The College Hill Independent: November 10, 2011

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

10 NOVEMBER 2011 VOLUME XXIII ISSUE VIII BROWN/RISD WEEKLY

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENTFR O M T H E E DITORS:Last week, our watches, phones, computers, and clocks stood still for an hour. While most delighted in this extra rest, others lamented the loss of daylight. Despite its annual appearance, few question the logic behind Daylight Savings Time. So this week, the Indy takes a look at the history of DST. DST is less than a hundred years old. During European industrialization in the latenineteenth century, there was a need to install a more regimented system of time. With railroads and large-scale production, industry required a standard means of accounting for labor hours and keeping precise schedules. In 1895, the British-born George Vernon Hudson presented the first version of DST to the Wellington Philosophical Society in New Zealand, hoping to extend his daylight leisure hours so he could spend more time on his insect-collecting hobby. Then in 1905, the English outdoorsman William Willet proposed an idea to Parliament to reduce summer daylight, outraged that Londoners were wasting the season away sleeping, rather than playing golf. However, it was not until 1916 in Germany that DST was ever fully institutionalized. During WWI, Germanyand subsequently many other warring countriesbegan to use DST as a way to conserve coal. After the war, the United States struggled with DST, repealing it under President Warren Harding, who called it a deception. It was not until 1966 that the U.S. saw the revival of DST, and it was not until 1987 thatwith the funding of Clorox and 7-Eleventhe Daylight Saving Time Coalition successfully pushed for a national DST, which drew heavy support from Idaho senators who argued that fast-food restaurants in the state could sell more French Fries during DST. As the leaves turn orange and red and yellow, and the cold winds begin to blow, we hope you all can enjoy some autumnal French Fries, too.

NEWSWEEK IN REVIEWBY BARRY ELKINTON, ALEX RONAN BY ERICA SCHWIEGERSHAUSEN

SPACE KISS

METROWHADDUP PROV?BY CAROLINE SOUSSLOFF

SLICE OF SEGALBY SAM ADLER-BELL

FEATURESBERLUSCONI BOWS OUTBY BELLE CUSHING

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EP H E M E R A

REVOLUTIONARY RAPBY EMILY GOGOLAK

ARTSRK + XVBY ANA ALVAREZ

AUTUMN PLAYLISTBY BOBBY HUNTER

ROCK N FAME

ABO ME EP H EU T R AFALL 2011MANAGING EDITORS Malcolm Burnley, Jordan Carter, Emma Whitford NEWS David Adler, Erica Schwiegershausen, Kate Welsh METRO Sam Adler-Bell,Grace Dunham, Caroline Soussloff OPINIONS Stephen Carmody FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Max Wiggins INTERVIEWS Timothy Nassau ARTS Ana Alvarez, Eve Blazo, Emma Jananskie SCIENCE Ashton Strait, Joanna Zhang METABOLICS Chris Cohen LITERARY Michael Mount, Scout Willis OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan X PAGE Rachel Benoit, Audrey Fox LIST Allie Trionfetti Max Lubin, Jonah Wolf DESIGN EDITOR Mary-Evelyn Farrior DESIGN TEAM Andrew Beers, Olivia Fialkow, Jared Stern, Joanna Zhang COVER EDITOR Annika Finne ILLUSTRATIONS EDITORS Robert Sandler, Becca Levison MEGA PORN Kaitie Barnwell SENIOR EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Adrian Randall, Erin Schikowski, Dayna Tortorici STAFF WRITERS Madilynn Castillo, Barry Elkington MVP: Steve Carmody v Cover Art: Annika Finne and Becca LevinsonTHE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT PO BOX 1930 BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE RI 02912 twitter: maudelajoie

BY GREG NISSAN

INTERVIEWSUNDER CONSTRUCTIONBY TIMOTHY NASSAU

OPINIONSQUEER POLITICSBY ROBERT SANDLER

FOODMOLASSESBY JESSICA DANIELS

SCIENCERATTING OUT THE PILLBY MARA RENZ SMITH

WANT TO JOIN OUR RANKS? EMAIL [email protected] to the editor are welcome distractions. The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI press in Seekonk, MA. The Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center for American Prgress. Campus Progress works to help young peopleadvocates, activists, journalists, artistsmakes their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org

LITERARYAMERICABY KATE WELSH

XBY AUDREY FOX

DOLLS


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CUBA CRIBSby Barry Elkintonockeans, get out your party horns. Cuba, one of the worlds last communist holdouts, announced on November 3 that private property rights are returning to the island. Under a new, widely anticipated law, Cubans will be able to buy and sell homes for the first time since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Though this privilege will only be extended to permanent residents of the islandglobal capitalist marauders need not applythe law will allow Cubans to own up to two houses; one in the city, and another in a government designated vacation zone. After all, as Tim Padgett of Time sardonically observes, some weekends you just need to get away from your neighborhoods Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. The new rule, effective November 10, is the latest in a string of reforms by President Raul Castro aimed at encouraging limited free-market activity on the Caribbeans largest island. Since he took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, Castro has granted Cubans new privileges, such as the right to have cell phones, operate private businesses, and sell used cars. This past summer, the Cuban government even issued preliminary approval for the construction of sixteen luxury golf coursesa shocking decision given the countrys longstanding animosity towards the quintessential game of bourgeois decadence. One of Fidel Castros first acts upon taking power in 1959 was destroying all but one of the countrys golf courses. The spared course was later used to mock golf-loving President Dwight Eisenhower when Castro and Che Guevara famously staged a photo shoot of themselves hitting the links in full military uniform. Though the new golf courses were symbolically notable among the recent reforms, the right to buy and sell homes is expected to have the most significant impact on the Cuban economy. What that impact will be is the subject of some debate. Certainly the new system will remove much of the bureaucratic delays and under-thetable exchanges that defined previous housing exchanges, where homes could be traded as long as they were of roughly equal size and quality. Whether the legislation can alleviate Cubas housing crisis or encourage significant free-market activity is less clear. In a country where the average salary is $20 a month, and the government is the only recognized contractor, the new laws effects may initially be limited. Few people other than those with relatives sending money from the US will be able to purchase homes, and the cashstrapped government is unlikely to build many new housing developments. But, looking down the road, many analysts see the new legislation as the strongest sign yet that change is in the air in Cuba. "The liberalization of these markets will ignite new demands for reforms," economist Arturo Lopez-Levy told the Associated Press. "In the long run, the question will be: How long can the economic genie be out of the bottle without people asking for more substantive political reform?"

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WEEK IN REVIE REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIE F O O D F I G H T REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW Iby Alex Ronann the wake of the Department of Agricultures (USDA) proposed changes to the federal lunch program last May, the National Potato Council (NPC) challenged the call for potato reductions in school lunches, launching the Tell USDA to Keep Potatoes in Schools! campaign. The proposed changes to the federally funded lunch program are a push to improve health amongst American children. According to The New York Times, approximately 40 percent of calories eaten by kids are consumed in the school lunch period. But with a third of American children either obese or overweight, the first overhaul in fifteen years seems well overdue. In addition to limits on fat and sodium, the USDA has called for reductions in potatoes and other sources of starchy carbs in favor of more fresh apples, peaches, spinach and broccoli. Unlike past federal suggestions (see the Reagan Administrations proposition that to save cash, ketchup be considered a vegetable,) the USDAs rules reflect the latest research from the Institute of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health. For example, under the new plan, a cup of tomato paste on pizza would no longer count as a vegetable. Although more stringent, the guidelines are also more costly: the proposal calls for increased spending on federal lunches totaling $6.8 billion over the next five years approximately 14 cents per lunch. Despite the fact that a potato isnt biologically a vegetableits a tuberthe NPC has positioned potatoes as a gateway vegetable capable of introducing students to other vegetables in, around, and on top of the potato. It remains unclear whether or not they consider bacon bits a vegetable. The NPCs tactics also include passive aggressive swipes at competitors, with the assertion that a single serving of baked potato is an excellent source of potassium far more than a banana. Its also a good source of fibermore than a serving of broccoli. Hot potato, indeed. The NPC has also argued that potatoes are kid pleasing, adding that familiar shapes make lunch fun. Backed by $5.6 million from food companies, the movement has quickly gained traction. With the help of Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), who once worked picking potatoes, and several farm-state senators, an amendment that struck down the USDAs plan to limit starchy foods achieved unanimous approval on October 18th. While the bill is still pending in the House, Senator Collins told POLITICO, I am delighted, and I have won.

WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW

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ilvio Berlusconi was first elected Prime Minister of Italy in 1994. He was re-elected in 2001, and again in 2008. Mired by legal accusations of corruption and tales of Bunga Bunga sex parties thrown at his many houses, surrounded by embarrassment at home and reduced to the butt of jokes abroad, he remained the defiantly smiling face of a crumbling country. That is, until last Tuesday. The People of Freedom, Berlusconis political party, has been hanging by a tenuous thread in a coalition that finally snapped. On November 8, a Parliamentary budget vote showed that Berlusconi no longer held the majoritymore than half the members had refused to vote. After over fifty separate no-confidence votes and even more calls for him to step down throughout his reign, Berlusconi announced his imminent resignation. As Europe worries about the bailout of Greece, its second largest debt is miring across the Adriatic in a country too big to bail out. Berlusconis government is paralyzed in the face of the economic crisis. Berlusconi himself has brushed concern aside. In an October 24 statement, Berlusconi responded to the deficit, 120% of the nations GDP, by saying, No one has anything to fear about Europes third largest economy. Berlusconi has done little to assuage the fears that do exist. Where he has seen successplans for future school and prison reform, a crackdown on illegal immigration, a slowdown of national spendinghe has ignored or failed to solve rising unemployment and rising bonds. One of the laws he did manage to pass granted himself retroactive immunity from the many accusations against him, protection that was only just overturned at the beginning of this year. As his reign is com-

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ing to a close, and the national image and economy are deeply threatened, Italians and foreigners alike are wondering how he lasted so long. On November 2, in another city that has seen jovial government corruption, another Italian who knows the art of flattery came to Brown University with some answers. Giuseppe Severgnini is a journalist for Il Corriere della Sera, one of the Italian newspapers not controlled by Berlusconi, and he came to Providence to talk about his new book. Mamma Mia: Berlusconis Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad is exactly what the title suggests: hairpulling exasperation amid an attempt to break down Italys long-standing political situation for those pointing and laughing, or scratching their heads. The author kept a crowded auditorium chortling as he explained the ten factors he uses to explain why Berlusconi remained in power for seventeen years, despite a failing economy and seemingly never-ending scandals. The factors range from the Harem factor to the psychology of The Truman Show, but essentially, Italians keep reelecting Berlusconi because they see a bit of themselves in him. It is a funhouse mirror, exaggerating and distorting the similarities to embarrassing proportions, but a mirror nonetheless. Berlusconi represents the vices that everybody secretly harbors, and the financial and social success that everyone desires in vain. Even Severgnini is not immune to a sweet-talking Berlusconi comparison. He treated his very nice interviewer to coffee before the event, hung back with the girls to discuss it after, and later tweeted how much he loved Brown, complete with a disclaimer that he was not being flatteringBerlusconesque. But his score

would still register low on the Berluscometer. If youre over 50 percent, Severgnini hypothesizes, you probably vote for him. Even non-voters cannot avoid the man who represents the best and much of the worst of Italy. One Italian reader who didnt much care for this assertion declared vehemently at a book talk that he had zero percent of the prime minister in him, to which the author replied, Let me have a word with your accountant, your confessor, and your wife. Then well talk.

Born during the reign of Benito Mussolini, Silvio Berlusconi, the child of a bank employee and a housewife, grew up to become a mogul of media and politics. In the 1960s, he launched a residential complex, Milano Due, in the outskirts of Milan. He went on to create a small cable company made specifically for the residents of his housing project, his first foray into television which soon morphed into his first media group, Fininvest. Today, Berlusconi sits at the top of a mountain of gold that comprises MediaSet, which controls over half of Italys public television and major advertising; the countrys largest publishing house; several newspapers, magazines, and production companies; and the AC Milan soccer club to boot. The tenacity with which Berlusconi rose from nothing to excess rivals that of a winner of the American Dream. Where others attempted entrepreneurism and failed, Berlusconi succeeded, although not without a little help. His television empire and subsequent political success was in part due to the patronage of Bettino Craxi, who ranks among his protg and Mussolini as one of the twentieth centurys more controversial Italian politicians.

Craxi was eventually convicted of corruption and bribery and fled to Tunisia. It remains impossible to trace the exact origins of the money that funded Berlusconis endeavors. Berlusconi has paid the nepotism forward. His siblings and spouses, past and present, have holdings in his companies, and an attractive Italian girl might plan on a career in either TV or politics, or both, either way appointed by Papi. The cover of Severgninis book shows the Prime Minister gently fondling Botticellis Venus. This anachronistic defacing of cultural capital is not too far from truth. Last year, the Prime Minister reportedly did some sprucing up of second-century statues in his office in Palazzo Chigi. Venus was given back her hand, and Mars was gifted a brand new penis. The cultural ministry assured art conservators around the world not to worry; the cosmetic improvements are only attached by magnets. Italians were perhaps waiting out the last days of Berlusconis regime, anticipating the moment when they could pull off the magnets and restore a sense of national pride. The lasting repercussions of Berlusconis comportment remain to be seen. Now that Italy has voted to stop placing fig leaves over the Prime Ministers indiscretions, the effects of such long-standing inadequacy will have to be dealt with openly, against a backdrop of economic crisis. To Antonio, Severgninis nineteen-yearold son, Berlusconi is like a Sony Walkman. Antonio knows what the dinosaur device is, but its just shoved in a drawer somewhere. He has more relevant modes of staying tuned in. Yes, Berlusconi is an analog figure: Internet-illiterate, reliant on the power of TV, a playboy of the past. Except, as his father points out, Berlus-


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FALL OF BERLUSCONIS ITALYET TU BUNGA BUNGA ?by Belle Cushingconi is still playing. Andrea Back, a student from Venice, is fed up with Berlusconi. After studying at Ca Foscari University, twentytwo-year-old Andrea has since gone to the United Kingdom for graduate school and an escape from the precarious job situation that awaits university graduates in Italy. To Andrea, Berlusconi is a firstrate scapegoat. For all his public failings, the blame cannot be solely pinned on one man. Italy is a boat losing water from all sides, and if you cover one hole, two more will open, Andrea told The Independent. The problem is Italy itself, and its thousand contradictions. The Italian peninsula has an ancient history, but the country itself is still new. This year, the country celebrated its 150th birthday. To put this in perspective, Berlusconi is half as old as the country. It is only since 1946 that Italy has been a republic (so declared by a referendum in which democracy only just eked out a victory over monarchy). Its democracy struggles against a background of ancient dominion, division, and delusion, and another decline and fall appears to be looming. Rome is a city of this confusion. Google (not Gogol, the Russian novelist Berlusconi has confused with the search engine) Maps calculates that 180 meters separate Palazzo Grazzioli, where Berlusconi is known to host underage girls, and Palazzo Venezia. Here, Mussolini inspired Italians from the balcony with glorifying speeches, right up to the countrys impending collapse in 1941. Around these two buildings, both constructed as opulent aristocratic homes during the Renaissance, lie the ruins of one of the greatest empires and greatest republics. Not to be forgotten, always complicit: just across the river lives and rules the Pope himself, a supporter of the Prime Minister who, during the 2006 election campaign, called himself the Jesus Christ of politics.

Graphic by Alexander Dalelence, nothing will ever change. Severgnini had predicted last week that Berlusconis days were numbered. There will be some sort of interim government, with some sort of fancy name. The Truce Government. The National Reconcilation Government. The Government for Europe. Berlusconi has said that he will appoint Secretary Alfano to the head, a transition to his right-hand man that would keep power close. Others suggest former European Commissioner, Mario Monti, to whom the President of the Republic just gave a life-long term in the Senate. Also in the cards is a possible referendum to change the Italian electoral law; currently, parties choose candidates, not the people. Berlusconi may have resigned, but he will not go without a fight, and it is safe to assume that the world has not seen the mans final smirk. Directly after the parliamentary vote, a photographers zoom lens caught the words Berlusconi was scribbling on a scrap of paper. Above the word resignation, two more words were also legible: eight traitors. BELLE CUSHING B13 has less than 50% of the Prime Minister in her.

For many Americans, Italy is a dream tourist destination. To temper the countrys timeless appeal, they tell timely jokes about its prime minister. The situation is distanced, as much from themselves as from the ruins tourists wish to visit. When his talk had ended, Severgnini admitted a concern that his approach was too comical for such a serious reality. Perhaps the only way to reach an attentive public is to wrap the truth in shiny paper, or in a book cover emblazoned with a female icon in the nude. And who else likes inappropriate jokes? Berlusconis favorite involves him finally falling from power, hurtling toward the ground from the top of a building with just enough time to catch a glimpse of a woman changing through a window. He has told the joke many times, but now he is in full descent, and keeping his eyes open. When Americans are the friends abroad to whom Berlusconi is being explained, included in this intended audience are the Eliot Spitzers, the Herman Cains. Its easy to sit in a Brown University auditorium and laugh about drama playing out on a Roman amphitheatres political stage. But what if the Berluscometer were put up to America and to its own politicians? The mirror might show amused but guilty faces. Among Berlusconis valued friendsPutin, Mubarak, the late Qaddafihe counted Americas own George W. Bush. And one can imagine that a Berlusconismo would gain a place in a political dictionary right between a Bachmann gaffe and a Bushism.

