“No, it’s not that bad. I just make it a point to go to the library every day. The Reg’s the most social place on campus!”

In high school, the library was a place of uncomfortable fidgeting and pin drop silence; a place of infrequent, short-lived visits. Just how any library could serve to be more than that, and become a part of a lifestyle, seemed to be an alien concept. Therefore, a group of friends and I decided to dissect the culture of the Regenstein, and we noticed right away that it was a world within a world. Some common patterns (listed below as common occurrences) became obvious from very early on, and although we have many examples of each, we have listed just one with every pattern, to keep our observations short and succinct.

Subject of Inquiry: The ‘Reg Culture’

Parameters of Observation: 1100 East 57th Street Chicago Illinois 60637. B-level to the fifth floor of the imposing, gray structure known lovingly as the Regenstein library.

Some Noted Colloquialisms:
“Reggin’ it”
Translation: Studying at the Reg, for an extended period of time.

“Secret Garden ”
Translation: Referring to the couches positioned behind the ground floor bookstacks, often obscured from common view.

“Jock floor”: Second floor of the Reg, scattered with group tables. It is considered louder and more social than most of the other floors (with the exception of the A-level).

“Caffiee” A mixture of the words ‘coffee’ and ‘caffiee’. Mostly uttered by sleep deprived students, dragging themselves to Bart Mart, or Ex-Libris.

Common Occurrences:

1. Domestic Disputes:
Observed: A college couple peacefully studying on the fifth floor. Suddenly, bickering ensues and the girl is seen snatching the papers from her partner’s hands and flinging them into the air. He, in turn, starts violently shaking her. Other students around come to life and intervene. Boy and girl collect things, walk out (together) while the fifth floor looks on, cell phones in hand.

2. Student-Staff Squabbles
Observed: Student attempts to walk in to the study space of the Reg with banana in hand. Member of the staff angrily tells her she cannot enter with a piece of fruit (although students are often seen devouring pizza and other edibles). Loud argument interrupts the ground floor studying and goes on for a good ten minutes. Finally, student heatedly throws banana into the trash bin and storms out.

3. Morning After (all-nighter) Rituals:
Observed: Girl with two large duffel bags positions herself in front of the mirror in the A-level bathroom. Takes out many, many bottles of product, and slowly goes on to wash hair in the sink, brush teeth, apply makeup – all the while remaining oblivious to the growing knot of people whispering around her.

4.Finals Week Retreat
Observed: As soon as the week begins, a tent is put up in the A-level. Inhabitants are seen taking sporadic naps within, whenever their schedule permits. Other students are seen camping at the A-level in different ways. Some sleep under the tables, while others on top of the tables. There is a mass exodus on Friday of that week, and the Reg is at once reminiscent of a forgotten graveyard.

Note to Diskord readers: Send us any new colloquialisms you note, or any recurring patterns you observe! The Reg culture, like all others, is also an evolving one, and we would like to keep out studies updated.

These pictures were taken in April in Indiana on the polluted grounds of an Exxon Valdez plant. Life had a miraculous reemergence, growing atop slag- a mixture of steel and sand- stone. It is hard as bedrock, roots cannot penetrate beneath it. The slag has been there since the turn of 18th century, so everything below it is long dead.

Doomsayers may add something new to their list— an Asian Carp Invasion of the Great Lakes.

Successive waves of invasive species are always accompanied by panic and heavy investment trying to stop them. There is infighting among officials, who sometimes cannot agree on how to fix the problem. This holds true for the Great Lakes Region of the Midwestern U.S. and Canada. The Great Lakes ecosystem and economies are currently threatened by Asian Carp.

If these fish establish themselves throughout the Great Lakes, they may dramatically alter the ecosystems and cost a total of $4-6 billion annually in damages.

Invasive species are almost always introduced to an area by accident, and Asian Carp are no exception. No one can ever pinpoint the exact area of introduction or who did it. These accidental introductions wreck havoc and alter the local landscape. Since the animals are foreign, they have no natural predators. Likewise, their prey is not familiar with them as predators. Strain is put on the ecosystem as the invasive species out-competes other animals for the same food source. There several types of Asian Carp, including silver carp, grass carp, black carp and bighead carp.

