Black Friday with Reverend Billy

Local

“Is that Johnny Cash?” one asks.
“Is that Billy Graham?” asks the other.
“That’s Reverend Billy,” explains a church member, “Just listen.”

LETTER FROM BALUCHISTAN
A Call to Resistance: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes

Express

Khan of Kalat Suleiman’s country is rich in resources that everyone wants to take and he doesn’t have the power to stop them. “We sit on a mountain of gold,” he says, “and the devil sits on us.”

Yun-Fei Ji with John Yau

Art

During his brief visit to New York for his first one-person exhibit at James Cohan Gallery, “Water that Floats the Boat Can Also Sink It: New Work by Yun- Fei Ji”, which will be on view till December 22, the artist came to visit Rail’s art editor John Yau to talk about his new body of work.

Kiki Smith with Phong Bui and Susan Harris

Art

On the occasion of the traveling retrospective Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005, the artist’s first full-scale survey (on view until February 11, 2007), Kiki Smith welcomed Rail publisher Phong Bui and independent curator/writer Susan Harris to her home and studio to discuss her life and work.

John Elderfield with Phong Bui

Art

On the occasion of the exhibit Manet and the Execution of Maximilian at The Museum of Modern Art, which will be on view until January 29, 2007, John Elderfield, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, took time from his busy schedule on a recent afternoon to welcome Rail Publisher Phong Bui to his office to talk about Manet’s four featured paintings, related works and more.

The Brooklyn Rail’s Person of the Year

Satan played a starring role on the world political stage during 2006. His presence was felt from the Persian Gulf to the banks of the Mississippi. Other than the devil’s handiwork, how else to explain why Iraq became hell on earth, and New Orleans remained in tatters?

Emmanuelle Loyer with Emmanuel Laurentin

Fiction

“Some ‘flights’ are given significance as acts of opposition, rebellion, refusal to accept ‘fait accompli’. This is difficult to comprehend, and each case is different. This is why I had to—and I favored—an approach stressing portraits, sometimes very precise and detailed, in order to try and retrace, at the scale of a given man or woman, the framework of constraints and choices.” — Emmanuelle Loyer

Chris Marker: “Make Cats Not War”The Case Of The Grinning Cat, plus 5 shorts

Film

Chris Marker’s latest film, The Case Of The Grinning Cat, was originally released in France in 2004, and played in last Spring’s Tribeca Film Festival. Wandering the streets in search of a response to the current state of the nation, Marker finds himself taken by these unexplained images of cats, which, for him, must be connected to political discontent.

A Southern Mouth: Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers Hit the Road Screamin

Music

“True insanity doesn’t need to be maintained,” says Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers’s frontman Colonel J. D. Wilkes on touring their new album, Pandelerium.