#based on danas artwork on twitter

[3laxx]

... What now?

But Hunter couldn’t sleep and Luz couldn’t sleep and it seemed a time as good as ever to be putting the question out there when it was just the two of them. --- The Day of Unity is over, and the gang is trapped in the human realm. Some Late Night Conversations are inevitable.

I knowwww, I should be working on all my other projects and AUs but this just came to my mind and before I knew it I had written over 6k words for it. WE'RE ALL SUFFERING OKAY THIS IS MY WAY TO COPE Anyway, suffer with me.

That being said, the new chapter for Built to Last is coming along well and I've started on my Bartender AU! Otherwise, have fun with this first lmao

TRIGGER WARNING: - PANIC ATTACK

Ao3 / FF.net

---

The evening bled into the night before either of them could even blink.

Camila had taken them all in immediately, having Vee ordering in Pizza to feed them all and preparing makeshift beds, mattresses, and mats for them to sleep on in the living room.

It hadn’t taken long for the first to break down. The others followed suit.

It hadn’t come as a surprise for anyone that the first had been Amity. She had swallowed all her concerns about her father and siblings to function in the fight. Gus had been next to break out in tears again, immediately comforted by Willow and Hunter while Luz and Amity had lied down on the couch, tightly cuddled up, as Amity wept.

Camila had taken a chair next to them to listen to Luz quietly explaining the past few months, while she had held her girlfriend in a warm embrace, patiently waiting until her tears had dried.

Willow had managed to hold on the longest and by the time she shed the first tear, it was late at night already.

These were the first few shocks.

Just a while later, the anxiety started.

And the big looming question of “What now?”

Camila had immediately shut down any doubts about going home. She had made sure everyone had new clothes on, was warm and fed and bandaged up, and she wouldn’t hear any fears about the future.

Somehow, her firm denial of any doubts put the children to rest.

Gus had been the first to fall asleep. Curled up into a little ball, he had made himself comfortable on one of the mattresses on the living room floor, the blanket wrapped around him so snuggly only his ear poked out from beneath it. Willow made sure to keep close to him, one of her hands constantly keeping contact with him, and that’s how she fell asleep, too.

She had long given up trying to hold onto him, so her relaxed, half-closed hand merely lay somewhere on the little huddled pile of witchling while she was sleeping tightly.

Hunter had made himself comfortable next to her, even if he couldn’t fall asleep yet. He was the closest to the couch where Luz and Amity stayed since Amity hadn’t been able to move from the spot after her breakdown.

Luz had turned to the side by now, overlooking her friends on the floor, and managed to wrap her girlfriend’s arms around her to spoon her, making sure she was comfortable.

Amity had contently snuggled into Luz’s back, her arm tightly wound around her middle as if she was afraid of losing her once she let go. Luz had only been able to loosen her grip somewhat by interlacing their fingers on her chest, occasionally placing a little kiss on Amity’s curled-up fingers.

But she couldn’t sleep, either.

She had pretended to sleep for the past ten minutes after her mother had shut off the lights and checked on them one last time. She had kissed Luz’s forehead and told her not to worry, they would find a solution, before tucking a strand of hair behind Amity’s ears and making sure the other kids were looked after as well.

Scrunching her face, Luz huffed quietly, listening to Willow’s soft snores because she was lying on her back, then she opened her eyes for just a short moment.

It wasn’t a surprise to her that Hunter stared back at her in the otherwise dark room, only illuminated dimly by the moon outside. It had stopped raining for now and the clouds had broken up to allow a little bit of the night sky to shine in, but the weather forecast had predicted it would begin raining again in a bit.

He was lying with his back to his captain, staring up at Luz unmoving, and she found herself staring back at him. She had meant to close her eyes again, but she supposed the unrest she had felt was partly due to him staring at her.

Amity behind her huffed softly and snuggled tighter into her back, she could feel her girlfriend’s adorable nose getting scrunched up against her shirt.

Pulling her arm a bit higher, Luz adjusted ever so slightly, Amity following her movement to stay close, then she nodded at Hunter.

“… Can’t sleep either?”, she asked in a hushed whisper, not to disturb her friends’ sleep. The boy in front of the couch shook his head softly, not wanting to make too much noise either, before sighing.

“… No.”, he whispered back, equally as quiet. Luz almost couldn’t hear him in the soft rustling of the wind.

They stayed quiet for another little while, none of them wanting to start first. Luz looked out the window across from her and Hunter looked at her. Both couldn’t seem to break the quiet.

Until Gus huffed and turned in his sleep. The silence was broken.

“… What now?”, Hunter asked, causing Luz to look back down at him with the dreaded question out there. The question Camila hadn’t allowed in her presence, not wanting the looming threat of despair to consume the teens quite yet.

But Hunter couldn’t sleep and Luz couldn’t sleep and it seemed a time as good as ever to be putting the question out there when it was just the two of them.

Luz looked at him for a minute that felt like an eternity, her mind only working slowly, as she went over all that had happened in the short time of this day. She didn’t know if Eda and Raine and all the other witches were really okay after the Collector had stopped the draining spell.

Sure, Hunter had stopped feeling the effects, and the magic flow had stopped, but she didn’t know if Eda’s curse had affected her too much.

King was at the mercy of a godchild now, and there was no way back. No Titan’s blood, no portal, no key, nothing. There wasn’t even a point to start at. No plan to follow, no lead to pursue, nothing.

Luz was just about ready to throw herself off a cliff with the uncertainty she was facing now.

Most of all – she felt responsible.

Not only responsible for helping Belos achieve the goals that had been necessary to lead up to this mess, but she also felt responsible for her friends ending up in the human realm along with her.

She was the human. She was the one they knew best, not her mother or Vee.

She was their guide, their anchor, she had to take responsibility to keep them safe.

Herding them, teaching them, educating them, and making sure they’d fit in, that all fell into her responsibility.

And finding a way back home. She knew that if she failed, she would consider herself the reason they were stranded here, away from their home, their families, and their other friends. Any familiarity they had.

And it was her fault, of course.

Philipp, Belos, the portal, the mess. Everything was her fault.

Breathing through, she squinted her eyes, then she looked back down to Hunter who was looking worried by now but didn’t seem to want to get up to comfort her, in the fear of waking Willow or Gus with that. Or Amity.

“… Tomorrow you’ll recharge and rest. I’ll go to the library and see if I can find anything. And to that guy’s museum, the one who captured Vee, to see if he has any other magic stored.”, she whispered, furrowing her eyebrows. She was sure she could find something if she looked hard enough.

Who knew, maybe they could recreate the way Philipp and his brother had ended up in the Boiling Isles. Eda’s mother had said garbage from the human realm got swept through the realms all the time, and that humans slipped through on occasion as well.

And the diary had made it sound like Philipp and his brother hadn’t come through to the Isles out of their own free will.

Whichever way it was, Luz would find it.

“… I’m coming with you.”, Hunter whispered and Luz already began shaking her head, but he wouldn’t let her object, “I want to know my roots.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

He was a grimwalker, which apparently meant he was a clone of Philipp’s brother if she could trust the bits and pieces of info they had gotten from fleeting glances at his memories.

She could understand him wanting to get to know his counterpart, the inspiration for his creator to make another. Especially if he looked the most like him, in Belos’ words.

But if she let Hunter come with, Amity would want to come as well. And with Amity, Willow would insist on coming, as well as Gus. If she was unlucky, Vee would want to help out, too, as well as her mother.

And then she would have a hell of a lot more pressure on her shoulders to find a solution to this.

Shaking her head, Luz huffed.

“No. You guys need to recharge and rest. I will go out to start. Maybe you can join me later.”, she tried but Hunter merely gave her a deadpan.

“Nice try.”, he dryly commented, “But you need rest, too. I won’t let you run off alone again.”

With an indignant pout, Luz nestled deeper into Amity’s embrace to escape his knowing glare, biting the inside of her lip.

“But you guys look like witches, you can’t just-”, she tried but Hunter was having none of it.

“We can wear hats, or use illusions.”, he pointed out, unimpressed by her weak protest, “Don’t try to do this alone.”

Luz hid her face in the pillow for a minute, before breathing through and rubbing her eyes. She had to convince him to leave her alone. It was her fault they were all here. It was her fault she couldn’t get them back to the Isles, that she didn’t know Eda was safe, or where that godchild had taken him. If the collector had enslaved the Isles or killed them all.

She remained quiet for a while, not wanting to move as she felt Amity’s hand curling and uncurling over her heart. She could probably feel her agitation in her sleep and didn’t like it.

Finally, Luz looked back up and out the window.

