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

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…]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, 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 […]

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’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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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: 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 […]