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film November 17, 2020
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‘A Crime on the Bayou’ director explores Gary Duncan’s fight for justice

“In 1966, in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana, a 19-year-old Black teenager named Gary Duncan was arrested for touching a white boy’s arm. This is his story.”

These words open the film A Crime on the Bayou, the newest documentary from filmmaker Nancy Buirski. Buirski recently spoke to Kulture Hub to offer comments on her latest film.

A Crime on the Bayou

The camera drifts placidly through a bayou, just below the water as rays of sunlight shine down, until a quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace appears:

“Since corrupt people unite among themselves to constitute a force, honest people must do the same.”

This leads into the first interview clip. Gary Duncan, who was arrested for trying to prevent a fight, tearfully remembers what happened to him years before. A fisherman from Plaquemines Parish, Duncan was falsely accused of a violent crime. And then targeted for punishment by the state as an example.

If that were all there was to his story, it would be far from unique – just another abuse of justice. But Duncan stood up for himself and, eventually, went to the Supreme Court. In fact, it was his appeal against the state of Louisiana which created the precedent that U.S. states must honor requests for jury trials.

Plaquemines Parish

In the 1960’s, white supremacist and political boss Leander Perez controlled the parish. Perez was notorious for his segregationist policies and also his political misconduct.

In 1962, he joined in a high-profile protest against the desegregation of public schools, and ended up on the front page of the New York Times. Perez wanted to make sure the parish’s Black residents remained an underclass.

Thus the legal vendetta he waged against Gary Duncan was just one example of how he tried to keep his idea of the “proper order” in place.

Gary Duncan was far from the first to be arrested and used as an example. “It wasn’t just Gary who suffered that way,” Nancy Buirski, the filmmaker, told Kulture Hub.

But “Gary had a very unique response to his arrest. His arrest was basically a way of putting African Americans in that area on notice.”

As Buirski tells it, “He was unique in his ability to stand up to it. And that’s probably the thing that moved me the most. His incredible fortitude, and his commitment to fighting the system that was oppressing him.”

Gary Duncan’s fight

The more Gary Duncan fought, the more Perez – and the racist judges and officials he appointed – tried to punish him. Furthermore, the white boy whose arm he touched accused Duncan of battery. But despite the local court being clearly against him, he refused to plead guilty.

Each time Duncan and the lawyer representing him found a way out, Duncan would be arrested again days later. Perez also tried to strong-arm the lawyer, Richard Sobol, who came from the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee.

Sobol worked as a civil rights lawyer at the height of Louisiana’s civil rights movement, often despite threats on his life such as those made by Leander Perez. Sobol too was interviewed for Crime on the Bayou, but unfortunately passed away earlier this year.

The story of Gary Duncan and Richard Sobol, to hear them both tell it in the film, is one of a lifelong friendship that began with injustice. The legal fight from Plaquemines Parish all the way up to the US Supreme Court is chronicled in the book Deep Delta Justice by Matthew Van Meter. The idea for the book came to Buirski and she decided to work on a film covering the same story.

“I was really taken with how it seemed to pull together so many of the themes that I had been dealing with in my other two films on racial justice.”

Nancy Buirski

Nancy Buirski

Buirski’s previous films are The Loving Story and The Rape of Recy Taylor. All three films follow people who faced racism and social injustice, and all three films dealt with the law and the politics behind legal processes.

“So many people who stood up for their rights…” pauses Buirski, “they were not trying to change history, they were not activists. They were suffering through oppression, and systemic injustice, and racism, and they decided they were going to fight back.”

Although it may not have been the intent of these people, they did change history. The law was used as a weapon against each of the subjects of Buirski’s documentaries. And their fighting back eventually caused the law to change.

In speaking with Kulture Hub, Buirski described Gary Duncan as a hero. After all, Duncan standing up for his rights helped him get justice, but also helped countless others to this day due to the case’s legal legacy.

Buirski’s film highlights multiple civil rights lawyers involved in and adjacent to Duncan’s case, which helps contextualize both how a white supremacist like Leander Perez maintained his power and how more justice-minded lawyers were able to create change.

Shining a light on injustice

Lolis Elie is another late civil rights lawyer whose son is interviewed in the film. She was instrumental in a lawsuit against Louisiana’s ban on out-of-state lawyers representing defendants. Elie himself was a victim of Louisiana’s segregationist policies growing up.

A comment in A Crime on the Bayou by Armand Derfner is revealing of the situation in the Parish before Duncan’s appeal: “There was a system of pretend law… which they could keep up as long as they weren’t scrutinized by the outside world.”

It was bringing the injustice to light which ultimately led to change. One take-away from the story, then, is that injustice thrives when it remains unknown and unexamined.

When it is brought to the attention of the masses, it is rooted out. This is one of the themes also carried over from Buirski’s other films, and she told Kulture Hub:

“One of the other themes that comes out in the movie that was important to me was the sense that people come together and they work together to try and change things. You see that, particularly The Loving Story. You see it with Recy Taylor, where Rosa Parks comes to her aid, and helps her fight the deal with the court. And you especially see it in Richard Sobol and Gary Duncan, who did remain close friends up until Sobol’s death.”

Nancy Buirski

That friendship is another aspect of the story Buirski emphasizes. Along with the interview footage, photos, newspaper shots, she also weaves footage from the modern day of Sobol and Duncan together.

A Crime on the Bayou

The film even includes a shot of Duncan, Sobol, and Duncan’s family at a crayfish dinner that, Buirski says, “Gary insisted on hosting for us at the end of the movie… Gary eating crayfish with his sisters and brothers.”

Gary Duncan is the youngest of eight siblings. As Buirski says, “they are a very, very close knit family, and they’re thriving” – perhaps a heartwarming family scene like this really is the ideal end to a film about standing up against injustice.

art November 13, 2020
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Will museum VR/AR experiences finally push out the old heads?

Museums, galleries, and libraries are major gathering places for old heads during normal times, but lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have shuttered many of these institutions making way for AR and VR experiences to flourish.

Institutions are trying to bring their collections online and create a decent virtual experience, reaching out to old and new audiences.

