​Epic Iran

 

A room in the exhibition “Epic Iran” at the Victoria and Albert Museum that is devoted to Persepolis, the ancient city that was once the capital of the Persian Empire.

“The board game is roughly 4,500 years old. Shaped like a bird of prey, it has holes running down its wings and chest, where the pieces were once positioned. It’s one of a few dozen ancient objects that were set to travel from the National Museum of Iran for a spectacular exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum here. But they never came.Other artifacts that were set to be shown — as detailed and illustrated and in the catalog for that exhibition ‘Epic Iran’ — included a gold mask, a long-handled silver pan and a carved stone goblet. ...”

NY Times: Looking Beyond the Ayatollah to the Treasures of Iran

V&A: Epic Iran (Video)

Guardian - Five thousand years of mystical magnificence: Epic Iran at the V&A – review

 

A folio from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, Tabriz, about 1523 – 35. The Sarikhani Collection

'I make these collages and write': Alice Notley's visual art

 

Alice Notley reading from ‘When I Was Alive’ at her MoMA PS1 show. 

“Alice Notley’s one and only exhibition of her visual art in the United States was in 1980 at MoMA PS1. The press release, written by Notley, notes that her collages are made ‘of paper (potential trash) from the poet/artist’s life, pieces of illustrations from favorite cheap books, sidewalk discoveries, and things she could see on the floor, from her chair, and was too lazy to throw away.’ Notley’s nonchalance toward her materials should not be mistaken for a lack of aesthetic intensity. Like her visionary poetry, which she has written and published continuously for over fifty years, Notley’s visual art is defined by intricate layers of presence and association as well as common themes: light, femininity, and irreducibility. ...”

Jacket2

W - Alice Notley

Poetry Foundation: My Fans By Alice Notley 

Poetry Foundation: Notes on  ‘Runes and Chords’ By Alice Notley

Poetry Foundation - ‘Spirit Flows From Pieces’: Alice Notley’s Collage Art

“Parthenon Fan,” 1992

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

 “Wild Combination begins with interviews of Russell's parents discussing their youngest offspring's childhood. The film describes how Russell as a young boy is obsessed with Timothy Leary and insecure about his acne. Leaving Iowa for San Francisco in the late sixties, he joins a Buddhist collective and befriends Allen Ginsberg. Russell decides to move to New York in the early seventies, where he starts working as the musical director of the Kitchen and becomes part of the downtown scene of artists, sharing an apartment building with Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell. Russell engages in nearly every music scene the city has to offer: disco at David Mancuso's Loft, rock at CBGB, minimal composition at the Kitchen, and Allen Ginsberg's poetry recitations. In 1978, Russell begins dating Tom Lee, whom he stays with until his AIDS-related death in 1992. ...”

Wikipedia

Guardian - My streaming gem: why you should watch Wild Combination (Video)

Criterion (Video)

2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2015 September: Arthur Russell, 2017 January: Instrumentals (2007), 2017 April: The Infinite Worlds of Arthur Russell, 2018 December: The World Of Arthur Russell (2004), 2019 May: Another Thought (1994), 2020 May: Vanished into Music

​60 minutes of music that sum up art-punk pioneers Wire

 

“... It’d be a stretch to say that Wire was the first art-punk band, given that much of the New York proto-punk scene (such as Patti Smith and Television) had ties to the art world, and a lot of the arty musicians that inspired Wire (such as Roxy Music and Neu) were skating on the edge of punk years before the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. But at a time in rock ’n’ roll when ‘art’ meant something either aggressively avant-garde or pretentiously progressive, Wire offered an attractive combination of the experimental and the accessible. Even at its inception, when the band was redefining what a song could be by writing and recording minute-long vignettes, the music usually had actual melodies and riffs—or, at the least, interesting sounds that could pass for a hook. ...”

AV CLUB (Video)

2009 January: Wire, 2012 January: On the Box 1979, 2013 September: Chairs Missing (1978), 2014 June: 154 (1979), 2014 July: Document And Eyewitness (1979-1980), 2015 April: The Ideal Copies: Graham Lewis Of Wire's Favourite Albums, 2015 July: Pink Flag (1977), 2015 December: The Peel Sessions Album (1989), “Dot Dash”, "Options R" (1978), 2017 June: Outdoor Miner / Practice Makes Perfect (1979), 2017 November: Live at the Roxy, London, 2018 June: Wire at Maxwell's (06-12-1987)

Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965 - David H. Rosenthal

From The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 1988: “Hard Bop, as a dominant school of jazz, flourished between 1955 and 1965—a decade unrivalled by any other in jazz history for the number of musically brilliant records that were issued. ... In addition to these magnificent recordings—and many others could be cited—the period also witnessed an outpouring of superb music that, while not quite up to the level of the records just mentioned, was notable for its passion and beauty. The foundation for this music was ‘bebop,’ a style that flourished in the late 1940s, whose high priests included trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Bud Powell and composer Tadd Dameron. ...”

