3 . Immersive Art Draws People In

With bold, swirling brushstrokes and vivid colors, Vincent van Gogh's stirring Starry Night brings to life a turbulent sky. It's one of the most recognizable paintings in the world. And gazing at the scenic canvas can make museum visitors feel starstruck.

    1     In fact, some exhibits give people a chance to be enveloped by van Gogh's celebrated painting. They find themselves surrounded by shimmering colors that dance before their eyes and ripple at their feet. These exhibitions digitally project moving images onto walls, floors, and sometimes onto viewers themselves. They are examples of immersive art.

Immersive art doesn't sit in a glass case or fit in a frame.     2     These exhibitions have been wildly popular, selling out tickets in cities worldwide.

Van Gogh gained fame only after his death. In fact, the 19th-century painter sold just one painting during his lifetime. But now he is immersive art's biggest superstar. His work has been showcased in various exhibitions featuring immense images.     3     One show, Van Gogh Alive, has appeared in 65 countries since 2011. It even features a signature scent for visitors to sniff.Shows of other artists — including Monet, Renoir, and Chagall — have lit up venues, too.

The popularity of immersive art has been powered partly by social media. As visitors post selfies featuring van Gogh's art or videos of friends stepping into a fantastical fridge, these experiences draw bigger and bigger crowds.     4     That's because many curators and creators share a common goal — to help more people get into art!

5 . The statue of King Leopold II of Belgium that stands in sight of the royal palace in Brussels has been defaced dozens of times in recent years. Activists have painted its hands and eyes red as a reminder of the brutality that Leopold unleashed in the Congo Free State, a territory in central Africa, at the end of the 19th century. As many as 10 million Congolese-or half of the population-might have perished as Europeans forced entire villages to collect rubber and ivory for export.

Leopold’s exploitation of Congo was a scandal. In 1908, after years of campaigning by journalists, the Belgian state stripped the king of his private possession. The Belgian Congo joined other European colonies in Africa where wanton（恶意的）extraction was to be replaced by a supposedly civilising mission. Yet though less transparently murderous, the “benign” colonialism of elsewhere was often not that different from what happened under Leopold. A new book, “In the Forest of No Joy”, by J. P. Daughton, an American historian, exposes how forced labour in the French Congo（now the Republic of Congo）, on the other side of the river from Leopold’s possession（now the Democratic Republic）, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Africans.

The book is a masterful, if relentlessly bleak, account of the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway, a route designed to connect the central African interior to the Atlantic. What makes it so compelling is the divide it exposes between the often admirable intentions of colonial bureaucrats, who did genuinely think they were lifting Africans out of poverty, and the grim reality that they enabled. The application of “modern” government to conquered people could be almost as savage as plunder（掠夺）, Mr Daughton shows.

The railway was the idea of Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza, an Italian-born French explorer who conquered much of central Africa for France “by exclusively peaceful means”. The French state imagined itself as a bringer of civilisation to Africa, and the railway was to provide a way for the Congolese to take part in world trade. Yet Mr Daughton shows how the colonial administration in Congo had little capacity to build a railway without violence: it claimed to be recruiting paid volunteers while its agents forced Africans to work at gunpoint. Many were marched hundreds of kilometres to the tracks chained at the neck, as slaves had been a century before. Whatever work had to be done, reported Albert Londres, a French journalist, “it’s captives who do it.”

Surprisingly, the French state documented these abuses diligently（the archives provide the source of much of Mr Daughton’s information）. In 1926 one inspector, Jean-Noel-Paul Pegourier, compared the treatment of workers on the railway to the German genocide of the Herero in Namibia before the first world war. Yet unlike the reports of Leopold’s abuses, these observations had little effect, not least because orders issued from Paris or even Brazzaville were simply ignored. Raphael Antonetti, the colonial governor, fought back with an avalanche of legalese.

The railway was a masterpiece of engineering, as Mr Daughton readily admits. For decades it provided the only means of transporting goods within Congo. The wealth of Brazzaville, still so named, was built on it. In Britain and France, the infrastructure bequeathed to former colonies is often cited as an argument for its benefits. But to build it, a weak and stingy state had to rely on brutality. As Mr Daughton reports, “the Congo-Ocean provides an all too-useful case in point for how the language of humanity could be invoked to explain the deaths of thousands.”

6 . Across all four walls of a vast hall, Vincent van Gogh’s blue irises begin to sway. They bloom gently at first, then more violently, as the music builds to a crashing crescendo. Visitors to “Immersive Van Gogh”, showing at a former music venue in San Francisco, sit or stand in socially distant circles on the floor, their bodies bathed in the glow of these animated laser projections.

