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R VOLUME 15, ISSUE 23
MARCH 6, 2014
Portraits redefine perceptions of race
Center for Documentary Studies exhibits My White Friends
TV en Français We Are Scientists, page 4
Non-Stop Liam Neeson’s latest thrill, page 4 MYRA GREENE/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
spring breakers...
Lauren Feilich [editor].............................................................. what’s my phase again? Eliza Strong [managing]........................................................................................... sx MC Bousquette [music]......................................................................................... chill Megan Rise [film]................................................................................ half stars 4.5eva Kathy Zhou [arts]......................................................................... west coast best coast Eliza Bray [photo]............................................................................................... darty? Prashanth Kamalakanthan [online].................................................................. cali boi
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rently in fashion, there’s no black guy at the end of the runway, in all honesty. Who do you know who’s more known for clothes than me? It’s like, how can you get a shot? No real designers will work with a rapper.” Kanye makes a fair point. Why, as a black man, do people respect him as a rapper but refuse to give him a chance in the fashion world? Undeniably, his aesthetic has made a big cultural impact. While people found it absurd that he had the recent audacity to create “leather jogging pants,” I couldn’t help but feel that if a “performance artist” or other “serious performer” had done something similar, the media would have instead commended such a person for asking questions about the nature of fashion. Later in his interview, Kanye explains, “I refuse to follow the rules that society has set up and the way that they control people with low self-esteem with improper information, with branding, with marketing. I refuse to follow those rules. It’s about truth. It’s about information. It’s about awesomeness.” Maybe awesomeness is some crumpled paper on the floor, or maybe it’s Kanye West. The framing of the art and the framing of the artist are more important than one might expect. -- Eliza Bray
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consider art at all. With a simple toilet bowl, Duchamp examined the nature of legitimating models and institutions. Sometimes these models and institutions can be as simple as an exhibition, a gallery or even a frame. Objects that are usually considered nothing but trash can suddenly be worth $15 thousand dollars when positioned in the right way and to the right audience. The evaluation of art, as well as so many things in life, is a matter of the framing. We live in a world where the rules of the game have already been created. We put our blind faith in established institutions of power and rarely take the time to consider whether these institutions ever really deserved our faith in the first place. More often than not, these organizations and individuals derive their power in joining a discourse that is Western-biased and privileges predominantly white, straight male narratives. This year, playing off my belief that Kanye West is a self-absorbed narcissist with a messiah complex, I decided to send valentines to several friends reading, “I love you almost as much as Kanye loves Kanye.” However, after his recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, I reexamined my own beliefs about what is deserving of value in our society. In response to those who have questioned his art, Kanye turned to Kimmel and said, “It’s not about racism anymore, it’s classism... Classism is when they try to say, ‘You’re a rapper…your girl is on a reality show so you’re not up here with us. We’re old money.’ It’s snobbery... A lot of people say, ‘You have to do music.’ I’m gonna keep doing music... [but] I’m only 36 years old. I have other dreams.” He says race is an issue that excludes him from other artistic forms: “Cur-
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Though I am unsure of the truth of his words, a friend of mine recently told me that maintenance faculty are not allowed to clean the Duke sculpture studio for fear that they might mistakenly throw out student work. He mentioned it to me when we stumbled across a story about a cleaning woman working in a gallery in Italy. She had accidentally thrown $15 thousand worth of art by modernist Paul Branca that consisted of crumpled cardboard and newspaper which had been scattered across the floor. Supposedly, it was the artist’s “commentary on the environment.” Many artists and art historians consider Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 “readymade” work “Fountain” a landmark of the avant-garde movement. Duchamp, a part of the anti-rational Dadaist artistic movement which sought to question the artistic establishment, attempted to display this work—a porcelain urinal with the name “R.Mutt” scrawled across it— at a prominent exhibition. It was quickly rejected even though the exhibition fee had been paid. Despite this rejection, the work garnered an amazing amount of attention and became a cornerstone of American art because it called into question what artwork we choose to imbue with value or even what we chose to
