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Archives for December 2016

Kikuji Kawada, April Chaos Cloud

December 23, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Kikuji Kawada and the current mood [Read more…]

Filed Under: Image, The Line

Igor Posner, Tabletop and Glass

December 20, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

 

Igor Posner, from his new book Past Perfect Continuous

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Books, Image, The Line

Centra Coronalis

December 20, 2016 By Riot Material 1 Comment

Anthony Hassett (1 of 3)

For three months, and in a confusion of names now
vanished, our rotting vessels made slow headway
through the strange aberrant splendors of the sea.

Finally, in a state of madness,
we ran our ships on shore, and so embedded them
forever in sand.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fiction, The Line, The New Word

The Lure

December 15, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by A. O. Scott

As folkloric Polish musical sex-comedy horror movies go, The Lure (2015) is pretty interesting. The first feature directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska, the film follows two mermaid sisters onto land, where they look for love, feast on human flesh and find work singing and stripping at a nightclub that might have come from an early David Lynch movie or a vintage-’80s music video [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

David Bowie, 2016 Man Of The Year

December 15, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Artist, Riot Sounds, The Line, Video

Madonna’s Moving Woman Of The Year Speech

December 14, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

[Read more…]

Filed Under: The Line, Video

East Village, 6 a.m.

December 13, 2016 By Christopher Hassett Leave a Comment

Street-side garden. East Village, NYC.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Image, The Line

Walhalla Warns Of The Nightmare Of Nationalism

December 12, 2016 By Rachel Reid Wilkie Leave a Comment

Anselm Kiefer at White Cube Bermondsey, London
Audio commentary by Rachel Reid Wilkie

Rachel Reid Wilkie examines Anselm Kiefer’s exceptional exhibition, Walhalla. The five audio tracks below address the five main rooms of Kiefer’s sprawling underworld. Press play and imaginatively amble through the halls of this dark yet deeply affecting show. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

An Envisioned Aftermath: Four Years Into A State of DTs

December 11, 2016 By Christopher Hassett Leave a Comment

In 2012 Justice David Souter anticipated an “invasion of ignorance” which a mere four years on, at the close of 2016, bares its unsightly teeth. RIOT MATERIAL, lacking all the foresight of the good judge, holds out its own prognosticatory lens and aims it four years further. That lens, naturally, peers through art, and though art has the timeless ability to show the way forward, it can equally enlighten as to which way we should not go. 

Below is one scenario of a nation, 2020, gone prophetically grate.  

Many thanks to the great artist Roger Ballen for this apocalyptic short, Outland.

Filed Under: Artist, The Line

Mad Max: Fury Road

December 11, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Anthony Lane

There is a moment, in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), when Max (Tom Hardy) washes blood off his face. This is unsurprising, since he has just engaged in one of many fights, but two points are worthy of note. First, the blood is not his. Second, he washes it off not with water but with mother’s milk, siphoned from a gas tanker. And there, in one image, you have George Miller’s film—wild and unrelenting, but also possessed of the outlandish poetry, laced with hints of humor, that rises to the surface when the world is all churned up. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

An Envisioned Demise, Delivered

December 11, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Justice David Souter foresees this day in history, 19 December 2016; the portentous American Electoral College votes are in.

Filed Under: The Line

Patti Smith Accepts Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize

December 11, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

[Read more…]

Filed Under: The Line, Video

Bone Tomahawk

December 10, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Jeannette Catsoulis 

In Bone Tomahawk (2015), an old-timer, an invalid and a gunslinger set out across the blistering desert to rescue three innocents from a band of savage cannibals. Their mission seems beyond futile, but don’t count them out too soon: Their leader is Kurt Russell.

Yet Mr. Russell is far from the only reason to see this unexpected low-budget treat, a witty fusion of western, horror and comedy that gallops to its own beat. That rhythm is dictated entirely by the writer and director, S. Craig Zahler, a novelist and musician who flips genre conventions upside-down and cares more about character than body count. As a result, he has given us a horror movie whose monsters are withheld until the tail end of its 132 minutes, and an action movie whose longest section involves mostly walking and talking. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

The Moment Worth Struggling Toward

December 10, 2016 By Christopher Hassett Leave a Comment

The Event of Literature

An Interview with Erin Currier

CHRISTOPHER HASSETT: There seems to be an explicit call to action in much of your work, or at the very least the demand that one take note of some supreme injustice in the land or amongst peoples. Yet what I appreciate about your work is that, more than it being mere critique or some one-dimensional, stop-action capture, it instead offers a way forward, and in my mind that way forward is dependably the right way forward. I’m thinking of, as an example, a new work of yours titled American Women (Dismantling the Border). Can you speak more to this idea of there being a constructive framework or, rather, this inherently optimistic baseline level of production which seems not only to shape but lay a distinctive stamp across your entire arc of expression? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Artist, Interview, The Line

Bowie Meets Burroughs

December 9, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

London, 1974

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: Have you ever met Warhol?

