Miki Berenyi,once of Lushand now of Piroshka, is on fine form. Talking to God Is In The TV, she looks back on 4AD, Lush, why they were dubbed both Shoegaze and Britpop by music weeklies, her forthcoming memoir, as well as reflecting upon Brexit. She also talks about Piroshkas second album, Love Drips and Gathers which came out a couple of weeks ago on Bella Union.

Londoners Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson met at fourteen years of age and became firm friends. Lush formed with Berenyis then boyfriend Chris Acland on drums and Steve Rippon on bass (later replaced by Phil King )

Signing to 4AD across five albums (Gala, Spooky, Split, Lovelife, Topolino ) and numerous EPs and singles in the 90s, Lush produced wonderful sounds, pairing loud guitars with vocal harmonies somewhere in the mix. The central songwriting duo of lead singer, the flame-haired Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson carved songs crammed with passion, infectious heavenly melodies and coated in a dreamy sound that evolved from reverb-laden guitar crescendos to spikier catchy garage pop. Their trademark vocals were possessed of both a bittersweet tone and infectious hooks and were delivered with a refreshing attitude. Underrated by some at the time in an era dominated by blokes with guitars, Lush looked and sounded like forerunners for a wave of current contemporary female led acts. Lush originally split in 1997 with Berenyi abandoning music after Aclands passing, only returning in 2016 with an EP and a run of shows.

Piroshka emerged in 2018; four individuals with distinct musical identities, but also overlapping histories. Before Miki and KJ Moose McKillop were a couple (and parents), they were pivotal figures on the London-centric 90s indie scene. Likewise, Elastica, whose drummer Justin Welch was part of Lushs 2016 reunion, whilst Michael Conroy of Modern English who played for both Moose and on their last ever gig Lush.

As Lush Mark II came to an end, Justin persuaded Miki to start another band, Piroshka, which in turn reignited Mooses long-dormant ambitions.

Love Drips and Gathers follows Piroshkas 2019 debut Brickbat, Miki explains: If Brickbat was our Britpop album, then Love Drips And Gathers is shoegaze! summing up their newly expansive sound thats more eighties synth drama than nineties indie.

With more textures and synths that reminds me of early 80s European new wave colliding with the dreamy gaze of the early 90s,Love Drips And Gathers follows a more introspective line meditating on the ties that bind us, as lovers, parents, children, friends a subtler, more ethereal and enveloping sound, one whose personal themes are worn on the sleeve and invested with melodrama.

Hi Miki, how are you today?

Im fine, its so weird with this lockdown any kind of appointment feels like such a huge event. I lost my job at the end of the year, so even though lockdown is lifted Moose is still working and stuff, but Im still at home so I feel like a pensioner or something! My landscape is very flat so when something crops up like this, it sends me into a fluster.

How have the last eighteen months treated you?

I think Ive just been a spectator really, its sort of affected my kids more and Moose as well. With my job, it went, but then I got offered a book deal. So I am just trying to discover how to fucking write a book (laughs); its totally out of my remit really. Its a memoir. There seems to be quite a trend for this lately. Im slightly regretting years of slagging off music journalists because Ive realised how difficult it is, Im discovering how hard it is. (laughs)!

I saw that youve been posting images from tours and video shoots from the Lush years on Facebook. What bits do you look back on fondly and not so fondly?

I think its really jumbled up with whats good and whats bad. In the telling it has to be black and white, having loads of photos makes you realise that. Like having a bunch of photos where we are having a really brilliant time, except it was in a period that was really difficult; there were sketchy periods for us as a band. But I think within that, what used to carry us through a lot was, we were all friends. That was mainly the most important thing: there was a lot of camaraderie. Certainly, when Chris was around he was really funny and always upbeat. We often suffered difficult times that were coming from the outside.

I think its the journey upwards that is most fun and most exciting. Once you get to a certain position thats where all the difficulties come. When you start you are just like oh my God this was our first time in London or on TV or in Europe! Everything is a massive achievement and an adventure, but I think thats when the expectations go up and it gets more stressful. We were really looked after by 4AD. Of course they wanted to sell records and the important thing was the record was good, but there wasnt the same pressure to have a hit as it were.

How important was it for Lush to sign to 4AD?

I dont think Lush could have achieved a tenth of what we did if we hadnt been on 4AD. It was integral to what we did, because when we started out we were quite incompetent and aware of that and we needed a lot of coaxing and nurturing. And having an environment that was totally non-exploitive helped, there was never really any pressure to stick the girls at the front that might have been there on another label. It really suited us to be cloaked in that 4AD artwork, we were really suggestible as a band but we really baulked at that exploitation. We were quite purist in that way.

I read you started out as a punk band

When we started out we were a bit punky, shouty, gymslipsy, Hes a bastard cant you see hes not good enough for you!!!(laughs). I suppose it was indie punk but we were part of a scene with quite a jumble of things going on. You can get away with a lot if you just whack the guitars and shout over them.

I guess punk isnt just a sound its a spirit

When I first got into punk it was oh my God everyone is really working class and they were like ooh you went to private school so I didnt feel I could wear that badge with any legitimacy. You didnt want to be a sell-out band or exploiting your sexuality or whatever, although there were plenty of bands that did that. I think Debbie Harry used her sexuality in a really cool way. But as women we were just conscious that was always the temptation, certainly with record labels, that would be the first thought they would have. But we didnt want to be part of that at all. And we loved being part of 4AD.

We were quite, collecty: we liked Factory and Cherry Red. When me and Emma were going to see Xmal Deutschland were playing, so we were aware of 4AD bands, so it was good to be put into that stable especially once Pixies and Throwing Muses came along. It felt like an honour to be honest. I certainly felt way out of my depth but it was flattering to be included in that stable and it gave you a certain amount of kudos as well.

4AD has definable characteristics not just in terms of sound, but the aesthetics, the artwork

It feels like a stamp of approval to people outside. I genuinely did buy records like that too. Id never heard of the Stockholm Monsters, but they were on Factory so Ill buy that.

It was tiresome at times though especially in Europe. They expected us to live up to this very arty persona and werent very impressed when we were swigging cider. I think Robert and Liz and Simon were hardly these angelic po-faced people either. It can feel like a bit of a straight jacket but there was no question of leaving or being on another label. At one point we had another manager who was like lets just look at other labels but we were just like well, you can look but we arent going to do it.

You worked with Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) on a few EPs and your debut album Gala;what was that like?

I cant remember if he had made noises that he was interested in working with us. We did the Mad Love EP first, I think. I think Ivo who ran 4AD was a bit worried about putting us in a studio with Robin for a whole album; it was a little bit sketchy. We really wanted to make the album with him. There was a bit of criticism because it was like oh, hes just put his sound over them. I didnt agree with that because we learnt so much being in the studio with Robin. There were difficultiesbecause we had to do everything his way; Chris had to learn to play on a pad rather than a drum kit. But it was really brilliant to work with someone like that; he was really engaged and on it and full of ideas. It did our confidence good because we would sit in the studio and be like Ive got a guitar part, but its shit and he would say well, just play it, stop running it down before youve even done it.

Its funny when I mention you to people, depending on their era, when I mention Lush they either say Shoegaze or they have heard of Ladykillers from a Shine compilation..

If you get a band that goes on and on, Blur were called Britpop and Blur were called baggy. My Bloody Valentine werecalled one thing and another and eventually they just become themselves. Its the fact that if we had gone on we would have outlasted those labels, but theres only a few albums, so yes you get shoved in one or other category. I get it, I shrug my shoulders and go whatever now.

In the 90s there was a lot of labelling of acts in scenes. It still happens now, Galaxie 500 was saying it has got ridiculous on Spotify with all these different made up genres

I get it, its algorithms. Back in the day it was a shorthand. Before, you had that for the music papers to go well if you like this you might like this because theyre the same kind of band. I always think bands baulk at labels because it knocks the interesting edges off you. Every band can say well weve got that song thats not Britpop or thats not shoegaze! but most of it is about the time you were making records as much as the sound of them..

If you could pick one song from your career to play to someone what would it be?

Its hard. Id probably pick something like De-Luxe which isnt even by me, its Emmas song. To me, thats like pick an obvious track and play it there you go.

Split had different sides something like Desire Lines and Hypocrite are quite different. Would you say the second album Split was an evolution of your sound?

A lot of the evolution came from different producers. Theres no doubt there was development; a lot of it came from me and Emma working with each other.

I saw you recorded some of it in Rockfield..

It was lovely, it was good fun. It was actually our manager who was a bit large and in charge I remember being dragged around all these bloody places some of them really fancy. Rockfield was quite shabby and to be honest we got talked into it. We werent well suited to a residential, we got talked into it and probably would have been better recording it in London. Im such a fucking towny and as lovely as Monnow Valley is after about two walks in the countryside I was bored. I kind of missed my mates, I didnt sit in that studio being really productive I just sat around waiting for my bit.

