Part 3: Keeping Cultured During Quarantine

This is the third installment of our “Keeping Cultured During Quarantine” series. Enjoy these recommendations from TeenTix Newsroom writers, New Guard members, and Press Corps teens about how to fight the collective cabin fever!

Daisy

Ok, so actually, my favorite kind of art right now might not even be classified as art (but in my head it is)! My favorite kind of art right now is . . . . PEOPLE!! (People are art!) The best quarantine activity EVER is to watch people tell me things about their life (over a socially distant video call, don’t worry!), or things that happened when they were little, or anything that’s happening in their heads! Good art = stories. Stories = people. People = art!!! Seeing people that I love, even from far away, and getting to know them better, learning more about the stories-that-make-up-who-they-are, is the best quarantine art obsession I can imagine! (Also Parks & Rec.)

Hana

The art I am engaging in now is mostly through the internet. This week I watched an older video of Isadora Duncan dancers dancing to a piece titled “Moments Musicaux No. 3 in F Minor, D780: Allegro moderato.” The energy was springy and light, which pays tribute to the balletic roots of the piece using classic movements such as pirouettes and pas de bourrée. In contrast to this, the piece also uses free movements like attitudes. The way the dancers moved told a story; the change from a more classic style of dance, ballet to a freer contemporary style, modern.

Lark

I've been watching (and thinking about and talking about and writing about) Maurice, the 1987 Merchant-Ivory adaptation of E.M Forster's novel by the same name. It's the story of a young upper-class English lad in the 1910s, falling in love and trying to live his life as a gay man in a highly homophobic society. There's some muted English sadness, and the film deals with period-appropriate homophobia, but it's not terribly brutal and the homophobia is balanced out by romance and (spoiler alert!) a (mostly) happy ending. It has all the best things: boys in love at Cambridge University, sweaters, climbing ladders to get to your boyfriend's bedroom, a young and very pretty Hugh Grant (oh my god, y'all, young Hugh Grant!). 11/10 would recommend for some beautiful period-piece escapism in this time of being lonely and touch-starved.

Michaela

I have been watching dance videos from my dance studio, listening to music from my choir teacher and just for fun. I enjoy looking at different art styles on Pinterest and doing the #drawthisinyourstyle challenges.

Nour

During this quarantine, I have been attempting to do digital drawing and have been gaining inspiration from digital artists on Instagram. Something I have really enjoyed seeing is the amount of diversity in styles especially for drawing figures and faces. It is really amazing to see how minimalistic portraits can still deliver the same features from a model without being hyper realistic. I have also noticed that with digital art posts, many artists can document their process through screen recordings which is really helpful for learning artists and educating people about how their final product is created.

Rosemary

I love most free, widely accessible things, and the most recent addition to this list is Kast. All you need is internet and at least one friend, and you can host endless Kast screensharing parties! So far, I've watched Parasite through someone else's Hulu (Rose already covered this movie perfectly in Keeping Cultured Part 2), Killing Eve through someone else's BBC (exquisite acting, gorgeous cinematography, elaborate plot, and luscious accents make every episode decadent), and soon, I'll stop being a screen mooch and host my own party. Kastapp.co is the best way to spy on others' screens—with friends!

Taylar

I've spent a lot of time tearing through horror and sci-fi podcasts, some old favorites and some new ones—notably Mirrors, a story of three women living in different centuries experiencing the same mysterious haunting. The characters are written with incredible realism and elevated with great voice acting, and the plot transitions smoothly from horror to pure sci-fi, using tropes from both genres that feel interesting and necessary instead of worn out and contrived. Without spoiling the beautifully unfolding plot, the first two seasons delve into alliance and commonality between those oppressed by power structures, finding truth and reflection of yourself in the experiences of other women, and the inevitability of late-stage capitalism and the necessity of fighting against it. And there's happily married lesbians, so you know, go wild.

Lead photo credit: Photo by Visuals on Unsplash.