Museums’ responses to COVID

In March 2020, three-quarters of museums shut down, including major institutions like NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. While most people’s interactions with the museum come from an in-person visit, these places aren’t shutting down entirely.

Even early on during the crisis, museums were developing their online presence and working to stay engaged with their audiences.

MoMA’s Virtual Views with Gordon Parks

In one famous publicity move, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium allowed its penguins and porcupines to explore the museum without human visitors.

Other museums focused more heavily on their social media presence, engaging with virtual visitors in online space.

From #TriviaTuesday to live-streams and virtual tours, museums have been doing what they can to make their collections available via the internet.

Museums already had an online presence before COVID, so virtual programs are nothing new.

Virtual tours of museums around the world, panoramic photos connected to simulate the experience of walking through the halls, have long been available online.

Traveling to see museums is difficult enough at the best of times, but since March, we have a little more reason to use these services.

Museums give access through online, VR and AR experiences

When it comes to museum VR and AR experiences, the internet provides a great potential not only for access but for collaboration. The Cleveland Museum of Art, for instance, as an “Open Access museum,” allows the public to share and remix images of tens of thousands of artworks.

They even created an augmented reality app, ArtLens.

art lens museum vr experiences
ArtLens App Google Play

Other galleries have done online events, putting up slideshows on Instagram and Facebook. Hanna Manninen (of the Galleria MABD in Finland) described her museum’s efforts.

The goal is to “transform the physical aspects of the gallery into a virtual experience” by describing the physical aspects of the art in online exhibitions. That way, you’re not just looking at a picture of a picture. You have something to interact with.

At the same time, museums have increased the messaging surrounding their existing online programs.

The online #MuseumMomentOfZen movement is another angle some galleries have taken. The Museum of the City of NY started it after closing to the public in mid-March.

The hashtag has been picked up by other museums and continued on social media to this day as a way of keeping engaged with the public.

Disadvantages of online-only formats

Of course, this is all just masking the fact that the museum is closed. If museums felt they could justify opening, they would, and these online, VR and AR programs are just a substitute.

One of the main criticisms of existing online tours of museums is that they simply cannot match the feeling of being in the space. And that’s true. Visiting a museum in person is always going to be a more complete experience than an online visit.

Hashtag campaigns by museum curators can reach a wider audience even than most of a museum’s in-person programs, but that reach is wide rather than deep.

Advantages of online-only formats

There are things that an online program is uniquely capable of, though. One of those things is collaboration.

The organization Open GLAM reported on its participation in the Creative Commons Global Summit earlier this year. The Creative Commons organization administers open licenses that people use to share their creative work free of copyright.

This online, virtual summit included experiences like #Hack4OpenGLAM and Translation Sprint. (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums).

These asynchronous events ran during the main conference. The Translation Sprint involved open groups translating some of the organization’s core documents “to make the case that digital reproductions of public domain materials should be openly and freely available.”

Hack4OpenGLAM describes itself as “a 4-day culture hack for getting creative with “Open Access cultural heritage.” Participants created digital products or even physical artwork inspired by the organization’s collections.

Another great example is the Brazilian Museu Paulista, a history museum covering the formation of Brazil. Students were tasked with improving Wikipedia’s coverage of events related to the museum.

After they became involved, coverage of these events improved dramatically. The metadata from the museum’s collection was made public and machine-readable.

This collection also matched its photos with OpenStreetMap, a free mapping project. This project demonstrated that the interaction of museums and communities goes both ways.

Museums can offer online, VR, and AR resources to communities. But also, the museums stand to benefit from opening up their processes and integrating old and new methods of understanding their collections.

The above event at the Museu Paulista was run by the group Wiki Movimiento Brasil.

So what’s really good with AR and VR experiences?

Emerging AR/VR technologies offer a new window into an alternate world. This tech can, potentially, offer remote visitors a more immersive, visceral experience of a gallery space. Or, even, of interactive artwork.

However, VR technology is not very accessible. Most people don’t own a VR headset, and most VR software requires a lot of computing power that most people lack.

While VR technology is great for those who can experience it, AR through phones – while less immersive – can reach a much broader audience.

Virtual reality projects from museums include “Beyond the Walls” and “Beyond the Glass.” “Beyond the Walls” comes from the Smithsonian art museum. “Beyond the Glass” is a similar program from the Louvre in Paris.

Meanwhile, museums like the Cleveland Museum of Art use AR instead of VR – through apps – to bring the gallery to the world. AR is resource-cheap and mobile, compared to VR, while still being more immersive than a traditional online offering.

It won’t transport you to another world. But it will bring something from another world into yours, and that’s worth checking out.

Like a series of augmented-reality sculptures by KAWS, for instance.

The pandemic may have us all a bit off our game and our usual routines, but culture doesn’t stop. Museums, for their part, are still trying hard to stay involved in their communities not only using VR and AR experiences but also staying connected with their audiences.

10K80 November 5, 2020
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Is it worth it? Photographers at extreme heights get the perfect shot

Photographers are climbing to new and extreme heights to get the perfect shot. And we’re here for it.

We’re well into Fall and the days are getting shorter and darker. In a city, the lights from street lamps and security lights and shops give everything a diffused glow, an atmosphere with its own appeal and warmth. It can be welcoming.

We’re not here to knock that. But in all that glow, the sunset is all the less bright, and the stars themselves disappear.

Jack Brauer, a wilderness photographer, is used to traveling in the dark, as he says in the October blog post covering the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

Even in the confines of a car, on a well-paved road, the dark is near-complete and it is only through the photographer’s headlights that he sees a mountain lion running along the side of the road. He pulls aside, driving alongside the animal while recording with his phone.

He has recently taken the picture above, as he wrote in his post. But now, he sees something he wasn’t expecting.

Mountain Lion on Red Mountain Pass, Colorado from Jack Brauer on Vimeo.

Photographers like Brauer are artists. They understand the techniques of photography, what gear to bring, how to approach each shot. But half the game is getting there and getting there is, sometimes, an extreme sport.

Photo technology and the climb

Technology like small, clothing-mounted cameras have allowed people to turn even physically extreme activities and sports into compelling video with relative ease. Drone videography gives us floating cityscapes and beautiful flight videos.