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CDS exhibition questions, expands our perceptions of race By Stephanie Wu THE CHRONICLE
For years, history has defined and framed race in terms of color. Yet in photographic representations of race, our perceptions are refined by the interaction of the subject and the space she inhabits. Myra Greene, an artist and faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, questions the implications of racial identity through photography. Starting Monday, her exhibition My White Friends, which consists of 20 by 20-inch color photographs of her friends, will be on display at the Center for Documentary Studies. Despite the bluntness of the title, the photographs are extremely nuanced in their depiction of whiteness. A quick glance at the photographs reveals little more than normal people in their environments. All hold the viewer in a direct gaze, almost challenging us to judge them. Yet their stoic expressions are unrevealing, forcing us to look at the composition as a whole. Some photographs are obviously staged, testing the effect of environment on our perceptions of race: a woman stands beside a golf course in a plaid skirt with a Pink Panther golf bag and average-looking parents with twins in matching polka-dot outfits pose outside their new suburban home. In her previous work, Character Recognition, Greene explored the manner in which black women are “looked at” and represented, using her own body to illuminate those experiences. Using photographic processes reminiscent of those used during times of slavery, she asked: “If you remove everything from me, then how is my character recognized?” My White Friends marks a departure from her exploration of blackness to one of whiteness. “I had a conversation with a friend about whiteness and if she thought about whiteSPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
MUSIC
ScHoolboy Q
Oxymoron Interscope Records
by Gary Hoffman THE CHRONICLE
Lately, much of the mainstream hip-hop community is determined to deliver meaningful, overarching social messages. Artists from Kendrick to Chance to Mac Miller have put out tracks with introspective production and heavy-handed themes. Ironically, this structure lets them brag about how tough and cool they were in their rough, dark past, while also showing their gratitude for being able to leave that life for a more mature and fulfilling one. With his major label debut, “Oxymoron,” ScHoolboy Q acknowledges that while he regrets some of his actions, he is not ashamed of his past. Instead, it empowers him. While most of ScHoolboy’s verses center around being the original gangster, his production and sampling suggest a complex portrait of the street life rather than just a series of boasts. Now 27, ScHoolboy started rapping at 16. In 2009, he joined the label Top Dawg Entertainment and helped form the group Black Hippy with Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Kendrick Lamar. ScHoolboy’s music is distinctly west coast. While his beats are
MYRA GREENE/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
ness and how people look at you when you’re white. She said, ‘No, I don’t think about race in those terms; I don’t think about race as much as you do,’” Greene described. Greene investigated the idea that race becomes important only when “otherness,” or any deviation from whiteness, is involved. “You don’t think about whiteness in a photograph. You look at a photograph of a white girl walking across the street and you would say, ‘There’s a girl walking across the street.’ But if it’s a picture of a black girl walking across the street, then you would say that it’s a black girl walking across, and race suddenly becomes important,” Greene said. My White Friends creates conversation about the various facets that characterize whiteness, which are largely unnoticed upon reminiscent of G-funk legends Dre and Snoop, they contain a more modern spatial depth. They shine on songs like ‘Break The Bank’ and ‘Man of the Year,’ where the eerie synthesizers and samples keep Q sounding interesting and sophisticated. The album’s lyrics range from Q’s struggles with prescription drugs to tales of his tough, streetwise grandma. Although not really stretching himself thematically, ScHoolboy does put together some pretty entertaining verses. In one, he even takes a stab at Kendrick, telling him to “move from the throne.” It’s shots fired between friends, though, and both Kendrick and Jay Rock are featured on different songs on the album. Numerous rappers are featured throughout “Oxymoron.” On ‘Blind Threats,’ the legendary Raekwon makes an appearance. ScHoolboy pays his respects to the past by letting Raekwon close the track, even though he delivers only a few lines, making the verse seem like more of an outro. Tyler, the Creator also delivers a solid hook on ‘The Purge,’ and Odd Future fans will recognize an OF sample used in the song. In the title track, Schoolboy explains the oxymoron he faced when selling prescription drugs to make enough money to raise his newborn daughter. Ironically, these are the same drugs that kept him from taking care of his daughter while he was addicted to them. The contradiction in the album goes a little deeper, though. Unlike many other modern rap albums, “Oxymoron” at no point gives any hints of delivering a socially conscious message about life in the streets. As a result, it paints a harshly realistic, darkly cynical picture of Los Angeles that is actually more powerful than most other heavyhanded, self-pitying lines about the past.
