At The Atlantic Festival, a 2019 conference put on by The Atlantic, an interviewer asked Maria Ressa, CEO of the Filipino news site, Rappler, why Americans should care about the deteriorating political situation in the Philippines. Her response? "What happens in America happens in the rest of the world." Ressa...
Alternatingly celebratory and apocalyptic, moon Over miami -- a collaborative album curated by Archival Feedback, a long-time duo consisting of Emile Milgrim and T. Wheeler Castillo -- subverts the old standard of the same name with a series of remixes and re-imaginings. Written in 1935 by songwriters Joe Burke and...
"Capitalism drove our expansion westward, leaving an enormous human and environmental cost in its wake. However, the myths surrounding our settling of the west will have you believe something totally different, entwining these events with American values of ‘freedom’ and ‘independence.’ Our history of settling the West is both a...
For centuries, witchcraft has been the sign and symbol of subversive and liminal pathways in life and art; the focal point of cultural anxieties and repressed dreams. Lately, the aesthetics of witchiness have enjoyed a major resurgence. Showing up in fashion and the popularity of herbs and crystals, its widespread...
As per usual, we here at REDEFINE have done the hard work of going through SIFF 2016 (Seattle International Film Festival)'s extensive three weeks of programming to bring you a carefully curated short-list of films you should actually go out and see. Additionally, this year's SIFF boasts some new and exciting...
Though such a struggle may have only existed in some people's minds, if there was one between digital and analog music recording and creation, there's no question that digital came out on top without ever even having to dig a trench. Does this make any remaining pockets of resistance akin...
According to Death Play writer and performer Lisa Dring, grief, in its most violent throes, can be so consuming that one who is experiencing it can hardly feel anything at all. Dring would know. Having lost her estranged father, beloved mother, and half-understood Japanese grandmother by the wee age of 25,...
Photography by Claire FinucaneWe are said to dream on any given night, even if we fail to remember its contents. For the inaugural performances of Arya Davachi's immersive theatre piece, Rough Sleeper, a woman polls us before we enter the venue. Did we sleep well last night? Did we dream?...
When listening to so much post-rave, R&B-indebted bass music, one can't help but detect a certain critical distance. It's like they can't get the power and force of the gravel landslide sub-bass and jerking, jittering trap rhythms to jive with the stories of seduction, temptation, malaise, and emptiness the vocals...
Adorning the cover of Sóley's new record, Ask The Deep, is a portrait painted by Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, with Sóley's face smeared about like the things of nightmares, like a horror film incarnate. Upon first glance, this visual seems inconsistent with one's first impressions of Icelandic musician Sóley Stefánsdóttir -- but...
“There’s a lot of noise out there -- more bands than ever, newer forms of 'entertainment' or distractions for our time. This will be the first decade where history will talk more about the technology surrounding music than the artists. While it’s a challenge, I feel like the past few...
Calling to mind controversial films like Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (2002) or Harmony Korine's Gummo (1997) and Kids (1995), The Tribe can be construed by some as a film of senseless depravity. Over the course of two hours, it is unrelenting as it bleakly follows the lives of an isolated group of deaf-mute schoolchildren that perpetuate a hierarchical system of bullying, violence, and prostitution within the confines of their school and its adjacent living quarters. The film boasts proudly that no spoken words and no subtitles are necessary to convey its themes of love and hate -- and in this regard, The Tribe is, from the get-go, unlike any other. Bold and polarizing, it wordlessly pulls one deep into its trenches, fictionalizing teenage depravity in the cold, rough climate of post-Soviet Ukraine.