Would you say your last album Lovelife was your most commercial

One of the things that happened with the CD format was that we suddenly had to record so many tracks to fill up the CD with as many tracks as possible. There were so many songs you could actually look at all the songs recorded around the time of Lovelife and put together a totally different album. Some of the songs were picked as singles because it was that time.

When Emma wrote Single Girl it was a B-side as far as she was concerned but because Britpop was around it was quite an in-your-face pop song that was picked as a single at a different time,.

Lovelife itself would have been a single but that was on the album before. I think Split was a very very introverted album and it actually got a bit of a damp reception. It was out of step with the times. So we maybe did make more of a conscious effort with the lyrics to be less revealing with the lyrics and more upbeat. To be perfectly honest Britpop was old hat by the time Lovelife came out so we got sneered at with that anyway.

Lush were on Top of the Pops; what was that like?

It was quite fun! I think Chris had the best quote about it. It actually means when you get in and if they asked you if you were in a band you could say yes, and we played Top of the Pops!

Music is so much more fragmented now, but back then you had John Peel, Top of the Pops and music weeklies

There was some quite narrow bottlenecks that you had to get through radio play and music papers and Top of the Pops and it doesnt really exist anymore as you say. The internet has changed everything in some ways; there are positives and negatives. Its much more scatter gun and you have to track down what you want to listen to. If you just rely on some algorithms to chuck stuff at you that has its problems, doesnt it?

Back then you had to go searching for what you wanted; there was a reward for searching out certain records then. There was a frustration, though, that you would read about some artists you would never hear, unless you heard it on the radio or on a compilation tape, now you can just type it in and you can hear it straight away.

I suppose bands toured a lot more in the 80s. There was that, kind of, although you had these big bands that would tour albums, There were a lot of bands who just played all the fucking time. Its like if you dont catch this band on this date theyre not going to be back for another two years.

I think there was a whole structure that supported that circuit that the internet has blown apart; streaming certainly has. I can remember doing a tour for Ladykillers; for a tour of thirty dates in Britain and two months later we were out touring the album in many of the same places. Back then you would get tour support, the record company would pay that and the album would make money. Now albums dont make money either so there isnt really the money to support you going out for thirty dates and play everywhere now. I think its quite hard for smaller bands now.

With the Brexit nonsense and with festivals and Covid as well, you wonder how many festivals will come back next year

Theres a bit of me thats a little bit optimistic. Back in the 80s there werent that many festivals; we are judging it on now when theres so many. I think there will be a resurgence. I had a neighbour who used to put on a festival; I remember him telling me it takes three years before you can make a profit. It would help to have a government who would support it and recognise it as massively important that it is. Its just not on their agenda. Back in the 80s you had the GLC that actually was a huge arts fun and I can remember festivals in Finsbury Park, on the South Bank. Obviously the Tories hated it as soon as they could. Its weird because there are Tories that go to gigs; youd think they have some love. I just dont even think they are interested.

Its a bit of a culture war by the Westminster government on culture at the moment. Theres also the very little Englander attitude that wants to wrap itself in the flag and try and tell people to go home. I think its really sad and ignorant, the world is getting smaller and we want to cut ourselves off..

Coming from London thats what I remember through the 80s, it was like this sneering attitude not just if you were foreign if you were from London, if you went up to Manchester they were like oh you fucking Londoners. I remember when I was at London Poly I remember meeting this guy from Liverpool at the bar and another one and they had a fight because they were like three streets away from Liverpool. Its so weird that really specific regional snobbery.

I wonder if in future generations they will want to rejoin the EU?

I voted remain, but I think both sides are spitting venom at each other. I just voted remain instinctively, even then I didnt know what it meant. So when I see Bruce Dickinson on Twitter and everyone is like oh you idiot what did you expect? But I am like clearly not this. Obviously I didnt buy it but there are a lot of people that did, believing that there was going to be some great new dawn or whatever. Its quite a dereliction of duty not to properly explain what was going to happen and that was the biggest issue. It was just an idea with no grounding.

Piroshka have been called a supergroup because you were all previously in different bands

Supergroup is another of those terms where you think, Christ. I think it was because when we first announced our album that it got taken up as terminology, I could already sense the sneering sounds of Oh God, what are all these old has-been indie B-listers doing trying to revitalise their sorry careers by capitalising on their collective.

I suppose its just not that cool anymore to be in a guitar band. I think the real thing about us four getting together was that we actually knew each other and that it was incidental that we had been in bands before; that wasnt the driver for it. But three of us got together because we knew each other from Lush anyway.

I was listening to the album, with the combination of synths and guitars, I was getting almost a European New Wavey sound in parts of it

Quite possibly, it was quite a conscious decision to let Moose and Mick do a lot more of the production of it. Moose in particular can sit in a room fucking around with pedals and the sounds and Mick too really. I am more like this ones got distortion and chorus and this ones got distortion, I only need four pedals!

Is the lullaby-esque The Knife Throwers Daughter about family?

Moose wrote it, I think hes got me, his mum, his daughter, so its about the women in his life. He reads a lot of novels and he did remark that in the last couple of years a lot of the books he read were all by women writers. When you read back a lot in the early twentieth century is about a domestic environment and I think that was influenced by the way he was thinking about lyrics.

Scratching At The Lid is epic; it really bubbles. It sounds like trying to throw off regret

Its quite a morbid picture really, that idea of being buried and scratching at the lid and thinking, but I havent finished yet! As you get older and once you get into your 50s you can spend a lot of your time worrying about stuff. I think your 40s is quite key actually, I think thats what Moose was thinking about. You can feel like shit, Ive tipped over theres a tinge to that.

You can worry an awful lot about where you are and what you are doing, it eats into your time its better to just do and not worry about it too much. I think that was what a lot of what his regret was in that song. You can spend decades worrying, then you look back and think well what was I worrying about? Why did I spend all that time worrying? I spent most of my life being quite anxious about things, but on some level its not a terrible thing to be, it does drive you to achieve certain about things. But if it casts too much of a shadow, theres no point being too anxious about things if they spoil your enjoyment.

I read, V.O. was inspired by working with Vaughan Oliver; what was it about working with him that made it a good relationship?

Some bands baulked at that; we were signed at the same time as the Pale Saints and they had their own ideas of what they wanted on their sleeves. They were very together as a band so I dont think Vaughan used a couple of their sleeves. Whereas we were like do what you fucking like and he rather liked that. Why wouldnt you? Someone is giving you the opportunity to work with amazing artists, so why wouldnt you?

We had a great working relationship, in that respect, we let him get on with it pretty much and trusted him. Often the titles were inspired by the sleeves, Scar was inspired by the artwork. With the Piroshka stuff, Chris Oliver who worked with Vaughan, both those titles were triggered by the covers. Both Chris and Vaughan would listen to the music and discuss it and that was the direction they would take from that. I am awful with titles, I literally have people at the pressing asking me to confirm them at the last minute.

When I saw Chriss artwork it was quite poetic and I remember trawling through old poetry books. I dont know much about poetry, but I remember doing that one at O Level and I thought it was a nice line. Its difficult with titles because a lot of them have been used. I remember The Smiths having lyrics from a quote or a play and I remember thinking Morrissey probably had endless notebooks of lyrics and titles.

With Echo Loco, I was getting references to politics and social media..

That was on my mind. I think basically it was around the time of the first Piroshka album, I started going on social media. I really hadnt done it before at all. I thought if we are doing a band I need a profile on social media to be my own PR and all that. I started using it and thought wow its a minefield. I feel crappy writing a song and just saying its about the internet because, its really dull.

I think its a very prescient theme, Twitter in particular is very reactionary

When I was a kid it was often quite sci-fi fantasy thing to say, imagine if you could read peoples minds that would be brilliant! Now you have Twitter and you can read what they think. And I look at it and I think fucking hell I dont want to know what people think about this because its doing my head in!

Theres some brilliant stuff, you have to find the good stuff. There are times when I am absent-mindedly scrolling and I can feel my mood darkening. Its genuinely upsetting and depressing if people can say these awful things in response to people. Living in ignorance is better in some respects. Just turn it off, its a big thing to manage. Its brilliant theres bits about it that are brilliant but you have to monitor your mood.

Maybe what I was thinking about with that song there is this desperate need to connect with others, whether its interacting or loving the same band and relationships, but theres a desperate edge to it sometimes. Where ultimately it is virtual, you dont know these people. People confess things, Ive done it myself oh yeah Ive done that when I was 14, you tell people things that you would never dreamed of telling anyone for years. I am terrible because I overshare anyway. It does fascinate me, but I think there is a tiresome element to it. I think my first experience was the comments under a Guardian comments section if you keep scrolling for long enough every possible response will be there at some point. You almost think they are saying something somebody else hasnt said. YouTube comments are horrible!

