Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Patti Smith, John Cale & Other Cultural Icons (with Music by Joe Strummer)

"Jack Kerouac was cool before it was cool. Kerouac’s breakout novel, On the Road, influenced generations of artists, writers and musicians. His prose was vital and messy and new. He wrote frankly about sex, drugs and spiritual yearning. He was young and movie star good looking. And he was a friend with just about every other literary rock star of the era – William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Neal Cassady — many of whom ended up characters in his books. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Sally Cruikshank

Wikipedia - "'Quasi at the Quackadero' is a 1975 animated short by Sally Cruikshank. This cartoon follows two ducks and a pet robot at an amusement park in the future where time travel is exploited. In 2009, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Animator Sally Cruikshank, while a graduate student at the San Francisco Art Institute, in San Francisco, California, created the animated short 'Chow Fun' (1972), editing it at the city's Snazelle Films, a commercial-film company that also rented space and film equipment. This led to Cruikshank being hired there, and becoming head of animation by the end of summer 1972."
Wikipedia
W - Sally Cruikshank
Boiling Sand
YouTube: Quasi at the Quackadero, Make Me Psychic, Face Like a Frog, Fun on mars, Island of Emotion, Above It All, Sally Cruikshank interview 1980

Astor Piazzolla - Live at The Montreal Jazz Festival (1986)

"In a nod to an Argentine musician who revolutionized the genre-not without sometimes fierce resistance-it's often said that there are two types of tango: before and after Piazzolla. The Argentine's music found inspiration in the traditional tango of his homeland, but infused it with highly contemporary harmonies, a sustained rhythm, and inventive writing that is seductive, warm and superbly eloquent. His bandoneón solos are masterpieces that draw from jazz as well as a mysterious and abidingly Latin musical vocabulary."
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
amazon: Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival (2008)
YouTube: Live at The Montreal Jazz Festival (COMPLETO) 59:49

2008 March: Astor Piazzolla, 2010 September: Astor Piazzolla Remixed, 2011 February: Adios Nonino, 2011 April: Milonga del angel, 2011 August: 1985. Utrecht, Netherlands.

Camille Lepage

Wikipedia - "Camille Lepage (January 28, 1988 – May 9, 2014) was a French photojournalist who was killed during the conflict in the Central African Republic in 2014. Her death was described as a 'murder' by the French presidency and it marked the first death of a Western journalist in the conflict. ... Lepage spoke passionately about the seriousness of the news stories surrounding the Central African Republic conflict that are not covered by the mainstream media: 'I can’t accept that people’s tragedies are silenced simply because no one can make money out of them,' she said. 'I decided to do it myself, and bring some light to them no matter what.' A week before her death, Lepage's last entries on Instagram and Twitter said that she was traveling by motorbike for hours with an anti-balaka militia down routes chosen to avoid checkpoints of African peacekeepers to Amada Gaza about 120 km away from Berbérati, where 150 people had been killed by Séléka rebels since March. On May 13, 2014, Lepage's body was found by French troops patrolling in the Bouar region in the west of the country in a vehicle driven by anti-balaka rebels."
Wikipedia
Camille Lepage
New Yorker - Slide Show: Remembering Camille Lepage (1988-2014)
TIME: Photographer Camille Lepage Killed in Central African Republic
The Courageous Career of Slain French Photojournalist Camille Lepage

How New York City invented the penthouse

1930s
"Penthouse: the word conjures up luxury and exclusivity. Thing is, it’s a clever 1920s rebranding of the top of a building, where no one with any choice used to want to live. For most of the city’s history, the single-structure mansion was the preferred domicile for the rich. At the turn of the 20th century, monied New Yorkers were increasingly occupying 'French Flat' cooperative apartments. But even then, the undesirable rooftop apartment was given over to servants. Until the city and its tastes changed in the Jazz Age. ..."
Ephemeral New York

“Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981)

Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955
"The purpose of this monograph is to describe the influence of Walker Evans’ American Photographs (1938) on The Americans (1959) of Robert Frank. To do this, the photographs in the two books have been edited and yoked together in a series of comparisons. What follows, then, is an exercise in speculation, one born of love and respect. It is offered as a working idea rather than an assured truth, a reasoned pretext for returning to the two great books it examines."
ASX
amazon: Walker Evans and Robert Frank, an essay on influence

GP (1973)