It was still quite windy, but still not raining. She could see the illuminated outlines of trees outside softly swaying in the wind, leaves rustling with each gust plowing through the crowns.

It was somehow serene, almost calm, as she stared out the window.

“… What now?”, it was now her turn to ask this question and Hunter sighed softly, shrugging as he adjusted to lie on his back, looking outside as well.

“We’ll have to adjust.”, he suggested, and Luz knew that was true. They wouldn’t find a way back within a few days. Maybe not even weeks. They would have to find a way to keep everyone safe here in the human realm. And help out her mom with some money and work around the house.

She supposed she would have to go back to school again.

“… We’ll have to help Mama, somehow.”, she mumbled and Hunter nodded, uncertain what that entailed but he was sure he could do some job to keep the woman that had taken everyone into her house financially stable. He could go bounty hunting or maybe he would be proficient as a soldier.

“Yeah…”, he lamely replied and Luz had the nerve to laugh softly, stifling her giggling as Hunter shot her a glare.

“I really don’t know what job you could be doing here.”, she said, as if she had read his mind, which made him huff indignantly.

“I’ll find something.”, he mumbled and heard her giggle again, before shuffling a bit. A small smile from Amity followed.

“Maybe you could help out on a construction site. Or in a supermarket. Though, I really think we should keep you away from interacting with too many people. You’re not the best actor.”, she mused and while Hunter wanted to protest that, he actually had to agree with her on this one. Interacting with fewer humans meant less stress for him to keep up a façade.

“Amity could help out in the library. She has some experience there, at least. Willow could help out as a gardener. I’m sure she would have an easier time working within her expertise. And Gus could help out in the cinema, maybe.”, she mumbled to herself, and Hunter realized this was more wishful thinking. She followed suit, “But we’ll probably just all end up in fast food anyway.”

He sent her an amused glance, prying his eyes away from the window to look at her briefly, before turning back to the moon.

“What’s fast food?”, he asked and Luz chuckled.

“Like not-dogs, but more of that.”, she decided on the simplest explanation. He could hear the tiredness in her voice. Turning back to her and lying back down on his side, he looked back up at her.

Luz was still looking out of the window, even as she noticed Hunter had returned to his old position of looking at her. The wind was picking up a little and she could see the little drops of the previous rain glistening in the moonlight. It was mesmerizing to see something as normal and bland as leftover raindrops sparkling in the moonlight.

“… You okay?”, he finally asked and Luz sighed, feeling the dread pooling in her stomach again. She was tired and exhausted and overwhelmed and most definitely not okay. But she wouldn’t tell him that.

On the other hand… She really should begin telling the others that she was not okay. She wouldn’t be able to hide it in the long run, especially with her mother and Amity around. Her girlfriend had proven more than once that she was capable of looking right through her, and her mother knew her all her life. Now living together with Willow and Gus would surely make them more sensitive to her actual mindset.

She gave herself until tomorrow when they would start to notice something was seriously wrong.

Biting and chewing on her lip, she contemplated if she should start now with Hunter and risk the wrath of her girlfriend in the morning when she realized she had not been the first to be included in Luz’s wellbeing, or wait until tomorrow and risk not telling anyone at all until they’d inevitably pick up on it.

Finally, she decided against her usual way of trying to keep it a secret for as long as possible. Eda had taught her as much. It was always better to talk about what weighed down on her and to find a solution together. She had been able to look right through her as well. Luz wondered how she was doing right now.

“I-… I feel like… Why we’re here, I mean…”, she gulped and played around with Amity’s fingers, trying to procrastinate actually having to say it. It would mean taking responsibility. Something she knew she had to do but was terrified of.

“Stop blaming yourself.”, she finally heard after a few minutes and looked up to see Hunter still staring at her. He looked sympathetic, and she could tell he’d been through this for himself already.

“… How can I not?”, Luz finally asked, blinking away her tears. She could feel her sleeping girlfriend press a soft kiss to her neck at her sniffles as if to comfort her.

“It’s not your fault.”, Hunter simply stated, narrowing his eyes, “But if you believe helping Belos was your fault, you have to blame me, too. I’ve been helping him all my life. I got him your Titan’s blood.”

Immediately, Luz shook her head.

“I wouldn’t ever blame you-”, she started and he cut her off.

“Then don’t blame yourself either.”, he said, pulling the blanket tighter around him. Suddenly, he looked so mature to Luz, even if he was just sixteen, just two years older than her. The way the moon illuminated the back of his head and the way his expression spoke of a deeply rooted guilt he’d been carrying with him ever since they had left Belos’ mind, made him look older.

He looked back up at her and Luz worried her lip, trying to think of a way to go against his argument. She couldn’t do anything against the feeling of guilt that was weighing heavily on her shoulders. And she didn’t want to work against it either. It felt righteous, justified to be blaming herself.

“You were just following orders. He would hurt you when you didn’t obey. I was helping him out of my own free will.”, she argued and Hunter scoffed at that.

“I still enabled him. And you didn’t know better. At the end of the day, he just exploited us both.”

Luz still wasn’t happy with his reasoning. Grumbling, she once again pushed her nose into the pillow, eyeing him, before facing him.

“Ignorance is no excuse in law.”, she mumbled, which almost caused Hunter to sit up, but after flinching, he thought again and settled back down, not wanting to jostle Willow or Gus, or startle Amity awake. He was about sixty percent sure she would immediately attack him, should he threaten Luz in any way.

“That was no ignorance. You just didn’t know, and Belos deceived you. If you had known who he would turn out to be, you would have done everything to stop him.”, his whispers got a bit more aggressive, though he didn’t raise his voice.

Luz pouted at him trying to reason with her, scrunching her eyebrows, before looking down.

She had been deceived. She hadn’t known.

Still, it did little to alleviate the pressure on her chest, nor did it help her get rid of the blame she felt. Not only for helping him but also for ditching her friends once the Owl House had gone into hiding, for getting herself captured by Kikimora, disguised as Hunter, to be taken to Belos. For trying to fight him alone, for almost getting herself petrified, for being so useless in their fight against him, for-

It took a few attempts for Hunter’s voice to get through to her.

She had in no way intended to ignore him, but her panic had gotten the better of her. So much so that Hunter had in the end sat up to scoot closer to the couch, uncertainly patting her shoulder.

Luz’s eyes finally focused on him, if only to blur over immediately while she tried her hardest to contain herself, then Hunter leaned forward to cradle her head and let her bury her face in his chest.

Amity snuffled and pressed herself tighter into Luz’s back, unwilling to give up even an inch of her girlfriend in her sleep, but Luz was grateful for Hunter’s hug.

It allowed her to stifle her sobs, and muffle whatever she couldn’t suppress.

A moment later, when she had finally managed to match her breathing with his deep, calm breaths, she felt him leaning back and Amity pulling her back into their embrace again. A glance over her shoulder reassured her that her girlfriend was still tightly sleeping, and another over Hunter’s shoulder revealed that neither Willow nor Gus had woken up either.

She breathed through, then she watched as Hunter sat back and pulled his blanket around his shoulders, watching her again as she brought Amity’s hand up to her face to softly kiss her palm. The girl spooning her immediately relaxed at that with the most adorable little huff Luz had ever heard.

Blinking slowly, she settled back into the pillow and looked at Hunter who was still watching her as the first few droplets of rain began tapping against her window once more.

Luz breathed through and tried to focus, nodding to herself. She had to tell someone and Hunter would probably understand the best.

“… You-… You’ve seen his… Appearance.”, she tested the waters and Hunter slowly nodded, his own memories flashing across his face. It was obvious he had seen Belos like this more than once, and it was possible he kind of knew what Belos had done to himself, “He was able to do magic without the staff.”

Hunter nodded again and Luz gulped, worrying her lip before continuing.

“When-… When I fought him alone, he outmatched me by far. I didn’t have a chance… So he, uhm, captured me.”, she mumbled and Hunter sat closer, putting his elbow up on the couch beside Luz’s head. She was glad for the close proximity, the quieter she could say it, the less chance any of her friends had to listen in on them, should they pretend to sleep.

“He wanted to make a deal. That I come home with him, to the human realm, because he didn’t want me-… Staying in the demon realm.”

Hunter slightly recoiled at that, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Why? Why did he care about you?”, he asked and Luz felt her heart being squeezed by the hurt look on his face. As much as Belos had betrayed him and as much as Hunter had learned in the past few weeks, she figured it would still hurt for him to hear his uncle, as he had thought his entire life, would care for her, who had just been on the Isles for a few months.

