Salon.com > Hyperallergic http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Google Earth as art http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 18:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287895 Hyperallergic

 

OAK PARK, Illinois — You’re driving to a suburb that you don’t know well, and you whip out your iPhone to quickly punch an address into Google Maps. In this case, that address is 704 Highland Avenue, home of Sabina Ott and John Paulett, who run Terrain Exhibitions, a once-a-month-ish, home-turned-cozy gallery experience. Every artist who shows work here must wrap it around the concept of the artist-writer couple’s home.

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition - QR Code

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition – QR Code (all photos by the writer unless otherwise noted)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/feed/ 0 Does painting still matter? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/#comments Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283103 Hyperallergic

 

Three months ago I attended a discussion at Hunter College called “…towards meaning in a plural painting world.” The panel sought to examine today’s multiplicity of painting styles and determine if this is a positive or dilutive development for painting’s meaning as a whole. Last Wednesday, the Pratt Institute took on similar subject with a panel titled Painting Matters Now: a Conversation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/feed/ 4 When maps are art http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:40:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281820 Hyperallergic
When I was a kid, my father kept a dog-eared street map of the Dallas metroplex in his truck’s glove compartment. As a contractor who spent hours driving each day, this atlas was his North Star — a point of reference for navigating the city’s chaotic, concrete sprawl. Today, the cartographic tradition that his homely map belonged to — spanning millenniums from the early Phoenicians to Amerigo Vespucci and Lewis and Clark — is rapidly changing. I now find my way through New York by following a tiny, triangular point on an iPhone screen. In an age of new technology, information, and globalization, maps are no longer mere objects, and they increasingly represent immaterial worlds. This shifting understanding of time and space is reflected in Contemporary Cartographies, a group show at CUNY’s Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/feed/ 1 Space preservation’s new frontier http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/space_preservations_new_frontier_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/space_preservations_new_frontier_partner/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:52:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281232 Hyperallergic Some of the most historic sites of human history aren’t even on our planet. On the moon are the six lunar landing sites left from NASA’s 1969 to 1972 trips to the moon, and traveling somewhere out in the distance of the universe are interstellar objects like the Voyager probes. There are even closer historical space objects lingering in orbit with other space debris around the planet, like dead satellites and pieces of rockets.

A growing focus has been how to preserve these historical sites and objects, when no earthly country can own the land or space they are on. Leonard David with SPACE.com explored this emerging extraterrestrial preservation concentration this week, focusing on the gathering of several of its academic proponents at the annual Society for American Archaeology meeting that was held earlier this month in Honolulu. For example, Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University elaborated on how to turn the site where the 1969 Apollo 11 lunar lander touched down into a protected national historic landmark, using funding from NASA. Joe Reynolds of Clemson University pointed out the similarities in preserving these types of sites to places like Antarctica, where groups like the Antarctic Heritage Trust oversee historical exploration bases and sites, while the land remains possessed through an international treaty.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/space_preservations_new_frontier_partner/feed/ 3 New Yorkers’ newest opportunity to step all over you http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:39:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13280091 Hyperallergic In an attempt to show the faces of the New Yorkers and tourists who swiftly move through Times Square at an unrelenting 24-hour pace, French street artist JR has set up a photo booth right in its center. Inside Out New York City, which started last night as part of the Times Square Arts public arts program, is a continuation of JR’s Inside Out Project, where the faces of the people who live in a place are made visible on its structure.

JR in Times Square
Pasting new posters
JR in Times SquareJR’s photo booth truck

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/feed/ 0 Frank Lloyd Wright’s auto showroom is no more http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/frank_lloyd_wrights_auto_showroom_is_no_more_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/frank_lloyd_wrights_auto_showroom_is_no_more_partner/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:39:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13274098 Hyperallergic It’s shocking that a building designed by one of the biggest architects of the past century could disappear so quickly and quietly, but last month Frank Lloyd Wright’s auto showroom on Park Avenue was demolished and the architectural world is just now feeling the reverberations.

