Is Pretty Better?
Milan dresses up for Instagram, photographing the Spanish Civil War, and more
November 3, 2022
In this week’s issue of Public Seminar: updating Our Bodies, Ourselves for the digital era, artists examine freedom of speech, and more.
Picture This
The once-gray city of Milan has become “Instagrammable.” Giorgio Fontana asks: Is that a good thing? “The first effect is a kind of semiotic trivialization, a flattening of taste. The second, more revolutionary, is the city itself becoming a commodity: and anything outside the brand image must be fought.” (October 27, 2022)
“In 1936, with the Spanish Civil War still being fought and the outcome unclear, Robert Capa, already a well-known photojournalist, produced what, at the time, was widely considered one of the greatest images of war ever produced: the image of a Loyalist soldier, apparently captured at the precise moment he’d been fatally struck by a fascist bullet.” Mitchell Abidor takes a closer look at the Spanish Civil War photographs of Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim, currently on show at the International Center of Photography. (November 2, 2022)
Feminism Now
The beloved feminist health resource Our Bodies, Ourselves has been rebooted for the digital era as a website. Program director Saniya Lee Ghanoui chats with Claire Potter about adapting the 1970s classic. “The books initially responded to a lack of information, but the website is responding to a different problem: there is almost too much information about women’s health on the internet. For example, if you Google ‘abortion clinics,’ sometimes it’s very difficult to tell the difference between what is an actual abortion clinic and what is a crisis pregnancy center. Our Bodies Ourselves Today does that curation and vetting for women, girls, and gender-expansive people.” (October 27, 2022)
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Narrative Arts
“Being at The New School—and looking at our own history of building this university, from the get-go, on art and nonacademic practices and disciplines—that’s one reason that it feels absolutely natural to include practices that are not necessarily discursive, but that are visual, that are more emotional.” Carin Kuoni joins Laura Raicovich for a conversation with Lindsey Scharold about the curatorial ethos behind Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech, co-edited by Kuoni and Raicovich and published by Amherst College Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. (November 1, 2022)
Read an excerpt from artist Amar Kanwar’s introduction to Studies into Darkness. “Looking back at India—the country’s birth as a nation and the later execution of its imagination—it’s hard not to see large-scale violence at every stage.” (November 1, 2022)
“I get to be really blunt at poetry readings,” poet CM Burroughs explains to Evangeline Riddiford Graham in Episode 6 of Multi-Verse poetry podcast. “This is a book about grief.” (October 31, 2022)