Doug Rickard - American Suburb

#82.948842, Detroit, MI. 2009, 2010
"Rickard’s series consists of color photographs of American street scenes, located using the internet tool Google Street View. Rickard takes full advantage of the technology’s comprehensive image archive to virtually drive the unseen and overlooked roads of America, bleak places that are forgotten, economically devastated, and abandoned. Collectively, these images present a startling photographic portrait of the socially disenfranchised, providing deeply affecting evidence of the American Dream inverted."
Wirtz Gallery, Doug Rickard - American Suburb

Masters of Photography - Diane Arbus

"In 1967, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented New Documents -- a major exhibition of the personal visions of several photographers -- the surprise of the show was the work of Diane Arbus. On her own, against the advice of many friends, she had pursued her documentation of people on the fringes of society, and the astonishing in the commonplace."
Masters of Photography Diane Arbus Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

ABOVE

Paris, France. 2002
Wikipedia - "ABOVE (born circa 1981) has been creating public art since 1995. Above is an international contemporary street artist who keeps his identity concealed and is widely known for his multi-layer/full color social and political stencils, spinning wooden 'arrow mobile' installations, and large mural 'word play' paintings. Above started traditional graffiti of tagging freight trains in California in 1995. ABOVE moved to Paris at the age of 19 where he started painting his trademark arrow (pointing above) all around the city."
Wikipedia, Google, vimeo, Interview with Graffiti Street Artist ABOVE + Print GiveAway (video)

Boardwalk

Pleasant Valley Nature Park
Wikipedia - "A boardwalk, in the conventional sense, is a wooden walkway for pedestrians and sometimes vehicles, often found along beaches, but they are also common as paths through wetlands, coastal dunes, and other sensitive environments. Boardwalks along intertidal zones are known as foreshoreways. A boardwalk along a river is often known as a riverwalk and a boardwalk along an oceanfront is often known as an oceanway."
Wikipedia

TriBeCa

Wikipedia - "Tribeca (sometimes stylized as TriBeCa) is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York in the United States. Its name is an acronym based on the words 'Triangle below Canal Street', and is properly bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and Chambers Street."
Wikipedia, TriBeCa in the 1970s, Tribeca Film Festival

Brian Eno performs Written, Forgotten, Remembered

"Filmed in his London studio, Brian Eno treats us to a reworked version of Written, Forgotten, from his new album with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams"
Guardian - Written, Forgotten, Remembered (Video), Instant Nuclear Family, Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea, Big Thief Trudge. Eno - Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea

The Hermit

Wikipedia - "The Hermit has internalized the lessons of life to the point that he is the lesson. The Hermit, as a kind of shamanistic hero, has made the complete journey – both the withdrawal and the return. As Joseph Campbell said, 'A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.' (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)"
Wikipedia

Talking Heads: 77

Wikipedia - "TALKING HEADS: 77 is the debut album by Talking Heads. It peaked at #97 in the Billboard Pop Albums chart and the single 'Psycho Killer' made it to #92. In 2003, the album was ranked #290 on Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Uh Oh Love Comes To Town, New Feeling, Tentative Decisions, Who Is It?, No Compassion, The Book I Read, Don't Worry About The Government, First Week Last Week...Carefree, Psycho killer, Psyco Killer - CBGBs, Pulled Up, Building On Fire, I Wish You Wouldn't Say That, Sugar on my Tongue, I Feel It In My Heart (Live at The Kitchen '76)

Beatnik

Wikipedia - "Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish misrepresentation of the real-life people and the spirituality found in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical fiction. Kerouac spoke out against this detour from his original concept."
Wikipedia

