Category Archives: New Utopia

A new Aardman short is being released on Netflix in time for Christmas with Robin Robin set to tell the heartwarming story of a small bird who sets off on a quest to prove herself to the family of mice burglars who raised her.

As you might expect, the beloved stop-motion animation studio has been able to draft in some big names to lend their voices to the characters read on for everything you need to know about the cast.

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Who is Robin? The main character in the film, Robin is described as a small bird with a very big heart. Having been raised by a family of mice burglars, as she grows up Robin begins to become more aware of her differences and sets off on the ultimate heist to prove her worth to the mice discovering a lot about herself in the process.

What else has Bronte Carmichael been in? Young star Carmichael has a number of film credits to her name including roles in Darkest Hour, On Chesil Beach, and Christopher Robin. She also appeared as Martha in two episodes of the final season of Game of Thrones and has a regular role as Skye on Sci-Fi series Nightflyers.

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Who is Dad Mouse? The head of the mice burglar clan that raised Robin, Dad Mouse is described as a bit bumbling and a little bit clumsy by actor Adeel Akhtar.

What else has Adeel Akhtar been in? Akhtar has many TV and film credits to his name, and won particular praise for his roles as Wilson Wilson in Utopia and as Shazad in the TV film Murdered by My Father. Other recent credits include roles in films such as The Nest, Enola Holmes, Everybodys Talking About Jamie and Ali and Ava, in addition to a main role in the Netflix series Sweet Tooth.

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Who is Cat? The villain of the piece, Cat is described as amenacing, yet very cool Cat who would like nothing more than to gobble Robin up.

What else has Gillian Anderson been in? Anderson has played a number of iconic roles in her career from Special AgentDana Scully in The X-Files and DSU Stella Gibson in The Fall to Jean Milburn in Sex Education and Margaret Thatcher in The Crown. Film credits include The Last King of Scotland, Viceroys House and The House of Mirth, while she will play Eleanor Roosevelt in the upcoming Showtime series The First Lady.

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Who is Magpie? A curmudgeonly old magpie who Robin encounters on her journey, Magpie has a house full of glittery things that hes stolen and an unlikely heart of gold. He is desperate to steal the sparkling star from the top of a local Christmas tree and enlists Robins help in his endeavour.

What else has Richard E Grant been in? One of the nations most popular actors, Grants most famous roles include the title character in cult comedy film Withnail and I and his Academy Award-nominated turn as Jack Hock in Can You Ever Forgive Me?. Other film credits include How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Hudson Hawk, The Player, Bram Stokers Dracula, The Age of Innocence, Spice World, Gosford Park, The Iron Lady, Logan, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Everybodys Talking About Jamie.

Who is Dink? Dink is the youngest member of the mouse family with whom Robin has grown up.

What else has Amira Macey-Micahel been in? Macey-Michaels only other credit is in the film Out of Orbit.

Robin Robin will be available on Netflix from 24th November check out our guide to thebest TV series on Netflixandbest movies on Netflix, or take a look at ourTV Guide. Visit ourMovies hub for more news and features.

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Meet the voice cast of Robin Robin - Radio Times

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Theres a long-standing conundrum in ecology called the paradox of the plankton. Famously articulated by ecologist George Evelyn Hutchinson in 1961, the paradox explores how odd it is that there are thousands of species of phytoplankton in the upper reaches of the ocean. The top few meters of water are basically a well-mixed soup, meaning all of these species of phytoplankton are relying on the same nutrients. The theory of competitive exclusion says that one of these species ought to be a little stronger, and should out-compete the rest. But none has. Why?

Hutchinson published the paradox at the height of the Cold War, when the air was thick with debates over the values of competition and the sharing of resources. Ecological thinking was itself dominated by the idea that competition drives some species to thrive and others to go extinct. But Hutchinson saw this way of thinking as an oversimplification, and he held up phytoplankton as an example of how there must be additional forces shaping biodiversity.

Over the past few decades, ecologists have suggested many explanations for why multiple phytoplankton species persist, including the effects of rapid environmental shifts, the existence of species codependencies, the uneven distributions of phytoplankton species, and the fact that some phytoplankton release toxins that may give them an edge over the competition. But a new study by Oregon State University ecologist Michael Behrenfeld and his colleagues seeks to solve the dilemma by taking a different perspective: the planktons.

Phytoplankton are so small, and the distances between them so vastfrom their perspectivethat its likely phytoplankton arent competing at all, says Behrenfeld. If you imagine that a phytoplankton is roughly the size of a trees rootball, he says, the next nearest phytoplankton would be kilometers away.

A phytoplanktons small size also means that it experiences water as a thick substance, perhaps akin to how honey feels to us. When an individual phytoplankton moves, a layer of water called the boundary layer moves with it. This means that phytoplankton spend most of their time firmly separated from each other.

When you think of it that way, its like, well, how can phytoplankton that are that physically distant actually directly compete with each other? says Behrenfeld.

Inspired by this insight, Behrenfeld decided to model phytoplankton biodiversity using an approach called neutral theory. Rather than modeling the ecosystem dynamics as competition fueled, this framework says that a community only loses species when, by chance, too many members die at the same time, and only gains species when they immigrate or when genetic mutations create them anew.

For about a thimbleful of water, neutral theory worked greatthe number of species Behrenfelds model predicted to be present was around what scientists have observed in at-sea surveys. But when he scaled the model up to represent a larger body of water, a crack began to form.

We have to remember that the water is being mixed continuously, Behrenfeld says. In a world dictated by neutral theory, phytoplankton would have to die at an unreasonable rate to make room for all of the new plankton coming in from other parts of the ocean. Instead of explaining why there is more than one phytoplankton species, Behrenfelds neutral theory-based model predicted that there should actually be an astronomical number of phytoplankton species.

