Jesse Albrecht is at home with unsettling thoughts. Since completing military service in Iraq, he has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2019, he spent seven weeks in an inpatient trauma recovery unit at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Montana. That space is depicted in the vase Room 200, produced the following year, which represents both a psychological and artistic breakthrough for the artist.
Reading Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic novel with Christian eyes
Of course we all know Adorno said that after Auschwitz
poetry as we know it is senseless. The world keeps on
stumbling into the flames and dust obscures
even the faces of children. Can any art matter
without the great ideas that fuel the fire?
Over Black Forest cake and ice wine, the conversation
drifts to history and remembrance. There’s Herbert,
a boy in Germany, walking with his grandfather
by the tracks near the railroad station. They see
a train stopped, hear human voices
Watching the Pixar movie alongside Euphoria and Yellowjackets made me appreciate the exuberant intensity of Mei’s embodiment.
The central character of Kazuo Ishiguro’s virtuosic 2021 novel is an “Artificial Friend” with a young girl’s body.