Italys next steps will be complicated by one of Severgninis ten factors: T.I.N.A. or, There is No Alternative, coined by Margaret Thatcher and today applied to Berlusconi in a country where the enduring fear of communism means that voters will choose anything else. I support two teams, New England natives chant with pride. The Red Sox, and whoever beats the Yankees. Berlusconi is the team that beat the Yankees. The Red Sox are currently unavailable, so Berlusconi sweeps in for the title of Cavaliere, the knight, as he has affectionately dubbed himself. Berlusconi is the CenterRight, bordered on one side by Umberto Bossi and the hyper-Right Northern League, whose campaign shouts Yes to Polenta, No to Couscous, and the divided, uninspiring Democratic Party, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, on the other. The Left, Severgnini writes, proposes confused solutions to complex problems with a contrite expression. Italy would prefer simple solutions presented with a smile. Hence Berlusconis official party song, which he also helped to write, which croons to audiences from the TV channels that he owns, Thank goodness for Silvio. According to Severgnini, the public response must go through the necessary stages before breaking its stasis. Italians will feel complicit, then embarrassed, a feeling that will morph into shame, and finally, anger. Frustration and anger have certainly already taken hold, but even as Berlusconi is voted out of office, it is unclear if this will be the overhaul hoped for by Andrea and the next generation, or another blip in a procession of distrusted politicians. In Italy, Andrea told The Independent, as long as they [politicians] keep coming and supporting the interference of the Vatican, the absurd pretense of the law, the mafia and the code of si-

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STAR WARSEpisode: China by Erica Schweigerhausen illustration by Deepali Gupta

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hinese citizens reveled in nationalistic pride last week after a pair of unmanned Chinese spacecraft successfully performed the countrys first space-kissthe docking of the Shenzhou 8 capsule with the Tiangong 1 module at an altitude of 340 km over China. Its just like a couple of lovers walking hand and hand in space, a radio broadcast reported, according to the China Daily. Despite the fact that American and Russian aerospace engineers mastered space docking technology in the 1960s, Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for Chinas space program remarked at a news conference that this makes China one of the few countries in the world that can independently research and develop docking mechanisms. The technological advance is well -timed for the Communist Party as it struggles to rally public support before the countrys once-a-decade power shuffle, which will take place next year. The successful docking also represents a considerable technical advance in Chinas project

to reach the moon and launch its own space station by 2020around the same time that the International Space Station may go into retirement (read: have run out of funding). The US remains wary of Chinas advancements in space. The sanctions imposed by Congress limiting cooperation between American and Chinese aeronautical engineers shortly after Beijings violent suppression of pro-democracy protestors in 1989 are still in place. Chinese scientists are barred from American space conferences, and China has been repeatedly rebuffed in its attempts to join the 16-nation International Space Station, largely due to objections from the United States. Current US hesitancy to support Chinese space exploration stems largely from concerns over a Chinese military buildup in space. The Peoples Liberation Army runs Chinas manned space program and its space vehicles and satellites are often equipped for both military and civilian purposes. However, China has said

repeatedly that its space ambitions are peaceful, and after the docking the staterun news agency Xinhua reported that a Chinese space station would be open to international scientific collaboration. China is currently investing billions of dollars in its space program, and already has two satellites in orbit in addition to a lunar rover scheduled to launch in 2013. The Chinese presence in space highlights an unsettling contrast to the United States, as the landing of the space shuttle Atlantis this July marked the end of the US space shuttle program for the foreseeable future. American space shuttles are currently being retired, although NASA claims it plans to use the $4 billion it previously spent maintaining three space shuttles to develop new spacecraft that can travel beyond the ISSs near-earth orbit, an impossible feat for current space shuttles. In an era of trillion-dollar deficits, it would seem advantageous for the US to reconsider the potential benefits of cooperation with China, ending what many perceive as a costly and unnecessary space

race. However, many on Capitol Hill remain unconvinced. Any effort on our part to reach out to the Communist Chinese, to engage them on matters of technology is, quite frankly, not just nave but dangerous, said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, citing a history of technology theft and human rights violations. Yet John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, asserted in a testimony before the House last week that collaboration with Chinas space program could strengthen our hand in the effort to get China to change aspects of its conduct that we oppose. Holdren maintains that aeronautic cooperation could be mutually beneficial, possibly opening up opportunities which are currently too expensive, such as a mission to Mars. ERICA SCHWEIGERHAUSEN B 13 sees stars.


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HAT IS THAT? Y PROVIDENCE, W HE

The Providence National Bank Faadeby Caroline Soussloff rendering courtesy of Chad Goneyn Weybosset Street, there is a point where the sidewalk ends and the density of downtown recedes. At this site stands what was once the historic Providence National Bank. Now its just a redbrick faade, elegant but contained by a chain link fence and supported by rusted scaffolding. Although conjoined with a row of storefronts, it remains the stately entrance to an empty lot. Soon, however, it may be the portal to a parking lot. Back in its glory days, when the building still had four walls to its name, its main entrance looked out onto Westminster Street. That faade displayed two tiles, each etched with a date: 1791 and 1929. The first memorialized the foundation of the Providence National Bank, the second the construction of its new home. Providence National Bank was Rhode Islands first bank. As the tile attested, it received its state charter in October of 1791, following in the footsteps of the First Bank of the United States, established that same year. Over the centuries, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, its name and composition changed. Then, after a merger with Fleet National Bank in 1985, it vacated its Westminster Street address. Today, what was once Providence National Bank is now under the purview of Bank of America. Its affiliated center of operations now lies outside Rhode Island. DUST TO DUST The vacant lot spanning Westminster and Weybosset Streets has a history of its own. Most notably, in the late 19th century it was home to the Lyceum Building, so called because it housed the Franklin Lyceum debating society. Founded by a group of secondary students, the Lyceum was modeled after Aristotles acadmy. According to the Providence Historical

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Society, Rhode Islands future civic leaders would gather there to hone their oratory skills as they debated questions such as Ought women be allowed to vote? (Their ultimate resolution: No.) The Lyceum sometimes featured lectures by prominent New England public figures, among them John Quincy Adams, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The faade that greeted passers by on Westminster looked quite different then, most notably marked by a 65 statue of the societys namesake, the master orator Benjamin Franklin. In 1926, bronze Ben was hauled off and the Lyceum Building demolished to make way for the brick Georgian Revival building that became the new headquarters of the Providence National Bank. The faade we see today does not date from this period, however. Despite mimicking the Westminster faades architecture, the Weybosset faade was constructed during a 1940s expansion. When Blue Chip Properties and Granoff Associates demolished the old bank building in 2005, the Weybosset faade was not a priority for preservationists. They preferred the older, more iconic front entrance of the building facing Westminster. However, the developer had other plans for Westminster Street. The empty lot was supposed to become the site of the tallest building in Providence. The developers wanted to incorporate the banks neighbor, the iconic Westminster Arcade building, into the design as a lobby of sorts. Business at the Arcade had declined significantly since the days it made a name for itself as Americas first shopping mall, and the hope was that the increased foot traffic would be a boon for commerce. There was even talk of putting a Dean & Deluca in the skyscraper to attract the bourgeoisie. But similar developments

at the Westin and Waterplace Park got off the ground faster. Then the economy took a dive, and the blueprints were crumpled. Ive spoken to the guy who owns the site now and he has said to me that the project never really could have gotten off the ground, said James Hall, Executive Director of the Providence Preservation Society. It was originally supposed to be all residences, then a residential hotel, but there wasnt really a market for it. The past decade has not been kind to Rhode Island real estate. FAADE FACE-OFF So the lot remained a lot, unfurnished beyond the disembodied wall. Years passed. Local business owners began to tire of the sight of it deteriorating, propped up by crosshatched steel beams. They complained that the barriers blocking off the surrounding sidewalk interrupted pedestrian activity on the street. There were concerns that the wall was a safety risk that could, at any moment, shed an errant brick. Its a hazard at this point, David OBrien, the proprietor of Weybosset Streets Picture This, told the New York Times in a 2010 article about the demolition of historic buildings. I would just as soon take that lot and turn it into a park, a parking lotanythinguntil they have the money to build again. I dont actually think its all that structurally unsound, Hall said. Theres an enormous concrete footing underneath the building that acts as a ballast. The only reason there is so much steel on the face of the building is because they were going to do major construction on itthey felt they needed that kind of structural bracing. He did acknowledge that the back of the faades masonry is at risk; interior brick is not made to withstand the ele-

ments, a fact that lends some urgency to improved preservation. In 2009, the lots owner, OConnor Capital Partners, began vying to install a parking lot in the space. The neighborhood was generally supportive. Local business owners felt they could use the parking space. Hall and his fellow preservationists fought back. Theres a 40% vacancy rate [in parking lots] downtown, he said, so there really isnt this need. The law was on their side: a parking lot in the space would technically be in violation of zoning restrictions. The City of Providences Downcity Design Review Committee told the owner that they were unsatisfied with the current proposal, and the project stalled. This Monday, November 14th, there is going to be a press conference at the site to announce plans for a compromise. In the short term, at least, the owner will both create a parking lot and conserve the faade. The details are still fuzzy. The Providence Preservation Society would like to see a full restoration and backlighting at night. The owner has agreed to relocate the scaffolding to the back of the building, but is also considering using concrete blocks to close up the windows at the suggestion of his engineer. Hal believes that though it may not be one of Providences most significant landmarks, the faades survival is important just the same. People forget that cities are made of walls. A good city is a strong street edge, he said. When you take buildings out of a streetscape, its like missing teeth. Which of your front teeth do you want to lose? CAROLINE SOUSSLOFF B12 is prourbanity.