Fehlfarben

Wikipedia - "Fehlfarben is a German post-punk band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The band name is from a German printing term referring to erroneous colors in prints: singer Peter Hein was in this line of work at Xerox while in the band. Its founding members were Peter Hein (vocals, former Mittagspause ("lunch break"), Thomas Schwebel (guitar, former Mittagspause, S.Y.P.H.), Michael Kemner (bass, former 20 Colors, Mau Mau, DAF, YOU), Frank Fenstermacher (saxophone, later Der Plan), Markus Oehlen and Uwe Bauer (drums, former Mittagspause, Materialschlacht)."
Wikipedia, Ein Jahr (es geht voran), Tanz mit dem Herzen , Tag und Nacht, Gottseidank nicht in England, Paul ist tot, Wir warten, Grauschleier, Hier Und Jetzt

Boogie-woogie

Andrews Sisters
Wikipedia - "Boogie-woogie is a style of piano-based blues that became very popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but originated much earlier, and was extended from piano, to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, and country and western music, and even gospel. Whilst the blues traditionally depicts a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing."
Wikipedia, Boogie-woogie, YouTube - Meade Lux Lewis - Boogie Woogie, Boogie Woogie Dream -Lena Horn,Pete Johnson & Ammon Ammons part 1 of 2, Martha Davis - Martha's Boogie, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B, Calloway Boogie

Richard Avedon

Wikipedia - "Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American photographer. An obituary, published in The New York Times following Avedon's death said that, 'his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century.'"
Wikipedia, Richard Avedon, YouTube - Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light (1/9), (2/9), (3/9), (4/9), (5/9), (6/9), (7/9), (8/9), (9/9)

Making Art

"Toward the end of !Women Art Revolution, the performance artist Janine Antoni, who was born in 1964, recalls a moment when her professor, Mira Schor, asks if she’s heard of the work of Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke, and Carolee Schneeman. Antoni hadn’t, and she went to the library to learn more. She found nothing, so Schor brought Antoni clippings and catalogues she had saved at home. The moment was profound.”
The Paris Review, RAW/WAR, !Women Art Revolution, The Museum of Modern Art, YouTube

Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century

Caspar David Friederich, Woman at the Window, 1822
"This exhibition focuses on the Romantic motif of the open window as first captured by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists around 1810–20. These works include hushed, sparse rooms showing contemplative figures, studios with artists at work, and window views as sole motifs."
Metropolitan Museum of Art, (1), (2)

Gavin Bryars – The Sinking of the Titanic

"This piece originated in a sketch written for an exhibition in support of beleaguered art students at Portsmouth in 1969. Working as I was in an art college environment I was interested to see what might be the musical equivalent of a work of conceptual art. It was not until 1972 that I made a performing version of the piece for part of an evening of my work at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London."
Gavin Bryars, npr - Gavin Bryars' 'Sinking of the Titanic' in Concert (Video), UbuWeb (Video)

Music for pieces of wood - Steve Reich

"This piece, Music for Pieces of Wood, is a fine example of how something of interest can be made with only basic elements. Pitch is involved in the tuning of the claves, but after the piece is launched, that parameter fades more to the background. To understand the piece, imagine listening to a kaleidoscope. A pattern is established, then it shifts as with the click of the kaleidoscope. There are 58 shifts of pattern within a general 10 minute time frame. Three general sections comprise the overall form. Each section employs an additive progession to build density and is linked to the neighboring section by the underlying quarter note laid down by the first clave player."
Music for Pieces of Wood by Steve Reich, Lunanova, YouTube - Music for pieces of wood - Steve Reich

Paul Kos

Scything, 2005
"As Bay Area pioneer of conceptual art, Paul Kos helped define a West Coast approach to the form that emphasizes the elegant use of materials to explore issues of perception, social relations and life activities."
KQED Art, YouTube - KQED Spark

Studio One

Wikipedia - "Studio One is one of Jamaica's most renowned record labels and recording studios, having been described as 'the Motown of Jamaica.' Studio One was involved with most of the major music movements in Jamaica during the 1960s and 1970s, including ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub and dancehall."
Wikipedia, Studio One - The Motown of Reggae, amazon - Studio One Reggae Compilations -- Top Ten, YouTube - A TRIBUTE TO STUDIO ONE, Story Of Studio One Part 1, Part 2