“It’s a national tragedy simply because there are not that many Frank Lloyd Wright design commissions left in America — and truly not that many in New York City,” Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council in New York, explained over email. “There were three, now there are two. Frank Lloyd Wright is arguably America’s greatest architect — he’s definitely our country’s most famous one. Even given a question of the individual significance of the showroom within Wright’s extant oeuvre, it should not have been casually thrown away, but rather studied and discussed.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/frank_lloyd_wrights_auto_showroom_is_no_more_partner/feed/ 4 Fed up Louvre staff strikes over roving bands of pickpockets http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13268973 Hyperallergic

Tens of thousands of the visitors who mob the Louvre each day drawn by those sirens the slightly smiling Mona Lisa, the amputated beauty the Venus de Milo, and the windswept Winged Victory of Samothrace had their hopes dashed like ships against the rocks by a staff strike in response to pickpocketing. Adding to France’s storied history of disruptive strikes of questionable impact, the Paris museum was shut down Wednesday with a 200 member staff walkout, the AFP reports. Reportedly, there have been roving bands of pickpockets of up to 30 members strong, swaggering through the stately galleries, infiltrating the crowds that stop to balk at the priceless works of art, twirling mustaches no doubt as they eye the hapless tourists taking photos with iPads or rummaging through their purses jumbled with passports and multiple types of currency. These gangs even sometimes include children (taking advantage of the museum’s free admission for the young, like sly Oliver Twists).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/feed/ 4 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, cubed http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/the_metropolitan_museum_of_art_cubed_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/the_metropolitan_museum_of_art_cubed_partner/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:43:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13267104 Hyperallergic The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that Leonard A. Lauder has made a major donation of Cubist art that will transform New York’s largest museum into a major center for Cubist art. The pledged gift is comprised of 78 works, including 33 works by Pablo Picasso, 17 by Georges Braque, 14 by Juan Gris, and 14 by Fernand Léger. As part of the donation, the Metropolitan Museum will create the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, which will serve as a leading center for scholarship on Cubism and modern art. According to the New York Times, the Lauder Center “will be supported by a $22 million endowment that he has helped finance along with museum trustees and supporters.” The Center promises to attract leading scholars and curators in the field, and transform the institution into a player in a field where its collections have long been sparse. The Metropolitan Museum only received its first Cubist painting in 1996.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/the_metropolitan_museum_of_art_cubed_partner/feed/ 1 Woman arrested for Instagramming http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/woman_arrested_for_instagramming_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/woman_arrested_for_instagramming_partner/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:37:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13261953 Hyperallergic

20-year-old artist Jennifer Pawluck was arrested Wednesday morning at 10:30am after posting a picture of anti-police street art on her Instagram feed a few days before.

“Many of my friends do not like the police,” Pawluck told the Huffington Post Québec in French. “I thought it would be funny to put the picture on Instagram. I do not even know who he is, Ian Lafrenière.”

Pawluck took the photo in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood of Montreal, where she lives, and police arrived early yesterday with a warrant accusing her of uttering threats to the Montreal police spokesperson Ian Lafrenière.

The photo in question depicts a hand-drawn image of Ian Lafrenière with a gunshot wound to the head flanked by the words “Ian Lafrenière” and “ACAB” — a popular graffiti acronym that stands for “all cop[per]s are bastards.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/woman_arrested_for_instagramming_partner/feed/ 52 Outsider art invades Paris http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:36:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13260137 Hyperallergic

PARIS — For a brief time, a former Catholic seminary on Paris’ classy Boulevard Raspail was overtaken with a psychoanalyst’s jubilee of art from self-taught creators who worked in secret or seclusion, in mental asylums or hospitals, or just from their own particular perspective of the world. The Museum of Everything is a traveling exhibition started by British filmmaker James Brett in 2009 that’s been widely successful in its unique curation of overlooked art, having now collaborated with the Tate Modern and the Missoni fashion house. Its Exhibition #1.1 popped up from October 2012 to March 2013 in the Saint-Germain space of the Chalet Society, a project of Marc-Oliver Wahler, the former director and chief curator of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. I was lucky enough to catch it in its last days, and it was one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had of viewing “outsider” art, as it’s usually classified, from the sheer overwhelming density of the work to the truly talented, and truly bizarre, artists corralled into one alternative arts space.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/feed/ 0 “Farmscrapers” could turn future cities green http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/farmscrapers_could_turn_future_cities_green_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/farmscrapers_could_turn_future_cities_green_partner/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:53:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13259992 Hyperallergic One of the advantages of living in a city is that the urban environment is in many ways more sustainable than suburbia — mass transit provides easy access to different areas without cars or highways, and dense planning efficiently fits more people into less space. But the quintessential architectural unit of the city, the skyscraper, isn’t always the greenest method of building. Enter “farmscrapers,” a new creation by the France and Belgium-based firm Vincent Callebaut Architects.