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MONEY, POLITICS, CLASS WAR, AND YOUTUBEInterview by Sam Adler-Bell Illustration by Becca LevinsonIndy: What has Demand Progress been working on lately? DS: Mostly weve been fighting the Internet Blacklist Bill, which would give the government power to block Americans access to websites that get accused of copyright infringement. With social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, [and] Twitter, if the sites users get accused of copyright infringement the site could be taken down or portions of it could be taken down. And its really our countrys first foray into broad-based, sort of Chinese-style censorship. If this thing passes I think that were really going to start careening off in that direction. And it gets back to the campaign finance issue because Hollywood [which has a serious stake in anti-piracy legislation] still throws down big bucks every election year for liberals. So we see a lot of Democrats on the wrong side of this. If youre a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee [through which the Blacklist Bill must pass], Hollywood money, record industry money, thats your bread and butter. Indy: Okay. I buy that. But with Occupy Wall Street (finally) starting a conversation in this country about economic inequality and corporate greed, why should we care about net neutrality and copyright right now? DS: Given the role that the internet and social media have played in democratization movements over the past year or so, the prospect of giving corporations and governments more control over what information people have access to is reallydangerous. Its obvious that they will skew that information in ways that benefit their continued hegemony. And thats what were starting to see happen. Indy: Is Occupy Wall Street class warfare, as some right-wing pundits have disparagingly characterized it? And would that be such a bad thing? DS: I wish I had a deeper historical perspective on why that seems to workinvoking the idea of class warfare as a way of undermining the movement. If it is class warfare, its not unjust class warfare. We know class warfare has been taking place in this country since its inception and we know who tends to win. Its only when the people whove been on the losing side of it start agitating for their rights that we call it class warfare. Indy: You were a legislator from 2003 to 2011, that is, for most of your twenties. Has it been a big adjustment to no longer hold elected public office? DS: Yeah.Well, sort of. There were certain aspects of the political thing I was al-

A conversation with former Providence City Councilman and Rhode Island State Rep. David Segal

n 2002, David Segal won a seat on the Providence City Council, becoming the first Green Party candidate to hold office in Rhode Island. In 2006, he was elected to the RI General Assembly as a Democrat representing Fox Point and East Providence. During his four years in the statehouse, he won the respect of legislators on both sides of the aisle for his intelligence and tenacitytaking principled stands on progressive issues ranging from workers rights and the environment, to criminal justice reform and immigration. In 2010, he ran for Congress in RIs First Congressional District, losing a four-way Democratic primary to outgoing Providence Mayor David Ciciline. In 2011, he spoke with The Indy about his recent political work, life outside the public eye, and where to get the best pizza in Providence. Independent: In your 2010 campaign, you ran on a platform that emphasized your refusal to accept money from corporations or their Political Action Committees. But you lost to David Ciciline, a mainstream Democrat who took substantial donations from corporate interests. How can real progressives win elections given the pay-to-play structures of our electoral system? David Segal: Its obviously very difficult [for progressives]. But its notimpossible. Especially with organizations like Democracy for America and the PCCC [Progressive Change Campaign Committee], internet groups that aggregate small donations from thousands of individuals across the country. The system allows progressive candidates who arent taking corporate donations to get funded and compete with their opponents who are. But, yes, it is overwhelmingly difficult, increasingly so in this momentthe post-Citizens United era. We need a public financing system in this country, and we need to get rid of corporate personhood. But to make those changes you have to go through the same Congress whose members have already benefited from the influx of corporate dollars. By definition, if youre in there right now, you know how to play the game, and its not in your interest to change the rules. Indy: What have you been up tosince running for Congress? DS: The first thing I did was cofound a new Netroots organizing group called Demand Progress [Netroots refers to political activism organized around internet media]. We do primarily civil liberties and civil rights organizing, multiple campaigns around Internet freedom. There are lots of progressive Netroots groups, but not many of them are focused specifically on civil liberties or internet-related policy. In the past year, weve grown to a membership of about 600,000 people.

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ways ambivalent about, especially for having started so young. I was a little worried that it would become part of my self-identity. So in some ways, a break from it has been good, and Ive been able to get other aspects of my life in order. Its remarkably difficult to find work that pays you enough to get by when youre also doing that job. You know, a legislator makes $13,000 a year and works ridiculous, haphazard hours. Thats why there are so many lawyers and family business owners and retired folks in the statehouse; you have to be able to keep your own hours. Indy: I saw a great picture of you and the late Miguel Luna being sworn in on the City Council together in 2003. How have you felt in the wake of his recent passing? DS: Its a huge loss. Hes one of my best friends and my first real political ally. We got elected at the same time and had the same group of people working on our campaigns. He was just such a warm and funny and sarcastic sort of person. And hes also just very easy to miss; both because of his stature as an activist, and his physical stature and booming voice. Hes someone you actively know is absent, especially, on a picket line or at Occupy Providence. Indy: Youve often been described as an activist first and a politician second. Whats the difference between the two? What are the possibilities and limitations entailed by working inside the electoral system versus working outside it? DS: I dont think there needs to be much of a difference, fundamentally. Its a false dichotomy thats been set up because most politicians dont believe in that much. But in every legislative body that Im aware of there is a core of solid progressive activists working hard on the issues that matter. And then on the other side, there are conservative activists, who I disagree with but who are at least doing the work out of some adherence to principle and in the interest of an agenda they believe in. The term politician has connotations Id like to avoid, but still, the skills of a good organizer are very similar to the skills of an effective politician: the ability to communicate, to empathize, to think

strategically and figure out how to pressure people in ways that are most tactical. There is a group of strong progressives [in the General Assembly] doing that work, and in my time there, the more we organized as a block, the more effective we were at getting things done. We were able to hold back a state budget until millions of dollars were reinstated for cities and towns. At the federal level, that tactic is seen as the province of the Tea Party, but theres no reason progressives in Congress couldnt be doing precisely the same thing. Indy: Are you going to run for Congress again? DS:I dont know quite yet. Thats the best answer I can give you Im afraid. Indy: David Scharfenberg wrote an article for The Providence Phoenix last week about the restoration of Rep. David Cicilines image over the past year. If you or another Democrat were to run against him in 2012, what makes you think you (or someone else) could beat him this time? DS: I think theres still a lot of resentment about the straits the city was left in after his administration, and in particular that he wasnt honest about the condition of the city [when he was running]. He won last time, but as the mayor of the states biggest city he only secured 37% of the vote. So in a one-on-one race against a competent candidate, hes got a very good chance of losing. Indy: Whats your favorite pizza place in Providence? DS: Bob and Timmys. Ive got to say. I dont mean to pan Nice Slice or anything. Theyre number two. Indy: Dont assume. I like Fellinis. DS: Well, the pizzas great there. But they tilt their pinball machine up extra high andset it so that it doesnt give the ball back if you miss right away. Its rigged. Sam Adler-Bell 12.5 is careening towards broad-based, sort of Chinese-style censorship.


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A REVIEW FROM

THE PRECIPICERK PROJECTS ATLAS AT THE COHEN GALLERYby Ana Alvarezt rstglance,theminimalaesthetic and grey palette of ATLAS, the latest exhibition at the Brown UniversityGrano sCohenGallery,isalmostindiscerniblefromthegalleryspaceitself.The spectacleofpastCohenGalleryexhibitionsis markedlyabsent.Yetastotemicplastercubes risefromtheconcreteasagender-lessvoice eerilydronesfromavideoprojection,somethingperceptiblecomesintofocus.Thespaceis neitheremptynorfull;itisinsteadsituatedin anamorphousandaestheticallyneutralspace. Theexhibitionisthelatestundertaking from RK Projects, a Providence-based selfdescribedexperimentalexhibitionplatform thatspecializesinbringinggreatervisibility tolocalartistthroughephemeralDIYshows. Thegroupconsistsofcuratorialandconceptual headTabithaPisenoandengineeringandinstallation expert Sam Keller. Together, the two RISD alums (2009) decided to stay in Providencepost-graduationtofortifythebudding, yetattimeslocallyneglected,Providenceart scene.Theirideologyiscenteredonusingexhibitionsasplatformsforsocialengagementby locatingtheirprojectsinabandonedindustrial propertiesaroundProvidence.Throughthis, theyhopetobothbringarevivingawarenessto theseforgottensitesandtocreateanalternative communityinwhichtofeaturelocal,site-speci cworksthatavoidscommercialization.The arttheyfeatureisoftenperformance-based, makingitasephemeralandexperimentalas thesiteswheretheexhibitionsareproduced. WhentheGrano committeeinvitedRK to propose a Project for the Cohen Gallery, PisenoandKellerchosetoworkwithlocalperformanceartistandproli claptoppopmusicianXavierValentineperhapsbetterknown X.V., the ever friendly and chic store clerk of ProvidencevintagehavenForeignA air.One yearlater,ATLAShasemergedasacollaborationbetweenX.V.saestheticsandRKscuratorialdrive,usingtheGrano sarchitectureas its muse. As the shows curatorial statement attests, exhibiting at the Grano was a central consideration of the show. RK Projects is, afterall,primarilyconceptualizedasaplatform for projects that want to break from the institutionalizedgallerysetting,soexhibitingat BrownUniversity,ablatantinstitution,became anobviouspointofdeliberation.AsPisenoexplainedinaninterviewwiththeIndependent, it was less aboutcoming to terms withex-

