culture

Mapping ORIGINS: The Art of Integration by Sam Abelow

Artists seek resolution of inner and outer tensions, personally, in relationships and between cultural groups. This is a call to rise above flagrant moral negligence on the part of the academy, curators and artists themselves, to recognize that what we do has consequences, on a personal, national and global stage. In order to grow together:

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Mapping ORIGINS: Conflicted Artists Position by Sam Abelow

The contemporary artist is tasked with reintegrating the multitude of past art movements, resolving disassociated conflicts, into a greater whole. A multicultural, multifaceted — that is, a comprehensive approach — is thus the progression beyond arbitrary obsessions & expressions of dualism, towards a greater union of self — intrapsychic, interpersonal and transpersonal.

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The Coming Decade: What to Expect in Culture & Art by Sam Abelow

Pioneering markets (Germany, Silicon Valley) have been integrating insights of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, Meanwhile, in the past decade, Paganism was America’s largest growing religion. The reintroduction and proliferation of cannabis, recreational and laboratory use of psychedelics, affects the cultural psyche causing vast individuals to calibrate or fall into catastrophe over their innate spirituality, religious archetypal substructures and inner conflicts.  This is a backdrop of what’s to come.

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The Black Model at the Crux of Western Culture: Sweeping Exhibition at Musée d’Orsay by Sam Abelow

The “Black Models” show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris reveals the Western neglect of the archetypal feminine, which accounts for racial and gender subjugation and ultimately a disregard for the planet itself. In this view of the show, we poignantly discover a cultural progression, but also a dire need for further understanding today.

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The Lover Archetype in Modern Men: Soundcloud Rappers, XXXTentacion as Dionysus by Sam Abelow

Both Orpheus and Dionysus are archetypes commonly active in the personalities of contemporary artists. An artist with an undeveloped “Orphic” disposition will tend more towards a longing, romanticization and dramatization —  a poetic, almost mystical love. The artist tinged more with an immature “Dionysian” typology will be affected by extreme emotionality and even reckless, violent behavior. These typical scenarios are caused by living out a collective pattern — an archetype — which has an impersonal disregard the individual wellbeing.

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Demoiselles d’Instagram: Exploration of the Feminine in Society and Art by Sam Abelow

The “D’Madsoille de Instagram” series, presented by Tibor de Nagy, offers an opportunity to delve into these matters and contemplate what it means to consume and therefore support the production of objectifying, sexualized images today.

Whether it has been men’s reductive treatment of women, the courtesans of history, or Instagram models using their sexualized bodies as a basis for a career, an inner relationship to the archetypal feminine that is limited and ruled by libido is at the core.

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Sam Harris and David Benatar Debate Anti-Natalism: Breaking Through the Philosophical Quibble by Sam Abelow

David Benatar is a philosopher and writer who insists that a universe without human beings is better off than one with them. He believes, that because sentient beings can suffer, in varying degrees, it is better that they never lived. Additionally, once living, suicide is, in the majoirty of cases, a moral wrongdoing.This school of thought is known as “Anti-Natalism.” 

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New Age Ridiculousness at Columbia University Program by Sam Abelow

Among his seemingly random meanderings throughout the class, events that took place included, a girl crying to the class for 20 minutes about the very personal death of her grandfather, a loose discussion on the concept of time and how we don’t live in the moment, several aggressive table pounds by the professor, and a couple of phrases that made shallow sense, like “life doesn’t go fast, we go fast”.

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The History of Alchemy: From Isaac Newton to Joe Rogan by Sam Abelow

In the ancient past — Egypt for example — there were a class of people who had profound knowledge. Their knowledge came from some much more distant past (before the ice age) and the difference between that knowledge and the type people seek today, is that the ancient knowledge was always infused with what one could call a “spiritual” perspective.

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