FR/BLCK/PR Archives – Riot Material

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 7- Musings On The Afro-Techno-Utopia

September 8, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 6 – The American Theatre Of The Real & The Nazi Party

August 31, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 5 – The Fall Of Kanye And Obama Part 1 (ruff mix)

August 26, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 4 “…Because The Southern Strategy”

August 19, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 3 – The Future Of Language

August 12, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 2 – No Space

August 5, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Free Black Press Radio, Episode 1 – The KKK & Roots Of Whiteness

July 29, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing

at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham UK (through 2 June) Reviewed by Christopher P Jones Hew Locke makes art to discover things. This is the sense you get. It explains why there is so much texture and variety throughout his work. For the viewer, being with an artist who seems to be in the act of turning […]

Transit Offers Old-School Romance And Timeless Tragedy

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko The cruelest twist of history is how it mercilessly repeats. As the dust of World War II settled, German author Anna Seghers wrote Transit, a novel that centered on a concentration camp escapee fleeing Nazi forces. While headlines and political propaganda might paint refugees are invading swarms, Seghers’ book aimed to restore the […]

Andy Warhol: By Hand

at The New York Academy of Art Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban We are so accustomed to seeing Warhol as a seminal game changer that it’s easy to forget that like most artists, he started out in a much more conventional vein, as evidenced by his junvenilia and other early works on display at the Whitney’s […]

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

Reviewed by Caroline Fraser Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh Scribner, 290 pp., $26.00 Courtesy of The New York Review of Books As told in her ambitious and moving new memoir, Heartland, Sarah Smarsh’s life was ripped right out of a Bruce Springsteen […]

Angela Davis On What It Means To Be A Revolutionary

One of the videos on view at the entrance of The Broad’s exceptional new exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (opening March 23), is Angela Davis speaking to the idea of what it means to be a revolutionary. It is a timely reminder and an historical call to hone […]

Solange Knowles: When I Get Home

Reviewed by Seren Sensei Announced on the last day of Black History Month, Solange Knowles’ fourth studio album, When I Get Home, surprise released at midnight as a digital drop and experimental short film. A method originally pioneered by her sister, mega-superstar Beyoncé, many other artists have since adopted the technique of the ‘surprise drop,’ […]

The Timely Call of Revolution from Without…

at The 8th Floor, NYC (through May 4) Reviewed by Ellen C. Caldwell Revolutionary Cycles is an expansive two-year series of art showing at The 8th Floor, a New York exhibition space run by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. The series will feature different themes such as issues around surveillance, gender, and media. Curated by […]

Annie Leibovitz, The Early Years: 1970-1983

Archive Project No. 1 at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (through April 14) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear There’s a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware –-Lyrics: Stephen Sills/Buffalo Springfield […]

Them That Follow Delivers A Striking Coming-Of-Age Drama About Snake Handlers

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko To most, a slithering snake might inspire fear. But to Mara (Alice Englert), in the new film Them That Follow, these creatures are beautiful, strong, and hold deep ties to her faith. Mara is a snake handler, part of a Pentecostal sect rooted deep in the woods of Appalachia. Like the […]

Lupita Nyong’o Slays Comedy, And Zombies, In Little Monsters

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko All hail Lupita Nyong’o, the Scream Queen of SXSW! On Opening Night, the Academy-Award winning actress shocked and awed the packed house at the Paramount Theater with Us. In dueling roles, she gracefully and ruthlessly filled the audience with tension and terror. The following day, she returned to the Paramount for […]

Riot At The Astor Place Opera House

by Steven Rosenthal My first historical theater experience was at 16, when my mom took me to see Jason Robards star as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh, by Eugene O’Neil. The dialogue was deep, fast-paced, dramatic, the characters themselves characteristically downmarket. The play, in brief, revolves around a classic crew of bottom-of-the-barrel drunks, has-beens who […]

Jordan Peele’s Us Is a Bold And Brilliant Follow-Up To Get Out

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Jordan Peele has done it again. In 2017, the comedian turned filmmaker with a blisteringly funny and soul-rattlingly scary directorial debut Get Out. The horror film was universally praised, instantly iconic, and went on to win Peele an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. So, anticipation has been through the roof for […]

The Kids Are Not Alright In Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary

Reviewed by John Biscello The Emissary, by Yoko Tawada Translated by Margaret Mitsutani New Directions Publishing, 128 pps. $14.95 I have seen the future and it’s murder — Leonard Cohen, “The Future” Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Death walks into a bar, wielding a scythe, which he intends to use in shaving God’s […]

Shining Light On Luchita Hurtado’s Dark Years

at Hauser & Wirth, 69th Street, NYC (through April 9) Reviewed by Ellen C. Caldwell Hauser & Wirth’s exhibit, Dark Years, features three gallery floors of work from painter Luchita Hurtado. Venezuelan-born and Los Angeles-based, Hurtado is 98 years old and beyond deserving of the show and recognition. This is a real celebration story of a life-long artist […]

Jan Švankmajer’s Insects: On Meaning in Surrealist Film

by Timofei Gerber Last year, Jan Švankmajer, the great master of surrealist cinema, returned to his roots with another stop-motion film mixed with live footage in the same vein as his classics Alice (1988) and Faust (1994). Yet there is something that is immediately striking in Insects (2018), namely that it keeps breaking the fourth wall […]

The Variant Hands Of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye And Wilmer Wilson IV

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, In Lieu of A Louder Love at Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC & Wilmer Wilson IV, Slim…you don’t got the juice at Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC (through March 16) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx Lynette Yiadom-Boakye follows in the steps of late 19th century European masters, and makes no mystery about it. They […]

Norman Rockwell v. The State Of Public Art

Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt, & The Four Freedoms A traveling exhibition, with Reimagining the Four Freedoms currently at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Washington, DC (through April 29) Reviewed by Kevin Baker Courtesy of Harper’s Magazine The fight over which of our public monuments should remain where they are is as complicated […]