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By RICHARD B. W OODWARD

New York

Photographers and filmmakers are uniquely vulnerable to the slander of "exploitation."

One of those barbed words almost impossible to remove after someone hangs it around

your neck, it has been used loosely to describe any act whereby the more privileged takeadvantage of the less privileged. Anyone holding a camera is deemed to be a potential

abuser. High-art credentials are no defense. Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker

Evans, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sebastião Salgado are only a few that

critics have brought up on the charge.Laurel Nakadate:Only the Lonely MoMA PS1Through Aug. 8 Boris Mikhailov:Case History Museum of Modern HistoryThrough Sept. 5

A pair of artists with current museum exhibitions here have placed this inflaming issue at

the forefront of their work. Laurel Nakadate's "Only the Lonely" at PS1 and Boris

Mikhailov's "Case History" at the Museum of Modern Art don't pretend to be a set of

neutral observations about sex (Ms. Nakadate) or homelessness (Mr. Mikhailov). Both

artists openly admit their role in manipulating the events they describe; both dare us to

condemn them for exploiting their hapless or impoverished subjects.View Full Image

Laurel Nakadate/Leslie Tonkonow Artworks+Projects

'Exorcism in January' (2009) by Laurel Nakadate, from 'Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel.'

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Ms. Nakadate was a sensation shortly after she earned her MFA from Yale in 2001. Hervideo, "I Wanna Be Your Mid-Life Crisis" (featuring herself and several middle-age men,

who had made passes at her, performing a series of silly and humiliating actions), was an

undisputed hit of the Armory show in 2002. The rituals of feminine seduction as depicted

in everything from MTV to Playboy have been a trademark of the 35-year-old's

performances.

"Only the Lonely," a 10-year retrospective now at PS1 and organized by its chief curator,

Klaus Biesenbach, is tamer than it might have been. (Nothing here is as provocative as

"Heavy Petting," shown at the James Danziger Gallery in 2006, in which the nude or

bikini-attired artist recorded herself faking orgasms on various surfaces while shouting out

a mantra of rapturous satisfaction.)

The emphasis here is less on sexual heat and more on the pathos of unfulfilled desire.

The hallways and the central room on the second floor are lined with large, murky color

prints from "365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears," Ms. Nakadate's series in which she

photographed herself "taking part in sadness" every day for a year. As the poses consist



mainly of her tear-stained face in shadow, and the waterworks are programmed, this

exercise in psychological masochism is something of a fizzle.

Ms. Nakadate's hamminess is better suited to video, where she continually toys with the

expectations of the viewer. In her collaborations with sad-sack men, whom the pretty,

raven-haired artist has lured or paid to be lustful foils in her comic videos, she can be at

once temptress, feminist avenger and goofball. It's left to us to judge when, or if, her

playing with her subjects (and with us) becomes a cruel tease.

"Happy Birthday," a student video from 2000, records her interactions with three men

directed to help her celebrate that most fraught of supposedly joyous annual occasions.

"Oops!," another 2000 work, has her partnering with another male trio in a re-enactment of

the lubricious Britney Spears video. As the lightly dressed Ms. Nakadate wriggles to Ms.

Spears's chorus of "I'm not that innocent," the men lamely try to keep up. In this case, the

contrast in age, gender and attractiveness serves not to diminish her balding, overweightsubjects but to expose the packaged coyness of Ms. Spears and what she represents: the

relentless sexual messages of youth culture, a commercial siren song aimed at women

and men alike that everyone finds hard to resist.

Ms. Nakadate controls these scenarios, her voice or figure present in almost every frame.

Even when the older men are in on the joke, they are stooges hired to do her bidding. Her

artistic confidence and brio leavens the work and helps to calm worries about her safety

(when dressed only in her underwear) in the company of strangers several times her size.

In one scene from the 2006 video "Beg for Your Life," for instance, Ms. Nakadate

pretends to be beaten up and killed by an older man. It may be a cinematic spoof of a

serial killer. But that she will one day find herself in a room with someone who doesn't find

her skits cute and funny surely must be one of her fears.

