"Don van Vliet, alias 'Captain Beefheart', is one of the most influential, misunderstood, talked about, admired, copied, treasured, loved and quoted musicians and yet he is still an obscure and mysterious artist."
UbuWeb
Anton Corbijn
"Don van Vliet, alias 'Captain Beefheart', is one of the most influential, misunderstood, talked about, admired, copied, treasured, loved and quoted musicians and yet he is still an obscure and mysterious artist."
UbuWeb
Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht
"Weill came of age at the end of World War I, in a Europe that was both spiritually exhausted, ghastly, frightening, desperate -- and remarkably creative. The carnage of World War I had shattered the smug 19th-century illusion that Western societies had achieved perfect, rational civilizations under wise, benign leaders. When the smoke cleared and the millions of bodies were buried, every art form underwent radical change, from old styles of simplistic (and often schmaltzy) charm and harmony to new, terrifying visions of fear, dread, satire, revolt and despair."
Gordscafe, Three Penny Opera, Wikipedia - Kurt Weill, W - Bertolt Brecht, YouTube, (1), (2)
Jah Wobble
"Fascinating collusion of East, West and down-deep dub This could well be one of the greatest things to have come out of Liverpool’s status as Capital Of Culture 2008. Wobble’s commissioned collaboration with a selection of handpicked traditional Chinese musicians came to a wonderful blossoming conclusion with a series of gigs that blended Chinese music with his own hefty dub leanings. This album is the beautiful extrapolation of those unique moments."
MySpace, YouTube
Brooklyn Royal Giants
Wikipedia - "The Brooklyn Royal Giants were a professional baseball team based in Brooklyn, New York which played in the Negro Leagues. They were one of the premier professional teams before World War I, winning multiple championships in the East. During the 1920s, under the ownership of Nat Strong, a white New York City booking agent, the team fell into somewhat of a decline, and did very poorly while in Eastern Colored League."
Wikipedia, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Brooklyn Royal Giants, Google
Cabaret Voltaire
Wikipedia - "Cabaret Voltaire were a British music group from Sheffield, England. Initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group was named after the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland that was a centre for the early Dada movement. Their earliest performances were dada-influenced performance art, but Cabaret Voltaire later developed into one of the most prolific and important groups to blend pop with dance music, techno, dub house and experimental electronic music."
Wikipedia, W - Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich), brainwashed, last.fm, MySpace, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)
The Wicker Man
Wikipedia - "The Wicker Man was a large wicker statue of a human used by the ancient Druids (priests of Celtic paganism) for human sacrifice by burning it in effigy, according to Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentary on the Gallic Wars). In modern times the figure has been adopted for festivals as part of some neopagan-themed ceremonies, notably without the human sacrifice element."
Wikipedia
Kid Creole and the Coconuts
Wikipedia - "Kid Creole and the Coconuts is an American musical group created and led by August Darnell. Their music incorporates a variety of styles and influences, in particular 'American and Latin American, South American, Caribbean, Trinidadian, Calloway' and conceptually inspired by the big band era."
Wikipedia, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, MySpace, YouTube, (1), (2), (3)
The Beatles' Christmas Album
Wikipedia - "The Beatles' Christmas Album (U.S.) aka From Then to You (UK), was a 1970 compilation album of the Christmas records issued via the Beatles' Fan Club—and made available solely to members of their official fan clubs in the UK and the U.S. The Beatles' Christmas Album was issued as From Then to You in the UK by Apple Records (LYN 2154) and in the U.S. (SBC 100)."
Wikipedia, The Beatles' Christmas Record, The Beatles Fan Club Christmas Records, THE BEATLES CHRISTMAS RECORDS updated 12/08, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)
An Italian City Shaken to Its Cultural Core
"Cities take centuries to grow, but they can die in the relative blink of an eye. After an earthquake in April killed hundreds and left tens of thousands homeless in and around this medieval and Baroque city some 70 miles northeast of Rome, the emergency relief efforts were extraordinary. Volunteers from all over Italy rushed to help."
NYT
Sophie Calle
Wikipedia - "Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing."
Wikipedia, Paula Cooper Gallery, iniva, Artist
Victorian Infographics
"A time table indicating the difference in time between the principal cities of the World and also showing their air-line distance from Washington."
BibliOdyssey
UbuWeb Ethnopoetics
"The breakthroughs of the last 100 years in poetry and elsewhere have been marked by new approaches to language and performance. Largely this has been the work of several generations of experimental writers and performers, many of them now archived and available thru Ubuweb and related web sites."
UbuWeb Ethnopoetics
Matt Kish, Zak Smith
MOBY-DICK, Page 097
"About this Moby-Dick project: In August of 2009, I was really restless. I remembered seeing a book where the artist Zak Smith had made one illustration for every page of Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow. I was really blown away by how amazing his art was, and by the whole idea in general, so a while later I decided to try the same thing myself. Only instead of Gravity's Rainbow I decided to work on my favorite novel, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick."
One Drawing for Every Page of Moby-Dick, zak smith,
"mission": reappropriating public space in new york
"Why is it ok to take down someone else's work (/advertisement) and put my work up instead: The message of this work is not 'buy! buy! buy!' it is 'look, enjoy, think, like, don't like, form an opinion.' It engages viewers in a dialogue which advertisements do not. Each piece of art put in a public space, in place of an ad, is an opportunity for viewers to reconnect with the space they inhabit."
Wooster Collective
Wax Audio
"Wax Audio, otherwise know as Tom Compagnoni, began cutting, pasting, mixing, mashing and producing digital audio ditties for the online world back in 2003 at his home studio in Sydney, Australia. As the drums of war began beating in a global media hell bent on destruction in Iraq, Tom produced Wax Audio's first pointedly political online audio presentation - WMD ...and other distractions."