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hibitingwithinaninstitution.Instead,RKand X.V.tooktheGrano andutilizedthespaceof thebuilding,thearchitectureofthebuildingas apointfromwhichtoaddresssitespeci city. ThisisanexceptionalqualityfoundinmostRK Projectshowstheirlackofapredetermined galleryspacegiveseachprojectasite-unique attribute. In ATLAS this is revealed through X.V.s useofGrano sarchitecturalquipsasinspirations. As X.V. explained in an interview with theIndependent,theextendedpreparationof theshow,whichspannedawholeyear,focused on how he and RK couldaddress the inherentbeautyofthearchitectureofthebuilding whilesimultaneouslyreferencing[their]own points.X.V. retells rst visiting the Grano andinstantlyconceptualizingwhatarenow themonolithicgradientmuralandplastercast totemsthatlinethegalleryspace.Theblackto-whitegradientofthemural,representedin consecutiveverticalbeamsonthebackwallof thegallery,isaresponsetothejagged,pleated metalsidesoftheGrano . Similarly,theplastertotemsarealsodiedinblack-to-whitegradientsandareplacedthroughoutthegalleryin varyingsizes,fromaone-foottotemthatcould easily be tripped on, to a six-foot totem that precariouslydominatestheotherwiseunoccupied gallery space. X.V. went on to explain that the works wereconceptuallyframedaroundanattempt tophysicallyembodyRolandBarthess1970s lecturesonneutrality.Barthessnotionofneutrality pointed towards a deconstruction of binaries;theneutralgroundwasseenaspace wheretheseconstructeddivisionscouldcease andtruerformsofunderstandingcouldarise. Theexhibitionscuratorialstatementfurther explainsthisanalogy;intheworks,neutrality servesasavantagepointfromwhichtoreconsiderthesuspensionbetweentwopolaroppositesassomethingmoremomentousthanoften assumed. Thisnotionofsuspensionaboveneutral groundleadstothesecondunifyingconceptof theshowthatoftheprecipice.Inthislight,

theseeminglyplacid,neutralspaceischarged withpossibility;theworksarenolongerneutrally secure, but are at risk of plummeting overtheedge,intoanadversaryexistence.Snap ThisQuietSnap,adigitalprintandinstallation featuredintheshow,perhapsbestelucidates thisquiveringdivide.Inthepiece,aminimally designedblackandwhitedigitalprintseeminglyhangsfromthewallbyasinglethread.It wasideal,Ithink,thewaythattheprintishung tokindofemphasizetheverticalityofthespace as well but [also] the idea of it being about to fall, X.V. explains. Everything to me looks likeitsonthebrinkofbeingsomethingelse thegradientisalwaysonthebrinkofbecoming thenextcolorandthepillarsarealwaysonthe brink of falling to the ground. Below the digital print there is a spotlightedstandwithvariousrockssurrounding theexhibitioncatalog,whichwasdesignedby RISD artist Dan Brewster. Such a prominent emphasisoftheexhibitioncatalogaspartofthe artpieceSnapThisQuietSnapwasanengaging choice.Thecatalogsyellowcoveristheonly objectinthespacetobreakwiththestrongly imposedblack-and-white-onlydesignofthe exhibition.Italsosuggeststhatperhapsthereal workofartisnotsomuchwhatispresentin theneutralspace,butitscontinuationoutside thegallerysetting,onceitfallso theprecipice and into the combatant world. Thevideos displayedonthewalloppositeofSnapThisQuietSnappresentacollection offoundfootagethatcontinuetoengagewith thesenotionsofneutralityandtheprecipice. MotionofGildedMomentspresentsadigitalsea-

scape in perpetual motion.Each minute of thevideoshowsonehourofrealtimeofwhat appearstobethehorizononanoceanshore. Asthevideoprogresses,ahuman gurehangs suspendedfromthelandscape,continuouslyon the verge of leaping, facing a neutral abyss. Whilesomemight ndATLAStoodependentonitsminimalaesthetictobeengaging, andtooladenwiththeorytobeaccessible,its lesstheworkandmorethepossibilityofanexhibitionlikethisthatmakesitbothengaging andaccessible.Thisisanarrestingexampleof collaborationthoughseverallayerscollaborationbetweenanartistandhiscurators,betweenthearchitecturaldesignofabuildingand theworkdisplayedinit,betweenaninstitution and the community it lives in. ANA ALVAREZ B13 is on the precipice.

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RAPPING THE REVOLUTION IN PALESTINE

from East Harlem to the West Bank: Palestinians bring hip-hop back to its rootsby Emily Gogolak illustration by Olivia Fialkow

n 1970, over a steady drumbeat and the slow stream of a saxophone, the late Gil Scott-Heron said six immortal words and helped kick-start the genre eventually known as rap: The revolution will not be televised. Thousands of tracks and two decades later, Public Enemy frontrunner Chuck D was calling rap music the CNN of urban youth in America. Earlier this month, Tamer Nafar, lead singer of the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, told the Independent, Rap is CNN for us, the Palestinian people. In every village, in every town, in every cityin Israel, Gaza, the West Bankpeople are doing hip-hop. EAST TO WEST In 1999, Tamer, his younger brother Suhell, and their friend Mahmoud Jreri, also from Lod, Israels most notorious ghetto, started the hip-hop group DAM which means eternity in Arabic, blood in Hebrew, and stands for Da Arabian MCs in English. The first Palestinian rap crew and among the trailblazers of early Arab rap, DAM overlaid hip-hop beats with Arabic melodies and lyrics that brought their music back to the genres 1970s roots: protest. It all started with Tamer, and his infatuation with American rap legend Tupac. In the mid-1990s, the teenaged Tamer started watching music videos by the late West Coast rapper, and what he saw on the screenthe grimy, crime-ridden streets of Los Angeleslooked all too familiar. It looked like home. Nafar hails

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from Lod; and though only a 20-minute drive from the tree-lined boulevards of Tel Aviv, the citys narrow, gray streetslined with graffiti, broken glass, and crumbling housescouldnt seem more removed. Safety was a luxury foreign to Lod, and during Tamers childhood, neighborhood stabbings were routine and shootings were on the rise. Tamer also recognized the discrimination and racism Tupac decried. Both men were of minority groups with a history of discrimination: Tupac an African American in what he called A White Mans World and Tamer a Palestinian citizen of Israel, an Israeli-Arab. Unlike the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled Palestine in 1948, many remained on the land that became Israel and now live as citizens of the Jewish state. Today numbering over 1.2 million, Israeli-Arabs face a tough reality. Structural inequality, unemployment, and crime are constant threats, and according to a 2009 OECD report Israeli-Arabs, who today make up 20% of Israel, face a poverty rate of 50%. And the Israeli-Arab problem doesnt end there. Not only do Arabs face discrimination in Israel, but they are also largely unrecognized by the greater Arab community, who see them as traitors for living in the Jewish state. Israelis dont like us because were Arabs, and the other Arabs dont like us because we have Israeli passports, because we are citizens, Mahmoud of DAM told the Independent. But if

he is a citizen of Israel, he only sees himself as a second-class citizen. Having an Israeli passport means nothing. When I go to the airport, they still think I am a terrorist. It doesnt matter what you call us, he said. We live in a racist country. Listening to rap music, Tamer saw a way in: it was a way to resist his circumstances. He started writing, throwing down beats, and telling his family and friends that he wanted to be a rapper. They thought I was joking, said Tamer, a wiry 32 year-old with a sharp tongue and a wit to match. And, I kind of thought I was joking too. A couple of years later, however, Tamer was already performing solo in the then-small but burgeoning Israeli hip-hop scene, making a name for himself as the first Palestinian rapper and even sharing the stage with Jewish Israeli artists. It was a family scene, he explained, but it wasnt political. It was for nice things like peace and all that shit but it wasnt about reality. BREAKING IT DOWN But when Tamer joined Suhell and Mahmoud to form DAM, things changed. We opened our mouths Suhell told the Independent, We got with realityand it wasnt a pretty picture. The Second Intifada erupted in September of 2000 and violence between Israelis and Palestinians rose to heights unseen in yearseventually claiming over 5,500 Palestinian and 1,100 Israeli lives. Racism between the two groups was as vicious as ever, and

DAM had something to say about it. Taking a line from American rapper DMX, Tamer explained, We wanted to tell Israelis, Walk in our shoes, and youll hurt your feet. Arming themselves with their lyrics, DAM called for people to walk in the Palestinians shoes before judging the rock-throwing youth of the uprising. In 2000, they released their first single Innocent Criminals, recorded in Hebrew over the beat of Tupacs Hail Mary. And a few months later came DAMs big break Mein Erhabi (Who Is the Terrorist?). The track went viral, and was downloaded over a million times after its free online releasequite a feat for a hardly known DIY rap group with no record deal. The lyrics, rapped in Arabic, were fearless: You jump to say You let small children throw stones! Dont they have parents to keep them at home? WHAT?! You must have forgotten you buried our parents under the rubble of our homes And now while my agony is so immense You call me a terrorist? When dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians had turned into bloodshed during the Intifada, anything strongly proPalestinan or pro-Israeli came across as threatening to the other side. And Israelis were outraged with DAM, saying that it


