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In 2009 the New Museum inaugurated its "Generational", a triennial show of artists who are “younger than Jesus” (ie, 33). The results were spastic and scattered, but also provocative and occasionally mesmerising. Ryan Trecartin, an American artist, emerged as one of its stars. His room-sized video installation was lurid and weird, with orange people jabbering on-screen in an atmosphere of palm trees and airplane seats. But it felt like a complete and exciting world, a cohesive albeit manic vision of life in the YouTube age.

Born in Texas in 1981, Trecartin is still younger than Jesus. His first full-scale solo show, “Any Ever”, opened recently at MoMA’s PS1. In the revitalising sprawl of Long Island City, PS1 exhibits a more youthful strand of contemporary art in a big and stylishly repurposed school building. Trecartin’s videos effectively create more dissonance here than they did amid the wannabe edginess of the New Museum. The show includes seven videos, each presented in its own immersive installation. In one room viewers watch from stadium seats; in another they sit on airplane seats (complete with seatbelts); yet another room is designed to look like a cheaply outfitted corporate boardroom. In a room of couches, handbags are bunched up as if partygoers had strewn them about. Viewers then sit down, don large headphones and watch a video, with the volume turned up. The effect is uncanny, both familiar and fake, a theatrical environment of real life.  read more »

The director of "Waste Land", a film about Brazilians who pick recyclables from garbage and the art they create, on finding her subjects

Julian Assange, the notoriously elusive founder of Wikileaks, may not have hand-picked The Economist to receive an advance notice of its cache of more than 90,000 military documents about Afghanistan (that honour was given to the Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel). But he did have tea with the paper and discuss his motives.  

The exchange is fascinating. In response to a question about the upshot of the big leak—government officials say new details could help the enemy; analysts suggest there's little that's new (The Economist calls the Afghan War Diary "long on detail and short of revelations")—Assange huffs:

Typical nonsense from analysts who can’t actually be bothered to read the material. How do they know there’s nothing new there. 91K reports—have they read 91k reports? Even our journalistic team are only reading detail. 

An example he then offers, about the real reason for certain Canadian casualties (discovered by a Canadian newspaper from the leaked reports), indicates that there are indeed devils in the details.  read more »

Where did the week go? And the summer? Is it really nearly August? Good lord.

It may sound like something out of a National Enquirer article, but these rats really do save lives. In this Economist audio slideshow Bart Weetjens, founder of Apopo Detection Rats Technology, discusses training chihuahua-sized rodents to detect landmines and tuberculosis. He developed the idea after reading about explosive-sniffing gerbils and now runs a training and resource center in Tanzania, and his rats have been accredited by International Mine Action Standards. The animals are easy to train, too small to set off landmines, and respond well to new handlers. Most importantly, they are really cute.

NOW here's a video with a message. Possibly "the best public service announcement of all time", says Publisher's Weekly, which has an obvious interest.

NB: don't click on this if you are easily offended. It is stuffed with swear-words to offend all sensibilities. But no more so than the rap songs that it pastiches ...  read more »