Wax Audio, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), Google, Vimeo
Théodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa, 1819
Wikpedia - "Théodore Géricault (26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he became one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement."
Wikipedia, Google
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
"One of my favorite Walt Kelly books. It's covered a lot of miles, as you can tell by the condition of the cover. This isn't the entire book; just the Charlie material."
Alsirois, Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Whirled of Kelly
Raymond Roussel
Wikipedia - "Raymond Roussel (Paris, January 20, 1877 - Palermo, July 14, 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau roman."
Wikipedia, Almalen, Louis Bury
Miniature sheet
Wikipedia - "A souvenir sheet or miniature sheet is a small group of postage stamps still attached to the sheet on which they were printed. They may be either regular issues that just happen to be printed in small groups (typical of many early stamps), or special issues often commemorating some event, such as a national anniversary, philatelic exhibition, or government program."
Wikipedia, Commons
Analog Africa No. 3 - African Scream Contest
"This project initially took off in August, 2005 when I arrived in Cotonou without any special expectations, just hoping to lay my hands on few good records. What I found in the process cannot really be described in words. This first trip was followed by eight more to the region."
Analog Africa, Dusted Magazine
The Known Universe
"The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible ..."
YouTube
The McCoys
Wikipedia - "'Hang On Sloopy' is a song by the pop group The McCoys which was #1 in America in October 1965 and is the official rock song of the state of Ohio and The Ohio State University. It was written by Wes Farrell and Bert Russell and is named for singer Dorothy Sloop (1913-1998), who used the name 'Sloopy' on stage."
Wikipedia, YouTube
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex
Wikipedia - "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is a 2008 German film by Uli Edel; written and produced by Bernd Eichinger. It stars Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck and Johanna Wokalek. The film is based on the 1985 German best selling non-fiction book of the same name by Stefan Aust. It retells the story of the early years of the West German militant group the Red Army Faction (RAF)."
Wikipedia, W - Red Army Faction, Baader Meinhof Movie, imdb, YouTube
Keith Tyson
Wikipedia - "Keith Tyson (b. August 23, 1969) is a British Turner Prize-winning artist. He works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing and installation, and he is noted equally for his painting series, such as Nature Paintings (2005 - 2008), and his large-scale sculptures and installations such as Large Field Array (2005)."
Wikipedia, Keith Tyson, artnet, Google
Bob Waldmire
Wikipedia - "Bob Waldmire (April 19, 1945–December 16, 2009) was an American artist who is well known for his artwork of U.S. Route 66. Being the son of Ed Waldmire Jr., he is often associated with the Cozy Dog Drive In restaurant in Springfield, Illinois (on U.S. Route 66), where it is claimed that the elder Waldmire (along with his friend Don Strand) created the corn dog."
Wikipedia, Route 66, Illinois Times, Sun Times, Chicago Tribune
James Chance
Wikipedia - "A key figure in No Wave, Chance has been playing a combination of improvisational jazz-like music and punk in the New York music scene since the late 1970s, in such bands as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions, James White and the Blacks (as he appeared in the film Downtown 81), The Flaming Demonics, James Chance & the Sardonic Symphonics, and James Chance and Terminal City."
Wikipedia, MySpace, The Blow Up, YouTube, (1), (2), (3)
Stone circle
Wikipedia - "A stone circle is an ancient monument of standing stones. It is not always precisely circular, often forming an ellipse, or more rarely a setting of four stones laid on an arc of a circle. The size and number of stones in a 'circle' varies from example to example. More than 1,000 stone circles have been catalogued for the British Isles and parts of Western Europe, mostly lying not more than 100 miles from the sea. Erected thousands of years ago, their purpose is still something of a mystery."
Wikipedia
This Is England
Wikipedia - "The film is centred on young skinheads, and is set in England in July 1983. The film illustrates that the skinhead subculture, whose roots are associated with Jamaican culture (especially ska, rocksteady, and reggae music), eventually became adopted by white nationalist groups such as the National Front."
Wikipedia, imdb, Guardian), Vimeo
The Red Book of C.G. Jung
"This unprecedented exhibition marks the first public presentation of the preeminent psychologist C. G. Jung’s (1875-1961) famous Red Book. During the period in which he worked on this book Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation."
Rubin Museum of Art, Red Book Video, NYT
History of astronomy
Wikipedia - "Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, and astrological practices of pre-history: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not completely disentangled from it until a few centuries ago in the Western World (see astrology and astronomy)."
Wikipedia
Gabriel Orozco
Wikipedia - "Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist, called 'one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too.' He was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and educated in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984."
Wikipedia, Art 21: PBS, MoMA
Youssou N'Dour
Wikipedia - "Youssou N'Dour ... (born 1 October 1959 in Dakar) is a Senegalese singer, percussionist and occasional actor. In 2004, Rolling Stone described him as, in Senegal and much of Africa, 'perhaps the most famous singer alive.' He helped develop a style of popular music in Senegal, known by its Wolof language name of mbalax."
Wikipedia, Youssou N'Dour, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)
Jeff Greinke
Wikipedia - "Jeff Greinke is an American ambient music and jazz artist and composer currently based in Tucson, Arizona. He is known as one of the pioneers of dark ambient music, with his earlier solo albums often compared to works by Robert Rich, Brian Eno, and Vidna Obmana. Greinke's approach on his ambient works is to heavily layer, mutitrack, and texture soundscapes, effectively using the studio as an instrument."
Wikipedpa, MySpace, Profile: Jeff Greinke, last.fm, Rhapsody, Ambience for the Masses, YouTube
Dick Higgins
Wikipedia - "Dick Higgins (March 15, 1938 – October 25, 1998) was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist."
Wikipedia, Dick Higgins, TAM Interview #43
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