Devotion: Patti Smith by James Carraghan
I started this review at three in the morning. I woke up with a pain in my side; probably the result of poor cooking decisions on … Continue reading Devotion: Patti Smith by James Carraghan
Category: InFinite Museums
20/20 at the Carnegie Museum of Art by James Carraghan
20/20: An exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, July 22nd through December 31st 2017 REkOGNIZE: An installation by Bradford Young at the Carnegie … Continue reading 20/20 at the Carnegie Museum of Art by James Carraghan
Playing the Riot Box by James Carraghan
The beat of the heart my love / Is stronger than the charts my love / Your water sign just lit my fire. –“No Matter What Sign You Are,” Diana Ross and the Supremes. There’s a lot of Motown sound coming out of a hole-in-the-wall bar on Christopher Street. That sound, that space, that park, changes with almost every year. The street changes so that elements of its past are forgotten; others are compartmentalized. The voices coming through the speakers are mostly smooth and harmonize with each other. The feeling is sentimental, in an uplifting way—exactly the sort of thing … Continue reading Playing the Riot Box by James Carraghan
To Love Edward Said by James Carraghan
I must confess to my own sins here: there is a small part of me that has fallen in love with Edward Said. I do not mean this in the sense that I admire his scholarship and think of him as a role model (though that is very much the case). I mean that I have actually fallen in love with this man—the way that Patti Smith wrote about falling in love with the poet Rimbaud, who died many years before she was even born. Even as I confess to this, I wonder if I am falling into the trap … Continue reading To Love Edward Said by James Carraghan
The Looker: John Berger by James Carraghan
I was making my way through Ways of Seeing when I stopped at the end of the third essay and sent a text message to my friend. Within a few minutes he had responded, telling me that he was reading the same essay, at the same time, for a class; he had the same thoughts and was going to get in touch with me. This was not to be the last time this would happen. I worked my way through the rest of the book, finding germs of the theoretical lenses I would be studying in theory-heavy courses outlined with concrete … Continue reading The Looker: John Berger by James Carraghan
Deamon Love: Dennis Cooper by James Carraghan
On a whim I went to the blog I had not checked in on in a long while, only to find there was no blog. Everything had been replaced with a page stating that the blog had been closed down for violating terms of use. This was not in and of itself surprising: transgressive artists should expect to face censorship challenges. It would not be anything remarkable if not for what happened after. Things disappear off of the internet all the time. The real puzzle was the reason behind the disappearance, as well as the complete absence of a warning … Continue reading Deamon Love: Dennis Cooper by James Carraghan
Living InFinite Museums by James Carraghan
The Internet is a museum that goes on forever. This is what I want to believe, at least. We are firmly in the grasp of the Digital Humanities revolution. This means things are irreparably different now. The Digital Humanities—and what that term is going to encompass is a question we are still working out—will bring us everything and nothing new all at once. Do not ask me what that means exactly. No one quite knows. The best definition I found was a website that generated a new definition each time you refreshed the page. But we can mostly agree that the Digital … Continue reading Living InFinite Museums by James Carraghan