Mr. Mikhailov's collaborative portraits of the homeless in his native city of Kharkov,

Ukraine, are no less unnerving than Ms. Nakadate's and, in truth, leave more of a bruise

on the museum visitor.View Full Image



Courtesy the artist/ Pace/MacGill Gallery/ Galerie Barbara Weiss

'Untitled' by Boris Mikhailov, from the series 'Case History' (1997-98)



The 72 year-old photographer's style of grotesque realism, developed over more than 40years, has earned him a devoted following among critics in the U.S. and in Europe. His

preference for imperfect bodies and lives, however, has sometimes put him at odds with

the idealism promoted by Soviet communism as well as by Russian fashion magazines.

His 1986 series "Salt Lake," in which he documented his fellow Kharkovians sporting on a

grotty beach polluted with industrial waste, is typical. To enjoy Mr. Mikhailov, you have to

share his dark merriment over human filth and folly.

He completed "Case Study" in 1997-98 after returning from a period in the West and

witnessing the new economic chasm that yawned between a wealthy elite and the

dispossessed. Even though as an artist he might be classified with the former, he clearly

identifies here with the latter.

Mr. Mikhailov in this series makes a dangerous gamble. Rather than stand at a safe

remove from his subjects and finesse the charge of exploitation, he has doubled down

and ground our faces in their struggles. He has them strip and perform for his camera.



Exposing their sagging genitals and the ugly rashes on their buttocks, they strut around in

soiled clothes and hold out their unappetizing daily fare for the viewer to savor.

The prints are near life-size and have been pinned to the wall by Eva Respini, associate

curator in the department of photography. In the context of MoMA, these leering men and

women weave toward us like a gang of foul-smelling bums who have crashed a party in a

luxury apartment and built a campfire on the living room carpet.

Mr. Mikhailov's decision to treat Kharkov's homeless as actors is not unlike what Jean

Renoir did in his 1932 film "Boudu Saved from Drowning." Both the unhygienic men and

women on MoMA's walls and Michel Simon's rude and larcenous tramp are vehicles for

shattering bourgeois complacency. An even closer analogy might be to what Dostoevski

(one of Mr. Mikhailov's favorite writers) did in "Poor Folk" and "The House of the Dead."

Both novelist and photographer want to elevate depravity into a state of holiness.

Mr. Mikhailov's refusal to dignify the condition of poverty is bluntly honest. Ms. Nakadate'sindulgent takes on the lewdness of older men around younger women are likewise

refreshing. At the same time, of course, their methods are also distorting. He has in a

sense directed a reality show called "Lives of Kharkov's Poor and Faceless," and what

she has done could be called in a legal sense entrapment.

Many photographers and video artists believe that no one should claim anymore to be an

impartial observer of anything. They believe that for a picture to qualify as "truthful," the

false notion of objectivity must be shattered and the coercive power of the camera (and

the artist) made evident. Exploitation of some sort is inevitable.

This axiom, valid up to a point, can also be convenient. By exaggerating the ills of the

world, and using techniques of the very society they are trying to mock, artists can always

find shelter in museums and art galleries while their subjects still look like fools.



Intelligence Stupidity Is Contagious

Everett Collection

A study found that college students who read a short script about a moronic soccer hooligansubsequently did worse on a test of knowledge than a control group.

College students who read a short script about a moronic soccer hooligan

subsequently did worse on a test of knowledge than a control group. But the

deficit disappeared if the readers were encouraged to carefully notice how theydiffered from the character in the story.

Sixty-three Austrian students read "Slow on the Uptake," about Meier, who wakes,

is confused by an adage on his calendar, gets drunk, attends a soccer match and

misses the outcome because he brawls. The students either summarized the

story or underlined passages where Meier differed from them. A control group of

18 read a story with an innocuous protagonist.

