flourishing all over the place. The works of Those, another famous son of Grajaú who shares a studio with four other artists, are easily found in the neighborhood. “Graffiti does not carry signatures. What marks it... is the type of art, the stroke of each artist. But there are those who overdo it,” he laughs. Those’s signature is stylized elephants that have index fingers in place of a trunk.

Even in a strong and well-established graffiti scene, it is not easy to keep everything running smoothly. This isn’t to say that the residents are not already used to having to struggle all the time. A study by Rede Nossa São Paulo (the “Our São Paulo Network,” a movement which aims for a just and sustainable São Paulo) placed Grajaú in last place in terms of quality of life. Due to a lack of attention from the public authorities –- in all spheres –- the residents try and make do the best they can. “A bus is needed to take children to school? Someone obtains a vehicle, another fixes it and yet another takes the wheel. The women set up improvised crèches,” says DJ Ferrugem, another participant in the cultural scene who also gives canoeing classes to youths as part of the Meninos da Billings (“Children of Billings”) project.

So the project “Transformações, arte urbana e cidadania” (“Transformations, urban art and citizenship”) began, which combines entrepreneurship with the revitalization of public spaces to provide aesthetic relief from the suffocating everyday routine. The studio Pássaro de Papel and the Imargem collective, which provides a space for new talent and organizes cultural workshops, joined as partners. The initiative established funding for organizing 10 new artistic interventions. Paint, fees and all the necessary infrastructure were guaranteed. Mauro and Jerry Batista were the big names selected to have their own murals. Zezão, Titi Freak, Tinho Nomura, Conrado Zanotto,Matias Picón, Alexandre Orion, Enivo and Pas Schaefer completed the dream team. All of them have extensive experience in urban art in Brazil and overseas.


hands
Grajaú, birthplace of the artists




The mural reserved for the Jardim Lago Azul was in the hands of Enivo. The cultural exuberance required space, and the artist did not have any problem with inviting local pichadores and graffiti artists to lend a hand. The black youth portrayed there is Caio Cartenum, 20 years old, a graffiti artist from Grajaú who uses the character of a deep-sea helmet diver in performances and on the walls of São Paulo’s streets. “I felt that graffiti was a means of expressing myself,” he says. On the lower part of the art commissioned to Enivo was yet another statement: “Cheer up... we are all made of dreams the size we want them to be.” The phrase is Mano Money’s, also from the neighborhood.

Alexandre Orion has two works for Grajaú. For “Transformations,” he set aside graffiti and used posters to cover and decorate the façades of fruit and vegetable market stalls in the area. Best known for his graffiti made using paint mixed with soot removed from the walls of the capital’s tunnels, Orion used this special technique for portraying his daughter “playing house” with the favela. The work “Apreensão” (“Apprehension”), 15 meters high and 32 meters wide (about 49 feet high and 104 feet wide), took three to four weeks to be completed on one of the inner façades of the CEU Navegantes building and was made in partnership with the city hall during the Virada Sustentável (“Sustainable Turnaround”) campaign.

This year, the presence of these graffiti artists is once again confirmed for this event.



Mauro’s mural for “Transformações”




At the entrance to the Jardim Eliana, facing a busy roundabout, is the space used by Jerry Batista, an experienced artist who has toured Europe, but has set up a property in Vila Madalena where he runs Galera A7MA. Jerry’s main painted image is a canoe that could also be a walnut shell. Finally, Zezão left his characteristic works, with their stylized waves.

Those who make a living from graffiti are used to waking up one day and finding their work “run over” by pichadores or other artists. Unlike with academic art, it is not possible to expect eternal praise for the works made on the street. To start with, the sun, rain and weather are sufficient barriers to maintaining the quality of the paintings. Nature is unforgiving. And of course, the temperament of the residents also matters, as one day, fed up with the alien art, they might just paint over it and bring the party to an end. The difference is that in Grajaú, the chances of a wall remaining homogeneous are rather slim. You can be sure of that.








This post originally appeared on HuffPost Brazil and was translated into English.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

20 Of The Summer's Wackiest Art News Stories

0
0

Warning: this post contains nudity and may not be appropriate for work. 


Read the original story on artnet News. 




Though it may seem fairly dead during the dog days of summer (is every Tweet from Donald Trump worth a headline?), as always, the art world (or the universe just slightly beyond) continues to deliver a steady stream of absurd and wacky news. Need proof? Here's a sampling of all the strange art-related stories that have been reported over the last few months. (For a look at the year-end round-up of such stories for 2014, click here.)




