FILM ROUNDUP

KEITH UHLICH

It’s a Sin (Dir. Peter Hoar). Starring: Olly Alexander, Lydia West, Keeley Hawes. This magnificent fiveepisode drama from British writer Russell T Davies (Queer as Folk and Doctor Who) follows a quintet of friends over an eventful decade. It begins in 1981, with gay aspiring actor Ritchie (Olly Alexander) escaping from his small-town Isle of Wight home to a London loft that he and his circle nickname “The Pink Palace.” Life’s a party until a new disease—first called GRID, eventually HIV/AIDS—begins its indiscriminate reign of terror. Davies infuses this tragic subject with vivacity and hilarity, in-between inevitable moments of heartbreak. (Saddest needle drop of Laura Branigan’s Gloria ever!) Peter Hoar’s direction is exuberantly attuned to the way people create makeshift families in the face of adversity, and the cast is uniformly excellent, with special mention to Keeley Hawes as Ritchie’s mother, who proves, as the series goes on, to be a most complex kind of antagonist. [N/R] HHHHH A Glitch in the Matrix (Dir. Rodney Ascher). Documentary. Room 237 and The Nightmare director Rodney Ascher tries for another in his series of mindfuck documentaries with A Glitch in the Matrix, which explores the possibility that the world we live in is a computer simulation. The film is principally informed by a 1970s lecture by Philip K. Dick in which he outlined the theory, as well as the more popularized version that emerged in the wake of the Wachowski siblings’ immensely popular 1999 sci-fi neo-noir The Matrix, innumerable clips of which are utilized here. Ascher also conducts Zoom/Skype interviews with proponents of the electronic universe idea (many of them with their appearances altered into video-game-friendly avatars) and interweaves these scenes with asides on Minecraft, Plato’s Cave and Elon Musk, among other subjects. The meat of the movie is an audio interview with ‘Matrix Killer’ Joshua Cooke whose murder of his adoptive parents is unfortunately exploited to tsk-tsking ends. The film’s droning, ambient album doom-and-gloominess still manages to compel. [N/R] HH1/2

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disruptors

A.D. AMOROSI

What a Little Art Can Do

Jane Golden’s Mural Arts

If you build it, they will come.

YES, THAT IS ANoften misquoted line from 1989’s Field of Dreams (“he will come” was more like it, as the tall tale involved an adult son looking for the ghost of his deceased father). Beyond film trivia, however, and in the broader sense, that line is about creating something meaningful where nothing ever existed: crafting beauty, empathy, and equity from a void, pulling mussels from a shell.

That is what Philadelphia mural artist, conceptualist, and organizer Jane Golden has been doing ever since then-Mayor Wilson Goode asked her to come up with ideas to address the city’s widespread graffiti issue. Golden’s first response was to work with graffiti writers (as well as other painters, muralists and students of the form) and integrate their larger art into something expressive, beautifying and empathetic. Since 1984 and the inception of her Mural Arts, Philadelphia has become the United States’ largest public art program. A potent and poignant model for transforming public space and forming equity through art, Golden’s Mural Arts has welcomed over 4,000 works of public art in the area since its start, while maintaining collaborations with community-based organizations, nonprofit organizations, schools, and prisons. She saw a system that needed something good, something catalytic, something stimulating, to be forged from the bad, and made it happen. Golden built her mural-lined field of dreams, and everybody came.

Young people who are in and out of the system and identified by the Probation Department as being high risk get assigned to us…They’re studying landscaping, building skills, mural making, financial literacy, and leadership…About 82% of our constituents get a job. And this is the best statistic: we have a recidivism rate of 8%.

Considering where you were when you started Mural Arts, what were your goals? Did you want to beautify the city with murals before Mayor Goode brought you on as a field representative? And, by 2021, do you believe that you met those early goals?

When I was first hired by the Goode ad-

Jane Golden.

ministration to work for the Anti-Graffiti Network, I thought it was an exciting time to be in Philadelphia, and that I was at the forefront of positive change, something fresh. This was a new groundbreaking program, and I felt honored to be part of that team. It did occur to me, though, that so many graffiti writers had real artistic talent. What was also clear was that they didn’t have the benefit of more opportunities. Over those next few years, it became clear to me to try and build a network of art, education, and opportunity for young people and work in public spaces in the city. I think that it was working with community organizers, meeting extraordinary block captains who were moving the needle in their neighborhoods – by partnering with so many esteemed people and organizations—we started to get a clue that art could have power.

That community-based-and-exhibited art could have power.

Yes. And that if we worked intentionally and in collaboration and respected the authorship and the voice of that community, that great things could happen. At first, however, we were all about short-term goals—first few years this, next few years that. I don’t believe that I thought ahead past the Anti-Graffiti Network job because, quite frankly, I thought I was going to law school. I was an artist who wanted to be a lawyer.

You’ve painted since childhood, though.