Afterward, on a difficult test covering geography, science and the arts, thestudents who had read about Meier but not underlined how he differed from them

scored from 30% to 32%, compared to about 37% for the control group and for

students who distanced themselves from the character.



"A Story About a Stupid Person Can Make You Act Stupid (or Smart): Behavioral

Assimilation (and Contrast) as Narrative Impact," Markus Appel, Media

Psychology (April-June 2011)

Personal Finance

Confidence in DebtYoung people "experience debt as empowering," according to a study, and the

effect is strongest for people who come from the poorest families.

Researchers looked at the responses of 3,079 people from 1979 to 2004, in the

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. They ranged in age from 18 to 34,

although most were in their early-to-mid 20s. The survey included data about

credit-card and educational debt, and measures of respondents' self-esteem and

sense of mastery.

For students from families in the bottom 25% of income, self-esteem and

perceived mastery rose steadily with both educational and credit-card debt. The

education itself didn't drive the rise in self-esteem; given two people with the same

demographics and schooling, the one with higher debt had higher self-regard.

Similar but less-consistent effects were found for students from families in the

broad middle income ranges.

Only at age 28 did educational debt (though still not credit-card debt) become a

drag on self-esteem.

"Youth Debt, Mastery, and Self-Esteem: Class-Stratified Effects of Indebtedness

on Self-Concept, Rachel E. Dwyer, Laura McCloud and Randy Hodson, Social

Science Research (May)

View Full Image



Blend Images/Getty Images

People who fill out bubble forms, like those ubiquitous fill-in-the-circle tests, use distinctive pencilstrokes that can be used to identify them, researchers report.



Privacy Bursting the BubblePeople who fill out bubble forms, like those ubiquitous fill-in-the-circle tests, use

distinctive pencil strokes that can be used to identify them, researchers report.

They programmed a computer to take stock of 804 potentially tell-tale aspects of

people's pencil strokes on such forms. These include the mark's center of mass,

the variance of pencil-strokes from the bubble's radius and the depth of shading,

as well as more mathematically advanced measures.

The computer analyzed 92 student surveys, checking a dozen marks from each

respondent. Then the researchers scrutinized eight marks from a randomly picked

person. The computer identified its man or woman 51% of the time. The correct

answer was among the computer's top three choices 75% of the time and was92.4% of the time among the top 10.

The method could be used to catch students who hire proxies to take their SATs

and teachers who change answers on their students' high-stakes tests. But

employers, the researchers said, could also use it to monitor the voting habits of

their employees, since some jurisdictions, in the interest of transparency, release

scans of voters' bubble forms, without attaching their names.

"Bubble Trouble: Off-Line De-Anonymization of Bubble Forms," Joseph A.

Calandrino, William Clarkson and Edward W. Felten (to be presented at the

Usenix Security Symposium, August)



Getty Images/OJO Images

A study claims that brain scans of consumers who listen to new songs can better predict hits thandirectly asking the consumers what songs they like.

Neuropsychology The Brain's Pop ChartForget that focus group or that rave in Pitchfork or Rolling Stone: A study claims

that brain scans of consumers who listen to new songs can better predict hits than

directly asking the consumers what songs they like.

In 2006, 27 people aged 12 to 17 rated 120 songs by different unsigned artists

while having their brains scanned. The researchers eventually analyzed all

recorded sales for each song —including singles, albums and compilations —

through May 2010. Sales data could be found for only 87 of the songs.



Most were duds, but three sold at least 500,000 copies. There was no correlation

between the test subjects' ratings (on a 1-to-5 scale) and sales. But researchers

did find a link between units sold and activity in the nucleus accumbens, a brain

region linked to reward and anticipation.

The scans predicted about one-third of the hits, defined as songs with sales of

15,000 to 35,000, and 80% of the nonhits. But that was still impressive, the

researchers said, given the capricious nature of the music business.

"A Neural Predictor of Cultural Popularity," Gregory S. Berns and Sara E. Moore,

Journal of Consumer Psychology (forthcoming)

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