Arts & Entertainment
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Love in Free Fall: A Review of Bright Half Life

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“Falling in love” is a fascinating expression. In my native language, Chinese, the two most-used equivalents of the phrase compare love to things one could physically fall into, such as a river or a net, but English expression might just be superior because of its ambiguity. Do we fall into love, or are we falling when we’re in love? The Kitchen Theater’s Bright Half Life seems to say it’s both. Written by Tanya Barfield and directed by Sara Lampert Hoover, Bright Half Life is a two-women play that follows the story of Vicky (Shannon Tyo) and Erica (Jennifer Bareilles) through the decades.

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Night Light: Beauty in Methodologies

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Taught by Professor Jean Locey in the fall of 2017, ART 3604: Alternative Processes offers a stunning collection of works in Night Light, an exhibition held in Tjaden Hall. The class was an exploration of non-lens based photographic processes, centering around the creation of imagery through the painting of  photosensitive emulsion on paper followed by a subsequent exposure to light. Kylie Corwin ’18, one of the five featured artists,  remarks that, “this class challenges our contemporary perception of photography as a medium by teaching analog techniques that are not only historic but also labor intensive, thus enriching our appreciation for the physicality and vastness of the photographic medium.”

Originally used for the reproduction of diagrams and notes, the cyanotype is a photographic printing process that results in products with varying intensities of the titular cyan shade — hence the term, blueprint. However, the technique has since been extensively utilized by artists for a multitude of intentions. Jérai Wilson ’20 features this method in Recycled.

Arts & Entertainment
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Doug Hall’s In Silence — A Wondrous Architecture

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The acclaimed artist Doug Hall has worked in a variety of media and his work is currently being exhibited through his photography. Located in the Bibliowicz Family Gallery in Milstein Hall, In Silence brings together some of Hall’s most celebrated photographs which feature stunning scenes of archives and examinations of the human relationship with knowledge. In “Remembrance of Things Past” (Marcel Proust), the title of the photo alludes to the central figure dominating the entirety of the piece, the Proustian work of the same name. The luscious prose which sprawls across the page is hypnotic and is one of the initial pulls of the work. The book in the photograph radiates the appearance of being effortlessly unplanned yet at the same time astonishing.

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Courtesy of Cornell University

Escaping the Exclusive Preserve — A discussion of William Lim: The Architect and his collection

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Once an architecture student at Cornell, William Lim has since had a transformative effect on the artistic landscape. His style is concise yet evocative, and his works represent a compelling intersection between art and architecture — a sublime pursuit of elegance removed from the exclusive preserve of the museum. In addition to his role as a prolific creator he has maintained an impressive art collection, exercising a particular emphasis on representing the artists of his native Hong Kong. Located in the John Hartell Gallery in the Sibley Dome until March 15, William Lim: The Architect and His Collection exhibits a stunning selection from the artist’s collection and from his own works. One of the particularly moving pieces of the exhibition is Pastoral Music by Samson Young.

Arts & Entertainment

Festival 24: The Epitome of Creativity

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What did you do in the 24 hours starting from Friday at 6:30 p.m.? A group of students were creating something incredible from scratch. Festival 24, which started in 2008 with only theatre productions, recently added film and dance performances to showcase the work of other students in the Performing and Media Arts department. Festival 24 challenges students to produce a story from a  one-word theme in 24 hours. Playwrights stayed up all night to write a 10-minute play.

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Beauty in the Unfinished: Drawing the Line

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Drawing the Line, open until June 10 at the Johnson, displays over a century of drawing history from European artists. In particular, the exhibit celebrates both the drawing as a sovereign entity as well as an often-ignored component of the artistic process in its entirety. In this way, Drawing the Line forces the audience to closely reevaluate pre-existing notions of where and how beauty is to be found. A drawing technique with a history of over six centuries, gouache differs from watercolor in that it produces a distinctly more opaque finish. In an untitled composition from 1915, Pablo Picasso intermingles both gouache and watercolors.

Arts & Entertainment
The cast of Hamlet Wakes Up Late rehearses at the Schwartz Center before opening night.

Hamlet Wakes Up Late, Now at Schwartz

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You’re probably used to seeing Shakespeare plays with a twist: whether that means adapted into a musical, parodied upon or set in a different era or political context. In fact, these days it might actually be harder to encounter a Shakespeare play done in the strictly “classic” manner than one that takes on some sort of revisionist elements. But you probably haven’t seen an adaptation as bold as Hamlet Wakes Up Late. Written by renowned Syrian poet and playwright Mamduh Adwan, translated by Prof. Margaret Litvin, Arabic and comparative literature, Boston University, and directed by Prof. Rebekah Maggor, performing and media arts, Hamlet Wakes Up Late is a Syrian political satire set which had its English-language premiere at the Schwartz this weekend. Inspired by The Bard’s iconic tragedy, the play unfolds under a drastically different and intriguing premise: one in which Prince Hamlet is an narcissistic alcoholic, so absorbed in his own world that he remains unaware of the truth behind his father’s death and oblivious to the people’s suffering under his uncle’s dictatorship until it is too late.

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Beyond a Pentagonal Room: Sama Alshaibi’s Silsila at the Johnson

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In the center of a dimly lit room a rug of intricate design is splayed underneath several patterned poufs. The cavelike disposition of the space channels and stretches the haunting drone of the music being played overhead. On each of the room’s five sides, all of which are made up of moveable walls, a different film is being projected. Both the video works and the accompanying soundscape border on the trancelike and reflect their roots in the traditions of Sufi mysticism. Each of the works derives its title from a significant facet of Sufi spirituality and of the five in the room, the work that attracts my particular attention is Al-Tarīqah (The Path).

Arts & Entertainment
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Broker, video, 2016 1440x690

Progress Undone

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What exactly are the implications of something that is undeniably of fiction, yet that is frighteningly familiar? Is it the fiction that approaches the reality or perhaps is it a truth that has become divorced from itself?
Inhabiting the World We Made offers a space of navigation for these types of conversations.