So Behrenfeld and his colleagues considered other forces that could limit the number of plankton species even in a competition-free utopia, such as how attractive phytoplankton are to predators, how fast they reproduce, and how asexual reproduction affects genetic variation within a species. Their work paid offadding these elements to their model gave them close to the same number of species that scientists have observed in the ocean.

Nick Record, a computational ecologist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, says Behrenfelds results highlight how the oceans constant churning forces scientists to come up with new ways of thinking about relationships between species. Marine systems are really different from those on land, he says. And they behave in these really different ways.

Yet Record has a different take on the paradox of the plankton. Its not really a paradox to be solved, Record says. Its part of a narrative.

Rather than assuming that some solutions are right while others are wrong, Record thinks that all proposed solutions to the paradox point to a bigger truth about marine ecosystemsthat they are complex enough that ecologists may never find a one-size-fits-all model to describe how they function.

Perhaps the next 60 years will see just as many proposed solutions to the paradox as the last. And maybe thats exactly how it should be when it comes to a good paradox.

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Why Are There So Many Kinds of Phytoplankton? - Hakai Magazine

Madeline Hollander, Review, 2021, Performa Commission for the Performa 2021 Biennial. From left: Ashley Hill, Jodi Melnick, Frances Samson, Savannah Spratt, MeghanManning, Michael Greenberg, Megan LeCrone, Eloise Deluca, Olivia Boisson, Miriam Miller, Alexa De Barr (far back) Kevin Zambrano, Lauren Newman, Misha Culver. Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk, courtesy of Performa.

STRANGE THAT IT'S BEENyears since I last saw live performance. But everyone was exclaiming this now-familiar platitude as they busily embraced on the sidewalk at the intersection of Rivington and Orchard the past October, during the collective reunion which took as its backdrop and pretext Kevin Beasleys The Sound of Morning. The first of eight commissions realized for this years Performa Biennial, the performance began almost unnoticeably. One of Beasleys collaborators flung a deflated basketball into the air; another began methodically disassembling a black metal barrier that had been provisionally erected on the sidewalk. (By the end of the hour-and-a-half event, the gates beams were piled up like flotsam in the middle of the street, a makeshift stage on which the performers assembled, posed, read, etc.). Another performer dragged a loose bike rack here and there. Ten in all were enfolded, at first unrecognizably, in the ambulating audience, their activities initially so fragmented and dispersed, so quotidian and unremarkable, as to warrant the question: Is anything going on?

You could lose them, Beasley said about the dancers in this work, which put pressure on some familiar but still productive questionsof presence and embodiment in the urban landscape, and what passes as noticeablewhile inversely drawing attention to the perverse spectacularization of these dynamics. (Note how many iPhones were brandished throughout the proceedings, snapping photos and videos of the performers). At one corner of the intersection, Beasley and his team mixed sounds picked up from contact mics secured to a crushed plastic bottle, newspaper broadsides, collapsed cardboard boxes, or clasped in the performers hands. As the sun began to set, the energy began to feel anarchic, the sound rawer, the audience more diffuse and less immediately identifiable (after all, it was an early weekend evening in the LES). When the performers and spectators walked off into the night, I was left with a lingering ambivalence toward this works provisional offering: that a routine-puncturing event was no sooner recognized than it was returned to the ambient texture of the city; that bodies had appeared in all their singularity and collective assembly one moment only to disappear again the next; that what is palpable could just as quickly become untraceable, like that fleeting sound produced by steel scraping against concrete.

Starkly different in style was the next piece on view: Sara Cwynars Down at the Arcade, which also took attention as its subject, though this time via an ever-growing cache of images, texts, objects, and artifacts that form the expanded imaginary of this kitsch encyclopedists maximalist archive. Produced in the former fast-fashion Topshop flagship on Fifth Avenue (one of the many vacated commercial buildings in Midtown), Down at the Arcade reimagined the photographers studio as a set for a three-act rumination on archival excess, digital economies, and the bewildering endeavor of locating desire, the real, and the self (if these categories even still apply) within an industry of simulacral perceptual experiences. A conveyor belt supplied a steady stream of objects selected to illustrate a lecture, delivered by Cwynars frequent collaborator Paul Cooper in a soothing voiceover with the artist regularly chiming in, while a performer manipulated the scattered elements on set. Multiple cameras framed and live-streamed the continuous deluge of content, instantly remediating what appeared on set into a packaged, prosumer montage.

Other commissions, Danielle Deans Amazon (Proxy) and Ericka Beckmans STALK, took on allegorical dimensions. Deans production at the new Bushwick art complex, Amant, invoked Fordlandiathe Detroit automobile industrialists short-lived 1920s rubber plantation in the Brazilian rainforesttelescoping it through the contemporary lens of Amazons Mechanical Turk (AMT) platform, through which companies can crowdsource remote human labor to harvest data for AI optimization. (Instead of extracting rubber, were extracting human emotions, the actors intoned.) Amid idyllic, pastoral decor, four performers (Proxies) reenacted conversations with Turkers, with whom Dean communicated over several months to collect testimonies about their experiences; these played on two monitors and informed part of the script, which details the kinds of surveys AMTs complete daily, probing their perceptual responses, emotional states, and moral orientations. Fords extractive capitalist utopia was a failure, collapsing in 1934 after workers rebelledan ending echoed here as the jungles climate compromises the ill-adapted corporate settlements operations, and as the Proxies mount an uprising to protest working conditions. Deans conflation of these contexts in Amazon rehearses critiques of post-Fordism and its injunction to perform soft skills (read: be flexible, motivated, communicative, competitive, resourceful, and so forth), showing the pernicious effects of these qualities as they become compulsorynow more than everin decentralized, virtual, and alienating labor contexts. Beckman, for her part, presented STALK at Brooklyn Bridge Park, her first off-camera performance. Refashioning the fairytale of Jack and the Beanstalk as a critique of capitalism, financialization, and climate destruction, with a pun on stalks/stocks (and the lower Manhattan skyline as a backdrop to bring the point home), Beckman transposed her signature profilmic performance to a live setting, with slightly asynchronous visual and sonic tracks underscoring the farmers-cum-investors task-based, mechanized repetition of phrases and actions. The result was uneven, but the sight of an aerial gymnast climbing a taught rope as if she were scaling the skyscrapers in the distance was impressive.