But long before this technology was conceived, photographers were already going the extra mile to get the perfect shot. All without the benefit of their cameras being small enough to attach to a person’s head.

Ansel Adams, one of the people in the Getty Museum’s video above, photographed the western side of Half Dome in Yosemite, California in 1927. The video above shows him climbing up to take the photograph, while the final product is below.

photographers extreme heights
Photo by Ansel Adams

It is a beautiful photo and, importantly, it is one that couldn’t have been captured without climbing.

Photography, after all, is an art that captures a small, framed slice of the world. The best photography is a product of the artist getting into the right place at the right time.

That means that photography is not only an art but also, in a way, an active sport.

Photographers at extreme heights require fine-tuned technique

And for some photographs, getting into the right place, at an extreme height, is far easier said than done.

It is easy to forget when looking at a photograph of some remote vista that some parts of this world are simply difficult to get to. Those are also, often, the locations that make for the most compelling photography.

It is possible, of course, to follow hiking trails and reach high places. There’s nothing wrong with mountain photography from the comparative comfort of a trail. But there is something special about peaks, about what they represent to people.

For photographers, when it comes to extreme heights, the rules of capturing a quality photograph combine with the rules of mountain climbing.

It’s a rule of thumb that when you want to contrast a small foreground object with a larger background object, you need to get low to the ground.

In some places, that isn’t much of a problem. Flat ground next to a river is easy. But try lying down while mountain climbing, and you’ll find that it usually is not the best idea – unless you can find the right spot of course.

The fact is, photography is active – and trying to get the perfect shot at an extreme height means you have to be ready to work out.

Spoiler alert: Mountain climbing is dangerous

As landscape photographer Daniel Laan writes for the site Expert Photography, as well, greater altitude results in pictures of summits that are more distinct, with details invisible from the valleys.

That’s why there’s such a difference between this photo:

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Sunrise this morning

A post shared by Tim Banfield (@timbanfield) on

and this one:

That means getting to extreme heights improves the range of photos photographers can capture.

And that means more intense hikes and climbs.

It isn’t all about the gear, of course, but what you bring on any difficult trek matters. A few extra pounds of stuff you don’t need is bad news when you’re climbing a mountain. Alex Buisse, in his guide to mountain photography, focuses heavily on the weight of his equipment.

You are going to carry all of this stuff up for probably several thousands of meters so will be grateful for each gram that you can save, even at the cost of some convenience or even, yes, image quality.

Guide to Mountain Photography

The right tools for photographers at extreme heights

He recommends the lightest camera that has all the features he needs, along with one wide zoom and one long zoom lens, UV filters, a bag, cleaning cloths, hard drives for backup (but not to be taken to the summit), SD cards, and batteries.

That’s it. No tripod, no flash head, no filters, or unusual lenses. It’s stripped-down photography compared to what you can do on the ground with advanced equipment.

But the vistas are absolutely worth it.

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Ever since they came out with a nifty little device called the Capture, I have been a proud ambassador of @peakdesign . Since then, they have created awesome camera attachment systems, bags and tripods. I use their products every single day, both in my daily life and for my adventure photography. Their latest project, announced just today, is one I am extremely excited about: the Mobile system, built around a phone case and multiple attachment devices. I have been using a pre-production prototype for a couple of weeks and absolutely love what it allows me to do – just yesterday, I was taking pictures with my iPhone from 30m inside a crevasse! One of the things I love about Peak Design is their business model, relying on kickstarter campaigns to fund production rather than taking in external money (the traditional Silicon Valley way), which has allowed them to stay true to their environmental values, excellent customer service and constant innovation. It is therefore no surprise that the Mobile would launch on kickstarter first. Special note to us climbers and paragliding pilots: though it isn’t quite ready yet, I was assured that the final production model would feature a way to thread an anchor link to the case, which means we should be able to have a good leash system to avoid dropping our phones while climbing or flying. Link in bio for 24h or here: https://peakdesign.kckb.st/alexbuisse

A post shared by Alex Buisse (@alexbuisse) on

Another problem Buisse touches on that won’t be an issue for Brauer right now, in dry, hot Colorado, is the cold. On the snowy mountain summits Buisse photographs, batteries lose their capacity. They prefer warmth.

Buisse’s answer to this: keep two batteries on you, swap them out regularly, and put one close to your body. Protect it from the cold with your own body heat, and its capacity won’t drain so fast.

Just remember the next time you see one of your favorite photographers post one of these incredible landscape photos from an extreme height: What went into setting it up is about as exhilarating as the picture itself.

Make sure to check out our photography series and learn more about what it takes to become a true visionary

anti rent October 27, 2020
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COVID evictions? Why is the pandemic still pushing people out the crib?

Evictions due to COVID are still going down…

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the U.S. economy since this March and left tens of millions of people without a source of income.

While the unemployment rate has started to rise again, this situation may not return to normal for a long time.

Especially for workers in the most precarious industries (like service jobs that rely on in-person engagement), the impact can’t be understated.

Loss of income, in a society where so many people rent homes and live paycheck-to-paycheck, means we can expect the homeless population to increase.

It’s been forecasted since the early days. Back in June, the Aspen Institute predicted 20 million renters would face potential eviction due to COVID by September. News media picked up on the story.

But, the situation hasn’t been dominating headlines for a while. Sensational stories – stories of street violence, military conflict, political squabbling – these make for better TV. Yet the eviction crisis is still very real. It’s been drawn out by aid bills, moratoriums, and shoddy, uneven pandemic response.

Federal and State Moratoriums

New York State first put a moratorium on evictions in March. Legislation was then passed at the end of June that extends protections until the end of the pandemic is declared.

This means no one can be evicted in NY until the crisis is declared over. This action, the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, was accompanied by financial assistance to renters and homeowners. The moratorium was extended several times, most recently until October 20.

Nationwide, the CARES act temporarily protected renters from eviction, but the protections did not last long and some landlords began eviction even while the moratorium remained in effect.

At the beginning of September, a new order was put forward by the CDC, barring evictions for the rest of the year.

