Ellen Pearlman


Selected Works

A fresh look at modern Beijing
BEIJING BOOGIE WOOGIE
A surprising video
Criticism, essays, interviews and reviews
Brooklyn Rail
Winner of the 2007 Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Publishing Grant, the 2002, 2003,2004 Utne Magazine Award for Independent Publishing, as well as 2003, 2004, 2005 IPPY--The Independent Press Association Award.
Destroyed Lines
Beat Kuert's Work; An Evocative Catalog Essay
Most popular English language monthly in Beijing
Time Out Beijing
English language version of Time Out Beijing
Online Magazine of Arts and Ideas
Art Critical
Reviews
Reviews in English on China
NY Arts-Beijing
English Language Arts Reviews China
Sacred Dance
Tibetan Sacred Dance
The first book in the English language to explore the symbolism of the sacred and secular ritual dances of Tibetan Buddhism.
Tricycle Magazine early issues links. May need to be a subscriber to view
Tricycle Magazine Links
The heyday of Tricycle Magazine


THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
EMPAC
The opening of EMPAC (Electronic Media Performing Arts Center), a 200-million-dollar, 220,000-square-foot glass, steel, and cedar building is a massive step forward in developing the intersection of technology, media, and
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Art and China's Revolution
A collection of mostly Social Realist paintings about Mao and the Chinese Revolution, spanning the 1950s through the 1970s, is quite honestly nothing revolutionary to look at. But, like the Shroud of Tu
BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Swoon: Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea
Swoon—a street artist whose moniker shields her from potential prosecution on vandalism charges—sailed her ragtag Burning Man on the Hudson-like flotilla of seven sculptures nee boats to landf
BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Railing Opinion: Mao Is Like So Over
“Mao Crazy,” Jed Perl’s critical essay about contemporary Chinese art in the July issue of the New Republic, deals with commonly understood but not often voiced criticisms of post-Maoist political
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART BOOK
Andy Warhol in China
In 1982, before it was hip, fashionable, or barely possible, Andy Warhol tripped off to China with young photographer Christopher Makos, who documented the fabulous but anonymous Andy in Mao land. Now Ti
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Cai Guo-Qiang
While he was installing his current retrospective I Want To Believe at the Guggenheim Museum Cai Guo-Qiang took time out from his busy schedule to sit down and talk with Rail Editor-at-Large Ellen Pear
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Performa 07
Rose Lee Goldberg the director of the visual art performance biennial Performa 07 deserves an honorary key to the City from Mayor Bloomberg as a high/middle/low/brow cheerleader for the arts. New and improved over Per
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Zhang Huan
In 1994, the pinnacle of China’s post-Tiananmen “Shock Art” phase, Zhang Huan lathered his nude body in honey and fish oil and sat down on a roughhewn latrine seat in a public bathroom in Beijing’s East Village art
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Xu Bing
Xu Bing is one of the most important expatriate Chinese avant-garde artists. Winner of a 1999 MacArthur (“genius”) Fellowship for A Book From athe Sky, which consisted of thousands of characters from an invented language
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Letter From China. “In Beijing they shit ice cream and piss lemonade,” says Robert Bernell, one of the founders of the Dashanzi Art District, also known as the 798 Art Zone, and of Timezone 8, a bookstore and publishing company.
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
The Rape of the Sabine Women by Eve Sussman.
Lust and Debacle seem to be on the mind of a coterie of avant filmmakers these days. First there was the Whitney Biennial
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Li Wei
Lost Gravity; the Photographs and Performances of Li Wei. Li Wei, a short and stocky man, clambered up a metal ladder ten feet, sticking his head deep into a hole in the wall. Two somber assistants using wire pulleys c
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Contemporary Asian Arts week, held since 2002, is dedicated to showcasing the best of Asian Art through a consortium of 28 participants. Though the week is pan-Asian, Chinese artists in particular are gaining rapidly in New York
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Fade To Black - Subtitled Day for Night, the Whitney Biennial is less about surface, glitz and shifting identities than it lets on, and more about anxiety than it admits.
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Performa 05, the first Biennial ever of “new visual art performance,” that ambiguous yet agreed-upon term encompassing spoken word, theater, film, video, computer art, photography, music, sound, travel, and lectures, stormed acro
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
CLICK on left link for ART, Japanese Anime, Expo 2005 and the Future of the World. I have seen the future: it is soft, green, and fuzzy. The future is named Morizo and Kiccoro, the mascots of Expo 2005
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. The Rubin Museum interior stairwell. Photo by Ellen Pearlman. There was a full-blown, fourth of July style fireworks display exploding over my head in ...
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Digital Avant-Garde: Celebrating 25 Years of Ars Electronica a collaboration with the American Museum of the Moving Image, Eyebeam Gallery, and the Austrian Cultural Forum June 2004 Interactive
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
From 'da Hood to 'da Whitney: 3 Artists from Williamsburg Make Good March 2004 Julianne Swartz, How Deep is Your (2003), site specific installation with sound. Courtesy P.S. 1 M
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
American Effect = Death Threat: The Art of Saira Wasim, October 2003 Saira Wasim, Silent Voices. Courtesy of the artist. Saira Wasim s Mughal style paintings, part of the rec
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - ART
Life at the VSC November 2003 The Studio Center courtyard at night. Photo by Howard Romero. When Le Quoc Viet smiled, his lips parted like a theater curtain revealing his glis
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - FILM
“I had to keep filming to figure out this modern crazy life,” Jennifer Fox says at the beginning of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. In 2002, she was at a crossroads and needed to make a different life for herself. The result
BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
DR. ATOMIC - JOHN ADAMS AND PETER SELLARS