The most arresting moments in this years biennial were also the most evanescentthe ones that interrupted performances recent, long disappearing act by transforming that absence into a capacious and expressive presence (call me sentimental). Take Shikeiths notes toward becoming a spill, staged to overlook the Atlantic Ocean from Rockaway Beach. A gospel choir flanked an illuminated platform, giving breath to the ecstatic and vital choreography of four dancers, clad in diaphanous mesh costumes in various hues of blue that echoed the shifting luminosity of the sea and the sky. Shikeiths moving work, which continues his ongoing study of blue spaces, boundlessness, and contemporary Black queer identity, metaphorized diasporic longing, ancestral histories, and the ocean as a site of loss and refuge. At the golden hour, the choir repeated We wont rest until were free. When the performance closed, the cast walked down to the waterfront, turning its back on a rapt audience for a minute of silence. In another vein, Madeline Hollanders Review paid homage to the many performances canceled, postponed, or curtailed by the pandemic, bringing together twenty-four dancers from several New York-based companies to embody everything we missed. On one of falls first crisp nights, with the audience seated on either side of the LESs empty Hamilton Fish public pool, dancers marked their motions in the choreographic short-hand used in rehearsals to preserve energy. Dancers conjoined into solos, duos, and trios in this manifold collection of repertoires, producing a dialogue of echoes, affinities, and unlikely counterpoints. After each finished their sequence, they bowed, and returned to their stations behind a tall spotlight, which they promptly turned off, leaving the stage dark. They bowed over and over again in their own idiosyncratic styles, marking a continuous cycle of beginning and ending. After two yearsamidst the pandemic, between biennialsthat have felt like a rehearsal for a future perpetually delayed, this show of endurance in practice was welcome. As in Shikeiths gripping closing act, the abundant applause that followed spilled out, evaporating into the air.

Rachel Valinsky

The 2021 Performa Biennialtook place in New York City from October 1630.

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Rachel Valinsky on the 2021 Performa Biennial - Artforum

Just like they push the boundaries of what can be considered music, artists within the realm of ambient and drone music tend to make interesting forays into complex subject matters, attacking concepts in ways that genres more tied to song structure and cadence cannot. Incoherency and unpredictability actually work in the music's favor in this case, authentically rendering the chaos of existence. Pseudodoxia and The Sun and the Mirror bend this to their advantage on their new split The Eerie and Radiant Doorless Rooms of Pain, exploring the concept of memory and the need to live in the moment, respectively. Both these ideas hinge on abandoning a traditional start-to-finish flowin Pseudodoxia's case, due to the inherent unreliability of our recollection, while The Sun and the Mirror suggest that what's to come is immaterial compared to the present. Though they take vastly different sonic approaches, the two halves of the split rely on drawn-out, engrossing soundscapes that interweave ambient and drone-doom musings, offering flashes of intensity and tension that are best experienced without any thought to what comes next. Skip all the guessing and just absorb each moment as it arriveslisten to the split now with our full stream here.

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We last heard from The Sun and the Mirror earlier this year when they released their debut full-length Dissolution to Sun and Bone [interview here]. Their merger of powerful doom and gripping ambient textures is in full effect here, though it's cast in a different light: while the harsher tones and angrier edges on that album fit its themes of grief and resolution, on The Eerie and Radiant Doorless Rooms of Pain the duo opt for an intimate and almost reassuring sense of up-close doom. Clean vocals and cello textures add an organic warmth to the gloomy riffs, reaching out to the heart even as the rumbling bass and blown-out snare threaten your speakers' livelihood.

This warmth serves as a vital contrast to Pseudodoxia, who craft the first half of the split from bleak, inhuman raw materials. Relying on a sort of corrupted musique concrte, angry synthesizers thrum atop muffled, dour backing riffs (there's no telling what instrument is creating them) and confoundingly distorted vocals. The 'doom' region of their ambient-doom-drone continuum is no less fractured, pitting discordant leads against moody vocals as drums thrash almost arrhythmically behind it all. It's jarring and often rather uncomfortable, but due to this, all the weirdness has a habit of aligning into unpredictably excellent moments. This new group consists of members of Feed Them Death and LaColpa (the latter having crafted one of the scarier records I listened to last year), so this fusing of twisted, avant-garde minds has borne exactly the hideous fruit one could hope for.

United, at least broadly, by the idea of 'now' mattering more than anything else, the two halves of The Eerie and Radiant Doorless Rooms of Pain actually do create a narrative, or at least a journey: Psuedodoxia erodes the listener's need for structure and The Sun and the Mirror then contemplates this change in perspective. It's not really a good thing that we can't trust our memories, or that our hopes for the future can destroy our present, but this is doom metal (in part)diving into sad truths is a reward in itself.

Psuedodoxia comments:

Pseudodoxia is interested in exploring the notion of memory - its unreliability and the transitoriety of our knowledge and understanding of it.

The intention from the get go was to treat our music like the aural version of a book by W.G. Sebald, therefore stylistically exploring the option of a narrative that is ultimately incohesive and yet able to tell a story through multiple fragments of memory. The layers comprising our soundscapes are juxtaposed fluidly rather forced into cohesion for conscious interpretation, and so our songs titles are all acronyms - debris of logic rearranged to represent the unthinkable.