Asian Carps are considered to be aquatic vacuum cleaners. They eat only zooplankton (plankton that eat phytoplankton—the plants of the water— which create food from sunlight). The facts surrounding Asian Carp have been distorted in many newspapers and sensationalized. They have the ability to eat up to 20% of their body weight, though many newspapers have falsely reported that they routinely eat 40% of their weight. Another way of understanding the damage they can inflict on an ecosystem is their ability to filter out important resources in the ecosystem.

They are very good at finding and eating zooplankton. This ability takes the food away from the zooplankton’s native predators who die. Most of the zooplankton is eaten, and their original predators die. The food web breaks down. The fishermen that rely on the native species for sustenance and sport also suffer. Everybody loses, except the carp. But it is not that simple.

The Asian Carp have been established in the U.S. since the 1970’s though no one is sure how they arrived. They have been steadily making their way up the Mississippi River for years. There are now in several Chicago Rivers including Calumet Harbor, the Illinois and Michigan Shipping Canal, the Des Plaines River and the Chicago Shipping and Sanitary Canal. These rivers all provide direct access to Lake Michigan, although Lake Michigan empties into these rivers. At the mouth of these rivers and their access points to the lake are locks, which could be closed to prevent the carp from entering Lake Michigan. However, there are some holes in the locks, which may be big enough for some fish to enter. The city of Chicago argues that this would not do much to prevent the carp’s entry, it would instead endanger Chicago’s livelihood.

To close the locks would put the welfare of Chicago at risk. The locks help regulate seasonal flooding. If they were closed, much of downtown Chicago would be flooded, dealing a damaging blow to the economy. The floodwaters would also seep into residential houses. In addition, if the locks were closed it would be difficult to respond to emergencies downtown, it would hurt the tourism economy, and disrupt the shipment of goods down the Chicago River. Closing the locks would also create small dead zones in the river where there would be minimal nutrient and water exchange. The water would quickly de-oxygenate and the fish would die.

However, there is then the inevitable fact that the carp are already established in another Great Lake.

Asian carp have been fished from Lake Erie for years. All the Great Lakes are connected by smaller waterways. It follows that the carp would use these waterways to find their way into Lake Michigan. But this is not the end of the line. Lake Erie has low levels of plankton, so the Carp are not out-competing many fish. In addition Lake Erie used to be an environmental hazard. It caught on fire several times in the past, and has been cleaned up. The lake wasn’t abandoned despite its severe environmental degradation and it rebounded. Thus the Asian Carp threat and their potential damage do not spell the end of times for this region. Yet Michigan, surrounded by all the Great Lakes has the most to lose from the carp invasion and is holding Chicago accountable since the carp are poised to spring into Lake Michigan from the city’s territory.

Michigan, several Canadian provinces, and a couple other U.S. states have joined suit against Chicago, holding it accountable for the carp threat to The Great Lakes ecosystem. Chicago maintains that it should not to be held accountable for the carp problem, since they came from further downstream. Mayor Dailey, in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, said that there needs to be collective action, instead of pinning all of the blame on his city. He maintains that the southern states need to be held accountable and contribute to the cause, since they did not do enough to control the spread of Asian Carp. Yet there is a universal agreement among experts that Southern states would never contribute money to this cause.

In an attempt to prevent the carp from reaching the Lake several electrical barriers have been constructed across the Chicago Shipping and Sanitary Canal (CSSC). The first barrier was completed in 2002, a second in 2004 and the third is to be completed sometime this year. The electric barrier system in the CSSC reduces the risk of Asian carp migrating into the Great Lakes along the most direct pathway, but other pathways do exist and need to be addressed. The Des Plaines River is a potential by-pass to the electric barrier. Closer to the lake, above the CSSC barriers, the Des Plaines can flood and transfer water and fish into the CSSC.