Dr. Atomic, the opera composed by that dynamic duo John Adams and Peter Sellars and premiered in 2005 in San Francisco, has been reworked for its premier at the Met. A whopping three hours
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Funky But Sleek Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Holon
Swiss pianist Nik Bartsch and his neo–jazz-funk ensemble Ronin play music unlike anyone in recent memory. The group rummages through the work of a wide swath of global impresarios, ran
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Celia Cruz, affectionately known as “La Reina de Salsa,” was a force of nature, an irreplaceable, once-in-a-generation female singer whose life and music echoed for over sixty years the trajectory of the Cuban Diaspora’s effect
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Sporting spiky, orange-tipped dreads, and gesticulating like a rainmaker; conjuring invisible forces with her impeccable bel canto voice, feedback loops, and a MIDI-controlled device called the BodySynth, Pamela Z recently parac
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Argentina's Diamond, Finally Mined - the Music of Geraldo Gandini. It is unforgivable that Gerardo Gandini, the most famous modern composer and pianist in Argentina, is virtually unknown
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Bow Becomes Breath - Stringsongs - Meredith Monk, Kronos Quartet, Zankel Hall March 2005. The newest strand in Meredith Monk’s endless creative braid is the string quartet Stringson
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo by Ned Sublette Chicago Review Press November 2004. Ned Sublette has taken on ...
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
The Rebirth of DJ Spooky, September 2004 A still from DJ Spooky s Rebirth of a Nation. Courtesy of the artist. Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, presented
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
All Cage, All the Time (With a bit of Merce, Nam June, Shigeko, and Charlotte) March 2004 The five-day Cage-o-rama presented jointly by Anthology Film Archives and the Joh
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Nik Bartsch s Ritual Grooves by Ellen Pearlman April 2003 Nik Bartsch is an unsung wunderkind of European new music. I first heard him in Graz, Austria, with his trio Ronin; they played tig
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - MUSIC
Our Favorite Holiday Records January 2004 Year-end lists you can t live with em, and you can t live without em. But wanting to at least provide an alternative to all the Best Records of 200
THE BROOKLY RAIL - THEATER
Maria del Bosco: A Sound Opera (sex and racing cars)Written and directed by Richard Foreman
The real, as opposed to the imaginary, Maria del Bosco, which is translated from the Italian as "Maria of the forests," appeared to a
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - DANCE
Descent. Choreography by Noemie LaFrance. Photos by Richard Termine. Courtesy of Sens Production. The Bessie award-winning Descent, created, directed, and ingeniously costu
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - DANCE
Sound Itself Is No Sound A journey into process and performance with Meredith Monk, April 2003 I never imagined waking up in total silence at Zen Mountain Monastery in the
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - DANCE
In conversation: Meredith Monk with Ellen Pearlman April 2003 The following conversation took place in January of 2003. Ellen Pearlman (Rail): You said that there was no separation anymore
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - FICTION
In conversation: Rikki Ducornet August/September 2003 Rikki Ducornet spent her childhood in Cuba and Egypt. In addition to a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she has also
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - POETRY
POETRY from print edition web exclusive Anne Waldman, as told to Ellen Pearlman February 2004 Infra-red photo entitled Nuclear Family (1985) of the poet Anne Waldman, her then husband Reed Bye and their son Ambrose Bye. Photo b
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS The New Psychedelia
Three books have appeared, heralding a quiet resurgence in certain circles of the use of hallucinogenic drugs for spiritual or visionary purposes. Designed to redirect us from the environmental, religious and
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS
Biography "Trungpa" What Becomes a Legend Most -Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, though certainly not the only Tibetan Lama hounded out of Tibet by the Communist Party’s pogrom of Buddhists, was undeni
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS photo by Ellen Pearlman Winter 2003 Daniel Pinchbeck, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Boo
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS
Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown, Atria Books. So, what was is the life of a geisha really like? Not the made up fantasy of a western m
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS
Sparks in Nevada photo by Ellen Pearlman Winter 2003 Drama in the Desert: The Sights and Sounds of Burning Man, based on the images of Holly Kreuter. A Raised Barn Press P
THE BROOKLYN RAIL -BOOKS
SCROLL to bottom, Strange, Dark Places, "Ring of Fire" Anne Arden McDonald: Installations and Self-Portraits (Autonomy and Alchemy Press - Anne McDonald is one of the 60 artists living on Water Street in Dumbo
THE BROOKLYN RAIL -SCROLL to bottom, BOOKS - Poetry - An Ongoing Experiment- Daniel Kane, All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2003)
The St. Marks Poetry Project has long ser
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - BOOKS SCROLL to bottom- Fluxus, by Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, (University of California Press, 2003) Hannah Higgins, child of Fluxus progenitors Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, cut her baby teeth on legendary
THE BROOKLYN RAIL - HISTORY
HISTORY from print edition web exclusive A Brief History of the Brooklyn Rail by Theodore Hamm On the occasion of the Rail s 10th full-format issue, the editor reflects When my wife, playwright Emily DeVoti, named The Brooklyn


Quick Links

Interview on Contemporary Chinese Women Photographers
Drawing from their long history of Buddhism, Tibetan artists are leading the way in exploring suppressed spiritual values.
Interview with Li Wei about sticking his head into a wall
Imagine Gallery in Beijing, Interview With Russell Beighton on sculptural practice
Comments on Process/Journey, Exhibit of Contemporary Australian/Chinese art
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston mentions TSD
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston article with Ellen Pearlman
Blade Over the Heart, American Ninja, Part 1
Blade Over the Heart, American Ninja Part 2
Meditating in Havana: Interview with Eduardo Pimentel
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