Amir ElSaffar and Two Rivers - Crisis (2015)

"Crisis chronicles the continuing development of trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s critically acclaimed Two Rivers Ensemble, a band purpose-built to explore the juncture between jazz and music of the Middle East, in particular the Iraqi maqam. The new work is his reflection on a region in turmoil and strife: revolution, civil war, sectarian violence; a culture’s struggle for survival. It sets aside some of the more exploratory work that he has done in recent years to focus on music that is passionate and visceral, a cry from the heart. ..."
Amir Elsaffar
Jazz album: Crisis by Amir ElSaffar and the Two Rivers Ensemble
Amir ElSaffar and the Two Rivers Ensemble: Crisis
Soundcloud: Amir ElSaffar, New York, NY
vimeo: Amir ElSaffar and The Two Rivers Ensemble - CRISIS - EPK
YouTube: Love Poem, Trumpet Taqsim + El Sha'ab

On the Beach - Neil Young (1973)

"Following the 1973 Time Fades Away tour, Neil Young wrote and recorded an Irish wake of a record called Tonight's the Night and went on the road drunkenly playing its songs to uncomprehending listeners and hostile reviewers. Reprise rejected the record, and Young went right back and made On the Beach, which shares some of the ragged style of its two predecessors. But where Time was embattled and Tonight mournful, On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant. ..."
allmusic
W - On the Beach
The Quietus - From The Darkest Chasms: Neil Young's On The Beach Revisited
Classic Album: Neil Young - On The Beach
Spotify
YouTube: On the Beach

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), 2015 January: Neil Young the Ultimate Guide, 2015 March: Old Black, 2015 September: Zuma (1975).

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - Marcel Proust (1919)

The shadow of young girls in flower – at Cricquebœuf
Wikipedia - "... Volume Two: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. The Narrator's parents are inviting M. de Norpois, a diplomat colleague of the Narrator's father, to dinner. With Norpois's intervention, the Narrator is finally allowed to go see Berma perform in a play, but is disappointed by her acting. Afterwards, at dinner, he watches Norpois, who is extremely diplomatic and correct at all times, expound on society and art. The Narrator gives him a draft of his writing, but Norpois gently indicates it is not good. ... Two years later, the Narrator, his grandmother, and Françoise set out for the seaside town of Balbec. ..."
W - Volume Two: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: The two-minute 'Shadow'
Yale Instructional Technology Group
amazon

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel.

Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn

"When Arthur Miller first visited his country cousins in Brooklyn in the early 1920s, Midwood was not just a neighborhood, it was a description. Patches of woods stood thick enough near their East Fifth Street home that the boys could hunt squirrels, rabbits and other small game. There were muddy paths and tomato fields, and big sacks of potatoes in the cellar. Miller’s two salesman uncles — on whom he would base the character Willy Loman — were urban pioneers, planting roots in the borough just after World War I. The woods have been replaced by houses and streets, but much of what Miller loved and used as inspiration for his plays can still be found. ..."
NY Times

2011 April: The Misfits (1961), 2012 June: Before Air-Conditioning (1998), 2014 December: The Crucible (1953), 2015 December: A View from the Bridge (1955)

Russian Ark - Alexander Sokurov (2002)

Wikipedia - "Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, Russkij Kovcheg) is a 2002 historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. It was filmed entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum using a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. An unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The narrator implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a nineteenth-century French traveler. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed. ..."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Slant
Guardian
NY Times
YouTube: Trailer: Russian Ark
YouTube: Russian Ark - FULL MOVIE 1:35:11

A Long Hardwood Journey

"You know that we’re not running the correct out-of-bounds play, right? That our defensive press is a mess? That we’re close to another loss? Coach Marc Skelton leaned in close, his eyes inches from those of his teenage players, his questions pregnant with expletives. He had paced, implored, tossed his arms in the air, yelled and, for punctuation, whacked his clipboard like a zydeco musician with a washboard. Combustion seemed a real and present danger. It was December, and Skelton’s basketball team, the Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School Panthers, had traveled across the South Bronx to a rival team’s gym. 'Fellas, you are in the lion’s den,' Skelton yelled into the din, with another flourish of profanity. 'Now you have to kill the lion!' Skelton directed his players to double-team the top three opposing scorers, who were talented shooters but not great passers. They rely on chaos; respond by playing methodically. ..."
NY Times

Edgardo Antonio Vigo

(1987)
"This exhibition celebrates the mail art, visual poetry, performative works, and publications of the Argentine artist Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928–1997). From his quiet hometown of La Plata, Vigo developed an extensive network of contacts in the Americas and Europe, making the city a hub of the international mail art movement—a loose network of artists who exchanged ideas, art, and poetry through the postal system. From his defiantly local position, Vigo developed an internationalism tempered by a sharp critique of the foreign policy of the United States, from its role in the Vietnam War to its support of authoritarian Latin American governments. ..."
MoMA - The Unmaker of Objects: Edgardo Antonio Vigo's Marginal Media (Video)
[PDF] Edgardo Antonio Vigo's Proyectos a Realizar
Edgardo Antonio Vigo (by Clemente Padin - Uruguay)
Edgardo Antonio Vigo's essay, "Process/Poetry To And/Or Realize"
YouTube: Edgardo Antonio Vigo, SEÑALAMIENTO XI - SOUVENIR DE DOLOR