Traces of carp presence have been found in Southern Lake Michigan, a warning sign that Asian carp could have advanced past the electric barrier that has previously prevented their movement north. Since this finding, the voltage of the barriers has been increased, making it a potentially dangerous situation for boaters who cross the CSSC everyday. The barriers are all being operated with federal funding. The Des Plaines River and Illinois & Michigan Canal have tested positive for silver carp presence, though none have been physically collected. Thankfully, none have been detected in the Chicago Shipping and Sanitary Canal, though there is the risk that the carp can get into the CSSC from overland flooding from the other two waterways.

Below: This is scale of how large these fish can grow

Furthermore, the Army corps of engineers are erecting a concrete and chain link barrier between the Illinois & Michigan river and the upper Chicago Shipping and Sanitary Canal to prevent the Asian Carp from escaping into the upper part of the CSSC during the overland flows that occur in the springtime. However, the barrier may not be ready till October of this year. In the meantime, they are controlling the carp population by conducting intensive netting, electro fishing and developing scientific tests which will tell them the exact location and numbers of carp.

Asian Carp can weigh up to 60 pounds and have seriously injured boaters. The fish often jump out of the water and sometimes crash into boaters. If the carp do establish themselves in the Great Lakes, which will take years, a market could and should be cultivated for their meat. Asian immigrants already buy them, but other Americans do not.

Other species have invaded the Great Lakes in the past and are still living in them. Steel head trout invaded Lake Michigan in the 1860’s and have since become an accepted part of the ecosystem. Regardless of what happens, whether the Asian Carp are able to establish themselves in all of the Great Lakes or not, it will be just a matter of time before another species threatens the Great Lakes ecosystem and the magnitude of their effects may even been worse than the damage the Asian carp stand to do.

This was not the first invasion, and it will not be the last.

Pictured here: MySpace pageviews for The Webelos, courtesy of Next Big Sound

In case you have ever hesitated to take the call of a Diskord reporter … check out the awesome peak in site stats for The Webelos on March 22, the day the Diskord article “Making It As A College Band” went up. Now, admittedly, a dozen to a couple dozen of those are ours, as we tested links and dealt with mp3 embedding and browser crashes. As for the rest … we’ll let Diskord readers take some of the credit for those. (It’s a little thing we like to call “the Diskord bump.” … haha.)

Diskord is all about reporting on cool (or spectacularly un-cool) local people and movements, so if you have a story that you want heard, pitch it to us! E-mail: editor@diskordchicago.com

Exploring Entrepreneurship: Innovations in the Midwest Education Industry

Best Talk: Provider of online learning K12 Inc (NYSE: LRN) reported an astounding 96% parent satisfaction rate for their curriculum quality. CEO and founder Ron Packard made the case that as virtual classrooms become more mainstream, they have the potential to completely eliminate the need to build new schools in the US.

K12’s online delivery platform allows students to take classes from their homes 4 days per week, and requires students to be present in a physical classroom setting only once per week. The advantages of having reusable curriculum content delivered via scalable technology has obvious advantages — reusability justifies spending more dollars on developing a truly quality curriculum.

K12 schools are accredited by respected accreditation bodies and boast 160+ courses, including World Languages and AP. More than 10 years in the making, K12 has achieved traction as the largest provider of online learning, with over 1 million courses delivered to date.

Noteworthy: Check out social language learning on-line with Live Mocha, the world’s largest language learning community with 4 million+ members.

Innovation Workshop “The Current Environment of University Startups”

RPX Group’s co-founder and managing director Bob Okabe discussed startup activity at universities across the nation, in an effort to understand the new venture development process and its relationship to university support in a systematic way (the full presentation and set of slides are available here). Slides 54-59 descrbie investor activity and a statistical breakdown of why investors are so interested in the oft-heard multiplier 10x (as in, VC’s are looking for companies that may be sold for at least 10x the initial investment). Slide 66 describes where investors gain the confidence to invest in a deal — the 2 biggest sources of confidence are interest by fellow investors and past successes of the entrepreneur.

Noteworthy: University of Chicago, while it does not have an engineering program, across other disciplines is faring well with regard to support for research patents and associated start-ups.