The Beaches of Agnès

NYT, A. O. Scott - "And then there is Agnès Varda, the only female filmmaker associated with the Nouvelle Vague at its high-water mark and now, at 81, an artist of undiminished vigor, curiosity and intelligence. That is certainly how she appears in 'The Beaches of Agnès,' her latest film, which opens in New York on Wednesday, after winning a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for best documentary feature in February."
NYT, The Beaches of Agnès, Roger Ebert, YouTube - The Beaches of Agnès, P.O.V. | The Beaches of Agnes: Behind the Lens | PBS

Paleocycle

"One thing is missing from the picture chronicle of the paleocycle: a photo album of paleocyclists. Not a massive album, indeed. From before the spreading of the “safe bicycle” in the 1890s and of the “bicycle craze” it has brought with itself, there are not many bike photos. Not only the bicycle, but also the camera was a new invention and a rare good. Moreover, until the end of the century the moving of any of the two wanted a full man, so the gentleman sensitive of novelties had to choose: either pedaling, or dragging the heavy camera."
Paleocycle

Thirty Second Spots: TV Commercials for Artists (1982-83)

Joan Logue
"Through an intimate and elegant use of the medium, Joan Logue's work defines the art of video portraiture. Capturing the essence of subjects that range from avant-garde artists to New England fishermen, her video portraits are minimalist dramas precisely composed, richly nuanced, and highly expressive of the character of the 'sitter.'"
UbuWeb

Kara Walker

Wikipedia - "Kara Walker (born November 26, 1969) is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes."
Wikipedia, PBS - art21, Google, YouTube - Kara Walker, Kara Walker: Cut and Construct, Meditation on 'My Complement ...'

Danspace Project

Meg Chang, Jill Green, Douglas Dunn, Gabriella Hiatt, Kevin Ho, Kiori Kawai and Elaine Summers
Wikipedia - "Danspace Project was founded in 1974 to provide a performance venue for contemporary dance. Its performances are held in St. Mark's Church in the East Village area of the Manhattan borough of New York City."
Wikipedia, Danspace Project, YouTube - Potemkin Piece at the Danspace Project, Exhausting Love at Danspace Project, Persona - Danspace Project, vimeo - Unbounded - Danspace Project

BOXI

"Last Summer, while in Berlin, BOXI spoke to us about a new project he was working on - an extremely intricate six six layer hand cut stencil of a curtain made on 8mm MDF and illuminated by 12v Dimmable SMD LED's."
Wooster Collective, BOXI

A Tribe Called Quest

Wikipedia - "A Tribe Called Quest is an American hip hop group, formed in 1985. It was composed of rapper/producer Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, formerly Jonathan Davis), rapper Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor), and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad."
Wikipedia, A Tribe Called Quest, last.fm, YouTube - Check the rhime, Electric Relaxation, Oh my god, Jazz(We've Got) & Buggin' Out, Find a Way, Scenario, Award Tour

Juxtapositions: Female Reformers

"The New York Public Library has many items that help to document emerging human rights movements at important times in their development. Two 19th-century works show the struggles of women and gays as they challenged the status quo and progressed toward larger roles in political life."
NYPL - Video

The Strangeloves

"The Strangeloves were the creation of an American songwriting/production team in the 1960s who were from New York, but pretended to be from Australia. Their biggest hits were 'I Want Candy,' 'Cara-Lin' and 'Night Time'."
Wikipedia, YouTube - I Want Candy, Cara Lin

Big Sky

"Foremost, 2011, archival inkjet print, 40" x 60". Courtesy Gallery Jones."
The Paris Review

Very - Pet Shop Boys

Wikipedia - "Very exhibits one of many turning points the Pet Shop Boys would make to their music, shifting from the subdued electronic pop of Behaviour to richly-instrumented dance arrangements. The content and lyrics led to Very being called their 'coming-out' album, since it was during this time that Neil Tennant had publicly discussed his long-rumoured homosexuality."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Can you forgive her?, I wouldn't normally do.., Liberation, Dreaming Of The Queen, Yesterday When I Was Mad, The Theater, To Speak Is A Sin, Young Offender, One In A Million, Absolutely Fabulous, Euroboy, Girls and boys, Go West Live Brits 1994, Go West (Discovery Live in Rio)