first impression. Greene plays with the idea that spaces and environments may all have a racial identity and contribute to our perceptions about race. As much as the photographs may appear purely documentary in nature, Greene deliberately plays with the notion of a photograph’s objectivity and depiction of truth. “They’re not really portraits of the people—my friends—in the pictures. They’re my friends who are playing roles and playing types,” Greene said. “I expect people to read them quickly as documentary pictures, but as they look at them longer and longer, they can say, ‘That’s staged,’ or ‘That’s performed.’” My White Friends questions documentary portraiture in respect to the degree of truth or information that can be extracted without SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
MUSIC Real Estate Atlas Domino Records, Mexican Summer
by Andrew Karim THE CHRONICLE
Surf rock’s been vacationing in New Jersey since Real Estate released their 2009 self-titled debut on Woodsist. The band signed with the London-based label Domino (Blood Orange, Dan Deacon and Arctic Monkeys, to name a few) to produce 2011’s “Days,” the sophomore record that solidified the band’s unique psychedelic-surf sound in the indie big leagues. Real Estate fled to Chicago to avoid the distractions of recording an album in New York City. This time around, they wanted to capture their live sound while highlighting each member’s individual musical contribution. The opening ‘Had to Hear’ evokes the familiar ease of Real Estate’s gentle drum and jangly guitar combos that was salient in “Days.” Martin Courtney’s
bias. The photographs are not depictions of the people themselves, but rather of the categories that they represent. Greene’s questioning of how much truth can be perceived from photographs parallels her exploration of how much an individual’s identity can be perceived through race. Greene’s depictions of race resonated with Courtney Reid-Eaton, Exhibitions Director at CDS. “[My White Friends] makes you...interrogate portraiture. When people look at a portrait—especially a documentary portrait— they will make up a story in their head about who they think that person is. But that might not be who that person is,” Reid-Eaton said. Although race has always been a topic of scrutiny and conversation, Greene’s exhibition touches on the issue from a largely untraversed path. Reid-Eaton appreciates such an approach. “Very rarely when people talk about race do they mean to talk about white people,” Reid-Eaton said. “I am not a white person, and I am very conscious of the fact that white people have a race.” In exhibiting Greene’s My White Friends, Reid-Eaton hopes to engage the campus and Durham in conversation about race. “I want to talk to people about [My White Friends], to talk to them openly and frankly about race. This work is an amazing catalyst for that,” Reid-Eaton said. Greene’s voice carries throughout her photographs, beautiful visual creations translated directly from conversations with friends, fueling as many, if not more, conversations about race in the larger community. My White Friends will be on display in the Center for Documentary Studies Gallery from March 10 through May 17. Greene will visit CDS on April 9 to give a talk about her work, including My White Friends. For more information, visit the CDS website. sleepy vocals mesh nicely with the song’s quiet instrumentals, creating a multilayered lullaby that’ll only put you to sleep if you want it to. ‘Talking Backwards’ is the record’s first single. It’s as upbeat as Real Estate gets, with clean guitars keeping Courtney’s vocals afloat despite the cut’s more prominent drums. The lyrics touch on miscommunication and longing for a dreamlike love that’s hard to make sense of. This is one of the few songs on the record that exhibits audible variance in guitar chords. They’re still open and light, but switch musical gears to cater to Courtney’s changing tempos. ‘April’s Song’ is a lyricless interruption of Courtney’s vocals. The song features two guitars that play off one another’s melodic peaks alongside a sobering bass and simple drum. The beat remains constant throughout the track save for a few subtle guitar buildups; it’s consistent, but not to the extent that it translates into sonic monotony. The borderline jazz guitar in ‘The Bend’ sets a loungy tone before subtle drum shakers transition the quietness to a jivier beat. With lyrics that reflect helplessness and immobility, the song is a bit of a downer compared to the more blissful tracks on the record, but Courtney’s warm and airy vocals keep vibes light enough to sway to. Stay away from this record if you’re looking for Real Estate’s grand stylistic departure from their vaguely melancholic beach vibes. It’s important for a band’s sound to mature with time, but Real Estate is in no hurry to deviate from their signature beach vibes just yet. “Atlas” gives us the band at their most refined, picking up where “Days” left off with fun, breezy tracks that consistently uphold lyrical substance.
