Art
Constructing Our Online Identities
"In the name of 'progress,' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old," writes Marshall McLuhan in his zine/manifesto The Medium Is the Massage.
Latest
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, a chilling performance in Shanghai, the sale of the Washington Post, history of London coffeehouses, privacy and art, TED Talk as propaganda, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Sound
Yesterday, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opened Soundings: A Contemporary Score, the museum's first major exhibition of sound art. But will it answer the question, "If a piece of art falls in the forest and no one hears it, is it still art?"
Art
The Inimitable and Influential Art of Catherine Murphy
I have been following Catherine Murphy since 1980, when I first saw her work at Xavier Fourcade. My interests are purely selfish: she is uncompromising in ways that I admire, which is to say she is not dogmatic. Always in hot pursuit of what she sees — subjects so commonplace and underfoot that othe
Music
Margins of Error: Chelsea Light Moving
From the mid-’80s to the late ’00s, every few years Sonic Youth would come out with an excellent album. Their consistency and reliability are very nearly unmatched by anybody else in music: they have fifteen in total, well over half of which are worth owning. For their many fans, it became normal to
Interview
On Emerson, Process, and the Room within a Room: A Conversation with Karinne Keithley Syers
Watching Karinne Keithley Syers dance is like watching someone tell a ghost story with her hands and eyes. One hand obscures her vision while the other guides her body through unknown territory. Where she is, or how she arrived there, feels less pertinent than her strong sense of self-awareness and
Art
Conspicuously Absent: When Art Goes Undercover
Even in today’s anything-goes environment, it’s not all that common to encounter a work of art that hews so closely to the mundane that it risks not being recognized as art at all. Let alone two or three in a single show. But that’s the case with Conspicuous Unusable, a group exhibition at Miguel Ab
Poetry
"Alter(n)ations #27" by Matt Shears
Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Matt Shears for the latest in a monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
Art
What Is Hip-Hop Feminism?
Short answer: it's awesome. And it's currently on view at Cue Art Foundation. Curated by Katie Cercone, the exhibition Goddess Clap Back: Hip-Hop Feminism in Art brings together various artists who, in their work, subvert the tropes of mainstream hip-hop: the unabashed consumerism and celebrity wors
Opinion
Miami Police Kill 18-Year-Old Street Artist
Israel Hernández-Llach of Miami was tagging a shuttered McDonalds in Miami Beach when he was approached by police and fled. It's unclear exactly how the situation unfolded from there, but Hernández-Llach was soon dead, the result of a police tazering. The officers claimed that they shocked their vic
Art
Glitter, Not Gold: The Art of Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
I first saw the work of artist Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt earlier this year at MoMA PS1. The exhibition, appropriately titled Tender Love Among the Junk, nearly left me breathless: not only was it comprised of several rooms of quirky, colorful, astounding works, but the richness of the art — its layers
Books
Snapshots of the Relaunched Aperture Magazine
Compared to, say, the over 40,000 year history of painting, the two centuries that people have been experimenting with photography is a blink of an eye for a medium, yet its rapid proliferation and dense, evolving culture have partially made up for lost time. Aperture magazine, which recently relaun