newyorker--2020-09-08--It Will Take More Than a Vaccine to Beat COVID-19

The first outbreak of polio in the United States struck Rutland County , Vermont , in the summer of 1894 .
The disease began with fever , sore throat , and fatigue ; it sometimes went on to damage the brain and spinal cord , paralyzing or even killing its hosts .
Charles Caverly , a local physician , chronicled the devastation using detailed maps and notes .
“ Boy , 10 years ; died within twenty-four hours with convulsions , ” he wrote .
“ Boy , 10 months ; died on sixth day , all extremities paralyzed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; died on third day , no paralysis noted .
.
.
.
Male , 22 years ; died on third day , both legs paralyzed.
” Within weeks , a hundred and thirty-two people , mostly children , had been paralyzed , and eighteen had died .
In the coming decades , polio became a familiar menace .
Summer , when the virus exacted its heaviest toll , was dubbed “ polio season.
” The virus crippled children and adults , often paralyzing their respiratory muscles and confining thousands to iron lungs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recorded nine thousand cases of polio and six thousand deaths .
In August of 1921 , Franklin Roosevelt , then a thirty-nine-year-old lawyer , fell off a sailboat and into the icy waters of the Bay of Fundy ; the next day , he noticed lower-back pain , and within a week he could no longer stand .
The pace and size of outbreaks accelerated .
Even though the polio death rate declined in the decades that followed , owing to advances in medical care , the virus still disabled more than thirty-five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 1952—the year the virus peaked in America—nearly sixty thousand people were infected , and more than three thousand died .
Parents refused to let their kids play outside .
Cities introduced social-distancing measures .
Summer camps were cancelled ; schools were shut down ; bars and theatres closed .
As bad as polio was , it wasn ’ t the only infectious disease stalking mid-century America .
In the early nineteen-hundreds , tuberculosis began to compete with influenza for the title of the world ’ s deadliest disease .
TB , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burrows into the lungs and other organs , spreads through coughing , sneezing , and talking ; the Industrial Revolution , which brought huge crowds together in urban neighborhoods and workplaces , made it more likely to spread .
In some people , TB lies dormant , sometimes for decades .
In others , it becomes active , causing a quick and violent death : bedsheets drenched in sweat , sputum mixed with blood , a wasting away so severe that the disease was known as consumption .
TB ’ s toll was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prisoners , the poor .
The death rate for minorities was three times higher than for whites .
In 1953 , the United States saw more than eighty-four thousand new infections , and nearly twenty thousand deaths .
In 1962 , forty-one years after her husband was diagnosed with polio , Eleanor Roosevelt died , at age seventy-eight , from complications of tuberculosis .
The total elimination of polio in the United States and the near-complete eradication of tuberculosis are two of this country ’ s greatest public-health success stories .
And yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Polio was defeated by a silver bullet : Jonas Salk introduced a polio vaccine , administered by injection , in 1955 ; a few years later , Albert Sabin developed an oral version .
As a result , in the nineteen-sixties , the number of polio cases plummeted to fewer than a hundred , and in the seventies it fell to fewer than ten ; no one has contracted the virus in the United States since 1979 .
By contrast , there is no comparable vaccine for tuberculosis .
The B.C.G .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective against TB only about half the time , and is not given to the vast majority of Americans .
Instead , TB has been beaten back incrementally , using a host of imperfect medical and public-health advances .
In the nineteen-forties , Selman Waksman , a microbiologist at Rutgers University , isolated streptomycin , the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis .
Streptomycin had serious side effects , including nerve damage , and quickly led to bacterial resistance ; as a result , several other drugs were developed .
Used alone , none @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given over a period of months can cure the infection .
Meanwhile , testing for TB became readily available across the United States .
( For some people , such as hospital workers , it became required . )
Public-health protocols were developed : new cases of TB were reported immediately to departments of health , which moved to isolate patients and trace their contacts .
( Those systems remain in place today : as a physician , the first time I wore an N95 mask was while treating a patient with TB @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American housing and sanitation , these developments made the virus both less infectious and less deadly .
Today , around the world , ten million people contract TB each year , and a million and a half die of it ; multidrug-resistant tuberculosis , which is harder to treat , is spreading in some developing countries .
But the United States is recording fewer tuberculosis infections now than at any point in the nation ’ s history : about nine thousand cases each year , and around five hundred deaths .
In fighting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a silver-bullet cure : the polio model .
In April , the federal government launched Operation Warp Speed , a ten-billion-dollar effort to expedite , through government-industry partnerships , the development , manufacturing , and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine .
The goal is ambitious : three hundred million doses by January , 2021 .
Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , believes it is plausible .
“ My hope , my expectation , is that we ’ ll have not one but multiple vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In the popular imagination , a coronavirus vaccine will bring the pandemic to a decisive end .
And yet not all vaccines are as powerful as the one Salk developed .
Many vaccines are only partly effective , or work better for some age groups than others ; the immunity a vaccine confers can wane with time , and a shot that ’ s hard to manufacture or distribute could remain unavailable to many of us .
Last week , the Centers for Disease Control sent a letter to state governments telling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a coronavirus vaccine this fall ; it described the progress of “ Vaccine A ” and “ Vaccine B ” —almost certainly the vaccines being developed by Pfizer and Moderna , respectively .
Though these vaccines are promising , there is no guarantee that they will be cure-alls .
“ Unless you have a perfect vaccine , which very few are , you ’ ll always have people who end up getting sick , ” Fauci said .
“ With or without a vaccine , we ’ re going to need other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But we need to be prepared for the possibility that , in the absence of a single-shot cure , it will be the tuberculosis model—incremental , simultaneous progress on multiple fronts—that gets us through the coronavirus pandemic .
It ’ s a good thing , then , that vaccine research programs aren ’ t the only ones progressing at unprecedented speed .
Three kinds of therapies currently in development—antiviral drugs , antibodies , and immunomodulators—may be ready soon .
Alone or in combination with a vaccine , they could help us turn the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fight back against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 , the disease it causes .
We can limit the virus ’ s spread in the population at large ; we can also build barriers against infection for at-risk people , such as caregivers or essential workers , in particular .
We can devise therapies that prevent the newly infected from getting worse , and we can create interventions that target the sickest and give them a fighting chance .
By surrounding the virus in this way , we can make it less contagious and lethal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