The Sun and the Mirror comments:

The Relinquishment of Hope is a meditation on the life denying temptation of escapism, the longing for utopia and salvation that keeps us from experiencing each moment fully, whether that be joy or immense sorrow and pain. It is about letting go of the impulse to wait for life to begin when things are better. It is a full acceptance that utopia may never come, that we have to live fully while were alive, through fortunate circumstances as well as tragedy and unmitigated disaster.

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The Eerie and Radiant Doorless Rooms of Pain releases on November 26th via Brucia Records.

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There Is No Entry or Exit to The Eerie and Radiant Doorless Rooms of Pain (Split Premiere) - Invisible Oranges

Winters can sometimes be really harsh and hard to get through, especially if you are someone who is always cold and cannot bear even the slightest drop in the surrounding temperatures. However, if you have the right resources at your disposal that will help you stay warm and cosy, you can get through even the harshest winters. This is exactly what an electric blanket aims at doing. By providing the right heat and warmth, an electric blanket helps to keep you and your bed warm which can not only help you stay warm in cold weather but also help to relieve stress by inducing a relaxing effect. Read below to know more about some of the best electric blankets available on Amazon which you can buy to keep yourself warm and cosy!

When looking for a new convenient method of keeping yourself warm through the winters, which can prove to be much more efficient at a much lesser cost than the heaters and radiators, you cannot go wrong with this Expressions EXPLORAR04DB electric bed warmer. It keeps your bed warm with dual controls that are uniquely designed to fit the comfort of two people sharing the bed. How annoying does it get when your bed partner is always warm while you are always cold or vice versa? With this electric blanket, you do not have to worry about that as it allows you to customise the warmth according to each of your needs. The soothing heat and warmth also help to relax your muscles and relieve stress and pain after a long tiring day. The electric blanket works at a low wattage to ensure complete safety.

The Utopia Bedding single bed electric bed warmer comes with a 100% waterproof design which enables it to sustain an occasional splash of water without malfunctioning or getting damaged. With the durable yet soft design, it lets you take the control of your warmth and comfort into your hands. This Utopia electric blanket can also be used to warm up your bed before getting into it, which means you no longer have to worry about having to sleep in a cold bed. You can also leave the under blanket switched on all night without any safety concerns and enjoy a warm and comfortable sleep all night long.

This GoHome double bed heating ELECTRIC-POLARDOUBLERUST blanket ensures maximum comfort and safety by using the auto cut off feature which gives you complete overheat protection by switching the supply off if the temperature crosses the optimum limit. With its two heat settings, you get total control of your comfort by customising the heat according to your needs. The quick heat-up feature gets your electric blanket ready in no time for you to snuggle up and get warm and comfortable in your bed. The 100% polyester design makes for a durable yet soft fabric to provide you with ultimate comfort.

This woollen electric blanket from Odessey products uses a low wattage technology that works towards heating up the blanket at a low watt power to ensure complete safety. The woollen fabric adds to your comfort and warmth which makes it a great choice for staying cosy even in the harshest winters. Heat therapy works wonders in relieving stress and pain from your sore muscles, this is why the electric blanket is also very useful in case of body aches, muscle pains or arthritis for relaxing your muscles and inducing a comfortable sleep so you feel refreshed and rested when you wake up.

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Best electric blankets to keep you warm and cozy on Amazon India - Digit

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CP Photo: Jared Wickerham

Chrome Cable poses for a portrait in the Strip District on Fri., Nov. 12, 2021.

And its truly been a family affair.

UTOPIA as a project is also an endeavor of McCloskeys production team and creative agency, Hounds, that he started with his brother, Clay, in 2018. Hounds does everything from design and branding to consultations and photo and video work. McCloskey says that he wanted his debut album to be, in part, a showcase of what Hounds can do.

I just wanted it to feel kind of out of this world, I wanted it to be larger than life. I wanted it to be an overall experience, he says about his album. I wanted to feel like I was from another world. I use the 412th dimension a lot, too with Pittsburgh. That's supposed to be the other world of Pittsburgh in my mind.

UTOPIA is a 14-track album that comes in at under 40 minutes, and it definitely succeeds in achieving that out of this world feeling. The tracks blend seamlessly together and whether McCloskey is rapping or singing, his vocals are smooth and balanced.

McCloskey produced, engineered, and wrote all the songs on the album. He was essentially a one-man production team, with the exception of one collaborator: popular local hip-hop artist Mars Jackson, who is featured on the song Energy. The track is definitely a stand-out, with an old school hip-hop and R&B feel.

It's stressful, very stressful, but its fun though because you get to choose, you get to do everything the way that you want to at your own time, says McCloskey. You don't have to worry about, let's say, bothering someone or having to pay someone for something you know? I love collaboration, but I wanted to see if I could do this myself.

McCloskey says he has been making music seriously for the past four or five years, but got his true start in the industry about seven years ago. Chrome Cable has steadily released singles since 2019, including his 2020 single Mother Earth which a Pittsburgh City Paper article described as singing sweet nothings to the planet like one would to a loved one.

Taking four years to put out his first full-length album might seem like a long time for some, but McCloskey says he wanted this project to be something he was fully proud of.

It was something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I've been kind of low key about making music and just getting out there because I wanted to get to the point where I was comfortable with everything I was doing. I wanted to make sure that I found my sound and I didn't want to, for lack of better words, half-ass anything, he says. I wanted to be sure when I put something out there, especially as a full album, I knew I wanted to impress people. Especially since I do all my production to engineering and then obviously all the writing and recording as well. I wanted to make sure that it was good enough.

