6 — Friday, January 24, 2020 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com WHISPER SUBMIT A WHISPER By Paul Coulter (c)2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 01/24/20 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 01/24/20 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Friday, January 24, 2020 ACROSS 1 Draft category 5 Crisply played, in mus. 9 Qatar’s capital 13 Inflammation treatment 15 Apple product 16 Blamed for personal advantage 19 More mean 20 Sci-fi helmsman 21 Burdened 24 Portable chair 26 “Uno __”: cantina request 27 Fundraising targets 29 Boar’s mate 31 Punch with force, maybe 35 Greatly beloved ones 38 He reunited with his fictional ex on Valentine’s Day in 2011 39 Ibuprofen brand 41 Backboard attachment 42 Place Sundance liked to see 44 Chanoyu ceremony essential 47 Kazakhstan, once: Abbr. 49 Waste time 50 __ store 53 Many an Indian 57 Green 58 Game with two secret passages 60 Advice 62 Hotel amenity, and a hint to three puzzle answers 67 They can make you better, briefly 68 Basically 69 Annoyance 70 Do, for example 71 Cutty __ DOWN 1 Fall mo. 2 Kabuki kin 3 Give the wrong change, say 4 Acts of reparation 5 IRS IDs 6 Talks up 7 Musical in which FDR is a character 8 Gave up 9 Board mem. 10 Expresses a preference (for) 11 Blah 12 “A Passage to India” heroine 14 “Lemme!” 17 Age relatives 18 Clear 21 Delay 22 Not quite identical 23 Comforter 25 It’s often served with nutmeg 28 “... __ woodchuck could chuck wood?” 30 Subjects of European trials during the Renaissance 32 Wd. ending in -less 33 FDR power plan 34 Backtalk 36 Botch 37 Common sense? 40 Bloke 43 It may be tapped into a tray 45 Parents, usually 46 High __ 48 P.R. part 50 Appear 51 Fluff, as pillows 52 Blender button 54 Hopeless 55 “Beats me!” 56 Up in the air 59 Aims 61 Zaire’s Mobutu __ Seko 63 It ends shortly after 1-Down 64 __ moment 65 “Bad Moon Rising” band, briefly 66 “A rat!” CLASSIFIEDS 734-418-4115 option 2 dailydisplay@gmail.com FALL 2020 HOUSES # Beds Location Rent 6 511 Linden $4650 6 722 E. Kingsley $4650 6 1119 S. Forest $4000 5 910 Greenwood $3900 4 809 Sybil $3200 2 221 N. First $1900 Tenants pay all utilities. www.cappomanagement.com Showings M-F 10-3; email cappomanagement@ gmail.com DEINCO PROPERTIES 734-996-1991 4 BEDRM 5 person house Mary Court @ IM bldg, May- May $2990 month FOR RENT FOR RENT “ Kevin is definitely the slowest worker in the daily!” “Women want me fish fear me” “Only looking for hookups. very inexpe- rienced.” puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com “60 characters. Bare your soul. Get featured in the Daily!” WHISPER Introducing the SUDOKU COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN The image is this: a gender-ambiguous figure stands in the desert facing the camera. They hold binoculars to their face, looking to some horizon over our shoulder. There’s a placelessness to the setting, which is made up of no more than sand, clouds and sky. No details or ornament in the figure’s dress bind it to any particular time period. It’s universal. Diminishing conceptions of cultural and interpersonal difference seemed to be the larger aspiration of Taking a Stand, a group exhibition at the Stamps Gallery organized around the theme of solidarity-building. The show opened last Friday night with a crowd of about 50 navigating the gallery’s spaces as a DJ spun eclectic beats. This desert figure, seen on the event poster, was one of several photographs by Meryl McMaster, one of the evening’s more successful acts. Artist Syrus Marcus Ware drew in gallery-goers with works like Activist Love Letters: personal letters to activists that highlight a certain individuality and humanity that’s overlooked in their arduous work. Ware gives them the pedestal they deserve in this gallery space. Leaving the “letters to” format, McMaster’s photos painted more vivid landscapes than just about any other media on display. Think Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” aesthetic. The introspective side of her characters was foregrounded by concealing physical appearance with body paint and sculptural attire. Another exhibition feature: a TV showing surveillance from some other space in the gallery. Simulated atop the footage were several digitized female avatars, each speaking in poem about feeling frozen. It definitely generated sympathy, made us consider the differences between ourselves and the avatars. The footage was actually generated from the other side of the wall. The exhibition had an iPad that was supposed to factor into a fully simulated AR sequence, but instead it stayed frozen on these women and their existential dread. Artist Oliver Husain dominated the back portion of the gallery with his fantastical combinations of historical objects and events. It started with various drawings of a pirate ship docked inside of a contemporary mall space, and led to a short film, Isla Santa Maria 3D, that played on loop in front of 12 sets of 3D glasses. The glasses didn’t actually work, though, and this didn’t seem intentional given the subject matter — a complex commentary on the legacy of colonialism via Victorian-era beach dwellers, visitors from another planet and a holographic oracle. Such an uncanny combination of characters and visual effects made several hundred years of history seem like a miniscule drop in the bucket of time. It displaced us from the arbitrary rules of everyday life, making us look inward in much the same way as McMaster’s photographs do. Yet again, though, the technical delivery fell short. The whole point of the event was to position the gallery as a space of potentially vital conversations about political injustice, but the gallery was hardly vital. Friday night’s gallery-goers were hardly inclined to talk to one another any more than they would have on the street. The art on display did some work to dissolve our notions of national boundaries, but lacked new takes on what the gallery