Are You Ready for the Flood?

Local

Sophie Bednarczyk, sporting black curly hair and a heavy layer of make-up, said, “You have to pray and do the rosary to prevent global warming. We have zero influence on what’s going to happen. Take the Tsunami. Bad people live over there. Like, people in New Orleans were punished for all the prostitution, the gays and the lesbians. God doesn’t like that. So if the flood is going to come, it’s not from what we do.”

The Feds Bring Death Back to New York

Express

On January 30 in a Brooklyn federal court, the twelve jurors assigned to decide the fate of 24-year old Ronnell Wilson finished deliberating, and went with death. It might have been a dramatic conclusion to a fairly traditional death penalty case—except that the trial never belonged in federal court to begin with.

Mary Lucier with Phong Bui

Art

In the midst of preparing for her new video installation The Plains of Sweet Regret, which will be on view at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. from March 10 through April 28, 2007. The artist Mary Lucier took time from her busy schedule to talk with Rail Publisher about her life and work.

June Leaf with John Yau

Art

Recently, while June Leaf was having an exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the Edward Thorp Gallery, Rail Art Editor John Yau stopped by her studio to discuss the show and her recent work.

Matthew's Mark: The Jamestown Epistles

Books

Most people born before the 1980s will remember letters. Hand- or typewritten, letters exist in time and in space in a way that text messages, IMs, and emails do not.

A Real Legacy

The Bush administration will best be remembered for its destruction of two of the world’s great cities, Baghdad and New Orleans.

Floats Horse-floats or Horse-flows

Fiction

“Floats Horse-floats or Horse-flows” is based on the notion of “alexia,” word-blindness, but not arising as a nervous disorder, unknown words create a future.

Imamura Retrospective at BAM

Film

Unlike most Japanese filmmakers more familiar in the West, Shohei Imamura was “interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure.” Imamura focuses on the seemingly animalistic, often criminal lower strata of Japanese society without passing judgment, meticulously observing human nature for its own primal sake. Sadly, his rawer, and in some sense truer vision of Japan is not well known in the West, despite the fact that he was one of the few directors to win the Cannes Palme D’or twice (The Ballad of Narayama in 1983 and The Eel in 1997).