The Jazz Annex

W - David H. Rosenthal

amazon

Walter Benjamin - Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1969)

 

“German Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940) was a writer, a philosopher, a critic, a spiritual sceptic, and, most of all, a collector. Benjamin collected ideas, concepts, books, and small items of personal cosmic worth. Illuminations is a collection of Benjamin’s essays—critical and otherwise—chosen and edited by philosopher Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a scholar on institutionalized evil, tell us that collecting was ‘Benjamin’s central passion’ and that he had a destructive affinity for the past. ...”

The Examined Life

Walter Benjamin on Information vs. Wisdom and Storytelling as the Antidote to Death by News

[PDF] Illuminations

amazon

2015 September: In praise of dirty, sexy cities: the urban world according to Walter Benjamin, 2020 September: On Benjamin’s Public (Oeuvre), 2020 November: When Waking Begins

Glen Brown And King Tubby - Termination Dub (1973-79)

 

“Originally a singer, Glen Brown first ventured into production in the early '70s, releasing his distinct creations through homegrown labels. However, financial constraints ultimately led to a lack of success, with Brown unable to press as many copies as he would undoubtedly have been able to sell. Regardless, he continued to produce, turning out a series of excellent records during the second half of the decade. The rhythms Brown oversaw during those years, as performed by drummers Carlton Barrett and Carlton ‘Santa’ Davis, bassists Aston Barrett and Lloyd Parks, organists Winston Wright and Earl Lindo, and many others of similar stature, stand up to virtually anything from the roots era. ...”

Holland Tunnel Dive

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Termination Dub (1973-79) [Full Album]  49:01

​Debatable: Has the Pentagon covered up space aliens?

 

Former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who worked to fund a Pentagon program for U.F.O. research in 2007.

“At some point next month, U.S. intelligence agencies are expected to brief Congress about recorded encounters between military personnel and mysterious flying objects appearing to defy the limits of known human technology. Yes, U.F.O.s. And yes, explained to the same branch of government that once had to ask Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook works. ... How did we get here, and how should we take the suggestion — made by a former C.I.A. director, among others — that these U.F.O.s are of alien origin? Here’s what people are saying. ...”

NY Times (Video)

​Dawn Delight: Catch the Total Lunar Eclipse on May 26th

 

“If it feels like a while since the Moon took a deep dive into Earth's shadow, you're right. The last total lunar eclipse occurred on January 21, 2019, followed by four penumbral eclipses in 2020. Wait no more! On May 26th, observers in the western half of North America, western South America, East Asia, and Australia will once again see the Moon fully eclipsed. This eclipse will be short and sweet much like the total solar variety, with the Moon spending just 15.9 minutes inside the umbra, Earth's central shadow. The brief visit is due to two factors. First, the Moon passes well north of the umbra's center with its northern limb nearly tangent to the umbra's edge. Minutes after it enters the shadow, it pushes out the other side. ...”

Sky & Telescope

W - Lunar eclipse

YouTube: Total Lunar Eclipse | Griffith Observatory | May 26, 2021  3:40:52, “The Flower Super Blood Moon Total Eclipse”: online observation – 26 May  2021  2:01:35

Official Secrets - Gavin Hood (2019)

 

“... The whistle-blower in ‘Official Secrets’ has only one memo to print out, a modest if mighty task that here looks like, well, a woman anxiously using an office printer in bad lighting. One of those ripped-from-the-headlines jobs, ‘Official Secrets’ revisits how a British intelligence officer, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), tried to stop a war. In 2003, a few months before the invasion of Iraq, Gun received an email that had been sent to her division in Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (a.k.a. GCHQ). It was from Frank Koza, identified as the chief of staff for the regional targets division at the National Security Agency of the United States. ...”

NY Times - ‘Official Secrets’ Review: Betraying Her Government for Her Country (Video)

Guardian - Official Secrets review – Keira Knightley shines as a very British whistleblower (Video)

W - Official Secrets

amazon

YouTube: OFFICIAL SECRETS - Official Trailer [HD] Keira Knightley

May 25 Should Be a Day of Mourning for George Floyd

 

“Carrying Casket”, by Jammie Holmes, Library Street Collective.