DAVID BOWIE: Yes, about two years ago I was invited up at the Factory. We got in the lift and went up. When it opened there was a brick wall in front of us. We rapped on the wall and they didn’t believe who we were. So we went back down and back up again till they finally opened the wall and everybody was peering around at each other. That was shortly after the gun incident. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Artist, From The Shelf, Interview, The Line

“Outside Influence” Hacks At Heartland’s Face

December 8, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Russian hackers strike twice, then twice more in what officials describe as an orchestrated campaign.  Incoming American president said to be in receipt of  “goods.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: The Line

Baskin

December 8, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Jamie Righetti

One of the great pleasures of international horror films is uncovering what is considered scary in other countries. Even a quick glance at some of the most memorable titles of recent years highlights how diverse these offerings can be: Sweden’s sublime vampire tale Let The Right One In; South Korea’s psychological chiller A Tale of Two Sisters; France’s visceral Martyrs; and Serbia’s controversial A Serbian Film. But if we dig a little deeper, we find the same threads woven into the entire horror landscape. We fear the unknown, the dark, the grotesque, but most of all we fear pain and death. Our fears are primal and universal; horror regularly serves as the great unifier in a way most genres can’t match.

It should come as no surprise then, that much of what we see in Baskin (2015), the first feature length offering from Turkish director Can Evrenol, feels familiar.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

The Witch

December 7, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Anthony Lane

A father and his son, a boy of twelve or so, go into a wood. They are out hunting, armed with a gun. As they walk, they engage in one of those ordinary, man-to-man chats that arise on a country stroll. “Canst thou tell me what thy corrupt nature is?” the father asks. “My corrupt nature is empty of grace, bent unto sin, only unto sin, and that continually,” the lad replies. Clearly, he has learned the words by rote, yet they don’t sound tired or hollow in his mouth; he means them. His next task is to help with the traps that have been laid in the undergrowth. We watch his small hands slowly easing wide the iron jaws. These scenes are from The Witch (2015), a film written and directed by Robert Eggers.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

Embrace of the Serpent

December 6, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Stephen Holden

“The horror! The horror!” The terminal valediction of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is deconstructed with a raging eloquence in the Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s majestic, spellbinding film, Embrace of the Serpent (2105). Is the unspeakable savagery evoked by his dying words really beyond the reach of the civilized imagination? I doubt it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

It Follows

December 4, 2016 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Stephen Holden

The nameless, shape-shifting horror that stalks the blond, 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) in David Robert Mitchell’s cool, controlled horror film, It Follows (2014), might be described as the very incarnation of paranoia. The menace, which only she can see, takes any number of forms, from a naked man standing on the roof of a house to an unsmiling old lady heading purposefully in her direction. When it appears, it is usually first glimpsed from a distance, walking slowly toward her like an expressionless zombie. Although Jay repeatedly flees, she can never shake the sense that it is out there somewhere and knows her precise location. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Riot Cinema

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Short Fiction

Hunting in the Dark, by Kika Dorsey

Hunting in the Dark

by Kika Dorsey

Joan was convinced she had cancer. Sometimes it was a dull ache in her side, sometimes a cut that didn’t heal. She knew of a woman with Crohn’s Disease and just recently an old friend of hers died of pancreatic cancer. It was just a matter of time before those alien cells took over her body. Her body was on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall. When she got out her Tarot deck, she always drew the Fool. Once she saw the Hermit in a dream. He dropped his lantern and the light tumbled down into a rocky canyon, glowing on the silver cliffs as it fell. It was winter, with pockets of snow on the peaks. [Read More…]

Riot Sounds

Tony Dreher's Orkan. Listen to it at Riot Material magazine

Saw-Whipping Techno-Trance From Toby Dreher: “Orkan”

From the new release, Ohrwurm

https://www.riotmaterial.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/11480527_Orkan_Original_Mix.mp3

on Acker Dub

Toro y Moi's Laws of the Universe, at Riot Material magazine

New Work From Toro Y Moi: “Laws Of The Universe”

From the Outer Peace release

https://www.riotmaterial.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/03-Laws-of-the-Universe.m4a

on Carpark Records

The new word

Where to Begin?

First, we’re skinny-dipping,
Sam & I, in a pond in Tennessee,

which is his idea, I should say,
& the tree with the rope swing
looms darker

than the dark night sky.

Second, the harvest moon,
which we came here to see,

is nowhere to be found,
instead the sky burning with stars
I can’t see without my glasses [Read More…]

The Line

Village Voice Covers, a wood-block print on newsprint, by Nils Karsten © The artist..

Gary Indiana’s Vile Days

Reviewed by Lidija Haas Vile Days, by Gary Indiana, edited by Bruce Hainley.  Semiotext(e). 600 pages. $29.95. Courtesy of Harper’s Magazine How unromantic can a deathbed scene get? A test case: one day in 2015, The New Yorker’s art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, makes his way to the Village Voice’s Cooper Square offices, seeking to rescue the columns he […]

Seeing Allred (2018). Interview with Gloria Allred at Riot Material magazine.