“… I’m human… He didn’t want another human hurt by the Isles… It was about his ideology. He’s-… He didn’t care for me. I guess he was just projecting.”, she explained and Hunter visibly relaxed. She couldn’t blame him.

“And I guess you said no?”, he asked with a deadpan after a while, the rain was by now audibly splattering on the window and getting so loud it even droned out Willow’s and Gus’ breathing.

“… I kind of… Maybe… Insulted him instead.”, Luz grimaced and Hunter had to groan at that. She really had no common sense for any safety.

But as she grew quiet again, listening to the soft pattering of the rain, Hunter leaned in again. Luz turned her head back to the pillow, as if attempting to hide, then she sighed into the fabric. He moved his other hand to rest on her shoulder and encouraged her to speak up about it.

“I-… I got him so mad that he-… He wanted to put me out of my misery instead.”, she gulped as Hunter furrowed his eyebrows at that, his grip on her shoulder tightening, “And-… When-…”

Her voice failing, she felt tears welling up in her eyes again and her feet felt as heavy as they had when Belos had raised his hand and made a fist. It felt exactly like that again, the unforgiving cold and stiffness creeping up her legs again.

Rubbing her feet together, she made herself feel that they were not actually turning to stone again but the dread was still pooling in her stomach.

“… What happened then?”, Hunter asked and Luz sniffled, pulling Amity’s hand up to her face again, keeping her gaze down to avoid his looking at him. Her girlfriend gave another little huff and tightened her hug before she could answer.

“… He petrified me.”

The silence that stretched after she had said it grew louder by the second.

The rain and wind from the outside were suddenly droned out at the deafening absence of words, just the rush of blood in her ears was still there. Slowly, Luz looked up and grimaced at the expression on Hunter’s face.

He looked downright furious.

Breathing through his clenched teeth, he stared at the backrest of the couch, trying to contain his rage as he worked through the first few seconds of understanding the horror Luz had gone through.

Gulping, she looked down again, waiting for his response.

Only now that she had said it, told someone else what had happened, it seemed real. Before that, it had happened between Belos and her, and before he had gone berserk when she had branded him.

Now that it was out there, now that Hunter had heard it and now that she would have to tell her girlfriend, her mom, and her friends, it seemed a lot more real.

Breathing faster, she squeezed Amity’s hand and tried breathing through.

When the stone had crept up her legs, when she had understood that she could die right there, with the portal open next to her, with her mom not knowing what had happened, with Eda and Raine and the rebellion so far away. With her friends on the way, only that she hadn’t known that.

Hot tears welled up in her eyes again and she rubbed her feet together to feel them alive and not made of stone. Finally, her tears spilled. Once again, she buried her face in the pillow, and once again, she felt Hunter leaning in and comforting her.

The realization set in now. The shock faded. The feeling that it was a dream, that it had never happened, was gone. The comfort, maybe delusion, that she had dreamed it all up, was gone.

Suddenly, she knew it was real.

How her joints had started working, how Belos had thrown her across the room, how she had watched her legs turning cold and unmoving, how she had already pictured moss spreading on her statue. How it had moved up her body, her hips, how hard it had been to move then. How her hand on the floor, desperately grasping the branding glove, had turned cold, unmoving. How her own arm had started feeling like a cane or a branch merely supporting her chest, how she hadn’t been able to move away or do anything about it. All the while her brain raced a thousand miles an hour, trying to find the right words to persuade Belos, how she had hated to say his name to his face and the smug smirk that had spread on his lips then.

How the stone had moved up her chest, how she had felt her lungs turning, how breathing had gotten hard. How she had spoken the last words on her last breath before her mouth and nose had turned to stone as well. How suffocating it had felt, that her throat had hardened and finally, her breathing had cut out. She had heard her last breath. How scary that had been, how the tears had soaked the stone that her cheeks had turned.

Gasping, she curled up even tighter, not even realizing how she had started curling, around the void that started filling her middle. How the pain had started spreading from her ribcage, how her heart was being squeezed and how she had started breathing faster, tucking her legs in.

Her knees were up to her throat when Hunter’s voice finally broke through to her. He told her to breathe, to open her eyes, and to look at him, otherwise, he’d wake Amity.

She couldn’t say it again. She couldn’t have Hunter tell her girlfriend.

Forcing herself to breathe in through her nose, Luz tried hard to fill her lungs with air to help with the lightheadedness, but it was harder than she thought.

The feeling of her body hardening, of herself turning to a statue, of the pain she had worked around just to keep talking, bargaining, dealing with Belos. Her begs rang in her ear, louder than she had probably spoken.

The cold, unforgiving, unmoving, hard stone reached her head, locking her jaw, working up to her ear, her eye, her brain just before Belos had stopped it.

Functioning, executing her plan, after almost ending up as a statue. And telling nobody about it.

It all came back now.

How horrifying the past few weeks had been, between the anniversary of her father’s passing and her ending up back in the human realm. How she and Hunter had discovered he was a grimwalker, how she had gone into hiding, how helpless and desperate Eda and Lilith had been to keep her and King safe, how they had discovered everything about King’s true heritage, the Titan Trappers, the Day of Unity starting, her friends, her family, the rebellion-

Suddenly, a female voice talked to her.

The hand she had so tightly clasped in hers had disappeared from her grip and when she was turned over and opened her eyes, she was looking into Amity’s golden ones. Hunter was still there as well, talking fast to her girlfriend while she only curled up tighter, struggling to breathe.

She still didn’t know what had happened to Eda. She still didn’t know what happened to King. How the Isles were. If the collector had left with King or if they had decided to enslave the entire population of the Isles into some sick, twisted game to play with him.

Raine, Darius, Eberwolf, she had heard of none of them. All that she had to go by was that Hunter’s sigil hadn’t killed him. But what of Eda’s curse?

Had it harmed her?

Was King safe?

What about everyone who didn’t have a sigil? Were they okay?

Luz tried to breathe, she really did, but she could only squint her eyes more and try not to let the pain inside her chest eat her up alive.

A hand cupped her cheek and Luz opened her eyes back up, looking up to Amity once again. Once her vision stopped being blurred, she could see how disheveled her girlfriend looked. Hunter had probably woken her up while panicking about her state, and Amity had immediately entered the adrenaline rush over her girlfriend not being okay.

Amity was leaning over her, propping herself up above her, so she could look at Luz properly.

She was saying something, but Luz couldn’t hear her. Her own shallow breathing was too loud, the rushing in her ears, the tumult in her head, the concern and worries and everything was getting too much and she couldn’t focus, damnit-

Until a comfortable weight settled on top of her. And the weight was breathing. She only belatedly realized Amity had climbed atop of her and was showing her hand, slowly counting up to four and down again, doing the same movements with her lips as Willow’s breathing technique required.

With the help of being engulfed completely by her girlfriend and the breathing on top of her that she could feel and didn’t have to hear, she slowly managed to get her oxygen intake back under control.

They breathed together until Luz could feel stuff around her again. Hunter’s hand on top of her head, Amity’s hand in her hair, the blanket still draped around them.

Somewhere in between, Amity’s head had dropped next to hers, snuggling into her neck and continuing to breathe slowly as Luz’s vision stabilized and she could slowly find back to herself.

Amity continued breathing on top of her and Hunter still held up his fingers, counting to four and back so Luz wouldn’t forget to breathe.

When she had calmed down enough to talk, Amity leaned back again, looking down at her skeptically.

“… Did you sleep at all?”, she asked and Luz sheepishly shook her head, looking around as she felt Hunter’s hand leaving her hair to discover he was only fetching a glass of water for her. Amity obviously disapproved, but looked understanding. She probably knew why Luz had trouble sleeping.

After allowing Luz to sit up to accept Hunter’s glass of water, Amity slipped from her lap and she gratefully took the glass of water, taking a sip before her girlfriend nudged her.

At her nod, Luz drank half the glass and looked for her approval.

They settled back down on the couch and Amity draped the blanket back over them both, now having switched places after Hunter bid them goodnight, and looked at her.

Luz felt the comforting pressure of the backrest along her body and had her hands linked with Amity’s, resting between them. She smiled at her girlfriend, but Amity was having none of it.

“Luz, what just happened?”, she whispered, just loud enough for her to hear since they were practically nose to nose, so Amity would still have some room on the couch. Luz squinted her eyes and buried her face in the pillow before Amity reached over and brushed some strands of hair out of her face and behind her ear. She would really have to get a haircut.

“… Some… Stuff happened before you guys arrived in the skull…”, she admitted. Her girlfriend merely nodded, leaning in closer and pressing a soft kiss to her cheek, keeping close and parting their fingers so she could hug her.