Validating a vaccine isn’t the end of the process. “Getting it rolled out from there will be massively challenging,” Juelg said. “Even if a vaccine is safe and effective, that doesn’t mean people can just walk into their primary-care doctor’s office the next day and get it.” In its letter, the C.D.C. indicated that, even if trial results come quickly and are favorable, only a few million doses of the new vaccines would be available at first—nowhere near enough to create herd immunity or fundamentally alter the economic and social disruptions of the pandemic. Both of the vaccines it described, moreover, must be stored at subzero temperatures—Moderna’s at four degrees below zero, Pfizer’s at ninety-four below—and require two doses, spaced weeks apart, to work. Distributing and administering them will not be easy.
Finally, of course, Americans must be convinced to take the vaccine in numbers high enough to conquer the coronavirus. Fauci told me that he worries about how vaccine science is being communicated to the public. “I never liked the ‘warp speed’ terminology,” he said. “It suggests, incorrectly, that you’re rushing things. Whenever people hear things are being rushed, they worry about safety. They think you’re prematurely putting something out there that isn’t entirely safe.” The speed in Operation Warp Speed, he said, really has to do with the reduction of financial risk: the government has committed to buying millions of doses of vaccines before they are proven. “If a vaccine doesn’t work, you’ve lost a few hundred million dollars,” Fauci said. “If it does work, if it’s safe and effective, you’ve saved four, five, six months of waiting to get people the vaccine. That’s huge.”
Even before the pandemic, American politicians and celebrities fomented vaccine skepticism with debunked safety concerns. In recent years, vaccine hesitancy has grown, and many Americans are now dubious about vaccines with proven track records. (In 2019, because of vaccine hesitancy, the country experienced its largest measles outbreak in decades.) A new COVID-19 vaccine won’t have years of safety data behind it. “For a vaccine to be trusted, you need time and you need evidence that people who get it don’t end up having major issues later on,” Peter Bach, a drug-policy expert at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, told me. “Even if we get a vaccine, it wouldn’t surprise me to see many parents making the very rational decision not to vaccinate their children without long-term safety data.” Recent polling suggests that between a third and half of Americans would choose not to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, even if a vaccine were cheap and easily available. The case will be further complicated if a vaccine is only partly effective, or requires multiple doses, or if it’s unclear how long immunity lasts. If only part of the population gets vaccinated, any notion of immediate herd immunity is a pipe dream.
All this suggests that a silver-bullet vaccine may not be in the cards, at least not right away. “Hoping that a vaccine will quickly change the course of this pandemic is, I think, hoping for the least likely outcome,” Bach said. “I wouldn’t bet the future of our society on a COVID vaccine.” And yet even a partially effective, partially adopted vaccine, combined with contact tracing and social distancing, could still make an incremental difference. Each person vaccinated would be a person who is less likely to get sick, and so less likely to pass the virus on to others. Depending on the vaccine’s effectiveness, those who’d received it might be able to rest easier. The virus’s momentum would slow, at least a little.
Antiviral drugs fight the virus in a different way from vaccines. A vaccine gets your immune system ready before an infection; it’s like an intelligence report telling your body to get ready for an incoming surprise attack. Antiviral drugs are useful after the invading force has arrived; they fight back by sabotaging it. As Matthew Hutson explained earlier this year, in his survey of antiviral-drug development, an antiviral might work by inserting faulty material into viral genomes, by restraining the enzymes that a virus uses to weave itself into our DNA, or by blocking the proteins that a virus needs to mature. Doctors now see COVID-19 as a disease with two phases: in early and mild cases, replication of the virus seems to drive symptoms, but in later and more severe illness it’s our own overexuberant immune response that damages the body. Antivirals generally work best in the first phase, before critical illness has set in. Remdesivir, the only antiviral shown to work against the coronavirus so far, is largely ineffective for patients who are intubated or need high levels of oxygen—they are in the second, immune-focussed stage of the disease—but it can hasten COVID-19 recovery by about four days in people with less severe illness, in whom viral replication is still driving symptoms. Researchers are working on other, more powerful antivirals, which could replace remdesivir or work in concert with it.
To understand the difference antiviral therapies could make in the fight against COVID-19, you should first understand that, right now, doctors have very few therapies at their disposal. When I first began caring for COVID-19 patients, in March, just as the pandemic exploded across New York City, we made great strides in understanding the course of the disease and reorganizing our hospital to accommodate the surge. But the few proposed remedies we tried, such as the drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, failed. We quickly discovered that the best we could do was support our patients while they battled the virus themselves. We laid people on their bellies to allow their lungs to expand; we tried multiple oxygen-delivery devices; we connected the most desperate to ventilators, hoping that their immune systems could mount the fight we couldn’t. Antiviral drugs would give us a weapon against the virus.
We’ve long used antivirals to treat viruses such as herpes and influenza. But they’re perhaps best known as a treatment for H.I.V. The first H.I.V. antiviral, AZT, was introduced in 1987, six years after AIDS was identified. In 1995, effective “combination antivirals” arrived; they used separate mechanisms to attack the virus simultaneously, “cornering” it so that it couldn’t mutate its way around a single drug, in a phenomenon known as viral escape. We’re likely to move faster with the coronavirus, both because there are so many more infections, giving researchers more opportunities for study, and because of how rapidly the disease unfolds. It takes nine years, on average, for an H.I.V. infection to progress to AIDS. The coronavirus leads quickly to acute illness, and so a researcher knows within weeks if a treatment worked.
So far, coronavirus research has focussed mostly on hospitalized patients. But it’s giving antivirals to those who never require hospitalization that could change the course of the pandemic. Treated people will walk around shedding less virus, reducing the chance that they’ll pass it to others. Treatment, if it’s given early enough, becomes a form of prevention.
The concept of treatment as prevention for viral diseases gained momentum in 2011, after a landmark study found that H.I.V. patients who started antiviral medications early were much less likely to pass the virus on to their partners. (The reduction in H.I.V. transmission was so large that the study’s results were released nearly four years ahead of schedule: it became unethical to continue withholding treatment from the control group.) As antiviral drugs became safer, with fewer side effects, the strategy was extended to people who didn’t yet have H.I.V. but were at risk of contracting it. So-called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in which high-risk, H.I.V.-negative individuals take antiviral drugs, is now a major tactic for preventing viral spread. When used correctly, and in concert with condoms, PrEP almost completely eliminates the risk of acquiring H.I.V. Doctors now use the same approach for influenza, prescribing the antiviral drug Tamiflu to nursing-home residents, postpartum women, and people with chronic conditions who are at risk for serious complications from the flu.
Could antivirals be used prophylactically for vulnerable people who haven’t yet been infected with the coronavirus? Remdesivir can be given only intravenously, which limits its applications. But an oral antiviral drug, known as MK-4482—previously known as EIDD-2801—is being developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. In June, the drug entered Phase II trials; its creators hope that, in infected patients, it will be able to reduce the virus to undetectable levels within days. It’s easy to imagine how such a drug could be given to people who test positive for the coronavirus but who don’t require hospitalization—and even to those with whom they’ve had close contact. There are some preliminary signs that MK-4482, which was originally developed as an influenza treatment, may also work against other coronaviruses, including the ones that cause MERS and SARS. “At least in vitro, it seems to have pan-coronavirus activity,” Nicholas Kartsonis, who’s leading the medication’s development at Merck, told me. Ideally, it could be used against not just this coronavirus but others. “If the virus mutates again, and there’s a pandemic in the future, we might not have to ride this roller coaster all over again,” Kartsonis said.
In early April, I admitted John, a middle-aged man, to the hospital. In the days before I met him, John had visited two other emergency departments. He’d been feeling unwell—tired, feverish, coughing—but the oxygen in his blood had held steady, and he’d been told to isolate at home and return if the symptoms worsened. Eventually, his breathing grew labored; three days after his arrival, he was on a ventilator in the I.C.U. For weeks before John took a turn for the worse, both he and his doctors knew he had the coronavirus—but, during all that time, they had no medications to give him or the people he might have infected. I can’t say for sure that antivirals would have helped John, who remained debilitated and delirious weeks after coming off the ventilator. But it’s easy to see how antivirals prescribed after his first emergency-department visit—as azithromycin Z-Paks are prescribed to patients with pneumonia—could have halted his morbid progression and made a difference for others.
Like antivirals, antibodies interfere with an invader’s spread inside the body. Unlike antivirals, they are made by our own cells—and so the trick is to transfer them from one body to another. Therapies based on the transfer of antibodies have a long and storied history. In the early eighteen-nineties, two physician-scientists working in Berlin, Emil Adolf von Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburō, took blood from animals that had recovered from diphtheria and found that, transfused, it could prevent or cure the infection in other animals. They worked with guinea pigs, goats, and horses. Soon, though, the therapy was being used to treat people around the world. In 1896, it was hailed by The Lancet as “the most important advance of the Century in the medical treatment of acute infective disease.”
In 1901, von Behring won the first Nobel Prize in Medicine. In the following decades, blood from recovered patients—called “convalescent plasma” or “convalescent serum,” depending on which blood products were isolated—was used to treat pneumonia, meningitis, anthrax, measles, chicken pox, and other diseases. It was also deployed during the 1918 flu pandemic, when researchers found that it led to reductions in mortality. Studies from a century ago have limitations; still, most infectious-disease specialists agree that the treatment probably helped.
The use of serum therapies declined precipitously in the nineteen-forties, as antibiotics became widely available. That was partly because animal serum created substantial complications when it was used to treat people. It often caused fevers, chills, and other allergic reactions; its efficacy might vary from batch to batch; its antibodies had to be matched to specific strains of human pathogens. (There might be several varieties of a given virus or bacterium in circulation at any one time.) Antibiotics were equal-opportunity destroyers—safe, reliable, and easy to produce. In the nineteen-nineties, interest in convalescent plasma rebounded, because many previously tamed pathogens had developed resistance to antibiotics; by then, human blood was also being used, and the process was much safer. In patients sickened by SARS, H1N1 influenza, and Ebola, convalescent plasma showed potential for lowering virus levels and, in some cases, death rates. But evidence from gold-standard randomized trials is still lacking. By the time well-controlled studies of the therapy had got under way, the viruses had moved on to other locations, which meant that new patients had to be enrolled.