"Given Gram Parsons' habit of taking control of the bands he played with (and his disinclination towards staying with them for very long), it was inevitable that he would eventually strike out on his own, and his first solo album, 1973's G.P., is probably the best realized expression of his musical personality. ... Parsons also discovered that rare artist with whom he can be said to have genuinely collaborated (rather than played beside), Emmylou Harris; Gram and Harris' spot-on harmonies and exchanged verses on 'We'll Sweep out the Ashes in the Morning' and 'That's All It Took' are achingly beautiful and instantly established her as one country music's most gifted vocalists. ..."
allmusic
W - GP (1973)
Perfect Sound Forever
GRAM PARSONS: GP. Bud Scoppa - Rolling Stone, 1 March 1973
YouTube: Still Feeling Blue, We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning, A Song For You, Streets of Baltimore, She, That's All It Took, The New Soft Shoe, Kiss the Children, Cry One More Time, How Much I've Lied, Big Mouth Blues - Live texas

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970).

John Ashbery, The Art of Poetry No. 33

Pyrography: John Ashbery working, 1984. Larry Rivers.
"The interview was conducted at John Ashbery's apartment in the section of Manhattan known as Chelsea. When I arrived, Ashbery was away, and the doorman asked me to wait outside. Soon the poet arrived and we went up by elevator to a spacious, well-lighted apartment in which a secretary was hard at work. We sat in easy chairs in the living room, Ashbery with his back to the large windows. The predominant decor was blue and white, and books lined the whole of one wall. We talked for more than three hours with only one short break for refreshment—soda, tea, water, nothing stronger."
The Paris Review

Jane and Louise Wilson - Stasi City {1997)

"Jane and Louise Wilson’s Stasi City is a psychological exploration of the mute, abandoned architectural spaces of the Stasi, the former headquarters of the East German secret police. For five minutes, a video camera slowly and deliberately pans through the building’s hallways and interrogation rooms, invoking the long history of abuses that took place there, as a human figure floats gently upwards unpinned from the laws of gravity. The four channel video installation is shown on opposite corners of the enclosed installation space, reinforcing a sense of confinement and surveillance."
Zero Gravity
spacearts
Film Space - Invisible Sculpture: Jane and Louise Wilson's Haptic Visuality
UbuWeb: Stasi City (1997)

2013 August: Jane and Louise Wilson

The Apartment (1960)

Wes Anderson’s 10 Favorite New York Movies
Wikipedia - "The Apartment is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, which stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. ... Calvin Clifford (C. C.) 'Bud' Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a lonely office drudge at a national insurance corporation in a high-rise building in New York City. In order to climb the corporate ladder, Baxter allows four company managers, who reinforce their position over him by regularly calling him 'Buddy Boy', to take turns borrowing his Upper West Side apartment for their various extramarital liaisons, which are so noisy that his neighbors assume that he is bringing home different women every night. The four managers (Ray Walston, David Lewis, Willard Waterman, and David White) write glowing reports about Baxter, who hopes for a promotion from the personnel director, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray)."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
THE APARTMENT by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
YouTube: The Apartment - Trailer, Office Party Scene

Body Politic: Contemporary Art and Culture In Rio

Gondola lift, Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, July 7, 2011.
"FOR THIS ISSUE’S Dispatch, Artforum goes south, to Rio de Janeiro—a city as defined by myths of sensualist extravagance as it is by horror stories of yesterday’s military dictatorship and today’s slum violence. Yet one does not have to subscribe to cliché to recognize that Rio is somehow singular; that, in the past half century alone, it has been a place of extraordinary innovation and devastation alike, from the decadent inventions of bossa nova and Tropicália to the human-rights abuses of the postwar period and the unsettling rise of the modern favela in the 1970s. Such paradoxical histories are still with us: This year, as Rio prepares to host the World Cup in June and gears up for the Summer Olympics in 2016, spending astronomical amounts on infrastructural changes and in many instances attempting to eradicate portions of the favelas, it also observes (without celebrating) the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 coup that brought the military to power."
ARTFORUM
GUILHERME WISNIK
IRENE V. SMALL
DANIEL STEEGMANN MANGRANÉ

"And This Is Free" (1964)

"After languishing out of print for many years, Mike Shea's legendary film on Chicago's Maxwell Street Market, And This Is Free, has finally been reissued by Shanachie and I imagine news of this will stir up quite a bit of excitement in blues circles. Shanachie has done an exemplary job with the packaging; housed in a soft covered fold out set is a two disc set containing the 50 minute documentary And This Is Free, the 30 minute documentary Maxwell Street: A Living Memory, some fascinating archival footage, an interview with sound man Gordon Quinn, a separate CD of performances by artists associated with Maxwell Street plus an illustrated 36 page booklet."
And This Is Free: The Life And Times Of Chicago's Legendary Maxwell Street
CBG
allmusic: Various Artists - And This Is Maxwell Street
Gordon Quinn
amazon
vimeo: "And This Is Free" (1964) 47:50

2011 January: Maxwell Street

FIRST LOOK: Feature Film Sign Painters. Premieres Today.