Net Impact Conference

Best Talk: This conference included speakers from both Zipcar and I-Go. Both companies take pride in reducing the societal and environmental costs of driving, although I-Go differentiates itself as 1) a not-for-profit and 2) the only car-sharing company that has 100% low-emission vehicles. While a smaller enterprise than Zipcar, I-Go is also the only car sharing service that offers a combined CTA / I-Go smartcard.

There are only two institutions on campus that offer banking services – Citibank and the University of Chicago’s Maroon Financial Credit Union, and in case you’re still searching around campus for an ATM by any other name, you’re out of luck. Chances are, you’ll open an account with one or both of these if you haven’t already. We’ll compare the two institutions and examine the University’s special relationship with each.

Maroon Financial Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative. This means that when you deposit funds into your credit union account, you become a partial owner and participate in the union’s profitability. To join the union, you must be a member of the University of Chicago community. Said its President, Cristian Hernandez, “We exist to exclusively assist the University [of Chicago] community and all their financial affairs.” The pros: the cooperative structure; free checking and savings forever; free ATM access at more than 65,000 ATMs in all 50 states, the UK, and Canada; a clear summary of rates and fees for all products made readily available on their website; automatic payroll deduction. The cons: no credit cards; only two free ATMs on or near campus, with the one 24-hour ATM located two blocks farther west than the Citibank Ellis Street ATMs.

Citibank is an international bank that is a branch of Citigroup. Citigroup is a company owned by its shareholders. Major shareholders include US taxpayers, who own more than a third of Citigroup following the $45 billion bailout in 2008, the government of Singapore, Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, Capital Research Global Investors, Capital World investors, Citigroup employees, and many large asset management and pension funds that manage money for investors. Jared Evans, the manager of the Citibank branch on campus, said, “Because of our location here, we want to offer the best accounts for the students.” The pros: 10 on-campus ATMs, including 3 24-hour ATMs at the Citibank branch on Ellis Street; globality and reach — 1400 branches and free ATMs in 46 countries; student credit card availability, including credit cards for international students; may qualify for Checking Plus Overdraft Protection, which transfers funds from your credit line to your checking account to cover banking transactions for a $10 fee — this prevents checks from bouncing as long as you have enough credit available, 24/7 live person customer service. Neutral: ThankYou Network rewards program. The cons: free checking and savings valid only as long as you are an active enrolled student at U of C, only 26,000 surcharge-free ATMs worldwide.

Both institutions offer the basic cadre of banking services, including online banking (including BillPay), direct deposit, and 24/7 Automated Telephone Banking.

After completing this basic research, I still found it curious that the University’s own homegrown credit union had such a dirth of ATMs on campus. I paid a visit to the credit union and sat down with its President to find out the reason.

Sue: Is it expensive?

Mr. Hernandez: No.

Sue: [The university administration] won’t let you?

Mr. Hernandez: I can’t comment on that.

Sue: Is there a lot of policy to go through?

Mr. Hernandez: No comment.

After several minutes of further questioning, Mr. Hernandez finally replied “We would work on putting ATMs on campus if we were allowed,” but he had no comment on who I could speak to regarding the credit union’s inability to place more free ATM’s closer to campus. Intrigued, I did some digging.

I interviewed John Kroll, the Comptroller of the University. Citing data regarding the phenomenon of colleges in the US fostering exclusive relationships financial institutions, I asked whether the University was aware of any such relationship between the University of Chicago and Citibank.

“You’re absolutely right about what takes place around the country,” Mr. Kroll replied, adding that indeed, campus institutions focus on striking a deal with a single financial institution. The deal with Citibank, he explained, started with a “very detailed . . . Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) … It was a formal process when all major banks were invited to make a proposal … including the credit union.”  This took place at a time when the credit union did not have a big cadre of products (Maroon Financial Credit Union confirmed that it had only opened its doors to students two years ago, and prior to that had served employees of the University and Medical Center).

The choice was made to go with Citibank as the on-campus provider, with the provision that the credit union could continue to do business without interruption. As a part of this agreement, the credit union was allowed to have an ATM on campus as long as it was “within the facility space that they are using,” which is the basement of the Administration building on 58th and Ellis. The first right of refusal regarding the placement of ATMs on campus is with Citibank, and unless Citibank specifically waives that right, no other financial institutions may place ATMs on campus.