newyorker--2020-09-07--The Colorful Worlds of Pipilotti Rist

The Colorful Worlds of Pipilotti Rist

It took more than two years to make “ Sip My Ocean.
” The underwater scenes were filmed in the Red Sea , in Egypt , with a waterproof wide-angle camera that had only recently come on the market .
“ I longed to film coral reefs , and the first time we snorkeled in the Red Sea I had to come up quickly because I couldn ’ t stop laughing , ” she remembers .
“ What an abundance of endlessly different forms and colors !
” ( They ’ re partly gone now , owing to climate change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ever Is Over All ” by a year , it showed more clearly where Rist ’ s work was headed , and its impact has been greater .
“ ‘ Sip My Ocean ’ changed my curatorial practice , ” Klaus Biesenbach , a former director of MOMA PS1 , who now directs the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art , told me .
“ I looked at videos differently after seeing it , and I looked at color differently.
” Joan Jonas , an older video artist whose work Rist reveres , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she taught at M.I.T .
“ The lightness , motion , weightlessness , gravity , melancholy , and levitation reminded them perhaps of flying carpets , winged horses , genies , carousels , or , in Rist ’ s words , ‘ the glory of life , ’ where ‘ worry will vanish , ’ ” Jonas wrote , in a catalogue essay .
Growing up in a small village in the canton of St. Gallen , close to the borders of Austria and Liechtenstein , Rist preferred to make her own arrangements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Elisabeth Charlotte , didn ’ t suit her .
She longed to be a boy , and in primary school , where she was often nicknamed Lotti , she called herself Elisabeth John for a while , and then Pierre .
A few of her classmates took to calling her Pipi , after Pippi Longstocking , the mythically strong and fiercely independent heroine of Astrid Lindgren ’ s children ’ s book series , which had been reborn as a popular Swedish television series .
“ That of course made me proud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also increased the number of mothers who wouldn ’ t let their children play with her . )
Born in 1962 , Rist was the second of five children ( older sister , younger brother , and younger twin sisters , all of whom still live in Switzerland and see one another often ) .
She was the only one to attend high school and college .
“ The others went to apprenticeships instead , ” she explained .
Ursula , the firstborn , takes care of elderly people in their homes ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cook , and now owns and runs a bar in Zurich called Helsinki ; one of her twin sisters , Andrea , is a photographer , and the other , Tamara , is a seamstress , who often helps on Pipi ’ s video projects .
“ For me , it was very clear , ” Rist said .
“ I was a good student , and being a good student was the one thing that could make my father pay attention.
” Not a lot of attention , though .
Her father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never seemed to recognize that she had become an internationally known artist .
As a lifelong stamp collector , however , he was deeply impressed when she was asked to design a stamp for the Swiss postal service .
Both her parents were from working-class families in St. Gallen , and both had broken precedent by choosing professions .
Walter Pius Rist was a doctor .
For the first six years of Pipi ’ s life , they lived in the mountains , where Walter ’ s patients were mainly Italian laborers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife , Anna , was the only teacher in a one-room school for forty-five students .
Pipi remembers “ endless green-brown alpine fields with manifold flowers and vivid little brooks melting holes in snow blocks—also skiing between my parents ’ legs.
” When Tom was born , they moved from the mountains to the village of Grabs , in the Rhine Valley , where her mother had grown up , and then to neighboring Buchs .
“ My mother was such a strong lion , very generous and giving , ” Rist said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look after others , and she always said if someone did something we liked we should go quickly and make a compliment .
On holidays , she had us bring bread and butter and honey to all the neighbors .
I thought that was a cool thing .
My father was a depressed person , who always had a new partner ” —that is , a mistress .
“ My parents ’ marriage made me swear I would never marry , ” she said .
Both her parents were freethinkers .
“ My @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and considered Africans more beautiful and intelligent than we are , ” she said .
He was also a dedicated environmentalist , who stopped heating the family swimming pool because it used too much energy .
One summer , Pipi , feeling unhappy and misunderstood , spent several nights sleeping in the empty pool , and going to her grandparents ’ house for meals .
Her parents separated , amicably , when she was sixteen—her father moved to the house next door , where he had his medical practice and received his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remained in the family home .
That year , Pipi fell in love with a boy in her school named Thomas Rhyner .
“ Pipi was one class behind me , and the only other person in the village who admired John Lennon and Yoko Ono , ” Rhyner recalls .
Music was their shared introduction to popular culture .
Second-string English rock bands ( never the Beatles ) used to come and play at a hall just over the border in Liechtenstein , and Anna , newly released from her marriage , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at her house .
“ To this day , ” Rist told me , “ if my mother sees a backpacker who looks a bit lost , she will say , ‘ Do you want to stay with us ?
’ ” Rist left home in 1982 , and spent four years at the University of Applied Arts , in Vienna .
Swiss artists have traditionally gone elsewhere to learn and practice their craft—Paul Klee to Munich , Alberto Giacometti and Jean Tinguely to Paris , Urs Fischer to Amsterdam and New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becoming an artist , commercial or otherwise .
She wanted to get out of Switzerland and to study physics , which had been her strongest subject in high school , and she wanted to do so in a German-speaking country .
The university in Vienna , whose program was heavily influenced by Bauhaus inclusiveness , offered a wide variety of courses in the sciences and the humanities .
She took theoretical physics and philosophy , studied illustration , photography , and commercial art , and became fascinated with experimental cinema—the poetic , highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ VanDerBeek , John Waters , and others .
Rist made a few short films in Super 8 , and eventually decided that she wanted to work with moving pictures and sound and language .
After graduating , in 1986 , she returned to Switzerland and registered for video classes at the School of Design , in Basel .
She chose video because it allowed her to do everything herself , from camerawork to editing .
To pay for her studies , she took part-time jobs with Ciba-Geigy and Hoffmann-La Roche , the big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labs where they made promotional videos .
This put her in contact with current technologies .
Every new technology seemed to come equipped with a guy , a male techie who knew how to use it and kept the knowledge to himself , but at the Ciba-Geigy lab Rist worked for an older man named Erhard Hauswirt , who had been a filmmaker .
He sensed her ambition and talent , and let her use the lab at night .
She more or less taught herself how to operate the equipment , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that launched her career .
It was called “ I ’ m Not the Girl Who Misses Much.
” The title is a slightly altered version of the opening line in John Lennon and Paul McCartney ’ s song “ Happiness Is a Warm Gun , ” which was inspired by Yoko Ono and released on the Beatles ’ “ White Album , ” in 1968 .
“ Lennon sings , ‘ She ’ s not a girl who misses much , ’ and I used to walk on the street singing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prophecy , ” Rist recalls .
In her video , wearing a low-cut black dress and dancing so maniacally that her breasts keep spilling out of it , she turns the line into a first-person anthem of gutsiness .
She sings it again and again , in a soft , little-girl voice that shifts to falsetto , building to a kind of out-of-control hysteria that ’ s hilarious and disturbing .
Rist knew that it was beyond anything she ’ d ever done .
She said , “ When I found how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realized , Wow , this really shows how our lives are sometimes , when you feel like a puppet .
I felt I had found something that had a general meaning.
” She sent the video to the Solothurn Film Festival , in Switzerland , where it was accepted , “ and I guess you can say it was well received .
”

