Author: Alan N. Shapiro

  • Lost: The Crash Out of Globalization and Into the World

    En route from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, California, USA, Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashes on an unknown Island in the South Pacific. This flight that was supposed to circumscribe half of the globe already symbolizes globalization, and the crash of Flight 815 symbolizes the crash of globalization. But the crash into what?

  • New York City in Las Vegas

    New York New York Las Vegas Casino & Hotel all photos © 2011 Alan Shapiro

  • Complementarity: An Archipelago, by Robin Parmar

    Robin Parmar is an intermedia artist whose practice incorporates electroacoustic composition, sound installations, improvisation, radiophonics, sonic ecology, poetry, performance art, theory and photography. Works have recently appeared in Ireland, England, Portugal, Germany, Spain and Sweden.

  • Three Impressionist Paintings by Florence Morrison

    As if Santiago of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea had gone out again for priceless discoveries, but this time with a group of friends. The singularity of this painting is striking, yet it also reminds me of work products from Van Gogh’s period in Arles.

  • The Identity and Anxiety of Colonial Dublin in Joyce’s Dubliners, by James Shapiro

    “Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears…” This line from ‘The Sisters,’ the first story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, establishes from the outset a central theme of the collection.

  • Morality in Europe Today

    “Morality in Europe today,” wrote Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, “is herd animal morality.” On April 22, 2010, there took place an extraordinary creative event in Dusseldorf, Germany – at the KIT (Kunst im Tunnel) art space – called “Morality in Europe Today” (Zeitgenössische Moralvorstellung in Europe).