Can A White Cube Museum & Conference Center In Lusanga Redress Economic Inequality In The Democratic Republic Of Congo?
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A RENDERING OF THE WHITE CUBE IN LUSANGA (IMAGE: © OMA)
With the establishment of LIRCAEI, the iconic modernist White Cube will be recontextualized in the setting that has historically underwritten its development. In economic terms, plantations have funded not just the building of most European and American infrastructure and industries, but also that of museums and universities. On an ideological level, the violence and brutality unfolding on one side—the plantation zones—has informed and haunted the civility, taste and aesthetics championed at the other: the White Cubes. By colliding these two opposite poles of global value chains with each other, LIRCAEI aims to overcome both the monoculture of the plantation system—that exhausts people and the environment and the sterility of the White Cube—a free haven for critique, love, and singularity, that, more often than not, reaffirms class divides.
A RENDERING OF THE WHITE CUBE IN LUSANGA (IMAGE: © OMA)
DC's Republic Restoratives Releases Rodham Rye In Honor Of Hillary Clinton
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Distillery and craft cocktail bar Republic Restoratives founders Pia Carusone and Rachel Gardner planned and renovated their warehouse space in DC's Ivy City for over two years, making it home to a bar, retail store, a tasting room and their bourbon distillery. Carusone and Gardner can lay claim to the first women-owned distillery in Washington, DC.
“You can’t make a true bourbon unless you’re an American producer,” Carusone said. “Americans have been perfecting it for generations, and it’s protected from international competition. It goes back to international trade law that protects specialties of certain nations.”
The two-story, 24,000 square foot warehouse located at 1369 New York Ave. NE is in an area that is quickly-emerging as the food and liquor manufacturing hub of DC.
“I want people to feel excited, interested and connected in the same way we feel connected to the neighborhood,” Carusone said. “This whole area is developing very fast.”
Home to Rodham Rye
The owners of Republic Restoratives, spent months concocting a spirit worthy of celebrating their next president’s inauguration. Their creative juices imagined a drink that would be the talk of Washington. And then the roof fell in, and it seemed that Rodham Rye sort of made no sense. This week, after “a period of self-described mourning,” Gardner and Carusone have decided to move forward with the whiskey anyway. Their boozy homage to Hillary Clinton went on sale in a limited batch of 4,652 bottles that could go pretty fast, though the company is already teasing, “You never know, there could be a comeback.”
Hillary Clinton has been known to "throw back" the occasional whiskey, writes The Washingtonian. Priced at $79, 5 percent of each sale goes to support pro-choice Democratic women running for political office with the help of Emily's List.
Carusone, who used to be congresswoman Gabby Giffords’s chief of staff, says Rodham Rye is really a celebration of women in general, which is why they’re releasing it in March, during Women’s History Month. “It’s a tribute to women in history, and a tribute to women in our everyday lives,” she tells Washingtonian. And there are plenty of symbolic eye winks. It’s a blend of one- and three-and-a-half-year Tennessee ryes, teeing up this description on the bottle: “A selection of whiskies that are stronger together than apart.” Additionally, Carusone points out, rye is the “hardiest, sturdiest, most resilient” grain of them all, and it just so happens that they sweetened the whiskey with maple syrup from Clinton’s state of New York.
Rodham Rye launched on March 25 with a “community conversation” at the Ivy City distillery entitled “How to Support Women in the Age of Trump.” After a panel discussion, Republic Restoratives lead tours of their facility, offered samples and cocktails, while female-owned vendors provided food.
Fake Letter Requesting Removal Of Dana Schutz' 'Open Casket' Emmett Till Painting Dials Up Protest Temperature
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The controversy around artist Dana Schutz' controversial painting 'Open Casket' and the horrific death of Emmett Till continues at the Whitney Biennial. This shocking image above appeared in Google Images and is from former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos' website.
The debated work is based on a photograph from the funeral of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black American who was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman.
Schutz shared her perspective about the painting with ArtNet News, saying:
You’ve said in the Times that you approached the painting as a mother, and as a way to explore a mother’s pain. Would there have been no way to address the subject without, as your critics would have it, appropriating black experience?
It was the feeling of understanding and sharing the pain, the horror. I could never, ever know her experience, but I know what it is to love your child. I don’t know if there would be a way to address the subject without some way of approaching it on a personal level.
Could you have foreseen that you were stepping on a third rail by treating this explosive subject? If so, what made it necessary to paint Emmett Till specifically?
Yes, for many reasons. The anger surrounding this painting is real and I understand that. It’s a problematic painting and I knew that getting into it. I do think that it is better to try to engage something extremely uncomfortable, maybe impossible, and fail, than to not respond at all.
Will the reaction to the painting change anything about your practice in the future?
I’m sure it has to.
On Thursday morning several new outlets including Artsy, Frieze, and Out Magazine published parts or all of an open letter alleged to have been written by the artist Dana Schutz, requesting that the painting be removed from the exhibition. Shortly after, the letter addressed to Whitney Biennial 2017 co-curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks was declared to be a fake by Stephen Soba, the Whitney Museum’s director of communications.
Queer artist Parker Bright has maintained a vigil in front of the painting, blocking its view. Bright met with Lew and Locks to express his views, and he was assured that Schutz would not sell the painting or profit from it in any way, writes Out.
Artist Hannah Black sent a letter earlier in the week to the curators, requesting that the painting be moved and destroyed. AOC will revisit this story after digesting a number of essays and thoughtful pieces about the controversy.
Read AOC's original story, including the full text of Black's letter to the Whitney and new details around Emmett Till's death: Dana Schutz' Painting Of Emmett Till Creates Controversy At Whitney Biennial 2017 AOC The Wokes