Ellen Willis

Wikipedia - "Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, and pop music critic. ... She is also known for her feminist politics and was a member of New York Radical Women and subsequently co-founder in early 1969 with Shulamith Firestone of the radical feminist group Redstockings."
Wikipedia, Ellen Willis, Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis, Was Ellen Willis – Feminist, Activist, Genius – The Best Rock Critic of All Time?, The Paris Review, amazon, YouTube - OUT OF THE VINYL DEEPS: Ellen Willis on Rock Music

East Village Other

Wikipedia - "The East Village Other (often abbreviated as EVO), was an American underground newspaper in New York City, New York, during the 1960s. It was co-founded in late 1965 by Walter Bowart, Ishmael Reed (who named the newspaper), Allen Katzman, Dan Rattiner (of Dan's Papers), Sherry Needham and John Wilcock. The paper's design, in its first years, was characterized by Dadaistic montages and absurdist, non-sequitur headlines. Later the paper evolved a more colorful psychedelic layout that became a distinguishing characteristic of the underground papers of the time."
Wikipedia, Ephemera Press, Google, The East Village Other - Video

Herb & Dorothy

"HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists."
HERB AND DOROTHY, pbs, Wikipedia, YouTube

Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985)

"In 1984, the landmark production of Einstein on the Beach was staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was the first time since 1976 that its principal creators - composer Philip Glass and director/designer Robert Wilson - had collaborated on restaging this tradition-breaking opera. Interviews with Glass and Wilson along with clips of rehearsals and performances offer insight into this important work, making it accessible to all audiences. The film is a rare look at the creative process of two of the most important figures in American contemporary music and theatre, essential viewing for everyone interested in the evolution of the performing arts in our century."
UbuWeb

Claire Barclay

Shadow Spans
"Claire Barclay is a leading figure in a generation of young sculptors who have re-engaged with craft techniques and the symbolic resonance of materials. The architectural mix of the East End with its dark cobbled alleyways, Georgian townhouses and modern buildings are refracted into her sculptures. Door and window-like forms create the basis for structures around which fabrics and objects are gathered."
Whitechapel Gallery - Video

Détournement

Wikipedia - "A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Situationist International, and consist in 'turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself.' Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s."
Wikiedia, A User’s Guide to Détournement, Détournement, Dagwood, Google

Robert Duncan: May 18, 1959

"The Poetry Center presents Robert Duncan reading his poetry from and discussing his book The Opening of the Field (1960)."
Poetry Center

2008 March: Robert Duncan, 1919-1988

Miami Vice and early '80s musical montages.

"This is the segment from Miami Vice Season 2 Ep 8 which has part of the song 'Hello Earth' by Kate Bush in it. I'm posting this because I finally got the episode and a buddy and I have been trying to catch this scene for a long time. Miami Vice was a fun show when we were growing up and we both love Kate Bush."
YouTube - Hello Earth - Kate Bush, David Johansen - King of Babylon, Going Under - Devo, Afrika Bambaataa - Renegades of Funk, Godley and Creme - Cry, The Damned - In Dulce Decorum, Iggy Pop - Real Wild Child, Steve Jones - Mercy, Red 7 - Heartbeat, Pete Townshend - Face The Face, The Who - Baba O'Riley, Public Image Ltd - Order Of Death, Etta James - You Want More, Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa

2009 July: Miami Vice

Ged Quinn

In Heaven Everything is Fine
Wikipedia - "Ged Quinn (born 1963, Liverpool) is an English artist. He studied at the Ruskin in Oxford, the Slade School of Art in London, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He specialises in allegorical paintings that include contemporary images (generally on controversial topics in Western cultural history) in idyllic scenes based on classical paintings such as the pastoral works of Claude Lorrain and Caspar David Friedrich."
Wikipedia, Saatchi Gallery, Wilkinson Gallery, frieze