What did the University get in exchange for granting Citibank these exclusive rights? Mr. Kroll said that globality was a huge motivator since the University has students from all over the world, and in addition cited free checking and savings with no minimum balance, unlimited check writing, no surcharge at Citi ATMs and other ATMs networked with Citi, and twice a year discounted airfare. The most important aspect that drove the deal was that Citibank provides a solution for students when they are away from campus domestically or internationally. The moment that they try to renegotiate the terms of the deal with Citibank to allow students on-campus ATM access for other financial institutions, everything is up for renegotiation, especially regarding anything with the words “no” (i.e. no minimum balance), “no charge,” and “free” (free checking and savings as long as you’re a student at the U. of C.)

But what else does the University get? I asked,

“Does the University profit from this deal?”

“I wish,” Mr. Kroll replied. “Citibank gets a small amount of retail space across from the school. In exchange for that, they pay us rent … The University does not benefit from this deal in a financial way.”

In a follow-up e-mail exchange, I asked about credit companies and credit-card issuing banks. I reproduce the questions and responses here:

Does the University of Chicago disclose students’ contact information to credit card companies or credit card-issuing banks? ***NO***

Do credit card companies or credit-card issuing banks strike partnerships with any University-affiliated group or entity in order to market to the University’s students? ***NO***

Does the University of Chicago have any revenue-generating deals with credit card companies or credit card-issuing banks? ***BASED ON THE TERMS OF OUR CONTRACTUAL TERMS,  RELATIONSHIPS WITH CREDIT CARD COMPANIES ARE CONFIDENTIAL***

I was unable to obtain any further information regarding the last question, but representatives of Chase Bank at the Booth School of Business orientation fair verified that, to their knowledge, they did not pay to have a table at the fair and that they did not pay for student information from the University.  (If anyone has a tip, please write me at sue@diskordchicago.com.)

Now, if I may proffer my personal, layman’s opinion on Mr. Kroll’s response and my advice regarding banking on campus — other than the discounted airfare (which, by the way, was news to me — I’ve never heard of anyone taking advantage of this and have myself always found great rates via price comparison shopping on the Internet. If any of our readers can verify that the offering from Citibank beats those, I would love to hear from you: sue@diskordchicago.com), the globality, and the credit card offering, Maroon Financial has the same services, including unlimited check writing, and they ask only for a $5 minimum balance to open the account, which will probably not break anyone’s back. But globality is indeed a critical factor. The single credit union branch location may not affect those who can handle their banking by phone or on-line, but would be an inconvenience to anyone who wants or needs to take care of their banking affairs inside a physical office after moving away from Hyde Park.

The move made by the University was a shrewd one in the sense that they are getting terms from Citibank that they would not have gotten without the deal (for example, Citibank does not offer free checking and savings to all college students), whereas Maroon Financial Credit Union would do all of the same things with or without an exclusive deal.

Regarding the lack of a rewards program, Mr. Hernandez of the credit union said, “Our knowledge of rewards is that the consumer ends up paying a lot more than the reward is worth … Obviously, any institution would not offer rewards unless they’re getting a profit off it.” It was not the small size of the credit union that prevents him from offering rewards — he wants to offer simple, easy-to-understand products, and given a very competitive interest rate vs. rewards, he will go with the very competitive interest rates. He does not see the rewards as beneficial. My position on rewards vs. no rewards is neutral, and the interest rates on the savings account won’t make a difference for most of us anyway, who probably have at most a couple thousand dollars in checking or savings at any given time.

The only fee that I’ve ever come across is the overdraft fee — this is $34 at Citibak and $26 and Maroon Financial Credit Union.

The 24-hour ATM for the credit union on the first floor of DCAM, two blocks further than the Citibank ATM is indisputably more inconvenient. DCAM is not a 24-hour building, but if you have your student ID with you the 24-hour security guard will let you into the building as long as you have business there.