“When the protests started in the streets of Denver last spring, days after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, I watched dozens of people marching with anguish and affliction on their faces. Several of them were crying, or clearly had been. When I watched the video of the final moments of Mr. Floyd’s life, I myself felt the telltale symptoms of grief: a clenched stomach; a surge of adrenaline; and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. As they unfolded over the next days and weeks, the protests seemed like a moment when Black grief — a feeling familiar for Black Americans after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till and so many others — might finally become collective grief for the rest of America. ...”

NY Times: Opinion

 

“George Floyd’s murder felt like everything was the same and nothing was the same, said Miski Noor, an activist in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a white police officer a year ago on 25 May. ‘How many times have we seen Black death go viral?’ asked Noor, the co-founder of Black Visions, which advocates for abolition, an approach to public safety that does not involve the police. Noor, who helped found the group in 2017, knows that to abolish policing you also must confront systemic racism and the weight of history. And Noor also knows as the child of Somali immigrants, that the issues are global. ...”

Guardian - One year on, how George Floyd’s murder has changed the world (Video)

NY Times: A Timeline of What Has Happened in the Year Since George Floyd’s Death

NY Times: One Year Later

George Floyd Memorial Center plans Day of Enlightenment (Video)

​Two portraits of one lowdown saloon in 1919 Greenwich Village

 

“The Village has always had dive bars that attract locals and luminaries. But The Golden Swan, on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, might have been the first—and the most notorious in its day. Inside this Irish tavern dating back to at least the 1870s, writers, artists, activists, and assorted Village characters of the 1910s gathered to drink. (National prohibition was looming, after all.) While the front of the tavern may have catered to locals and Hudson Dusters gangsters, bohemians made the back room—aka, the Hell Hole—their own. Charles Demuth was a fan of the Swan. ...”

Ephemeral New York

​Chess in the arts

 

Honoré Daumier (1863), The Chess Players

“Chess became a source of inspiration in the arts in literature soon after the spread of the game to the Arab World and Europe in the Middle Ages. The earliest works of art centered on the game are miniatures in medieval manuscripts, as well as poems, which were often created with the purpose of describing the rules. After chess gained popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, many works of art related to the game were created. One of the best-known, Marco Girolamo Vida's poem Scacchia ludus, written in 1527, made such an impression on the readers that it singlehandedly inspired other authors to create poems about chess. In the 20th century, artists created many works related to the game, sometimes taking their inspiration from the life of famous players (Vladimir Nabokov in The Defense) or  well-known games (Poul Anderson in Immortal Game, John Brunner in The Squares of the City). ...”

Wikipedia

Chess in the Arts

The Chess Players — John Lavery (1929)

Andrea Belfi & Machinefabriek ‎– Pulses & Places (2009)

 

“This ninth release in the Brombron series (hosted by Korm Plastics) comes from the absurdly prolific Machinefabriek and Italian electro-acoustic musician Andrea Belfi.  For this project, Rutger Zuydervelt plays guitar and organ, while Belfi concentrates on drums and assorted percussive instruments. While the mood of the music is consistent with Machinefabriek's propensity towards atmospheric, detailed ambience, there's a markedly more organic aspect to this music that sets it apart from most of the Dutch composer's collaborations. The presence of Belfi's live, acoustic drums puts a very different slant on this music, bringing a kind of swaying, somnolent rhythm to the first piece, while Zuydervelt's layered drones map out a woozy trail. ...”

Boomkat

Bandcamp (Audio)

W - Andrea Belfi, W - Machinefabriek

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Pulses & Places (Full Album) 34:13

The Battle of Algiers

 

“The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of urban guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front (FLN) against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of attacks by the FLN against the French forces followed by a terrorist attack on Algerian civilians in Algiers by a group of Pieds-Noirs (European settlers), aided by the police. Reprisals followed and the violence escalated leading the French Governor-General to deploy the French Army in Algiers to suppress the FLN. Civilian authorities left all prerogatives to General Jacques Massu who, operating outside legal frameworks between January and September 1957, successfully eliminated the FLN from Algiers. The use of torture, forced disappearances and illegal executions by the French later caused controversy in France. ...”

Wikipedia, W - National Liberation Front, W - Women in the Algerian War

YouTube: The Algerian Revolutionary, Larbi Ben Mhidi 47:23, Veterans: The French in Algeria 24:23

 

The six historical Leaders of the FLN: Rabah Bitat, Mostefa Ben Boulaïd, Mourad Didouche, Mohammed Boudiaf, Krim Belkacem and Larbi Ben M'Hidi. 