"Papa Don't Preach" - Madonna (1986)

Wikipedia - "... It portrayed a storyline where Madonna is trying to tell her father about her pregnancy. The images are juxtaposed with shots of Madonna dancing and singing in a small, darkened studio, and spending a romantic evening with her boyfriend. ... 'Papa Don't Preach' is a dance-pop song with instrumentation from acoustic, electric, and rhythm guitars, keyboards, and string arrangements. It is set in common time, and moves at a moderate tempo of 116 beats per minute. The song is written in the key of F minor. The combination of key and tempo produces a disjuncture between pop and classical rhythms, underlined by the instrumentation during the introduction. The song begins with a distinctly Vivaldian style, as the fast tempo and classical-style chord progression anticipates the lyrics to follow. This is followed by the sound of dance music, produced by a powerful beat from the instruments. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: MADONNA'S NEW BEAT IS A HIT, BUT SONG'S MESSAGE RANKLES (September 18, 1986)
Rolling Stone
Spotify
YouTube: "Papa Don't Preach", "Papa Don't Preach" (Live)

Highlife Time: Nigerian and Ghanaian Sound from the 60’s and early 70’s

"Highlife is club music. Not any old nightclub, but big, grand, gay (the 'gay' of yore, like when George Burns could sing it and Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t have snickered), evoking images of white dinner jackets and hired drivers. Whether that image is appropriate to a discussion of West African music is another conversation entirely, but highlife just oozes 'society' the same way mambo or swing would. Neither temporally nor melodically challenging, it’s a deceptively easy form that invites first- and second-timers to take a swing at it, but like distant American cousins old timey and bluegrass, highlife can reveal myriad styles, its own structural limitations being challenges to enterprising musicians or bandleaders who want to show they are the leaders of their genre. ..."
Dusted Magazine
amazon
YouTube: HighLife Time 1:09:09

What It's Like to Live Inside the Legendary Paris Bookstore Shakespeare & Co.

"George Whitman opened the legendary bookshop now known as Shakespeare and Company in the shadow of Notre Dame in Paris in 1951, and having spent all his money on the shop he slept on a pullout couch among the books. He insisted on giving it up, though, if a writer came by and needed a place to stay. (He often asked writers to sleep there even if they didn't need a place to stay.) Soon, he started housing several writers at a time, either published or aspiring, and these literary vagabonds came to be known as the Tumbleweeds. ..."
VICE
Lisa Paclet: Lost portraits from the Shakespeare and Company archives.
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart (Video)
Bringing the Tumbleweeds into the 21st Century...
To Home, With Love by Yoyo Chan
Shakespeare & Co.

2011 December: Shakespeare & Company

Queens Hit “Top To Bottom” by New Mural Project in L.I.C.

Icy & Sot
"The spirit of New Yorks’ 5 Pointz graffiti/Street Art holy place has popped up in the same Queens neighborhood where it was demolished in 2014, and since last summer more than 50 local and international aerosol artists have been hitting a new project 'Top to Bottom'. The choice of 'Top to Bottom', a graffiti term that recalls 1970s trains painted their entire height, is no mistake as creative director James P. Quinn reveres the classic style and histories of those original writers like internationally and institutionally celebrated artists Crash and Daze, who have collaborated on a mural here. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

A Corner of Europe Frozen in Time

When he was eighteen, Viktor left his home town of Jakubiskes to join the Soviet Army. Later, he moved to Vilnius but returns to Jakubiskes each summer to tend to his parents’ house. Jakubiskes, Lithuania, 2015.
"About an hour’s drive south of Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius, the country’s narrow panhandle, locally known as the 'appendix,' starts to push into the countryside of neighboring Belarus. The joke in Lithuania is that, while drawing the borders of the region, Stalin set his pipe down on the map—no one was brave enough to move it, so improbable borders were drawn around its perimeter. ... With its scattering of tumbledown villages, many of whose residents speak a mix of Polish and Belarusian, the region lives according to its own rhythms. The German-American photographer Jasper Bastian captures this peculiar state of isolation in his series 'A Road Not Taken,' which he shot during several visits to Dieveniškės last year. ..."
New Yorker

Village Voice NYC Albums - James Brown - Live At The Apollo (1962), Joe Cuba Sextet - Wanted Dead or Alive (1966), Cabretta - Mink DeVille (1977)

Wikipedia - "Live at the Apollo is a live album by James Brown and the Famous Flames, recorded at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and released in 1963. ... Live at the Apollo was recorded on the night of October 24, 1962 at Brown's own expense. Although not credited on the album cover or label, Brown's vocal group, The Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Bobby Bennett, and Lloyd Stallworth), played an important co-starring role in Live at the Apollo, and are included with Brown by M.C. Fats Gonder in the album's intro. ..."
W - Live at the Apollo (1962)
YouTube: Night Train lIve, James Brown Live At The Apollo 1962 FULL