CP Photo: Jared Wickerham

Cole McCloskey aka Chrome Cable

UTOPIA isnt an album that youll hear played at one of the many dance nights in Pittsburgh. It's not necessarily a club listen, its more of a project that youll put on when hanging out with friends, going for a drive, or chilling by yourself when you want to listen to something with some balance.

The album has already seen a lot of support from fans, but whether hes getting praise or criticism, McCloskey says he is grateful that he isnt surrounded by yes men who tell him everything is perfect and great.

Utopia is this place where it's your highest high, but you don't want to get lost in that utopia. You want to have that balance of reality and that utopia. So you want to be able to balance it out, so you're not doing the wrong things, making the wrong moves, he says. You may not be paying attention to what's really going on in real life, but it's not all bad things, too, you know. There's a lot of good things when it comes to your utopia. When you have that balance, that's when you can find the truth.

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Chrome Cable releases new out of this world album, Utopia - PGH City Paper

Mega-gallery David Zwirner is growing again.Today, it unveiled Utopia Editions, a new publisher of original prints by contemporary artists. It will be overseen by Elleree Erdos, who joined the gallery in August as director of prints and multiples.

One offer right out of the gate are three new print editions by Marcel Dzama, each in an edition of 75, priced at $2,500 each. The works are titled: Under for opening eyelids of the moon; The flowers of indulgence; and And now we have Mother Nature on the run. The works are lithographs thatwere made by master printer Maurice Sanchez of Derriere LEtoile Studios in Queens, in collaboration with the artist. All three are currently available on platformart.com.

Next up, Utopia Editions will release lithographs by Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy on December 8, and a silkscreen edition by Ebecho Muslimova in early 2022. Additional artists to release prints include Katherine Bernhardt, Cy Gavin, Raymond Pettibon, Cynthia Talmadge, and Luc Tuymans, and others.

Marcel Dzama, Under for opening eyelids of the moon, (2021). Marcel Dzama. Image courtesy the artist and Utopia Editions.

Asked about the impetus for the new initiative, gallery founder David Zwirner told Artnet News via email that,once the gallery launched Platform in 2020, right after the lockdown kicked in, I saw how quickly our client base was growing, I realized that our publishing avenue needed to be developed further.

Zwirner added that from the time he first opened the gallery, he wanted to be a publisher as well as an art dealer. His first job in the art world was working for Brooke Alexander Editions. I started there in 1990. I was in charge of the production of prints and multiples, where we worked with artists like Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, John Baldessari, to name just a few. At that point, I fell in love with the medium and the endless possibilities for expression as artists collaborated with master printmakers.

Though he initially undertook print projects with artists like Raymond Pettibon and Chris Ofili, he says that the realities of running my growing gallery kept me busy.

However, once the gallery started establishing itself in the online world in early 2017, Zwirner says he reconnected with his interest in fine art prints and embarked on successful projects with Lisa Yuskavage, Neo Rauch, Alice Neel, Josh Smith, and others, offering their prints through davidzwirner.com. We were excited to see that our activities reached a different kind of collector, looking for great art at a lower price point. Young collectors who were just getting started responded immediately, as did seasoned collectors, he added.

Following the launch of Platform last year,I started to look for somebody to lead our efforts establishing the new publishing house at our gallery and was fortunate to find Elleree Erdos, Zwirner said. Her deep knowledge and expertise in the world of prints allows us to establish Utopia Editions with a leader at the helm.

Marcel Dzama with one of three new prints produced with Utopia Editions. Image courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery.

Asked about pricing for the various editions, Erdos explained that it will be set by a group of gallery directors, including herself, in collaboration with the artists who are making them. We will also be publishing prints with artists outside of the David Zwirner roster, so these prices will be decided by those artists and their galleries.

In general though, Erdosnoted, pricing will depend on a combination of factors such as edition size, physical size of the print, and the printing technique or techniques used.

Of the work being released today, Dzama said: I love the tradition of printmaking, how it changed the world and the ability to make multiples but still be an original work. Some of my favorite works of art were prints made by Drer and Goya. This series of work was made during this monumental time of change in the world with the pandemic, tyrannical leaders, and destructive climate change. These works have a bit of an escape in mind but also knowledge that a threat is at our doorstep.

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Building on the Appeal of Lower-Priced Online Sales, Zwirner Launches an Editions Company to Publish Artists Prints - artnet News

As most European monarchies made way for constitutional democracy, Russia remained under autocratic rule. Unable to raise their voice in congress, Russian thinkers relied on pen, paper, and printing presses to figure out how society could be improved. Their combined efforts gave way to what literary scholars now refer to as sociological literature. Books from this period were rarely written simply to entertain; they diagnosed social problems and attempted to formulate viable solutions.

The first step in this process was by far the easiest. Compared to Europe and the (still infantile) United States, Russias form of government was considered inapt and outdated. Power was vested in a single individual, the selection of whom was based not on skill but blood. Russians were divided between a small group of obscenely rich nobles and a disproportionally large group of have-nots. Prior to the emancipation of 1861, many of these have-nots were kept as serfs and deprived of basic human rights.

But while virtually every Russian thinker agreed that their country was in desperate need of change, they all came up with different, often conflicting solutions. In his article, A Clash of Utopias, professor of Russian and Slavic studies Hugh McLean proves as much when he compares the utopian pictures painted by two equally influential Russians: author Leo Tolstoy and political activist Maxim Gorky. The insurmountable contrasts between their visions explain Russias stunted development and hint at its destructive future.

McLeans inquiry into Tolstoys vision of utopia begins with a truth which many scholars before him had already acknowledged, that the authors critical powers, his capacity for discerning flaws in the reasoning of others, were infinitely greater than his ability to construct positive systems on his own. Tolstoy wrote multiple books and hundreds of essays on societys discontents from substance abuse to systemic poverty but often failed to find compelling answers to the questions that he asked.

