Rockin’ around the Christmas tree looks different for visitors at Rockefeller Center this year, starting with Wednesday’s tree lighting ceremony. What’s normally a chaotic, crowded tourist hotspot during the holiday season was instead a mask-mandated, time-limited, socially distanced locale due to the coronavirus pandemic. The tree, a 75-foot (23-meter) Norway spruce, had its holiday lights turned on in an event that was broadcast on television but closed to the public. The telecast used pre-recorded performances from entertainers like Kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton, and camera shots of the streets around the tree showed them to be largely empty.
Once a place where sea, desert, and palm groves coexisted in rare harmony, Tunisia’s Gabès Oasis stands today as one of the world’s most fragile cultural-environmental sites. At its heart is artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda, whose ecological practice offers a form of resistance—one built on memory, materials, and a return to ancestral knowledge.