Wikipedia - "Gilberto Miguel Calderón, better known as Joe Cuba (April 22, 1931 – February 15, 2009), was an American conga drummer of Puerto Rican descent widely regarded as the 'Father of Latin boogaloo'. Cuba was born in New York City, Cuba's parents moved from Puerto Rico to New York City in the late 1920s and settled in Spanish Harlem, a Latino community located in Manhattan. Cuba was raised in an apartment building where his father had become the owner of a candy store located on the ground floor (street level floor). This event motivated Cuba to organize his own band. In 1954, his agent recommended that he change the band's name from the José Calderón Sextet to the Joe Cuba Sextet and the newly named Joe Cuba Sextet made their debut at the Stardust Ballroom. ..."
W - Joe Cuba
allmusic
YouTube: Bang! Bang!, Joe Cuba Sextet - Wanted Dead or Alive (1966)


Wikipedia - "Cabretta, known as Mink DeVille in the United States, was the 1977 debut album by Mink DeVille. ...
Trouser Press described the Mink DeVille of this era as follows: 'On a good night in the New York underground around 1976 or 1977, the band led by Willy DeVille...could be the coolest cats on the scene. Willy dressed like a pimp and played a guitar covered in leopard skin; swagger and soulful strut was a brisk rejoinder to the sloppy punk and wimpy power pop bands they preceded and followed on stages. After the band was discovered, producer Jack Nitzsche got them on the lean, tough R&B beam for a first LP that sweats and smokes through and through as a classic of such fully and lovingly assimilated music should.' ..."
W - Cabretta - Mink DeVille (1977)
Spotify
YouTube: Spanish Stroll, Mink DeVille - Cabretta (FULL ALBUM)

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch - Henry Miller (1957)

Wikipedia - "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch> is a memoir written by Henry Miller, first published in 1957, about his life in Big Sur, California, where he resided for 18 years. ... The title of the book is taken from 15th-century Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch's triptych 'The Millennium', where oranges and other fruits symbolize the delights of paradise. The book is dedicated to Miller's friend Emil White, who established the Henry Miller Memorial Library in his old cabin in Big Sur. ..."
Wikipedia
Reality Studio: Finding the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch and Henry Miller
Rhona Cleary: The Last Book I Loved, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
amazon

2010 March: Dinner With Henry (1979), 2011 December: Asleep & Awake (1975), 2013 April: Henry Miller, 2014 April: Henry Miller, Brooklyn Hater, 2015 July: Henry Miller Interviews, 2015 August: The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1970).

How Wile E. Coyote Explains The World

"A joke has structure. It has a central rule. Setup, punchline. The setup produces a tensed, expectant state; the punchline resolves the tension with a surprise. If the elements of the joke are not arranged into a setup and a punchline, it is not a joke. It is just a statement. This is a matter of mechanical necessity; it’s true of every kind of joke, from long story jokes to one-liners. Consider this short, immaculate, spectacularly stupid joke by the immortal Jack Handey, which has never failed to make me giggle uncontrollably, and which I now will ruin with explanation: The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw. ..."
The Concourse (Video)

2011 May: Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner

A Scratch-Off Map of Old New York City

"In cities, the past is always peeking through the surface: cobblestones beneath some torn-up asphalt; a vanished street that still shapes the properties around it. Urban Scratch-Off, a new tool by digital mapmaker Chris Whong, aims to recreate that palimpsestic experience online, with an approach inspired by lottery tickets. Whong layered an aerial photograph of New York City from today beneath another one from 1924 (a remarkable find from the New York Public Library), and coded in a 'scratch-off' effect. Click and rub your cursor over a section of the old map, and you’ll see modern-day New York revealed underneath. You can search for specific addresses, flip the maps so that new sits on top of old, and opt to simply 'pan and zoom' when you’ve done enough scratching. ..."
City Lab
Reveal How New York Has Changed With This 'Scratch-Off' Map,
Urban Scratch Off

How it's Made: Millais

"In the second of our series on artists’ techniques and processes, Susan Breen explains how the paintings conservation team breathed new life in to The North-West Passage by John Everett Millais. The work can currently be seen on display in Artist and Empire — a major new exhibition exploring the legacies and consequences of Empire. Completed in 1874, The North-West Passage was one of the most popular works of its time; a number of high profile Arctic explorations took place during the 19th century, and through the depiction of the aged mariner, sitting defiantly at his table surrounded by maps, charts and flags, and of his daughter, reading through past log books, Millais wanted to convey and inspire patriotic sentiment. Henry Tate bought the painting in 1888, and if formed part of the original Henry Tate bequest, entering the national collection in 1894. ..."
Tate
W - John Everett Millais

2015 December: Artist and Empire

Katzine #1 – Katriona Chapman Fosters an Intimate Connection Between Creator and Reader in this Appealing Autobio Zine