“… Hunter told me as much…”, she murmured and Luz was glad she didn’t hear anything from the mattress down below. She also couldn’t hear any sort of resentment from her girlfriend, as scared as she had been of that.

Huffing, she turned her face back up and leaned the bridge of her nose against Amity’s to be as close as possible. Their breaths mingled and thankfully, Luz felt herself growing sleepy at that.

“… I-… I fought Belos and, he wanted a deal…”, she began but Amity merely shook her head, her hand wandering up Luz’s back before weaving into her hair, her fingers playing with her locks.

“… Not tonight.”, she mumbled and Luz gratefully snuggled in some more, finding herself smiling. Amity probably just didn’t want her to have another panic attack. She couldn’t express how thankful she was that she didn’t have to repeat the three words that caused her so much pain and fear.

“Okay.”, she mumbled back, snuggling into her embrace and trying not to think too much about what had happened. She had thought about that enough for today. Hunter knew now and Amity knew she had to tell her something. She would tell them all tomorrow and it would feel much better doing so after she had slept a night over it.

And they were safe. As much as it sucked to be away from the Isles and everyone else and as much as it pained Luz not to know what was happening over there, they were safe. Willow and Gus and Hunter and Amity, her girlfriend, were safe.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she had pressed a soft kiss to the corner of Amity’s lips and snuggled closer, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend. Amity gave a soft eep, before snuggling into her warm embrace and settling down again.

Sleep took her faster than her girlfriend this time. After just a few breaths, she was out cold and had quickly fallen into a deep, dreamless slumber. Here, in the arms of her girlfriend, the world on her shoulders seemed lighter, the light brighter, and the solution closer than she thought.

Just a moment later, Amity followed. The last to fall asleep was Hunter, and as much as he tossed and turned, as soon as Luz's hand dropped over the couch’s edge and Willow’s hand had found its way to his mattress as well, he calmed down.

 ---

When Camila entered her living room this morning, disheveled and bleary-eyed from a restless night, she found a smile growing on her lips.

She had sent Luz off to camp mainly to make some friends, not because she had wanted her to actually think inside the box. It had been her last resort to allow her daughter some kind of connection with the rest of her age class.

And now, seeing her all cuddled up with her girlfriend, holding hands with the boy she had come here with – Hunter, as she recalled – she felt that maybe, the Boiling Isles hadn’t only kept her daughter away from her.

She tiptoed past the sleeping horde of teenagers and managed to get herself a nice cup of coffee before sneaking back in and leaning over the backrest to watch her sleeping daughter. She had curled in just enough to hide her face in the crook of Amity’s neck, leaving the witch girl to bury her nose in her hair. They looked so serene, so calm and peaceful, despite what they had been through just yesterday.

Luz’s arm was draped over her girlfriend’s waist and hanging off the couch, where Hunter’s fingers were timidly laced into hers, his elbow propped up just enough to keep his arm upright, while he was softly snoring. His other hand was occupied by the girl sleeping next to him, Willow if Camila remembered her name right.

Gus was curled up on Willow’s side and huffing from time to time, his ears flicking. She suspected the youngest of the group would wake up soon.

Looking back down at her daughter, Camila couldn’t resist the smile she felt growing on her lips, or the hand to reach down and brush some of Luz’s hair out of her eyes while taking care not to wake Amity. She also reached over to brush a strand of lilac hair behind her pointy witch ears, though she wasn’t too sure if witches slept lighter than humans. She didn’t want to wake Amity up.

Without meaning to, she mustered the young witch that her daughter was so cuddled up to. She was pretty. Luz really had chosen well, even if she hadn’t believed her daughter at first when she had told her she had a girlfriend that night she saved Vee.

Chuckling to herself, Camila finally took a sip of her coffee that had cooled down a bit by now and walked back to the kitchen to sit down at the counter and have her cup of coffee to herself, without annoying the children too much.

Without her noticing, a sleepy smile spread on Amity’s lips. She hadn’t woken up, but the timid touch alone had been enough to make her feel entirely at home, with her girlfriend snuggled up to her.

---

I hope you enjoyed it!

[wallpaperpainting]

Why Is Wall Art Ideas For Master Bedroom So Famous? | wall art ideas for master bedroom

For some of us, accepting a acceptable night’s blow has been a claiming lately. I’m acquisition myself alive up in the average of the night, experiencing acutely active nightmares, or clumsy to abatement comatose at all. All I appetite to do is beddy-bye until this communicable is over, but I can’t alike accomplish it through a distinct night. I asked experts for abstracted bedchamber account to advice me with my hawkeye nights.

If your 2020 coma acquaintance is activity annihilation like mine, it ability be account advantageous added absorption to the ambiance in which you beddy-bye than ever. “When I architecture bedrooms, I’m all about creating a serene, adequate escape from the world, which I anticipate we all charge adapted now,” says Los Angeles-based autogenous artist Rande Leaman.

This ability be the adumbration of the year, and until we can get aback assimilate a bank with a piña colada in hand, our bedrooms (and the beddy-bye we seek aural them) are all we’ve got in agreement of artifice the acrid realities of the world. Below, acquisition 16 tips for authoritative castigation as zen as possible.

To alpha with, Leaman advises evaluating which items currently in your bedchamber can be removed. “With beneath stuff, we accept the addiction to feel calmer,” she says. “I don’t beggarly you should accomplish it antiseptic and get rid of everything—I’m a designer, so I adulation stuff—but I would aloof be a little discerning.”

Once that’s done, you can activate to add new items area appropriate. This doesn’t mean, however, that you accept to absorb money. “Look about your amplitude and see what you ability be able to abduct from the active room, bathroom, like a absolutely abundant candle that you adulation or some art that you can move around,” says Leaman. “We all get so ashore in how we busy our places, but sometimes we don’t apprehend we can accumulate it aqueous and redesign the bedchamber to accomplish it a little added serene based on what we already own.”

“Chop up a auto and put in a baby basin or glass, add a compression of salt, and ample the barge with water,” suggests Feng Shui Master Dana Claudat. “Leave it on your nightstand for a day or two (no longer, so it doesn’t mold) to annihilate any abundant activity in your bedroom.”

Nature is an accomplished antecedent of zen, so Leaman recommends bringing flowers and plants into the bedroom. You don’t accept to boutique for them, either. Instead, she suggests acrimonious them from your backyard or while out on your circadian walk. Nature-themed artwork or photography can help, too.

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[biofunmy]

#MeToo Work at Art Basel Offers Cautionary Tale About Political Art

The Los Angeles artist Andrea Bowers made a monumental artwork that she hoped would support the #MeToo movement and presented it, with the help of four galleries, at the prestigious Art Basel fair in Switzerland. Three imposing walls of text and photos made up of 167 red panels retold the stories of men and women who had been accused of sexual misconduct or harassment since the movement began in 2017.

But if the intent of her work, called “Open Secrets Part I & II, 2018, 2019,” was to raise awareness about insensitivity to women, it seemed to backfire when Helen Donahue, a woman who said she had been abused complained on Twitter last week that photographs of her were used without her consent, and another woman, Abby Carney, said her name had been used without her consent. In a highly unusual move, Ms. Bowers extracted the panel in question, and issued an apology for having used the photographs.

Ethics scholars said the incident at the fair, which runs through Sunday, offered a case study in the complexity of creating political art. What rules apply for appropriating images and stories previously posted on personal social media accounts, or allegations made in a journalistic context? As socially-conscious art has become increasingly popular, and these works enter galleries and other commercial settings, should moral lines be drawn?

“This is a whole new set of questions,” said Prof. Griselda Pollock, director of the Center for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds in Britain. “Artists have a right to quote from the world, and they have authorization to present it as their art. But if you use materials that come from one context of use, with its own inherent ethics and politics, into another one, then we find that there are people who are challenging it.”

Ann Demeester, director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, who is an authority on ethics in contemporary art, said that Ms. Bowers’s work enters ambiguous territory because it makes artwork from personal images and material that was originally presented in a media context, without significant fictionalization or alteration.

“I don’t know of any ethical written standards for artists, not even for curators,” she said, “but there’s a common understanding that you try to be as respectful as possible for any human person that you involved in an artwork. But sometimes when a work is activist, some people fall victim.”

Protests erupted in 2017 at the Whitney Biennial when the artist Dana Schutz made a painting based on photographs of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, an African American teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955. His mother had made the photos available to selected media after his death to illustrate the extreme brutality of his murder. Protesters objected to the fact that Ms. Schutz, a white artist, reused it for her own work.

