Did Bob Dylan Really Plagiarize SparkNotes In His Nobel Lecture?

This month, American bard Bob Dylan finally delivered his Nobel lecture, many months after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The lecture, traditionally given days before the award ceremony in December, must be delivered by those who accept the award within six months. Dylan slipped in his assignment just under the deadline.

Now, however, another Nobel controversy has arisen for the singer-songwriter: Numerous outlets have reported that he may have plagiarized from SparkNotes during a long passage on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in his long-awaited lecture. 

The discovery stems from a line in which Dylan appears to directly quote Moby Dick. “A Quaker pacifist priest, who is actually a bloodthirsty businessman, tells Flask, ‘Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness,’” said Dylan. One problem: that line never appears in the actual novel.

Writer Ben Greenman noted in a blog that the quote appeared to have been fabricated. Then, Andrea Pitzer tracked down a similar quote, not in the book itself but on an entry about Moby Dick on the website SparkNotes ― a website that, like the iconic CliffsNotes, provides summaries, character descriptions and thematic breakdowns of books for students to use during study (or use to skip the reading altogether). In a Slate piece, Pitzer documents over a dozen other instances in which Dylan’s discussion of the classic book closely mirrors language found in SparkNotes.

This may seem to fall in a gray area of plagiarism ― most of the matching snippets Pitzer lists consist of phrases or pacing choices in Dylan’s summary of the book, not full sentences or passages. There’s a good chance that it was at least inadvertent: In preparing his speech, he consulted SparkNotes to brush up on his Melville, then had their framing and word choices floating in his head when he sat down to write. 

Some scholars defended his cribbing from SparkNotes to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, suggesting that it was simply an artistic allusion and even a mocking wink at the Nobel committee. “His lecture is … meant to be a post-modern work of art,” said Alex Lubet, a music professor at the University of Minnesota. 

Maybe it was simple plagiarism. Maybe it was a brilliant, paradigm-shifting artistic web of allusion. Or maybe, and perhaps most disappointingly, Dylan was just being lazy. “He’s on the road all the time. He just turned 76,” pointed out David Yaffe, a Syracuse University professor of humanities, to the Star-Tribune. “You could see him wanting to take a few shortcuts.”

Sure, sure ― except Dylan took an extra six months on his assignment only to turn in one that was hastily cobbled together with the aid of SparkNotes. Would the professors defending the musical icon for taking such “shortcuts” have similar patience for a student who cited SparkNotes instead of the assigned text because they were overwhelmed with classwork? Perhaps ― none of my literature professors were ever impressed by such an excuse.

Stephen Fallon, John J. Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, told HuffPost, “If a student borrowed [from SparkNotes] as Dylan does here, I’d be concerned about plagiarism, but I might give Dylan a pass as he’s not implicitly claiming as his own the ideas of someone else.” Still, “the fact that he clearly turned to SparkNotes raises doubts and also the question of why he didn’t at least skim the novel again before devoting a good chunk of a Nobel lecture to it.” (Editor’s Note: Stephen Fallon is the father of this post’s author.)

Any use of SparkNotes’s interpretations, as opposed to simple plot summary, would be more troubling, he added.

The Nobel Prize in Literature often goes to writers with many decades under their belt and a host of obligations, but this typically does not preclude them from crafting an original, erudite lecture. If Dylan was incapable of doing so ― even while taking advantage of his full six-month window to compose it ― he had the option of turning down the prize. Others, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, have done so in the past. 

Instead, it seems Dylan relied on sloppy shortcuts and the work of others to turn in a musically worded but less than original piece. He’s been accused of outright plagiarism before, but more meaningfully perhaps is that he’s been accused before of creating art that simply echoes or copies others’ work without acknowledging where his originality begins and ends. In 2011, questions were raised about an exhibition of his paintings at Gagosian Gallery, which were presented as “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape.” According to The New York Times, some critics pointed out that several of the paintings seemed to be copied from photo, reproducing the work of photographers in paint without altering the framing, perspective or composition.