"From my review of her nature-based slice-of-lifer Brockley Foxtrot in the early months of this column through to her time as one of the guiding lights of graphite artzine Tiny Pencil, Katriona Chapman is an artist whose work has, perhaps, been fleeting in output but always beautifully presented on those occasions on which I have covered it. This year, however, has seen her launch a project which guarantees a more prolific yield of Chapman material with her own quarterly autobio offering Katzine. The obvious comparison to make here would be Katie Green’s similarly themed and arranged The Green Bean. Katzine, however, relies on a heavier comics content, with over half of its 24 interior pages being classifiable as sequential art. It’s an engaging mix of strips, illustrated features, mini-essays and photos that encompass a variety of Chapman’s day-to-day thoughts, exploits and interests. ..."
Broken Frontier
Katriona Chapman
Small Press Spotlight on… Katriona Chapman (Video)

Barbara - Christian Petzold (2012)

"'Barbara' is a film about the old Germany from one of the best directors working in the new: Christian Petzold. For more than a decade Mr. Petzold has been making his mark on the international cinema scene with smart, tense films that resemble psychological thrillers, but are distinguished by their strange story turns, moral thorns, visual beauty and filmmaking intelligence. His latest to open in the United States, 'Barbara,' begins in 1980 with an East German doctor from Berlin (Nina Hoss) who, after an unspecified offense, has been recently banished to the boonies. There, in between hospital rounds and harassment from the secret police, she waits and she burns. ..."
NY Times
Roger Ebert
W - "Barbara"
NPR - 'Barbara': An Unbroken Spirit In The Eastern Bloc
W - Christian Petzold
YouTube: Barbara

‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: So Nice to See Him Again?

"Season 6, Episode 3. Dear Tom Branson, My, what a … what a nice surprise. No, really. We thought you were gone for good but … apparently not. Oh, I know we should have guessed. That whole dream business in your letter about 'walking with Sybbie under the great trees' and 'listening to the pigeons cooing in their branches' and your eyes filling with tears. It was like getting an Instagram post from Wordsworth. And suddenly there you were, looking as hearty and plow-horsey as ever, and there was Sybbie, giving a sweet li’l hug to Georgie (and checking Marigold for signs of a pulse). It’s not that we weren’t happy to see you. Or at least we weren’t definitively, comprehensively unhappy to see you. ... Signed, The Abbots ..."
NY Times

2012 March: Downton Abbey, 2013 February: Downton Abbey 3, 2015 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ and History: A Look Back, Recap: Rumble With Lord G!, 2015 February: Recap: Prayers for Lord G’s Truest, Furriest Love, 2015 February: Recap: The Crawleys Should Have Sent Their Regrets, 2015 February: Recap: Yes, It’s Called the Hornby Hotel, 2015 March: Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome, 2016 January: Downton Abbey Returns for a Feel-Good Final Season.

James Chance & The Contortions - Lost Chance (1981)

"Picking up where their previous ROIR live release left off (the excellent Soul Exorcism), James Chance & the Contortions offer another collection of their cutting-edge musical blend. Recorded live in Chicago back in September of 1981, Lost Chance may be a tad more visceral than their previous in-concert recording, but the over-the-top performances never get in the way of the music. And although the album contains traces of jazz and new wave, Lost Chance is highly recommended to funk connoisseurs -- the Contortions may have been the most underrated funketeers to ever hit the stage. Out of the album's nine tracks, three are James Brown covers ('Super Bad,' 'I Got You,' and 'King Heroin'), which would surely bring a smile to the Godfather of Soul's face. And although the whole band wails throughout, bassist Colin Wade proves to be outstanding, playing some of the most fluid and funky basslines ever committed to tape. Highlights are many, but tops would have to be 'Sax Maniac,' 'White Cannibal,' and 'Hell on Earth.'"
allmusic
amazon, Spotify
YouTube: Super Bad, Sax Maniac, White Cannibal, King Heroin

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 January: Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979), 2015 July: James White And The Blacks - Off White (1979), 2015 October: Pat Place.

Port and Docks

This photo of the North Wall shows some of the docks and ports along the eastern end of the Liffey. Photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914.
"Not technically a place, the Port and Docks, now simply known as Dublin Port, was originally established in 1707 as the Ballast Board and has been headquartered at various places along the Liffey according to the shoreline of the river’s mouth as it opens into the Irish Sea. The earliest ports in Dublin were associated with the Viking establishment centered at Dublin Castle, and the ports have moved continually downstream as a result of the management of the river’s banks with the building of the South Wall in 1715 and the Bull Wall on the north shore in 1842. By the time James Joyce referenced the Port and Docks as the employer of Gabriel’s father T.J. Conroy, they were an organization whose main industry and activity happened along the North Wall of the Liffey at the eastern edges of Dublin: 'They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T.J. Conroy of the Port and Docks' (179). ...'
Mapping Dubliners Project
W - Dublin Port
Dublin Port History
The shipping news: Dublin is reacquainted with its docks

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, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s.