The legal aspect at stake is a principle called “fair use,” which typically applies when an original is transformed by being incorporated into art. The limits of fair use have been tested in lawsuits against Richard Prince, who has appropriated images posted on social media for his artworks and has sold them for millions of dollars.

In this case, there is no lawsuit, but Robert Penchina, a partner at the law firm Ballard Spahr who specializes in copyright, trademark and media law, said that the fair-use principle could apply here. Including Ms. Donahue’s photo “in an artwork where the artist is putting it into context, combining it with 170-odd panels, is telling a particular story, transforming it by building upon it,” he said. “I think it is a good candidate for fair use, and potentially defensible on that ground.” The panel of the installation that contained the photograph was removed.

Charles Krause, founding director of the Center for Contemporary Political Art in Washington, said, “This incident at Basel is probably a useful cautionary tale” for artists who make political art, and for “the gallery owners and fair promoters who are their editors.”

“What about the accused?” he said in an email exchange. “How many of them have been found guilty in a court of law, as opposed to the court of public opinion and political expediency? Can we trust Andrea’s work is accurate with regard to them, or shouldn’t we concern ourselves about the actual facts of each individual case?”

The panel of the installation that was removed concerned the freelance writer Michael Hafford and allegations made in 2017 by fellow journalists and former girlfriends in an article in Jezebel, an online magazine.

Ms. Bowers, who declined to be interviewed for this piece, seems to have based her panel largely on that article, in which four women described physical or sexual mistreatment by Mr. Hafford. One of them, Ms. Donahue, told Jezebel he had caused her physical pain — and bruising — during intercourse that went beyond “rough sex.” Another, Abby Carney, said he had raped her, ignoring her requests to stop having sex one night in 2015. Ms. Carney wrote on Twitter, “TFW you find out someone turned your rape into “artwork” at Art Basel???”

Neither woman has filed formal charges against Mr. Hafford. Mr. Hafford, reached by phone and email, did not respond to questions emailed to him by The New York Times. Neither would he comment on the allegations in Jezebel.

In her artwork, Ms. Bowers incorporated photographs of Ms. Donahue’s bruised face, chest and shoulders that were originally posted on her Twitter account, and were also used in the Jezebel article; Ms. Carney’s full name was written into Ms. Bowers’ text.

Ms. Donahue protested on Twitter that use of her image in the work was “exploiting us for ‘art’.” She added, addressing Ms. Bowers, “Do you know how [expletive] insane it is to find out my beat up face and body are on display as art rn for rich ppl to gawk at thru a stranger’s instagram story.”

Ms. Bowers “absolutely realized that that was a mistake,” said Susanne Vielmetter, the owner and director of Vielmetter Los Angeles, one of the four galleries that collaborated to bring the artwork to the fair. “We all agreed it should be taken down,” she said.

After they removed the offending panel from the installation, Ms. Bowers contacted Ms. Donahue, and tried to explain the nature of her work and her intentions, Ms. Vielmetter said in an interview.

The artist, in a public statement sent to The New York Times by her gallery and published on Twitter on Wednesday, said: “I, Andrea Bowers, would like to apologize to the survivor whose image was included in my piece,” adding “I should have asked for her consent.”

Ms. Bowers is known for her drawings, videos and installations that focus on social issues ranging from workers’ rights to immigration to victims of harassment, including transgender women. Her artworks, in the collections of the Hammer Museum of Art, in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, have reused text from protest posters and activist slogans.

The galleries that brought “Open Secrets” to Art Basel, which also include Andrew Kreps, Kaufmann Repetto and Capitain Petzel, also issued an apology, adding “We stand by Andrea Bowers and her work and support the conversation that has only just begun.”

In an interview, Ms. Carney said that she had never been contacted by the artist for any participation in the project and she had not received an apology from Ms. Bowers., nor was she contacted by the artist

“Part of the retraumatization is that it’s a half story or a poorly told version of the story,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m trying to conclude that chapter, and to be known for my career successes and not for that.”

The gallery owner, Ms. Vielmetter, in an interview at the fair, said that “this piece is showing how widespread this problem of abuse is, and how the cultural dialogue of what is and what isn’t acceptable sexual behavior is changing right now.” She added, “The last thing that we wanted to do was to do more harm to one of the survivors.”

Ms. Vielmetter confirmed that the original asking price of the installation was $300,000 but added that the galleries who presented the art have now decided not to offer it for sale “out of respect for the ongoing conversation between Andrea Bowers and the survivor.”

Ms. Carney said that she has mixed feelings about the fact that the single panel was removed, because she supports the idea of a discussion about this topic.

“I believe she probably has good intentions,” Ms. Carney said of Ms. Bowers, “but when you’re telling someone else’s story, if you’re not careful, you can make it too general because you haven’t really taken the time to understand it.”

She added, “My upset is not so much that I hate having my name out there, but more about getting a chance to talk about it. We are all writers and journalists, and we have powerful voices of our own.”

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[makingscipub]

CRISPR culture

CRISPR is a way of changing and replacing parts of DNA using enzymes like a pair of molecular scissors (of course things are more complex than this!). This new technology for ‘editing’ DNA, genes or genomes began to attract public attention between around 2012 and 2015. When I started to write about metaphors used to make CRISPR public (for example, here and here and here), in around 2015/16, I was surprised by how little resonance CRISPR and gene editing seemed to have in wider culture (which was, one has to admit, just then engulfed by other major preoccupations). This was, I thought, quite different compared to what happened during the emergence of, say, cloning or nanobiotechnology, which caused something of a cultural ‘effervescence’ after 1997 and after about 2003 respectively, with lots of stories and images circulating widely.

CRISPR novels

Things seem to be changing now. To see what’s going on, the first thing I did was google. I searched for ‘CRISPR novels’ and got this (11 March):

I was somewhat surprised, as I had not regarded A Crack in Creation (Doudna and Sternberg, 2017) as a novel, despite the use of some fictional characters, such as unicorns. And Modern Prometheus (Kozubek, 2016) was not a novel by Mary Shelley. These two books are written by scientists/science writers not novelists. They deal with reality, not fiction and I have written about them here and here.

I then searched for ‘CRISPR scifi’. That proved more fruitful. I found a very useful webpage on CRISPR in movies and on TV. I’ll come back to movies in a minute. I also asked on Twitter whether people knew of some CRISPR inspired novels. At first, people were a bit stumped, but then I got a few hints.

There seems to be one real CRISPR thriller, namely Change Agent, by Daniel Suarez (2017). As one preview said: “It’s a sci-fi thriller about a topic few non-nerds would normally consider thrilling: Crispr (short for ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’).” It engages with the science, summarised on the first few pages, as well as with upcoming ethical dilemmas, also flagged up, in a relatively unsubtle way, on the first few pages. Here goes:

We are introduced to a couple trying to produce a genome edited child. They talk to a counsellor: “The husband again placed his hand on her knee. She shook her head. ‘It seems against Nature.’ The counselor spoke softly. ‘This is the very same process Nature follows to eliminate viral DANA in bacteria. The same process used under the UN’s Treaty on Genetic modification.’ ‘Yes, but to cure deadly genetic defects, not to tailor-make a child.’ The husband shook his head. ‘We are not tailoring our child. We are correcting genetic weaknesses. Is not a weak memory fatal to a future doctor or attorney?’ ‘Where does this sort of thinking lead us, Neelo – eugenics?'” And so on…

Other novels mentioned by my Twitter correspondents were: Helix by Marc Elsberg and Intrusion by Ken MacLeod. There are probably more out there. Netflix is currently looking into turning Change Agent into a movie.

CRISPR movies

Many movies have dealt with genetic engineering, and some are listed on the webpage I mentioned above, such as GATTACA, of course. However, it seems that only one movie so far has taken up the CRISPR challenge directly, and this is Rampage (2018), directed by Bad Peyton. There is also a TV Show Luke Cage (2016-present), which engages with CRISPR and, the, perhaps better-known, series Orphan Black (2013-2017).

Many of these movies and series pose thought-provoking questions about human nature and personhood. However, there is also the temptation of using facile ‘TV tropes’, one of which is called, by some observers, ‘LEGO genetics’: “With LEGO Genetics, you can fiddle with DNA wherever you like, intentionally or accidentally, and all the cells will change overnight (if that). Just wake up and presto! Wings! Fur! Gills! Hulking muscles! Giant brain! Stem cells! You don’t even have to eat the equivalent of your entire body mass to create all those new body parts; the old cells and the new ones are just cobbled together like LEGO bricks.”