“Immersive art” experiences are on the rise, not just in America but across the world. Tens of thousands of people have walked completely dry through a “Rain Room” of streaming water in Shanghai, Melbourne and Sharjah. Others have entered a gallery filled with disorientating yellow fog in Berlin or visited a mirrored “infinity room” in New York. More and more, the experience of contemporary art is just that: an experience.

These installations share a common trait: an urge by artists to create and audiences to enjoy a space in which visitors participate and play. “It’s a bit like going into the museum and being in the picture,” says Florian Ortkrass, co-founder of Random International, an art collective which has followed its blockbuster “Rain Room” with other hands-on exhibits that probe the tension between human bodies and technology. “If this kind of work is done well, it engages people emotionally, it lifts them out of their everyday rut,” adds HannesKoch, Random Intemational’s other co-founder. “It heightens your awareness and perception of people and the space around you and people like that.”

Immersion in a sensory experience-a Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art-has a long pedigree in human history, with the cave paintings at Lascaux and the overwhelming aesthetic experience of the Gothic cathedral. Yet through the 19th and 20th centuries art-making became more individual and focused on the autonomous painted or sculpted object. Only in the 1960s did artists return to “reinventing art as the environment”. Artists have been experimenting with ambitious installations ever since, enabled by ever more sophisticated technological tools.

Admittedly, whizzy new technology is part of the reason for immersive art’s appeal. In a screen-saturated world, there is also an undeniable “relief that comes with being in a physical environment that sparks the imagination,” says Ali Rubinstein, co-chief executive of Meow Wolf. “People want to connect to art-making.” agrees Mr Glimcher of Super-blue. More profoundly, as humans become more urban and isolated, “we need our artists to help us connect to a sense of awe-to the transcendent(超常的)and to each other,” he adds.

Art is always a reflection of the spirit of its time, notes Dorothea von Hantelmann, professor of art and society at Bard College Berlin. What she calls “the shift from object to experience” is a phenomenon of the rich world that reflects many things: an excess of stuff, a young, more interactive generation with a sophisticated aesthetic, and, perhaps, “a new kind of thinking which one might call ecological thinking, which is to think in connections, in relations.”

7 . A Bold New Era at Work

Adrienne Barnard has worked in human resources since 2004, and has been all manner of concerns and requests from workers. But Barnard, now senior vice president of people operations at Boston tech startup Mainstay, recently found herself shocked at how emboldened some employees had become.

“There’s a sense of _________ that’s buildings,” says Barnard, who’s had to deal with issues like remote workers expressing _________ with the system the company used to deliver them free lunches. “These employees are recognizing, ‘You need me, and if I leave, it’s going to be hard to replace me.’”

Employees in many industries are in a position of power that they haven’t experienced in years, as the economy swiftly _________ from the pandemic and businesses struggle to recruit retain enough workers to keep up with the growth. The rate of monthly _________ hit a record low in May, as job openings notched a record high. Meanwhile, more employees _________ quit their jobs in April than ever previously recorded-a clear sign that they’re confident they can find better options.

On top of the tight labor market, the pandemic has led many people to reconsider the centrality of work in their lives and has _________ some ties to their employers. Surveys suggest roughly 40% of U. S. workers are open to switching jobs in the coming months.

To a significant extent, this is a really good development. Workers had lost leverage with employers over the past four decades, amid a sharp _________ in union membership and an intense focus on shareholders at the expense of employees. The recent rise in wages. and worker’s increasing _________ in workplace practices, in many ways helps reset the balance.

Now, in order to attract and retain the workers they need, leaders are having to _________ their organizations’ practices. A large portion of office-based companies are rolling out flexible schedules, which allow employees to work when they want, and hybrid arrangements, where they __________ their time between office and remote work.

Barnard predicts the four-day workweek may even __________. Already, Kickstarter and other U. S. companies have committed to experimenting with the approach. And in a high-profile test in Iceland, workers were just as __________ and had improved well-being when they worked a shorter weekly schedule.

Another tactic is to conduct “stay interviews.” Employers traditionally hold “__________ interviews” when people leave companies, to better understand what went wrong. __________, managers would be better off if they proactively met with staff individually to better understand any problems they’re having before they get to the point of quitting. Good questions to ask include What do you wish you could spend less time on?