A Word With Seeing Allred Co-Director Sophie Sartain

by Cynthia Biret Seeing Allred is a fascinating documentary about one of the most powerful and outspoken discrimination attorney and women’s rights advocates of our times: Gloria Allred. Co-directed by Sophie Sartain and Roberta Grossman, the film gets up-close and personal with this formidable woman, from her high profile cases and strategic presence in the […]

Supertalls in NYC

A City No More: The Rise Of The World’s Largest Gated Community

by Kevin Baker From “Death of a Once Great City” Courtesy of Harper’s Magazine New York has been my home for more than forty years, from the year after the city’s supposed nadir in 1975, when it nearly went bankrupt. I have seen all the periods of boom and bust since, almost all of them […]

"Supertalls" in NYC

NYC Supertalls And The Narrowfication Of The City’s Architecture

by Aaron Timms From “The Needles and the Damage Done” Courtesy of The Baffler What kinds of people did I expect to find here, in the public garden at the foot of 432 Park Avenue, New York’s tallest residential building? In the days before I arrived in Manhattan to chart a course across the city, […]

Charles Mingus, at Riot Material Magazine

Playing the Truth: Charles Mingus’s Jazz in Detroit/ Strata Concert Gallery/ 46 Selden

Reviewed by Henry Cherry In January of 1979, two extraordinary losses occurred in Mexico. 56 sperm whales beached themselves on the country’s coast line. Reportedly on the same day, fabled jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus died of heart failure related to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 56. Mingus had gone to Mexico in […]

Thelonious Monk, Mønk, Reviewed at Riot Material Magazine

Thelonious Monk, Not Yet At The End

Mønk on Gearbox Records Reviewed by Henry Cherry Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk loved Laurel and Hardy, and playing Yahtzee with his wife Nellie, and ping pong. He once played 60 consecutive games of pong against John Coltrane, Monk winning all but one. He also lost his cabaret card (a license to play in […]

Touch Me Not (2018)

Bodies, And Limits, Beyond The Norm In Touch Me Not

Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx At the start of Touch Me Not, which opened the 2018 Romanian Film Festival in New York City, two men set up a device involving a glass plate and a camera. This is followed by a panning shot in shallow focus detailing the landscape of a male body, skin, […]

Deana Lawson at The Underground Museum, Los Angeles

Deana Lawson’s Planes Soars

Deana Lawson: Planes at The Underground Museum, Los Angeles (through February 17th, 2019) Reviewed by Ellen C. Caldwell  The space of The Underground Museum might be what you expect, but it might not be. It is housed in an unassuming storefront on a busy street in Arlington Heights, Los Angeles. As visitors enter, they appear in […]

Dhatu (2009) — James Turrell

Transforming Light Into Art: A Look At The Movement Of Light And Space

by Ryan Guerrero During the mid 1960’s, Light and Space became a loosely affiliated art movement related to Op Art, Minimalism and Abstraction. Influenced by American artist John McLaughlin, the movement was characterized by a focus on perceptual phenomenon and became well known throughout California. Artists integrated ideas of light, volume and scale, and the use […]

Sally Mann

Southern Discomfort: The Photographs of Sally Mann

Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings at Getty Center, Los Angeles (through February 10, 2019) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide!  –Hymn Sally Mann’s haunting black and white photographs are a hymn to the South she loves so ferociously, with all its troubled, tangled, […]

Christian Bale (left) as Dick Cheney and Sam Rockwell (right) as George W. Bush in Adam McKay’s VICE,

Dick Cheney’s Imperial Shadow Looms Large in Adam McKay’s Vice

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo One can only imagine what the great Roman historians like Tacitus and Suetonius would write about our own imperial moment. From rugged colonial stock the union sprout, liberated itself from the British crown, declared itself the United States, expanded in both territory and military might, and birthed characters like Richard Bruce […]

Ethan Hawke in First Reformed (2018)

Visions of the Age: A Top 10 Of 2018

by Alci Rengifo It is the cinema which chronicles the passions, nightmares and dreams of an era. To look back at the movies of any given decade is to peer into the very fabric of an age’s consciousness. We are currently living through a period of historical transition, a moment Gramsci would recognize as a […]

Robert Pruitt's Devotion, Installation View

Robert Pruitt: Devotion

at California African American Museum, Los Angeles (through February 17, 2019) Reviewed by Ellen C. Caldwell Robert Pruitt: Devotion is Houston-born and New York-based Robert Pruitt’s first major museum exhibit in Los Angeles, and it is a must-see and muse-experience. California African American Museum (CAAM) features Devotion in a large interior room, with plenty of light and […]

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RIOT MATERIAL
art. word. thought.