Love Drips and Gathers is out now on Bella Union.

http://smarturl.it/ldag

Piroshka UK live dates:

Tuesday 2nd November Brighton Chalk Wednesday 3rd November Leeds Brudenell Social Club Friday 5th November Manchester Deaf Institute Saturday 6th November London Garage Sunday 7th November Guildford The Boileroom

Photo credit: Ivan Berenyi

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IN CONVERSATION: Miki Berenyi (Lush, Piroshka) | God Is In The TV - God Is In The TV - God Is In The TV

To the Western gaze, the leaping dance of the Maasai is an iconic signature of exotic, distant lands, where people adorned in entirely distinctive dress are festooned in necklaces as wide as the brim of a safari hat, robed in vibrant reds and blues, their bodies thin as the trees that surround them in the semi-arid ecology along the Great Rift Valley. In her two-minute video, We Are Here, curated at the center of her retrospective, This Place We Call World, which encompasses nearly four decades of work, Selma Grbz adapts the photogenic tradition.

In notes accompanying the piece, the curation by yk zsoy discusses the transformative potential of the ritual and its representation. It has the power to transport its observer not only into a worldview indigenous to the African Great Lakes, but also toward a shapeshifting mentality where reality and fiction coalesce and birth a singular order of being. The scenes naturalness contrasts with digital collaborations, a pointillist particle animation by Ali Emre Karaal and heaving mechanical sound engineering by Kerim Karaolu.

The video itself was shot by the poet Burak Acar, who Grbz traveled with to the Serengeti, ultimately inspiring her return from a three-year hiatus to the exhibition of her work. There is a moment that she reveals in an interview when a lone lion appeared in the grasslands, moving to the rhythm of the wind. She described the effect of the moment as a shock akin to what she felt on first seeing the Maasai, a spirit of independence that empowered her to create anew in direct dialogue with her prolific past.

With over 100 works selected by zsoy, a senior curator at Istanbul Modern, the show exemplifies the best intentions of the Women Artists Fund, foregrounding Grbz in the ongoing saga of making female Turkish artists more visible.

Grbz, born in 1960 in Istanbul, received her initial higher art education in the U.K. at Exeter College before returning to Istanbul to pursue a painting degree at Marmara University. Since graduating in the mid-1980s, she has gone on to enter the worlds most prestigious collections, including The British Museum.

One of the more impressive elements of Grbz, which jumps out in a way perhaps comparable to the upward momentum of a Maasai ceremony, is her attention to paper, specifically handmade varieties, as intimately related to the subject matter that appears on their surface. The fibrous material is organic and speaks of its adventure of having been made with a force and grace not unlike her fine approach to painting itself. Yet, the material discourse of naturalism as pure and alive is imbalanced inside the institutional airs of Istanbul Modern.

While respectful to the formidable role that Grbz has assumed in Turkish art history, the in-house curatorial practice of zsoy is about as old-fashioned as the cultural importance of a Western expedition to the African wilderness in the midst of 21st-century globalization. It is problematic to pose Africa as a distant, reliable muse for Turkish art, aligned with native tribes and untouchable lands, while increasing numbers of African migrants work the streets of Istanbul and Congolese photographer Sammy Baloji exhibits concurrently at Pera Museum.

Grbz maintains a palette of red, gold and black throughout her works, evoking a mythopoetic world of her own making, alongside the land of the living. While influenced by cultural motifs, such as Greek pottery, Japanese calligraphy and African sculpture, she is grappling with the visualization of the afterlife as it recurs before her alone, as a phenomenon coexistent in the sensual world, accessible through alternate states of mind. Death is a constant theme in her works, yet, it is as if she were painting its hints and whims from the other side.

The red sun blazes in the next world, its rays dangling over a golden sky, under which black skeletons dance with anthropomorphic plants. It is an active, spiritual realm in which the boundaries of life are long transcended, animated by the limitlessness of flight. There is no solid ground to speak of in such works, as From Where We Left Off (2019), made with ink on handmade paper, but rather vaguely, the explanatory texts that follow each work throughout the show refer to the anachronistic generality of her integrating Eastern and Western aspects.

In an increasingly color-conscious world where racial blindness is an excuse for ignorance and words have unprecedented potency to conjure histories of violence, the near-symmetrically perfect, ancient aesthetics of the piece Reflection (2018-2019) are cause for certain wonder. The unmistakably human figures are winged. One is black, the other orange, and both of their brains are exposed, further enunciating their departure from realism, toward a world where myth and art commingle.

But Grbz advances a stylization of figurative realism in relation to her early work in the Paris printmaking studio of surrealist Spanish artist Joan Miro, known for his wisps of fancy that delighted in the informality of color over shape. Grbz, however, is on the other side of the spectrum in terms of her approachability. Her works are representational, but they also bend reality, particularly gender expression. Tree Woman (2019), for example, diversifies human dualism in the same way that she points to the life in death, and the death in life.

The celebration of universal, transcendent unity is sometimes merely a lack of clarity, and such could be said of the curations differentiating between creative periods and approaches in the lifes work of Grbz, who explored such popular techniques as op-art in a series of ink portraits of women on handmade Japanese paper. Yet, these trials were not necessarily fulfilled of themselves, and seem to have been gateways for her to realize more mature works, such as her oil painting, Daybreak. Burden. (2011).

Another series of landscape works of gouache, made in 2006, appear almost irrelevant as they hang in their own hall, on thin paper, slightly off-center. In their naivety, however, is the redemption of the artists voice, as someone who has dared to integrate a foreign visual world into Turkish art history, which is too often circumscribed and pigeonholed by domestic issues. And she has come around, through the African wilderness, to such series as Creatures (2019), fictive, humanoid animals that she adapted for the video Chase (2020), set against observational photography of a female lion emerging out of obscurity, staring back.

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On evolution and art: A retrospective for Selma Grbz | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

These are challenging times, and we are being called to make decisions that not only affect our own lives, but the lives of others. To paraphrase a recent ad on television, Its not enough to do it alone, we must do it together. We have so many its today that we are often overwhelmed and dont know what decision to make. Part of that feeling is the impact our decisions have on others.

It is more and more evident that the world is at a crossroads: We can continue to work alone, or we can find new ways to work together. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that the solution to a healthy world can only come when each person in the world is healthy and protected. We can only reach that goal by caring for and working for others, as well as for ourselves.

The many protests, here at home, and in other countries, are calling us to have patience with one another, to listen to each other, to find the truth of the issues, and come up with mutually beneficial and just solutions. We cannot do it alone. We must do it together with mindful cooperation and trust. Working together we can and will find solutions.

At times like this our deepest spiritual faith sustains us. It is the underlying resource for helping us make these important and sometimes difficult decisions. What are the teachings of our faith? What does our faith tell us about working together? How are we to work together? The answers to these questions and our willingness to follow them are more important than ever for the world to survive.

This crossroads we are at right now is no less than the shifting of the consciousness of the world to a higher spiritual level. All species evolve, they dont devolve. We cannot go backwards; we must go forwards. For humanity that means our consciousness must evolve from doing it alone to doing it together. It is a conscious shift in perspective from the good of the one to the good of all.

Humanity already has one great resource to help us move forward. That resource is found in all religions. It is one common truth the Golden Rule. The words may be expressed differently in each religion, but the meaning is the same. We are to treat others as we wish to be treated. It is no coincidence that this important and basic spiritual teaching has survived throughout the centuries to help us in this time.

The Golden Rule has always been a good basis for making decisions. Will this decision reflect how I want to be treated? Is this decision loving, kind and positive? If the decision does not meet these guidelines, its time to reconsider. And it works for small decisions as well as larger ones.

We celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.s life this week and his passion for helping humanity evolve. He said, Its always the right time to do the right thing. He was not talking about the right that people expound upon when they want their own way. He was talking about the deeper meaning of the word right.

How do we know what is right? Websters Dictionary gives us this definition of the word: Something that is correct, just, proper and honorable. The Bible and other sacred scriptures explain that right is the truth of the divine working in consciousness. What is the truth of the divine? It is a knowingness about goodness found in the deepest part of our hearts, the sacred part. We often talk ourselves out of making the right decision. We reason, we bully, we insist, all the while trying to ignore what our sacred heart is telling us. And when we take action on that false decision, we usually suffer the consequences because we did not listen to the Voice of God.

We can no longer follow this old way. It is time for us to evolve and use our consciousness as God intended us to do. The Golden Rule can be our guide. Listening to the voice of God in our heart can direct us to right action. We are at the crossroads of humanitys evolution. We can either help each other to make the way easier or hinder the progress. There is no turning back. We must go forward prayerfully together with justice, honor, love, kindness, compassion and trust. The hope for the future is in our hands. Now is the right time to do the right thing.

