Author: Paul Ketchum
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My name is not John, but it may as well be: on Danger Signals by Built for Collapse
The history in the text (of lobotomies, of white-male explorers, of colonization) becomes compressed: events, accidents, happenstance, and mistakes, become “like layers of snow into a glacier.”
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On Femme Pathos, with a Joseph Campbell analogy
Moodey tries to save the bird by soaking it in Epsom salts and massaging it, but the inevitability of its death leads to the practicality of it being made into chicken soup.
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To Be Alone In a Room With People: A Conversation with Joey Weiss and Matt Korahais
“It started as a piece with very pared down visual corollary, but I soon realized that was beside the point. It was a much more interesting piece to use language to describe a thing and entirely remove the visual corollary.”
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William Burke and the Never Ending Celebration of Failure
The failure Burke examines comes from (intentional) overuse, dereliction, or poor design, not the result of freewheeling adventure or calculated risk-taking.
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The Resuscitation of Rhapsody; or, Can Anybody Make Art Anymore Without Someone Comparing it to Game of Thrones?
The severed head of Homer has been degraded, discarded in wintry sidewalk snow mounds and forgotten inside the walk-in refrigerator of some swank restaurant before being hung on a meat hook above the bath tub.
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An Evening Without Kippy Winston, Wherein the Author Attends the Season Finale of REAL TALK/KIP TALK
It was funny, it was touching, it inspired moderate anxiety.
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A narcissist is a narcissist is a narcissist
Just like everyone who translates Dante’s Inferno gets to draw some picture of all the rings of hell, so too does everyone who writes about a Maxwell show get to comment on the plain, emotionless delivery the esteemed writer/director brings to his shows. I will not forgo my opportunity.
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Making Sure That One Person Will Never Speak for Everyone: 25 years of the Brooklyn Arts Exchange
25 years ago, in a large room in the Gowanus Arts Building that stands just outside the window of my Gowanus apartment, the Gowanus Arts Exchange, founded by Marya Warshaw […]
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Just Because You’re the First Doesn’t Mean You’re the Best, or “Get the Cheese Plate”: the Immensely Gratifying Return of THE BLACK CROOK
I sauntered into McSorley’s just as my phone jingled. Moe Yousuf was running late; the trains in Brooklyn were to blame. My eyes met Josh Gelb’s as soon as I […]
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On A Clear Day I Can See How Artificially High My Blood Pressure Has Climbed: A Conversation with Eliza Bent
Upon first entering the Five Guys on 7th Ave in Park Slope, I noticed that the usually ubiquitous pictures of salt shakers, to indicate when a dish is high in […]
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Cara Scarmack made a pact with a Devil
Amidst earthquakes and making pacts with the Devil, Paul Ketchum talks to Cara Scarmack about her upcoming operetta at JACK.