This new order comes with conditions, according to the Times and Marketplace:

  • You must have attempted to obtain all available forms of government assistance.
  • You can’t be earning more than $99,000 in 2020, or $198,000 if you’re married and filing a joint tax return.
  • You must be experiencing a major loss of household income, have lost your job or faced major medical expenses.
  • You must be trying to make partial rent payments, as much as “circumstances may permit.”
  • Eviction would likely lead to either homelessness or your having to move to a place that was more expensive or where you could get sick due to proximity with other people.

This order could protect a lot of people. In the face of an epidemic and the economic crisis it has hastened, any relief might prevent somebody from being turned out onto the street.

And this isn’t just about protecting people’s housing. It’s about protecting people’s lives. Homeless shelters and other spaces where people stay close together are more likely to spread disease.

Right now, we are facing a novel virus and the seasonal flu at the same time. Thus, the risks compound. However, the specific nature of the order could cause problems. It was issued by the Centers for Disease Control, not Congress.

From an ethical standpoint, that shouldn’t matter – preventing homelessness is a good thing. From a legal standpoint, however, some commentators have argued that the CDC does not have this authority.

The order was framed as a public health measure. This framing becomes suspect when considering how inconsistent the Executive Branch’s response has been.

Of course, the case can be made – has been made by the CDC – that “housing stability helps protect public health.” That’s true, it does. But so far, the solution we’re seeing from the government is just restrictive.

There hasn’t been a proactive effort to house those already homeless. Doing so isn’t a pipe dream, by the way – Finland did it last year.

All that’s needed is for leaders to understand their own moral imperative to help people facing evictions during COVID.

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The Housing First approach is an assistance program that places an emphasis on providing permanent housing to individuals experiencing homelessness. Through this method, individuals experiencing homelessness can expect to be housed, where they will be able to work on personal objectives like getting a job or recovering from substance use. The Housing First method has proven to be an effective solution to ending homelessness. PSH or Permanent Supportive Housing has a long-term housing retention rate up to 98 percent. RRH or rapid re-housing has shown that up to 91 percent of households remain housed a year after rapid re-housing. For more information on the Housing First model, visit https://endhomelessness.org

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Had this order come in the form of a law from Congress, things would be different from a legal standpoint. Had that happened, there wouldn’t be a door left open for the order to be challenged.

It’s probably a moot point, though. The moratorium is in place until the end of the year, and we’re already in October.

The rent isn’t canceled

More importantly, the CDC’s order does not include rent assistance, nor forgiveness. That means the money from missed rent payments can pile up. Renters will have to pay their landlords eventually.

For those living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a serious problem. Even if every job that was lost gets replaced – and they probably won’t – many people will be behind by months. The poorest renters will be faced with a load of debt.

They might not be homeless now, but once the crisis is over, the CDC’s order can’t protect tenants. People will be turned out onto the street. They likely won’t be able to defend themselves legally.

Had there been a comprehensive rent assistance program, paying landlords on behalf of at-risk tenants, this crisis wouldn’t be happening. High cost, but a high reward. But, that isn’t what happened.

And how do people react when they’re faced with a dire situation like this? When the measures put in place by authorities seem to be putting the crisis off for later, instead of actually solving it?

People get angry.

Anti-rent movements

Massachusetts’ state moratorium on evictions ends October 17th, so protestors have taken to the streets. Since plenty of people still haven’t gotten their jobs back, they still can’t pay rent. The state’s order is more protective, and prevents more evictions, than the federal one.

In New York City, despite the moratorium, eviction cases are still being heard in courts.

anti-rent poster
A poster in NYC’s Chinatown calling for a rent cancellation.

The COVID evictions situation has led to something of a mass movement for rent to be cancelled. According to the Right to Counsel, NYC Coalition, this wouldn’t mean that the government pays all rent directly to landlords.

Instead, housing payments would be canceled universally for the duration of the crisis, and a “small landlord hardship fund” would be set up for smaller individual landlords (as opposed to large real estate corporations).

Unrealistic? Probably. There’s no way that all the movement’s demands will be met, as much as doing so would help the homeless and those facing homelessness.

However, it may be that as more legal pressure is placed on officials, something changes. As it stands, delaying payment is – for the poorest among us – just pushing the coming crisis aside. The day will come when legal protections are gone and vulnerable people start to lose their homes.

Only time will tell how these COVID evictions will end, but the stage seems set for yet another national crisis. If it gets ugly, it’ll be after months as a “crisis-in-waiting,” one that could have been prevented if our society could come together and make a solution.

Still, we live in divisive times, and schisms have consequences.

Bruh October 9, 2020
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Who are the ‘Proud Boys’? The neo-fascist group backed by Trump

Note: This article discusses violence and violent rhetoric. Reader discretion, etc.

It was only last Tuesday, which in the 2020 U.S. news world is about a millennia ago. On that day, President Donald Trump, during his debate with former Vice President Joe Biden, told a group called the “Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by.”

The actual group, the Proud Boys, swiftly changed their logo to include Trump’s quote, celebrating the moment on their online forums. [News organizations widely criticized the statement as a refusal to condemn white supremacy and violent militias from a President who has, intentionally or not, courted such groups in the past.]

Probably intentionally.

Even Merriam-Webster (yes, the dictionary) weighed in:

Because somebody’s got to stand up for the truth.

A contentious debate moment

The above clip from September 29th’s chaotic debate has sparked outrage from op-ed columnists and celebration from the Proud Boys themselves.

The next day, Donald Trump claimed not to know who the Proud Boys are, but told them to “stand down and let law enforcement do their work.”

However, Trump has a previous connection to the proud boys: Roger Stone. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence for lying to Congress (see video below) on July 10th. Stone himself is an associate of the Proud Boys, particularly of Enrique Tarro, the group’s current leader.

Tarrio also heads Florida’s Latinos for Trump.

While Trump himself doesn’t have a direct connection, there is a chain of connections. If he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were before claiming so, well, that was impressively ignorant of him.

Who are the Proud Boys?

If you haven’t encountered or heard of the group in real life, and you aren’t the right (wrong?) kind of Extremely Online, you might have had no idea who the Proud Boys were before Tuesday. In the wake of Trump’s comments, however, the group gained a lot of public attention.

Internet searches for the Proud Boys skyrocketed in the wake of Trump’s comments.

