Fair warning: the Brighton-based quartet British Sea Power set sail with a heavy load of affectations. They have no surnames, and the first names they go by–Yan, Hamilton, Wood, and Noble–are less than reassuring. Sometimes they wear woolen military coats onstage. Their debut release, The Decline of British Sea Power (Rough Trade), has the word […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 23
Issue of Mar. 4 – 10, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
A Feast for the Eyes
Carie Lassman at Dogmatic, through March 13 Kirsten Rae Simonsen at Peter Miller, through March 20 Maurizio Pellegrin at Carrie Secrist, through March 20 The centerpiece of Carie Lassman’s eight-work exhibition at Dogmatic, 480 Plaids, celebrates image making through its sheer size, exuberance, and variety. Her grid of 480 sheets of paper, each containing a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Your tax dollars at work, maybe. Rupa Shenoy writes in the Chicago Reporter (January): “The Chicago Police Department would not provide detailed information on police shootings, such as the locations of the shootings or the names of injured civilians. But The Chicago Reporter analyzed nearly 700 stories published in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Walkmen
When the Walkmen’s plangent anthem “We’ve Been Had” showed up in a Saturn commercial, fans understandably winced. Selling out is one thing, but the way the admen had transformed an ambivalent look at the passing of youth into a standard-issue bill of goods was almost too much to bear. Given their history, however, it was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tania Bruguera
Along the corridor leading into the Rhona Hoffman Gallery is Tania Bruguera’s beautiful yet troubling installation Poetic Justice: used tea bags shingle both walls, broken occasionally by tiny LCD screens playing sepia film loops of marching figures or of black faces being touched by people outside the frame or being covered by an oxygen mask […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Blocked Arteries
I would like to commend Ben Joravsky for his February 6 article entitled “Exit Wounds” that addressed community protest over the elimination of certain access ramps on the Dan Ryan/I-94 expressway by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). The residents of the community where the targeted ramps are located have a legal right to question […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Charles Dutoit has the ability to make even familiar works sound fresh, finding details other conductors miss or gloss over. Since resigning as the artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2002 following a dispute with musicians, he’s been guest conducting other orchestras and focusing on his specialties–the French and Russian repertoires, especially from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Burying the Bones
BURYING THE BONES, Stage Left Theatre. Margaret Lewis’s play set in South Africa should be intriguing. A woman haunted by her husband’s ghost goes to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, seeking answers about his death. Meanwhile her politically minded sister gets a job attending to an unrepentant police […]
Posted inNews & Politics
On the Wrong Side of History
Dear editor, The treatment of psychoanalysis pioneer Carl Gustav Jung and his biographer Deirdre Bair at the hands of the New York Times and book reviewer Dinitia Smith (Hot Type, February 13) reminded me of the inquisition of Patrick J. Buchanan after the publication in 1999 of his book A Republic, Not an Empire. Buchanan […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Datebook
MARCH 5 FRIDAY The centerpiece of Voices in Time: Lives in Limbo, an art exhibit opening tonight at Las Manos Gallery, is a re-creation of a prison cell furnished with a quilt made from bits of female prisoners’ clothing. The show and an accompanying series of free panel discussions explore the consequences of rising rates […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Party’s Over
Stroger used a time-honored strategy to pass his budget: put it off until the last minute, then wear ’em down.
Posted inArts & Culture
Luomo
Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti made his name in the late 90s with a series of noisy ambient dubscapes–and though several of them were credited to Conoco and Sistol, that name was Vladislav Delay, the entity to which production was ultimately attributed. Then, in September 2000, he released Vocalcity on Forcetracks–a subdivision of Frankfurt’s conceptual techno […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dirtbombs
“We’re not a garage band,” claim Detroit’s Dirtbombs on their Web site–which is pretty rich considering that front man Mick Collins more or less single-handedly launched the Motor City’s garage rock renaissance back in the 80s as the leader of the Gories. Still, one can sympathize with their urge to distance themselves from that increasingly […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Women on Top
WOMEN ON TOP, pH Productions, at Stage Left Theatre. Nine women blend raw personal monologues with quick-witted improv in this feisty, funny show. They start by introducing themselves during a modern-dance parody, dressed all in black and swirling their arms. Then they ask the audience creative questions like “What’s your favorite sea creature?” and “What […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Knowing Cairo
KNOWING CAIRO, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, at Victory Gardens Theater. If you left at intermission–and few would blame you–you might think that Andrea Stolowitz had flunked playwriting 101. Cranky 80-year-old German Jew Rose is driving her nondescript therapist daughter, Lydia, crazy. Enter indifferent African-American home nurse Winsome. After an hour onstage together, Rose and Winsome have […]