Bottom line: If you want a credit card and convenience when you’re traveling abroad and you’re looking to open an account with a bank close to campus, Citibank is the way to go. But it will never cost you anything to have an account with the credit union, which comes with its own set of conveniences. My advice is to open an account with both.

The fold between the two sides of artistic sources met and closed into one lapidary clause: nature and technology are both spiritually inspirational and endlessly complex: a rich and challenging source for the artist. We now live, therefore, with an aesthetic sensibility that sources equally from nature and technological progress. It is a matter of purpose to then ?nd the individuals whose work or lives emulate this sensibility. This is not done by prettifying and highlighting the paltry scars of this antiquated schism. The comprehension of this sensibility is discovered no longer in their explanation but is displayed, absolutely, through their very formation.

Enter now:  a possible manifestation of this contemporary aesthetic sensibility. “All the Pretty Corpses,” the current exhibit at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago features projects by eight living and working artists. The tagline of this exhibit as well as the hearsay qualifier is: “Neo-Gothic.” In a stringent art historian’s mind, Neo-Gothic could rightfully conjure an image of an edifice with cascading glass flying-buttresses, gleaming metallic surfaces ornamented by glowing light, buzzing antennae, coiled wires, piling and protruding from bulbous pods, swirling and swelling from seemingly technological, or possibly, bio-technological necessity: a massive totem pulsating with human or human induced activity. One would replace the spires so familiar of our famous Gothic cathedrals with blasting beams of light. Our magni?cent stained-glass rose windows could be refitted with enormous plasma screens, displaying continually mutating images. This window would  be a monitor of progress, a panoramic surveillance of construction and expansion. This portal, which once served as the delicate filter between the harsh earthly existence of the preRenaissance subject and enormously beautiful prospect of heaven, would be in its “neo” incarnate, no longer a filter between squalor and opulence but between the now and the metallic and digital future.

However, as of yet we do not have any edifices which resemble my description. We certainly do have veritable representations of this futuristic reincarnate: films and animated/comic literature offer us a glimmer of this stylized state.

Neo-gothic is mainstream as a concept but its creative fervor is still relegated to the basement hallways of high schools, the midnight salons in diners and in fringe music venues and clubs, and overwhelmingly, on the internet, prosaically qualified as a sub-culture. The Renaissance Society, as an institution, has continuously framed exhibits and featured individuals whose purpose and work could be quali?ed as experimental, counter-cultural or curious. So here, we find the Renaissance Society reaching deep inside the bowels of society, touching a group, a style and an ideal which has held dominion over the nether-creatures of the counter-culture for nearly three decades.

What appeared most blatantly curious about the exhibit during its opening was the complete lack of gothic personalities. In their clothing, accessories and manner of speaking one found nothing reminiscent of the markedly (i.e. stereotypically) gothic individual. No high-contrast makeup, no black, no leather and no occult paraphernalia. How then, we may ask, is this art neo-gothic if not created by gothic individuals? Perusing web-sites devoted to displaying artwork of gothic sensibility one comes across delicately rendered images of princesses, dragons and satanic creatures. There are Giacometti-like scribbles of suffering lonesome individuals cowered in the corner of vast, cold cemented rooms. One finds pouting young girls with slick, long, black hair staring, plainly forward. One can only imagine that the source of these images, created by persons across the world, is their very selves. The imagined accessories of the gothic regalia rendered in ink and pencil drawings or actually fashioned from materials seem only to make sense if they come from an individual who appreciated and understood the aesthetics of this sub-culture: someone who would desire to share their creation amongst the like-minded.

So this synthesis of which I write, that cohesive perspective that does not highlight the opposition between nature and technology, but rather, highlights the in?nity of creation over the explanation of purpose is achieved through the presentation of the “neo-gothic” style by the curators at the Renaissance Society. In codifying several disparate artistic sensibilities in varying mediums of visual arts, the exhibit posits a counter-point to an increasingly insincere period of popularized artistic representation. Most conventionally executed are the ink drawings of Kacy Maddux. This artist, in utilizing gothic or occult symbolism—aspects of religious, mythic and the corporeal—has enveloped the urge (or angst) towards the infinity of creation in a series of sizeable pieces which covered an ample portion of the gallery walls. When studying the dynamism of these images, an almost inexhaustible source of inquisition towards a definition of a “what” materializes itself. The drawings are immaculately executed in clean, steady lines and curves and framed for the viewer to stand squarely and study their content. This inexhaustible source of inquisition is not a secondary inquiry into the drawings but is the very content of the drawings themselves.

