Christopher Marcisz

Williamstown, MA

Writes, edits, walks the dog, jams econo. Writer for @Popula, @the_shoestring, @BerkshireEagle, @Hyperallergic, and others. Adjunct at @WilliamsCollege

Christopher Marcisz

Williamstown, MA

Writes, edits, walks the dog, jams econo. Writer for @Popula, @the_shoestring, @BerkshireEagle, @Hyperallergic, and others. Adjunct at @WilliamsCollege

Featured
MASS MoCA Strike Continues Into Second Week
The museum has proven itself a viable balm for deindustrialization. But who will share that success?
The Shoestring
How the Berkshires Became the Berkshires
The interplay of nature, economics, and culture has shaped and reshaped the region in a million little ways, moved along by visionaries, thinkers, leaders, and inventors— here’s their story.
The B magazine
Featured
The Museum of J. Stalin’s Underground Printing Press
When it comes to Stalin, he manages to be everywhere and nowhere at once. There is still a fascination with power, and pride in how the Great Patriotic War turned out. While in the West he remains a reliable boogeyman for anti-leftist name-calling, at home it is more complicated.
Popula
Featured
Russian Authorities Order the Destruction of a Digital Artwork
In what may be the first recent case of Russian authorities ordering the destruction of a specific work of art, a St. Petersburg court is in the midst of hearing an appeal into the case of a work that shows the disintegration of a photo of President Vladimir Putin — it was seized as part of a demonstration last spring. Artists and activists involved in the case are unlikely to succeed in the courts, but they say it is a priceless opportunity to discuss censorship in Russia today.
Hyperallergic
Breaking New Ground
Since coming home to the Berkshires, the architects of GroupAU — who happen to be husband and wife — are transforming the landscape with their innovative ideas and a deep appreciation for the land and its history.
The B magazine
A Moscow Museum’s Ecological Rallying Cry
Russia, which covers an eighth of the Earth, remains a leading supplier of the carbon economy and its government seems unwilling to change course: In a place where Chernobyl continues to be a living memory, the government is shipping a floating nuclear reactor across the Arctic Ocean. Yet The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics, 2030–2100 at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow is a remarkably insightful and challenging exhibition on the climate emergency.
Hyperallergic
Helsinki's ground-up model for reviving industrial spaces
I spent a day at "Kaapeli" earlier this summer as part of my research into how old industrial spaces are finding new life and uses. In the Berkshires we've had a few success stories, like seeing the old Sprague Electric plant become Mass MoCA, and a few stories that are still yet to be told. Converting factories to make culture is a long established idea in Europe — according to legend, Thomas Krens had the first spark of the idea for Mass MoCA on a trip to Germany in 1985. But what I found in Helsinki was a completely different way of thinking about these kinds of transformations.
The Berkshire Eagle
The Wild World of Trenton Doyle Hancock
For nearly 20 years Trenton Doyle Hancock has been exploring “Mounds” as an organizational and a metaphysical system. Through paintings, comics, sculptures, and gathered objects like board games and collectible toys, he has built an elaborate mythology around his sentient Mounds and their “Moundverse.”
Hyperallergic
Technology's lasting impact on Japanese popular culture
On a quick pass you might think you can pin down the dress on display in the center of the exhibit — something Japanese, a kind of kimono. Look closer and you can see more of what is happening. There are two distinct patterns — an abstract pattern on top and a print of cherry blossoms on the bottom — but it is fringed all around with white ruffles, like you might see in a European dress from another century. Read the label and learn it belongs to a Japanese subculture within a subculture called “Wa Lolita,” a somewhat subversive fashion concept that mixes European schoolgirl uniforms with traditional Japanese designs. You’ll also note it was created by a designer from Argentina.
The Berkshire Eagle
Author Rinker Buck wanted to experience floating down the Mississippi, so he built a flatboat and did
Buck was just out of college and talked his way into a job by impressing publisher Lawrence K. "Pete" Miller with his command of tactical details at the Battle of Gettysburg. As a reporter, he quickly developed a reputation as the kind of reporter who would find his own way of doing things, which didn't always sit well with more traditional- minded editors. Some of the older ones hesitated to assign him sensitive stories because, as they put it, "he would do something with it."
The Berkshire Eagle
At the Clark, 'As They Saw It' presents four centuries of war in prints, paintings, and photos
The flood of information and commentary from Ukraine is more than anyone would have imagined a few weeks ago. As we watch, we try to find out what is happening, figure out a way to explain it, search for signs of hope, and uncover ways we are being lied to. [This exhibit] is an intriguing academic question that becomes acutely important as events become overwhelming.
The Berkshire Eagle
Liz Glynn’s Comforting Vision of a Dystopian Future
To look back at the news from last October, when Liz Glynn’s show opened at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, is to be stunned by how much has come at us and how quickly. During that first week of October 2017, a concert in Las Vegas became the site of the worst mass shooting in US history.
Hyperallergic
On President George W. Bush Street
The fastest way to drive from the airport outside Tbilisi into the capital takes you along a stretch of highway called President George W. Bush Street. Having lived through the Bush years I guess I'd resigned myself to someday seeing such a place name in Texas somewhere, but certainly not in a foreign capital.
The Berkshire Eagle
Art and theater confront, confuse and annoy in performance piece at WCMA
Chris Burden's notorious performance art piece, "Shoot," is never going to happen again. Even if you could somehow organize a re-enactment of the piece — in which the artist had a friend shoot him in the left arm one night in November 1971 — it would have a different capacity to shock or surprise.
The Berkshire Eagle
At Mass MoCA, Nick Cave's "Until" is a challenge disguised as an invitation
The scale of "Until" is a new frontier for Nick Cave for whom dance and fashion were an enduring interest, until the videotaped police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in the 1990s changed everyone's focus, including his. Nick Cave's work is going to get your attention. When it works, it invites you into a world familiar but strange, but certainly a place you've never seen before and probably won't again.
The Berkshire Eagle
Digging Up the Past
In 1962, Soviet police fired on a crowd of peaceful demonstrators in the industrial city of Novocherkassk. It was one of the biggest domestic disturbances over the 70 years of Soviet rule. Yet even today, for Russians, the event is shrouded in misinformation, rumor, and myth.
Russian Life magazine
Features

About

Christopher Marcisz

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AP Style

Magazines

Arts Writing

Book editing

I'm a writer and editor currently based in western Massachusetts. I'm a frequent contributor to The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass., my work has also appeared in Popula, The Shoestring, Hyperallergic, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, The Moscow News, Russian Life magazine, and Williams magazine.

For many years, I was the Eagle's North Adams bureau, while also writing about the arts and contributing editorials and OpEd columns. I began my career with the international editions of Newsweek, and later covered national energy policy in Washington.

I'm originally from western Massachusetts, and went to the University of Pennsylvania, where I studied English and History. I also graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

I'm currently based in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and have also lived in Moscow, where I was the sports columnist for The Moscow News, and in Budapest, where I was a book editor for a university press.

I also teach courses in nonfiction and journalism at Williams College.