The Nuclear Observatory of Mr Nanof - Piero Milesi (1986)

"... Most of his work was for the cinema and the theater, as documented by the soundtracks collected on The Nuclear Observatory of Mr Nanof (Cuneiform, 1986). The 13-minute Mr Nanof's Tango is actually a flute-driven elegy caressed by sympathetic strings and lulled by minimalist repetitive patterns in the strings and keyboards. Excerpts from the one-hour piece The Kings of the Night include The Procession, which creates suspense by releasing a flock of drones, and Three Figurations, a sort of frantic gamelan that generates a sort of tidal wave of sound amid symphonic staccatos. One of the most intriguing selections, The Presence Of The City, is actually a piece (mostly rollicking piano figures) that evokes a lifeless soundscape, possibly a nocturnal one. ..."
Scaruffi
W - Piero Milesi
YouTube: Mr. Nanof's Tango
WNYC: The Undead #99 - New Music from Italy

2008 July: Piero Milesi

"Saturday Night Fish Fry" - Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five (1949)

Wikipedia - "'Saturday Night Fish Fry' is a popular song, written by Louis Jordan and Ellis Lawrence Walsh, best known through the version recorded by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five. The single was a big hit, topping the R&B chart for twelve non-consecutive weeks in late 1949. It also reached number 21 on the national chart, a rare accomplishment for a 'race record' at that time (although the very popular Jordan had already had earlier crossover hits). Jordan's jump blues combo was one of the most successful acts of its time, and its loose and streamlined style of play was highly influential. ... The Jordan band also dropped the shuffling rhythm of the Eddie Williams original, accelerating the pace into a raucous, rowdy jump boogie-woogie arrangement. ..."
Wikipedia
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER: Louis Jordan - The King of the Jukeboxes
YouTube: Saturday Night Fish Fry

Adam Pendleton

Untitled Woman, 2013
"The oldest manufactured mirrors to have come down to us are made of obsidian, their black surfaces polished until they became reflective. ‘I’ll Be Your’, Adam Pendleton’s first solo show in the UK, as well as his first with Pace, was all surface. The title is emphatically cropped – like many of the black silkscreen images on display, applied to canvas, mirror, Perspex or transparencies – leaving it to the viewer to supply the missing word (‘Mirror’) from the 1967 song by the Velvet Underground & Nico. Crying out to be completed, it gestures towards the ‘Incomplete Open Cube series’, begun in 1974 by Sol LeWitt, an early supporter of the young American artist’s work. Photocopied reproductions of LeWitt’s white Minimalist sculptures, blown up out of all recognition and silkscreened onto canvas, furnish Pendleton with the matter of his own ‘Black Dada’ works (2008–ongoing). ..."
Africanah
Adam Pendleton
Pace
W - Adam Pendleton
vimeo: Adam Pendleton Brings “Black Lives Matter” to Venice
YouTube: Salon | Artist Talk | Black Dada: How does it feel to be a problem?

Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box (1991)

Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery, 1943
"Susan Sontag, Tony Curtis and Stan Brakhage all shared an appreciation for the work of American artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972), and all appear in a 51-minute documentary Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box directed by Mark Stokes for the BBC in 1991. Susan Sontag was also the subject of one of Cornell’s collages, something she discusses here. Tony Curtis collected many of Cornell’s boxes and used to visit the artist when he was in New York; in Stokes’s film he discusses their relationship and reads from Cornell’s writings. I’ve had a tape of this for years courtesy of Kerri Sharp who worked on the film (hi Kerri!) but it’s taken a while to turn up on YouTube. The value of films such as this isn’t so much the view they give of the works themselves—all of which are better judged in books or museums—but the way they function as mini-biographies which give a sense of the environment from which the art emerged. ..."
feuilleton
YouTube: Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box 51-min.
BBC
NY Times
MFA - Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell a biography by Deborah Solomon

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, 2015 May: Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination.

Alias Kurban Saïd (2004)

"The real identity of the author of the exotic love story Ali & Nino has been the subject of much speculation ever since the book was first published in Vienna in 1937. With its recent translation into English and its subsequent 'rediscovery,' the controversy has grown. (Indeed no pen name has aroused so much curiosity since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and other books signed 'B. Traven' launched a decades-long inquiry into the man behind that pseudonym.) Sometimes dubbed 'the Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus,' Ali & Nino tells the story of a pair of lovers from neighboring Caucasian lands -- a Christian girl from Georgia and a Muslim boy from Azerbaijan -- set against the turmoil of early 20th Century Baku. It ends tragically with the young man's death and with Russia's occupation of the Caucasus and displays a remarkably acute knowledge of the interaction between two ancient cultures. ..."
Tribeca Film Festival
W - Ali and Nino
W - Kurban Said
Fandor: Alias Kurban Saïd

"Bad as Me" - Tom Waits (2011)

Wikipedia - "'Bad as Me' is a song by American rock musician Tom Waits, written collectively by Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan. Written and recorded during the sessions for his studio album of the same name, the song was released as Waits' seventeenth single on August 23, 2011 and was the first new studio material by Waits in seven years, since Real Gone in 2004. ... Stereogum also described the song as 'a characteristically unhinged caterwaul,' and SFWeekly further commented that the song was 'pure, melodramatic Waits, with a dragging blues beat, stabbing, reverb-dipped guitars, and a horn section that plays accomplice to the gritty unfoldings [...] making the whole thing feel like the perfect soundtrack to some dusty bar full of misfits and killers in a Robert Rodriguez film.' ..."
Wikipedia
Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Luce" - A Cautionary Tale
Slate: Tom Waits on His Grandma’s Pistol, His New Record, and Keith Richards
YouTube: "Hell Broke Luce"

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985), 2015 February: Mule Variations (1999), 2015 April: Swordfishtrombones (1983), 2015 July: Alice (2002), 2015 September: Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985, 2015 December: Franks Wild Years (1987).