Since the age of ten. My mom was an accomplished watercolor artist. I had a double major at Stanford in political science and fine art. When I graduated from Stanford, I moved to LA and painted murals [actually, Golden co-founded the Los Angeles Public Art Foundation during her time in California] Along with having grown up on the Jersey Shore, when I came back to Philly, it was because I had lupus, and was quite ill. When the Goode Administration hired me, my lupus had gone into remission. I thought that mural painting and working for the city government would be an interesting intersection of my issues and concerns. What drew me to the law was the idea of becoming an advocate for people—but in my heart, I was an artist.

An artist with a social streak. Do you feel that you use your potential legal skills as the Mural Arts Program’s boss?

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“Railway Enhancement,” 10th and Norris Streets, 2020. Photo by Steve Weinik

“Families Belong Together,” by Ian Pierce (Artes Ekeko). Photo by Steve Weinik.

“A Love Letter for You,” (c) 2009 Steve Powers, Market/Frankford Line. Photo by Steve Weinik. “Peace Is a Haiku,” Song by Josh Sarantitis and Parris Stancell, 1425 Christian St. Photo by Steve Weinik.

“A People’s Progression Toward Equality,” 8th & Ranstead Streets, 2007, Jared Bader

“Migrant Imaginary,” © 2019 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program / Layqa Nuna Yawar & Ricardo Cabret, 1902 So. 4th Street. Photo by Steve Weinik.

>12 JANE GOLDEN

I always say that I play a lawyer on TV. The part of me that is adversarial driven and tenacious—not the nice person always willing to compromise—is the lawyer in me; that, and the fact that I’ll argue a point with someone endlessly. I believe that I’m always trying to convert people to thinking that goes ‘art is important’ and ‘art can change society.’ I’ve never lost that part of me, the advocate part.

Considering the ‘art as an agent for change’, let’s look at the present day: How did you and Mural Arts respond to the structual racism that arose in 2020?

The world as we know it imploded on many fronts. Covid exposed a lot of the deficits that were there in the system, anyway, and the murder of George Floyd and those uprisings across the country—all of this was inevitable due to long standing, structural racism in our country. Mural Arts has always valued equity. Let’s look at our prime directive—we believe deeply that everybody everywhere should have access to art. within the re-entry program you have regarding behavioral health and art education programs for, what, around 100 people per year 18 to 25? These are young people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. They’re in and out of the system and identified by the Probation Department as being high risk, so there is a chance that they could be either the victim of a crime or commit a more serious crime. We work with great partners in the city, and the Office of Violence Prevention, the County Jail, and the Probation Department. Young people get assigned to us, and ours is a pre-apprenticeship program. People are getting paid. They’re studying landscaping, building skills, mural making, financial literacy, and leadership—how to get a job and keep it—parenting, as well as helping them cope with the trauma they’ve experienced.

Our counselors make sure they’re ready for the workforce when they’re done with us. Many of the youths who come to us are creative without ever having any formal art training or exposure to classes. We see, though, just how much they love making things—and work in public spaces and get the proper acknowledgment and encouragement. About 82% of our constituents get a job. And this is the best statistic: we have a recidivism rate of 8%. Most programs like this around the country have that rate at about 3035%. Society has designed a system that’s just not fair. There’s not a lot of opportunities. There are so many barriers, and often they go back into the prison system or get a parole violation. What we’re trying to do is present these young people with as many opportunities as possible. Along with the success of this guild program, we just got funded for a women’s guild.

Making it and appreciating it.

We’re in a city with over 4,200 works of art that grace public spaces and sides of buildings, most of which represent the people who live in that community where the mural resides. I love museums and galleries, but art should not be exclusive to those venues. Beyond having a work of art in your community, how do you value it, use it as a tool of agency? The ques- “Domestic Situations,” by Steve Powers. tions then become who is getting represented and who is doing the representing. Those two questions should never go away. They should loom large for us, all of us. So when the protests started to occur, we knew that we had to dig in more. We employ over 200 artists every year. How do we make that more equitable? We started a fellowship program for Black artists, and we made a commitment as an arts organization not to be random, and not to do this solely because of the times, but because we believe it’s the right thing to do. And that we will continue to do it annually. We started doing more small murals to create pathways for artists of color, woman artists, LGBTQ artists to come in and do work. Because, historically, the public art world has been very effete. We want to do all that we can to disrupt that system. Also, we want to put some power in our constituents' hands to make a mark on this city in big, bold, wonderful ways. We’re showing that public space can be determined by those who live here and not necessarily by outsiders, corporations, Issues arose with some murals, especially or governments. Frank Rizzo’s in the Italian Market. A controversial figure and a controversial mural that

That’s a big part of the shift represented many in his South Philly neighborhood wanted to remain up.

The Frank Rizzo mural was, for us, an aberration. Mural Arts didn’t create that mural, to be 100% clear. That was painted under the AntiGraffiti Network, and not my decision at all. We had done a mural of Wilson Goode, and that opened Pandora’s Box to the thousands of people sending petitions—that we needed to be fair and do a mural of Frank Rizzo. It was a source of great internal debate. We tried to site it properly in South Philly. We found an artist from South Philly, Diane Keller, and did the mural. We were never happy about it. It got defaced all the time to the point where we wanted to take it out when Trump was elected; it became a legal issue. Mural Arts can’t just take out murals. These are properties owned by the people on which the murals reside. If I had that power, no murals would disappear. That said, in the end, we couldn’t spend precious dollars on one mural that repeatedly got defaced. Fast forward to this year, the owners had an epiphany and gave us permission to remove the mural. And we did. In the end, that is a cautionary tale. Sometimes you make decisions that haunt you, so how do you vet the decisions?

