Beauty and Bloodshed in ‘Titane’

Titane is easily the strangest movie I’ve ever seen. The Palme d’Or winner gained notoriety and praise for its demented portrayal of love. While that sometimes gets lost in the movie’s unhinged plot, Titane’s visceral experience of blending horror and eroticism results in a thrumming crescendo of creative ingenuity. Titane centers around Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a murderous strip-club dancer who takes on the identity of a long-missing boy named Adrien in order to escape the authorities. At risk of spoiling the movie, I should note that it is also about cars, and the companionship that accompanies the grotesqueness of the human body.

Design, Empathy, Collaboration: RAW EXPO at Milstein Hall

RAW EXPO can perhaps best be described as a gathering of creators and question-askers deconstructing barriers to collaboration. In the wide concrete dome of Milstein Hall, over 50 groups of and individual artists, publishers, engineers, developers, musicians, architects and people who came simply due to curiosity conversed and tested out products and processes. Simply put, a desire to create a fully interdisciplinary environment undergirds RAW EXPO. Now in its second year, RAW EXPO was hosted by and served as a kickoff for Medium Design Collective, a group of students that champions collaboration and design-oriented creation. Many members of ASSOCIATION, the group that organized RAW EXPO’s inauguration last year, remain in Medium.