Author Archives: k-fai steele

Your Breasts Are Like Two Young Deer That Are Twin: Fraktur In the Free Library’s Rare Book Dept.

By k-fai steele | November 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

The title of this article ends an inscription in a fraktur love letter (liebesbrief) written to Barbara Muller around 1800 by a now-anonymous doter. It is preceded by, in elaborate handwriting, “The heart of mine shall be devoted to you. See, my girlfriend, you are beautiful… Your eyes are like the eyes of doves between [...]

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One Book, One Artist Talk: Marjane Satrapi at the Free Library

By k-fai steele | September 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

Wednesday was a long night if you were one of the eight hundred people who waited to hear Marjane Satrapi speak about the Complete Persepolis (Pantheon, $24.95), chosen for this year’s One Book, One Philadelphia. The night was also emotional. Mayor Nutter confessed that passing bill 1828 was “the most emotionally challenging” situation he ever [...]

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No, It’s Not a Real Wii™ Game, It’s John Karel Making Macaroni and Cheese

By k-fai steele | September 26, 2009 | 0 Comments

I have been a fan of John Karel’s work ever since I met him in 2007. His animations, drawings, and paintings are literally and metaphorically reflections of him, his friends, and the vloggs/vloggers (video blogs/bloggers) he finds on the internet. John infuses his artwork with horizontal-lipped humor and a fantastic sense of color and drawing. Clearly [...]

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Homelessness in a Discrete Living Simulation

By k-fai steele | August 19, 2009 | 4 Comments

Released in 2000, The Sims was the first computer game in its genre to engage players in the everyday activities of virtual people, or “Sims.” It is like a microcosmic version of SimCity (the urban planning/management computer game) but instead of a municipality you create and manage individual persons. The ultimate goal is to steer your Sim towards happiness [...]

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The Phenomenology of the Craft Craze

By k-fai steele | June 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

The soft strums of an inoffensive acoustic guitar hovered over the booths at the Art Star Craft Bazaar on a correspondingly pleasant day at Penn’s landing.  I have noticed, for a few years now, an upsurge in crafting as a popular cultural phenomenon. Its pervasiveness has resulted in communities of both male and female crafters [...]

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To Mumbai and Back–Philadelphia’s International Design Clinic and its guerilla design project

By k-fai steele | May 6, 2009 | 1 Comment

Mumbai in the past twenty years has gone through a prodigious economic boom, bringing an influx of migrant workers from the rest of the country to perform labor and service-industry work. It is India’s largest city at 13.5 million, and it suffers from the usual developing-city problems like poverty, lack of social services and clean [...]

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The Human Scale of Recycling in India

By k-fai steele | April 2, 2009 | 8 Comments

Enrico Fabian is a German-born, Delhi-based photographer whose work is on display at the India Habitat Center. Fabian spent three months in 2008 working alongside the NGO Chintan documenting the daily life of the Kabari, a general term used for people in India who collect and sell recyclable materials. Fabian’s show consists of about two [...]

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Chandighar, City of Tomorrow, part 2

By k-fai steele | March 18, 2009 | 5 Comments

Part 1 of this post can be found here
Chandigarh was a project taken on by Le Corbusier in 1951, after the original architects Matthew Nowicki and Albert Mayer (of Mayer, Whittlesey & Glass of New York) ended the project following Nowicki’s death in a plane crash. The city was planned as the new capital of [...]

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Chandigarh, India’s City of Tomorrow

By k-fai steele | | 1 Comment

We arrived in Chandigarh two days ago. This means we’ve been traveling officially for 11 days in India- my and my boyfriend’s first time, our friend’s second time, and we have another 4 weeks ahead of us. I’d been looking forward to seeing Chandigarh, an masterpiece in architectural and urban planning by Le Corbusier, for [...]

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IYARE! at the Penn Museum

By k-fai steele | February 15, 2009 | 1 Comment

Post by K-Fai Steele

Map of modern-day Nigeria, showing the location of Benin and Benin City
I went to go see IYARE! Splendor and Tension in Benin’s Palace Theater at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology a week ago, an exhibit that deals with the historical roots of the Benin culture today by looking [...]

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