1. It's definitely been the summer of Milo Moiré, who has certainly had more than her fair share of attention due to her nude performances and selfie opps at Art Basel and the Eiffel Tower. During the latter, Moiré was arrested and detained overnight on charges of public indecency.


2. Turner Prize-winning artist David Shrigley designed a mascot for a UK football club, and the fans were not exactly thrilled. The disturbed-looking sun-like creature, which is called Kingsley, was described by theTelegraph as "Lisa Simpson if she had been tortured and then melted. And then addicted to crystal meth."


3. Five words: The Great Wall of Vagina. British artist Jamie McCartney is looking for women volunteers from every country on earth to contribute a cast of their genitalia to his next sculpture. "It's not vulgar," his website insists. "It's vulva!"



4. A word of advice: don't create interesting patterns when applying your sunscreen. A great Instagram shot of your sunburn art just isn't worth the skin cancer, no matter how many likes it gets.


5. Japan has a virgin problem, so much so that special nude figure drawing classes have been established to help the virgin men find love. For middle-aged men who have never had sex with a woman, the drawing sessions can help prepare them for the sight of the naked female body, so they are more at ease when the chance to be intimate finally presents itself.


6. Snorri Ásmundsson is a man in search of a corpse. The Icelandic artist is soliciting dying people to agree to take part in a performance art video piece, in which he will dance with their remains. Ásmundsson could likely find a body in Mexico or China, but insisted to Morgunblaðið that "I'm not that kind of morally corrupt. I want to do this piece in collaboration with the dead."


7. A bold art thief brazenly walked out of a London art gallery with a statue worth £40,000 (about $63,000) by Elisabeth Frink rolled up in his newspaper. The Telegraph reports that the so-called "gentleman thief" is thought to have made off with a bronze valued at £100,000 (about $157,000) by Francois Pompon from a London art fair by tucking it under his jacket just days later.



8. We thought it was pretty wacky when Paul Coombs took an ISIS flag, replaced its logo with stylized dildos, and flew it in London's Pride Parade. But wackier still is that CNN actually reported on Coombs's creation as if someone was actually waving a real ISIS flag.


9. Public art and design collective Hungry Castle literally put Nicolas Cage in a cage when it crafted a giant black-and-white-striped bouncy castle with a giant, creepy-looking portrait of the actor on one of the walls. The art installation, clearly as bizarre as the man himself, debuted at an Australian music festival, but there is already talk of a world tour.


10. Courtroom artists are generally pretty overlooked, but New York's Jane Rosenberg found herself in headlines after an unflattering drawing she made of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady got panned on social media and even spawned new memes comparing the drawing to Sméagol, The Scream, and the poorly restored Ecce Homo among other less-than-flattering pop cultural references. (Meanwhile, the "deflategate" football that landed Brady at court fetched $43,739.99 on the auction block at Lelands last month.)



11. So many young Russians have been seriously injuring or even killing themselves in their quest for the perfect selfie that the government actually felt compelled to start an official selfie-safety campaign. Told to avoid climbing dangerous buildings and train tracks, teens promptly began posing with Lenin monuments, also with destructive results.


12. Just when you think you've seen it all, you realize that there's an annual event in which eight teams of artists compete in synchronized swimming -- or their artistic, less-regimented interpretation of the sport. Performance art at its finest -- and perhaps zaniest.


13. The Internet couldn't quite handle it when Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's Angel was installed in Beijing last month. The hyper-realistic fiberglass sculpture, of an elderly, featherless angel sprawled on the ground, tipped off a rash of news articles claiming that an honest-to-god angel had fallen out of the sky. Calm down you guys. It's just (bad) art.



14. An Australian performance artist named Stelarc implanted a third ear on his arm, in the hopes of letting the whole Internet listen in on his every moment through a wireless microphone. It took Stelarc ten years to find a team of plastic surgeons willing to create the unnatural ear. We can't imagine why.


15. A seven-year-old boy gave his mother quite a scare when he managed to get his leg stuck inside a public artwork on display in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Artist John Clement was a good sport about the whole thing. He loves when people interact with his work, "but it is not a playground structure," he told artnet News.


16. A personal, portable air conditioner might sound like a great way to beat the summer heat, but Satisfixation LLC's project the Mobile Personal Suburbanification Device proves that it would also be pretty antisocial. Creator Gregory James has taken to New York city streets in what looks like a hazmat suit hooked up to an AC unit and generator. He calls the get-up a commentary on our society's "social dysfunction and over-reliance in technology."