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was supporting terrorism and sympathizing with the suicide bombers who were blowing up buses in Tel Aviv. Subliminal, Israels most popular rapper and a former friend of Tamer (they even used to perform together in Tel Aviv), was livid. He told the Guardian, This f*** got up on TV and said: The guy that blew himself up? I can identify with him. You wanna talk about the Zionist enemy, homie? Well here I am. Meanwhile DAM was gaining more and more fans across Palestine. When we started, we took any show we could get, Tamer said. And then it became three shows a day. We were the headliners. And soon, DAM wasnt just a household name among Palestinians. Rolling Stone in France distributed the song in one of its issues, and Le Monde heralded DAM as the voice of a new generationtheir music was becoming the anthem of frustrated youth throughout the Middle East. They were doing for young Arab rappers just what Tupac had done for them: showing how rap can work as a means of dialogue and resistance. DAMS FIRST DECADE Fast forward ten years to today. DAM is still the Palestinian soundtrack to resistance, only better known with two albums under their belt. They have made several tours of North America and Europe, where they have gained the attention of the liberalminded university crowd and performed

with the likes of Talib Kweli, Michael Franti, and Dead Prez. Even some of the hip-hop greatsthe very artists that got them hooked on hip-hop in the first placehave taken note. When we were in Brooklyn a few years ago, we met Chuck D, Tamer said, cracking a rare smile. We got the Kings blessing. Theyve also received Hollywoods blessing. An award-winning documentary called Slingshot Hip Hop premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and tells the story of Palestinian rap, starting with its founding fathers in Lod. The film also features up-and-coming hip-hop ensembles in Gaza and the West Bankincluding a female duo, Arapeyat (translated as Arab Women Who Rap)and is a testament to Tamers statement that Palestinians everywhere are doing hip-hop. DAM can be seen on stages worldwide, but the trio stays true to their root and its commitment to the Palestinian reality and the struggle of Israeli-Arabs remains as strong as ever. Tamer, Suhell, and Mahmoud still live in Lod, where they help provide the youth in the city and neighboring communities with cultural workshops and opportunities that have otherwise been denied to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. And just like when they started, the trio is keeping up the tradition of early protest rap, arming themselves with words to expose injustice. At the end of a performance in early October at the Arab-Jewish Community Center south of Tel Aviv, DAM pulled a

group of young fans on stage. Before an audience that ranged from seven to seventy-year-olds, the kidsIsraelis and Palestinianstook the mics and belted the lyrics by heart in Arabic: To change the situation we need a revolution But alone I cant change this Hell to Heaven, It takes revolution to find a solution. Meanwhile, the situation for Palestinians in Israel only seems to be getting worse. On October 3, a fanatic renegade group called the price-taggers torched and graffitied a mosque in the northern Arab-Israeli village of Tuba Zangaria. A few days later, on Yom Kippur, Christian and Muslim tombstones were defaced in a cemetery in Jaffa, the ancient port city that today comprises the greater metropolitan area of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and has a sizeable Arab population. And just last week, an Arab restaurant in central Jaffa was firebombed. The events follow a legal blow to Arab-Israelis. In September, the Israeli government approved the Nakba Bill, which bans publically funded organizations from commemorating the Nakba (translated literally as the catastrophe)when over 700,000 Arabs were forcibly removed from land that became the state of Israel in 1948. Scholars and public intellectuals have recently shown a growing interest in the Nakba, and this lawheavily criticized by the Israeli left and civil rights groups is considered a reflection of the governments growing fear of Palestinian history being made public. According to Haaretz,

Israels leading newspaper, it encourages the instigators of racism and is designed to shut people up. DAM, however, has refused to shut up. This is not a free country, Tamer said, And real rap criticizes anyone who denies freedom. EMILY GOGOLAK B 12.5 has started writing, throwing down beats, and telling her family and friends that she wants to be a rapper.

This week, the phenomenon is moving from Palestine to Providence. As part of their new North America tour, DAM will be live at Brown on November 12th, in a performance coordinated by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine.

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FALL JAMSthose ribbed fish instrumentstrip over each other in seemingly endless rotation. There are crescendos but it isnt clear where they begin or end. Califones genius is that many of their songs are best described as a series of memorable moments, yet the transitions to and from those moments are so seamless that they are hard to discern, even after dozens of listens. Like a decontextualized trip into another space triggered by a vaguely familiar smell, Califones music is a tribute to the power of the sensory. Their lyrics are heavily associative, with animal descriptions and metaphors often as a unifying trope. This is appropriate, since the music is more instinctive than rational. However, the albums power lies not so much in the solutions it offers for living in a heavily sensory world, but in the beautiful, often non sequitur musical possibilities of such a world. Conflicting sounds and styles are the air the keeps the album breathing. 3. Television - Marquee Moon (1977). Television is generally separated from other NYC punk explosion bands by their complex guitar interplay, which synthesized blues and jazz influences to create something wholly original. And in the context of the 1977 punk scene, this was perhaps doubly subversive. But beyond that, they also transcended their peers in the way their stylistic experimentation complemented their lyrical content. Marquee Moon is largely removed from the senses of swagger and rage that defined the late-70s CBGBs scene, instead focusing on alternating paranoia and hysterical joy. Opener See No Evil sets the albums majestically bipolar tone by acknowledging the ridiculousness of what might, in less able hands, be a self-indulgent song about invincibility. Follow up Venus is structured like a ballad until Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyds interspersed call-andresponse exchanges question the narrators reliability just in time for the chorus and riff. And then theres the title track, which has to be the most economically creepy, suspenseful and ecstatic 10-minute rock song in history. Marquee Moon is then a punk album in the purest sense: by taking elements of classic (even arena) rock, punk, blues, and an indie sensibility that hadnt even been invented yet, it remains Televisions lasting middle finger to all their influences and imitators. 2. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury (2006). Much is revealed in a rap album through its use of skits or interludes. The most traditionally ambitious ones use them as breathers, sometimes signaling tone changes or introducing standout tracks (see: Ghostface Killah, Fishscale). But Hell Hath No Fury is differentthe first song is a cyclical intro, boasting the Re-Up Gang label name with the looping line we got it for cheap, and coming full circle with the same samples at the end. But the second loop comes 3:42 later, after an explosion of Pusha T and Malices harrowing

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few months back I was driving an old family car and found a series of mix CDs, each labeled with a different date in November 2007. The three mixes were mostly dispatches from the Mountain Goats, Elliot Smith, and the Smashing Pumpkinsa group brought together by their lyrics explicit confrontations with pain. Lyrics like the Mountain Goats I played video games in a drunken haze/I was seventeen years young/hurt my knuckles punching the machines/the taste of scotch rich on my tongue are powerful because singer John Darnielles anger resonates with a variety of listeners diverse personal experiences, despite the particularity of Darnielles own. Four Novembers later, Im still drawn to a particular type of telling, though perhaps a more nuanced one. The tension between the rainy temperature drops and gorgeous visual stimuli recalls the coexistence of the melancholic and the cathartic in music. Which seems appropriate for a season defined by a sense of transition and change: these days the space between a tragic story and a blissful one seem especially open to exploration. Accordingly, there seems to be a particular brand of discordant storytelling in the music I gravitate toward during autumn. Here are five album suggestions for the season, each ambivalently articulating conflict in their own way. 5. Invincible - Shapeshifters (2008). It would be tempting to locate Invincible in a lineage of message rappers, brought together by their socially conscious themes and avoidance of anger as a guiding principle. One imagines an Invincible fan also digging Talib Kweli, KRS-1, and other rappers who are conscious without being revolutionary. But that would miss what makes this album so special. Invincible covers Israeli/Palestinian relations, corporate greed, racism, sexism and gentrification, with impressive fluidity and cogency. The result, though her lyrical content is specific and substantive, is much more than just emotionally charged commentary. Its a philosophy of witness and transformation. The title track begins: Music is not a mirror to reflect reality/its a hammer with which we shape it. Even though shes angry, her anger exists within a holistic framework of healing that has a systemic resonance. So its not even the overflowing content thats important here, its the act of confessionan articulation of the challenges of community building as a way to break through them. 4.Califone-Quicksand/Cradlsnakes (2003). Americana. Freak Folk. Soul. Garage. Raspiness. Vibrations. Feedback. Breathing. Breathing. The album embodies it. The record is not a subject as much as a process, the way that soundswhether guitar/banjo twangs, electric fuzz, or