"Since founding the Wooster Collective more than ten years ago, some of our favorite artists featured on the website have been trained in the art of sign painting.  Today, the highly anticipated feature film SIGN PAINTERS, directed by Faythe Levine & Sam Macon, is now available on iTunes and for download and streaming worldwide through the film's website signpaintersfilm.com The film explores and celebrates the 150 year-old American history of the artform through anecdotal accounts from artists across the country including Ira Coyne, Bob Dewhurst, Keith Knecht, Norma Jeane Maloney and Stephen Powers. We're thrilled to be involved with SIGN PAINTERS and are releasing it through BOND/360, the film distribution arm of Marc's firm, BOND Strategy and Influence.
Wooster Collective (Video)

Anthology Film Archives

Wikipedia - "Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is one of the largest archives of avant-garde and experimental cinema in the world and is the only non-profit organization of its kind in New York City, independent through self-support. Anthology screens nearly 1,000 public programs annually; features weekly in-person appearances by artists with their work; and publishes historical and scholarly books and catalogs."
Wikipedia
Anthology Film Archives
New Yorker: The Singularities

The 9/11 Story Told at Bedrock, Powerful as a Punch to the Gut

Airplane fragments displayed at the Sept. 11 museum.
"After a decade marked by deep grief, partisan rancor, war, financial boondoggles and inundation from Hurricane Sandy, the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero is finally opening ceremonially on Thursday, with President Obama present, and officially to the public next Wednesday. It delivers a gut-punch experience — though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its trifurcated identity."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: 9/11 Memorial Museum Faces the Latest Hurdle: Its Opening (Video)
NY Times: A New Story Told at Ground Zero - The National September 11 Memorial Museum (Video)

2011 September: The Encyclopedia of 9/11, 2011 September: WNYC's Guide to 9/11 Arts Events, 2011 September: September 11, 2001.

Gig Alert: Marc Ribot Trio

"Guitarist Marc Ribot plays art-rock with his band Ceramic Dog…he plays soul with The Young Philadelphians…and writes scores for silent films like Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. Oh, and when he has free time, he plays with a couple of the finest jazz musicians in the city, too. Here’s Albert Ayler's 'The Wizard' from the new recording of the Marc Ribot Trio Live at The Village Vanguard. They play at Le Poisson Rouge tonight."
WNYC (Video)

2011 February: Selling Water By the Side of the River - Evan Lurie, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 February: Silent Movies, 2013 November: The Nearness Of You, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010).

Portfolio by Anna Plesset

"It starts with a found film. According to Plesset, sometime around 1945 her grandfather, a division psychiatrist in the US Army during WWII, exchanged a pistol for a 16mm camera. The footage from this camera is a record of his passage through Europe during the last years of the war, lingering almost equally on landmarks, monuments, and landscapes as on bombed-out roads and abandoned cities. ... The project is fragmented in its constant shifting between these two axes, but it’s the details—locations on a map, stills from the grandfather’s film, a stub from a museum ticket, a postcard—that make it resonate as a document that is intimate in scale and ambitious in the way it reflects history, technology, time, and how these alter our experience."
BOMB (Video)

INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″

Sunday, 1926
"The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Edward Hopper on June 17, 1959. The interview was conducted by John Morse for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution."
ASX

2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing.

Spirit

Wikipedia - "Spirit was an American jazz/hard rock/progressive rock/psychedelic band founded in 1967, based in Los Angeles, California. Their most commercially successful single in the US was 'I Got A Line On You', but they were at least as well known for their albums including The Family That Plays Together, Clear, and Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. ... [Ed] Cassidy was instantly recognizable by his shaven head (hence his nickname 'Mr. Skin') and his fondness for wearing black. He was around twenty years older than the rest of the group (born in 1923). His earlier career was primarily in jazz and included stints with Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Roland Kirk, Thelonious Monk and Lee Konitz. He was a founding member of Rising Sons with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder."
Wikipedia
Progarchives
YouTube: I got a line on you, Spirit (1968) 1:03:18, The Family That Plays Together (1968) 38:48, Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus (1970) 54:09