Audiences, players, consumers etc. will probably be well aware of such tropes and know how to deal with them; and if they are not, there are fictional characters that tell them how to. For instance, Prokhor Zakharov, a character in a computer game, says: “”Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can’t, for example, insert ‘the genes for an elephant’s trunk’ into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants’ talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant.”

Before exploring documentaries, where one would expect such lessons, I have to mention, of course, Captain Marvel – with her marvellous superpowers… Here is a great blog post about Marvel and CRISPR. I only quote one paragraph: “Films about the Marvel universe are all the rage right now, showing off characters with truly amazing abilities that humans can only dream of having. The introduction of the CRISPR gene editing technology has left people wondering if they could gain ‘superhuman’ powers. From a scientific standpoint, CRISPR researchers have made it quite clear that the scientific community does not support creating humans with enhanced abilities. ‘The talk about designer babies is ultimately a big distraction,’ says Carl Zimmer, science journalist and award-winning New York Times columnist.”

Well said! We all welcome debate, but the debate should at least be well-informed. Can documentaries provide that information?

CRISPR documentaries

A feature documentary about CRISPR was released on 10 March called “Human Nature”,  and other documentaries are in production. Grant Jacobs wrote a quick blog post about it and points out that: “The film features a star cast of scientists working on genome editing. Alongside them are experts representing law, bioethics, environmental and commercial interests. The listed cast includes Jill Banfield, David Baltimore, Rodolphe Barrangou, Alta Charo, George Church, Jennifer Doudna, Antonio Regalado, Fyodor Urnov, Luhan Yang, and Feng Zhang. (If I had a criticism, it’d be that the cast is very USA-oriented, but then it’s produced in the USA.)”.

Watch the trailer! I haven’t seen the documentary, but some say it strikes a good balance: “It’s hopeful about CRISPR’s ability to help us fix diseases that have plagued humans for millennia, while also questioning if we’re ready to make genetic changes that’ll affect us for generations to come.”

One of the more gang-ho voices heard in the documentary is George Church. If you want to know more about his views, you can look at this interesting piece entitled “Five conversations with biology’s Captain Marvel, George Church”! The subtitle of the article brings us back to LEGO genetics: “When it comes to tinkering with the stuff of life, George Church is the equivalent of a Lego master builder.”

CRISPR and popular science writing

Nessa Carey has just published a popular science book that brings the CRISPR story up to date (after Modern Prometheus, 2016, and Crack in Creation, 2017). She uses more conventional metaphors in her book title: Hacking the Code of Life: How gene editing will rewrite our futures (2019). Having just read the book, I can say that Carey uses the hacking metaphor really creatively in the book to draw readers in and hook them. If you want to be well-informed and ready to debate CRISPR knowledgeably, this book is a great start.

Of course, popular science writing doesn’t only happen in books. Au contraire! One should also look at newspapers, podcasts, blogs, journals, twitter and more! …

CRISPR art

And finally, there is also CRISPR inspired bio-art, some of which has been surveyed in this blog post under the title “Who is afraid of CRISPR art?”. There is an article in Nature entitled: “Love, death and CRISPR: An artwork”. There is also an artwork that I actually saw, by Anna Dumitriu, and an article on CRISPR art I couldn’t see in The Crispr Journal. I bet there is more….

CRISPR the board game

And, before I forget, there is even a board game based on CRISPR on the horizon! “Players are members of a team whose missions entail delivering specific CRISPR-edited products to users. To succeed, players must: solve puzzles; communicate about their work to indispensible [sic] support professionals and the public; overcome obstacles; foil would-be underminers; and recover from setbacks. See more detailed game features here.”

Cultural horizons

Discussions about CRISPR, like discussions about cloning or stem cells for example, happen against a well-established cultural horizon. When studying the issue of ‘designer’ or ‘donor’ babies in the year 2000, I called this ‘cultural precognition.

I pointed out that new developments in genetics throw up fresh ethical questions almost every day. Doctors, scientists, policy makers, the media and the public are ill-equipped to find answers to these questions on scientific, legal or moral principles alone. They therefore often take recourse to metaphors and narratives to fill this ethical void. Popular culture talks about space-rockets before there are space-rockets, clones before there are clones and artificially created babies before there are artificially created babies. When scientists do anything new, there is often a ready-made public perception of how good or how bad it is going to be, derived from social, linguistic, literary and cultural preconceptions.

So, when genetically edited or ‘crispred’ babies happened (if indeed they did), I was not surprised to find the following observation about popular culture in the context of Rampage, Change Agent etc: “A scientist in China has dominated headlines this week with the claim that his research team has successfully created the world’s first genetically-edited babies. If true, the experiment raises a lot of difficult ethical questions—ones that mainstream films and TV shows have been exploring for decades. The topic of genetic engineering is so prevalent in pop culture that it’s practically a genre unto itself. At the heart of these science fiction depictions is the issue of whether the benefits of genetic engineering—that is, potentially curing diseases—outweigh the colossal risks, which range from eugenics to unintended mutations.”

A sub-genre of the genetic engineering genre is ‘biopunk’, to which some of the CRISPR movies and novels belong. I bet there will be more biopunk in the future. Another cultural tradition that holds a mirror to science and society and there to be explored.

Keeping an eye on CRISPR culture

Future work on the language and culture of gene editing should chart changes and shifts in social and cultural perceptions of genome editing over the last two decades or so from around 1998 (Dolly, BSE, GM, stem cells etc.) to now. Such a diachronic analysis could be based on comparing two books, published twenty years apart.

In 1998 José van Dijck published a book entitled Imagenation: Popular images of genetics, in which she explored the crucial role that cultural images played in the popularisation of genetic knowledge, especially cloning.

In 2017 Everett Hamner published a book entitled Editing the Soul, in which he stresses that we need to pay attention to the “cultural mythologies” by which we frame our public debates about genome editing. The stories we tell are shaped by science and culture alike, including the metaphors created by scientists themselves: “We should consider carefully how these mutual narratives double back and colonize the research and applications that find private and public financing.”

Science always happens against an established cultural horizon, but it also feeds into and transforms it. This then also changes social and ethical perceptions and actions. If ever we manage to establish something like a ‘global observatory for gene editing’ (a rather ambitious project!), this needs to include the observation of cultural developments! Only then can we grapple with ‘public engagement’ in a well-informed way.

Acknowledgement: I’d like to thank the second referee of an article for making me dig deeper into the cultural ramifications of CRISPR!

Image: Pixabay

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: From the Bronx to Brooklyn, Confederate Symbols Come Down Across New York City

Bronx Community College will remove these 2 sculptures from campus of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson. 5pm #FOX5NY

A post shared by Dana Arschin (@dana_arschin) on Aug 17, 2017 at 1:18pm PDT

The push to dismantle Confederate monuments across the United States is not just restricted to the South.

Two streets inside New York City’s Fort Hamilton army base dedicated to Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are the latest targets in a nationwide movement to remove public symbols glorifying the Confederacy.

Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke held a renaming rally at John Paul Jones Park on Tuesday morning with several Congresspeople and Brooklyn politicians. Lee served as an engineer at the Fort Hamilton army base from 1841 to 1846, and is one of the most prominent military figures associated with it.

“The time has come for the Army to remove from Fort Hamilton and other military installations the disgraced names of men who waged war against the United States to preserve the evil institution of slavery,” Clarke spokesman Patrick Rheaume told Hyperallergic. “It is clear that these symbols remain an inspiration to some who espouse white supremacist ideology to perpetuate acts of terror and violence on the peaceful, law abiding citizens of our nation.”

Clarke made a request to change the street names earlier this summer, but the army declined to alter them. She has since introduced a bill in Congress calling on the Pentagon to change the name of “any military installation or other property under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense that is currently named after any individual who took up arms” against the country during the Civil War.

And now, after Neo-Nazis and white nationalists terrorized Charlottesville, Virginia, at an August 12 demonstration to prevent the removal of the town’s Robert E. Lee statue, momentum may be on her side.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other New Yorkers have piled on and demanded the US Army change the names of the streets. And Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that he would launch a “90-day review of all symbols of hate on city property.”

Bronx Community College’s Hall of Fame for Great Americans contains busts of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (photo by Jim.henderson/Wikipedia)

The directive may come as a surprise to some, but New York City has a smattering of statues and memorials dedicated to Confederate and other racist figures, most of which will soon be relegated to the corners of history museums.

De Blasio pledged to dig out a sidewalk plaque commemorating Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain in the Canyon of Heroes.

Bronx Community College will replace two busts of Confederate generals from the school’s “Hall of Fame” after Gov. Cuomo and Bronx leaders called for their ouster. The busts ended up at the school thanks to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the organization responsible for so many of monuments now under fire across the country.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. proposed sending the busts to the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs, “where they could be presented in a historical context rather than venerated.”