Dylan typically gets out of these dust-ups easily enough, as scholars and fans are willing to assume that his every move was a conscious artistic choice ― a work of collage or allusion, rather than simply a borrowed piece of work passed off as original. Reading SparkNotes for a work rather than referencing the book itself points to something else, though. Dylan may be a great songwriter, a brilliant artist, and a cultural icon, but his Nobel lecture shows signs of an intellectual laziness that wouldn’t be accepted from a freshman English literature student. What a shame.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Much Ado…

Shakespeare in the Park’s production of “Julius Caesar” with the man himself looking uncannily like Donald Trump has caused a stir. So much so in fact that some of the corporate sponsors have decided to withdraw financial support. These include Bank of America and Delta Airlines with the latter stating “No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of ‘Julius Caesar’ does not reflect Delta’s values.” I wonder what on earth this means. So let’s dig a little further into why a play written more than 400 years ago could create such a reaction.

To begin with, Shakespeare can rightly be called the most contemporary of all playwrights. His characters describe psychological types and states of mind that even Freud thought were extraordinary. His plays can be staged in any number of ways from period costumes to modern dress, from demure Elizabethan backdrop to the Fascist brutalism of the1930s. His ideas are so vast and his understanding of our humanness so all consuming that his plays can fit any age and any approach. Somehow he always provides the opportunity for the essence of his drama to survive and shine no matter how radical the treatment. He was a careful politician in his time when a careless word or action could lead to terrible reprisals. His only slip was a re-staging of “Richard II” specially requested by the Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s erstwhile favorite who was about to fall from power and end up on the block. “Richard II” is about a sovereign who looses his crown and staging it at a time of possible national insurrection by Essex was an unwise move.

Then there is Shakespeare’s political handling of the character of Julius Caesar. This had nothing to do with government but with management of his actors. Why is the play called “Julius Caesar” when our eponymous hero has only five percent of the lines and is killed in Act 3, Scene 1? Compare this to Brutus at 28 percent of the lines, Cassius 20 percent and Mark Antony 13 percent. Shakespeare had a dilemma with this play. He had written three great parts, parts that actors everywhere still fight over from Orson Welles and Marlon Brando to Ralph Fiennes and Kenneth Branagh. He could easily have called the play “Brutus” or even “Mark Antony” but if he had, the fall-out from his star actors would have meant company internecine warfare. So the compromise was to call it “Julius Caesar” to whom he gives some of the best one-liners of all time:

‘I am constant as the northern star,’ ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once,’ ‘Let me have men about me that are fat.’

He obviously revered Caesar and made him a sympathetic character following his historic source material in Plutarch, even down to showing that he had lost his hearing in one ear.

Portraying Caesar as Trump is probably well within contemporary performance practice, but maybe a little cheap and obvious. It’s certainly not something to get fired up about. We live in an open society; there is the First Amendment, which applies as well to theatre directors and we are mature experienced adults who can deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous stage performances. Well, can’t we? If you are intent on getting offended, then watch Bill Maher or John Oliver on HBO delivering their own style of political commentary. (I believe that such commentary is really important in a free society.)

If you really wanted to create a sensation with a Trumpian figure in Shakespearean form then you could conceive of a new “Macbeth” with King Duncan recast as Hillary, or better still a white Othello surrounded by an all black cast with those blonde curls taking us from victorious battles (signifying the election perhaps) to the murderous bedchamber scene about which we can only imagine. Now that might be really nicely provocative and stir up some really great discussion and debate. But getting upset about a small character in a big play looking like the President, well really, get over it and get some courage because we are going to need it for the next few years.

In keeping with that thought, I offer some lines inspired by but not written by Shakespeare—the result of a Shakespearean improvisation competition between my son and me. (He won.)

Fear not this temporal King whose pride is ripe as autumn’s berries.
Think not upon your vaunted ambition to lie upon his smoking image
For it will change and when ‘tis done a lighter place will smile upon our offerings
And make them bright as a child’s glad laughter,
So now think your way through and bring your honest courage to this our noble charge.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Roxane Gay Opens Up About Living ‘In This World In A Fat Body’ On ‘Daily Show’

“The story of my body is not a story of triumph,” Roxane Gay writes in her new memoir, Hunger, which publishes June 13. “This is not a weight-loss memoir.”

Instead, Gay ― the author of Difficult Women, Bad Feminist and An Untamed State ― explores her relationship to her body before and after the sexual violence that would rattle her youth.

Gay discussed her new book Monday on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.” 