So, who are the Proud Boys? According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, they’re a “radicalization vector.” That is, members of the group are likely to get involved with more extremist groups. Therefore, the group can maintain a sort of plausible deniability. In fact, the Proud Boys sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling them as a hate group.

The group was founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, who (according to the International Centre) acknowledges himself as a xenophobe. He envisioned the group as a “pro-western fraternity” dedicated to celebrating western culture. Effectively just a drinking club.

However, they have established themselves as more of a fight club, showing up at political rallies and participating in fights (often escalating force) such as confrontations at the protests in Portland. In fact, one prominent member was arrested in Portland on September 30th.

Charlottesville

In Summer 2017, amid controversy over the removal of Charlottesville, Virginia’s Confederate monuments, numerous far-right political groups organized a “Unite the Right” rally (here’s a YouTube video reviewing the event).

That is: neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, the Ku Klux Klan, et cetera. These protestors marched through the streets of Charlottesville with tiki torches. They shouted slogans such as “blood and soil,” “white lives matter,” “Jews will not replace us, and “you will not replace us.” This rally turned violent (predictably) and one woman, Heather Heyer, was killed on August 12th.

McInnes and the Proud Boys were invited to the rally, but declined because, “if we do go, it will look like we’re fighting for Nazis we don’t like.” This is consistent with the Proud Boys’ MO: they seek to distance themselves from more overt “alt-right” groups while maintaining indirect associations with them.

While McInnes and the mainstream “Proud Boys” group didn’t appear at the rally in Charlottesville, their more violent offshoot (the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights) was present.

So although the Proud Boys maintain some plausible deniability by disavowing and distancing themselves from devoted white-nationalist, anti-semitic, and neo-fascist views, the fact is that they’re closely associated with other groups that proudly hold these more overtly violent views. This has led to the Proud Boys being labeled as part of the “alt-lite” by hate-watch groups.

Alt-right? Alt-lite? WTF do all these words mean?

Since 2016 the “alt-right” movement has gained increased public attention as an influential movement in the U.S. The term was coined in 2008 by Richard Spencer, and is effectively a repackaging of white supremacist and ultra-nationalist ideologies.

The movement is a loose association of groups, not an organized whole, and is therefore difficult to reliably define. What unites them is their racist, nationalist ideology and their online activity, including memes.

Including memes about dropping people out of helicopters.

The alt-lite is, just like the Centre for Counter-Terrorism’s article described, more of a vector for radicalization into the alt-right. “Alt lite” groups, such as the Proud Boys, share a disdain for “feminists and immigrants” but shy away from more overt expressions of white supremacist ideas.

Alt-lite groups often keep their focus on “civic nationalism” rather than “racial nationalism.” The Proud Boys put their own focus on “western values,” avoiding any direct tie to the racial nationalism of, say, the KKK and neo-Nazis.

While individuals such as Jason Kessler, the Unite the Right rally’s organizer, have a past association with the Proud Boys, the group tries to keep its public image free of that association. Kessler was apparently kicked out of the Proud Boys when he became too extreme for them.

2020 makes everything worse

However, this doesn’t change the fact they’re more than happy to show up and exacerbate violent situations.

Summer 2020’s series of protests in American cities, originally sparked by the extrajudicial police killing of George Floyd in May, has resulted in clashes between Proud Boys and right-wing groups in their orbit, and left-wing groups loosely called “antifa” (anti-fascist). This moniker has come to include the Black Lives Matter movement.

Although politicians have condemned violence on both sides of this conflict, it’s very important to note that police have been far more permissive with groups such as the Proud Boys than with antifa and protestors against police brutality. Consider the use of federal troops in American cities earlier this year. Consider Trump’s insistence that U.S. political violence is primarily left-wing. (This is statistically untrue in recent history).

Consider the false equivalencies made by commentators, seeking to be evenhanded, between protests against police brutality (responded to with more police brutality, even in the absence of destructive tactics), and counter-protests (often protected by police groups).

ashley barrett October 7, 2020
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Video game musicians’ Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett’s journey to fame

In early March 2020 at the popular video game exposition, PAX East in Boston, Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett took the stage for an hour-long concert.

Korb is the composer for Supergiant Games, a video game developer based out of San Francisco. Barrett, a professional vocalist, works with Korb on his soundtracks and has appeared multiple times for live performances alongside Korb.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9HiStuJn1F/
The group’s 2020 concert poster.

It wasn’t their first time performing at the exposition, either. The previous year, in August, the exposition’s western equivalent in Seattle hosted a concert for the studio’s tenth anniversary.

Given the high-profile nature of this event, one would expect that Korb and Barrett, if not high-profile musicians themselves, were at least established as professionals long before this. You wouldn’t be wrong to assume that.

However, they weren’t established enough to have a professional-quality studio when recording the vocal tracks for Supergiant’s second game, Transistor. Those lyrics were actually recorded in a closet, a story that can’t be separated from Supergiant’s reputation among game musicians.

Korb’s music is a combination of virtual drums and electronic instruments, with acoustic instruments – especially guitars, mandolins, and the like – recorded from Korb’s own playing.

The end result is surprisingly coherent. Though the sound is stitched together from synthesized tracks, samples, instrumental recordings, and vocals, it all fits together. In fact, Korb’s soundtracks are downright show-stealing compared to other aspects of the games they appear in.

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“Sound designer”

Beyond the music, Korb is officially Supergiant’s “sound designer,” in charge of the games’ sound effects and the general audio direction.

That means working closely with Supergiant’s professional voice actor, Logan Cunningham. Cunningham recorded over 3,000 voiced lines – again, in Korb’s closet – for the adaptive narrator of their first game, Bastion.

These lines trigger based on the player’s actions in-game, and contribute significantly to atmosphere and tone.

For example, spend a minute in Bastion just smashing objects, and you’ll hear Cunningham’s dry commentary: “Kid just rages for a while.”

Taking indie to the big stage

Prior to 2019, Korb and Barrett had performed together a few times on stage. But at PAX in 2019, and later in 2020, they turned things up to eleven.

They added an orchestra, making their sound fuller and more like what you hear in Korb’s engineered, layered recordings. Acoustic performances are one thing, but having an orchestra to back them up?

