THE “LEADERLESS REVOLUTION”
CARNE ROSS with Nikolas Kozloff

Express

Once a consummate insider, the former diplomat is now a trenchant critic of the establishment.

A Mother’s Days

Express

Writing in 1974, Joan McClure assessed the challenges presented by her roles as a mother, professor, and feminist activist.

Watchin’ the Detectives—And the Rest of the Officers, Too

Local

While various past watchdog efforts have targeted police brutality, Police Reform Organizing Project founder Robert Gangi says that the new group is the first "to focus on policy and the harm being caused to individuals and communities on a day-to-day basis.”

NARI WARD with Phong Bui

Art

A few days after the closing of his exhibit Liberty and Orders at Lehmann Maupin Gallery (March 29 – April 21, 2012) artist Nari Ward paid a visit to the Rail’s headquarters to talk with Publisher Phong Bui about his life and work.

LIAM GILLICK with William Corwin

Art

William Corwin sat down with Liam Gillick to discuss a recipe for creating public art that is neither grandiose, kitschy, nor dismissive of the public; the responsibilities of the contemporary curator; and the joys of lying face down on the floor.

ALAIN KIRILI with Robert C. Morgan

Art

On the occasion of the current exhibit The Drawing Show: Lines in Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor, Galvanized Iron and Black Rubber (January 3 – June 30, 2012), the sculptor Alain Kirili and Contributing Editor Robert Morgan paid a visit to the Rail’s headquarters to talk about his life and work.

Looking Backward to Looking Forward

We ought always to embrace the whole realm of our experience, despite its pressures and encumbrances, simply because it’s only through the entirety of lived experience that the outcome can be expansive, complex, and capable of moving us.

FROM METAPHYSICS TO INVECTIVE: Art Criticism as if it Still Matters*

Art

I’ve found that students who are beginning to write criticism usually start with the vehement denunciation and vituperation first, and it might be a very long time before they get around to the metaphysics.

Tree Roots and Trunks

Poetry

Clayton Eshleman's most recent publication is The Price of Experience, a large compendium of Eshleman's poetry, lectures on ancient cave paintings, a journal, essays, reviews, and interviews, just out from Black Widow Press.

The New Millennium Minstrel Show

Dance

Danspace Project, a leading space for experimental contemporary dance, just finished a two-month program that examined the meaning of black dance. Curator and choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones asked, “[D]oes ‘Black Dance’ even exist? And assuming it does, what defines it?”

Arrow Canyon

Fiction

Out here where we are, down this end of the county, we don’t have much in the way of attractions. Not any more, anyways. Unless you’d call the Ute jerky stand an attraction.

MIRACULOUS AGITATION
Scroungings Toward a New Acoustic Synthesis

Music

In an age when so much experimental music is concerned with seizing upon exciting new effects of appropriate novelty and timelessness, it is heartening to hear the old “infinite world of the real” occasionally proffering impressive acoustic gurgles of its own, often in the dirtiest of places.

SONG OF OURSELVES
ABBIE HOFFMAN with Abbie Hoffman

Express

“Political irrelevance is more effective than political relevance,” says Abbie.