Tuesday, May 21, 2013

"This is not a Holocaust story, this is a war story": The life of Hannah Senesh

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 05:15 PM

Hannah Senesh and her brother Gyuri in Israel, 1944
  • collection of the Senesh family
  • Hannah Senesh and her brother Gyuri in Tel Aviv, 1944
"In the end," says curator Louis Levine of his latest exhibit, dedicated to the life of the poet Hannah Senesh, "this is not a Holocaust story. This is a war story."

Except that "Fire In My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh" just went on display at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.

Nonetheless, it's true that "Fire In My Heart" does not bear any of the hallmarks of a Holocaust exhibit. There are no yellow stars, no striped uniforms, no photos of starving concentration camp inmates. Hannah Senesh spent most of World War II in the relative safety of Palestine. Though she did die at the hands of the Gestapo, it was while facing a firing squad, not in a gas chamber.

"She was not murdered," says Levine. "She was executed. She was given a soldier's death. She was buried in a Jewish cemetery, not dumped in the Danube. She was executed because she was a traitor to Hungary. For these reasons, this is not a Holocaust story."

It is, however, one of the most remarkable stories that came out of the Holocaust era.

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Black Cinema House has The Blues—and more—this Friday

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 04:10 PM

The Blues, a 1973 documentary by Samuel Charters, screens this Friday
  • The Blues, a 1973 documentary by Samuel Charters, screens this Friday.
On Friday night around 8:15 PM the south side arts organization Black Cinema House will host the first program in a summer-long series called "Movies Under Stars." Copresented by Chicago Film Archives, the outdoor series centers on documentary shorts about jazz and blues musicians, with other rare nonfiction works rounding out the lineup. This week's program consists of: The Blues, a 1973 doc by music historian Samuel Charters depicting southern bluesmen performing at home; Give My Poor Heart Ease (produced by the Center for Southern Folklore in 1975), which focuses on blues from the Mississippi Delta; and American Shoeshine, a 1976 doc in the direct-cinema mode about shoeshiners. The monthly series continues in June with more rarities from the Center for Southern Folklore archive; I'm most excited for the program on August 19, which features docs about Duke Ellington's 1964 tour of Japan and the great drummer Elvin Jones.

Speaking of Chicago Film Archives, a week from tonight the organization will present another free outdoor screening, this one on the lawn next to Logan Square's Comfort Station. The movie will be Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the infamous production of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo by the recently deceased filmmaker Les Blank. (And speaking of Fitzcarraldo, that movie screens a week from tomorrow in Doc Films's ongoing Herzog series.) It'll be projected from a 16-millimeter print from the Chicago Public Library's collection.

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The summer jam that's about to rewrite the Billboard record books

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 02:47 PM

mariah_carey_miguel_beautiful.jpeg
As with most pop stars, there is a multitude of personalities contained within the concept of Mariah Carey: the giddy ear-candy dispenser, the melismatic melodramatist, the self-obsessed wannabe movie star, the surprisingly capable prank caller. One of my favorite Mariahs is the one who's obsessed with old Brill Building pop, and who occasionally gets to take charge and release an unabashed tribute to the girl group era as a single. (And those occasionally become important parts of her catalog.)

That's the Mariah who just put out a song called "#Beautiful" with critically adored R&B singer, drugs liker, and animated gif star Miguel. With its echo-drenched backbeat, twanging guitars, and stacked backup vocals, despite the self-consciously modern title it's one of the most straightforwardly retro singles that Carey's ever released, and offers further proof that Amy Winehouse continues to have a stronger influence on contemporary R&B (not to mention hip-hop) than a lot of people are willing to give her credit for.

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Print may be dying, but art is alive and kicking

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 02:09 PM

Rosie the riveter
  • J. Howard Miller
  • Rosie the riveter
I recently asked a group of Chicago curators and artists to help me compile a list of exhibition spaces that weren't receiving any mainstream attention. The overwhelming response to that request was "Wait, there are galleries in Chicago receiving mainstream attention?" It's a tongue-in-cheek riposte to a very sobering reality—visual arts coverage in Chicago is slipping. In a city of three million people, there is not a single full-time art critic. Yes, there are several dedicated and talented freelancers who devote their efforts to art, but no publication willing to make a full-time commitment to them. So what to do? We could wring our hands, lament the decline of culture, the death of print, and on and on and on—but this is Chicago, the city that works. And if there were ever people who understood how to cobble together a gratifying existence from less than ideal means, it's artists. So in the spirit of getting it done, here's a list of local spaces that should be on your radar (after the jump). Look for coverage of them here in the coming weeks and if you have suggestions for artists we should be interviewing, exhibitions we should be covering, etc., let me know. E-mail me, be my Facebook friend, become the third person to follow me on Twitter—whatever works. We can give our thriving arts community the attention it deserves, it's just going to take a little DIY spirit.

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ArtPlace America ignites Great Chicago Fire Festival with $250,000 grant

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 01:33 PM

GCFF_Image.jpeg
  • Lin Ye
  • A ritual burning is coming to Chicago.
Redmoon announced this week that Artplace America has awarded the spectacle troupe a $250,000 grant to help fund the first Great Chicago Fire Festival, to be held on the Chicago River in October 2014.

There's no mention in the announcement of previously revealed plans to build, float, and burn effigies representing the thing each Chicago neighborhood most wants to get rid of.

Artplace America is "a collaboration of leading national and regional foundations, banks and federal agencies" that funds projects using art as a catalyst for community revitalization.