Living in Havana

"The Directors of Marlborough Chelsea are pleased to announce that an exhibition featuring the contemporary Cuban artists Abel Barroso, Roberto Diago, Kcho, William Pérez, and Ernesto Rancaño will open May 19 and continue through June 18, 2011. The extensive exhibition will be held on both the first and second floors of the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery and will include works varying in size and media, from intimately-sized etchings on acrylic board to large-scale sculptural works."
Marlborough Gallery

Whistler & His Jug Band

"Whistler & His Jug Band came up out of Louisville, Kentucky, and became the first recorded jug band, according to R Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country. They recorded at least twenty-one songs between 1924 and 1931. The names of the musicians remain unknown."
Whistler & His Jug Band, YouTube - Foldin' Bed, Jerry O' Mine, I'm a Jazz Baby, Jail House Blues, Chicago Flip

Patti Smith - "Ghost Dance"

"We shall live again, we shall live. What is it children that falls from the sky? Tayi, taya, tayi, aye aye. Mannah from Heaven from the most high, Food from the father, tayi, taye aye. We shall live again, we shall live again, We shall live again, shake out the ghost dance."
YouTube

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble with the Todd Reynolds Quartet

"Meredith Monk celebrates the release of her new album, Songs of Ascension, with a live concert. Join New Sounds’ John Schaefer for performance and conversation with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, along with the Todd Reynolds Quartet."
WNYC - Video, amazon

Robert Montgomery

"Robert Montgomery works in a poetic and melancholic post-Situationist tradition. Since 2005 he has carried out his WORDS IN THE CITY AT NIGHT project where, echoing the Situationist concept of detournement, he hijacks advertising space in the city, often illegally. His texts are part poetry, part an enquiry into our collective unconscious."
Robert Montgomery

Ah Pook Is Here (1994)

"Directed by Philip Hunt. Writing credits William S. Burroughs. Music By, Performer, John Cale. Dresden Film Festival: 1995 Won Best Animation Film, Philip Hunt"
YouTube

Charles Hardin Holly; Clovis, New Mexico; May 27, 1957

"Dear Lorin, A time comes when it’s healthful to put aside obscurantism and turn to bedrock, if only briefly. And while I flatter myself in thinking you know me as a man not prone to get overly excited about digital-remastering projects, nevertheless there are instances in which the beauty of the original song lay precisely in a primary attempt to expose its elements, and in these cases the additional stripping away of hiss and other shit can be revelatory, or in this instance (Best Ever: Buddy Holly, Techniche 2009), transformative."
The Paris Review - Video, Wikipedia - Not Fade Away, YouTube - Buddy Holly, Not Fade Away

A Country Without Libraries - Charles Simic

Hartland Four Corners, Vermont, 1994.
"All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire."
NYBooks, San Francisco Public Library. Public Library: An American Commons - A photography exhibition by Robert Dawson

Cage - Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939)

Wikipedia - "Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition by the American composer John Cage. Written in 1939 at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, the work is the first in Cage’s series of five Imaginary Landscape pieces."
Wikipedia, Art of the States - Video

Bob Marley & the Wailers Live 1973 - 1975

"Hear the words of the Rastaman say: 'Babylon, you throne gone down, gone down; Babylon, you throne gone down.'"
amazon, YouTube - Concrete Jungle, Rastaman Chant, Stir It Up, Concrete jungle, Duppy Conqueror, Burning and Looting tonight, No Woman No Cry, I shot the sheriff

OpenStreetMap

Wikipedia - "OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography, other free sources or simply from local knowledge."
Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, twitter, amazon

Roman de la Rose Digital Library

Miniature from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose
"Welcome to the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, a joint project of the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The creation of this resource and the digitization of manuscripts from the BnF was made possible by generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Roman de la Rose Digital Library is to create an online library of all manuscripts containing the Roman de la Rose poem. We will have digital surrogates of roughly 130 Roman de la Rose manuscripts available here by the end of 2009."
Roman de la Rose Digital Library