The Brown Arts Initiative invited students to join in “Remaking the REAL,” this past week, engaging artists, media makers and art and media theorists in conversations related to images and narratives of reality. 

Students are exploring the current realities of COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement and political unrest in ARTS1000: “🎵 I’m So Alone 🎵: The Art of Surveilled Bodies Amidst a Global Epidemiological Cluster#@%$,” an interdisciplinary arts workshop offered by the Brown Arts Initiative this fall. 

Outside of buildings at the Rhode Island School of Design, large white tents are spread across various corners of campus. Under these tents, groups of students are seen drawing, sketching and painting while sitting six feet apart from each other.

“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” Director Jeff Orlowski opens his documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” with this ominous quote from Sophocles, reminding audiences of the downside of powerful social media tools. 

Brown students, faculty and alums logged onto Zoom to attend a town hall on the meaning and implications of the statues and monuments that decorate Brown’s campus.

In Disney’s 2020 attempt to resuscitate the 1998 animated film, much of the nostalgic charm of the original “Mulan” is deadened for the sake of aesthetic value and purported maturation — not to mention political controversy beyond the screen. 

“Boys State,” directed by filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, swept 2020 festival circuits and won the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Upon hearing the University’s announcement that classes would operate mostly online, Rebecca Ho ’21, visual art and biology concentrator and co-head Herald photo editor, was worried that she would not be able to complete her visual art concentration requirements.

On Thursday, Sept. 17, the Brown Arts Initiative welcomed students to a livestreamed “Living Room Concert” by Temma Schaechter ’21, a musician and aspiring psychologist who performed a series of original songs accompanied by a discussion of emotional processing through music.

Morale is low in the entertainment industry. With Disney’s live-action adaptation of the 1988 animated classic Mulan all-but-abandoned on streaming services and the forthcoming Bond film delayed for months, the COVID-19 pandemic has sunk the film industry to new lows.