The Fire Festival grant is one of 134 Artplace is making this year.

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12 O'Clock Track: Katie and Allison Crutchfield's noisy take on "Oblivion"

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 12:00 PM

kate_and_allison.jpg
One sign of a really well-crafted pop song is that you can change everything about it but its melody and it remains a really good pop song. The original version of Grimes' "Oblivion" is airy, cool-toned synth-pop played just a couple BPM short of what it feels like it should be, which imparts a tentative, very human quality to it. The version recently recorded by Allison and Katie Crutchfield (twin sisters who play in the groups Swearin' and Waxahatchee, respectively), on the other hand, is noisy, lo-fi, and leans into the beat, and it still sounds incredible.

The Crutchfields' cover is this month's theme song at Rookie magazine, where Reader alum Jessica Hopper's recently taken over music editorial duties. You can stream it after the jump.

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Did you read about the Oklahoma tornado, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Phil Jackson?

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 11:01 AM

Phil Jackson, 2003
  • AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
  • Phil Jackson, 2003
Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.

Hey, did you read:

• That the Oklahoma tornado puts that state's senators in a sticky situation? Tony Adler

• Farai Chideya writing in the Nation on how to solve journalism's class and color crisis? Tal Rosenberg

• That Jann Wenner's 22-year-old son and recent Brown University graduate Gus Wenner is taking the reins of Rollingstone.com? (Talk about an extravagant graduation present.) Leor Galil

• That a little-known mathematician has made a breakthrough on Twin Prime Conjecture? ("Just very suddenly, an idea came to my mind," Yitang Zhang said.) Steve Bogira

• That there are big bucks to be made off female anxiety, whether about breast cancer (the test for the BRCA mutation now made famous by Angelina Jolie is $3,000) or fertility
(yet another freeze-your-eggs-now proselyte has popped up, urging all women over 35 to undergo the $9,000-$13,000 procedure)? (Of course, neither is covered by insurance.) Kate Schmidt

• That a biopic may be in the works about a certain Hillary Rodham Clinton? Mick Dumke

• About grocery shopping with Phil Jackson? Aimee Levitt

• That the anchored putting stroke, used by the winners of four of the last six major championships, has been banned, effective 2016? (There goes my chance to break 80.) Steve Bogira

• That NASA has finally decided to start 3-D printing pizza? Finally. Kevin Warwick

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A look at immoderation on the pundit front

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 07:58 AM

Barack Obama
  • AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
  • According to pundits, Obama's connection to Chicago explains everything.
King George III was no Hitler or Stalin, but because revolutions are glorified when they succeed we happily remember ours as a triumph over tyranny. That set a low bar for tyranny, and we still live with it.

David Brooks began his column in last Friday’s New York Times with a quote from Clinton Rossiter comparing government to fire: "Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant." Brooks didn’t come right out and say that tyrant is now trampling our liberties, but he sees alarming signs. "Most government workers are amazingly dedicated and talented," he allowed, but there are too many others who "far from checking their own desire for control, have taken it out for a romp." His eye on recent IRS and Justice Department scandals, Brooks diagnosed a "culture of unrestraint" in Washington and worried that federal regulators writing new health-care and financial rules will "expand their reach beyond anything now imagined."

The job of a headline writer is to get to the point the careful columnist might have only hinted at. The headline over Brooks’s column said bluntly: "When Governments Go Bad."

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Reader's Agenda Tue 5/21: Israeli jazz, immigrant stories, and a JC Brooks listening party

Posted by on 05.21.13 at 06:11 AM

JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound
Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered:

If there's one group of people who know how to throw a jazz festival it's the . . . Israeli consulate to the midwest? Swallow your surprise and catch rising New York guitarist Gilad Hekselman at the Anshe Emet Synagogue.

Anchee Min discusses The Cooked Seed: A Memoir, her follow-up to the best-selling Red Azalea, at the Harold Washington Library Center. It's a story about coming to America after growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Happy Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.

"Postfunk soul" is quite a self-description for JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound's brand of simple, nostalgic blues-pop. Hear them earn it at the listening party at Saki for Howl, their new album on Bloodshot. WXRT's Marty Lennartz hosts a Q&A and Brooks spins a DJ set.

For more on these events and others, check out the Reader's daily Agenda page.

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Monday, May 20, 2013

The House of the Rising Sun burger at Portage Park's Leadbelly

Posted by on 05.20.13 at 04:58 PM

The House of the Rising Sun
The song "House of the Rising Sun," recorded by lots of people including Leadbelly, whose name was appropriated by the owners of a new northwest-side burger joint, is the tragic lament of a man whose life has been brought to ruin by the whorehouse of the title. The House of the Rising Sun burger is a thick slab of beef and smoked pork belly ground together and topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, Bloody Mary sauce (it tastes like ketchup), and a fried egg. Breakfast food . . . rising sun . . . get it?

The restaurant's blues-bar theme is, frankly, a little silly, particularly since the place looks way too new and clean to be in any way authentic. This is, by the way, absolutely fine with the clientele, who, at least based on a sample observed last Saturday night, appears to be comprised of Portage Park residents in their mid-30s who just want a place where they can take their toddlers and still get a decent meal and, therefore, have sacrificed their need for authenticity for clean floors.

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Agenda Teaser

Performing Arts
Best Musical! Stage 773
February 06
Galleries & Museums
AfriCOBRA: Prologue South Side Community Art Center
May 10

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