THE 99% BAT-SIGNAL: A Cry from the Heart of the World

Local

“We need a bat-signal,” Hero said. “We need a bat-signal.”

OCCUPY GO ROUND: The Dimensional Nature of the Movement

Express

When the protest began on 9/17, there was no concentric circle model for #OWS. There didn’t have to be. People can rely on concentric instincts when they get together to do, say, or envision something important.

John Elderfield, Jennifer Field, Lauren Mahony, and Delphine Huisinga with Phong Bui

Art

John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, who organized de Kooning: A Retrospective (September 18, 2011 – January 9, 2012) along with his associates Jennifer Field, Lauren Mahony, and Delphine Huisinga, paid a visit to Art International Radio to talk with publisher Phong Bui about the remarkable life and work of Willem de Kooning.

RITA ACKERMANN with Anne Sherwood Pundyk

Art

Late in October, when I entered painter Rita Ackermann’s studio in Brooklyn’s Navy Hill, she was working on three works on paper on the floor, pouring thinned cerulean blue paint, stopping, looking, working the paint into forms with a wide brush, then stopping and looking again.

BONNIE MARRANCA with Patricia Milder

Art

On the occasion of the 100th issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Bonnie Marranca, editor and publisher, and author of three collections of essays, met Rail Managing Art Editor Patricia Milder to discuss the journal, as well as her life and work

CHARM LIKE A DRUG
MAURIZIO CATTELAN with Jarrett Earnest

Art

In the late 1980s Maurizio Cattelan emerged on the international art circuit with sculptures that appeared equal parts sight-gag and natural history diorama. Combining taxidermied animals, wax figures, and the tears of a clown, he has reigned as court jester of the art fair set for the better part of two decades.

UNHAPPY DAYS IN THE ART WORLD?
De-skilling Theater, Re-skilling Performance

Art

Ideally, the dialectic of de- and re-skilling should allow artists, directors, and choreographers to creatively rethink their output, and in ways that go beyond a mere swapping of context.

Note from the Publisher

“What I have always tried to do is think in ways that allow me to become an interesting person, like how I am always attracted to inner-resting [Delmore Schwartz’s pronunciation] people. Whatever else follows is a matter of luck.”

The Rail’s 2011 Player of the Year

The Rail’s Player of the Year Award annually goes to the most surprisingly influential performer on the political stage. This year's candidates include a testy lawman, a horny congressman, and Swing State actuaries.

ALEX WATERMAN with Timothy Nassau

Music

Vidas Perfectas, a new Spanish-language production of Perfect Lives, Robert Ashley’s visionary television opera from 1983, will premiere December 15 through 17 at Brooklyn’s Irondale Theater, with performances of the first three episodes of seven.

George Kuchar’s Otherworldly Humanity

Film

George Kuchar (1942–2011) was one of the most creative, original, and influential filmmakers of our time, straddling two generations of North American iconoclasts, from Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Rudy Burckhardt, Kenneth Anger, and Michael Snow to Warren Sonbert, Ernie Gehr, Abigail Child, and Henry Hills.

The Diary of Martín Santomé: A Novel

Fiction

This is the second English translation of the novel, La Tregua by Mario Benedetti that was first published by Editorial Nueva Imagen, S.A. in 1960. Originally translated by Benjamin Graham and published in 1969 by Harper & Row as The Truce, the novel is long out of print in English. The Rail will be serializing this Benedetti masterpiece over the winter and into the spring of 2012.

LIN HIXSON and MATTHEW GOULISH with Carol Becker

Theater

Director and writer Lin Hixson and performer, writer, and dramaturg Matthew Goulish, both based in Chicago, spent 20 years working with the company Goat Island. That company developed and performed nine unique pieces over 20 years in locations around the world. After a two-year process of marking the end, the company disbanded.

Editor’s Note

Dance

I can’t remember when I fell in love with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.