“As a comedian, I’ve made a lot of fat jokes,” Noah said in his conversation with Gay. So he was intent on listening to what Gay had to say about her experiences rather than continuing to equate fatness with farce.

Gay explained that she often feels uncomfortable on airplanes, at movie theaters and even at her own book signings, where readers and fans have offered her unsolicited weight-loss advice. 

“At the grocery store, people make commentary about what they see in your cart,” Gay said. “You don’t fit in the world, oftentimes. The world is not really interested in creating a space for you to fit.” 

Gay also shared a story from her childhood, when she was gang raped at the age of 12, before she was old enough to understand what happened to her.

“It was so unexpected,” Gay said. “I just thought, ‘I want to be stronger. I want to be bigger.’ … It was a deliberate choice.” 

Hunger isn’t her first experience with discussing assault and its aftermath. For The Rumpus online literary magazine, she wrote about the careless language of sexual violence and other essays based on her experiences.

In Hunger, she writes, “I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe.” This feeling courses throughout the book, which is subtitled A Memoir of (My) Body.

On “The Daily Show,” describing her motivations for writing the book, Gay said, “I wanted to tell the story of my body, because when you’re fat in the world, people have assumptions. They assume you’re stupid. … I think it’s important to show what it’s actually like to live in this world in a fat body.”

Buy it on Amazon or at your local indie bookstore. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Dr. Jill Biden Receives Standing Ovation After Her Tonys Speech

Dr. Jill Biden was an unlikely star of the 2017 Tony Awards.

When she took the stage on Sunday night, Biden earned a round of applause even before beginning her tribute to America’s veterans. Following her short speech, in which she outlined the difficulties veterans face in adapting to civilian life, she was met by a standing ovation from the Radio City Music Hall crowd ― one of the biggest of the night.

Biden was there to introduce a performance from the musical “Bandstand.” Set in 1945, the show tells the story of Donny Novitski, a musician leading a band of fellow veterans attempting to acclimate to post-war life in a competition for America’s hottest new swing band. 

“In the armed forces, ‘got your six’ means, ‘I’ve got your back,’” Biden said in her introductory remarks, proclaiming her support for the organization Got Your 6. The group works to empower veterans by providing them with resources and opportunities when they return from military service.

Got Your 6, Biden explained, has also partnered with “Bandstand” to highlight the experiences and talents of America’s veterans.

“As the daughter of a World War II signal man and the mother of an army captain, I’ve seen how the scars of service can haunt even in the best of situations,” she said.

“As veterans cope with returning to civilian life, they form a band unlike any the nation has ever seen and discover the power of music to find their voice, their purpose and redemption,” Biden concluded. “I’m honored to say to our veterans on behalf of Joe, myself and the company of ‘Bandstand’ and everybody else here, we’ve got your six.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden was caught by cameras beaming in the audience.

You can see a full list of the 2017 Tony Award winners here.

And if you’re feeling nostalgic for American politics circa 2008 to 2016, here’s a meme that never gets old:

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=593db401e4b0b13f2c6b9ad2,5939465fe4b0061054800ade,59087196e4b05c3976825c0d,58f648cbe4b0da2ff863a6ec

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Tim Cook ‘Reveals’ Who Is Really Behind Donald Trump’s Late Night Tweets

Tim Cook used part of his address to graduating students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday to poke fun at President Donald Trump.

The Apple CEO began by saying he’d never figured out how students at the university in Cambridge pulled off their spectacular course-end pranks ― such as the placing of a propeller atop the campus’ Great Dome.

“Or how you’ve obviously taken over the president’s Twitter account,” Cook added. “I can tell college students are behind it because most of the tweets happen at 3 a.m.”

Cook went on to deliver some serious advice to the class of 2017, and the effect that the online world may have on their lives.

“The internet has enabled so much and empowered so many. But it can also be a place where the basic rules of decency are suspended and pettiness and negativity thrive,” Cook said.

He encouraged students not to let “the noise knock you off course” or to “get caught up on the trivial aspects of life.”

“Don’t listen to the trolls, and for God’s sake don’t become one,” Cook added. “Measure your impact on humanity not in likes, but in the lives you touch. Not in popularity, but in the people you serve.”

