Elevate Difference

Reviews by Beth Fagan

Skin Collision Past

I was excited about this album within moments of pushing play. Wild Moccasins could not be rebuffed by the aging speakers of my 1980s boombox. Their energy electrified the faux-fur seat covers of my red Volvo. I found myself sitting in the parking lot, unwilling to go into the grocery store until I had listened to all nine tracks. I resisted the urge to text my friends that I had found… something new! Something young! Something untouched by Brooklyn’s current brand of cool!

I Am From Titov Veles (Jas Sum Od Titov Veles)

The film begins with a visual icon of the industrial world: the factory’s spires rising like a cathedral, emitting billows of smoke into the sky. Then, a woman’s legs, wrapped like a present in ribboned slippers and a skirt of delicate fabric. She is walking quickly along a wall; she is hurrying. Behind her, out of focus, a man rides on a machine in the factory yard. It becomes obvious that she is surrounded by a workers’ strike, and she sits down and suddenly notices a tiny bug on her hand. She is delighted, in awe.

Being and Becoming Visible: Women, Performance, and Visual Culture

This book collects an array of articles previously published in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, brought together for the first time under the auspices of elaborating on the theme of visibility in both performance and visual culture. As with all such collections, some pieces stand out in caliber, notably "Practical Perfection?

Acoustic Project

When I moved to Virginia over four years ago, I didn’t know what folk music was. Growing up in Portland Oregon, I was raised on the quickly growing West Coast indie rock scene. But sometime in my teenage years I started finding artists like Sparklehorse, Nickel Creek, Laura Gibson, and Blitzen Trapper and I couldn’t get enough. I didn’t know then what it was about these different artists’ sounds that made my mouth water, but there was something they had in common, something earthy, something gritty, that I absolutely loved. And when I arrived in Virginia, it finally dawned on me.