Rev. Robert Wilkins

Wikipedia - "Robert Timothy Wilkins (January 16, 1896 – May 26, 1987) was an American country blues guitarist and vocalist, of African American and Cherokee descent. His distinction was his versatility; he could play ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and gospel with equal facility. Wilkins was born in Hernando, Mississippi, 21 miles from Memphis. He worked in Memphis during the 1920s at the same time as Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie (whom he claimed to have tutored), and Son House. He also organized a jug band to capitalize on the 'jug band craze' then in vogue. Though never attaining success comparable to the Memphis Jug Band, Wilkins reinforced his local popularity with a 1927 appearance on a Memphis radio station."
Wikipedia
allmusic
NPS: Rev. Robert Timothy Wilkins - Memphis School
Illustrated Robert Wilkins discography
YouTube: Prodigal Son, Streamline 'Frisco Limited, Holy Ghost Train, Don't Let Nobody Turn You 'Round, New Stock Yard Blues, Alabama Blues, Dirty Deal Blues
YouTube: The Legendary Piedmont Recordings (Full Album) 36:40

Robert Dodge: Vietnam 40 Years Later

"As Americans and Vietnamese observe the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, award-winning journalist and photographer Robert Dodge asks us to give up our horrific war-era memories of this Southeast Asian country in favor of a more hopeful and modern vision. In an eight-year project that promotes reconciliation and healing, Dodge offers more than 100 beautiful and poignant images of Vietnam and its people that depict a country with one foot in ancient Asia and another tentatively leaping towards joining the global economy."
Robert Dodge: Vietnam 40 Years Later (Video)
Robert Dodge
Foreword: Vietnam 40 Years Later

Les Aambassadeurs Internationaux feat Salif Keita-Mandjou 1978

"Classic ode to president Sékou Touré (Guinea) by Les Ambassadeurs featuring singer Salif Keita and guitarist Manfila Kanté."
W - Salif Keita
YouTube: Les Aambassadeurs Internationaux feat Salif Keita-Mandjou 1978

Afro-Cuban jazz

Machito/Chico O'Farrill/Dizzy Gillespie - Afro-Cuban Jazz
Wikipedia - "Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Frank Grillo 'Machito' in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, based in New York City. In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, most notably the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as Dizzy's and Pozo's "Manteca" and Charlie Parker's and Machito's 'Mangó Mangüé', were commonly referred to as 'Cubop', short for Cuban bebop."
Wikipedia
allmusic: Machito - Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite 1950
Afro-Cuban Jazz
Discogs
YouTube: Machito & Charlie Parker - The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite, Mario Bauza & His Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra - El Manicero, Chico O'Farrill & Afro Cuban Jazz Big Band - Trumopet Fantasy, Machito & His Afro-Cuban Orchestra - Gone City

2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2011: Machito.

The Last Sentimentalist: A Q. & A. with Duane Michals

"The photographer Duane Michals is perhaps best known for his 'fictionettes': dream-like stagings in which Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, and Andy Warhol have all appeared. These enchanting photo sequences and montages, which are often accompanied by Michals’s handwritten prose, make innovative use of the medium’s ability to suggest what cannot be seen. Michals was born in 1932, in Pittsburgh. He moved to New York in the mid-nineteen-fifties, and he had his first exhibition in 1963, at the Underground Gallery, in Greenwich Village. A prolific photographer, Michals has published his work in dozens of books, including 'Questions Without Answers,”' from 2001. 'Empty New York,' a series of photographs that he produced at the start of his career, is currently on view at the D.C. Moore Gallery, in Manhattan."
New Yorker
DC Moore Gallery - Duane Michals: Empty New York

2011 October: Duane Michals

Chantal Akerman

Wikipedia - "Chantal Anne Akerman (... born 6 June 1950) is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the City College of New York. Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), broke new ground and still exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema. Akerman was born to an observant Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium. Her grandparents and her mother were sent to Auschwitz; only her mother came back. This is a very important factor in her personal experience. Her mother's anxiety is a recurrent theme in her filmography."
Wikipedia
European Graduate School
vimeo: Interview with Chantal Akerman
Icarus Films
Voice: Chantal Akerman's New York
YouTube: Hotel Monterey (1972), Hotel Monterey - 1, News From Home (1972), La chambre (1972)
YouTube: Interview - Too Far, Too Close<//a>

Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination

"American artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) has been celebrated internationally for his boxes, collages, and films since the 1930s. His mining of far-flung ideas and traditions and elegant integration of woodworking, painting, papering, and drawing define the innovation and visual poetry associated with his work. Above all, he forever altered the concept of the box—from a time-honored functional container into a new art form, the box construction."
PEM - Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination (Launch Page)
[PDF] Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. The following checklist lists those works ...
NYT: Poetic Theaters, Romantic Fevers
YouTube: Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination

2007 November: Joseph Cornell, 2010 September: Stan Brakhage, Joseph Cornell - The Wonder Ring, 1955, 2011 April: Rose Hobart (1936), 2012 June: "Bookstalls" - Joseph Cornell, 2012 December: Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels.