Rev. Arlyn Macdonald is the senior minister of the Spiritual Awareness Center and Dean of the Spiritual Development Institute.

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RELIGION: Now is the right time | Opinion | montrosepress.com - Montrose Daily Press

Image: Alfred Russel Wallace, attributed to John William Beaufort (1864-1943) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier this month, science historian Michael Flannery and political scientist John West discussed the legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) on the occasion of his birthday, January 8. The video is up now and is worth watching. Flannery and West note the irony that Darwins younger colleague, co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, broke with Darwin over Wallaces later advocacy of intelligent design. An exaggeration? Not in the least. He came to recognize an intelligent control operating everywhere in life:

I find this control in the lowest cell; the wonderful activity of cells convinces me that it is guided by intelligence and consciousness. I cannot comprehend how any just and unprejudiced mind, fully aware of this amazing activity, can persuade itself to believe that the whole thing is a blind and unintelligent accident. It may not be possible for us to say how the guidance is exercised, and by exactly what powers; but for those who have eyes to see and minds accustomed to reflect, in the minutest cells, in the blood, in the whole earth, and throughout the stellar universe our own little universe, as one may call it there is intelligent and conscious direction; in, a word, there is Mind.

If you told me that comment had come from, say, biologist Michael Denton, whose latest book isThe Miracle of the Cell, it wouldnt surprise me. No modern-day proponent of design theory would differ with a word of it. In fact, it would be a fun game to play with your Darwinist friends: Read the quote to them and ask who said it. Some anti-science ID scoundrel or, worse, creationist? Wallaces birthday this year may have passed, but the time for learning about this Victorian Indiana Jones, as Professor Flannery calls him, is well spent in any year or month:

See original here:
Fun Game: Ask Your Darwinist Friends, Guess Who Said This? - Discovery Institute

This week, I take a look at what brands are prioritizing on the sustainability front this year.

Implementing more sustainable practices is on the mind of many beauty companies. But despite the public urgency around the environment especially when it comes to climate change brand goals are often set for years in the future. For instance, 2025 is a popular deadline for LOccitane Group and Unilever.

This is the problem with announcements. You need them to come with a plan, a monitoring process throughout and actions to help you reach your milestones, said Arnaud Meysselle CEO for Ren Clean Skincare. We had a huge goal of zero waste by 2021. We made this promise in 2018, and for us, transparency has always been a crucial part of the [process].

Of course, change cant happen overnight. But beauty executives and insiders expect more actionable activity on the sustainability front this year. Below, a look ahead.

Rethinking the end lifecycle of productsTo reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, some beauty companies, like Credo, are following Starbucks lead. Last year, the retail giant eliminated straws in favor of sippable lids. For its part, Credo will be ditching all single-use items, including face wipes and sheet masks, as of May 31, in accordance with its annual sustainability guidelines. This will extend to items for sale, as well as in-store items for testing and sampling.

What has been the awesome thing of the last year is that we have been intellectually challenged as an industry to innovate, said Annie Jackson, Credo co-founder and COO. Beauty has been stuck with old-school formats like testers and sampling, so to [be able to] stop and rethink how we do things is a mic drop.

Jackson admitted that single-use wipes and masks are big unit drivers for Credo, but said theyre at odds with its broader ethos. The retailer currently carries single-use wipes and sheet masks from RMS, Kaia Naturals, Bawdy and Pipette, among others. It is working with brand partners to focus on reusable innovations, like reusable cotton rounds, for instance, and store associates will be trained to speak to customers about the changes. We think reusable and refillable options are about to explode, she said.

Jackson added that, although this is a Credo-only initiative, she hopes that brands wont spin-off the single-use SKUs to other retailers like Sephora or Ulta Beauty. Credos shop-in-shops are still present in Ulta stores across the country.

How a product is created and where it goes are values to the mainstream consumer. They dont want a lot of plastic or waste. When you add that to already creating an efficacious product, it may seem like a tall freaking order, but you have to do it all, she said. The customer is demanding it.

LOccitane, too, is rethinking single-use items. The company discontinued all plastic spatula production for testers and products. Just two products still have them, but they will only be available until 2022, said Corinne Fugier-Garrel, director of packaging concept development at LOccitane.

For its part, Ren Skincare is also prioritizing recycled or reusable materials for its packaging. 2021 is the completion of our first chapter to champion sustainability in beauty. We are tackling packaging first, because [its responsible for] 70% of the beauty industrys waste, said Meysselle.

Ren will also move forward with changes to ingredients, products and in-store items, but its making the updates slowly so the consumer understands all components. The challenge in prestige beauty is to keep evolving the brand, and staying sustainable and visually attractive, while preventing waste that inevitably ends up in a landfill, said Meysselle. From a consumer perspective the changes are not very visible. The product experience is the same or improves, but we are explaining as we make these changes that [components] are now recycled and recyclable. For example, the companys Ready Steady Glow Daily AHA Tonic is set to debut in new, fully recyclable packaging.

Post-consumer recycled materialsWhile not new, PCR materials are gaining steam. In the last month, Refreshments, Ipsys new personal care offshoot, launched with 30% PCR plastic; Beautyblender came out with a sugarcane-based makeup sponge, as well as PCR-containers; and Farmacy debuted a new Whipped Greens cleanser made with PCR resin.

Sabeen Mian, svp and gm of Refreshments said that a fun, extra brand ethos is not mutually exclusive with sustainability.

With Refreshments, we wanted to create a personal care brand for the future, and a big part of that is our commitment to sustainability, she said. While we are certainly committed to delivering more convenience to our members, we also have a responsibility to the environment.

All of Refreshments packaging is composed of post-consumer recycled materials, and its hero product, the Luxe razor, has a reusable handle to curb disposable plastic razor usage. The company is also combining shipments for its members that are Ipsy subscribers to reduce packaging materials and is working on refillable packaging for upcoming product launches.

Fugier-Garrel said that for LOccitane the transition to PCR materials is a long journey, with continuous improvements possibilities.

We are happy to implement, day after day, better packs for the planet thats a positive evolution we are constantly working on, she said. Forty-percent of LOccitane bottles are made from 100% recycled materials that can be found in its Aromachologie and liquid soap collections, among others. Forty-seven percent of LOccitanes worldwide boutiques also offer in-store recycling services.

Climate prioritizationClimate change is a grave situation worldwide, and President Joe Biden has already emphasized the U.S.s changing role in the situation. In his first days in office, he rejoined the Paris climate agreement, revoked the Keystone XL oil pipelines federal permit and pledged to review many of the Trump administrations regulatory actions for high-emitting industries.

Melanie Bender, president of Versed, said these are important first steps for all companies, especially those in beauty.Beauty brands are obsessed with recycling. In the context of the climate crisis, its like worrying about taking out the trash when your house is on fire, she said. A cool climate future needs to be the top environmental priority for the government and businesses, alike. Thanks in part to the election, were starting to see more consumers prioritize climate action, and with that, more beauty brands will follow suit.

Versed became one of the few beauty brands to accomplish net-zero emissions last year. It also signed the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Pledge and open-sourced its Climate Action Plan to allow any brand to use its framework. In addition, it will be signing on with Climate Neutral, to certify its commitment, and join other brands like REI to drive collective action.

Beauty is an industry known to guard its trade secrets like the CIA, but that type of thinking runs counter to the shift toward purpose-driven, societal missions like sustainability. We can make far greater, more efficient progress by collaborating on sustainability, including sharing methodology, materials and vendors. Versed believes this collaboration is essential to achieving our sustainability mandate, she said.

Increased investmentMichel Brousset, founder and CEO Waldencast, expects investors to incubate and fund environmentally responsible businesses in response to the conscious consumer.

We are very interested in more responsible supply chain and ingredient provenance, he said. The values of Waldencast are based on purpose and human and social values: sustainability, responsibility, inclusivity. It is imperative that the industry progresses toward a more sustainable and improved way of sourcing, manufacturing and distributing. Conscious consumerism is growing, and is a major consideration during the customer buying journey.

Weve already seen that happen as luxury sustainable brand La Bouche Rouge raised approximately $3 million in funding last September.

Jackie Dunklau, principal at private equity fund Aria, compared upcoming discussions around sustainability to the now tablestakes conversation brands are having around clean and better-for-you ingredients. Aria recently made its first investment in Hero Cosmetics this month. The idea of sustainability is going to be at the forefront of consumers minds, like clean skin care and, now, clean makeup,she said. People want to buy products that you can upcycle or feel better about. They dont want to create more waste in the environment.

But Dunklau emphasized that sustainable practices alone arent going to draw the consumer to beauty products. Its not going to be the sole reason someone buys beauty, but if a customer is choosing between similar skin-care or makeup products, and one is more environmentally conscious, the conscious option will win.

