Titled for Yayoi Kusama, who is the cat's pyjamas.
Installed in various venues throughout the U.S., critic Lori Waxman receives artists in need of reviews. Reviews are scheduled and written in twenty minute increments between the announced hours only. Reviews are signed, published, and ready for pick-up within the time frame of the performance. Artist, artwork, critic, and review all exist in the same space simultaneously. Reviews are free of charge, but are not guaranteed to contain positive responses to the work submitted. Critics are not meant to be cheerleaders or educators or advertisers; they are opinionated, thoughtful, informed commentators. Or so they try.
either a really great or awful idea.
AZEALIA BANKS - 212
Jonathan Bogart: She deserves better than to be championed by critics as a moral rebuke to Odd Future or Kreayshawn, especially when those rebukes carry overtones of East Coast snobbery and white people deciding who’s properly black. She also deserves better than to be championed by critics as an aesthetic rebuke to Nicki Minaj or M.I.A., especially when those rebukes carry overtones of anti-chart rockism and dudes deciding who’s properly feminist. But mainly, she deserves better than to be the subject of yet another Women Rapping (Too) profile, only to be forgotten by the time the next XX-chromosomed rap hype comes along. In the relatively brief space of this single song, she’s created not just a persona and a point of view — standard tools for any would-be musician, pop or indie or hip-hop or whatever — but a fully-formed aesthetic, dirty without sleaze, aggressive without sociopathy, gleeful without dumbness. There’s a reason the video focuses so much on her mouth whether rapping, stretching, or smiling: it’s both uncomfortably intimate and unvarnishedly truthful. There’s no escape. She’s here.
[10]attn: l
WHAT A FANTASTIC WAY OF WRITING ABOUT AZEALIA BANKS. I SECOND ALL OF THIS.
This post has been brewing in me for a while now. It’s about criticism: being critical, critiquing, creating a dialogue about the world. There are two parts to what I want to say. Firstly, I think it’s vital that criticism exists. But as Leticia Supple has said, criticism is too often seen as negative. Criticism is critical discourse, and is essentially a discussion, and it’s vital to creating a robust, intelligent society. I think we so often limit our criticism to texts only, but critical discourse about our culture is also vital. Where did we get this idea that criticism is bad – or, actually, that some kinds of criticism is ok (reviews of products) but anything else is unwelcome?
For me, criticism comes from a place of engagement, inquiry and interest. I have never criticised something I didn’t care about, and have never said something simply to agitate. That is why I’ve never blogged about, say, Sex and the City. Yes, I have a lot to say on the topic, but I know it’s not worth engaging with critically in any serious way.
"Lisa Dempster › How to be critical?
Yes! Cultural criticism doesn’t just evaluate a work, it engages with the subject and contributes something itself.
A critic I respect who also writes some fantasy, mentioned that she approaches criticism with as much creative energy as her fiction. As though it’s her turn speaking at a salon for creatives, with publishing simply the vehicle to share with an audience of invisible enthusiasts.
I often think of that during “‘is this worth submitting?” moments.