Photo booth

Wikipedia - "A photo booth is a vending machine or modern kiosk that contains an automated, usually coin-operated, camera and film processor. Today the vast majority of photo booths are digital. Traditionally photo booths contain a seat or bench designed to seat the one or two patrons being photographed. The seat is typically surrounded by a curtain of some sort to allow for some privacy and help avoid outside interference during the photo session. Once the payment is made, the photo booth will take a series of photographs (though most modern booths may only take a single photograph and print out a series of identical pictures)."
Wikipedia
Behind the Curtain: A History of the Photobooth by Mark Bloch
Photobooth.net
amazon: American Photobooth, Photobooth by Raynal Pellicer, Photobooth by Babbette Hines
Photobooth: A Biography by Meags Fitzgerald (Graphic novel), vimeo
YouTube: Weekend Explorer: History of the Photo Booth

Bill Laswell - ROIR Dub Sessions (2003)

"Few American record labels have done more to further the cause of modern dub than New York's ROIR imprint, which has not only reissued classic dub recordings, but also actively encouraged contemporary artists to reinterpret the tradition according to their own vision. And since bassist and producer Bill Laswell is among the most prolific and original modern exponents of dub, it was inevitable that the two would find their way to each other. Laswell has recorded four albums of progressive dub under his own name for ROIR, and this retrospective collection brings together one track from each of them to make a more-or-less full-length compilation. At just over 46 minutes, the program is a bit skimpy, but it does sell at budget price, and there's certainly no arguing with the quality of the content. ..."
allmusic
Blog Critics
amazon
YouTube: Dread Iternal, Ethiopia, Thunupa, Cybotron

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn (1980)

Wikipedia - "A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites. ... Reviews have been mixed. Some have called it a brilliant tool for advancing the cause of social equality. Others have called the book a revisionist patchwork containing errors. In a 1998 interview, Zinn said he had set 'quiet revolution' as his goal for writing A People's History. 'Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives.'"
Wikipedia
A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn. Presented by History Is A Weapon. A Note and Disclaimer are below.
Voices of a People's History of the US: Bringing history to life
YouTube: A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn. Narrated by Viggo Mortensen., Conversations with History 42:21, Three Holy Wars 36:49

Chamade - Vintage French Photos

Café de Flore - St-Germain, Paris, 1949
Chamade - Vintage French Photos

Georges Adéagbo

The Becoming of the Human Being
Wikipedia - "Georges Adéagbo (born 1942) is a Beninese sculptor known for his work with found objects. A native of Cotonou, Adéagbo studied law in Abidjan before moving to France to continue his studies. He returned to Benin in 1971 upon the death of his father, and began creating installations and environments in isolation from family and society. By the early 1990s he had begun to receive recognition, culminating in the reception of the Prize of Honor at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Adéagbo gathers the material for his art wherever he travels."
Wikipedia
Synchronizing Archaeology- Designation of Events
MoMA/PS1: Abraham – L’ami de Dieu
vimeo: La personne de Georges Adéagbo

History of Harlem

Wikipedia - "Founded in the 17th century as a Dutch outpost, Harlem developed into a farming village, a revolutionary battlefield, a resort town, a commuter town, a ghetto, and a center of African-American culture. ... Since the 1920s, this period of Harlem's history has been highly romanticized. With the increase in a poor population, it was also the time when the neighborhood began to deteriorate to a slum, and some of the storied traditions of the Harlem Renaissance were driven by poverty, crime, or other social ills. For example, in this period, Harlem became known for 'rent parties', informal gatherings in which bootleg alcohol was served and music played. Neighbors paid to attend, and thus enabled the host to make his or her monthly rent. Though picturesque, these parties were thrown out of necessity. Further, over a quarter of black households in Harlem made their monthly rent by taking in lodgers, many of whom were family members, but who sometimes brought bad habits or even crime that disrupted the lives of respectable families."
Wikipedia
Harlem History
New York Metro - A Harlem History
PBS: Harlem in the 40s
History: The Roaring Twenties (Video)
NBC: Living history in Harlem (Video)
YouTube: Ann Petry and Harlem's History, Daily Life In Harlem, Walking in Harlem - 125th street, The Streets of Harlem Documentary

2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2011 August: Memories of Sugar Hill, 2012 July: Dawoud Bey - Harlem, U.S.A..