If we are talking about disruption, then some people and plans get disrupted. Everybody in every neighborhood now wants a mural. There’s one mural we just wrapped that illustrates the challenges we face going forward. We did a big project with the OHCD [The Office of Housing and Community Development] who got a grant from HUD and assigned us to do three large underpasses at 10th and Susquehanna, Diamond, and Norris. They were huge underpasses that were so bleak. Our job was to knit together the community to develop a cohesive strategy around art and imagery that would genuinely unite people. So, we invested time in meetings and meals and trying to bring people together who otherwise would not talk, let alone talk about art. These places were those the community avoided because they were so grim. How do you broker these conversations? How do you make thematic decisions? Painting a mural is like filmmaking in that you’re creating then gathering content, which you must edit. It’s a fascinating process, and one that talented muralists must sift through to create something visually appealing and meaningful to the community. Now, the three underpasses are beautiful –all created during the conditions, complexity, and safety that was Covid – while ensuring that all in the community felt involved, connected, and engaged throughout the entire process. Someone once told me that Mural Arts was a deceptively complex program. To that, all I can say is, YESSSSSS. n

<8 BOOKS

selves murderers. They head for the woods, where they find their way onto a raft, but the natural terrors of Ironsforge gorge threaten to overwhelm them.

Four adults track them into the forest, each one on a journey of his or her own. Fish’s mother Miranda, full of fierce faith; his granddad, Teddy, who knows the woods like the back of his hand; Tiffany, a gas station attendant and poet looking for connection; and Sheriff Cal, who’s having doubts about a life in law enforcement.

The adults track the boys toward the novel’s heart-pounding climax on the edge of the gorge and a conclusion that makes manifest the grace these characters find in the wilderness and one another.

Foregone by Russell Banks Ecco 320 pages

At the center of Foregone is Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of 60,000 draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.

Structured around Fife’s secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.

The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens–and Ourselves by Arik Kershenbaum Penguin Press 368 pages

Scientists are confident that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Yet rather than taking a realistic approach to what aliens might be like, we imagine that life on other planets is the stuff of science fiction. The time has come to abandon our fantasies of space invaders and movie monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing. But short of aliens landing in New York City, how do we know what they are like? Using his own expert understanding of life on Earth and Darwin's theory of evolution—which applies throughout the universe— Cambridge zoologist Dr. Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like: how these creatures will move, socialize, and communicate. For example, by observing fish whose electrical pulses indicate social status, we can see that other planets might allow for communication by electricity. As there was evolutionary pressure to wriggle along a sea floor, Earthling animals tend to have left/right symmetry; on planets where creatures evolved in midair or in soupy tar, they might be lacking any symmetry at all.

Might there be an alien planet with supersonic animals? A moon where creatures have a language composed of smells? Will aliens scream with fear, act honestly, or have technology? The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy answers these questions using the latest science to tell the story of how life really works, on Earth and in space.

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker Henry Holt & Co. 384 pages

Right. Wrong. Life is lived somewhere in between. Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old selfproclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids.

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.

Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families―the ones we are born into and the ones we create.

Beyond the Sand and Sea: One Family's Quest for a Country to Call Home by Ty McCormick St. Martin's Press 288 pages

When Asad Hussein was growing up in the world’s largest refugee camp, nearly every aspect of life revolved around getting to America―a distant land where anything was possible. Thousands of displaced families like his were whisked away to the United States in the mid-2000s, leaving the dusty encampment in northeastern Kenya for new lives in suburban America. When Asad was nine, his older sister Maryan was resettled in Arizona, but Asad, his parents, and his other siblings were left behind. In the years they waited to join her, Asad found refuge in dog-eared novels donated by American charities, many of them written by immigrants who had come to the United States from poor and war-torn countries. Maryan nourished his dreams of someday writing such novels, but it would be another fourteen years before he set foot in America.

The story of Asad, Maryan, and their family’s escape from Dadaab refugee camp is one of perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. It is also a story of happenstance, of long odds and impossibly good luck, and of uncommon generosity. In a world where too many young men are forced to make dangerous sea crossings in search of work, are recruited into extremist groups, and die at the hands of brutal security forces, Asad not only made it to the United States to join Maryan, but won a scholarship to study literature at Princeton―the first person born in Dadaab ever admitted to the prestigious university.

Beyond the Sand and Sea is an extraordinary and inspiring book for anyone searching for pinpricks of light in the darkness. Meticulously reported over three years, it reveals the strength of a family of Somali refugees who never lost faith in America―and exposes the broken refugee resettlement system that kept that family trapped for more than two decades and has turned millions into permanent exiles. n