By Bobby Hunter Illustration by Diane Zhouaccounts of crack dealing, outlining the thrills, guilt and instability of hustling. The tactic of embedding stylistic bells and whistles within the albums dystopian lyrical universe complicates the rappers considerable showmanship. The result is a distinct feeling of entrapment within the Virginia beach drug culture, and all its ecstasies and insecurities. But then, the entrapment is layered. Malice is Pushas older brother, and the album captures the sense of mutual responsibility for each others scarred consciences (Malice: To my little brother Terrance who I love dearly so/If I ever had millions never would you sell blow). These days Pusha is collaborating with members of Odd Future while Malice is writing a born-again memoir. I dont know to what extent their life trajectories were diverging during the Hell Hath No Fury sessions, but the line between art and life seems especially fraught during the brothers moments of alternating didacticism and bravado. Mid-album highlight Hello New World perhaps epitomizes this opposition, as Malice answers Pushas golden line Some people called it crack I called it diet Coke! with his own This information I must pass on to my homies/ if hustling is a must be Sosa, not Tony. Their tension never compromises their chemistry, though, instead making it even more breathtaking. Since their clashes exist in the same spacey, drugged out world that even the skits cannot escape, each intricate, scary piece of Hell Hath No Fury feels like a step on a downwardly spiraling staircase. Lets be thankful the descent was so beautiful. 1.TheWrens-The Meadowlands (2003). The Meadowlands is broadly an album about failure, about fighting the shame of being poor, single and depressed at 30. Which is a pretty brave statement on its own terms: these are not romantic problems to have, and given the individualistic streak of contemporary America, any attempt to first-person dramatize them immediately opens one up to a world of scrutiny. Even braver, though, is that The Wrens dont try to romanticize these problems, shying away from making their subjects proletarian heroes or wounded souls. Instead, they are more interested in the conflicts of finding a voice. The Meadowlands is about fighting the shame of not knowing how to articulate failure in a meaningful way. Its about the profound directionlessness when the system is the problem rather than the individual embedded in it, and bettering your life can never be infused with a sense of vengeance because the problem is an unfeeling system that cant experience vengence. And, maybe after that, its about the shame of feeling like you need revenge in the first place. By focusing on failure, The Meadowlands transcends the need to imply a narrative conclusion to the narrators suffering. Instead, the emotional descriptiveness of The Meadowlands makes the passage of time seem downright irrelevant, despite the fact that aging is a recurring theme. Take the transition from second track Happy to third She Sends Kisses. The former closes with singer Kevin Whelan shouting Your lies to me/wont win again/so dont kid yourself/its better this way/ its all back to me, against the peak of a crescendo of feedback and shredding before a final fadeout riff. However, the immediately quiet and slower She Sends Kisses begins with Ten tons against me and youve gone/I put your favorite records on/and sit around/it spins around/ and youre around again. Such a sequence is typical; the bands perspective often switches between reminiscence, in-time narration, and cautiously optimistic fuck-you declarations with a seeming disregard for coherence, leaving only a swirling sense of working through. And if the album is as much about the pitfalls of testifying to ones failures as it is the subjective experience of failure, the albums most explicit moments of existential confusion come from This Boy is Exhausted, which is literally about the difficulties of writing the album itself, including the lines Im way past college/ No ways out/No back doors not anymore/but then once in a while/well play a show that makes it worthwhile. The song became the bands biggest hit, which shouldnt be surprisingthe Wrens biggest strength is their ability to be deeply self-conscious without losing a sense of urgency or sincerity. So, The Meadowlands might be the perfect autumn album because its so deeply and essentially processual, the bandmembers anguish of articulating their disappointments creates new disappointments to work through. The album is then its own solution. And if that leaves you wondering what happens in between, the answer is conflict. Bobby Hunter 12 is collaborating with Odd Future on a born-again memoir.


ARTS

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OLD MAN, YOUNG SOUL, MODERN LOVERJonathan Richman is no ordinary rockstarby Greg Nissan

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ast month, Jonathan Richman approached the stage at Firehouse 13 in the West End of Providence through the crowd, carrying his own guitar. He mumbled "excuse me" to everyone he passed and looked sincere in the request. He was performing with his long-time drummer and only band member, Tommy Larkins, with whom he chatted throughout the set. Richman seemed rhythmically off all night, but he was not discouraged and continued to showcase his legendary wit. Richmans solo career was born out of the instability of the Modern Lovers, the protopunk band that he founded in 1970. The band's only official album, 1976s The Modern Lovers, was released two years after the original lineup had disbanded. Richman became quickly disillusioned with the high-energy, back-to-basics style of the band after a stay in Bermuda, and the influence of the local musicians there still permeates his music today. For several years, Jonathan retained the Modern Lovers moniker, though he played with a variety of musicians and essentially began his solo career. While Richman's solo work is often intimate and laid-back, he is best known for the chugging punk sound of The Modern Lovers. In his mind, Richman's career began in 1967, a seminal year in music. Lou Reed was experimenting with noise and chemicals in Manhattan. Mick Jagger was prancing around arenas in painfully tight pants. Brian Wilson and the Beatles were squaring off for the psychedelic pop throne. In the midst of all this, Richman, a bright-eyed 16-year-old from Natick, Massachusetts heard the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" on the radio. He was captivated by the droning two-chord structure, the screeching viola, and the primal drums. Richman left Natick for New York that year. To understand why, one must understand Lou Reedanother punk forefather to whom Richman essentially owes his career. Lou Reed is a myth dressed in all black, who hated hippies in the 1960s and was bisexual at a time when that was far

less accepted. He hung out with models and artists in Andy Warhol's factory and played guitar in a way that communicated a sonic "fuck you" to popular music of his time. A key element of his current fame is the critical and commercial reception of The Velvet Underground & Nico at the time of its releasehardly anyone outside of his circle liked it. It was largely ignored as an obscene and cacophonous album, only to gain immense popularity and critical acclaim decades later. The disparity between the response to the Velvet's debut upon its release and its current status as an extremely important LP (Rolling Stone named it the thirteenth greatest of all time) makes Reed seem almost prophetic; hes transcended good musician to the status of cultural catalyst. "These people would understand me," Richman said he thought of the Velvets in a 2002 interview. In a strange turn of events, that Richman describes as "so ridiculous it had to be fate," he ended up sleeping on the Velvet's then-manager Steve Sesnick's couch. He eventually returned to Boston where he founded the Modern Lovers, a seminal band that recorded distinctly American rock infused with punk simplicity, filtered through Richmans young, ironic lens. The band holds a similar, though less pronounced, legendary status to that of the Velvet Undergroundultimately very influential to punk rock and independent music, but internally unstable, unsuccessful at the time, and short-lived. After the Velvets collapsed, Reed worked with major names such as Bowie and members of Yes. But what did Richman do? As a solo artist, Richman became a skilled guitarist rather than one who depended on power chords and noise, blending his old punk stylings with flamenco flutters or light triads. His most popular solo album, 1991s I, Jonathan, has become the musical template for most of his albums since. Richman sings of backyard barbecues, Boston, summer memories drenched in nostalgia, lesbian bars, and, of course, the Velvet Underground. He describes his love for them

over a rollicking rhythm, and in the middle of the song he does his best Lou Reed impressionchanging the tempo to a slow thump and rattling off garbled phrases. Jonathan makes it clear in one song that he is in many ways the anti Lou Reed he's not setting trends, but his sincerity is unmatched in music. There are many bandsthe Grateful Dead most famouslywho have reputations as "live bands." Their performances surpass their albums, often due to spontaneity, improvisation, and spectacle. It's not necessarily that Richmans music is much better live, but hes extremely charismatic. Seeing him perform is more about catching a glimpse of Richman in real life than listening to his music. In his strange, stumbling monologues, Richmans essence and childlike nature come to light. He constantly sings off-microphone and approaches the crowd, dancing like a tipsy uncle at a bar mitzvah. His goofy dances are not satirical, rather they recall a child's first attempts at dancing, and sheer wonder at the joy derived from moving to music. (One of his more famous songs is "I'm A Little Dinosaur," and in his younger years Richman was known to get on his hands and knees and imitate a dinosaur during performances.) At these moments, his concert feels more like a living-room gathering than a spectacle of fame. He oscillates from seeming like a creepy high-school drama teacher in his theatrics to a stoic commentator, from a little kid to an old sage. He seems to be aware of all these personas, yet calculates none of them. Much of Richmans set was reflective. "My Affected Accent" comically detailed his early bratty pretension. He painted himself as a brooding teenager, flaunting awful artwork in Harvard Square and forever in search of the rusted gates to Bohemia. "Old World" remains one of the few Modern Lovers songs he can bear to play, and the words "ancient" and "modern" appear in his songs almost as much as "dancing" does. Despite the general acclaim of the only true Modern Lovers album, Richman is ambiguous

about his legacy. "It had some good stuff on it," he said of the album. "Some of it was just weak. I wasn't good in the recording studio. I was too criticalI had a bad time [when I was younger] but a lot of it was my own fault." Richman almost doesn't seem to be a rockstar. He lacks the unintelligible hipness (Lou Reed), the egomaniacal bombast (Bono), the inability to ever admit you are not the best musician in the world (Noel and Liam Gallagher), the unfiltered sex appeal (Mick Jagger), and the dangerously wild lifestyle (Iggy Pop). While so much of being a star hinges on distance, Richmans childlike mannerisms and sincerity seem almost too easy to understand. That explains why Lou Reed just released Lulu, a collaborative album with Metallica that has been greeted by extreme criticism and confusion for its disastrous aesthetic, while Richman is busy strumming the same chords he's always loved. He's not projecting an image, not hiding behind anything. Richmans intimate and conversational display of his personality does not translate to arenas, which is why hes chosen venues like Firehouse 13. He does not use irony as a shield. He's just on stage, talking to you, singing to you, dancing with you and not just for you. He wants you to love him, not because he feeds on admiration but because he wants you to share in the experience of love. It's fitting that he named one of his albums, Not So Much to Be Loved as to Love. GREG NISSAN B15 does not want to have brunch with Bono.

