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.