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams - Darcy Frey (1994)

Wikipedia - "Darcy Frey is an American writer from New York. Best known for his 1994 book The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams, Frey has published articles in New England Monthly, Rolling Stone, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine. ... Frey published a single book entitled The Last Shot, about basketball and the game's effect on urban youth. Beginning in the summer of 1991, Frey spent nine months with members of the Abraham Lincoln High School basketball team. The school, located in Coney Island, is well known for its basketball program. One of the players Frey followed, Stephon Marbury, has been an NBA All-Star and was a player for the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics before playing in China. ... The Last Shot reveals the demeaning aspects of urban athletics – children are tempted by the multi-millionaire lifestyle of NBA stars and become convinced of their heroic prowess, usually at the expense of their education; most don't end up with a basketball career. It also documents the harsh effects of Proposition 48, the rule that requires at least a 700 on the SAT for NCAA eligibility. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Something's Got to Give By Darcy Frey
amazon

Dance, Valiant & Molecular - Trisha Brown Dance Company

"On the surface, Trisha Brown’s proscenium dances are kinetically intriguing and relatable, formed of waves of roiling, fluid phrases. But dig down, and the intellectual rigor and self-imposed rules factoring into their creation reveal Brown’s fascinating thought processes, and connect them to her early task-based or site-specific works such as Walking on the Wall or Roof Piece. Three major proscenium works will be performed by the Trisha Brown Dance Company at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from January 28—30, celebrating a relationship that dates from 1976. As organic as her movement appears, Brown laid down fairly specific action guidelines. ..."
BAM 150 Years
Trisha Brown Dance Company
BAM: 2016 Winter/Spring Season

2008 May: Trisha Brown, 2010 December: "A Walk Across the Rooftops", 2011 January: Trisha Brown - Floor of the Forest (1970), 2011 March: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s, 2012 February: Dance/Draw.

Sanders Is Not Trump

"In the burgeoning genre of think pieces linking the rises of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Stephen Marche’s vapid Guardian essay over the weekend is perhaps the definitive contribution. Over the past several months, the two have been variously equated on the basis of their policy positions, hostility to party establishments, and allegiance to political 'extremism' — in other words, as somehow equivalent political phenomena. Both Trump and Sanders, we are ceaselessly told, are essentially vehicles for outrage, addressing discontent through demagogy, and are therefore similar. ..."
Jacobin

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (1965-1966)

Wikipedia - "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One is a 1965 album by the jazz musician Sun Ra. The back cover describes it as an 'album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra'. The album is a notable example of the radical break which Sun Ra's music of that time had made with 'previous notions of melody or harmony'. Although heavily percussive, the music also dispenses with a continuous beat; instead Ra's music is reconstructed around 'interweaving compositional and improvisatory creative principles with programmatic affects'. ..."
W - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
W - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two
allmusic - Vol. 1, allmusic - Vol. 2
A Fickle Sonance - Point of Departure
dusted magazine
New York Night Train
amazon
Spotify - Vol. 1, Vol. 2
YouTube: Vol. 1, Vol. 2

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.10.16

Scoutpines
"You did it! First week of 2016 DONE! Congratulations sis we still have a few blocks to go. Exciting new gallery shows already this weekend with Esteban Del Valle in LA and Dalek / Interezni Kazki in NYC and a home-baked hard nut trio of El Sol 25, Specter, and Russell Murphy 'Putting It In' in Brooklyn this week. Actually the latter would like to further the dialogue with you about what is the current rightful state of illegal work among all the pretty murals going up now on the streets. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

The Best Rapper Alive, Every Year Since 1979

"Rap fans—that is to say, people who are passionate and informed about the culture—tend to get into arguments with other rap fans. Debates are often sparked when one mischievous soul declaims their Favorite Rapper. Your favorite rapper is a personal preference, one that requires the most subjective defenses. If you’re rooting for the rookie of the year or a washed up veteran experiencing a career resurgence or someone no one has heard of as your favorite, then so be it. The choice is yours. (Got too many favorites to pick one? Here's a test: If you logged onto Complex.com and saw that three new singles from your three favorite rappers had just dropped, whomever's song you listened to first is your favorite rapper.) ..."
Complex (Video)

Truman Capote’s Brooklyn Heights: A Personal MemoirBrooklyn: Never-Before-Seen Pictures of Truman Capote, Taken by David Attie