How to be Perfect - Ron Padgett (2007)

"Ron Padgett has written his recherche du temps perdu. Throughout this specular book he loses again what has been lost, waits for what has come and because most poetry saves nothing but time, is perfect timing. A basic rhythm, true to the moment of writing, appears to be one of holding and releasing. The poems are connected across gaps but the head comes away from the body more than once, and the attack of the collection — ‘Mortal Combat’ — sees the author trying to stop the idea of an English muffin from descending further than his salivary glands to his fingers, perhaps, where it is too late, and from ‘trying to pull me away from who I am. I am / a squinty old fool stooped over / his keyboard having an anxiety attack over an English muffin!’"
Jacket 37
Pataphysic
Excerpts from How to be Perfect
amazon

March 2008: Ron Padgett 

40 maps that explain the Middle East

11 - The 2011 Arab Spring
"Maps can be a powerful tool for understanding the world, particularly the Middle East, a place in many ways shaped by changing political borders and demographics. Here are 40 maps crucial for understanding the Middle East — its history, its present, and some of the most important stories in the region today."
Vox

Gerdes Folk City

Wikipedia - "Gerdes Folk City (sometimes spelled Gerde's Folk City) was a music venue in the West Village in New York City. Initially opened as a restaurant called Gerdes, by owner Mike Porco, it eventually began to present occasional incidental music. First located at 11 West 4th Street (in a building which no longer exists), it moved in 1970 to 130 West 3rd Street. It closed in 1987. ... Opening officially on January 26, 1960, Folk City was born in Greenwich Village, New York, and generated several waves of musical genres ranging from folk music to rock ‘n’ roll; folk rock to punk; blues to alternative rock, bringing the world a wide range of music from Pete Seeger to 10,000 Maniacs. From The Weavers to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Judy Collins and Rev. Gary Davis, many musicians who formed contemporary music’s foundation performed there."
Wikipedia
Folk City: GERDES FOLK CITY
Apr 11, 1961: Bob Dylan plays his first major gig in New York City
NYT: September 29, 1961 - 20-Year-Old Singer Is Bright New Face at Gerde’s Club
WNYC - Vanished Venues: Gerde's Folk City (Video)
YouTube: Corrina Corrina {Gerdes Folk City 1962}, Talkin' New York - Gerde's Folk City, New York, April 1962, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean {Gerdes Folk City}, Doc Watson - Live, Gerdes Folk City 41:34, Arlo Guthrie - 1966 Gerdes Folk City, New York

Roulette TV: MIXOLOGY FESTIVAL 2014 - M. Geddes Gengras, Pete Swanson, Ben Vida, Loud Objects & more...

"As even consumer electronics move into a 'post-PC' era of tablets and smartphones, Roulette’s 2014 Mixology Festival looks at the newest ways electronics are being used to make music. For a while dominated by laptops, the current landscape hold no singular method; co-opting analog and digital synthesizers from the past, exploring the touch screen as a modern performance instrument, and designing open source programming platforms and DIY circuits for personalized music making."
vimeo: MIXOLOGY FESTIVAL 2014
Fluorescent Tubes And Psychedelic Bass Mark This Year's Mixology Festival (Video)

Album - Vik Muniz

"Album presents two new bodies of work – the eponymous Album series as well as Postcards from Nowhere. Muniz continues to explore the contemporary fragmented visual experience, with an increased emphasis on nostalgia and the materiality of photography. The Album series utilizes found personal photographs, many treated in sepia tone, collected by Muniz over a number of years. The images composed are of familiar scenes that may be found in family photo albums - a portrait of a baby, a wedding, a school picture, or a vacation snapshot. These images reflect intimate yet universal narratives. With the proliferation of inexpensive cameras in the late 20th century, and by the ease and speed of digital documentation in more recent years, such images have become more common and less precious. Album questions the implications of these shifts in technology and image-making, and their impact on community, collective experience, and memory."
Sikkema Jenkins Co.
whitezine

2010 February: Vik Muniz, 2011 April: Waste Land.

Blast of Silence (1961)

Wikipedia - "Blast of Silence is an American crime/thriller film released in 1961. It was written and directed by Allen Baron and produced by Merrill Brody who was also the cinematographer. Frankie Bono (Allen Baron), a hitman from Cleveland, comes to New York City during Christmas week to kill a middle-management mobster, Troiano (Peter H. Clune). First he follows his target to select the best possible location, and orders a gun from rat-loving dealer Big Ralph (Larry Tucker). One night, he meets a former friend from the orphanage he grew up in, rattling his cool and putting his life in danger."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Allen Baron’s “Blast of Silence” (Video)
Film Noir of the Week
Bright Lights Film Journal
YouTube: Blast of Silence - Trailer