The video was picked up by other experimental film groups, and Basel’s Museum of Applied Arts put it in a group exhibition. “I got confidence,” Rist said. But confidence for what? Rist said that one of her teachers “had recorded me saying, ‘I want to make rooms full of light, where people find and understand each other,’ but I didn’t think that art would be where I did it. I was thinking more about discothèques, or concerts.” (MTV, which had been around since 1981, was not on her mind, either—she hadn’t yet watched it.) She became the stage designer for an all-girl band called Les Reines Prochaines, painting backdrops and projecting slides and Super 8 film clips, and for six years, in spite of acute stagefright, she sang and played string bass and flute with the band. She was still working part time for Hoffmann-La Roche, and making short videos in a studio in Zurich that she shared with another artist. Interest in her work was growing. In Basel, Galerie Stampa, whose main focus was selling art books, showed several of her early videos in 1993. When “I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much” was presented in solo museum shows in St. Gallen, Graz, and Hamburg, in 1994 and 1995, three New York galleries contacted her. Iwan Wirth, a young Swiss art dealer who loved her work but didn’t yet represent artists, advised her to go with Luhring Augustine, a mid-level gallery that represented Christopher Wool, Rachel Whiteread, and Albert Oehlen. Soon afterward, she also joined the new gallery that Wirth and his wife, Manuela Hauser, were opening in Zurich, Hauser & Wirth—the two galleries now split her representation. “Anthony d’Offay tracked me down on my honeymoon with Manuela, in some tiny Irish inn,” Wirth said, referring to the British dealer. “He wanted to show Pipi in London. I thought, We’d better grow the gallery quickly, or we’ll lose our artists.”
The one- and two-channel videos that Rist made in the first decade of her career are rarely longer than ten minutes. In “Sexy Sad I” (1987, four and a half minutes), a naked young chap in sneakers dances alone, in the woods, to a piano recording of the Beatles song “Sexy Sadie.” We see him from the neck down, advancing and retreating, his skinny legs kicking out with exaggerated moves that keep his genitals aflap. Male vulnerability is on display in all its comic absurdity. “It looks like he’s dancing, but he’s really fighting the camera,” Rist explained. Female vulnerability gets a workout in “(Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes” (1988, eleven minutes), in which Pipi—I’m tired of calling her Rist—in a number of unflattering dresses and suburban locations, keeps falling down and getting up. I may be alone in seeing this as a tribute to Nam June Paik, whose distortions of the video signal and other deliberate “mistakes” opened the medium to creative innovations. The out-of-focus look and scrolling lines of static in Rist’s early videos are Paik trademarks. Although she never met him, Paik’s attitude toward the medium influenced her deeply. “He used the screen as an eyeball massage and a light thrower—not deconstructing the medium but using it without unnecessary respect,” she said. When Iwan Wirth asked her to write the catalogue note for a 1993 Paik show he was putting on at a bar in Zurich, her text was a declaration of love. “Nam June Paik is a wild dog,” it reads. “He sees a tree, pees on it and the tree lights up. The leaves become monitor screens that gleam and flicker bewitchingly. . . . The electric cables, which no one but him can toss around so artfully, are the roots. . . . He works with an innocent, child-like, earnest smile. One just has to kiss him.”
“And in this corner, still undefeated, Frank’s long-held beliefs!” Cartoon by Ellis Rosen Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Heated discussions in the early nineteen-nineties about pornography and feminism led to “Pickelporno” (1992, twelve minutes), Rist’s attempt to make a porn video that appealed to women. Instead of looking at sexual encounters from the outside, she wanted to convey what the participants were feeling and seeing. Using a tiny surveillance camera designed to be hidden in walls, she worked very close, filming random moments of a nude couple’s imaginative foreplay—fingers exploring body parts, a hand caressing a breast, an erect and friendly penis. She interspersed these with shots of clouds and palm fronds, a lake, a miniature globe of the world resting on a vulva, and extended tongues, set to a soundtrack of rushing and bubbling water and ardent moaning. “Pickelporno” offended no one—it even appeared on Swiss television—but copious flows of menstrual blood (simulated) in “Blood Clip” (1993) made some viewers think that she was taking feminism too far. “That’s ridiculous,” Rist scoffed to one interviewer. “The idea is to get the blood out into the open, to show this red fluid, this marvelous liquid, this flesh-clock.”
To see “Selfless in the Bath of Lava,” which has been on view at MOMA PS1 since 1997, you have to crouch down and look into a small hole in the floor, where, on an LCD monitor, Rist reaches up with both arms and cries for help. She is naked, with white-blond hair, and enveloped in orange-red flames. “I am a worm and you are a flower,” she wails, in German, English, and several other languages. “You would have done everything better! Help me. Excuse me.” According to Rist, the video and its sound loop were inspired by an early experience with religion. The church was not a big factor in her family’s life. Her mother is a relaxed Protestant who occasionally goes to church; her father was a lapsed Catholic who became a church-hating atheist. When Rist was nine, though, religion suddenly overwhelmed her. She joined a Bible-reading sect and spent much of her free time studying Biblical texts. “That lasted three years,” she told me. “Until I began asking, ‘What happens with the people who lived before Jesus?,’ and nobody could give me an answer. Also, God never showed up. I would leave pieces of meat outside to honor God.” In “Selfless,” Rist is in Hell. “It’s a really mean story, that you will be burning forever,” she said. “When I got rid of the need to believe in God, I felt so liberated.”
The morning after my wife and I first visited Rist’s studio, she and three members of her team were in the large back room there, shooting Pierre Mennel’s left eye. Mennel, a strapping middle-aged man who was the male swimmer in “Sip My Ocean,” sat on a chair between two floodlights while Rist, wielding a video camera with a two-foot-long lens, moved it around and uncomfortably close to his retina. Mennel’s son, Nicolas, who is Rist’s intern (and the third generation in the family to work for her; his grandfather Jacques appeared as a performer), held a device that corrected the focus. “The left eye is definitely better,” Mennel père said. “It’s my better side.” (Laughter. They were speaking English for our benefit, instead of Swiss-German.) On the monitor, everything was in extreme closeup. I could see rows and patches of facial hair by Mennel’s eye that were barely visible to the naked eye. “There’s hair all over the body that’s mostly invisible,” Rist explained. “It becomes like a landscape. We have so much respect for machines, but the camera is a very bad copy of the eye system. Did you know that the retina is sending signals in two dozen data streams simultaneously? One is for movement from left to right, and another for right to left.” Rist has often used spy cameras and medical cameras that film inside the body. The long lens on the one she was using that day allowed her to come in very close, without making troublesome shadows. It had become available less than six months earlier, and she said that it “was like having a new boyfriend.” She held the camera in both arms, as if it were an AK-47. After a while, Rist and Mennel changed places—she sat and he filmed one of her cerulean eyes.
Video still of “I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much,” from 1986. Photograph © P. Rist. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Luhring Augustine
During a break in the shooting, Rist took us over to look at a painting on a nearby wall—a landscape with jagged mountains and huge stones in the foreground. “Do you know the painter Clara Porges?” she asked. (I did not.) “She was a contemporary of Ferdinand Hodler”—the nineteenth-century Swiss Symbolist painter. “She married a Jewish violinist, and they had to leave Austria when Hitler came. I really love this painting.” Rist had just bought it at auction, in Zurich. “It will be the star of my show in Kyoto,” she said. She demonstrated on a computer what she planned to do, bathing the canvas in waves and veils of changing computer colors; she will also project colors onto a group of modern Japanese ceramics. “In the Western world, color is underestimated,” she said. “Color is borderless, it’s dangerous, it’s emotional, like music. Primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—can look stupid by themselves. I’m interested in broken and dirty colors, natural shades. Painting with light, that’s what I try to do. Paul Klee said he wished he could have a color piano, and I am so lucky—I have a color piano!”
The question now, she said, was “Maybe we take your eye?” (My eyes are a different blue from hers, and four decades older.) I agreed, and sat down in the chair. The floodlights were blinding. Rist said that her team would put the camera on a moving support so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the lens touching my eye. That was good news. The shooting began. Mennel was the cameraman, and Rist was the director, telling me what to do. It was important to keep my eyes moving, she said. “You can think of going over there, and going there. And now look up. Yes! Really nice. Beautiful! O.K., one more. Look around—to Vienna, to New York. Cool! Can you close your eyes and then open? Yes! Once again to Vienna, over there. Once again closing. Open. Wow!” When it was done, the whole team applauded. I looked at a replay on the monitor. My eyeball seemed to lie under several layers of liquid, and the overlapping folds of skin under the eye looked like closeup photographs of a crocodile. “We hide that we are animals,” Rist said.
Lunch at the studio is communal. Everybody cooks, or brings a dish from outside, or cleans up afterward. There were seven of us at the table, and the main course was an assortment of curries, lentils, rice, and vegetables from a nearby Indian restaurant, on plates that didn’t match. When Rist finished eating, she picked up her plate and licked it clean. All the others did the same—there were no napkins. I remembered seeing her do this at a dinner party in New York, a year or so earlier, in the apartment of the dealer Roland Augustine. Was this a Swiss custom, I had asked her. “It comes from my mother, who now denies it,” Rist said. “And in my house it is a duty.” Two other guests at the Augustine dinner had tried to lick their plates, amid general hilarity. Rist tends to cause a stir in public. “Like my father, I’m an introvert disguised as an extrovert,” she said at lunch.
Video still of “Pour Your Body Out,” from 2008. Photograph © P. Rist. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Luhring Augustine
In 1998, to the surprise of nearly everyone in the Swiss art world, Rist was named the artistic director of Expo.02, Switzerland’s first international exposition since the nineteen-sixties, which would take place in four locations around the country. “I have no idea why they invited me,” Rist told me. “I had won the prize at the Venice Biennale the year before, and maybe they thought it would be good for marketing.” Before accepting the post, she consulted several close friends. Expo.02 had been plagued by fund-raising problems and erratic leadership, and its opening date had been delayed—it was originally scheduled for 2001. Iwan Wirth urged her to think carefully about it. “Her career was about to explode,” he told me. “Success is hard on Pipi. She doesn’t trust it. But nobody ever gave an artist this kind of responsibility.” For Rist, who thinks that the purpose of art is to improve people’s lives, the possibilities outweighed the risks. “She said yes, and her friends supported her,” Wirth told me. “And it turned out to be an impossible task. The public loved her. Pipi became a national figure, the goddess Helvetia, but the art world was skeptical, and the press was disastrous.” She spent a year and a half struggling with the bureaucracy and with scathing reports in the press, which ridiculed some of her proposals (such as a marriage bureau for temporary, twelve-hour marriages). Her health also broke down. She’d been having severe stomach pains, and she also learned later that she had hepatitis C. Her friends intervened, and, in 1999, Rist withdrew from the Expo job, and soon slipped into a clinical depression.
“The team of friends then sent me to Los Angeles,” Rist said. “I was one month in Venice Beach, in the house of Lili Tanner, an old friend, whom I cooked for, and who did not allow me to read anything about art.” (Tanner remembers Rist saying that she had walked by a newsstand in Santa Monica, “sniffing the art magazines like someone else sniffing porn.”) Her friends also cut her off from Balz Roth, a Swiss tech consultant she had been living with since 1998. She had become obsessed with the fear that he would leave her. Roth was deeply sympathetic and had no intention of leaving her, but he agreed that he had become part of the problem. Rist, who had always been close to her mother, knew that in some ways she was more like her depressive father, and at the same time determined not to be.
“I’d be fast, too, if I had legs that long.” Cartoon by Amy Hwang Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
After that month in California, the depression lifted. She returned to Zurich, where Wirth found her a room in a secluded hotel, and then she spent a month in Jacqueline Burckhardt’s family house in the countryside near Basel. (Solzhenitsyn had stayed there for a while, after he left Russia.) Not long afterward, she was reunited with Roth. “I did not choose a man who was similar to my father,” she said. “And when I was able to stop taking medication Balz told me he wanted a child. I had never thought about having a child, never, but I was thirty-eight, so I knew it was probably my last chance. Balz promised that he would take care of the child, and he kept his promise.” Their baby, a boy whom she named Himalaya (“my favorite word”), was born in 2002. Rist took a great interest in the process of pregnancy—all the bodily changes—but the birth itself left her “a bit disappointed,” as she put it. “I had thought that the moment you give birth you realize some great philosophical truth, but not at all. It’s still a big mystery. I didn’t believe so much in the mother feeling, although of course that came.”
Rist’s work expanded dramatically in 2005. She had been invited to represent Switzerland at the Venice Biennale that year, and was told that she could choose the Swiss pavilion, on the Biennale grounds, or the Baroque Church of San Stae, on the Grand Canal. She chose the church. “Homo Sapiens Sapiens,” a twenty-one-minute video projection, with music by Anders Guggisberg, turned the high, vaulted ceiling of San Stae into a sensual paradise, teeming with images and perspectives that evoked the illusionistic ceilings of Tiepolo and Tintoretto. “I tried to do a paradise without the fall of man,” she explained. Nude female figures floated in a blue sky, crushed papayas between their breasts or underfoot, and swam slowly among huge water lilies. Ewelina Guzik, a startlingly beautiful dancer and choreographer with red hair and pale, lightly freckled skin, lay motionless on a bed of green foliage, locking eyes with the viewer. Fingers glided through undergrowth, faces and bodies doubled and tripled, and waves of changing colors flowed over and through it all. Mattresses (made by Rist’s sister Tamara) had been provided so that viewers could lie down, immersing themselves in the prelapsarian choreography. After two months, the Roman Curia, which oversees Biennale exhibitions, ordered this one shut down—why it was allowed to stay up for so long is a mystery.
Rist had achieved what Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum, calls “the technological sublime, in the sense that the sublime has migrated from landscape to data.” It’s an interesting thought—the monumental, nature-worshipping canvases of Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Caspar David Friedrich, and other nineteenth-century artists reincarnated in pixels and moving images. In the multichannel videos that Rist has made since “Homo Sapiens Sapiens,” the technology becomes increasingly complex and inventive. She had learned how to shape video images to fit specific areas, in a process called pixel-mapping, which requires breaking the image down and working with one pixel at a time. For “Parasimpatico,” a show that Gioni invited her to do in 2011, Rist transformed the interior of a huge abandoned movie theatre in Milan into a fantastic world of moving images. The show began in the theatre’s Art Deco lobby, where she hung one of her “underwear chandeliers”—made of female undergarments and a few male ones. Video images were projected on the walls of the grand staircase and on the theatre’s giant screen, which had been one of Europe’s first Cineramas. “Her images were throughout the house,” Gioni remembers. “She wanted them to float away from the screen, flying breasts and mouths and lips and body parts. She said it was a way to caress or stroke the cinema, which had been left empty for so long.”
“Pour Your Body Out,” at the Museum of Modern Art in 2008, brought unexpected new life to the museum’s overlarge second-floor atrium, which was notorious for making even Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” look puny. It was “arguably the first project to humanize—and feminize—the atrium,” Karen Rosenberg wrote in the Times. Viewers could sit or sprawl on an upholstered mound in the center of the room—it looked like a doughnut, or a giant eye—surrounded by wall projections of eighteen-foot-tall clouds and meadows and tulip fields and underwater bodies and plants and a very large black-and-white pig. Children loved it, and some people came back again and again. “For me, that was a paradigm shift at MOMA,” Klaus Biesenbach told me. “You knew the architecture was at the service of the art.” In the two weeks before the opening, Rist sat in the atrium with a few technicians, reworking and recalculating every detail.
“Pepperminta,” her first attempt at a full-length feature video, fared less well when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2010. The narrative centered on a young woman (played by Guzik) whose grandmother had assigned her the task of freeing the world from any fears that were not required for our survival. The work, hampered by the absence of a viable script, made little impression, and Rist has not tried this form again. While she was at Sundance, she had several conversations with Robert Redford, and was surprised to find that he had seen “Sip My Ocean” and other works of hers, and knew a lot about video art. “I often think how different it would have been if cinemas had provided places, rooms for videos,” she told me. “For a while, video was floating somewhere between cinema and art, but it was the fine arts that finally embraced it.”
Early in her career, Rist worried that the phenomenal popularity of her work would be held against her. Crowds continue to line up for her museum shows. The Times’ Roberta Smith, writing in 2016 about “Pixel Forest,” at the New Museum, described Rist as “an artist who has effortlessly worked aspects of feminism, the body and performance art into her videos while giving moving images and music an organic unity rare in the art world.” There are critics who assume that work this popular should not be taken seriously, but so far no one has dismissed her on that ground, and there is hope that she will not be punished. It helps that even in her most color-drunk and hedonistic videos there are darker elements—melancholy music, weed-choked water, blood, and muck.


