weekend links: Tracy K. Smith, Roxane Gay, the Museum of Capitalism
Tim Portlock, CA$H_4_GOLD. Image courtesy Artsy/the Museum of Capitalism.
Congratulations to Tracy K. Smith, the new U.S. Poet Laureate. The 45-year-old Princeton professor has published three collections of poetry, including the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars. Read along as she performs two of her poems, “I will tell you the truth about this, I will tell you all about it” and “Wade in the Water,” in these video clips. [PBS]
Published earlier this week, Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body speaks of weight loss journeys and the trauma that follows a sexual assault. The book, building on her past feminist writings, is a practice in making peace with one’s body. [The Atlantic]
W.G. Sebald has garnered acclaim for capturing the horror and pain of the Holocaust as it has filtered through the generations, and so it’s a little surprising to see a tribute to the author’s comedic tendencies. Sebald’s humor may be subtle, but it adds necessary levity to his heavy ruminations. For those unfamiliar, consider this a primer to one of the greatest writers of the past few decades. [The New Yorker]
Ctrl, singer-songwriter SZA’s debut album, is filled with deeply personal songs about womanhood and insecurities. Her trick for getting in touch with her own vulnerability? Mushroom trips, which she says helped her with her anxiety and broke through her writer’s block. [Fader]
A new "speculative institution" opens in Oakland today: the Museum of Capitalism. Andrea Steves and Timothy Furstnau have created the concept for the project, which invites viewers to imagine a post-capitalism world and features artists from all over the world. Count us in. [Artsy]
Academy Award-winning director and producer Oliver Stone discusses his new documentary, The Putin Interviews, in which he shows Vladimir Putin’s take on the alleged Russian tampering with the US presidential election. [The Nation]
Thursday was the 30th birthday of the GIF, and to celebrate, GIPHY is starting an IRL art show titled Time_Frame in New York that will run from June 17 to June 22. The exhibit will feature contemporary GIF art as well as revisit the GIF’s milestone historical moments (and will hopefully settle the soft-G or hard-G debate!) [Observer]
Sofia Coppola talks about her remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film The Beguiled, the lesson of which can be summarized as “underestimate women at your own risk.” The film just won a historic Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, which means that nobody will be underestimating Coppola for the foreseeable future. [Vulture]
Yoko Ono will be given songwriting credit for John Lennon’s “Imagine,” according to the National Music Publishers Association. It was Lennon’s wish after all— he is seen in a 1980 video saying that Ono deserves credit on the song because of “her influence and inspiration.” [Pitchfork]
Nathaniel Ainley speaks to American painter Reisha Perlmutter about her “Hyperrealistic Water Nudes,” or rather nude portraits of real women in water. The goal of this collection is to show the biological connection between the body and water and how it’s universal regardless of religion or background. [The Creators Project]
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s inauguration and the creation of “alternative facts,” Broadway will be introducing a theatrical adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 later this month. Just make sure Big Brother isn’t watching you when you purchase those tickets. [The New York Times]
—Jae Lee