Bim Sherman - Across the Red Sea (1998)

"Originally released in 1982, Across the Red Sea captures Bim Sherman at an early creative peak. Teaming for the first time with producer Adrian Sherwood, his sweet, delicate vocals are well served by the booming rhythms and experimental textures of tracks like 'Golden Locks,' 'Slummy Ghetto,' and 'Party Time.'"
allmusic
YouTube: Golden Locks 12", Golden Locks Dub, Party Time, Slummy Ghetto, Revolution, You Are the One, Just Like A King, Golden Morning Star

Unedited History: Iran 1960-2014

Mazdak Ayari (né en 1976) Vie de famille, 2001-2013
"The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is presenting UNEDITED HISTORY, Iran 1960-2014 at ARC. Comprising over 200 works for the most part never shown in France before, the exhibition brings a fresh eye to art and visual culture in Iran from the 1960s up to the present. Its survey of the contemporary history of the country is arranged in sequences; the years 1960–1970, the revolutionary era of 1979, the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) and the postwar period up until today. Bringing together twenty artists from the years 1960–1970 and representatives of the new generation, the exhibition focuses on painting, photography and cinema, as well as key aspects of Iran's modern visual culture: posters and documentary material ranging from the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of the Arts to the revolutionary period and the Iran-Iraq war."
MaM
Slash

Putumayo Presents: Afro Latino

"Far from a typical salsa release, Putumayo Presents: Afro Latino is an intriguing compilation that examines the relationship between African music and Afro-Cuban music in the 1990s. African rhythms were instrumental in the development of son, cha cha, mambo, guaguanco, and other Cuban styles that came to be called salsa, and things really became ironic when artists in different parts of Africa started embracing salsa. Spanning 1995-1998, this 12-song CD boasts salsa recordings by both African and Cuban artists."
allmusic
YouTube: Afro Latino

Ruin Lust

John Skoog, Redoubt (commission from Towner, 2014)
"Ruin Lust, an exhibition at Tate Britain from 4 March 2014, offers a guide to the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition is the widest-ranging on the subject to date and includes over 100 works by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, John Martin, Eduardo Paolozzi, Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean."
Tate (Video)
Guardian: Ruin Lust review – transience, doom and lyrical melancholy
Guardian: Ruin Lust at Tate Britain review – 'a brilliant but bonkers exhibition'
Independent: Ruin Lust at Tate Britain, art review

Jammin' the Blues (1944)

"Jammin' the Blues is a 1944 short film in which several prominent jazz musicians got together for a rare filmed jam session. It features Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant, Archie Savage and Garland Finney. Barney Kessel is the only white musician in the film. He was seated in the shadows to shade his skin, and for closeups, his hands were dyed with berry juice."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Jammin' the Blues

The Sinking Bear & Ray Johnson’s A Book About Death

"At the forthcoming New York Art Book Fair at MoMA/PS 1 (September 19-22) there will be a dual exhibit in the Ray Johnson Room (Gallery Y) devoted to Sinking Bear and Ray Johnson’s A Book About Death, displayed along with related ephemera and zines. Boo-Hooray and Division Leap are co-publishing the exhibition catalogue The Sinking Bear, the first publication dedicated to the most insane, beautiful and innovative mimeo zine of the 1960s. Edited by the mysterious Soren Agenoux (by differing accounts a mail artist, playwright, suspected thief and forger) The Sinking Bear arose from a loose circle of artists associated with various downtown New York scenes, particularly the circle around the poetry newsletter Floating Bear, edited by Diane Di Prima and Leroi Jones, which not only filled a vital role allowing poets to share and refine their work, but also provided fodder for the rather vitriolic ridicule presented in Sinking Bear, which balanced a fine line between imitating Floating Bear and acting like its nemesis."
BOO-HOORAY
RealityStudio: Floating Bear 24

The Dead (1987 film)

Wikipedia - "The Dead is a 1987 film directed by John Huston, starring his daughter Anjelica Huston. The Dead was the last film that Huston directed, and it was released posthumously. According to Pauline Kael, 'Huston directed the movie, at eighty, from a wheelchair, jumping up to look through the camera, with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose to a portable generator; most of the time, he had to watch the actors on a video monitor outside the set and use a microphone to speak to the crew. Yet he went into dramatic areas that he'd never gone into before - funny, warm family scenes that might be thought completely out of his range. Huston never before blended his actors so intuitively, so musically.'"
Wikipedia
W - The Dead (1914)
The Dead - James Joyce
Guardian: 'I think he died for me'
Roger Ebert
NYT: The Dead (1987)
YouTube: The Dead, ".. upon all the living and the dead."