Though Tolstoy had always been interested in big questions, his writing did not become overtly utopian until later on in his career. Works from this period which include the essays A Confession and The Kingdom of God is Within You, as well as Tolstoys last true novel, Resurrection are characterized by their didactic style and Christian themes. Pulled out of depression by a religious reawakening, the writer settled on non-violence as the only viable path to peace and justice.

Believing that all people were inherently good, Tolstoy blamed virtually all evil on civilization and its corrupting institutions. While he thought himself deeply religious, he refused to be labeled as such. Rejecting organized religion and the saint-like figures these organizations were built upon, the author interpreted God as a symbolic expression of love and argued that a utopia could be created the moment every man, woman, and child on the planet began to trust in this basic human impulse.

From a socioeconomic standpoint, Tolstoys utopia could only be realized through devolution rather than evolution. If every person on Earth loved unconditionally, there would not be a need for borders, nor armies to protect them. Cities would dissolve as their inhabitants dismantled the institutions which Tolstoy deemed unnecessary or unacceptable. They would then reorganize themselves in the countryside, where they would work the farm, engage in communal activity, and devote themselves to matters of spiritual improvement.

Though widely known and read inside Russia, Maxim Gorky never approached Tolstoys level of international renown. As such, his person might require a more substantial introduction. Born in 1868, Gorky began his career writing sociologically minded short stories. He was one of few authors to play an active role in the Russian Revolution, becoming an ally of and adviser to the learned Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik government.

Gorky not only had a radically different vision of utopia than Tolstoy, but he also argued for different means by which that vision should be realized. Arguing that Russias deeply religious working class had been passive long enough, he agreed with Lenin that the status quo had to be destroyed, even if doing so meant resorting to violence. Considering landlords and nobles had frequently used the threat of force to stay in power, Gorky had no problem fighting fire with fire.

In true socialist fashion, Gorky also took issue with Tolstoys notion that utopia was best achieved through self-improvement. To him, such an argument would make sense only if every man was born with an equal amount of opportunity, which in 19th century Russia was definitely not the case. Though he agreed with Tolstoy that many social institutions were corrupt and dysfunctional, he still believed these institutions could be improved.

In an article published in 1909 titled The Destruction of Personality, Gorky called Tolstoy and his contemporary Fyodor Dostoevsky the greatest geniuses of a land of slaves () With one voice they cry out Endure () Resist not evil by violence. I do not know in Russian history a more painful moment than this, I do not know a slogan more offensive to a person who has already proclaimed his capacity to resist evil and to fight for his goal.

Gorkys vision of utopia was, as McLean puts it, the standard socialist one espoused by so many intellectuals in Russia. It was a world in which the means of production belonged to the workers instead of their employers, where private property was largely abolished, where governmental decisions were made via popular vote or by representatives who took the interest of the masses to heart, and where education would be reinvented to impart students with an irrevocable sense of social responsibility.

At the same time, Gorky was unique in that he did not fall prey to the kind of factionalism that divided socialist parties across Russia at the time. Before the Bolsheviks established their one-party state, Russia did indeed know dozens upon dozens of socialist organizations, each touting their own interpretation of the work of Karl Marx. Understanding that all socialists worked toward a common goal and differed only in the means used to achieve said goal, Gorky emphasized unification through civilized dialog.

However, of all brands of socialism, Gorky seemed to have liked Bolshevism the best. In the years leading up to the revolution, the writer made significant financial donations to the struggling party and even organized meetings at his home to turn working men and women into class-conscious revolutionaries. He also played a crucial role in the partys God-building campaign, which sought to figure out how the Bolsheviks could inspire the same kind of faith in their regime as the Russian Orthodox Church had done.

A classically trained intellectual first and a communist activist second, Gorkys personal upbringing soon drove a wedge between him and other Bolsheviks. Where Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin envisioned the communist state as a completely new, non-Western form of government, Gorky was never quite able to shake his admiration for European countries, which he not without bias considered the peak of human civilization and the ultimate destination of Russias political makeover.

Just as Gorky pointed out the flaws in Tolstoys worldview, so too did Tolstoy albeit unconsciously and indirectly point out the flaws in Gorkys. Though the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina never outlined Russias authoritarian future in quite as much detail as did Dostoevsky in his novella Notes from Underground, Tolstoy still understood the emotions that led to the Soviet Unions blood-soaked birth as well as its slow and painful downfall.

Tolstoy knew that, for a socialist utopia to actually work, its citizens could not be coerced into cooperation. For such an experiment to succeed, participants would have to experience a personal revelation and participate out of their own volition. Looking back at the millions of Soviet citizens who died of starvation, war, and persecution, there can be no denying that the cost of maintaining Lenins government far exceeded the regimes benefits.

But while Tolstoys approach is undoubtedly better in theory, it is also impractical and even a little nave. For instance, though the writer waxed poetically about the power of love, McLean struggles to find epistemological evidence for his hypotheses. Tolstoy found the law inscribed in his own heart, he wrote, and therefore concluded that it must be there in all of us. By emphasizing introspection, Tolstoy understated the significance of social change, and his economic theory represents an incomplete and, consequently, useless blueprint.

Rather than simply criticizing Russian intellectuals for the devastation their disagreements have caused, however, we must also show appreciation for the earnestness with which these individuals tackled the problems that affected their society. Many of them were willing and able to stand up for what they believed in even if this meant being ostracized, imprisoned, or killed. Though their writings did not protect Russia during the 20th century, hopefully they will guide human development moving forward.

See the rest here:

Tolstoy vs. Gorky: a war of Russian intellectuals over utopia - Big Think

Editor's note: This story is part of Smart Cities Dive's "Reassessing the smart cities movement" multipart series, which provides a look into the past, present and future of the space.