Watch Cook’s full speech in the clip below:

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=593a6813e4b0240268782296,593ba5f4e4b0c5a35c9fd86d,5937bf2be4b01fc18d3ed093

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The ‘Black Panther’ Trailer Just Dropped With A Star-Studded Cast

The trailer for “Black Panther” has finally arrived and, by the looks of it, this Marvel world will take us on one helluva ride.

In the nearly two-minute teaser, Chadwick Boseman reprises his role as T’Challa (aka the Black Panther) and returns home as king of Wakanda ― a mysterious, powerful and vividly colorful African world. There, we meet a star-studded cast with Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Danai Gurira as Okoye and, T’Challa’s nemesis, Erik Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan.

The teaser, which dropped during Game 4 of the NBA finals, opens with Klaw (played by Andy Serkis) chained to a chair asking Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) what he knows about Wakanda. When Ross says that it’s a third world country with “cool outfits,” Klaw reveals Wakanda’s true secret, claiming that he is the only person to have ever seen the country and make it out alive. 

“Explorers have searched for it, called it El Dorado,” Klaw growls. “They looked for it in South America, but it was in Africa the whole time.”

Wakanta, as it appears in the trailer, is a mix of traditional and modern, natural and sleek, and is brimming with waterfalls. Its people are as Ross had suggested — ornate and vibrantly dressed — but they also prove to be as fierce as T’Challa himself.

And, of course, a generous amount of time was used to show the Black Panther’s own super-hero strength and impenetrable armor.

While the trailer is packed with action and fantasy, Boseman’s co-star Sterling K. Brown has said that the film raises “really provocative questions” and is “politically astute” and “socially relevant.” 

“It’s not just an action film,” Brown told Entertainment Tonight. “It addresses the climate today of Africans and African-Americans ― across the country and across the world ― in a way that people will really be excited about.”

“Black Panther,” directed by Ryan Coogler and based on the comic book series by Ta-Nehisi Coates, premieres in theaters in February 2018.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

23 Harry Potter Wedding Ideas That Will Excite Your Inner Wizard

Any wedding can feel magical, but a Harry Potter wedding is positively spellbinding. 

We’ve gathered 23 enchanting ideas for brides and grooms who consider themselves honorary Hogwarts alumni.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58e3e497e4b0f4a923b2b0e1,57910d99e4b0bdddc4d393bd,5931ad64e4b075bff0f31e16,58cfd3ffe4b0ec9d29dd5d08

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Artist Creates NYC Bodega Completely Out Of Felt

Lucy Sparrow’s art installation in New York is definitely heartfelt ― with an emphasis on the felt.

The British artist has created an authentic bodega, complete with hot dogs, sodas and vegetables. The whole thing is made from felt ― even the bodega cats.

“I wanted to create this all-encompassing art experience of a bodega, which is completely disappearing in New York City,” Sparrow says in the video above. “And I’ve recreated this in felt.”

The felt bodega display is officially called “8 ‘Til Late,” and is located on the ground floor of The Standard hotel, High Line, in Manhattan.

Sparrow and her assistants made all 9,000 parts of the creation in London from wool pressed and rolled into felt. Then she shipped 9 tons of felt goodies to the U.S. in four planes.

The idea is to remind people of the world that existed before everything went online.

“The convenience store and bodega is where you would go and see your neighbors and have a chat and see if everything was still okay,” Sparrow says. “I think we are all leading such narrow lives that we are living online rather than actually living in the present.”

Like a real bodega, everything in the felt one is for sale. A felt cigarette pack costs $20, while a box of felt candy is $35, according to The New York Times.

That’s more expensive than the real items at a real bodega, but Sparrow says they have lasting value.

“So you can get an original piece of art for as little as $15, and you know that’s incredible, that’s accessibility to the max,” she says in the video.

Of course, if you’ve felt the appeal of the project, you can buy the whole “store” for $500,000.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Elizabeth Gilbert And Girlfriend Rayya Elias Hold Commitment Ceremony

Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert and girlfriend Rayya Elias are more committed to each other than ever. 

In a beautiful post shared on Facebook Tuesday, the 47-year-old writer ― who split from husband José Nunes just under a year ago ― announced that she and Elias had held a “simple and spontaneous ceremony of love” surrounded by close family and friends.

