Spectator sport: For five days in late November, Nadya Tolokonnikova’s POLICE STATE performance installation occupied a theater in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Its description characterized the Pussy Riot member’s piece as an act of creation amid surveillance-induced despair. Audiences would look into or walk around a makeshift cell, peering at several props while banners and an Orthodox-like cross loomed over the stage.
At the installation, I calculated my steps to avoid bumping into banners, televisions, a tower, gum machines, and other props that substituted surveillance at the hands of a Russian state and religion. Although they directed my movement, their stand-in nature made my calculated movements feel quotidian, rather than political. After these maneuvers, I made it to the stage’s center, where Tolokonnikova sewed garments in a cell, a reenactment of her 2012 imprisonment after Pussy Riot’s takeover of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior to perform its anti-church and anti-Putin Punk Prayer. The audience could peer at her labor so long as the museum was open, after which Tolokonnikova, presumably, left the cell.
Where performances such as Regina José Galindo’s America’s Family Prison at Artpace San Antonio make the viewer feel implicated because of the cell’s source—Galindo bought it from a company that services U.S. private prisons—and its 24-hour duration, Tolokonnikova’s failed to because of its overly symbolic rendition and short commitment. Given Tolokonnikova’s international scope, is it reasonable, as an audience, to expect to feel implicated? And must we feel implicated to truly care?
Maximiliano Mendoza, contributing editor
Debt reckoning: Last month, the University of Chicago released their annual financial statement to some fanfare. With the budget deficit down from $288 million by 44 percent, it appears as if there is plenty to celebrate. However, as Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics Clifford Ando argues in his latest (and thirteenth) op-ed for the Chicago Maroon, there is reason to temper the optimism displayed by University administrators. Ando argues that the methods used to close the gap—which include unlocking endowment funds—make this year’s progress difficult to sustain. On this point, at least, Ando and the administration agree. According to the Maroon’s reporting on a recent invite-only budget town hall, the University expects to reach its goal of a balanced budget by spending less through 2028. Still, with the future of federal grant programs in doubt, the long march towards fiscal health will not get any easier.
This ongoing effort to right the ship is poised to alter the student experience. The University is paying dearly for these deficit reductions, which has hit the Division of the Arts & Humanities with historic pauses to PhD enrollment and a proposed restructuring. Ando portrays the budget crisis as part of a larger reckoning for the University, as big bets on the applied sciences and changes to federal regulation cause it to reassess its traditional emphasis on humanities and social science research. Ando’s articles, published in Compact as well as the Maroon, offer a warning that extends well beyond the University of Chicago.
William Moursund, contributing editor
Out at sea: There are many ways a homesick American can find his fellow countrymen in Paris. On one weekend one could, for instance, attend a Sunday mass at the tony American Cathedral, have a restrainedly grand time at the American Contra Dance society monthly social, or attend a Charlie Kirk vigil with the Republicans Overseas club, all the while hearing not a single word of French. For my part and to my detriment, I have mostly steered clear of other Americans while falling flat in my efforts to integrate myself into French society. No matter how far into the country I run or how high I peer up the social ladder, America is somehow still there. Whether suffering through tinny renditions of English-language pop songs I somehow have never heard before (or worse, “Superfreak”) while stuck in the mulled wine line at a village fair, or being ambushed by “Abide with Me” at the knees-on-tile part of the Latin Mass, our country never fails to cast its ebullient shadow over the generally gray Parisian atmosphere.
It was thus to my great surprise that dear Uncle Sam reared his grand old head in one of the places where it should least be found: the utter excess of grand opera. The opulent Théâtre de Champs-Elysées was showing Jacques Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoé in France for the first time since the mid-eighties and, swayed by the incessant advertising on the subway, I shelled out the necessary shekels for a student seat in the highest balcony. Continue reading here.
Brady Santoro, senior editor
Image: Victor Dubreuil, Safe Money, oil on canvas, 1898 or later (National Gallery of Art, DC).