newyorker--2020-09-09--Jeff Bezos’s Same-Day Giving Pledge

Jeff Bezos’s Same-Day Giving Pledge

I , Jeff Bezos , the C.E.O .
of Amazon and the world ’ s richest man , pledge to give away some of my money by the end of today , guaranteed .
Although billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have pledged to donate the majority of their wealth in the course of their lifetimes , I have chosen a single-day contribution , because I believe society ’ s problems can be solved in the time that it takes Amazon to deliver a ring light .
I ’ ve been criticized for my lack of charitable contributions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this time of social and economic upheaval , I can no longer hoard my wealth and sit idly by and watch my ex-wife , MacKenzie , receive praise for her measly pledge of $ 1.7 billion .
Below are some of the organizations and causes that I have chosen to support .
The Oakland Food and Facial-Recognition Bank : This used to be just an ordinary food bank , but thanks to my generous investment it is now a place to collect both food and your biometric information .
Struggling Americans can always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we will need to harvest their data for research purposes .
Bezos Extreme Education Program : You may have already heard about my children ’ s-education initiative , in which I promised to treat children like Amazon customers .
So , if children are the customers , then teachers should be treated like valuable Amazon employees , working 24/7 and out of a warehouse .
I vow to invest in the future of our children and remove all barriers to their success , like labor laws .
Space : I commit to giving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people who need it most : space tourists .
Thanks to my continued investment in expensive technologies , we are very close to having ultra-wealthy Amazon customers travel to space , and to having Elon Musk eat my space dust .
Bezos Business Attire : They say that you should dress for the job you want .
I want to help in this endeavor by donating my used black leather jackets , puffy vests , and designer sunglasses .
Finally , hard-working Americans can dress like the job they want is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of America : I plan to use my disproportionate wealth to fight for social justice for bald men .
Don ’ t tell me this isn ’ t a real issue .
Others have tried , but now they ’ re floating in space somewhere .
A.C.L.U .
( Amazon Civil Liberties Union ) : At Amazon , we believe in protecting the rights of vulnerable tech giants .
We must defend our freedom of speech , so that all Amazon customers can speak freely while our products record what they say .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll send you an Alexa , free of charge !
Habitat for Humanity and Suburban Vigilantes : I believe in creating affordable housing and safe communities for all , which is why I want to develop an exclusive suburb protected by Amazon home-security systems .
Now , I know what you ’ re thinking : Can this be weaponized against people of color ?
And I ’ ve been advised not to answer this question .
Bezos Center ( formerly Lincoln Center ) : I love the opera , especially because I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spy on people with my opera glasses .
Thanks to my commitment to the arts , the Juilliard School will now be an incubator for change .
Students can say goodbye to performing stuffy old Shakespeare and say hello to pretending they ’ re Amazon delivery workers ( we encourage students to go Method with these roles ) .
Puffy Vests : I will continue to donate millions of dollars to my accessory of choice .
Earth : We only have one habitable planet ( until my space team proves otherwise ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learn to innovate .
I won ’ t rest until our planet is secure , in my hands .
Luckily , my team is very close to creating that “ Honey , I Shrunk the Kids ” gadget and zapping our planet into the size of a lentil .
This is my solemn promise .