Beyond the brand space, LOral Group also intends to contribute $50 million over the next three years toward impact investments, with a focus on projects that restore biodiversity.

Inside our coverage

Harrys looks to M&A.

Instagram is no longer an escapist platform.

AR product try-onsare a key vehicle for beauty brands to drive sales.

Grove Collaborativerethinks its beauty strategy with new brand.

What were reading

Shiseido is in talks with CVC to sell non-core personal care business.

Airbnbis launching an Inside K-Pop program, withonline sessions about K-beauty.

Can language ever express the essence offragrances?

Continued here:
Beauty & Wellness Briefing: How far will sustainability efforts go in 2021? - Glossy

The National Chicken Councils members produce about 95% of the broiler meat in the US, and NCC advances industry policies on Capitol Hill, within the executive branch and the media.

Industry evolution:

In the middle of March, Americans, like consumers in other parts of the world, found empty grocery store shelves, including in the meat case, as consumers hoarded food, toilet paper and other essential items.

About 44% of chicken production goes into food service. Thus, one of many industry challenges was taking products that would normally go to food service and diverting some of that meat to retail.

When we send items to food service, a lot of times they're going in 20-pound bags or 40-pound boxes," she said. "One of the initial challenges the industry had was diverting products, getting appropriate packaging material and getting the appropriate labels to get things to retail in a timely fashion to fill those shelves and feed Americans.

Looking at changes over time in food spending, the blue bar (chart above) shows a drop down in food service. The orange bar shows grocery store spending.

We did see a significant increase in grocery store sales and a drastic decrease in people going out to eat, which wasn't unexpected, she explained. Restaurants closed and you're going to need to start cooking at home, and people are very familiar with cooking chicken, so that was a common commodity that people were looking for.

Chicken and hamburger were the two most sought after proteins. In March and April, there was a drastic increase in grocery store/retail sales. This included an increase in meat department sales and fresh foods, including fruits and vegetables. Over the last few months, there has been a 9.1% volume increase on chicken purchasing, according to Peterson.

Throughout the pandemic, restaurants have worked to diversify, not only their menu, but their carry out options. Some foods don't carry out very well, so those restaurants have struggled a little bit more than others. Restaurants has also learned how to package certain food stuffs in way to ensure that when it gets home, it's almost as it would have been if you could have eaten at the restaurant.

Early on, the US industry had challenges with who was in charge, with direction coming from many different groups.

We would have state health departments who had a different perspective on what our industry needed to be doing with regard to maintaining the safety and health of our employees than did local health departments. The CDC then came out with their set of recommendations in April, she noted.

You have the governor calling on CEOs of chicken companies. You have OSHA with certain standards and coming in and wanting to do inspections at plants. We had USDA and we have the Food Safety and Inspection Service - we have those inspectors in our plants all the time. USDA was working hard to help make sure we had the appropriate staffing available so that we could keep operating. Trying to weave between all of these different groups who had different asks and asks that changed over time as we learned more about the spread of COVID was certainly a challenge.

This was the first time that I can remember where we actually had some food insecurity issues. People lined up for miles and miles to buy chicken.

In late April, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that essentially gave the former US Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Purdue, the powers of the president in order to make sure that meat and poultry processors could continue to operate, provided they were meeting CDC and OSHA guidelines.

While never executed per se, the order was designed to help companies fulfill their contracts and continue providing meat and poultry to consumers, according to Peterson. USDA worked very hard to ensure the industry could keep operating while also maintaining the safety of their workforce.

Of critical importance, Peterson said was ensuring the industry is doing everything they can to protect employees.

One of the things that sets the meat and poultry industry apart is that we already do a lot of things and had done a lot of things to ensure the safety of our employees, she said. Granted, we needed a lot more PPE than we had in the past, but donning PPE with something that you do that when you go into a processing plant.

In April, the CDC and OSHA came out with some interim guidance for the meat and poultry industry focusing on two areas.

Our industry has a unique challenge because if you look at the number of employees per thousand square foot of space, meat processing is at the very top; we have a lot of people within our establishment doing work, she said. We are quite automated, especially in first processing, but in second processing, there are a lot of people, depending on what product you're making, who are cutting up chickens.

"Some of the things that we implemented as an industry and some of the things that we had done well before CDC and OSHA came out with their guidance, was putting barriers in place so that people could come to work on the processing lines and not have to worry about getting sick from somebody next to you or spreading any potential viruses around. The PPE is something that we had already done, but it's been PPE on steroids, I would say.

Taking employee temperatures and extra sanitation focusing on common touchpoints and common areas was also set up. There were challenges procuring PPE that occurred and times when FEMA took product that was allocated to member organizations.

We have a very diverse population within our establishment speaking well over a dozen different languages within one establishment itself, so making sure that we could adequately communicate to everyone has been really, really important, she noted.

Social distancing - maintaining six feet apart because plants have not been set up to accommodate this. However, barriers have been installed to the right and left the employee, and in some cases in front of the employee when people are facing each other, for example in a de-bone line.

Temperature monitoring early on, there were some inaccuracy issues, but its gotten better. When people come in from outside, they're already cold, so it can be difficult to get an accurate reading. Getting an internal temperature is different than an external temperature like a forehead scan. However, temperature monitoring has made employees more comfortable to come to work.

Testing some member companies have made testing mandatory, while others have voluntary testing. There are also differences within people's religion and/or beliefs that may influence whether they want to get tested, so employers are conscious of those differences.

Education - being able to communicate to everyone is very important. CDC has offered resources to assist with this.

With two vaccines approved in the US, there have been 22.7 million doses administered so far.

When we talked to the CDC earlier in December, they had said that meat and poultry workers should be getting their vaccines in late January. We're in late January, and as far as I'm aware, none of our members have gotten the call that says, okay, it's time, she said. One thing we are talking with our members about is preparing for the vaccine.

Food and agriculture workers are essential frontline workers, which is part of the total group of about 30 million essential frontline workers. Peterson is hopeful that members will get access to a vaccine for employees within the next several weeks.

Peterson said 10 months in, the changes that have been made in processing, may become the new norm. CDC and OSHA are expected to update their guidance to the industry. So, time will tell.

Peterson does expect that COVID will change the future of automation, virtual audits and enhanced imaging systems in the industry.

There are is a lot of opportunity to make current technologies better and to help us do some things, so we don't necessarily have to have somebody standing there doing a particular job, she said.

See the original post here:
2021 IPPE: How has COVID-19 impacted the US broiler industry? - The Poultry Site

27 Jan 2021 --- In the confectionery market, increasingly milk-free and gelatin-free products are hitting the shelves, answering the demands of health-conscious consumers who still want to indulge in sweet applications. As highlighted in a new report from Innova Market Insights, the plant-based confectionery space is snowballing.

Innova Market Insights number two trend for 2021, Plant Forward, signifies the evolution of plant-based concepts beyond the core dairy and meat alternatives categories. In 2020, no fewer than 67 percent of all new products with plant-based claims were launched outside of these pioneering sectors, the market researcher has revealed.

Click to EnlargeInnova Market Insights says the plant-based confectionery space is snowballing.While total confectionery launches rose at a CAGR of less than 2 percent between 2016 and 2020, introductions of those carrying vegan claims increased at 17 percent CAGR. More dynamic still were confectionery launches under the plant-based banner, with introductions more than doubling in 2020 alone.

Moving to mainstream A review of vegan and plant-based confectionery NPD also demonstrates the shift of animal-free products further into the mainstream.

While vegan claims were once predominantly used as secondary or tertiary claims combined with other free-from, organic or health positionings, they are now coming to the fore as a primary focus.

Mars introduction of vegan Topic and Bounty bars in the UK this month demonstrates the growing importance of the vegan message, says Lu Ann Williams, director of innovation at Innova Market Insights.

Although the bars are also positioned as gluten-free, vegan is the most important claim on the packaging, while the Vegan Society logo is also prominent.

Big names brands are also unveiling their animal-free launches in line with Veganuary, a UK organization encouraging consumers to go vegan for the month of January.

Some confectionery producers are taking formulation and marketing cues from the established dairy and meat alternatives categories.Click to EnlargeThe Vegan Society logo is also prominent on packaging, according to Williams.

For example, in plant-based chocolate, some of the newer products use terms such as mylk or m!lk to reflect their dairy-free recipes, while others incorporate nut or oat milk as ingredients.

Meanwhile, in gelatin-free sugar confectionery, veggie terminology is being used on some occasions.

Whats happening in the plant-based arena? Launches of plant-based and vegan-friendly products have significantly increased across all sweet categories to keep pace with growing consumer demand for healthy and indulgent products.

This comes as the burgeoning interest in plant-based ingredients pushes plant-based eating from trend to food revolution status.

Iconic and indulgent brands like Magnum and Galaxy introduced new plant-based products with indulgence at heart. This is growing the category from its niche into the mainstream.