That put them at a level most indie studios (without the resources or backing of a major publisher) can only dream of.

“So I spoke to Austin and he’s like ‘Yeah, man. First of all, I’m in and I’m going to conduct it. Second of all, you can do it and I’ll help you get the guy to do the arrangements.’ He was really instrumental in getting the whole thing to happen.”

Darren Korb

The 10th-anniversary concert, Supergiant’s first orchestral show, had more established talent behind it too. Austin Wintory, a friend and colleague of Korb, conducted the concert.

According to Korb, Wintory – the composer for 2012’s Journey – was “really instrumental in getting the whole thing to happen.” Korb may have been used to acoustic shows and DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), but Wintory understood the orchestra.

Control Group and Supergiant

Before composing soundtracks, Darren Korb was part of a band called Control Group, which he still does recordings with from time to time.

They’re based in New York, where Korb lived before moving back to San Francisco (and Supergiant Games) in 2014.

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When Korb’s childhood friend Amir Rao – a co-founder of Supergiant Games – asked him if he wanted to be the new studio’s sound designer and musician, he jumped at the opportunity.

The studio formed in 2009, according to their website, and got to developing – and Korb, still working from his apartment in NYC, began composing.

It’s unusual in video game soundtracks for a composer to be brought onto a development team this early. Much of the music from the finished version of the game, and the soundtrack’s album, predates most elements of the game itself.

Korb’s music isn’t just a score – it informs the tone of the game itself, along with Jen Zee’s art direction, part of what makes the studio’s games cohesive wholes. It’s also why the game designers built certain parts of the game neatly around the music.

Acoustic Frontier Trip-Hop

Because Darren Korb was not trained as a classical composer, it didn’t make sense for him to use techniques typically associated with film and game scores, like leitmotifs for characters and repeated themes that develop over a work’s runtime.

So I tried to get around that by creating a genre and hoping that all the music would kinda fit there.

Darren Korb

For each soundtrack he has composed, instead of trying to fit standard composition practices Korb attempted to create his own genre. He developed short descriptive phrases to inform his compositions.

For the soundtrack to Bastion, that unique style was “Acoustic Frontier Trip-Hop.” The melody instrumentation is mainly acoustic, combined with electronic hip-hop beats. An overall twangy sound evokes the “frontier” setting of the game and meshes with the old-time style of the art.

For Transistor, he created “Old World Electronic Post-Rock.” Korb’s second soundtrack is heavy on vocals and includes harps and accordians among its instruments. The guitars are mainly ambient and electric. The entire game’s tone seems to stem from this music, fitting its retro-futuristic setting.

By Supergiant’s third game, Pyre, Korb seems to have found his footing in composition. Yet, he still referred to Pyre’s music in an interview with as “bardic acoustic rock.”

The instrumentation focuses on mandolin and lute, along with Korb’s signature electronic drum beats. It all meshes perfectly with the occult themes of the game and the art style.

Finding a niche

Building from the success of two major orchestral shows, Korb and Barrett are now working on a full orchestral album.

Again with the help of Austin Wintory, they’re seeking to translate their popular performances into a recording. For songs that were composed in a DAW, it’s a brand new format.

But if the success of the PAX East and West concerts are anything to go by, the finished album will be a brand new sound.

In less than a decade, Darren Korb went from never having composed a soundtrack to being one of the most recognizable figures in indie game music.

He shared the names of a few artists he admires in his interview with Hyperxgaming:

“Austin Wintory,” Korb began. “His stuff I really admire and respect. It’s so outside of what I would be able to do. It’s such a different set of skills that he has. I really respect his approach and execution. And Lena Raine’s stuff on Celeste is really impressive to me. I thought that was really rad. Danny Baranowsky, I really like his tunes. He’s got a fun, irreverent vibe to his music that I really appreciate.

Darren Korb

Supergiant Games’ latest title, Hades, recently reached its full release and features some of Korb’s best compositions and Barrett’s best vocals. Good Riddance is a standout track, but the entire album is worth listening to, whether you like video games or not. Check it out below:

Oh yeah, and the game’s pretty good too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

COVID October 4, 2020
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Musicians in COVID: How independent artists are fighting to make a living

Strange times we’re all living in, aren’t they?

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone’s daily routines and hastened an economic recession. It’s hard to understate how this situation has disrupted all of our lives.

Rescheduled plans have become canceled plans and now, six months later, people across the country are still facing long-term consequences.

With no end in sight, and entire sectors of society still shut down, there’s no doubt that post-pandemic life will look quite a bit different, assuming this disease doesn’t become endemic. One sector severely impacted has been music.

Impact of a Pandemic

Shutdowns of cultural events in cities throughout the U.S. (including NYC) left musicians without their gigs, with nowhere to tour, and thus bereft of their main source of income.

Most artists get the bulk of income from live shows. Now, it’s true that live music is far from the only way to listen to your favorite musicians. I know I haven’t been to a live concert in years, and prefer it that way (yes, I’m a weirdo).

But live performances are as lucrative as it gets for a musician. Think about it this way: in the absence of live performances, how do musicians get their income? Merchandise sales are one way, though concert-goers have more exposure to merch and are more likely to buy.

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Online concerts have also taken off – for instance, the famous “One World: Together at Home” fundraiser concert back in April. These online concerts don’t bring in nearly as much revenue but they’re also cheaper to set up.

Obviously, running a concert from your bedroom is easier than a packed concert hall. And if there’s one thing the Gaga-organized gig proved, it’s that these online concerts can be very successful. Sometimes.

And then there’s streaming. After all, streaming music online accounts for most of the industry these days. On the surface, that seems like good news.

After all, musicians can now get their music out to a wider audience without having to tour constantly! And for some artists, that’s just fine – that’s the model, in fact.

Live performances are as lucrative as it gets for a musician… in the absence of live performances, how do musicians get their income?

Some musicians work mainly online

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Take Janet Devlin, for instance. She’s part of a relatively small class of musicians who have made their living primarily online. She got her start uploading music to her YouTube channel and even today her following is mainly online.

I’ve had to cancel a bunch of live events that I’d not even announced yet. As someone who rarely does gigs off the internet, I was really looking forward to them.