Photograph by Sajjad Hussain / AFP / Getty
I, Jeff Bezos, the C.E.O. of Amazon and the world’s richest man, pledge to give away some of my money by the end of today, guaranteed.
Although billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have pledged to donate the majority of their wealth in the course of their lifetimes, I have chosen a single-day contribution, because I believe society’s problems can be solved in the time that it takes Amazon to deliver a ring light.
I’ve been criticized for my lack of charitable contributions in the past. But, in this time of social and economic upheaval, I can no longer hoard my wealth and sit idly by and watch my ex-wife, MacKenzie, receive praise for her measly pledge of $1.7 billion.
Below are some of the organizations and causes that I have chosen to support.
The Oakland Food and Facial-Recognition Bank: This used to be just an ordinary food bank, but thanks to my generous investment it is now a place to collect both food and your biometric information. Struggling Americans can always find a free meal here, because we will need to harvest their data for research purposes.
Bezos Extreme Education Program: You may have already heard about my children’s-education initiative, in which I promised to treat children like Amazon customers. So, if children are the customers, then teachers should be treated like valuable Amazon employees, working 24/7 and out of a warehouse. I vow to invest in the future of our children and remove all barriers to their success, like labor laws.
Space: I commit to giving away a majority of my wealth to the people who need it most: space tourists. Thanks to my continued investment in expensive technologies, we are very close to having ultra-wealthy Amazon customers travel to space, and to having Elon Musk eat my space dust.
Bezos Business Attire: They say that you should dress for the job you want. I want to help in this endeavor by donating my used black leather jackets, puffy vests, and designer sunglasses. Finally, hard-working Americans can dress like the job they want is that of hired assassin.
Big Bald Brothers of America: I plan to use my disproportionate wealth to fight for social justice for bald men. Don’t tell me this isn’t a real issue. Others have tried, but now they’re floating in space somewhere.
A.C.L.U. (Amazon Civil Liberties Union): At Amazon, we believe in protecting the rights of vulnerable tech giants. We must defend our freedom of speech, so that all Amazon customers can speak freely while our products record what they say. Make a donation today, and I’ll send you an Alexa, free of charge!
Habitat for Humanity and Suburban Vigilantes: I believe in creating affordable housing and safe communities for all, which is why I want to develop an exclusive suburb protected by Amazon home-security systems. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Can this be weaponized against people of color? And I’ve been advised not to answer this question.
Bezos Center (formerly Lincoln Center): I love the opera, especially because I feel like a Bond villain whenever I spy on people with my opera glasses. Thanks to my commitment to the arts, the Juilliard School will now be an incubator for change. Students can say goodbye to performing stuffy old Shakespeare and say hello to pretending they’re Amazon delivery workers (we encourage students to go Method with these roles).
Puffy Vests: I will continue to donate millions of dollars to my accessory of choice.
Earth: We only have one habitable planet (until my space team proves otherwise), so we must optimize Mother Earth and learn to innovate. I won’t rest until our planet is secure, in my hands. Luckily, my team is very close to creating that “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” gadget and zapping our planet into the size of a lentil. This is my solemn promise.


newyorker--2020-09-09--How to Draw a City

How to Draw a City

When I was first dating my now partner of many years , he lived in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn , which , at the time , was a trek from both my office and home and was forbiddingly hip , to boot .
In the early months of seeing this man , I sent so many aggrieved texts to my friends complaining about having to visit him in this remote outpost of punishing coolness that my phone began to autocorrect the place name to match my emphatic caps— “ BUSHWICK ” —which it does to this day .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led by a cartoonist friend to the record-and-comic-book store Vinyl Fantasy .
( They also sell things like socks that say “ EAT SHIT ” and a “ black-magic prayer candle.
” ) In the window zine rack—a.k.a .
primo real estate—I happened upon a comic called “ Stranger Than Bushwick , ” by Jeremy Nguyen , which perfectly pinpointed and lampooned all the myriad little things about the neighborhood that were primed for parody ( and did so without spite ) .
Now , as Jeremy ’ s editor at the magazine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to field cartoons and comics from him that so hyper-specifically depict New York ’ s neighborhoods and their dwellers .
Jeremy is a master of the urban detail , which for me evinces strong nostalgia for the pre-pandemic city , the one where we crammed into concerts and bars , the one where we brunched .
It feels sort of scandalous to look at cartoons published in prelapsarian times—it ’ s hard not to want to chastise all those cartoon characters , within their little boxes , for their social-distancing violations .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out how to draw this city that we are no longer fully allowed to inhabit , although many of them joked early on that they were the best prepared of anyone for quarantine , because they lead largely antisocial existences , working from home , in isolation .
At times , I feel like I ’ m not only no longer a real resident of the greatest city on earth , but that I ’ m a character in a Victorian novel—cooking endless meals , scrubbing the floor in a gown ( just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , never going anywhere .
Thank goodness for Jeremy and his cartoons , which remind us of all that this city was , is , and will be again .

When I was first dating my now partner of many years, he lived in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, which, at the time, was a trek from both my office and home and was forbiddingly hip, to boot. In the early months of seeing this man, I sent so many aggrieved texts to my friends complaining about having to visit him in this remote outpost of punishing coolness that my phone began to autocorrect the place name to match my emphatic caps—“BUSHWICK”—which it does to this day. On one jaunt to BUSHWICK, I was led by a cartoonist friend to the record-and-comic-book store Vinyl Fantasy. (They also sell things like socks that say “EAT SHIT” and a “black-magic prayer candle.”) In the window zine rack—a.k.a. primo real estate—I happened upon a comic called “Stranger Than Bushwick,” by Jeremy Nguyen, which perfectly pinpointed and lampooned all the myriad little things about the neighborhood that were primed for parody (and did so without spite). Now, as Jeremy’s editor at the magazine, it’s my great pleasure to field cartoons and comics from him that so hyper-specifically depict New York’s neighborhoods and their dwellers.
Jeremy is a master of the urban detail, which for me evinces strong nostalgia for the pre-pandemic city, the one where we crammed into concerts and bars, the one where we brunched. It feels sort of scandalous to look at cartoons published in prelapsarian times—it’s hard not to want to chastise all those cartoon characters, within their little boxes, for their social-distancing violations. It took the cartoonists a while to figure out how to draw this city that we are no longer fully allowed to inhabit, although many of them joked early on that they were the best prepared of anyone for quarantine, because they lead largely antisocial existences, working from home, in isolation. At times, I feel like I’m not only no longer a real resident of the greatest city on earth, but that I’m a character in a Victorian novel—cooking endless meals, scrubbing the floor in a gown (just to get out of my sweatpants), never going anywhere. Thank goodness for Jeremy and his cartoons, which remind us of all that this city was, is, and will be again.


newyorker--2020-09-09--What to Stream: “Tales from a Hard City,” a British Documentary About a Trio of Struggling Performer

What to Stream: “Tales from a Hard City,” a British Documentary About a Trio of Struggling Performers

