The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/category/arts/)
Surprise flickers across my face when the next “musician” on the set list at the EBR open mic announces that they aren’t actually going to be playing music. Instead they have an AI-generated song they want everyone to listen to. At this declaration my head snaps up; artificial intelligence creating music? At an open mic? Many questions were drumming in my head.
At 5 p.m. on Nov. 15, 2024 at Buffalo Street Books in downtown Ithaca, Miklos Mattyasovszky and Sam Samakande of the Cornell MFA in Creative Writing program could be seen reciting their fiction and poetry respectively to an eager group of writing enthusiasts. I was among the crowd of young and old people alike who gathered to listen to these talented writers. I had to trek down from campus on foot but it was absolutely worth it. I sat through the event with ears that devoured every word spoken, every image described and every idea proposed.
When J.R.R. Tolkein, often recognized as the Father of High Fantasy, writes “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger,” in The Fellowship of the Ring, it seems like a piece of advice both Frodo and you yourself should probably follow. So, naturally, I’m going to show you how to do the exact opposite!
The complex worlds and weirdness of fantasy can indeed be a complicated adventure that confuses and intimidates as much as it intrigues and fascinates, making many readers turn away after taking one look at the brick-like volumes that make up the fantasy section. As someone who frequently switches between romance and fantasy, I know how jarring it can be to jump into high fantasy after reading a cozy love story. Wars between different magical species are pretty far removed from your average small town romance after all. If this sounds like something you struggle with too, then come along.
Asian Pacific Americans for Action is a campus group dedicated to Asian American activism at Cornell. Since 1972, APAA — formerly known as the Asian American Coalition — has pursued their mission of empowering and advocating for the Asian American students on campus. The organization was integral to the establishment of Cornell’s Asian American Studies Program, just one example of a rich history of meaningful change made on campus. APAA has held teach-ins, screened films and documentaries and collaborated with other minority student groups to continue working toward its goals of activism and justice. Day-to-day and year-to-year, APAA displays a commitment to social justice and fostering change.
In late 2023, the largest retrospective of the artist Marisol began its journey at the first of four museums. Marisol (full name: Marisol Escobar) was a French-born Venezuelan artist who is associated with the Pop movement and best known for her larger-than-life wooden sculptures.
Marisol: A Retrospective is an expansive exploration of Marisol’s artistic eras: her earliest works in sculpture, her height of Pop sculpture, 2-D color pencil drawings, ocean inspired art, costume creation for dance companies, anticolonial solidarity and public monuments.
In his accompanying essay “You Will Not Catch Me Alive,” artist Alex Da Corte writes: “Two faces have I, one to laugh and one to cry. And for Marisol Escobar, through closed eyes and mouths cast in plaster, one to scream and one to shout and one to pierce the night.”
Corte’s words are apt: Marisol’s works pierce, present in my mind long after I left the museum. One thing that struck me throughout Marisol: A Retrospective was how sees. Marisol seemed to see in a way that cut right down to the core of an object or action, and she manages to recreate that perspective so transformatively. Perhaps part of this is how sculpture works in general.
In a social climate that increasingly feels more suffocating than stimulating, humor provides a rare reprieve — a means to engage with societal tensions without the weight of an impending sense of doom. Long a staple of cultural critique, political humor offers a lens to address contentious issues while avoiding the pervasive bleakness that dominates much of today’s conversations. Nonetheless, as scrutiny seems to tighten its grip on most judgments, one might wonder: Can humor find its place as a form of resistance, or has it simply become a safety valve for a broken system? From the sharp satire of The Onion to the renowned acuity of New Yorker cartoons to the more recent proliferation of meme culture embraced and mobilized by Gen Z, political humor cultivates a fertile, if volatile, space to flesh out political moments in ways that resonate more broadly. However, under the weight of algorithmic echo chambers and deepening political divides, its power to resonate broadly has become few and far between.
The country knew Latasha Harlins primarily by the grainy image broadcasted again and again on the courtroom television and on national news networks: a tussle between Latasha and the proprietor of that Los Angeles convenience store in 1991; a harrowing bang when the shopkeeper pulled the trigger of a gun she took from beneath the counter, and fired a deadly shot into the back of Latasha’s head. The proprietor had mistakenly assumed that Latasha intended to steal a carton of orange juice, and shot her after the physical altercation that ensued, after Latasha had placed the orange juice on the counter, and after she began walking away. Though it’s been 33 years since the 15-year-old was killed, Latasha is on my mind; I recently read a chapter from Brenda E. Stevenson’s The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins for my American Studies course, History of the Cops: Racialized Policing in the U.S. Gripped by Stevenson’s recounting of Soon Ja Du’s trial — and the key role that that grainy surveillance video of the shooting played in the proceedings — I stumbled on an altogether different videographic representation of Latasha Harlins — her life, not her death: Sophia Nahli Allison’s A Love Song for Latasha (2020). In the brief documentary film, Allison practices a sort of past and present Afro-futurism that entreats us to imagine how Latasha’s young life might have bloomed. The film is palpable, dreamlike, with images of shoes tossed over telephone wires and Black girls’ gap-toothed smiles, alongside oral histories from Latasha’s cousin, Shinese, and her best friend, Ty.
Haruki Murakami, household name of Japanese literature, has released yet another masterpiece: The City and Its Uncertain Walls. The City is a reworking of a short story of the same name from 1980, which Murakami makes relatable using his stunning finesse of the magical realism genre. Magical realism is a particularly popular genre that invites the idea that even in the regular places we frequent every day, in the tedium of everyday life, there may be something magical that could occur. At any moment we may be swept away to some unknown place or encounter some magical creatures. Murakami in particular thrives in this genre, taking us from the all to known landscape of modern Tokyo and the sprawling Japanese countryside to the dreary unnamed town where part of the story takes place, and from the ordinary office workers of the Japanese capital to the magical unicorns of the unnamed city.
The three-part story follows an unnamed narrator as he navigates through life.
With 26 wins and 33 nominations, Emilia Pérez has been basking in award glory. The musical crime comedy written and directed by Jacques Audiard premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2024, and then hit Netflix on Nov. 1. The musical pieces are primarily in Spanish but feature English as well, and the film stars Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz.
The film begins with Rita Castro (played by Zoe Saldaña) an under-appreciated and overworked lawyer working in Mexico on criminal cases, who has been contacted by Mexican drug lord Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón) for a job.
After putting a bag over Rita’s head and taking her to an unmarked location, Manitas asks Rita to help him become a woman. Rita is to find the surgeon and help Manitas fake his own death in Mexico and find a new home for his kids and wife.
The countdown is on. Adrenaline courses through your veins as we barrel toward the final stretch, and yes, finals. You probably curated a detailed playlist for your Thanksgiving break commutes, but now a new one is needed as the grind resumes. Something has to stop the days from blurring together as you guzzle Celsius and grapple with the reality of 4:30 p.m. sunsets. Just a few more weeks, and you’ll be free — at least from the grips of seasonal depression (for now).
I’m sitting in the basement of the Lodge Co-op, sinking into the rips of a couch, when enters the ethereal Overpade. Immediately there is an electric pulse that zings around the room, and the band excitedly moves to welcome them. Introductions are made, and we venture up the stairs, out of the shadowy basement, stumbling upon a pillow forted living room. Blankets spear the air held up by long tree branches, and a light illuminates the fort from the inside out. We settle down on the squishy pillows littering the floor, getting ready to open the Pandora’s box that is September’s Spirit.