Janet Devlin, in an interview with PSN Europe

However, this model definitely doesn’t work for everybody. There are not many artists who become successful this way, and as anybody who’s tried to make money on YouTube or through podcasting can tell you, it’s thin pickings unless you are very, very popular.

The trouble with streaming

In the bulk of cases, the gradual shift to online streaming does more good for corporate giants than musicians. Artists get fractions of a penny per Spotify stream, for a start.

Streaming companies pay the artists next to nothing. in royalties

And streaming platforms run on recommendation algorithms. These services will tend to recommend already-popular artists, while up-and-comers stay niche unless they’re lucky enough to “trick the algorithm.”

And that’s most of the music industry now. Spotify is hugely popular. YouTube is actually the most popular streaming site, and it pays artists even less than Spotify.

Bringing concerts back online

Online concerts can bring the artists more direct money, if they’re paid, give the artists more control compared to streaming music through a service, and reinforce the connection between the musician and the listener (which can also drive up those sweet, sweet merchandise sales).

That said, online concerts bring their own logistical problems.

On May 29th the Dropkick Murphys live-streamed a concert in an empty Fenway Park. The live-streamed video includes frequent cuts between cameras. Physically setting up that concert would require the same expertise as if people were there in person.

Smaller, less-popular musicians aren’t going to have access to that kind of help, and the necessary marketing to get the word out about online concerts, during a pandemic. They’re going to be overshadowed.

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They were able to pull an event like this off because they could advertise it widely.

Online platforms like StageIt do provide an alternative for smaller artists running living-room style concerts. While the platform was a novelty early on, and was at risk of being shut down before the pandemic started, the times have changed.

Artists on StageIt can charge for tickets, unlike video-streaming services (YouTube, Twitch) with their virtual tip jars.

Enter Bandcamp

One company in the online music space that can outdo Spotify, maybe not in popularity but in goodwill, is Bandcamp. The site seems pretty simple on the surface – just a place for artists to sell their music directly to listeners.

Listeners can review albums, leaving notes to the artists, and selecting their favorite songs. Merchandise and physical releases can be advertised, managed by the artists. Also, Bandcamp only takes a 15% cut of sales, smaller than online storefronts like Amazon.

However, the implications are huge. It’s an entirely different model from the streaming companies, and that alone has helped make Bandcamp popular.

The connection between musician and fan is virtually direct through Bandcamp.

Randall Roberts (Los Angeles Times)

Mark Mulligan of Midia Research told the Los Angeles Times that much of Bandcamp’s popularity comes simply because it’s a viable alternative to the streaming industry.

Listeners buy albums instead of subscribing to a service. And instead of recommendation algorithms, listeners browse based on the criteria they choose. There’s no “going viral,” but word of mouth matters a lot.

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The site’s entire business model is based around helping artists, and since the pandemic started it has regularly waived its revenue share on certain Fridays as a promotional event.

Artists like Shamir Bailey have reported that these gestures result in real income – not just a trickle of pennies from streams.

Plus, Bandcamp Daily, the site’s own music journalism outlet, does a great job of highlighting lesser-known musicians and telling their stories.

Don’t forget though…

Musicians aren’t the only people who were affected by the shuttering of cultural events, even within the music industry.

Consider all that goes into making a live music production possible – all the people other than the musicians themselves whose work is necessary to make the music happen.

Record stores, lighting and sound professionals, photographers, janitors – everyone could use a little help these days.

One thing we can learn from music’s continued cultural reach in an age of social distancing: it is our ability to connect that gives humanity life.

When cynicism too often rules the day, we all have an opportunity and a duty to right the wrongs we see in our communities and carry one another.

androgynous fashion September 25, 2020
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How androgynous fashion is shifting designers to push creative boundaries

Transgender and non-binary people make up about 0.6% of the US population. Trans people’s activism for public acceptance, rights, and legal protection has gained steam and public attention in recent years.

Androgynous fashion is a prime example of the impact this has had on culture. Fashion is also a nexus for issues in how gender non-conforming people are often viewed.

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Because gender is often expressed through fashion, the fashion industry expresses popular gender norms. Some fashion designers feel constrained by expectations to create either “men’s wear” or “women’s wear.”

For instance, Shao Yang, founder of The Tailory, expressed her frustrations at the 2016 New York Fashion Week’s gender-experimental show iD – “The industry still expects me to identify as a men’s or women’s wear designer, whereas I just see myself as a designer that creates self-identity and expression.”

More than a trend

Some mainstream media attention goes to androgyny and gender-experimental fashion. There’s a market for this, with entire brands marketing themselves as androgynous.

However, something is missing. There are still limits.

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Because brands like VEEA market androgyny as a particular set of “tomboy” styles, the public perception of androgyny is specific. To the industry, androgyny is a fashion trend – not a part of people’s identities.

While the past half-decade has seen an increase in press attention for androgynous fashion, there are still rules. Androgyny can end up meaning thin, tall, white, and lacking curves.

Brands that market themselves as “androgynous” tend to have a specific look to their designs, which sums up the problem with mainstream androgynous fashion.

Tall, skinny people whose body shape is easily obscured by a long, flowy button-up shirt do not represent the full range of people in the androgynous community.

Despite that, the attitude remains that androgyny means one thing, and even news outlets covering androgynous style have rejected input which runs counter to that limited idea.

This leaves others, like the NYC fashion magazine DapperQ, to “set the record straight” after more popular news orgs like Buzzfeed get it wrong.

Mainstream ideas of “androgyny” do have consequences. Those who don’t meet the standard are likely not to be viewed as androgynous by others.

The double standard

Exploring showcases of androgynous fashion, one finds that the models are mainly female-presenting people who can pass easily as male. There are plenty of exceptions, but this is the norm.

Much of this comes down to a fear of gender-defying fashion in some situations but not others.

Moral outrage in response to traditionally “masculine” clothes on “feminine” bodies is far more muted than moral outrage in response to traditionally “feminine” clothes on “masculine” bodies.

For example, in 2019 a gender-neutral fashion show was restricted by its host university due to complaints the previous year over a poster of a male model wearing a stylish black dress and knee-high boots. This type of restrictive acceptance limits what androgynous fashion can be.