Last August, indulgent chocolatier Lindt launched a vegan chocolate range made from oat milk. The launch was part of the Swiss chocolate and confectionery companys HELLO range and promised to be vegan and exquisite.

Last September, a descendant of John Cadbury and founder of British chocolate specialist, Love Cocoa, James Cadbury, launched his latest venture the UKs first oat milk chocolate range.

Click to EnlargePlant-based confectionery and chocolate NPD demonstrate the shift of animal-free products moving further into the mainstream.Motivated by his own dairy-free journey, James created a creamy plant-powered chocolate using a secret recipe which utilizes completely different production techniques to formulate HiP (Happiness in Plants).

Also in September 2020, chocolate and cocoa giant Barry Callebaut extended its Plant Craft range of vegan and dairy-free indulgent chocolate, cocoa and nut products for food and beverage manufacturers.

In February 2020, Barry Callebaut launched a 100 percent dairy-free milk chocolate coined M_lk Chocolate as part of Plant Craft, which has been developed to satisfy the growing demand for plant-based indulgence, particularly among Millennials and Generation Z. It was part of a broader portfolio of Plant Craft products ranging from chocolate, cocoa, nuts and fillings to decorations.

Edited by Elizabeth Green

To contact our editorial team please email us at editorial@cnsmedia.com

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Excerpt from:
Ticking the plant-based box: Vegan-friendly confectionery gathers pace, says Innova Market Insights - FoodIngredientsFirst

Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events and digitally, as well as in-person exhibitions open in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)

Tara Donovan, Untitled (2015) Slinkys. Photo: Philip Scholz Ritterman. Tara Donovan courtesy of Pace Gallery.

1. On Tara Donovans Intermediaries: Finding Uniqueness in Mass Production at Pace Gallery, New York

If you, like me, have ever wanted to be able to articulate responses to Tara Donovans something-extraordinary-from-nothing-special installations that are fitter for intelligent company than, WTF, how did she do this?! then Wednesday afternoon presents a golden opportunity.

To provide the high-level context Donovans current solo show at Paces New York flagship (through March 6) deserves, the gallery will host an online panel discussion between Museum of Contemporary Art Denver curator Nora Abrams, University of Chicago professor and Smart Museum of Art adjunct curator Christine Mehring, and UC Santa Barbara art and architectural history professor Jenni Sorkin. Mark Beasley, curatorial director of Pace Live, will handle moderating duties. Join me on the path to enlightenment.

Price: Free with RSVP Time: 1 p.m.

Tim Schneider

Esther Kim Varet, co-founder of Various Small Fires. Courtesy of Various Small Fires, Los Angeles and Seoul.

2. Talks at the Academy: Gallerist Panel With Esther Kim Varet,David Klein, andMonique Meloche at the New York Academy of Art

The New York Academy of Art kicks off its 2021 programming with a panel discussion moderated by critic Dexter Wimberly and featuring a trio of gallery owners: Esther Kim Varet of Los Angeless Various Small Fires, and dealers David Klein of Detroit and Monique Meloche of Chicago.

Price:Free with registration Time:2 p.m.

Sarah Cascone

Guerrilla Girls: The Art of Behaving Badly published by Chronicle Books.

3. (At Home) On Art and Behaving Badly: Artist Talk With the Guerrilla Girls in Conversation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

Tune in to the HirshhornsYouTube channelor join on Zoom to see the art worlds legendary masked feminist activist collective the Guerrilla Girls in conversation with the museumsassistant curator Sandy Guttman about what they see as the most pressing issues facing the art world today.

Price:Free with registration Time:7 p.m.8 p.m.

Sarah Cascone

Karen Kilimnik, My Judith Leiber bag, the royal house of Scotland (2012). Courtesy ofthe artist and 303 Gallery, New York.

4. NOTHNG OF THE MONTH CLUB at Off Paradise, New York

In 2013, the critic Erik LaPrade had a chance encounter with the artist David Hammons, who hed never met, at a friends studio. As Hammons was leaving, LaPrade ripped a page from his notepad and asked Hammons for his number. Hammons dutifully wrote down a phone numberjust not David Hammonss phone number.

And this is how a work of ephemera attributed to Erik LaPrade called THIS IS NOT DAVID HAMMONS PHONE # (c. 2013) has ended up in NOTHNG OF THE MONTH CLUB, a group show at Natacha Polaerts Walker Street project space Off Paradise. Conceived by Polaert and co-curator Randy Kennedy as an exhibition under the sign of artist Ray Johnson, each selected work embodies that legendary trickster in some way. As Kennedy explains in his essay, the artists chosenRichard Prince, Marlon Mullen, Karen Kilimnik, Richard Hell, and othersare like Johnson in that they have a love-hate relationship with the lever-pullers of the art world. Johnson, Kennedy writes, was working by choice and temperament outside the walls of power while possessing the tools to pick the lock on the back gate and wander around surreptitiously inside.

The show also features several works by Johnson, who died in 1995, including whats thought to be the last work exhibited in his lifetime, Taoist Pop Art School (1994).

In other words: Go see the show. Call the phone number. You never know wholl be on the other end of the line.

Location: Off Paradise, 120 Walker Street, New York Price: Free Time:Opening, 4 p.m.8 p.m.; TuesdaySaturday, 12 p.m.6 p.m.

Nate Freeman

Martha S. Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Courtesy of Hachette.

5. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All at the New-York Historical Society

Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, will talk on Zoom about how the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 did not in practice give all women the right to vote, and how Black women were an instrumental part the fight for suffrage from the days of Seneca Falls convention through the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to the present day.

Price:$20 Time:6 p.m.

Sarah Cascone

Hugo McCloud, pineapple express (2020). Courtesy of Sean Kelly.

6. Hugo McCloud and Sean Kelly in Conversation at Sean Kelly, New York

Dealer Sean Kelly will chat over Zoom with Hugo McCloud about the artists current show at the gallery, Burdened. On view through February 27, the show features paintings ingeniously made from single-use plastic bags, the ultimate symbol of waste and the environmental dangers posed by our reliance on plastic. The artist will speak to those issues, as well as about labor and geopolitics.

Price:Free with registration Time:3 p.m.

Sarah Cascone

Akbarnama, Mughal India, A party of hunters returning to camp (160304), detail. Courtesy of the British Library-Chester Beatty Library.

7. Tales in Connoisseurship: Appreciating Indian Painting at Asia Week New York

The latest virtual offering from Asia Week New York is this panel featuring Indian painting experts Brendan Lynch, co-director of London-based Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd.; Marika Sardar, curator of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto; and collector Gursharan Sidhu.

Price:Free with registration Time:5 p.m.

Tanner West

Amir H. Fallah, They Will Trick You For Their Own Rewards (2020). Courtesy of Denny Dimin, New York.

8. In Conversation: Artist Amir H. Fallah and Collector Liz Dimmitt at Denny Dimin, New York

Amir H. Fallahs latest show, Better a Cruel Truth Than a Comfortable Delusion, on view at Denny Dimin through February 20, is inspired by his young sons bedtime stories, but it still tackles hot-button issues such as racism, abuses of power, greed, and climate change. The artist will talk with collector Liz Dimmitt about the work, and the ways in which we pass along our value systems to children.

Price:Free Time:7 p.m.

Nan Stewert

Jean-Michel Basquiat performing with his experimental art noise band Gray at Hurrahs in 1979. Photo by Nick Taylor.

9. Time Decorated: The Musical Influences of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Part 2 at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles

This is part two of a new series at the Broad dedicated to the various musical genres that influenced Jean-Michel Basquiat. Tune in to see Afro-punk co-founder James Spooner play a selection of punk and No Wave classics from the likes of James Chance and the Contortions,Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Liquid Liquid,DNA, Mars, and Basquiats bandGray.

Price:Free Time:9 a.m. PST

Tanner West

Ai Weiwei (2012). Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

10. Night of Ideas at the Brooklyn Public Library, co-presented with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Traditionally the Brooklyn Public LibrarysNight of Ideas was a powerhouse marathon that took place from sunup to sundown at the main Grand Army Plaza branch, and though the time and place will be a bit different this time arounda six-hour livestream eventthe speakers are no less impressive. Tune in to see Ai Weiwei in conversation withNew York Times editor Peter Catapano, a short film by Astra Taylor, a special appearance by Patti Smith, and a host of other conversations featuring Nell Painter, Suketu Mehta, and novelist Hari Kunzru, among others.

Price:Free Time:6 p.m.12 a.m.

Caroline Goldstein

11. Street Level: Instagram Live on @artnet featuring @museumofgraffiti

Join us on the @Artnet Instagram account on Friday! Were going live with Alan Ket and Allison Freidin, co-founders of the Museum of Graffiti, in honor of the Street Level sale on Artnet Auctions. Tune in to learn more about when the public perception of graffiti changed, how the internet has affected the evolution of street art, and get the stories behind some of the biggest names in the genre like Lady Pink, Blade, Futura, and more.

