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The Seattle-based artist Gregory Blackstock’s career in ‘world famous artistry’, as he puts it, was a most welcome development, even as it came quite late in life. Living as an autistic person before the condition was widely understood, Blackstock had difficulty in school, where he was subject to corporal punishment, and he spent much of his adult life on the edge of poverty, working a menial, low-paying job. However, when Blackstock’s cousin Dorothy Frisch sent some of the hundreds of drawings he had crafted for his own enjoyment – often depictions of variations on a single item of interest, including vegetables, animals and household objects – to a gallery, she helped him forge a way to make a living from the unique talents that, for decades, he had kept mostly to himself. Directed by the Seattle animator and filmmaker Drew Christie, The Great World of Gregory Blackstock borrows from its subject’s distinctive drawing style to bring his story to animated life. In doing so, Christie also touches on the complexities of art commodification, especially as it pertains to ‘outsider’ artists, as well as which varieties of intelligence society tends to reward, and which it tends to overlook.
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Food and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
14 minutes