Gilbert wrote that the ceremony wasn’t “legally binding,” just a “private celebration of what we have long known to be true: We belong to each other.”

The ceremony’s timing had special significance; as Gilbert noted in the Facebook post, Elias ― a fellow writer and Gilbert’s long-time best friend ― has been battling pancreatic and liver cancer for the last few years:

“More difficult days are to come,” Gilbert wrote. “It doesn’t get easier from here. Rayya’s illness is grave. But our love is strong. We will walk together as far as we can go together. After that, it all gets turned over to God.”

Elias is a musician and the author of Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk From the Middle East to the Lower East Side.

In an equally moving Facebook post last September, Gilbert wrote that romance blossomed between the two women after Elias was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer this past spring. 

She also revealed that the intensity of her relationship with Elias played a part in the end of her marriage last spring.

“Death — or the prospect of death — has a way of clearing away everything that is not real, and in that space of stark and utter realness, I was faced with this truth: I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya,” Gilbert wrote. 

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Stories + articlesList=5776d10ae4b0a629c1aa05e6,57d07130e4b0a48094a74f3e,57bde9d2e4b04193420cd087,5845e3dde4b028b32338e4c4

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

‘Brighter Days Are Coming’ At St. Petersburg Street Art Museum

This spring, a hundred years since the Russian Revolution, a new Street Art inspired exhibition in St. Petersburg may reflect the ambivalence that competing storylines produce in the re-telling of history. A hundred years since the workers movement displaced the Czar and his family following three hundred years of power, the streets don’t look like they will return to the Bloody Sunday of hundreds of workers lying on the pavement, but a certain unruly violence can be sensed in the performances and artworks nonetheless.

“Brighter Days Are Coming”, co-curated by Andrey Zaitsev, the director of Street Art Museum and Yasha Young, director of the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the voices of 60 current artists with roots in the Street Art/ graffiti practice to discuss that specific revolution or the theme of revolution itself. Largely from Russia and using everything from aerosol to concrete to bricks to bones to smoke, it would appear that the effects of 1917 are even now difficult to resolve.

The Street Art scene is familiar with the schizophrenia of identity and the loosely tossed labels that never exactly fit. Multiple participants and categories of art-in-the-street now apply – perhaps reflective of the multiple individual stations one can occupy in society: citizen/ loyalist/ worker/ owner/ globalist/ revolutionary/ consumer. Awash in the borderless Internet of everything and nothing, it is often the youngest adults for whom Street Art appeals and has currency, an imperfect authenticity you can engage with. Ironically, there may be a way to accommodate these ubiquitous monuments of Lenin and other static heroes in your periphery as you walk by them playing with Pokémon on your digital device. One way is to make them your own.

Clicking “Like” Won’t Do It

There is a struggle today to discern the cultural weight and meaning of visual culture because hierarchies have been flattened and distance is seemingly elastic in our digital experience. Iconic Lenin may mistakenly be reduced to icon Lenin, a simplified button on one’s phone. The digital space can create a sense of intimacy with strangers and yet an odd distance when considering actual lives of peasants, or the fight of the workers, or the struggle of artists for that matter.

One sure way to appreciate art is to see it in person, to contemplate while gazing on the expanse of an enormous mural or trudging across the grounds of this plastics factory/ Street Art Museum on the outskirts the former Petrograd – one that was begun by twenty-somethings in love with global Street Art and is heavily populated with them.

Indeed a low-budget looking satirical promotional video for the exhibition posted on the Street Art Museum Instagram page appears as a mocking half-hearted celebration by costumed Russian Millenials and Gen Z’s dancing around a smiley icon cake whose dynamite candle suddenly explodes in a bit of stock video of a fiery Armageddon.

What is the future or past we’re celebrating? Does anyone know? Thanks to the explosion the video feels humorously heavy in the foreboding sarcasm department. Maybe it is just an insider reference to a favorite movie scene or video game. There ARE, after all, three  curious Pokémon characters at the kitchen table. The official poster features the cheerful sunshine-yellow Pokémon with lipstick and a full-mouthed smile. Somehow it has more credibility than any human figure, smiling and terrifically positive that the future is bright.