Maddux explained during a question and answer session at the opening, the drawings are the representation of a folding and unfolding of a repetitive sentiment. This sentiment, impossible to represent directly, is achieved through meticulous and scrupulous expansion and retraction of an iconography of the artist’s invention. An iconography, as Maddux explains, could be conceived as a transitory language. The series of drawings display an extract from a personal catalogue of icons that form the grammar by which this language is constructed. As a reading of Maddux’s drawings carries itself towards a form of representation which expresses in its material and its consistent imagery the actuality of a sentiment or an occasion, her inclusion in the neo-gothic style further substantiates the polarity between a sub-culture and the respected “culture” as such. The images that are found in the wake of Maddux’s pen, working against conventional contemporary culture and its incestuous purveyors of representation, are exaltations of sincerity. This art does not parody a sentiment to the point of a hollow echo. There is no mark of the deathblow called kitsch to banish this project to the realm of instituted product. The mistake of miscomprehension through blundered abstraction was performed by certain artists of the early years of abstract expressionism, but we may now have found seriousness through excavating sub-cultures from their quasinarcissistic catacombs.

This sincerity is even more apparent in the installation/ sculpture of Chicago-area artist Tony Tasset. His Grotto (2005), amassing blood-colored candles in the mouth of a life-size stone-and-mortar-looking plaster shrine conjures images of occult ritual and miserable onerous devotion. At first the “neo-gothic” imagery seems apparent, almost to the point of triteness. On the aesthetic note: the grotto looks solid. As the candles melt while some still burning, the red languid wax scores trails down the appreciably stone-gray plaster walls and sprawls onto the floor: the overall effect is quite beautiful. To conjure further the feeling of devotion, reverence, or grief in the wake of tragedy, the Grotto was placed in the corner of the gallery. One has to step aside from the main course of the galler y and stand alone, facing the glaring mouth of the edifice, which larger than us, blocks our view of anything else.

However, Tasset’s commentary on the piece was the more poignant of appreciable elements. Tasset explained his disappointment in the contemporary monument or memorial. Placing his grotto in the same context as a contemporary memorial one immediately thinks of recent events which were later marked by objects. The shootings in Columbine served as the artist’s example. His apparent distaste for the minimalist monuments that serve as the perpetual reminders of unarguably horri?c events posited his artwork within the dynamic style of representation here termed neo-gothic. Why not conjure the blood and misery of the event in its respective memorial? In explaining the allure and bene?ts of this sentiment and noting his child’s attraction to goth and/or metal music, he described our current state of affairs as pretty awful. In a society where everyone professes his or her anger and couples society with shit, why not sing about that? Why not show the shit and the society together, in glowering directness? Tasset’s Grotto serves as the memorial for a fictionalized tragedy. His memorial addresses the materiality of the event: the darkness, the blood and the inevitable isolation, which follows human tragedy.

“All the Pretty Corpses” offers its audience a tour through a world which is nothing short of stimulus and engaging imagery. This exhibit also incorporates artists whose agendas extend beyond those possessed by their source, the youth sub-culture of “goth.” However, it would be quite contentious to write that the works of art and the position taken by the artists or the curators of the exhibit were refreshing. Refreshing would assume a reconstitution of a state of freshness of which is presently difficult to conceive. However, if the cathartic properties of art were ever to be as present as they are in the exhaustive performance of head banging, ritual and incantation-based lyricism and a frightfully accurate representation of anger and fear as are found in the music and musings of the goth milieu, the art that this state of mind inspired is certainly a step towards a moment of respite from suffocation. This sensibility could be an antidote to the choking insincerity so symptomatic of befuddled parody and the lurking and lascivious kitsch of mainstream culture.