 

The Battle of Algiers - Gillo Pontecorvo

“The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 Italian-Algerian historical war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and starring Jean Martin and Saadi Yacef. It is based on events undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962) against the French government in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle. The film's score was composed by Ennio Morricone. It is often associated with Italian neorealist cinema. The film concentrates mainly on revolutionary fighter Ali La Pointe during the years between 1954 and 1957, when guerrilla fighters of the FLN regrouped and expanded into the Casbah, the citadel of Algiers. Their actions were met by French paratroopers attempting to regain territory. The highly dramatic film is about the organization of a guerrilla movement and the illegal methods, such as torture, used by the colonial power to contain it. Algeria succeeded in gaining independence from the French, which Pontecorvo addresses in the film's epilogue. The film has been critically acclaimed. Both insurgent groups and state authorities have considered it to be an important commentary on urban guerrilla warfare. ...”

W - The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers at Fifty

Madeleine Dobie — Edward Said on The Battle of Algiers: The Maghreb, Palestine and Anti-Colonial Aesthetics

senses of cinema

Criterion: The Battle of Algiers (BLU-RAY/DVD)

YouTube: The Battle of Algiers - Trailer, An Excerpt from Marxist Poetry: The Making of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, Steven Soderbergh, Mira Nair, Spike Lee, and Julian Schnabel on THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

Albert Camus

NPR - Camus' 'Chronicles': A History Of The Past, A Guide For The Future, NY Times: The Postcolonial, New Republic: What Camus Understood About the Middle East, YouTube: Albert Camus, Algerian Chronicles, ABC: Late Night Live, Google, amazon: Algerian Chronicles

Frantz Fanon and the Algerian revolution today, Fanon — Revolution, W - A Dying Colonialism - Frantz Fanon, [PDF] A Dying Colonialism, amazon

Mother Jones: A Savage War of Peace, amazon: A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, Google

History and the politicians (May 2021)

 

Frantz Fanon

Deux Filles ‎– Silence & Wisdom / Double Happiness (2013)

 

“The short, mysterious career of the female French duo Deux Filles is bookended by tragedy. Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule met as teenagers at a holiday pilgrimage to Lourdes, during which Coule's mother died of an incurable lung disease and Forque's mother was killed and her father paralyzed in an auto accident. The two teens bonded over their shared grief and worked through their bereavement with music. However, after recording two critically acclaimed albums and playing throughout Europe and North America, Forque and Coule disappeared without a trace in North Africa in 1984 during a trip to visit Algiers. The short and terribly unhappy lives of Forque and Coule are at the root of the small but fervent cult following the mysterious duo have gained since their disappearance, not least because the placid, largely instrumental music on the duo's albums betrays no hint of the sorrow that framed their personal lives. ...”

Dark Entries (Audio)

The Quietus

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Silence & Wisdom (1982) FULL ALBUM

​The Super League Thought It Had a Silent Partner: FIFA

 

“Tucked away in the pages and pages of financial and legal jargon that constitute the founding contract of the Super League, the failed project that last month briefly threatened the century-old structures and economics of European soccer, were references to one ‘essential’ requirement. The condition was deemed so important that organizers agreed that the breakaway plan could not succeed without satisfying it and yet was so secret that it was given a code name even in contracts shared among the founders. Those documents, copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times, refer to the need for the Super League founders to strike an agreement with an entity obliquely labeled W01 but easily identifiable as FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. ...”

NY Times

​Trump Is Marching Down the Road to Political Violence

 

“At the beginning of last week, former President Donald Trump referred to the 2020 election as the ‘greatest Election Fraud in the history of our Country.’ By the end of the week, he had issued a statement saying, ‘As our Country is being destroyed, both inside and out, the Presidential Election of 2020 will go down as THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!’ What else is new? These are the ravings of a 74-year-old sociopath, isolated and banned from social media, living in Mar-a-Lago, where he is crashing wedding parties and delivering rambling monologues. ...”

The Atlantic

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March 21: ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol, 2021 April: Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds

Projective Verse - Charles Olson (1959)

 

“Charles Olson’s influential manifesto, ‘Projective Verse,’ was first published as a pamphlet, and then was quoted extensively in William Carlos Williams’ Autobiography (1951).  ... Composition by field opposes the traditional method of poetic composition based on received form and measure. Olson sees the challenge of the transference of poetic energy from source to poem to reader, and the way in which that energy shifts at each juncture, as particularly of concern to poets who engage in composition by field, because the poet is no longer relying on a received structure as a propulsive force. ...”