Walking Inside and Out

The fourth such large exhibition in this suburban factory campus and its open outside space since the museum received official accreditation in 2012, this season at The Street Art Museum features 60 or so artists from 12 countries who look to the events 1917 for inspiration. As organizers note on the museum website, the topic is being addressed with retrospective shows this year by great museums worldwide including The MOMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Russia.

“The main object is the heritage of the Russian avant-garde, whose world-spanning and messianic spirit had a serious effect on the development of contemporary art,” explains the site. For practitioners and fans of the graffiti and Street Art scenes that have evolved in cities globally during the last 50 years, one revolution or another is never far from their mind at all. At the epicenter of history here in Shosse Revolutsii, the Street Art Museum is an appropriate place to at least contemplate the subject.

Large scale installations on walls throughout the compound are complemented by sculptures in open spaces; some of them interactive, others static, still others are reproductions of historic and recognizable figures. Most commanding would be the Lenin. Most remarkable would be the reproduction of The Hermitage.

The recreating of The Winter Palace façade is a guilty delight, one of the 6 buildings of The actual Hermitage that holds the world’s largest collection of paintings only kilometers from here. A world icon of the revolution since being stormed in the fall of 1917, the massive aquatic (or French) blue facsimile of the façade in this museum courtyard provides a haunted, riveting, and admittedly comedic context for everything that passes by it, behind it, before it.

Individual Interpretations of “Revolution”

Elsewhere Lisbon based Street Artist Bordalo II has brought his practice of creating an endangered animal with local garbage for his installation of the famous Russian Snow Leopard – an animal now critically endangered, with its numbers estimated by some as 100 or less. One may wonder, certainly these artists do, what animal species will still be here in 2117.

Russian artist Dima Rebus watercolor painted one of his character’s faces on the bottoms of 340 oil barrels by hand as a nod to the mobs of people who gathered together to form the the uprisings of the revolution. He says he has plans to disperse the mob wall, to vanish it at the end of the exhibition, painting each person out one by one with spray paint. Entitled “Life Goes On” the artist says, “Revolutions happen and pass, but life goes on.”

The Italian illustration-style Street Artist name Millo painted one of his imaginary highrise milieus where a giant child is at play in the center of an urban setting. The revolution here is the represented by the ripples of waves passing literally through the character, he says. On social media he describes it this way, “Each planet follows its orbit and all of them are the personification of the revolutions lived by the main figure. The message I want give is to find your personal revolution. When something is getting over is the exact moment to find the strength to revolution”.

French Street Artist Kazy Usclef (above and below) normally draws influences from Futurism and Suprematism so his connection to the Russian avant-garde is a short distance. He also isn’t afraid to touch upon current political sore spots.

In “Rebel Sex Love Resistance,” the two entwined figures are female and one is wearing a balaclava, features that together are perhaps subtle references to the activist art music group named Pussy Riot, famously contentious and Anti-Putin.

Performance, Panels, Debates

During its opening days the exhibition featured ongoing performances by contemporary artists and independent theater troupes, turning the courtyard into a stage and the “Hermitage” into a set.

Lead by curator and theater director Danil Vache, costumed performers appear to take inspiration from specific historical events and themes of radical change, societal rupture, militarism, and the uprising of poor and working class to claim power. Inside and onstage, live performances of poetry, speeches, and music were featured throughout the week.

Additionally there were a few panel discussions and forums like “Simulacrums of Revolution,” where moderating curator/ theatrical producer Mihail Oger spoke in conversation before an audience with guests like American graffiti/Street Art photographer Martha Cooper, Ukrainian artist Pasha Kas; Russian graffiti writer and contemporary artist Maxim Ima, graffiti/public artist Anton Polsky (known as Make), and Urban Nation (UN) Cultural Manager Denis Leo Hegic. Hegic, who spoke before images of the Berlin Wall during his presentation, tells us about his and the UN’s involvement with the exhibition.

BSA: The title of the exhibition is sort of a satiric, sunny reference to a happy future – “Brighter Days Are Coming”, yet it is cast directly under the shadow of the hardship and conflicted relationship Russian’s and all of us have with the past. How did you see the exhibition responding to this dichotomy?