LOOKING BACK AT THE FUTURE

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INTERVIEWS

10 NOVEMBER 2011

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VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE FROM THE PAST AND PRESENThandicrafts and we needed to return to small-scale commercial enterprise and small-scale nature-connected communities. After Morris you have an odd utopian novel called Altruria, by William Dean Howells, which predicted a future wonder-world of small villages, with everything really rooted in nature. So you do have these counter-visions, but theyre very rare. And in some ways they almost shed more light on the things they reject by nature of their rareness, which of course is this perpetual obsession with every technological trend: extrapolate it to its furthest, biggest possible manifestation. Indy: Did that obsession ever play out in weird ways? Do any of the imagined futures you found seem completely crazy? NW: There are some weird ones. There was a guy named John Cleve Symmes who in the early 1800s argued that he had done some math and that he had good reason to believe that the North Pole would actually be a giant hole, and that when we found the North Pole hole we could dive into a chasm that went all the way to the core of the earth. A lot of people believed him: Edgar Allen Poe believed him, Nathaniel Hawthorne believed him. And a lot of support was actually put behind efforts to find the North Pole partly because they expected to find this hole. What this hole would do is it would enable you to not only colonize lands near the center of the planet, it would also enable you to tap the center of the earth and the molten core for an industrial complex of unlimited power. All of this sounds pretty insane to me. Indy: Did any of these ideas, the slightly less outlandish ones, impact the present in ways we arent aware of? NW: People talk a lot about the almost obsessive prediction of ubiquitous urban and suburban flight in the early 20th century. It was only a matter of time before everyone would be flying around all over the place all the time. The simple fact that when you fly around youre more likely to smash into things didnt have a dampening effect on these visions. One of the reasons that modernist architecture became obsessed early with flat roofs was because everyone was expected to need to have a place to land their aircraft. The fact that one of the defining features of the reigning architectural paradigm of today was at least partly informed by this idea seems pretty funny to me. Indy: Are there any other features of the modern world that come from the madness of the past? NW: Everybody seems to think that our oil-addicted suburban economy in the United States and other countries, is all part of a corporate conspiracy. Which it partly is, but it was also deliberately designed into modernist urban planning by people like Le Corbusier who specifically said: In the city of the future, I will work in an office building, but I will live 50 miles away under an oak tree. My secretary will work in the same office building, but will live 50 miles away in the opposite direction under a different oak tree. We will drive every day to work, burning up oil, tearing up roads, destroying tires. Work for everybody. The idea that perpetual consumption itself offered a perfect paradigm for creating the sort of social economic system that was perpetually moving, and that the resources needed to keep this up in perpetuity were inexhaustible, is totally insane. Indy: Has greater awareness of the material limits of our planet impacted how we see the future today? NW: I think people are more skeptical, but I think that the typical answer is actually in many ways still in line with the modernist and pre-modernist tradition of future-forward, techno-centric speculation. People are so adamant about not returning to a previous way of doing things that they simply insist that we need more renewable energy, more alternative fuels, more technological doodads and fix-its. As if we can keep this high-stakes game up simply by other means, or by sheer willpower. No one is willing to admit: okay, we actually need to fall back, consolidate, make walkable towns with architecture that is more human-scaled and easier to maintain over time. This kind of commonsense solution evades us. Indy: Why do you think that is? NW: Beneath all the pragmatism and beneath all the cynicism there is still this hope that an uninhibited application of technology and science are all that is needed to make, if not a perfect world, something quite near to a perfect world. Once you let go of that its kind of like losing your faith. You have to completely reimagine the way the universe works and its painful. And for practitioners of architecture and these other design trades, they have something to lose professionally if they suddenly have to

Interview by Timothy Nassausay: Okay guys, you dont need me anymore to genius the world into a hypertechno solution. We need to sit down together and open the history books and figure out how to back out of this deadend track. Indy: So the cult of progress actually becomes a hindrance to itself? NW: Taking the lead on a dead-end track makes you last in the race to get back. If you were to look at most utopian visions today, theyre always caveated. The things that people would describe as progressive, as ideal, theyre going to be heavily environmentally oriented because everyones terrified by the fact that we seem to be destroying the planet. The problem is, every green architectural vision, with rare exception, is still so completely dependent on high technology that it neglects to use simple old solutions, simple old paradigms, that are proven to work. Andrs Duany points out that 300 years ago, buildings were essentially carbon neutral. They just were because they had to be. Thats how they were made and thats how they were maintained and thats how they were used. And so many architects today refuse to go back and learn from this stuff, which I think is silly. Now, I dont think we should go live back 300 years ago. I dont want cholera; I find the bigotries of today bad enough, let alone those of yesteryear. But I do think that its possible to learn from the past and silly to fail to do so. Indy: Since you talk about learning from the past, did any of the imagined futures you saw seem to be better than the present? Would you choose to live in any of them? NW: By and large the problem with all of these visions is that theyre so technologically oriented that they lose everything else. They lose brick sidewalks and fireflies and casual encounters with strangers in well-defined public squares. They just lose so much of what makes a city good. So much of what makes both Savannah, Georgia and New York interesting places. So I dont like any of them, to be honest. I wouldnt live in any of them. But by gosh, Id pay a fortune to visit any of them for a weekend. They are so wonderfully mad. TIMOTHY NASSAU B12 lives in an oak tree.

have seen the future and it works, said journalist Lincoln Steffens after visiting the Soviet Union in 1919. He was wrong, not because the future he saw didnt work, but because it wasnt really the future. Since nobodys been to the future, how do we determine what the future looks like? asks Nathaniel Walker, History of Art and Architecture PhD candidate and curator of Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future, an exhibition at Brown Universitys Bell Gallery that closed on Sunday after a two-month run. The show presented depictions of the future in advertisements, videos, utopian treatises, pulp magazines, and architectural sketches, among others, from the 19th century through today. Im fascinated by how it is that people decide what is and isnt progressive, said Walker, what is and isnt futuristic. Certainly not based on accuracy: the images in the show are exhilarating and depressing in turn, amusing and frightening, but none of them fully resemble the world we live in. Can our dreams of the future control it? Can they destroy it? I have seen the future and it does not work, read the posters of the 70s sci-fi film Zardoz. It all depends on what you see. The Independent: What can we learn in the present by looking at how the past imagined the future? Nathaniel Walker: I believe that a lot of the ways people have been thinking about the future are still dominant today and still bear an influence on our ability to envision tomorrow. If you go back and you look at these past visions, you can see patterns that are still clearly with us. Indy: What kinds of patterns? NW: There is an unrelenting, unremitting focus on technology and industry that has been and still is the dominant paradigm for futuristic thinking. From the very beginning in the late 18th century, people began to assume that science would usher in a new world order, that science would be best manifested as the applied science of technology, and that the applied science of technology was best manifested as industry, which is technology at its biggest, most hegemonic scale. And to this day we still think about the future almost exclusively in terms of technology. Exceptions are extremely rare. Indy: It is hard to imagine a vision of the future without advanced technology. What are some of the exceptions like? NW: Number one is William Morris, who thought that industry was debilitating for the average laboring person. He believed that we needed to return to

JACK SMALLEY, EDITOR / AMERICAN (ACTIVE 19221932) / ENDLESS BELT TRAINS FOR FUTURE CITIES FROM MODERN MECHANIX AND INVENTIONS, NOVEMBER 1932 / MAGAZINE 9 5/8 X 6 3/4 / PRIVATE COLLECTION


OPINIONS

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I WAS RAISED A BOY.

BUT WHATEVER.s a term, queer forms the basis of a political identity that is by nature variable. I do not stand to speak for us. Most definitions of queer are based in individual preferences and practices. One queer is not like another. Broadly, queer celebrates gender and sexual fluidity. It consciously defies binaries, most commonly the line between heterosexuality and homosexuality. For some, queerness breaks ties to standards of hetero- and homo-normative cultures. For others, it is fisting, orgies, polyamory, and consent. Because of this, queerness is an indefinable entity. This is a contemporary sense of the word in a world where, as Judith Butler has suggested, the category of sex is normative (read: constrictive). However, bodies do not adhere to norms. Lets get things straight, so to speak: while sex may be viewed as biological, it is a construction of civilization and nature. In parallel with hunger, we all eat, but what, how, and with whom are socially defined. In the same way, sex is structured with regard to appropriate partners and acts, as well as what it constitutes: can kissing be sex? Is it only penetrative? My queer identity, constantly changing and full of existential crises is rooted in my gender and sexuality. Ive had sexual experiences with people who are male and female bodied, male and female identified, and those who consider themselves neither male nor female. I am most viscerally attracted to male-bodied people, but this feeling is not constrictive. Sex for me these days operates on empathy. I was raised a boy. But whatever. I found my body on 9 AM trains with suit-and-tie-clad businessmen and progressively feminized ittighter and tighter pants, smaller and smaller tank tops. I did this because they couldnt and didnt. Seeing what they were helped me realize what I wasnt. I now live in an intentional community that understands queer identities, making the

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by Robert Sandler Illustration by Stephen Carmodyever-changing nature of my sexuality and ge

Documents

The College Hill Independent: November 10, 2011