Arts

How can we move beyond abstract architecture, where buildings are constructed without their audiences? Peter Ferretto’s method is based on observation, engagement, and the osmosis between teaching, practice, research, and social impact.

At the Vincennes Cartridge Factory, as part of the Paris Autumn Festival, the Théâtre du Soleil company plays Our Life in Art, a new play by American playwright Richard Nelson.

As literary concepts, “utopia” and “dystopia” have functioned as powerful tools of social and political critique, as they propose alternative visions of the future gone good or wrong. Gregory Claeys explores this dual nature, and its potential for imagining social change, while tracing back the historical roots and uses of utopianism.

How did Hip-Hop Studies emerge as a legitimate field of study? This interview with Murray Forman, who has contributed to the development of this field in the United States, shows the links between the recognition of rap and related art forms and the rise of academic analyses.

With electronic music comes the possibility of hacking instruments. How does hacking affect musical instruments and the ways of playing them? In this interview, Nic Collins, a pioneer in musical hacking, describes his journey at the crossroads of experimental music, computer music and sound art.

What’s more ordinary than a bridge? However, a bridge is a living structure that has to be designed, built and maintained. Here is our interview with a legendary bridge designer, who is also a man skilled in the art.

Over the past twenty years, a new field of study has developed: metal studies. The scholars in this field are often also music enthusiasts, investigating their own passion. How can fandom be articulated with academia?

Why has authentic blackness been conflated with “being cool” in Northern American inner cities? Thomas C. Williams, an African-American writer living in Paris, is exploring other ways to authenticity and masculinity.

In the 80’s, a peculiar genre of underground music emerged: Japanoise—or Japanese Noise. Based on feedback, without melody nor structure, this genre is often perceived as the end of music. Drawing on the tools of media anthropology, David Novak traces the history of the construction of this genre.

According to journalist and critic Jeff Chang, Trump’s appeal partially lays in culture war politics dating back to the 1990s, when the ideas of multiculturalism and post-racialism clashed intensively. It now remains to be seen whether justice movements activated on the ground can come together to resist the new president’s policies.

Described as “the admirable conjunction of a man, of an action, and of a work” by Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus embodies the very French figure of the “intellectuel engagé,” or public intellectual. The interest he still arouses in the United States reveals how much his work has been the object of enduring fascination for the American readership.

Antoine Compagnon discusses two recent projects that throw light on the intellectual history of the 20^th century. The controversies surrounding the institutionalisation of sociology or anthropology illustrate how academic subjects have developed in France; a literary anthology situates the literature of the Great War within an international context.

Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski’s work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the critical and the clinical. Books & Ideas met this citizen of the world at his house in Geneva, following the recent publication of three important books.

The curator of the recent La fabrique des images exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, anthropologist Philippe Descola offers a new approach of pictorial representations on the five continents and shows the four great worldviews they manifest: naturalism, totemism, animism, and analogism.