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New York City’s legendary, and recently much-beleaguered, subway is one of the largest, oldest and most heavily trafficked urban commuter systems in the world. In her collage video Underground Circuit, the Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou brings a very unusual – and highly fantastical – form of order and reliability to the New York commute. Stitching together a multitude of subways scenes in concentric squares, Zhou turns the transit system into a subterranean labyrinth at the centre of which is a street performer pounding on a drum. Multiplied four-fold, this drummer is, for Zhou, ‘the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion, the god who can fulfil and grant all wishes of its devotees’.
Director: Yuge Zhou
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Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
3 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
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Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
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Love and friendship
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment
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Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
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The ancient world
The six priestesses who kept the flame of ancient Rome alight at risk of death
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
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Architecture
West Africa was once an architectural laboratory. Is it time for a revival?
12 minutes