Baba Kazi Oliver drum circle harnesses hope, healing
I was shivering and a little miserable. I shook out my umbrella, heaved the Chapel door open and was greeted by a grinning man. He held his hand out for…
Taylor Stewart
‘Big Mouth’ season 3: comedy is irreverence, not insolence
Did being nice kill our humor? In an interview with the Daily Beast, comedian Nick Kroll discussed comedy in the age of political correctness, saying, “I think you can still…
Campus dweller draws elderly NY
Every Tuesday, Joseph Whang camps out in a study room in the Art Library, the one protruding from the Main Gate, and further enlivens his drawings. His process is unchanging:…
LaBier merges cultural iconography, modern mundanity
Alumnus Peter LaBier ’03 has described his work as assemblage, as “a body of flotsam and jetsam,” “the disjointed refuse of our material culture.” Even his single-medium paintings give the…
Bishop lecturer Mark Doty contemplates cosmic, atomic
Mark Doty’s manner is almost as lively as his poetry. As he recites, he performs a series of poses: clutching the podium with both hands, balling his fists, crossing his…
Dead Funny Records rides the waves of tradition, neo-indie
In the neighborhood Shimokitazawa in the Setagaya Ward of Tokyo, there is a Y-junction, the confluence of two narrow streets, with a little Shinto shrine. Despite the surrounding streetlights, solitary…
Japanese re-militarization: I want planes to anger me
When a man threatened the exhibition with a container of gasoline, I felt the flames; when the mayor of Nagoya condemned the sculpture, my cheeks burned with anger. I saw…
Dezaki film confronts comfort women issue
Nobukatsu Fujioka is a bespectacled and neat-looking man. He is also a purveyor of Japan’s history wars. As a graduate student at Sophia University in Tokyo, Miki Dezaki interviewed Nobukatsu…
Abdul Khabeer lectures at the nexus of faith, art, academia
Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer sat poised, legs crossed, at the front of the lecture hall. Even before she introduced herself, the audience thrummed, more lively than the hushed and severe…
Alt-manga artist illustrates beauty of the grotesque
When I sat down with the comic illustrator Suzy Amakane, the first thing he did was pull a postcard out of his backpack and contemplate being blacklisted by Disney. On…