“Putting Your Shame Out There”: How a Booming Instagram Account Wields Comedy, Mimicry, and Advocacy

By Cam Cronin

NOV 2020 | Theater

Jonathan Hoover may have started his Instagram account @inappropriatepatti for kicks—when you have the singular ability to parrot Broadway legend Patti LuPone, why not share it with the internet? But a talent for mimicry, like his booming account, has evolved into something greater: a source for comedy in dark times, and more importantly the vehicle for raising funds for justice. Here, Cam Cronin dives into the person and persona of Jonathan Hoover and how artistry is inextricably tied to activism.

Laurie Anderson with Paul D. Miller

JUNE 2022 | Art

On the occasion of Laurie Anderson’s exhibition, The Weather, at the Hirshhorn Museum, Editor-at-Large, Paul Miller spoke with Anderson on episode #483 of the New Social Environment. Their discussion touches upon Anderson’s attraction to the taboo, her desire to make a “walk-in comic book filled with words,” and her fascinating collaboration with a supercomputer at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning.

Judith Baumel with Catherine Parnell

SEPT 2022 | Books

The last time Judith Baumel and I engaged in conversation via the Brooklyn Rail was February 2020, during the before times. When Covid took over, life seemed to be in the breakdown lane, but that didn’t stop Baumel. She geared up an eclectic group of scholars and writers and artists for weekly Zoom conversations focused on the classics and, line by line, they made their way through Dante's Divine Comedy and are now halfway through Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Paolo Javier’s O.B.B. a.k.a. The Original Brown Boy

By Megan N. Liberty

DEC 21-JAN 22 | Art Books

A poetry comic that requires (and rewards) constant re-reading, like learning a new language. A chaotic mix of black-and-white photocopy-style images and texts that is an ode to the anti-storytelling potential of poetry.