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2010 March: Ulysses Seen, 2013 February: ULYSSES “SEEN” is moving to Dublin!, 2013: Dubliners.

L.A. Turnaround - Bert Jansch (1974)

Wikipedia - "L.A. Turnaround is the ninth album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch, released in 1974. Two of the songs were recorded in Paris in 1973, and the others were recorded in Los Angeles in 1974. The album was produced by former Monkee and Country rock artist Michael Nesmith, who also played guitar. Other guest musicians include Red Rhodes (steel guitar), Byron Berline (fiddle, mandolin) and Jesse Ed Davis (guitar)."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: "L A Turnaround" - Full Album

April 2010: Bert Jansch, 2011 October: Bert Jansch (November 1943 – October 2011), 2014 February: Bert Jansch / John Renbourn - Bert & John (1966).

Don Ward

"'Don’t worry,' Don says, upon hearing that his next customer has never had her shoes shined before. 'I’ll be gentle.' He instructs her to climb into an office chair bolted to a red-and-gray plywood box the size of a refrigerator, and sit down on a grubby towel printed with the White House’s insignia. 'I brought it from home,' he says, pausing for laughter. He throws a stained towel over her knees and skirt, to protect her modesty ('It’s not my birthday!'), and starts in on the story of how Don Ward, who prefers to be known only as Don — 'Cher can have only one name; so can I' — runs a successful business shining shoes at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street in Manhattan, just south of the headquarters of Fox News."
New Yorker - Making Money: There's No Business Like Shoe Busines
YouTube: No Your City: Episode 3 (Don), Don Ward: Shoe Shiner Extraordinaire

Kraftwerk - "The Telephone Call" (1987)

Wikipedia - "'The Telephone Call' (German: 'Der Telefon-Anruf') is a 1987 single by German techno group Kraftwerk, on the 1986 album Electric Café. 'The Telephone Call' was number one on the dance charts for two weeks, and was the second single that Kraftwerk took to number one in four months. ... The song's music video features each member of the band answering a telephone (Ralf Hutter's being a combination of a telephone and a synthesiser). None of the band members are seen singing the song in the video except for a silhouette Karl Bartos, but when the camera pans around it is revealed to in fact be Wolfgang Flur. He is also seen at a typewriter typing 'You're so close, but far away'. At several other points in the video, various other iconic images are seen including a dangling phone on a wire and an eye staring through a hole in a wall, the latter appearing for only one second in the video. The images give the video an unsettling feeling."
Wikipedia
YouTube: The Telephone Call, The Telephone Call (long version)

2008 April: Kraftwerk, 2011 March: Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, 2011 March: Kraftwerk - Documentary, 2011 April: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, 2011 May: Autobahn, 2011 October: Trans-Europe Express, 2012 February: Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, 2012 October: Radio-Activity.

Mondo Black Chamber - David Toop (2014)

"David Toop is a composer/musician, author and curator based in London. Since 1970 he has worked in many fields of sound art, listening practice and music, including improvisation, sound installations and video works, field recordings, pop music production, music for television, theatre and dance. He has recorded Yanomami shamanism in Amazonas, appeared on Top of the Pops with the Flying Lizards, exhibited sound installations in Tokyo, Beijing and London's National Gallery, and performed with artists ranging from John Zorn, Evan Parker, Bob Cobbing and Ivor Cutler to Akio Suzuki, Elaine Mitchener, Lore Lixenberg, Scanner and Max Eastley."
SubRosa (Video)
Morr Distro (Video)

2009 October: David Toop

Fela Kuti - Upside Down (1976)

"Upside Down, released in 1976, is one of the more unusual items in Fela Kuti's discography from the period. Not structurally -- it's the usual two-song, half-hour deal, the songs beginning with several minutes of instrumental solo trades before the socially conscious lyrics enter. The song 'Upside Down' itself, however, is sung not by Kuti but by Sandra Akanke Isidore. She was a woman that he met during his stay in the United States at the end of the 1960s, and who is credited with helping to elevate his own social awareness and ethnic identity. It's basically like hearing a track by this artist with a different vocalist, then. Although Isidore's pipes aren't as strong as Kuti's, it makes for something refreshingly different in the midst of all those similar two-song releases from the mid-'70s. The other track, 'Go Slow,' is a little jazzier, and puts less emphasis on lyrics than most Kuti tracks, with the singing largely limited to chants that punctuate the instrumental arrangement."
allmusic
YouTube: Upside Down, Go Slow