Poetry Foundation: Essay on Poetic Theory - Projective Verse

LARB - All Architectures I Am: The (Unintended) Legacy of Charles Olson’s Projective Verse

Projective Verse - Printer’s Devil Review (Video)

[PDF] Projective Verse

2009 January: Charles Olson, 2009 April: Rockport Harbor, 2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12, 2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957, 2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length, 2013 January: Mass.Charles Olson, 2013 May: The Maximus Poems, 2013 November: A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson , 2015 March: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket" (1950), 2017 May: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson edited by George Butterick, 2017 May: Gloucester HarborWalk #: Charles Olson 3rd Letter on Georges, unwritten to Schooner Footage, 2020 March: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester

​Deeper Listening: An Introduction to Drone Composition

 

“Drone composition encompasses a variety of music, all of which use long, slow-moving pitches as a vehicle for questioning how we perceive sound. Composers create these transfixing pieces by manipulating tape, layering acoustic instruments, and even inventing whole new instruments; but regardless of the nuts-and-bolts of their creation, the aim of drone composition is have us reconsider the role of sound in our day-to-day lives.The genre is garnering new attention thanks to the documentary Sisters With Transistors (2020), which sheds light on the work of female electronic musicians, many of whom were pioneers in the field of drone composition. ...”

bandcamp (Audio)

amazon: Experimental Music Since 1970, Jennie Gottschalk

Burning Spear - The Fittest Of The Fittest (1983)

 

“After the rather disappointing Farover, this mellow album laid down a firm foundation for the future, ensuring that while Burning Spear's fire no longer burned as fiery as before, a bright glow would still last down through the years. The Fittest of the Fittest's title track encapsulates both the sound and vision of what was to come. The Burning Band's rhythm section lays down a succulently meaty groove, while the rest of the musicians weave in and out, layering on riffs and flourishes to create a rich tapestry of sound. Overhead, Winston Rodney chants along, a long-distance roadrunner eating up the miles and passing cultural touchstones along the way. ... A superb album, which while not in the same class as Spear's first five releases, proves that the artist still has a good deal of simmer left. ...”                ”

allmusic (Audio)

W - The Fittest of the Fittest

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: 7'' Bad To Worse (& Dub), Fittest of the Fittest (2002 Remaster), Old Boy Garvey (2002 Remaster), Repatriation (2002 Remaster),  2000 Years (2002 Remaster)

A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP – A Fareed Zakaria Special

 

“CNN’s Fareed Zakaria investigates the roots of the radicalization of the modern Republican party.  A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP – A Fareed Zakaria Special, explores the roots that foreshadowed this critical moment for American democracy in a one-hour prime time special that premieres Sunday, May 16 at 8:00pm Eastern on CNN and CNN International. From Barry Goldwater and the John Birch Society, to the conspiracy theories of the defeated Donald Trump, who refused to accept the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and fomented an insurrection, Zakaria traces the GOP’s tradition of elevating personalities prepared to suppress the democratic franchise through the pursuit of illiberal extremism and conservative grievances against a changing world. Zakaria shows the political pathway of how America landed at the current inflection point for the ‘Party of Lincoln.’ ...

CNN

CNN (Video)

Extraterrestrial Plutonium Atoms Turn Up on Ocean Bottom

 

The remnants of a supernova, center bottom in blue-green, near the Small Magellanic Cloud, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“Scientists studying a sample of oceanic crust retrieved from the Pacific seabed nearly a mile down have discovered traces of a rare isotope of plutonium, the deadly element that has been central to the atomic age. They say it was made in colliding stars and later rained down through Earth’s atmosphere as cosmic dust millions of years ago. Their analysis opens a new window on the cosmos. ... Dr. [Anton] Wallner works at the Australian National University as well as the Helmholtz Center in Dresden, Germany.Dr. Wallner and his colleagues reported their findings in Science on Thursday.Plutonium has a bad reputation, one that is well-deserved. ...”

NY Times

America’s Dead Souls

 

Engraving from Gustave Doré’s 1861 illustration of Dante’s Inferno.

“There is money to be made off the dead. Nikolai Gogol knew this when he wrote his masterpiece, Dead Souls, the story of a middle-aged man named Chichikov who buys dead serfs with the intention of mortgaging their souls for a profit. I chose to read this novel at the start of quarantine, when everyone else was reading War and Peace. I had already read War and Peace. It ruined my life. I wasn’t keen to have my life ruined again. I wanted some other grand, sweeping Russian epic to fill my time. I wish I would have been more cautious in picking a book. Every time I read one of the Russian greats my life transforms into an eerie mirror of the work....”

The Paris Review