"Truman Capote effectively launched my father’s career. Which is something I learned five months ago, decades after my father’s death. If that seems odd to you, well, it’s odd to me, too. The road to this book has been filled with strange accidents, surprising discoveries, and incredible good fortune. And, oh yeah, the brilliant work of David Attie. At this point you’re probably wondering: Who the hell was David Attie? My father was a steadily working commercial photographer for about 25 years. He was a student and protégé of the famed art director Alexey Brodovitch—who had similarly mentored the careers of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn—and his work appeared on magazine covers, book jackets, even subway posters throughout my childhood. He had gallery shows, published a beautiful book of photographs he took in the Soviet Union, and landed prints in the National Portrait Gallery. ..."
Vanity Fair
Lost Photographs Uncovered of Truman Capote's Brooklyn - 10 Photos
W - Brooklyn Heights: A Personal Memoir
amazon

The Mystery Of Sacagawea - Natalie Shure

"If Grace Hebard gave half a damn about the opinions of men, perhaps she would’ve married one. But she never had the time: Since ditching Iowa in 1882 for a pioneer’s life in Wyoming, she had become one of the most renowned scholars in the West. So when U.S. government officials kept rejecting requests for public cash, Hebard simply took matters into her own hands: In the spring of 1933, now in her seventies, Hebard shelled out $150 of her own money to round out a set of three historical markers up the road from Fort Washakie. The center monument honored the gravesite of Sacagawea, the fabled Shoshone interpreter who hiked with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific. The other two were for her sons: one for Bazil, and one for Jean-Baptiste, whose life began as a transcontinental papoose strapped to his mother’s back. ..."
Buzzfeed
W - Grace Raymond Hebard
W - Sacagawea

Clash on Broadway (1991)

"Clash on Broadway is a fine triple-disc, 63-song box set covering the Clash's entire career. Although there are very few rarities, it does include all of the band's important songs, including cuts that were only available on EPs, singles, and B-sides. As a result, it's a useful box set even for dedicated fans, presenting the band's evolution in a logical fashion. Nevertheless, compilations don't always suit the Clash well because The Clash and London Calling were powerful individual works in their own right, and hearing them cut up in this fashion alters their impact. Even so, for anyone looking for one set illustrating why the Clash were a great, important, and influential band, Clash on Broadway explains exactly why."
allmusic
W - Clash on Broadway
amazon
Dangerous Minds (Video)
YouTube: PART 1/3, PART 2/3, PART 3/3

Thingamajigs Festival 2013 - Tim Phillips, Todd Lerew, Sudhu Tewari, Fred Frith

"Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. ... Sudhu Tewari has been called a professional bricoleur, junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer. An early interest in disassembling alarm clocks and coffee makers gave rise to electro-acoustic instruments constructed with the remains of discarded stereo equipment, kinetic sculptures and sound installations. Sudhu builds audio electronics, acoustic instruments, kinetic sculptures, interactive installations, wearable sound art and recently began working with bicycles with wide variety of end results. ... Todd Lerew is a Los Angeles-based composer and instrument inventor, currently pursuing an MFA in Experimental Sound Composition at CalArts. His work deals with the physical properties of sound and the nature of perception, exploring the use of sound as a plastic medium, and revisiting our understanding of what sound is and how it operates. ... Tim Phillips is an English sound artist, musician and inventor based in Oakland, CA. His work looks at making people curious about sounds and rhythms, while using participation and collaboration to encourage interdisciplinary and unexpected outcomes. ... Thingamajigs presents another year of exciting new musical works for homemade instruments, found objects, DIY inventions, and alternate tunings by some of the Bay Area's most innovative artists. "
Brown Paper Tickets
YouTube: Thingamajigs Festival 2013 - Tim Phillips, Todd Lerew, Sudhu Tewari, Fred Frith 1:10:00

Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964–1979

One and Three Brooms, Joseph Kosuth
"Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964–1979 traces the course of conceptual art in Britain from its origin in the 1960s until the late 1970s – encompassing a defining period in British history that takes in the first Labour government of Harold Wilson and the election of Margaret Thatcher. The exhibition gathers together artists who set out to think beyond the limits of traditional art, predominantly using text and photography to place in question the material, aesthetic and philosophical conditions and purpose of art, and which in certain cases led to a direct engagement with society and issues of identity politics. Artists featured within the show include, among others: Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Conrad Atkinson, Victor Burgin, Michael Craig-Martin, Hamish Fulton, Margaret Harrison, Susan Hiller, John Hilliard, Mary Kelly, John Latham, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, David Tremlett and Stephen Willats."
Tate

The not-so-secret history of comics drawn by women

In 2014 the only woman who made the long list for the Grand Prix Angoulême International Comics Festival was Marjane Satrapi. In 2015, no women made the list.
"This week the largest comics festival in France announced its 30 nominees for what many consider the most prestigious prize in comics, the Grand Prix. Not one nominee was a woman. Usually there are at least few women on the longlist for the Angoulême International Comics Festival (known in French as the Festival international de la bande dessinée or FIBD). Last year’s list included only Marjane Sartrapi. In fact, in the festival’s 43-year history, there has only been one female Grand Prix winner: Florence Cestac, who got the prize in 2000. But this year, there was a swift reaction. ..."
Guardian
Welcome to 2016, When You Can't Afford to Ignore Women in Comics

Crescent - John Coltrane (1964)

"John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you. ... In the liner notes, a quote from Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka states John Coltrane was 'daringly human,' and no better example of this quality transferred to musical endeavor is available than on this definitive, must have album that encompasses all that he was and eventually would become."
allmusic
W - Crescent
Slate: John Coltrane's Finest Hour
Carving Coltrane’s “Crescent”
Spotify
YouTube: Crescent (full album)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960).

