Posts Tagged ‘interview’
Morgan Library curator talks about century-spanning exhibit
“Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich,” currently at the Morgan Library & Museum features drawings from Picasso, Michelangelo and Munich, represent a rich variety of masterworks from renaissance to the modern periods. The Eye talked to Jennifer Tonkovich, curator at The Morgan Library & Museum about the show.
Which drawings are the ones you are most excited to see personally?
One of the groups that I was excited to see were the eighteenth century German drawings, because there are not many of them in this country, and they really represent some of the greatest achievements of the German Baroque and Rococo period. And Munich has such a wonderful collection and these artists are a revelation.
Blaine Swen: All the world’s a stage
Blaine Swen is the creator and the director of the Improvised Shakespeare Company, a comedy company that will be performing at Theater 80 in New York from October 3rd-5th.
Noel Gutierrez-Morfin sat down with Swen to talk about his work and all the fun that comes along with Shakesperean improv.
How did you get the idea to start it in the first place?
I started doing improv in California years ago when I was a teenager, and I played for comedy sport, a show that does short-form improv, or short-scene games that have some sort of twist or goal, like what you would see on “Whose Line is it Anyways?”
One of the games we played was a game where you do a scene in the style of Shakespeare, which was a style that came up a lot. I was part of a group out there that decided to take the Shakespeare scenes and turn them into a longer show. We did that a couple of times.
When I was in LA, some people from that group started another group called the Backstreet Bards that performed Shakespearean improv shows at iO West [Theater]. When I moved to Chicago, I started a Shakespearean improv group in 2005, which was the ISC. More »
Alrick Brown talks about Kinyarwanda with The Eye
April 7 marked the 18th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, which took the lives of 800,000 people. The Eye sat down with Alrick Brown, director and writer of the documentary KINYARWANDA, to discuss his role in the remembrance of the tragedy.
First, could you talk about the film Kinyarwanda in general? Start with the content.
The film is based on some of the actual happenings during the Rwanda genocide. We took stories from different sources: from a child, from a couple, from two soldiers, from a priest and an imam, and that will give the audience a more comprehensive look at what actually happened during the genocide. And it was our intention to tell a more significant story, not to portray heroes or villains but just people, caught up in the horror of a crazy situation. More »
The Eye chats with Keep Shelly in Athens
Your music has been called down tempo electronica. Where do you see your style fitting in within the electronica genre?
We like to say we are making downbeat pop. That means that there are many genres that can be identified in our music. There is a wide range of influences we share and that reflects on our tunes. We are more ambient and no one would call us a band that makes dance music, [but] our up tempo songs are still down tempo-ed. I think that is [what we are] all about: creating a dreamy atmosphere that makes people calm down and get in a trip, guided by intricate electronics and soft voices…
Where does the name for the band come from?
There is a neighborhood in Athens called Kipseli. But somewhere in Athens there might be our Shelly… More »
Speaking with Noah Fischer, Occupy Museums creator
Noah Fischer is a Brooklyn-based artist who graduated from Columbia’s School of the Arts in 2004. Fischer has often focused on alternative and public space as subject for his works, and so, this past October, he instigated the “Occupy Museums” movement. Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, the group hoped to both create awareness about and fundamentally change “the pyramid schemes” on which “the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%” operate, according to the movement’s manifesto.
In a recent issue of The Eye, Ravenna Koenig wrote on this intersection between activism and the art world. Check out her interview with Fischer after the jump, in which they discuss artists’ salaries, private wealth, and where exactly, it all went wrong. More »
14 questions for Jacob Wysocki
Comedian Jacob Wysocki makes his feature film debut this summer in the Sundance hit Terri. Alongside Creed from the office and indie stalwart John C. Reilly, he plays a charming obese teenager struggling to navigate the loneliness of high school. The Eye met with Jacob to discuss his newfound fame. Later he invited us to a party. So we think he’s a nice guy and he made a good movie.
So, this is your big break, huh?
Yes, this is it. This is the moment people want.
You dropped out of UCLA? We assume to join the ranks of Jim Morrison and James Dean and sail away into famous infamy.
That is false. But I love that they printed that. So I’m going to say yes. But it is not true. I dropped out of school. But not UCLA. I dropped out of community college that had the same initials. I read it, I was like yeah. I think it makes me seem way smarter. So I’ll stick with the lie. More »