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MUSIC We Are Scientists TV en Français Virgin Records
by Eliza Strong THE CHRONICLE
Truth be told, I had never heard any of We Are Scientists’ music before writing this review. That said, “TV en Français” is an instantly likable album. As this marks the band’s fifth full-length record, their mature, highly developed sound shines through with wellcrafted harmonies and guitar-based songcraft. However, as other critics have noted, this album may have easily come out six years ago. In many ways, “TV en Français” is textbook altrock, which is probably also why it’s so easy to get into. Lead vocalist and guitarist Keith Murray has a quintessentially indie front man voice that could just as easily place him in your older brother’s best friend’s garage band as a massively successful mainstream group (which, I suppose, places them somewhere in between). Chris Cain rocks bass that both perfectly complements and challenges Murray’s guitar melodies. Andy Burrows rounds out the trio on drums and is certainly the backbone of their catchy sound. ‘What You Do Best’ wastes no time in drawing the listener in, thumping with distorted bass and likable cheek. The highly accessible indie anthems, like ‘Make It Easy’ and ‘Dumb Luck,’ are pure head-bobbing, foot-tapping fun from the start, but don’t actually bring anything new to the table. Somehow, this isn’t off-putting or even boring. Yes, the lyrics wax cliché, but they are so classically relatable to your summer high school romance that they’re nearly impossible not to like. “Can we just agree to both stop wasting time tonight?/
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recess Every second is a second chance to get this right…Should I be embarrassed to be saying this?,” is the self-conscious opening to ‘Make It Easy,’ epitomizing the balance struck between ‘been there’ and ‘can’t get it out of my head.’ ‘Sprinkles’ follows and, thankfully, is unique. The band harmonizes throughout the entire song, hitting each note with neat balance and tone. ‘Slow Down’ is a bouncing, high-energy, surefire hit and a surprising picking up of the pace so late in the album. ‘Courage’ and ‘Return the Favor,’ the slowest tracks on the record, also stand out as its best, slinking into interesting rhythms and more creative melodic motifs. “TV en Français” has an exuberance that is unusual of a fifth album, and in this case, it is endearing rather than disappointing. Though it isn’t new territory, bright anthemic pop is a place where We Are Scientists hasn’t quite been itself. Instead of dipping into the moody, obvious attempts at depth that a band that’s been together for over a decade is wont to do, We Are Scientists has picked up the genuinely celebratory spirit you might hear on a debut. The lyrics are clever without being obscure and tend to articulate pretty universally human feelings. A visit to the band’s website reveals a quirky, amusing group of guys projecting a pure love of music and desire to spread the fun. So, although this particular brand of indie rock has been traversed by countless others, “TV en Français” feels genuine. On the website’s front page, the band writes of the new album, “We can’t wait for you to hear these things. GODDAMMIT THEY’RE GOOD…If you’re reading this with a friend, now might be the time for a high five. If you’re in a crowded public place, consider standing up on a table, banging on your glass with a fork, and letting everybody know the good news…You’re very, very welcome.” It’s hard to argue with that much self-confidence, and I did consider their latter suggestion. Sadly, I was in Perkins, and decided that would’ve been awkward for everybody.
FILM Non-Stop
Universal Pictures Directed By Jaume Collet-Serra
by Drew Haskins THE CHRONICLE
How did a 61-year-old Liam Neeson become our biggest action star? Ever since 2008’s “Taken,” Neeson has consistently drawn the biggest audiences of his career. Is this because of his gruff, authoritative charisma, or does America just like old people punching things (hence the success of “The Expendables”)? “NonStop,” the best and most recent of Neeson’s action movies, makes a convincing case for the former argument. “Non-Stop” is the second movie Neeson has made with Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra after 2011’s ludicrous “Unknown.” Like “Unknown,” “NonStop” is the kind of movie that defies explanation. Luckily, “Non-Stop” has plenty of things to distract the audience from its paper-thin logic—namely the crackerjack premise. Neeson plays Bill Marks, a grizzled air marshal who boards a non-stop flight from New York to London. On board, he begins receiving text messages from an unknown menace that a passenger will be killed every 20 minutes unless $150 million is wired into an offshore banking account. After the mayhem ensues, Neeson is forced to find the suspect picking off travelers one-by-one. Could it be his nervous seatmate (Julianne Moore)? The uber-professional flight attendants (Michelle Dockery and Lupita Nyong’o)? His rude fellow air marshal (Anson Mount)? Or—God forbid—the pilot (Linus Roache)?
The story is delightfully twist-filled, and the film sustains its high-concept conceit throughout the entire film. Confining the action to a plane could have hampered the entertainment value, but Collet-Serra works wonders with a limited amount of space. The small jet amplifies the terror of the situation, and violence is used sparingly enough that it’s a real shock when it does happen—a refreshing departure from other Neeson action movies. “Non-Stop” falls apart in its chaotic third act. When the villain’s motivations are revealed, the film bends over backwards to justify its turn into convoluted political critique. What should be the most thrilling part of the movie is diluted by too much nonsense. That being said, the impressive cast cements it as a worthwhile film. While recent Oscar-winner Nyong’o is wasted in a nothing role, Dockery of “Downton Abbey” proves a highlight of the supporting cast. Dockery is more of a Bond girl than a flight attendant. Her steely, British resolve is an excellent fit for the part, and she’s adept in her action scenes. Julianne Moore transcends her thankless role as Neeson’s presumptive love interest with her humor and sharpness. Liam Neeson is the biggest reason to watch “Non-Stop.” The movie is the best showcase for his new persona since he began his box office renaissance. He gets to show off his impressive range as a dramatic actor while providing the audience with its requisite fighting. In films like “Taken” and its unnecessary sequel (if you get kidnapped twice, you’re not taking care of yourself well enough), Neeson was reduced to a catchphrase-spouting punch machine. Here, Neeson makes you feel for him—and yes, there is still a lot of punching. Thanks to Neeson and Collet-Serra, what could have been a good bad movie is, shockingly, just good.