Digging deep into the dustbin of performance art-historical activist collectives, the occultist minds behind the revival of the WITCH collective and “feminist coven” this year achieved an extraordinary telescoping of cultural memory. Simultaneously evoking the outcast status of political erasure perpetrated against women throughout history as evil-loving witches, they effectively flipped the script to refocus that historical bigotry back where it belongs via public convenings to ritually hex actual evil-doers as a kind of protest performance including against, for instance, greedy gentrifiers in Logan Square, or as a kind of community healing ritual after traumatic events such as the Orlando shootings. All of which is directed at tearing down systemic female oppression because, says the group’s site, “nothing scares the patriarchy more than a non-conformist, sexually liberated, independent thinker. Nothing scares the patriarchy more than a WITCH.”
Today in the Culture, April 26, 2021: Medinah Revival | Framing Venice Biennale | RIP Jetta Jones & Jerry Ranalli DESIGN Saluting the Hidden Wood Frame In Venice The U.S. Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale will spotlight the American wood frame, reports Architectural Record. "Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, curators of this year’s U.S. Pavilion, shine a spotlight on this humble method of construction to explore what it says about America’s history and our attitudes toward labor and…