Detail of a farmscraper unit (Image courtesy Vincent Callebaut Architects)

Detail of a farmscraper unit (Image courtesy Vincent Callebaut Architects)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/farmscrapers_could_turn_future_cities_green_partner/feed/ 7 Fred Le Chevalier haunts the streets of Paris http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/the_poetic_parisian_street_art_of_fred_le_chevalier_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/the_poetic_parisian_street_art_of_fred_le_chevalier_partner/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:29:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13258800 Hyperallergic

PARIS — As I’ve been wandering the streets of Paris this week, one artist seems to be haunting my path with his dark and elegant street art. Fred le Chevalier, as he signs his work, has paste up drawings of red-lipped pale women posed with strange creatures like owls, large cats, and anthropomorphic suns. Each has its own identity while being immediately recognizable for their hand-drawn details and illustration style. And they’re prolific. I’ve come upon them all over the Marais, Bastille, and Montmartre neighborhoods, each work blending in with Paris’ own identity of beauty, but one that is often dark and strange, with its long twists of history winding through its alluring streets.

Fred le Chevalier

Paste ups by Fred le Chevalier

Fred le Chevalier

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/the_poetic_parisian_street_art_of_fred_le_chevalier_partner/feed/ 2 Jews are now works of art http://www.salon.com/2013/04/01/jews_the_museum_exhibit_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/01/jews_the_museum_exhibit_partner/#comments Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:44:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13258202 Hyperallergic A few weeks ago, my sister was in the Passover aisle of her local supermarket when a woman came up to her and asked if she knew where the tahini was. She didn’t. The woman explained that it was always in this particular aisle but now wasn’t, which led my sister to explain that it had likely been moved because it isn’t kosher for Passover, which in turn led the woman to begin inquiring about Passover rules. That blossomed into a larger, nearly half-hour-long conversation about Judaism, with the woman asking lots of questions and my sister trying to answer them. “I did the best I could,” she told me. As anyone who’s ever been expected to represent their entire religion/race/ethnicity/gender/world view knows, it’s a pretty difficult task.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/01/jews_the_museum_exhibit_partner/feed/ 13 Watching the Beats grow old http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/the_visual_history_of_the_beat_generation_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/the_visual_history_of_the_beat_generation_partner/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13255732 Hyperallergic

Allen Ginsberg, "William Burroughs" (1953), gelatin silver print, 4 x 6 in. (courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York; © 2012 Allen Ginsberg LLC, all rights reserved)

Allen Ginsberg, “William Burroughs” (1953), gelatin silver print, 4 x 6 in. Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York (© 2012 Allen Ginsberg LLC, all rights reserved; all images courtesy Grey Art Gallery)

From 1953 to 1963 — a period that corresponds with the publication of his most celebrated works — Allen Ginsberg snapped photographs of his cohort of soon-to-be famous friends. These shots weren’t intended for exhibition; they were mementos, thrown in the back of a drawer. He unearthed them two decades later and had copies made, in the borders of which he scrawled relevant details in felt-tip pen. It is these photographs, amended with shots from the ’80s and ’90s, that are on display at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/the_visual_history_of_the_beat_generation_partner/feed/ 20 Fighting for equality, one meme at a time http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/fighting_for_equality_one_meme_at_a_time_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/fighting_for_equality_one_meme_at_a_time_partner/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:50:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13255667 Unless, somehow, you miraculously haven’t accessed your Facebook or Twitter in the last two days, you’ve probably noticed a proliferation of crimson tiles with superimposed pink equal signs popping up in avatars and profile pics. The instantaneously ubiquitous logo, a riff by the Human Rights Campaign on its own original design, was posted in response to the two landmark Marriage Equality cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this week. Indeed, a report by the Chicago Tribune estimated that, within hours of its original posting, the image had been shared over 20,000 times. By Wednesday, the original design had transitioned into a fully-fledged internet meme, altered and hastily reconfigured much like last years pervasive image of Hillary Clinton texting from the belly of military plane cargo hold.
Hyperallergic