One of my cinematic pet peeves is when documentary filmmakers pretend that they ’ re invisible , as when they embed themselves with subjects for long periods , follow them around in private and in public , maybe even move in with them , without ever acknowledging their own intrusive presence—or the transactional value , for the subjects , of laying their lives bare for the camera .
In the British filmmaker Kim Flitcroft ’ s 1995 documentary “ Tales from a Hard City ” ( streaming on Vimeo ) , there ’ s no danger that the transaction between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it tells the story of three young people in Sheffield , England , all of whom are aspiring to—and struggling to achieve—careers as performers , and whose participation in Flitcroft ’ s film is itself a means to their end .
Although Flitcroft doesn ’ t show up onscreen , his presence is manifest throughout because his trio of young performers ( as well as family members , friends , and business associates ) are all openly interacting with his camera , flamboyantly performing for it , putting on a show for it—albeit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the stuff of their daily lives .
The movie starts with a middle-aged woman singing , in closeup , playing for the camera ; she ’ s the mother of one of the film ’ s main trio of participants , Glen Brodie , a young man who wants to be a rock singer .
He ’ s unemployed and not seeking work ; in the manner of tough love , she has cut him off without a penny , and so he has turned to petty theft , breaking into cars and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and bank cards and random boxes of merchandise , breaking into offices—and then spending his slim pluckings on drugs and finding himself in debt to friends and family .
He ’ s also unable to pay fines that he has already negotiated on an installment plan and , as a result , faces a court summons and risks jail time .
Glen speaks on camera of his crimes as frankly and freely as if he had sovereign immunity—yet there ’ s a shudder of poignant self-awareness running through these admissions , as if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Paul Wallace , a former boxer who now aspires to act , is a natural self-promoter .
He trawls the town ’ s businesses ( starting with several auto dealerships ) in the hope of being hired to endorse them .
With his frank and easy manner and his athletic bearing , he cuts an impressive figure among the locals—and gets a toehold on a career , with a movie role as an extra that even accords him a closeup and a line .
( Flitcroft is able to follow Paul onto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie set . )
Paul , who is Black , manages to get representation in the form of one Anton , a smarmy “ image consultant ” whose approach to his ostensible client is peculiarly aggressive .
He wants Paul to be more “ bolshie , ” to be “ a rebel , ” but Anton ’ s own self-aggrandizement is thrust into the spotlight when the two men are joined at a bar by Paul ’ s friend , another Black man , who pushes back firmly and wittily against Anton ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sarah Smith , is a single mother who has won a certain local fame after being arrested and jailed , while on vacation in Greece , for dancing “ provocatively ” in a bar .
Now , having returned home to Sheffield , she hopes to parlay her unsought celebrity into a career as a dancer and a singer—she records an album in a local studio , under the guidance of a impresario named Wayne Chadwick , who teaches her , “ It ’ s all about sex , without going too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big shots of a local karaoke night , “ Teleoke , ” that gets videotaped and excerpted for a local TV talent show .
( At the event , he is impressed by Paul , whom he signs and plans to record , too .
Flitcroft films their negotiation , in which Wayne outlines the deal and the split . )
Sarah ’ s effort to overcome the trauma and the indignation of her mistreatment in Greece , by leveraging it into a happier life , is earnest , enthusiastic , and naïve—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Wayne works to promote Sarah , by means of a performance at a local bar , where he plans to stage a scheme by which she ’ ll be doing what he calls a “ raunchy dance ” and fifty men—planted by him in the crowd , assuming there ’ s a crowd—will rush the stage .
The scene of Wayne watching the video of the event , at home , with his two young sons , whose admiration he craves , has a pathos of literary dimensions .
Despite the desperation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s three protagonists cling to , despite the humiliations that they endure and the gap between their aspirations and their realities , despite the clumsiness of their efforts and their inchoate sensibilities , all are endowed with an authentic illumination that their professional endeavors only dimly reflect—but that comes to the fore brightly in Flitcroft ’ s documentary .
One could say that , even as a documentarian , he is an inspired and inspiring director of actors .

One of my cinematic pet peeves is when documentary filmmakers pretend that they’re invisible, as when they embed themselves with subjects for long periods, follow them around in private and in public, maybe even move in with them, without ever acknowledging their own intrusive presence—or the transactional value, for the subjects, of laying their lives bare for the camera. In the British filmmaker Kim Flitcroft’s 1995 documentary “Tales from a Hard City” (streaming on Vimeo), there’s no danger that the transaction between filmmaker and subject will go unnoticed: it tells the story of three young people in Sheffield, England, all of whom are aspiring to—and struggling to achieve—careers as performers, and whose participation in Flitcroft’s film is itself a means to their end.
Although Flitcroft doesn’t show up onscreen, his presence is manifest throughout because his trio of young performers (as well as family members, friends, and business associates) are all openly interacting with his camera, flamboyantly performing for it, putting on a show for it—albeit a show that’s inseparable from the stuff of their daily lives. The movie starts with a middle-aged woman singing, in closeup, playing for the camera; she’s the mother of one of the film’s main trio of participants, Glen Brodie, a young man who wants to be a rock singer. He’s unemployed and not seeking work; in the manner of tough love, she has cut him off without a penny, and so he has turned to petty theft, breaking into cars and taking stereos and handbags, stealing phones and bank cards and random boxes of merchandise, breaking into offices—and then spending his slim pluckings on drugs and finding himself in debt to friends and family. He’s also unable to pay fines that he has already negotiated on an installment plan and, as a result, faces a court summons and risks jail time. Glen speaks on camera of his crimes as frankly and freely as if he had sovereign immunity—yet there’s a shudder of poignant self-awareness running through these admissions, as if they were also apologetic and regretful confessions.
Paul Wallace, a former boxer who now aspires to act, is a natural self-promoter. He trawls the town’s businesses (starting with several auto dealerships) in the hope of being hired to endorse them. With his frank and easy manner and his athletic bearing, he cuts an impressive figure among the locals—and gets a toehold on a career, with a movie role as an extra that even accords him a closeup and a line. (Flitcroft is able to follow Paul onto location and to film him on the movie set.) Paul, who is Black, manages to get representation in the form of one Anton, a smarmy “image consultant” whose approach to his ostensible client is peculiarly aggressive. He wants Paul to be more “bolshie,” to be “a rebel,” but Anton’s own self-aggrandizement is thrust into the spotlight when the two men are joined at a bar by Paul’s friend, another Black man, who pushes back firmly and wittily against Anton’s presumptions.
The third aspiring performer, Sarah Smith, is a single mother who has won a certain local fame after being arrested and jailed, while on vacation in Greece, for dancing “provocatively” in a bar. Now, having returned home to Sheffield, she hopes to parlay her unsought celebrity into a career as a dancer and a singer—she records an album in a local studio, under the guidance of a impresario named Wayne Chadwick, who teaches her, “It’s all about sex, without going too far.” Wayne is one of the big shots of a local karaoke night, “Teleoke,” that gets videotaped and excerpted for a local TV talent show. (At the event, he is impressed by Paul, whom he signs and plans to record, too. Flitcroft films their negotiation, in which Wayne outlines the deal and the split.)
Sarah’s effort to overcome the trauma and the indignation of her mistreatment in Greece, by leveraging it into a happier life, is earnest, enthusiastic, and naïve—and her sexuality is all too casually exploited. Wayne works to promote Sarah, by means of a performance at a local bar, where he plans to stage a scheme by which she’ll be doing what he calls a “raunchy dance” and fifty men—planted by him in the crowd, assuming there’s a crowd—will rush the stage. The scene of Wayne watching the video of the event, at home, with his two young sons, whose admiration he craves, has a pathos of literary dimensions. Despite the desperation of the dreams that the movie’s three protagonists cling to, despite the humiliations that they endure and the gap between their aspirations and their realities, despite the clumsiness of their efforts and their inchoate sensibilities, all are endowed with an authentic illumination that their professional endeavors only dimly reflect—but that comes to the fore brightly in Flitcroft’s documentary. One could say that, even as a documentarian, he is an inspired and inspiring director of actors.