“They should not stay in the Bronx any longer,” he said Wednesday in a statement.

And Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres said he was “utterly shocked” to learn the busts existed and praised the community college’s president for moving them.

“He’s taking the right action,” Torres said in an interview. “It shows that what was acceptable a few weeks ago would be unacceptable now.”

Meanwhile, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island uprooted two plaques commemorating General Robert E. Lee in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. Lee had planted a maple tree while stationed at the nearby army base. The tree has since been replaced twice, but the Daughters of the Confederacy marked the spot with a plaque in 1912.

Workers remove one of two plaques honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the property of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Wednesday Aug. 16, 2017, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York. The removal comes in the wake of last weekend’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists protested plans to remove a Lee statue from a public park. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) #YahooNewsPhotos #Photosoftheday #photography #photographers #breakingnewsphotos #bestnewsphotos #photos #BreakingNewsPhotography #photojournalism #topStories

A post shared by Yahoo News (@yahoonews) on Aug 16, 2017 at 9:36am PDT

Lesser known antebellum figures are also in the public’s crosshairs.

A towering monument to Dr. J. Marion Sims presides over a corner of Fifth Avenue and East 103rd Street across from the New York Academy of Medicine.

Sims is known as the “father of modern gynecology,” but the statue has drawn ire from the East Harlem community and beyond because he experimented and operated on enslaved black women.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represents the neighborhood, called on the mayor and the Parks Department to remove Sims’s statue from Central Park. A Parks official told the New York Times that any decision about the sculpture would be made as part of the mayor’s citywide review.

The J. Marion Sims statue on Fifth Avenue, on the perimeter of Central Park (photo by Jim.henderson/Wikipedia)

The violence in Virginia unnerved public officials who say it’s time to retire Confederate markers from the public square.

“White supremacy and white nationalism contradict our core American values,” Cuomo wrote in a Daily News op-ed. “Those who carry the torch for those supposed causes, who feel empowered, need to understand that our country does not stand with them.”

But the vandalism and purposeful relocation of the statues dismayed President Trump, who argued that the Confederacy was part of America’s heritage.  

“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down,” Trump said last Tuesday from Trump Tower. “I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

Historians called his argument bunk. “You’re not changing history. You’re changing how we remember history,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told the New York Times.

Two days later, Trump lamented on Twitter, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.You can’t change history, but you can learn from it … the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”

It is odd to see the President play preservationist and historian since he has destroyed artwork and falsified history when it suits his purpose.

In 1980, Trump purchased the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue in order to build Trump Tower. The Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted him to donate two Art Deco limestone relief panels inside. Trump initially agreed, but when he found the removal would delay the building’s demolition, he had them jackhammered to pieces instead.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

A post shared by Tom Moccia (@shitzalot) on May 28, 2017 at 8:53am PDT

More recently, Trump bought a Virginia golf course on the banks of the Potomac River in 2009 and added a plaque between the 14th and 15th holes designating a Civil War skirmish he anointed “The River of Blood.”

“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription states. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’”

But no conflict ever occurred at that spot, local historians told the New York Times. Trump responded incredulously, “How would they know that, were they there?”

The post From the Bronx to Brooklyn, Confederate Symbols Come Down Across New York City appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[caveartfair]

Berkshire Museum’s Sale of Blockbuster Works Prompts Backlash—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

Catch up on the latest art news with the our rundown of the 10 stories you need to know this week.

01  Massachusetts’s Berkshire Museum will auction 40 artworks to bolster its endowment and pay for renovations, potentially violating industry guidelines, which generally prohibit art sales for operating costs.

(via the Berkshire Eagle and the New York Times)

Known as deaccessioning, the sale of works from an institutional collection is broadly banned by the industry guidelines crafted by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). The only exception is if the sale is intended to fund the purchase of other artworks. Selling work to fund operating and endowment expenses can result in sanctions, with other institutions refusing to loan work to the offending museum. Though they have expressed opposition, the AAM and AMMD have not announced if such a fate will befall the Berkshire Museum, which is auctioning works by Alexander Calder and Norman Rockwell, among others, to raise money for $20 million in renovation and $40 million in additional endowment funds. The sale has already resulted in criticism from other institutions, with the director of the Norman Rockwell Museum writing an op-ed calling for the Berkshire Museum to reconsider its sale.

02  The legal fight over a Paul Klee masterpiece looted by Nazis has been settled after 26 years of contentious litigation.

(via the New York Times)

Under the agreement, the German museum that now holds Klee’s Swamp Legend (1919) will keep the painting but pay the heirs of its original owner, art historian Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, its fair-market value, estimated at €2–4 million. Lissitzky-Küppers left the painting on loan to the Hanover Provinzial Museum when she emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926. It was later seized as one of over 20,000 works confiscated from German museums in the crusade against “degenerate art.” During and after World War II, Swamp Legend wound its way through the hands of several owners before landing in Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum, where it is on display today. Following the end of the war,  Lissitzky-Küppers unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim her collection. Her descendants, however, have been trying to recover the Klee from the German government since 1992. The settlement, which requires the painting's Nazi history be detailed when the piece is exhibited, concludes one of several cases seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis. Still, many others, including another ongoing lawsuit against Germany over a looted Wassily Kandinsky work, remain unresolved.

03  A Dana Schutz exhibition at Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston is prompting controversy, with protesters sending an open letter to the institution in opposition to the show.

(via the New York Times)

The 18-week exhibition of Schutz’s recent work opened at the museum on Wednesday. On Tuesday, protesters sent an open letter to curator Eva Respini and her team expressing concerns and criticisms of the exhibit. The letter follows months after Schutz’s depiction of Emmett Till in her work Open Casket (2016) caused protests and debates around representation and white privilege when it was exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in March. While that piece is not on display at the ICA, the six-page open letter urges the museum to consider the “moral gravitas of reckless cultural sensibilities of artists in their charge and not waver due to the weight of their bottom lines.” The letter lists four demands, including the appearance of Schutz as part of a public Q&A and increased explanation and acknowledgement of the Open Casket controversy. In response, ICA director Jill Medvedow noted that “art often exposes the fault lines in our culture, and ‘Open Casket’ raised difficult questions about cultural appropriation, race, and representation.” She pinpointed museums as a place where the artist’s voice is integral to dialogue and has organized programs related to the exhibition, but Schutz will not be present. Writers of the letter spoke with the ICA staff last week, but reportedly left with “many questions unanswered and with a promise from the ICA to continue this dialogue.”

04  Former Met director Philippe de Montebello is joining Acquavella Galleries.

(via the New York Times)

The move, announced Wednesday, is effective immediately. As a director at Acquavella, de Montebello will curate special exhibitions and develop publications for the Upper East Side gallery. De Montebello previously helmed the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stepping down in 2008 to end his widely heralded, 31-year tenure. “I think it’s one of the great art galleries,” de Montebello said of Acquavella. To the extent it ever existed, the line between commercial and institutional interests in the art world has become increasingly blurred in recent months. In July of last year, Eric Shiner left a directorship at the Andy Warhol Museum to join Sotheby’s as a senior vice president in its fine art division.

05  Six members of the administration of deposed South Korean president Park Geun-hye have been sent to jail for blacklisting thousands of artists for their political beliefs.

(via Artforum)

The discovery of government blacklist in December of 2016 caused public uproar that contributed to the ex-president’s impeachment, removal from office, and arrest in March. Names of those blacklisted have not yet been released, however officials estimate that at least 10,000 people were denied access to government-funded programs for their criticism of Park. The news has spurred hundreds of lawsuits by South Korean artists against Park and her aides, in addition to a call for new protective legislation for politically based discrimination. Park’s former chief of staff, Kim Ki-choon, has been sentenced to three years for ordering staff to create and subsequently lie about the blacklist. Previous culture ministers Kim Jong-deok and Cho Yoon-sun respectively received a two-year sentence and a recently suspended sentence for a conviction of perjury before the National Assembly. Park herself faces a variety of criminal charges that include accepting bribery and collusion in political oppression of dissidents.

06  Sotheby’s stock reached its highest price this week since the company went public in 1988.

(via Bloomberg)

Shares of Sotheby’s have climbed 45% this year, closing out Tuesday at above $57 before falling slightly to start trading on Friday at $56.61. The share price is a vote of confidence in the leadership of CEO Tad Smith, who was hired in March to help steady the company, and the product of a share buyback effort. David Schick, lead retail analyst at Consumer Edge Research LLC, told Bloomberg that a weaker U.S. dollar and the strength of the high end of the art market are also driving the stock upwards. Sotheby’s “has gone from more old-fashioned to modern, including more information flow between business units and more rapid digital-media work,” Schick said. The 273-year-old auction house will release its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

07  Rock star Alice Cooper has discovered a classic Warhol silkscreen that sat rolled up in a storage locker for 40 years.