In 1982, Walt Disney World officials officially opened Epcot Center, inspired by Walt Disneys plan for a utopia that would "never be completed, but will always be introducing, and testing, and demonstrating new materials and new systems." Although the Florida attraction was not necessarily a utopian city, the parks Future World pavilion marked by an iconic geodesic dome was meant to show off new technology and visions of the future.

Today in nearby Orlando, Mayor Buddy Dyer wants his city to take a similar forward-looking perspective, to become what he calls "Americas premier future-ready city." In September,the city moved toward that vision in announcing the early steps of a plan to bring flying cars to Orlando skies a technology that not even Disney could bring to Epcot.

"We know this technology is going to come, and we want to have the best framework in place when it does,"said Jacques Coulon, transportation planning projects coordinator for the city of Orlando. "We know that simply expanding roads and highways isnt going to get us to the quality of life we want, so we have to think about new opportunities."

Througha forthcoming Advanced Air Mobility Transportation Plan, Orlando officials will partner with engineering firm VHB and NASA to consider how air taxis could fit into the citys future. Orlando is also one of five entities and the only city partnering with NASA on a series of air mobility workshops.

Flying cars, air taxis or aircraft with electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOLs)are still,even by optimistic estimates, years away from ferrying riders. But Orlandos forward-looking approach reflects a reality for smart cities: Departments used to dealing with roads and trains mightsoon have to think about mobility solutions that seem like theyre out of The Jetsons.

While transportation departments have always worked on long-range plans to adequately prepare for multi-year construction projects, some governments are thinking even further ahead.

Miamis 2045 Long Range Transportation Plan, first released in 2019,includes language on connected and autonomous vehicles, maglev trains, hyperloops and delivery drones. The Texas Transportation Plan 2050,adopted last year,recognizes that technology is being adopted at a faster pace than ever before and weighs a variety of future scenarios with different levels of technology, stating that "as Texans embrace new technologies, behavioral patterns for transportation use will likely change."Pittsburgh even released a planthis year that looks out to 2070.

The world of transportation has changed dramatically even in just the last decade. Considering the ride-hailing revolution powered by Uber and Lyft, or the fleets of scooters and e-bikes dropped on city sidewalks, urban transportation departments have had to adapt quickly. Kersten Heineke, head of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility in Europe, said cities should be evaluating recent developments in mobility offerings in technology and think about becoming a pilot city to help shape the application of technology.

In an email, Heineke said there are "two main risks"for cities not preparing for new tools. "With previous technologies and services, cities who did not proactively co-shape with players had to 'overcorrect'by issuing ... bans for certain services or vehicles," Heineke wrote. He added that unprepared cities will be the last to reap the full benefits of the new technology.

For Orlando, that means preparing for urban air mobility by envisioning a network of landing pads for eVTOLvehicles. Those vehicles may be closer to launchingthan many people think:Californias Joby Aviationsays it has completed more than 1,000 test flights of an eVTOL vehicle, including a 154-mile flight it says is the longest for any eVTOL, and it has started the process to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration with an eye on beginning commercial operations in 2024.Uber and Boeing are developing flying vehicles as well.

A report this year from Deloitte and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) found that urban air mobility could be worth $115 billion by 2035.

Several cities are hoping to capture a share of that market and take advantage of the opportunity to move people around downtown corridors without adding any congestion on existing roads.Los Angeles announced in 2020 its Urban Air Mobility Partnership to educate and engage residents and policymakers in the technology. Houston has been a hub for Ubers flying taxitesting. In Miami, the newly constructed Paramount Miami World Center, which developers call Americas City-within-the-City of the Future,has a takeoff and landing port, and other new construction will include similar "SkyPorts."

Orlandos Coulon said that early work can ensure that any new technology meets the citys goals of sustainability and equity, rather than just chasing something new. Rather than dump money into an initiative that may just serve a niche market, Coulon said Orlando is thinking about "making this a way to get around that provides opportunities and growth."

"Were not going to repeat the mistakes of the past," he said. "When we think about placement, we are looking at how to do this without negatively impacting one neighborhood over another, not displacing anyone, but creating the best service for as many residents as possible."

Pittsburgh looked a half-century into the future with the PGH 2070 Mobility Vision Planit released in September. That document is based on historic transportation data and community input and considers a range of new modes, from waterborne transit to gondolas to high-speed trains running to Chicago and Washington, D.C. Completing this kind of long-range planning is necessary, said Kim Lucas, acting director of Pittsburgh's Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, to "lay the foundation for the more complex and challenging things that could come."

Of particular importance, Lucas said, was thinking about hubs for multimodal trips, like a central station that could handle high-speed rail and hyperloop trips and connect to intracity modes. The "living document" lays out the citys broad priorities and can adapt as new modes, public or private, emerge. But she added that Pittsburgh, which has been aggressive on smart city technology for years, was in the right position to think about 2070.

"Pittsburgh has the secret sauce that can get us a 50-year plan before a lot of other cities," Lucas said. "When leadership is receptive and we have a talent pool, this is a good environment for new technologies."

Similarly, Miamis 2045 plan envisions a city where people zip around on high-speed trains, navigate via air taxis and rely on autonomous and connected vehicles on the roads.Eulois Cleckley, CEO of the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works, said that reflects the "entrepreneurial and innovative nature of the city and county."

"Were not looking to replace anything, its supplementing what we already have and using new technology to fill in the gaps," he said. "You need both of those together, and ultimately you have the fabric of a mobility system that provides more access for more modes."

But certain advocates say that such a forward-looking vision can sometimes ignore the day-to-day needs of commuters. Kevin Amzaga, president of the Miami Riders Alliance, said a plethora of long-range plans for the region have led to a form of "analysis paralysis."