Price:Free Time:12 p.m. EST

Katie Rothstein

Courtesy Art/ Switch Foundation.

12. [re]Shaping Exhibition Practices at Art/Switch, Amsterdam and New York

This conference organized by Art/Switch, a young organization focused on sustainability in the arts, looks at the question of how to create environmentally sustainable exhibitions. With an emphasis on ways of systematically integrating sustainability into exhibition planning in a post-Covid world, topics include sustainability in curatorial practice, the structure and process of loans, what the art market can do to create environmentally-conscious exhibitions, and how to shift our thinking around blockbuster exhibitions.

Price:Suggested donation515 ($618) Time:4 p.m.7 p.m. CET (10 a.m.1 p.m. EST)

Naomi Rea

Mel Bochner, Language is not Transparent.Image courtesy of Magazzino Italian Art.

13.Resonance and Revelation: My Italian DaysatMagazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, New York

In this livestreamed talk, artist Mel Bochner and art historian Tenley Bick discuss the odd resonances the artist found between his work and American and Italian art of the 1960s and 70s, which are captured in Bochner, Boetti, Fontana, on view at Magazzino through April 5.Bochner has been at the forefront of conceptual art since the mid-1960s, but the artists exhibitions and intersections with artists in Italy during the formative decades of his career are less well known.

Price:Free Time:12 p.m.

Eileen Kinsella

Djamila Ribeiro at the 2020 Verbier Art Summit. Alpimages.

14. Virtual Verbier Art Summit 2021 atVerbier Art Summit, Verbier, Switzerland

The fifth edition of the Verbier Art Summit, an annual conference that focuses on climate, innovation, and ecology, usually in the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, will take place online this year. The two days of presentations and debates unites under the theme Resource Hungry and will include a talk by Swiss artist Claudia Comte, as well as a debate series featuring Daniel Birnbaum, Beatrix Ruf, and Philip Tinari, among others.

Price: Free withregistration Time: 9 a.m.5 p.m. CET January 29 and 30.

Kate Brown

Theresa Daddezio, Mother Orchid (2020). Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery.

15. Theresa Daddezio: Altum Corpus at DC Moore Gallery, New York

This is the last week to catch Theresa Daddezios solo show, which is her first since being represented by DC Moore Gallery. The exhibition consists of new paintings that give a contemporary twist to abstraction and hard-edge painting styles. Daddezio found inspiration for this work while visiting a Soviet bathhouse in Georgia, where the ruins were overgrown with vegetation, melding architecture with natural forms. The overlapping, curvilinear forms create a beautiful sense of movement and optical illusion.

Location:DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, New York Price:Free Time:TuesdaySaturday, 10 a.m.6 p.m.

Neha Jambhekar

Ensamble, Can Terra. Photo by Iwan Baan, courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum.

16. The World Around Summit 2021: Architectures Now, Near, and Next at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

TheWorld Around, a new itinerant cultural nonprofit, marks the launch of a year-long residency at the Guggenheim with its second annual summitheld online, naturally. Speakers will livestream from 14 sites around the world, presenting new work from architects, designers, researchers, and artists, including 20 groundbreaking architecture and design projects created over the past year.

Price:Free with registration Time:10 a.m.

Sarah Cascone

Read more:
Editors Picks: 18 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From a Chat With the Guerrilla Girls to the Music That Inspired Basquiat - artnet News

After wrapping the biggest film franchise of all time with Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, Anthony and Joe Russo wanted to go back home. Set in their native Ohio, Cherry, out Feb. 26 via Apple TV+, is their first non-superpowered project in more than a half-decade. Tom Holland stars as a young Iraq veteran, known in the movie as Cherry, whose battle with opioid addiction leads him to become a serial bank robber. For the personal project, the Russo brothers teamed with their sister, Angela Russo-Otstot, who co-scripted the adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel by Nico Walker, who wrote the book while serving a prison sentence for bank robbery.

The siblings talked to The Hollywood Reporter about how social media for better and worse influenced the movie and their hopes of appealing to Gen Z audiences.

How did you first hear of the book?

JOE RUSSO It was recommended to us by a book agent that we know who really understands our [home] state, who called and said, "Listen, I know you guys are from Cleveland, I know you're passionate about your upbringing there. There is this book that's coming out that is really profound, it's in a really unique voice and it's detailing the opioid crisis in the industrial Midwest and it interweaves the Iraq War." The opioid crisis is a very personal issue to us. In a lot of ways, the industrial Midwest is ground zero for this crisis. We've lost people who are very close to us to opioids and have others that are struggling with their sobriety. I read it and passed it to Anthony and Angela.

Was that a similar situation for you, Angela? The story felt personal?

ANGELA RUSSO-OTSTOT It did. We, the three of us, grew up in the same pocket that a majority of the book takes place, and I had also been living there. It was almost like all your senses come alive when you're reading something that is that close to you. I'm pretty close in age [to the author]. I think also, to Joe's point, it offered such a specific and truly valuable perspective. The book gives you an entryway into the internal nuances of what these experiences in the war feel like, and then with PTSD and addiction.

Was it understood from the beginning that you three would work on this together?

ANTHONY RUSSO It evolved over time. We have a very fluid relationship and creative engagement with one another. I don't really remember the tipping point, but I think it just grew out of our shared connection over the material and what the movie should be. It was kind of a natural evolution.

What were those early conversations about what the movie should be?

JOE Gen Z is at the forefront of this fight. I've got four children, Angela has three, Anthony has two. This movie was engineered with a visual language to appeal to that generation. It's why Tom Holland is such perfect casting for this movie. The message of this film, the meat of the movie, is about making simple life choices that can cost you a decade and a half of your life. Both Cherry and Emily [played by Ciara Bravo] make those decisions without any life experience. This drug is scientifically engineered to make you addicted to it. It will cost you thousands of dollars and years of your life to get off of it. You may never get off of it it may take your life.

ANTHONY It's a difficult story but it's a very important story to tell now. We wanted to make the movie accessible to audiences. We didn't want to make the movie feel like you were taking your medicine by coming to see it. That was one of the key touch points for all of us in terms of understanding that we need to balance the movie in such a way as to make it entertaining and inviting to watch, because it is such challenging subject matter.

Angela, when you were writing, what was in Walker's book that you wanted to make sure made it into the movie?

ANGELA He has such a remarkable voice and there's so many gems in there. When I went back into the book, it was about, "How do we capture the specialness of what Nico Walker has put on the page and translate it here within the script?" We found different ways to do that, and more inventive and experimental ways to do that. That's when we started to get into more detailed conversations about shifting tone and genre.

This movie blends a lot of genres romance, addiction drama, war movie. Were you worried about fitting that all into Cherry?

ANTHONY We've always been drawn to an unconventional mixology of genres. We like taking the things that seemingly are incongruous and smashing them into each other and seeing what that does. That was definitely part of the essential appeal of this story to us. We also liked how it helped support this idea that this is an epic life arc for this character in this film. It's almost like an Odyssean journey.

ANGELA A choice that Anthony and Joe made very early on, which I think was really smart, was that the anchor of the movie is the love story. It carries us through those different experiences so that there's that constant through-line. Emily is the one piece that keeps him surviving and keeps him afloat through it all.

Was having Tom Holland break the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience a part of that visual language you were talking about?

JOE Yeah. You want to invite the audience into the character, with an actor as charming as Tom Holland. Ultimately, what the movie is espousing is empathy. We feel like we live in a time where empathy is dangerously anemic and we lack empathy toward each other. And [addiction] is a disease and it requires an empathetic, holistic approach to treatment, otherwise we're going to be in a lot more trouble if we can't reverse the trend. Technology and social media they are all working against us, working against humanity and preservation of humanity. I think that you can draw a corollary between the opioid crisis and the advent of social media. We are becoming numb to crisis and we're becoming numb to pain, and that is not a good thing.

ANGELA Nico Walker, in the book, provides such an honest and transparent perspective. And it's unflinching. It felt very important to relay that within the film and with the level of detail that he does in the book. Our number one mission was to draw as many lines of empathy to this character as possible so that people who do not share these experiences, which is probably a vast majority of the audience, are able to feel compassion for him. And then for those who have experienced what Cherry finds himself going through, we would hope that there is some sense of appreciation on their part that their story is being represented. To us, the best feedback we could ever receive comes from people who share some of those experiences.

Directly talking to the audience is also how social media influencers engage with their audiences. Because you were targeting Gen Z, was that a conscious effort to create a familiar experience for them?

