kimoji

kimojis

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/emote/"></div><p>By <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/zack-hatfield/">Zack Hatfield </a></p>
<p>A little over a year ago, when entrepreneur and reality television tycoon Kim Kardashian debuted the first wildly popular line of celebrity emojis named Kimoji — an app that packages personalized emoticons and digital stickers for smartphones — a rumor propagated by online entertainment sites and the star herself claimed that Kardashian had broken Apple’s app store. The rumor proved false, but the publicity helped. Even more, people liked the Kimojis, which included risqué curves, Yeezy sneakers, a corset, a cannabis leaf, a car with suicide doors, and a now-viral image of Kardashian’s face with a pixelated tear placed below a kohl-dipped eyelash. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/emote/#more-2879" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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Only Emote

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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/vanitas-notes-911-art/"></div><p>By <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/zack-hatfield">Zack Hatfield</a></p>
<p>To see the first-ever art exhibit at the National September 11 Memorial &amp; Museum, you must first descend the escalator, walk past the spotlit wreckage displayed as part of the museum’s permanent collection, past armed guards, past fire trucks warped beyond recognition, and, finally, past the buckled I-beams and other debris that haunt Ground Zero. These artifacts serve as totems of perseverance and frangibility, souvenirs of past atrocity. Yet this preceding layout is such that, once you enter the gallery, the art feels unnecessary, perhaps even insensitive. What can creativity achieve amid so much pain and loss? In light of this duality, both the helpfulness and helplessness of art are on display in <em>Rendering the Unthinkable: 13 Artists Respond to 9/11</em>, an exhibit that embodies the comforting generalities that annex America’s remembrance of 9/11 today. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/vanitas-notes-911-art/#more-2594" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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Vanitas: Notes On 9/11 Art

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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/events/difficult-situations-zoe-leonards-wake/"></div><p>By <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/zack-hatfield">Zack Hatfield</a></p>
<p>Photographs of photographs constitute a peculiarly self-conscious genre. These images often emit a jejune urgency, an automatic feeling that the photographs they depict <em>must be preserved</em>. Given the rapid transformation of the photographic medium, it’s noteworthy that a physical photograph no longer qualifies as a preservation in and of itself — there must be a digital replication of the object. Photos are taken so that information can be shared (one thinks now of the reliable screenshot) — or so that information can be destroyed, the simulated a proxy for the actual. Sometimes, a photograph of a photograph implies historical and psychic gulfs between both beholders. As Zoe Leonard’s latest exhibit shows, these photographs can bear witnesses to — and perform in — the mysterious drama that is memory. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/events/difficult-situations-zoe-leonards-wake/#more-2329" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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Difficult Situations: Zoe Leonard’s <em>In the Wake</em>

Difficult Situations: Zoe Leonard’s In the Wake

<h4>Zack <span id="0.430728801560865" class="currentHitHighlight">Hatfield</span> is a graduate student in NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. His work has appeared in <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i>, <em>The Rumpus</em>, <em>Artforum.com</em>,<em> </em>and elsewhere.</h4>

Zack Hatfield

The Intimate Spectacle of “Public, Private, Secret”

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa

Art &amp; Architecture

Newcomers: Book One

The Great Slovenian Novel

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">— Fernando Pessoa, <em>The Book of Disquiet</em></p>

Around the World

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them." — Federico García Lorca

Nonfiction

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

After Culture Shock: The Legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers

Film

A Tale of One City: “Cincinnati Goddamn”

The Trumpets of Jericho

The Syntax of Anxiety: Unica Zürn’s Novella

Zack <span id="0.430728801560865" class="currentHitHighlight">Hatfield</span> is a graduate student in NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. His work has appeared in <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i>, <em>The Rumpus</em>, <em>Artforum.com</em>,<em> </em>and elsewhere.