17. Amid the nationwide outrage and head scratching over Rachel Dolezal, the artist and white NAACP leader who lied about being black, it became clear that one of her paintings appears to copy an 1840 work by J.M.W. Turner. Dolezal's situation was complicated enough without throwing bizarre accusations of plagiarism into the mix.


18. Alleged mobster Vincent Asaro took issue with the inclusion of a Goodfellas poster in an exhibition at the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Currently on trial there for his suspected involvement the 1978 Lufthansa heist, which was depicted in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film, Asaro feared that jurors might be negatively influenced by the poster.


19. We couldn't help including this item from just before Memorial Day on Australian artist Leon Ewing, who shared an interesting idea about how we might inspire the next generation of great artists: dose them with marajuana. Ewing equates the drug with the mood-stabilizing medications often prescribed to children, and believes that "educational marijuana" just might stimulate creativity in children.


20. What list of wacky art news could be complete without our good friend Luke Brugnara, the disgraced real estate mogul and art collector? He was finally convicted in May for failing to pay for $11 million worth of art, but is currently looking to appeal. The trial was beset with hijinks: Brugnara broke out of jailappeared in court shoeless, and threatened the judge and jury. At his June sentencing hearing, Brugnara was carried kicking and screaming from the courtroom.


Follow artnet News on Facebook.


 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

8 Completely Absurd Things Parents Have Actually Said, Illustrated

0
0

Kids may say the darndest things, but sometimes, their parents aren't too far behind.


In 2012, dad Nate Ripperger achieved viral fame with his hilarious posters that illustrated of some of the ridiculous things he said to his children on a daily basis. Now, he's put together a book of the poster highlights titled Things I've Said to My Children, the book will be available on Sept. 15.


"Every parent has that moment when they say to themselves 'Wow, I can't believe that came out of my mouth,'" Ripperger told The Huffington Post. From "We don't eat dinner with our toes" to "I am not talking to you until you are wearing underwear," this book is filled with dozens of parenting gems.


Scroll down for some sample pages from the book.



 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

'Eyes On China' Instagram Project Reveals What Life Is Like Behind China's Great Firewall

0
0

Every year, travelers from across the globe flock to China to visit the country's renowned monuments and historical landmarks. But Kevin Frayer and Frederic Dufour, two Beijing-based photographers, have made it their mission to tell the world about another fascinating aspect of the country -- its diversity. 


Frayer and Dufour started an Instagram feed in June in an effort to show China from as many angles as possible. The Eyes On China Project features images shot by more than 20 foreign and Chinese photographers across the country. The subject of the photos range from a transexual woman in Guangzhou preparing to meet the press, to students in Shanghai undertaking military training and soccer fans in Beijing cheering on their team.


"We felt there was a need to give a broader view of an incredibly dynamic, diverse, and complicated country," Dufour told The WorldPost by email. "It's no surprise to discover that people in China love photography as much as anywhere else," Frayer added. 


The photographers note that running the Instagram project is no easy task, however, since China's massive web surveillance system -- also called the Great Firewall -- blocks websites like Facebook and Twitter. Just like many Instagram users in China, Frayer and Dufour use Virtual Private Network (VPN) softwares or proxies to manage their feed. "But I suppose if it was easy the project wouldn't be so interesting," Frayer added.


 Check out some of Frayer and Dufour's favorite images from the project below:



Related on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

20 Festival-Goers On What AFROPUNK Means To Black Culture

0
0

Enormous crowds of black hipsters, cool kids and trendsetters gathered in Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, New York this weekend for the 2015 AFROPUNK Music Festival. 


The two-day festival, which celebrated its 10th year this summer, was filled with a celebration of black entertainment and style. Matthew Morgan, festival co-founder, founded AFROPUNK in 2005 as "an alternative" to other summer music festivals that he thought underrepresented  people of color.


"It’s an alternative view on our culture and music and things that are important to us," Morgan told the Huffington PostThis year's artist line-up included musical performances by New York natives Lenny Kravitz and Kelis, as well as Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, and others. 


But more than a music festival, AFROPUNK is a part of black culture. It is a place where black people are able to express the full diversity of their lived experiences. This year was no different, and festival-goers of all ages, colors, shapes and sizes were in attendance.


HuffPost asked 20 of the rocking festival attendees to describe the music festival and what AFROPUNK means to black culture. Here are their responses: 



Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Viewing all 18483 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images