(via The Guardian)

Andy Warhol’s unsigned piece from the Death and Disaster series depicts a red Little Electric Chair. The work is based on a press photograph of the death chamber at Sing Sing prison where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy in 1953. Cooper’s silkscreen reportedly disappeared into his touring equipment where it remained until four years ago, when Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon, heard about how much a similar piece went for at auction. A green version of the work from 1964 sold for $11.6 million at Christie’s in 2015. However, without a signature or authentication, Cooper’s Warhol may not be worth that much if sold. The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts stopped authenticating work after a 2011 legal dispute. But Richard Polsky, a Warhol expert, said it was valid, dating the diminutive 22 x 28 inch canvas to 1964 or 1965. According to Polsky, at the time the unsettling image of the chair was “not an easy sell,” but a half-century on, that could prove otherwise.

08  The search for the Colosseum’s next director will include foreign candidates after a national tribunal in Italy tossed out an earlier regional ruling.

(via the Washington Post)

A previous court decision had blocked the hiring of non-Italian directors to run several of the country’s most significant museums and archaeological sites. On Monday, Italy’s Council of State overturned this ruling—a decision celebrated by culture minister Dario Franceschini, who is currently interviewing candidates for the directorship. (Of the 82 current applicants, 16 come from outside Italy, he said.) Franceschini’s plan to hire foreign specialists to run Italian institutions is part of a wider initiative to revitalize the country’s ailing museum system. It has faced continuous resistance, however. Monday’s decision is the second this summer to dismiss rulings by the same regional body, which had previously fired five newly-hired museum directors in May.

09  Microsoft quickly canceled plans to scrap Microsoft Paint after an outpouring of fan support.

(via the Washington Post)  

On Monday, the company announced that it would no longer update and soon phase out Microsoft Paint as part of its fall operating system update. Fans of Paint, which launched in 1985 on the original iteration of the Windows OS, responded in something of a digital revolt. Along with a peppering of nostalgic tweets, the hashtag #RIPMSPaint trended on Twitter Monday. While other Microsoft software programs, like Outlook Express and the Reader app, will also be integrated into new browsers or simply be cut, none garnered a comparable level of protest. In response to the internet outcry, the Microsoft has reportedly decided to keep Paint as an app in the Windows store alongside a new image editing application, MS Paint 3D, which offers photo editing and 2D creation in addition to new three-dimensional creation capabilities.

10  Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (2002) has been crowned the U.K.’s favorite artwork.

(via The Guardian)

Beating out a long-time favorite, John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821), Banksy’s stencil was selected in a poll that asked respondents to choose their five favorite work from a shortlist picked by art writers. The piece by the anonymous graffiti artist originally appeared on a bridge in the South Bank of London. It also appeared in the East End, where it prompted outrage when the building owner proposed removing and selling it. A cardboard cutout of the piece sold in 2012 for £73,000. Following Banksy and Constable, the poll found that the country’s favorite works are Jack Vettriano’s The Singing Butler (1992), JMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire (1839), and Antony Gormley’s The Angel of the North (1998). Only two of the top twenty artists are female: Bridget Riley and Maggi Hambling. The survey was commissioned by Samsung to appear on a TV that shows a work of art when turned off.

—Artsy Editors

Cover image via Wikimedia Commons.

from Artsy News

[nofomoartworld]

Mr. Freeze has No Chill in This Week’s Comic Roundup

Panel selection from All-Star Batman #6. Illustrated by Jock. Screencap via the author

Each week, The Creators Project seeks out the best and brightest from the comics industry.

Comic writer Ryan Ferrier, author of D4VE, Kennel Block Blues, and many upcoming projects like a two-issue run on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe, speaks with The Creators Project about his favorite comics of the week. Of God Country #1, Ferrier says, “Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw have knocked this series debut out of the park, and I think they're going to have quite a run with this one… They've done a wonderful job at rewarding the reader here, starting with a sympathetic, familial gut-punch, and ending in a big, loud, but most importantly fun way.”

Of the new spy thriller James Bond: Felix Leiter #1, Ferrier explains, “I'm genuinely loving everything Dynamite is doing with the James Bond license. Every team on these books has to be having a total blast because they just read so great, like someone's pipe-dream project. Felix Leiter's solo debut is no different. Essentially the issue is one long cold open, the kind we've come to expect from Bond stories, but writer James Robinson feeds in just enough information to keep it really effective and intriguing. Aaron Campbell's art is perfect for the tones of this story — a little less glossy than 007, a little more seedy, but still remarkably attractive. Campbell's authority of the medium and the genre here is on fine display.” He also recommends All-Star Batman #6, reviewed below. Keep an eye out for Ryan Ferrier’s newest work, D4VEOCRACY, out January 25th from IDW Comics.

Reviewed this week: Batman tussles with Mr. Freeze, an amazing new indie about robo-women, a classic manga, and a showstopping graphic novel adaptation of an Octavia E. Butler novel.

All-Star Batman #6

Cover for All-Star Batman #6. Illustrated by Jock. Photo courtesy DC Comics

In the newest issue of All-Star Batman by Scott Snyder and the artist Jock, Batman heads to Alaska to stop Mr. Freeze from extracting the oldest ice core, which he plans on using to unleash an ancient virus frozen in the ice. Ryan Ferrier also singled out this book as one of his favorites of the week. “Snyder is once again subverting our expectations,” he explains to The Creators Project. “Not of a great Batman story, but this one feels so different. The poetic, prose approach [the issue has no speech bubbles, it’s all through narration and exposition] paired with Jock's stunning artwork is just so beautiful and creepy, really creepy. Snyder and Jock have managed to, seemingly against the odds, find a way to end this issue with a total chest-tightener.”

Grave Lilies #1

Cover for Grave Lilies. Illustrated by George Kambadais. Photo courtesy Z2 Comics

This new indie comic from writer Cullen Bunn and artist George Kambadais follows five young women who awake from what looks like sleeping pods in an underground bunker after a bomb is detonated over their heads. They don’t have a scratch on them, and they only vaguely remember a past, but they know each other, and know they need to be on the run. Each woman has a special power (though for now they’re mostly alluded to) including healing, interacting with plants, and super-strength. This new comic is a surprise delight, with stunning, restrained, impactful artwork from George Kambadais. Cullen Bunn, always reliable for a killer premise, also writes in this book one of the best introductory pages to a set of characters in modern times, when we see each character with computer loadouts of their prime powers/directives, hinting at a mechanical nature to our heroes. A must-read, for sure.

Manga of the Week: Kikaider Volume 1

Cover for Kikaider Volume 1. Illustrated by Shotaro Ishinomori. Image courtesy Ishimori Production Inc.

Kikaider isn’t, by any means, a new manga, but it’s featured in this week’s Manga Staff Picks on Comixology, and it’s nice, every now and then, to read the beginning of a manga, instead of the usual “chapter 207” little slices as they release each week. The classic manga Kikaider, originally published in the early 1970s and based on a live-action TV series, is a high-flying action comic that screams classic ‘70s manga. It’s about a scientist who built evil robots, had a change of heart and built a good robot (Kikaider), then disappears, leaving the good robot to defend the world as evil robots attack and swarm. For manga fans who haven’t delved into the Kikaider mythos yet, this is a must-read as it set the groundwork for great works that would come later.

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Cover for Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. Illustrated by John Jennings. Photo courtesy Abrams ComicArts.

This adaptation of the classic science fiction/neo-slave narrative novel by Octavia E. Butler is required reading. The adaptation, rendered with care by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, follows the story of Dana, a black woman living in 1970s California, as she and her white husband Kevin are thrust between their present life and Maryland in 1815. The graphic novel, like Butler’s original masterpiece, looks unflinchingly at race and gender in both time periods, with Dana witnessing firsthand the horrors of pre-Civil War slavery. Creators Duffy and Jennings have brought Butler’s work to life with vivid detail, and this new graphic novel is stunning and almost as powerful an experience as reading the original novel.

Panel selection from Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. Illustrated by John Jennings. Screencap via the author

What were your favorite pulls of the week? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter: @CreatorsProject

Related:

The 'U.S.Avengers' Are the American Heroes We Deserve

‘Black Panther’ Tackles the Politics of Rebellion

Is Aquaman an Underwater Terrorist?

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