Denis Leo Hegic: The title of the forum “Simulacrums of Revolution” is actually a good supplement to the title of the exhibition itself, since the idea was not to define revolution or to claim revolutionary DNA, but to reflect on what is the “Representation” of revolution on various levels and in our own understanding, in historical, scientific definitions and in the artistic representation.

Hegic points to the age old practice by humans of the falsification of historical events to form a narrative. He also points to “fake winter palace or the fake museum” and compares it to the famous painting “The Storm on the Winter Palais” by Pawel Petrowitsch Sokolow-Skalja as examples of re-writing history. You can almost anticipate that Hegic will transition readily into the topic of “fake news” or “propaganda,” but he takes another damning route instead.

“We can draw parallels to the fakeness of our own representation today – with our own “curated” Instagram accounts, or the millions of selfies we make from flattering angles – this seems to be a considerable part of our daily thought and activities. This is where I see the direct link to the representational powers of every revolution in our own present time.”

He also disagrees with how we characterized the title of the exhibition, “Brighter Days Are Coming.”

“The title should not necessarily be understood as a satiric one,” he explains. “Brighter days are always about to come. The light will inevitably win over the darkness and human optimism will remain a motor that keeps our evolution process in motion. Ironically, our evolution itself might bring our extinction too – but under the assertion ‘Brighter Days Are Coming’ we do continue to live and to hope.”

Pulling Back the Curtain

The museum itself, stationed on the campus of an operating plastics factory and under the directorship of the son of the owner, highlights some of the conundrums of featuring autonomous global public art movements in a time and place where official state messages speak more to loyalty than revolution. For many critics, Street Art belongs in the street, so the very existence of this institution is a non-starter.

Finally it is notable that St. Petersburg itself has very little of what you may call an “organic” Street Art scene – and one does not see Fascist or AntiFa post-Soviet graffiti furiously scrawled here. This appears to be comfortable protected space for debate about theory and history not easily identified by a graffitied or muralled exterior.

But these are only a few of the multiple ironies at play in the organized chaos of today, where the German Goethe Institute and Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art are partnering with the St Petersburg Street Art Museum to launch a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. For those who do not know at that time Russia and Germany were engaged together with Austria in a brutal and bloody war that killed three million people.

For the sixty or so artists and performers participating inside these factory walls you may also wonder how or if their work has been affected by the work of this Revolutionary era’s giants in literature, ballet, painting, music and movies — people like Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Kazimir Malevich. Each of these names became as closely identified with their disciplines as the politically, socially, anthropologically tumultuous eras they worked within.

As in every era, today technological revolutions are affecting all people regardless of nationality or national politics.

The Iranian Street Art duo who currently live in Brooklyn, Icy & Sot, steer clear of the politics of nations in their installation by building a wall – itself overlaid with political overtones – but here it is intended as a metaphor for protecting privacy. By bricking up the periphery of a bathtub, the brothers contemplate “No Privacy”, an occurrence enabled by our complicity (and obliviousness) to being tracked and followed by strangers via our smart phones.

“The bathtub and shower are everyone’s private place,” they tell us. “In this installation, even though we built a wall around the tub there is still no privacy because there is a smart phone playing music nearby, enabling some entity to always watch or listen to you.”

A Final Word

By focusing this large exhibition at its original epicenter organizers are bound to strike nerves and inflame passions and, although Russians don’t appear to be exactly celebrating the centennial, the opinions about who deserves blame and credit for the events that unfolded are all over the map. Which is why, perhaps, curators looked far for new takes on the topic.

“First and foremost this exhibition was meant as a representation of a broad international scene,” says Denis Leo Hegic as he talks again about the perspectives artists here bring to the topic of revolution. “The artists curated by the UN were all coming from different countries, bringing different ideas of portrayal and embodiment of revolutionary experience. The starting point of this revolution in 1917 did not stop at national boarders and claimed to be an international or even global movement.”

“Similar this is probably the most direct, democratic and largest global art movement today so the choice to bring international guests, with their own historic and different national backgrounds and their individual talents and approaches to creation – these were the most valuable contributions to the exhibition and the audience.”

___________________________

Our sincerest thanks to Martha Cooper for sharing these photographs with BSA readers! We really appreciate all that she does and who she is to so many.

_____________________________

The final attack of the Red Guard to the Winter Palace from the movie October by Sergey Ezeinstein

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.