"We put things off for so long that new technologies come along that we think are going to solve everything," Amzaga said. He pointed to the countys plans to build a monorail between Miami and Miami Beach, despite a previous study that showed that extending the existing Metromover transit service might generate more ridership. Building a new line, he said, would require riders to potentially switch modes if they are making longer trips, tacking on to what he called a "fragmented" rail network.

"It can seem like Miami prioritizes ribbon cuttings over moving people in an efficient way,"Amzaga said.

Cleckley said the monorail system is part of a voter-approved planning process that dates back nearly 20 years and will "create this connection that has been needed for some time."

The tension between the desire to be on top of new technology and meet today's less-sexy needs can be a struggle for some agencies, said Alisyn Malek, executive director of the Coalition for Reimagined Mobility, a project of Securing Americas Future Energy.

"City leaders should really be thinking about the entire system,"Malek said. "That way, whether its aerial mobility or teleportation, they can understand what modes solve what challenges, and it becomes easier to fill in the gaps."

That can also prepare cities for the inevitable delays in bringing new technology to market, whether its setbacks in permitting, approval or consumer acceptance.

For years, automakers and tech companies had promised that autonomous vehicles would be widespread by 2020, but self-driving taxi networks are still in trial stages. Still, cities that have worked on autonomous technology have managed to attract some pilot projects,and they say they are well set up for the proliferation of the cars. Other governments have backed away from ambitious projects; Colorado in 2019 ended a partnership with Virgin Hyperloop One that was exploring a 360-mile route for a train that could travel 600 miles per hour, saying its transportation department would instead focus on buses and light rail.

Even the $1.1 trillion infrastructure billthat President Joe Biden signed into law on Monday dedicates $110 billion to highways, roads and bridges, a sign of the needs of the transportation system of the past even as it laid out $500 million for new smart cities technology.

Malek said that transportation departments thinking about new technology have the opportunity to take a systems-level look that focuses on moving people in the most efficient way possible."The thing that gets me excited is the blurring of the lines," Malek said. "We have a chance to leverage these changes and think about how we align funding to give better transportation options to people."

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Flying taxis, hyperloops and driverless cars: Is it too early to start planning for future mobility? - Smart Cities Dive

Express News Service

At its core, Akash Kapurs latest book is about the eternal human desire for utopia and the cruelty that accompanies it. In early 2004, the author moved with his wife, Auralice Graft, from New York to Auroville. For the couple who grew up in Auroville, the move represented a step back into the past. Grafts mother, Diane Maes, and adopted father, John Walker, had both died in Auroville when she was 14. The deaths remained shrouded tragedies, and it wasnt clear what happened.

An intelligent, privileged scion of a wealthy American family, Walker left his life of luxury and chose one of an asceticcomplete with austerity and self abnegation. Maes was a beautiful, spiritually inclined dropout from Belgium. As Kapur narrates the detailed story of their lives, he also traces Aurovilles origin, its idealism, geography, architecture and gradual expansionthe many layers to its history as well as stories of hardship faced by its many inhabitants.

Along the way, he includes vivid details about the central characters who helped shape Aurovilles trajectory over the yearsa Frenchwoman called Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa, known as the Mother, Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose, known as Sri Aurobindo and a Frenchman, Bernard Enginger, known as Satprem. All of these people were rebels, who shared a constant restlessnessthe urge to fill a distinctive gap in their souls and escape their seemingly mundane lives. They were joined by thousands of others from around the world, people propelled by the same thirst, the same vague longing for something different, something more meaningfula deeper way of living.

Kapur analyses the possible reason for this phenomenon. After the Second World War, a number of people, particularly in the West, were dismayed with societyleading to a heightened interest in Eastern religions, cultures and spiritualism. During the 1960sthe golden age of utopiamore than 10,000 communities in alternative living with at least 750,000 members emerged across the world. Some moments in time are simply more epochal: they offer more scaffolding for our ideals, and for our fantasies of reinvention, writes Kapur.

And so, the Ideal City of Aurovillea brave experiment in communal livingwas a creature of its time, founded in 1968 with the goals of encouraging human unity and fostering evolution. For all its idealism and the promise of a better world, the fractured landscape of this idyllic land full of possibility was plagued with several fault lines which Kapur goes on to expose, such as disagreements, divisions, hunger, food shortages as well as a lack of organisation and finances. A number of freak occurrences add further to the turmoil.

According to Kapur, everyone at heart is a utopian. He also knows, however, what faith can do, and that the dream has its own shadows. By unravelling the truth about the City of Dawn and the mystery behind Maes and Walkers deaths, he somewhat busts the myth about the very idea of utopia and the search of perfectionrevealing its dark and often extremist underbelly. The line between utopia and dystopia is often thin, he warns. Writing the book was a cathartic process for Kapur and Graft , as it helped them decipher the tumult of their own unusual childhood.

Children of utopias are like exiles, writes Kapur. Having grown up with the illusory promise of an ideal society, they grasp the impracticability of that vision as adults. Yet, a part of them clings to that promise and they never stop hoping. Its hard to eradicate the vision of a better dream once it inhabits your dreams, he writes.

For more than a decade, Kapur and his wife spoke to a number of Ashramites and Aurovilians, who shared their memories and experiences. The books extensive research also includes other documentary sources, such as Johns original letters and diaries as well as material from the Auroville Archives, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The book also truly brings alive the 1960s counter-cultural and hippie movements, filling the readers mind with images of its idealists, dreamers and romantics, all part of a great adventure to remake human society and build a new world.

Better to Have Gone: Love, Death,and the Quest for Utopia in AurovilleBy: Akash KapurPublisher: ScribnerPages: 352Price: Rs 699

Excerpt from:

The enigma of Auroville - The New Indian Express