At the same time, androgynous fashion also remains inaccessible to those who are not “thin, waiflike, ethereal and [who] will never look like what genderqueer tumblrs reblog as our personal ideals.” That is, people with curvy bodies aren’t going to fit into the type of clothes marketed most strongly as androgynous.

Yet, there are fashion outlets out there, like DapperQ, working to fix that. They seek to change the narrative with their style guides. Plus, they host a show at the New York Fashion Week – iD, as it’s called.

Changing the story

Started in 2014, iD showcases experimental designers like The Phluid Project and WE ARE MORTALS. The show – seen here in a stream by the Huffington Post — includes plenty of flowy shirts and pants. This tracks with assumptions about marketable androgyny.

However, there are also voluminous coats, scarfs, and even a dress with wings. The main theme of the show seems to be lots of hanging fabric.

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There’s a difference between the mainstream fashion industry’s approach to androgyny as a specific fad and the variety of design seen at shows like iD. New designs experiment with androgyny, contrasting the specific type of androgyny that’s often marketed to young people.

As Nik Kacy told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, “The last few years have seen a dramatic change and improvement as more people from these… under-represented groups continue to innovatively come up with solutions.”  

As well it should be. An expansion of what is acceptable and explorable in fashion should open new avenues for creativity. And it should help more people feel comfortable in the clothes they wear.

anti-masker September 21, 2020
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Anti-maskers then and now: The 2020 COVID pandemic vs. the 1918 Spanish Flu

It is a cliché to say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” but clichés become what they are for a reason – there is a grain of truth in them. With anti-maskers, COVID-fearless as they seem, history is repeating itself from 1918 to 2020.

In March, the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading in the United States. People started wearing masks out in public, some practiced social distancing, and everyone collectively started freaking out. Meanwhile, historians began comparing this to the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Masked people sitting around a table betting over toilet paper rolls
We know what commodities are truly valuable.

Different diseases, similar public reaction

Both illnesses attack the lungs, are caused by a virus, and are capable of surface spread. Both are highly contagious. Before talking about the cultural parallels, however, note the medical differences between these crises. Influenza was deadlier than COVID-19 and it killed people at much younger ages. 

However, early estimates of the death rates for COVID (such as the 0.6% quoted in that New York Times article) are low. Compare with the real-time data Johns Hopkins University has been collecting since March. Check out that dashboard and do the math yourself – it’s not pretty.

Another interesting tidbit – the 2020 hype over Hydroxychloroquine, a potential treatment for COVID-19 which turned out to be worse than ineffective, parallels a similar attempt in 1918 to treat Influenza using Quinine.

Both drugs are actually meant to treat malaria, according to Dr. Jeremy Brown, the author of Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History, in an online talk hosted by Waltham Public Library.

More about public response than virus itself

The parallels highlighted, however, have less to do with the viruses themselves, and more with the public crisis responses. There is a portion of the population that refuse to wear face masks, as we’ve all seen. Another group mercilessly mocks those who refuse.

This is an attempt to enforce public health measures via social pressure, not legal force. Today, those who refuse are called “anti-maskers.” In 1918, they were known as “mask slackers.”

All this tension is bound to find a release in popular culture. In 2020, with so many of us bound to communicating via the internet, this has resulted in a lot of memes.

A pile of toilet paper rolls. Caption reads
Jokes about toilet paper stockpiles became quite the rage for a while.

Really, a lot of memes. Most have focused on the more absurd aspects of the pandemic, such as the rush by many Americans to stockpile toilet paper when the crisis first began.

Here come the memes

Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit: obviously, COVID-19 is not the only disease in existence. However, when people are scared of a pandemic, it’s easy to mistake any adverse symptoms as signs of the highly infectious coronavirus.

But, just as the social tension around the virus has become nasty, so have the memes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCejVfUDwfF/

It was in May 2020 that Calvin Munerlyn, a security guard in Flint, Michigan was shot and killed by an anti-masker. He was trying to enforce the mask order of the store he worked for. This death made headlines and sparked outrage – why would a simple request to wear a strip of cloth erupt into violence?

This wasn’t the first time, either. The same thing happened in 1918. That newspaper clipping above isn’t from COVID-19, it’s from the time of the Spanish Flu. It turns out that people are just as prone to senseless violence now as they were in 1918. Also, being asked to obey a basic safety measure, for the benefit of others, makes some people very angry.

Perhaps what is a sign of the times is that in 2020, we can publish jokes about these situations.

Anti-maskers COVID

Lower on the scale of meme grimness, we have the now-classic media tradition of poking fun at those who think COVID-19 is no big deal, or who speak out against mask-wearing. These anti-maskers, COVID-immune as they believe they are, are risking other people’s lives as much as they are their own.

While COVID is undeniably less deadly than the 1918 pandemic, and public health measures are more advanced today than they were in 1918, there’s still obvious danger posed by a virus that has killed almost a million people worldwide and almost 200,000 in the U.S. alone, as of this writing.

Absent a legal mandate, social pressure is a popular way of getting people to adopt a certain behavior. This often comes in the form of mockery, as in the above cases. In 2020, memes and cartoons making fun of anti-maskers (covid attractors) have grown popular on the internet alongside memes from the anti-maskers themselves.

The Anti-Mask League

Back in 1918, an organization called the “Anti-Mask League” formed.

E.J. Harrington, a lawyer and political activist, started the group in San Francisco to protest that city’s re-institution of a mask ordinance on the grounds that such laws were unconstitutional, and that the scientific evidence for masks was lacking.

Sound familiar? In 1918, too, the quarantine was shorter – just a few weeks, as Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society explained to WGBH.

“The quarantine period – just a few weeks – was so much briefer in most places than it is now. It was also a lot less systematic than this now,” he said in an interview in April. Perhaps it is no wonder that the resistance to quarantine was less pronounced then than now.

The major take-away from all this? It is easy to feel that we are living in unprecedented times. In all seriousness, the memes are correct about one thing: 2020 has been a disastrous year for many.

In times like these, it is important not to be caught entirely in the present. Looking back provides insight into the events of today and tells us what has truly changed, and what truly has not.

Looking forward in light of what we know about the past is necessary as we consider where society goes from here.