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/fighting_for_equality_one_meme_at_a_time_partner/feed/ 3 Marcel Duchamp, chess master http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:21:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13253734 Hyperallergic BRIGHTON, UK — Swapping out pieces in a game of chess is only a smart move provided you hold the most on the board, or at least the strongest position. But a new show at the Barbican in London suggests chess could be a “metaphor of exchange” between the artists it lines up. According to the theory, Duchamp swaps ideas with acolytes: John Cage, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. And yet the Frenchman, superb chess player that he was, came out conceptually on top by the time of his death in 1968.

As things stood by then, Duchamp had relatively few pieces on the board. The Barbican exhibition collects most of the best known: his bottle rack, his urinal, his bicycle wheel, and his large glass. They are all here in replica form, a gesture that calls to mind a proliferation of chess pieces, the symmetry of left and right, of white and black on the board. Curator and artist Philippe Parreno has set them out right across a two-floor space in the Barbican’s Brutalist main building. Also in the space, two prepared pianos stand in opposition to each other and offer ghostly recitals by Cage while in the center is a dancefloor, also visible from the galleries on the upper floor, much like a board ready for chess.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/feed/ 0 Wild horses gallop into Grand Central http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:32:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13252362 Before Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” galloped off into its first performance of its week-long installation in Grand Central Terminal, the soundsuit artist explained that he wanted to “produce a piece that brought us back to a dream state.” The 60 dancers from the Alvin Ailey School definitely gave the 30 fringed horse costumes a strange sort of life, as they changed into the horses and then out again into a frenzied dance of movement. There was a packed crowd around each of the sides of Vanderbilt Hall where the horses are corralled both during the performances that occur twice daily and when they are “inactive” (draped across what look like saddle racks). If the uncontrollable giggling of the man next to me and the mesmerized faces of the children watching the swishing and swaying stallions were any indication, “Heard•NY” seems to be off to a crowd-pleasing success.
Hyperallergic

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/feed/ 0 World’s first LEGO museum is coming http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/#comments Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249371 HyperallergicThe Bjarke Ingels Group (or BIG), the Danish architecture firm helmed by its namesake, is getting even bigger. New plans to create a LEGO museum and rethink the campus of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., signal that the buzzed-about firm is on the cusp of becoming the world’s next big starchitecture outlet.

BIG's Storefront LEGO installation (Image via good.is)

BIG’s Storefront LEGO installation (Image via good.is)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/feed/ 1 Check out Christo’s latest installation http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/#comments Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249639 Big Air Package

Construction of Christo’s “Big Air Package” at the Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. February 2013. (Unless indicated, all photographs by Wolfgang Volz & courtesy of Christo.)

HyperallergicChristo’s latest project, an awe-inspiring installation in an industrial relic in Germany, looks more like a captured dirigible than much of the previous fabric-based work he’s created with his late wife Jeanne-Claude. In fact, a balloon-building company was involved in engineering the “Big Air Package,” a towering installation recently constructed in the Gasometer in Oberhausen, Germany.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/feed/ 1 5 artists who’ve sent their work into outer space http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/five_artists_whove_sent_mission_patches_into_space_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/five_artists_whove_sent_mission_patches_into_space_partner/#comments Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249614 HyperallergicNow that street artist Shepard Fairey has designed a mission patch that will travel to the International Space Station, will other artists be drawn to this extraterrestrial exhibition opportunity? Fairey created the neon blue and green patch with Fiction, the design firm contracted for the patch for the ARK1 research mission of the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) that will launch into the stars later this year. All space missions have had patches, going back to military traditions, and NASA’s space program in particular is an interesting one to look at. Sometimes the collaborations between an artist and crew resulted in some sweet sci-fi success, and some were just galactic failures.

Apollo 11 Mission Patch (via NASA)

Apollo 11 Mission Patch (via NASA)

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