The increasing empowerment of workers is __________ and bewildering for many managers. But in the end, most of them are managed by someone else themselves. And if managers think deeply about what would attract them to an employer or make them stick around, it might help them succeed in this moment. As Bock says, “People forget that the thing that would help their teams the most is to give them what they themselves want.”

These days it seems that everywhere you turn you hear stories about how people are psychologically falling apart. On an individual level, I feet it. My late thirties brought about the worst clinical depression I have ever faced.

But there is a real crisis     1     (affect) both men and women in our society — a cultural crisis. We inhabit a cultural landscape that     2     (strip) of meaningful life markers. Of course many rites of passage (人生重大仪式) endure to this day in the modern world — Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceaneras, Seijin-no-hi, to name but a few. Some might argue that we just need to embrace the ones we have.

But that's not going to work. For one, our world bears very little resemblance to the world     3     gave rise to these traditional rites. Besides, today we live on average much longer lives than we did     4     these traditions were first established. We're not the same people as we were when we developed these tires. It only makes sense, therefore, for us     5     (develop) new ones.

This is     6     my essay starts to run by. I don't know how to do that. Does one crowd-source a ceremony? Does one outsource it to an unusually creative event planning firm — possibly with the help of a philosopher, or a science fiction author?

In an inspiring 2017 TEDx lecture, tech CEO Ron Fritz tells the story of     7     he and his family created entirely new "coming-of-age" rituals for their own children. It involves all the traditional components: involvement of    8     (extend) family and friends, a physical endurance part, a learning-from-an-elder part, and solitary contemplation, I felt immediately jealous, as I had never had     9     like that during my own life. To my mind, this is one of the great blind spots in our modern world. If we're lucky we get some memorable birthday parties, a fun high school graduation, and a not too bad wedding. And after that we're on our own.

This year I turned 42. According to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything. Why not make that our culture's new age threshold (开端) for a middle-aged rite of passage?

We have every reason to be happy about moving into our forties. We live longer and healthier lives than any of our ancestors     10     have dreamed of, and have access to opportunities and information previously unimaginable. Surely we can still be creative in how we live and celebrate our lives.

Inaugural (就职的) Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

THE PRESIDENT: Chief Justice Roberts, Vice President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Vice President Pence, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans:

This is Americans day. This is democracy’s day. A day of history and hope. Of renewal and     1    . Through a crucible (磨炼) for the ages America has been tested a new and America has risen to the     2    .

Today, we celebrate the     3     not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The     4    of the people has been heard and has been heeded. We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

So now, on this hallowed ground where just days ago violence sought to shake this Capitol’s very foundation, we come together as one nation, under God,     5     to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries. We look ahead in our uniquely American way — restless, bold, optimistic — and set our     6     on the nation we know we can be and we must be.

Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go. We will     7     forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility. Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal. Much to build. And much to gain.

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now. A once-in-a-century virus silently     8     the country. it’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War IL Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed. A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be     9     no longer.

A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.

And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.

To overcome these challenges—to restore the soul and to     10     the future of America—requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.

10 . “In every known human society the male’s needs for achievement can be recognized ... In a great number of human societies men’s sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability, to practice some activities that women are not allowed to. The maleness in fact has to be underwritten by preventing women from entering some fields or performing some feat (壮举).”

This is the conclusion of the anthropologist (人类学家) Margaret Mead about the way in which the roles of men and women is society should be distinguished.

If talk and print are considered, it would seem that the formal liberation of women is far from complete. There is a flow of publications about the continuing domestic bondage of women and about the complicated system of defence which men have thrown up around their, by far and away, accepted advantages, taking sometimes the obvious form of exclusion from types of occupation and sociable groupings, and sometimes the more subtle form of automatic doubt of the seriousness of women’s claims to the level of intellect and resolution that men, it is supposed, bring to the business of running the world.

There are a good many objective pieces of evidence for the erosion of men’s status. In the first place, there is the widespread postwar phenomenon of the woman Prime Minister, in India, Sri Lanka and Israel.

Secondly, there is the very large increase in the number of women who work, especially married women and mothers of children. We witness the sharing of domestic tasks, and the admission of women to all sorts of previously exclusively male pastimes.

In the ancient natural society, cave men went out and fish and to fight off the tribe next door while women kept the fire going. Everyone carries round with him a fairly definite idea of the primitive and natural conditions of human life. It is acquired more by the study of humorous cartoons than of archaeology (考古学), but that does not matter since it’s not significant as theory but only as an expression of inwardly felt expectations of people’s sense of what is fundamentally proper in the differentiation between the roles and the two sexes.