A Surge of Interest in East-Bloc Mementos

Lithographic portraits of Lenin (1972) in a Warholian style by the Hungarian artist Tibor Zala.
"When Communist regimes in Europe were unraveling in 1989, collaborators and dissidents alike began destroying vital historical material, from statues of dictators to family snapshots of government informers to manuals that exaggerated the quality of East German car engines. Now relics of ordinary life and heinous acts in the Soviet bloc are resurfacing in museums, publications and auctions. Recent books have delved into East German propaganda posters and Stalinist architecture as well as apartment life, bus-stop design, children’s books and store-window aesthetics in the Eastern bloc. ..."
NY Times

Making Chocolate the Traditional Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

"Chef turned restaurateur Alain Ducasse has rather a lot to say on the subject of chocolate. On the website of Le Manufacture, the small-batch chocolate factory he founded in a former Renault Garage, he waxes poetic, sharing wide-eyed childhood memories of the 'terribly sensual and bewitching substance.' He’s a bit more mercenary in the pages of the The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, noting that the chocolate operation grew out of his desire to control the process from cacao beans to dessert plates in his numerous fine dining establishments. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2015 January: Chocolate

Brooklyn, the Remix: A Hip-Hop Tour (2013)

A mural of the Notorious B.I.G., killed in 1997, in today’s Bedford-Stuyvesant.
"For current real estate purposes, the block where the Brooklyn rapper Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, once sold crack is now well within the boundaries of swiftly gentrifying Clinton Hill, though it was at the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant when he was growing up. Biggie, who was killed under still-mysterious circumstances in 1997, was just one of the many rappers to emerge from Brooklyn’s streets in the ’80s and ’90s. Including successful hardcore rappers, alternative hip-hop M.C.s, respected but obscure underground groups and some — like KRS-One and Gang Starr — who were arguably all of the above, the then-mean streets gave birth to an explosion of hip hop. Among the artists who lived in or hung out in this now gentrified corner of the borough: Not only Jay-Z, but also the Beastie Boys, Foxy Brown, Talib Kweli, Big Daddy Kane, Mos Def and L’il Kim. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Photo-Poetics: An Anthology

Moyra Davey, Les Goddesses, 2011. HD color video, with sound, 61 min., edition 5/5.
"This group exhibition features more than 70 works by ten artists: Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue examine an important new development in contemporary photography, offering an opportunity to define the concerns of a younger generation of artists and contextualize their work within the history of art and visual culture. Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism, these artists pursue a largely studio-based approach to still-life photography that centers on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. ..."
Guggenheim
aperture: Photo-Poetics: An Anthology at the Guggenheim
YouTube: "Photo-Poetics: An Anthology" (10.7.-30.8. 2015) @ Deutsche Bank KunstHalle

Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism

"... But even the nail-pounders and wrench-twisters and fishermen and farmers and writers out here have a sense that the politics of the nation are exuding an unfamiliar stench: Fascism is in the air. It's a special kind of gold-plated fascism, a fascism with a special orange color, a fascism with special turned-out lips, a fascism with a special voice, a fascism in a special shiny suit, a fascism that rides around in special big black cars and flies around in special big private jets, a fascism that arises not from ideology but from a special sort of privilege and a special sort of resentment unique to New York City: outer-borough resentment. In short, it's from Queens and it's Donald Trump's kind of fascism. It's Toy Fascism."
Voice
Jacobin: When Fascism Was American
The Nation:  Schlonged? Donald Trump’s Pathetic Frat-Boy Politics
NY Times: A Crass Act

Fifty Years Later, Looking for Last Exit (BKLYNR - 2014)

"Fifty years ago this fall, Grove Press published Last Exit to Brooklyn, a collection of revolting interweaving stories — which Hubert Selby Jr. had begun publishing in literary magazines as early as 1957 — that became a controversial instant classic of postwar urban degeneracy, populated by drunks, drug addicts, violently repressed homosexuals, victimized transvestites, worn-out laborers, and idle thugs. It’s not the only one of Selby’s six novels (and one story collection) still in print — Da Capo Press still publishes his other best-known book, Requiem for a Dream, thanks surely in part to Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film adaptation — though it’s the only one I’ve ever seen on shelves in Brooklyn’s independent bookstores, when they stock any Selby books at all. Still, neither Grove nor anyone else has announced plans for a 50th anniversary edition; it seems like Allen Ginsberg’s hope (once used in a full-page ad in the New York Times, now a pull quote on the paperback) that the book 'should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years' may have been dashed. ..."
BKLYNR
W - Last Exit to Brooklyn (1963)
W - Hubert Selby, Jr.
amazon: Last Exit to Brooklyn
NPR: In 'Last Exit,' Brooklyn Is A Character, Too (Video)
Guardian: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr – review
Too Horrible [LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN]
YouTube: Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)
YouTube: Hubert Selby Jr - 'It/ll Be Better Tomorrow'