Dance Battle! Meet the Warring Milli Vanilli of Italo Disco

It was not a high point for music; even Italians try not to remember Italo Disco. Den Harrow was one of its biggest stars… but who is Den Harrow, exactly?

Source: GQ
Published: Jan 26, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,533 words)

The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer

Every year, people kill other people accidentally with cars, boats, guns and neglect, yet science has barely studied the long-term effects on survivors. Murderers get most of the attention. “Accidental killers” get guilt, depression, self-loathing and flashbacks.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 18, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,869 words)

Little Things

“Why should it be so fulfilling to see the detritus of everyday life made small?” Alice Gregory explores the world of miniatures.

Published: Feb 1, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,146 words)

Naked and Famous

A profile of photographer Ryan McGinley, whose work has influenced advertising, film, music videos, and Instagram:

One of McGinley’s portraits of McChesney—taken in the bathroom of a gay club into which he dragged a mini trampoline for her to bounce naked on—was used as the lead image for his Whitney show. In it, Lizzy is caught in midair, feet a blur, mouth caught in the earliest milliseconds of a smile. The background is bisected at her torso—from the waist down, it’s all graffıti, but from the waist up, it’s a celestial mural. Her head pops up between two spacecrafts; her breasts—obscured by her own wrist—look to be about Saturn-sized. Twelve years later, it’s still one of McGinley’s most collectable photographs. José Freire calls it “one of the most beautifully optimistic things you’ll ever see.”

Source: GQ
Published: Apr 10, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,028 words)

Interview: Renata Adler

The author on writing nonfiction and fiction, and the current state of criticism:

“BLVR: There has been a lot of talk recently about the rules of criticism. When is it too mean? When is it too nice? The internet makes it so that you’re very much aware of the human you’re writing about—you don’t want to see them in pain. It’s good for the critic’s psychology, but maybe not so great for criticism.

“RA: Well, it used to be one way a young writer made it in New York. He would attack, in a small obscure publication, someone very strong, highly regarded, whom a few people may already have hated. Then the young writer might gain a small following. When he looked for a job, an assignment, and an editor asked, ‘What have you published?’ he could reply, ‘Well, this piece.’ The editor might say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was met with a lot of consternation.’ And a portfolio began. This isn’t the way it goes now. More like a race to join the herd of received ideas and agreement.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Apr 10, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,161 words)

On the Market

A former employee’s story of working inside the Sotheby’s auction house:

“Hired as a researcher, I was assigned the task of going through the catalogues raisonnés of the Contemporary Art department’s top-grossing artists—Warhol, Koons, Prince, Richter, Rothko—and determining the whereabouts of every piece that had ever come onto the global market. The Excel spreadsheets I worked on each day (column 1: image, column 2: title, column 3: year, column 4: cataloguing, column 5: present owner) would serve to expedite the future searches of collectors, who might want, say, a big, mostly purple Richter from the mid-’80s. Sometimes a painting was in a museum (the auction houses hate this because it makes the work more or less permanently priceless). Other times, a prominent collector was listed as the work’s owner. Usually, though, I was trying to track down pieces in anonymous private collections. Sometimes a city or country was provided, unhelpfully. Private Collection, France. Or more often than not: Private Collection, Liechtenstein.”

Source: n+1
Published: Mar 14, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,215 words)