newyorker--2020-09-09--Svetlana Alexievich Is Not Going Anywhere

I got through to Svetlana Alexievich , the Belarusian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature , around two o ’ clock on Wednesday afternoon , in Minsk .
It was noisy in her apartment .
“ There are about fifteen people here , ” she said .
They had gathered to bear witness to whatever might happen to Alexievich , who is the last original member of the opposition Coordinating Council—formed last month after mass protests began in Belarus—who has been neither imprisoned nor forced into exile .
Strange men , who she assumed worked for President Alexander Lukashenka @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ringing her doorbell the previous evening .
“ People have been gathering since nine in the morning .
Ambassadors and others .
It ’ s a kind of resistance through presence , ” she said .
Wednesday marked a month since Belarusians began protesting the rigged election in which Lukashenka , a dictator who has been in power since 1994 , claimed victory .
A critical mass of Belarusian citizens believes that the real winner is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya , a thirty-seven-year-old housewife who became the opposition candidate after her husband , who was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrested , along with another potential candidate .
Tsikhanouskaya was forced to go into exile the day after the protests broke out , but , with hundreds of thousands of people in the streets , she formed the nonpartisan Coordinating Council , made up of prominent Belarusians—activists , professionals , writers , and artists—who hoped to represent the will of the protesters .
“ I thought that the regime would have to talk to us , ” Alexievich told me .
In the face of mass protests and large-scale strikes of industrial workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he took to wearing combat gear and brandishing a semi-automatic machine gun in front of cameras .
In the streets , special forces rounded up protesters and random civilians .
Most were held for several days , then released ; some have disappeared , and at least two opposition activists have been found dead .
Alexievich told me that ten thousand people have been tortured , according to information collected by the opposition .
It seemed that , lacking the manpower to suppress mass protests directly , Lukashenka was intent on terrorizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up and went home .
On August 26th , Alexievich was summoned to appear before the Investigative Committee , the central prosecutorial authority in Belarus .
Alexievich told me that she considered refusing to go .
But “ then I imagined that they ’ d come to my house and do a search , and I went , ” she said .
“ I had a lawyer with me , who advised me that I didn ’ t have to testify against myself .
So I refused to testify , citing the constitution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a pity ; I ’ d hoped we ’ d get to talk.
’ ” Alexievich said she sensed that the detective felt uncomfortable with the task he ’ d been given : interviewing the country ’ s most prominent citizen .
Following her visit to the Investigative Committee , Alexievich left Minsk , the capital city , to go to her small house in the countryside .
Alexievich has trigeminal neuralgia , a chronic , painful condition that affects a facial nerve .
She had been experiencing a flareup—in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wednesday , one can see that she has some difficulty speaking—and she hoped that the calm and quiet of the countryside would help .
But , in the past few days , the crackdown on protesters in the streets became more brutal , and members of the Coordinating Council were , one by one , arrested or forced into exile .
On Tuesday , Alexievich realized that she was the last member of the council who remained free and in Belarus .
“ I realized that it was no longer possible to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
“ It would be so easy to arrest me there without anyone noticing.
” The Coordinating Council , which Tsikhanouskaya originally selected from a pool of volunteers , has continued accepting applications .
Alexievich told me that more than six and a half thousand people have now put in their names , and in the past few days existing members have chosen a hundred and twenty people who will now share decision-making power .
Unlike the names of the original members of the council , the names of what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kept secret , to protect them from arrest .
“ Every day , people keep signing up , ” Alexievich said .
As Alexievich and I spoke on the phone , voices kept interrupting us .
A woman said goodbye to Alexievich in halting Russian , then switched into accented English to say , “ It was an honor to meet you.
” ( Alexievich speaks only Russian . )
Alexievich told me that the Ambassadors of several European countries were at her apartment , but she had not heard from the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ friendly with the previous American Ambassador in Minsk .
The U.S. currently has no Ambassador to Belarus ; the Embassy is run by a chargé d ’ affaires , appointed in July .
The Embassy Web site features a month-old quote from the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany expressing “ concern ” about the Belarusian election and a broken link to what ’ s supposed to be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ’ s statement on Belarus .
A man ’ s voice attracted Alexievich ’ s attention next .
He was quoting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abused at a detention center in Minsk had been under the influence of drugs and had attacked the guards .
Alexievich said that Lukashenka was preparing for a visit to Moscow , planned for September 14th .
Russia and Belarus have a union treaty , a vague agreement that could conceivably be used to justify Russian military intervention in Belarus .
“ He is going there to trade sovereignty for personal security , ” Alexievich said , referring to Lukashenka .
Moscow , however , seems reluctant to intervene while Belarusians are protesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s press secretary told journalists that talk of Lukashenka ’ s visit was premature .
For Belarusians , that portends a further intensified crackdown .
“ I ’ m scared to think what he , infuriated , will do now , ” Alexievich said .
I have known Alexievich for twenty-five years .
We met a year after Lukashenka came to power ; soon after that , she left Belarus .
She spent a decade living in different European countries , stringing together fellowships and writing residencies .
In 2005 , she told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conclusion that she ’ d been wrong to think that she “ could sit him out.
” She returned to Minsk the following year .
Now , she said , the German Ambassador had offered to help her leave the country .
“ But I don ’ t want him to say that I fled , ” she said , referring to Lukashenka .
“ I don ’ t want people to lose the last remaining hope .
So I ’ m going to be here to the end .
”

“I’m scared to think what he, infuriated, will do now,” Svetlana Alexievich said, of Belarus’s President, Alexander Lukashenka. Photograph from Agence Opale / Alamy
I got through to Svetlana Alexievich, the Belarusian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, around two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, in Minsk. It was noisy in her apartment. “There are about fifteen people here,” she said. They had gathered to bear witness to whatever might happen to Alexievich, who is the last original member of the opposition Coordinating Council—formed last month after mass protests began in Belarus—who has been neither imprisoned nor forced into exile. Strange men, who she assumed worked for President Alexander Lukashenka’s security services, had been ringing her doorbell the previous evening. “People have been gathering since nine in the morning. Ambassadors and others. It’s a kind of resistance through presence,” she said.
Wednesday marked a month since Belarusians began protesting the rigged election in which Lukashenka, a dictator who has been in power since 1994, claimed victory. A critical mass of Belarusian citizens believes that the real winner is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a thirty-seven-year-old housewife who became the opposition candidate after her husband, who was trying to run for President, was arrested, along with another potential candidate. Tsikhanouskaya was forced to go into exile the day after the protests broke out, but, with hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, she formed the nonpartisan Coordinating Council, made up of prominent Belarusians—activists, professionals, writers, and artists—who hoped to represent the will of the protesters. “I thought that the regime would have to talk to us,” Alexievich told me.
In the face of mass protests and large-scale strikes of industrial workers, Lukashenka refused to negotiate. Instead, he took to wearing combat gear and brandishing a semi-automatic machine gun in front of cameras. In the streets, special forces rounded up protesters and random civilians. Most were held for several days, then released; some have disappeared, and at least two opposition activists have been found dead. Alexievich told me that ten thousand people have been tortured, according to information collected by the opposition. It seemed that, lacking the manpower to suppress mass protests directly, Lukashenka was intent on terrorizing and exhausting the people until everyone gave up and went home.
On August 26th, Alexievich was summoned to appear before the Investigative Committee, the central prosecutorial authority in Belarus. Alexievich told me that she considered refusing to go. But “then I imagined that they’d come to my house and do a search, and I went,” she said. “I had a lawyer with me, who advised me that I didn’t have to testify against myself. So I refused to testify, citing the constitution. The detective said, ‘That’s a pity; I’d hoped we’d get to talk.’ ” Alexievich said she sensed that the detective felt uncomfortable with the task he’d been given: interviewing the country’s most prominent citizen.
Following her visit to the Investigative Committee, Alexievich left Minsk, the capital city, to go to her small house in the countryside. Alexievich has trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic, painful condition that affects a facial nerve. She had been experiencing a flareup—in a video of her speaking to reporters on Wednesday, one can see that she has some difficulty speaking—and she hoped that the calm and quiet of the countryside would help. But, in the past few days, the crackdown on protesters in the streets became more brutal, and members of the Coordinating Council were, one by one, arrested or forced into exile. On Tuesday, Alexievich realized that she was the last member of the council who remained free and in Belarus. “I realized that it was no longer possible to stay in the countryside,” she told me. “It would be so easy to arrest me there without anyone noticing.”
The Coordinating Council, which Tsikhanouskaya originally selected from a pool of volunteers, has continued accepting applications. Alexievich told me that more than six and a half thousand people have now put in their names, and in the past few days existing members have chosen a hundred and twenty people who will now share decision-making power. Unlike the names of the original members of the council, the names of what’s now called the Expanded Council will be kept secret, to protect them from arrest. “Every day, people keep signing up,” Alexievich said.
As Alexievich and I spoke on the phone, voices kept interrupting us. A woman said goodbye to Alexievich in halting Russian, then switched into accented English to say, “It was an honor to meet you.” (Alexievich speaks only Russian.) Alexievich told me that the Ambassadors of several European countries were at her apartment, but she had not heard from the United States Embassy, though she had been friendly with the previous American Ambassador in Minsk. The U.S. currently has no Ambassador to Belarus; the Embassy is run by a chargé d’affaires, appointed in July. The Embassy Web site features a month-old quote from the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany expressing “concern” about the Belarusian election and a broken link to what’s supposed to be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on Belarus.
A man’s voice attracted Alexievich’s attention next. He was quoting Lukashenka, who had claimed that inmates abused at a detention center in Minsk had been under the influence of drugs and had attacked the guards. Alexievich said that Lukashenka was preparing for a visit to Moscow, planned for September 14th. Russia and Belarus have a union treaty, a vague agreement that could conceivably be used to justify Russian military intervention in Belarus. “He is going there to trade sovereignty for personal security,” Alexievich said, referring to Lukashenka. Moscow, however, seems reluctant to intervene while Belarusians are protesting; on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary told journalists that talk of Lukashenka’s visit was premature. For Belarusians, that portends a further intensified crackdown. “I’m scared to think what he, infuriated, will do now,” Alexievich said.
I have known Alexievich for twenty-five years. We met a year after Lukashenka came to power; soon after that, she left Belarus. She spent a decade living in different European countries, stringing together fellowships and writing residencies. In 2005, she told me that she had come to the conclusion that she’d been wrong to think that she “could sit him out.” She returned to Minsk the following year. “I don’t want him to say that I fled,” she said, referring to Lukashenka. “I don’t want people to lose the last remaining hope. So I’m going to be here to the end.”