Andrew Laumann sent us this screen-grab of a Donald Trump ad featuring what appears to be a David Ostrowski painting hanging in the background of this right-wing lady’s supposed home. LOL. Click to enlarge.
- “Go read this article, oops I mean celebrity press release, if you dare, and try to choke back the tears, oops, I mean vomit. This “toast of the art fair” is a ‘Mahatma Gandhi like figure’ who must have been ‘very uncomfortable lying on the pebble beach’ in imitation of the photo of the drowned Syrian refugee boy while the ‘soft evening light fell on his face’ and he stripped the boats of actual refugees for an art project because ‘the seashore is his studio.’ (What a luxury!) Ai WeiWei : calling you out for your nonstop exploitive victim porn, pretentious parade of attention-seeking bad art, and all the rest of your bull to the fucking shit! Enough.” Sean Capone on The Washington Post’s coverage of Ai Weiwei’s Syrian refugee project. [Facebook]
- Wow! The 16-mile Brooklyn-Queens waterfront streetcar plan is actually moving forward with the de Blasio administration. The downside: it will likely take nearly a decade (who are we kidding? Probably longer), there’s no mention of it being separated from traffic (otherwise it’ll be worse than a bus), and it’s expected to pay for itself with property value increases (meaning the people most in need of better inter-borough transit will likely be priced out of the neighborhoods it benefits). [The New York Times]
- A new pet craze in Japan: cubist grooming for fluffy dogs. Adorable. [MTV]
- “When white critics face work that calls attention to their whiteness, it is the unconscious nature of that erasure of whiteness that causes anxiety.” Yaniyah Lee revisits the reviews of past shows for artists Divya Mehra and Jérôme Havre, and parses reviewers’ anxious responses to indigenous and diasporic works that challenge colonialist legacies. The key takeaway is how often critics’ project a contentious neutrality, and don’t often take into consideration their own subjectification process. [C Magazine]
- Sad: the National Museum in Yemen has been destroyed as part of the fallout of the country’s civil war. The institution, which housed rare manuscripts and other artifacts, was incinerated in a fire. [Artforum]
- Facebook’s newsfeed algorithms have diminished “organic reach” (that is, unpaid content viewership) substantially. This is terrible news for nonprofits (like us) who largely depend on social media to share content. This is why your feed is full of advertising. [International Business Times]
- The next big thing in psychiatry? Treating severe depression with Special K. Researchers have discovered that the party drug quickly ends suicidal thinking and has a quick antidepressant effect, and it appears it’ll be soon endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association. [Washington Post]
- Cubans will soon be able to access the internet desde su casa. Cuba’s state telecom is introducing a pilot project that will deliver home wi-fi to two Havana neighbourhoods. The country only introduced broadband internet access last year when they opened state-sanctioned puntos wifi. [Fusion]
- Two huge net art exhibitions just opened in London, including Whitechapel’s Electronic Superhighway survey. The Guardian discusses those and the larger impact of the internet on cultural production. [The Guardian]
- As part of her ongoing Art and Populism blogging series for Vienna’s Kunsthalle Wien, writer Rosemary Heather interviews Mohammad Salemy, co-founder of the New Center for Research & Practice. As a decentralized education platform, the New Center is attempting to bridge the gap between legacy institutions and “new knowledge production” and offer affordable graduate-level programs. [Kunsthalle Wien]
- They just like us: apparently while Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme ran to the ground, Ruth Madoff coped by smoking a lot of weed. [Gawker]
- Useful: How to remove glitter from your clothing, face and hair. (Answer: oil) [InStyle]