JOE Absolutely conscious. We are in a very unique period in movie history the advent of digital platforms. You're going to reach any inflection point and there are going to be people who want to champion and hang on to the past, and there are going to be people who are more interested in what the future holds. Having four children, I can tell you that their acumen for understanding visual language is so much more significant than mine was at their age. Narrative is going to go through an evolution over the next decade or two. And as technology infuses into it, it's going to become more experiential. They are less precious about how they receive it. I love and adore the theatrical experience. My kids like it, but they also have six other ways that they can process information.

What [Anthony and I] love so much about the Marvel Universe is that it was a grand experiment that had never happened before. You were combining narrative from different franchises with different movie stars into mega events. And that was fascinating to us. You go back and look at our career. Arrested Development: riotous. Community: riotous. Ultimately I think what Marvel was doing no matter how people want to ascribe it as some sort of commercial monster it's still riotous in structure. It's still a new event, something that hadn't been done before.

Arrested was the first narrative show on television to shoot with digital cameras at that scale. I remember the fight we had with the network over that, [saying], "Look, this is the future, it's going to allow us to do this and move around and get 40 setups a day and six location changes with available light." We get out of bed every day for the challenges of trying to discover something new.

Do you view this as a period piece?

ANTHONY We definitely approached it that way. This movie is very much about the post-9/11 experience and about the post-9/11 generation. It's always fun to do period, and it was fun to realize that the early 2000s is in fact period now.

JOE We didn't have to change that much, which is why we found the material timely. If you go back and source the post-9/11 moment, it really draws a direct line to where we are right now as a country, where we are as people, where the opioid crisis really started and where it took root.

ANTHONY The opioid epidemic doesn't resemble drug waves that have preceded it. It's very different in terms of who is using the drugs, how they are being used, where they're being used and how they're being obtained. It is a wholly unique phenomenon that Joe just pointed out we are still in now, but that started in this period when the film is set.

How is the experience of working with family in a creative and professional capacity?

ANTHONY There certainly is a shorthand because of the shared experiences that really inform a lot of your artistic sensibilities and instincts. That was definitely at work on this movie with the three of us. We were able to tap into a shared experience that helped feed this movie very specifically.

We grew up in kind of an old-school, Italian American family. You develop this pattern where you have to understand that you have to submit the ego to the collective. That's sort of a fundamental premise of the clan. I think that helps in a creative collaboration because you are certainly never going to agree completely. You have to have that ability to let go of your own ego at certain moments and just run with the collaboration.

ANGELA You can also talk really loudly, but it doesn't mean you're angry.

Have you had an opportunity to screen the movie?

ANTHONY We're just beginning that process.

JOE This is an issue film. It's about PTSD. It's about trauma. Whether you were in a war or not or whether you're a recovering addict or not, we are all victims of trauma right now. We are traumatized every day by our government, we are traumatized by a pandemic. And I think what is important about this film is how we receive trauma and then how we process that trauma and work through it. We are going to have a couple years of fallout from everything that has happened over the last two or three years. And trauma is going to be on a wide scale in this country and in other parts of the world. So again, I feel like the antidote for trauma is empathy and acceptance and inclusion. And I think that is really what this movie is about.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

***

From 'Riotous' TV Directors to Box Office Titans

Avengers: Endgame

The Russo brothers brought the Marvel Cinematic Universe's third phase to a close with this blockbuster that grossed a whopping $2.8 billion worldwide.

Captain America: Civil War

This installment launched the MCU's third phase, setting up the events that would culminate in Infinity War and Endgame.

Avengers: Infinity War

The first chapter of Marvel's star-studded two-film crossover event, this entry in the MCU ended with a shocking cliff-hanger that killed off many of the franchise's heroes.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Russos joined the MCU with this sequel, the second Captain America installment in the franchise.

Community

The brothers served as EPs on the Dan Harmon-created NBC comedy, for which they directed the pilot. Anthony directed an additional 13 episodes, while Joe helmed 20.

You, Me and Dupree

The Russos' third feature film starred Owen Wilson as a house guest who outstays his welcome with newlyweds played by Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon.

Arrested Development

The brothers won an Emmy for directing the pilot episode of the cult-favorite comedy. Separately, they directed 14 episodes during its initial three-season run on Fox.

This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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How the Russo Family Switched From Superheroes to America's Opioid Crisis With 'Cherry' - Hollywood Reporter

Media: Lucia Thorne

Even though the world is forced to adapt to the pandemic, the fashion world may never be the same again.

By Jialin Xu January 26, 2021

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COVID-19 has heavily impacted the fashion world, which has led to more than a one-third drop in revenue within the fashion industry. Even though the world is forced to adapt to the pandemic, the fashion world may never be the same again.

As the pandemic changes our view of the world, it also changes how clothing companies view their products. A notable change would be the recent trend of sustainable fashion that consumers can participate in by purchasing less clothes in general or buying second hand apparel.

The clothing in your closet today has decades of history behind it, and it is important to look at how todays world will impact the meaning of these clothes. Before World War II, slinky and sumptuous evening dresses dominated womens closets. However, as women began to integrate into workplaceswhile men were busy fighting in WWII jumpsuits and pants became the new norm. Post WWII, Christian Dior introduced the New Look to bring back femininity into womens fashion, though trouser pants still remain a mainstay.

Through understanding history, we can discover that each major fashion movement has helped reshape the publics relationship with clothing. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.

During this pandemic, many fashion companies had to temporarily close down physical retail stores, in which 80 percent of transactions are done, and move entirely to e-commerce. Whats worse, many factories in garment-producing countries are shutting down because of the shortage of raw materials from China.

On the other hand, the pandemic has given the fashion industry a break, and has allowed companies to rethink the issue of overproduction.

According to McKinsey & Company, 100 billion items of clothing are produced each year when there are only 8 billion people living on the planet. In what is called fast fashion, businesses compress the production line to replicate runway pieces, regardless of the quality, focusing instead on generating huge revenue through the use of mass-production.

Fast-fashion is a leading factor of climate change. After wearing certain clothes a few times, people will throw out unfavoured pieces, which will end up being burned or disposed of in a landfill. An article from The World Resources Institute reports that it takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirtthe same amount of water to meet an average persons drinking needs for two and a half years. It also said that garments made by non-biodegradable fabrics will remain in landfills for 200 years. This data demonstrates how fashion industries deplete the planets natural resources.

Fortunately, we can see that fast fashion is facing backlash and that sustainability could become the mainstream post-pandemic.

Designers are conscious about their relationship with nature even before the pandemic. In September of 2019, designer Maria Grazia Chiuri collaborated with the Paris-based environmental design collective Coloco to set up the Christian Dior Spring 2020 Ready-to-Wear Collection runway show. The catwalks were surrounded with jungles and trees. After the show, the trees were replanted around Paris.

The purpose of this, as Chiuri explained in an interview, is to translate this idea of a garden into concrete action: a support project that can create other gardens in the community.

Though it is unrealistic for brands, especially for luxury brands, to transfer its supplies into sustainable ones overnight, many designers reflect the concept either in their collections or on the runway.

Alongside COVID-19, sustainability has been brought back to the spotlight again. The pandemic has demonstrated how fragile human bodies are. If we continue indulging in fashion, despite the ongoing harm the industry inflicts on natural resources, then the sustainable solution will no longer be available to us.

Gucci, the leading luxury fashion brand, launched its first sustainable collection, Off the Grid, in June. In this collection, all garments are made from recycled, organic, bio-based materials. The brand is sending a message that if we lighten our environmental footprint we can enjoy the world with greater freedom.

From its fashion video, the producer kept a good balance shifting the scene from the modern buildings to a small-scale treehouse in the city. It implies that modernity can coexist with nature as long as we maintain reverence toward it.

Another crucial factor in accelerating the use of sustainability within the fashion world is consumer behavior. Due to COVID-led store closures, consumers desire to support fast-fashion has drastically decreased. Masha Birger, who runs sustainability consulting firm ESG alpha, confessed that the crisis pushed her to clean out her closet and focus more on buying well-made, classic, multifunctional pieces.

Birger is not the only case. According to a survey of U.S. consumers aged from 20-22, 63 percent of respondents reported that they expect to spend less on apparel. This result is not surprising since no one wants to buy new clothes when theyre stuck at home. This is a special period of time, where consumers aremore than evercautious about their spending.

Subsequently, when consumerism is forced to decrease, the fashion industry produces less to avoid a surplus of unsold stock.

Elizabeth Segran, a staff writer at Fast Company, commented that the next phase of fashions evolution will really come down to our individual choices. Industries always pivot to cater to what the market wants and needs. Not retailers, not influencers, not celebrities, but you and I can change the fashion industry. If we keep a sustainable mindset, purchase fewer clothing items, and keep a curated wardrobe, we can eliminate the damage that the fashion industry has and continues to bring to the environment.

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Could the pandemic get rid of fast fashion for good? - Berkeley Beacon