space can be. The idea of an interactive video game sequence is good, but the reality is that only one person could use the iPad at once. Each work engaged the audience in a different way, but why not force people out of their comfort zones? If the aim was to persuade through solidarity, why not actually position people as the minority for once? Or have a gallery of team-building exercises? Each artist was acting from their inner self, and by no means followed a prompt. Their work happened to be featured with others’ under a unifying theme, but it just didn’t collectively convince. The Stamps Gallery is an important space, and has more potential than this. Stamps’ ‘Take a Stand’ impact is limited at best BEN VASSAR Daily Arts Writer The whole point of the event was to position the gallery as a space of potentially vital conversations about political injustice, but the gallery was hardly vital Conceptions of cultural and interpersonal difference seemed to be the larger inspiration of Taking a Stand The ridiculous TV of the late 2000s: ‘Kid Nation’ IAN HARRIS Daily Entertainment Columnist My house recently stumbled upon a gold mine. While casually browsing through YouTube one of my housemates came across a video entitled “Was Kid Nation the worst reality show ever?” After watching only two minutes of this video, my friend turned it off and immediately texted the group chat with two simple words: New show. Over the course of syllabus week my friends and I binged all twelve episodes of “Kid Nation,” a short lived CBS reality show that aired in the fall of 2007. The premise is as insane as it is simple. 40 kids, with no parents, no supervision and no adults of any kind, will take over an abandoned town in the middle of the desert and attempt to form the first ever Kid Nation. The kids are split into four “districts” and they compete in challenges to determine what role in society they will hold. Each week one kid is awarded a solid gold star by the elected town council, worth 20,000 real world dollars. The show is bananas. The fact that it ever existed it all is mindboggling. A Wikipedia search reveals that the shows producers actually classified and registered the set as a summer camp in order to avoid child labor laws. This is just one small factoid in the sea of madness that is “Kid Nation.” The show can only be found in grainy YouTube videos, because CBS all but denies it’s existence. While the entire thing is easily found, the subpar audio and video quality honestly kind of adds to the reality of the experience these kids are going through. The entire aesthetic of the presentation adds to the strange feeling you have while watching, that what you’re seeing shouldn’t actually exist. The people in charge of this show put a group of tweens in a desert with minimal commodities or utilities and more or less sat back to see what would happen. From that standpoint, the show is cleanly divided in half. During the first half of the season, the town council featured four kids appointed by the producers at the start of the show. This led to a number of kids questioning the authority of leaders that were not chosen for them, some kids refused to do the jobs assigned to them, while others got into fights with each other. Obstacles as simple as cooking mac and cheese became gigantic issues with eight year olds dumping in more pasta than the pan can fill. The first half of the season is filled with ridiculous nonsense like this, from kids eating so much candy they have sugar hangovers the next day to kids arguing which religion is best based only on the religions name. The chaos of kids trying to live by themselves is a setup rife with drama and conflict, but one that continually makes you wonder if it’s all right for you to be enjoying what you’re seeing. This show is kinda messed up. The entire premise is predicated on using kids’ pain to bring entertainment to the audience. How you square that is up to you, but the show was cancelled after one short season, so it’s doubtful watching it now is really causing anyone harm. However, in the back half of the series things take an interesting turn. After (spoiler alert) holding an election, throwing out the original town council, and electing their own leaders, Kid Nation really stabilizes. A Reddit AMA from a few years back that was done by one of the kids who appeared on the show reveals that the kids eventually got bored of the “game” of the show, playing the challenges and changing districts and what not. They had developed a system of labor that more or less worked without much issue, and they didn’t even fight that much anymore. It’s less bombastic and entertaining than the early episodes, but there’s something kinda fascinating about the end of “Kid Nation” all the same. At one point the kids are given a choice between a hot air balloon ride and a monument to the town they’ve built together that will stand there forever. As rightly pointed out by some of the kids, the real monument to the journey they went on is the show itself. But what started as a simple reality show designed to shock the audience eventually transitions into a strange meditation on the fragility of childhood and the inevitability of growing up. As their final days together come to a close, many of the kids we’ve grown to know become emotional about the fact that they’re about to leave people they’ve formed a connection with unlike any other they had before. As the kids run into their parents waiting arms, we watch as they experience joy, and sadness too. It’s been said that kids do live in their own world after all, one where the rules aren’t always defined by adults or the strict impositions of the adult world. Alas, you can’t stay in “Kid Nation” forever; eventually you have to return to the real world. “Kid Nation” was brief, bright and no more. Long live “Kid Nation.” The premise is as insane as it is simple. 40 kids with no parents, no supervision