Living in Havana

"The Directors of Marlborough Chelsea are pleased to announce that an exhibition featuring the contemporary Cuban artists Abel Barroso, Roberto Diago, Kcho, William Pérez, and Ernesto Rancaño will open May 19 and continue through June 18, 2011. The extensive exhibition will be held on both the first and second floors of the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery and will include works varying in size and media, from intimately-sized etchings on acrylic board to large-scale sculptural works."
Marlborough Gallery

Whistler & His Jug Band

"Whistler & His Jug Band came up out of Louisville, Kentucky, and became the first recorded jug band, according to R Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country. They recorded at least twenty-one songs between 1924 and 1931. The names of the musicians remain unknown."
Whistler & His Jug Band, YouTube - Foldin' Bed, Jerry O' Mine, I'm a Jazz Baby, Jail House Blues, Chicago Flip

Patti Smith - "Ghost Dance"

"We shall live again, we shall live. What is it children that falls from the sky? Tayi, taya, tayi, aye aye. Mannah from Heaven from the most high, Food from the father, tayi, taye aye. We shall live again, we shall live again, We shall live again, shake out the ghost dance."
YouTube

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble with the Todd Reynolds Quartet

"Meredith Monk celebrates the release of her new album, Songs of Ascension, with a live concert. Join New Sounds’ John Schaefer for performance and conversation with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, along with the Todd Reynolds Quartet."
WNYC - Video, amazon

Robert Montgomery

"Robert Montgomery works in a poetic and melancholic post-Situationist tradition. Since 2005 he has carried out his WORDS IN THE CITY AT NIGHT project where, echoing the Situationist concept of detournement, he hijacks advertising space in the city, often illegally. His texts are part poetry, part an enquiry into our collective unconscious."
Robert Montgomery

Ah Pook Is Here (1994)

"Directed by Philip Hunt. Writing credits William S. Burroughs. Music By, Performer, John Cale. Dresden Film Festival: 1995 Won Best Animation Film, Philip Hunt"
YouTube

Charles Hardin Holly; Clovis, New Mexico; May 27, 1957

"Dear Lorin, A time comes when it’s healthful to put aside obscurantism and turn to bedrock, if only briefly. And while I flatter myself in thinking you know me as a man not prone to get overly excited about digital-remastering projects, nevertheless there are instances in which the beauty of the original song lay precisely in a primary attempt to expose its elements, and in these cases the additional stripping away of hiss and other shit can be revelatory, or in this instance (Best Ever: Buddy Holly, Techniche 2009), transformative."
The Paris Review - Video, Wikipedia - Not Fade Away, YouTube - Buddy Holly, Not Fade Away

A Country Without Libraries - Charles Simic

Hartland Four Corners, Vermont, 1994.
"All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire."
NYBooks, San Francisco Public Library. Public Library: An American Commons - A photography exhibition by Robert Dawson

Cage - Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939)

Wikipedia - "Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition by the American composer John Cage. Written in 1939 at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, the work is the first in Cage’s series of five Imaginary Landscape pieces."
Wikipedia, Art of the States - Video

Bob Marley & the Wailers Live 1973 - 1975

"Hear the words of the Rastaman say: 'Babylon, you throne gone down, gone down; Babylon, you throne gone down.'"
amazon, YouTube - Concrete Jungle, Rastaman Chant, Stir It Up, Concrete jungle, Duppy Conqueror, Burning and Looting tonight, No Woman No Cry, I shot the sheriff

OpenStreetMap

Wikipedia - "OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography, other free sources or simply from local knowledge."
Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, twitter, amazon

Roman de la Rose Digital Library

Miniature from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose
"Welcome to the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, a joint project of the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The creation of this resource and the digitization of manuscripts from the BnF was made possible by generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Roman de la Rose Digital Library is to create an online library of all manuscripts containing the Roman de la Rose poem. We will have digital surrogates of roughly 130 Roman de la Rose manuscripts available here by the end of 2009."
Roman de la Rose Digital Library

Christiane Paul comments on Yucef Merhi's Super Atari Poetry

"Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art and author of the book Digital Art (Thames & Hudson, London) goes inside of Yucef Merhi's installation, Super Atari Poetry (2005), a unique poetry generator based on the notorious Atari 2600 Video Computer System. To experience the complete version and other features, please visit."
YouTube - Christiane Paul

James Brown - TAMI Rock Concert 1964

"From the TAMI Rock Concert in 1964. Night Train & PLease Please Please. EXCELLENT. 15 minutes long. JAMES BROWN & THE FAMOUS FLAMES at their finest."
YouTube - Night Train & PLease Please Please

Isaac Cordal

"Blink and you’ll miss it. Turning the urban landscape in on itself with installations that are almost to subtle to be noticed while passing by in an individualistic frenzy, Isaac Cordal uses the grey functionality of cement to question the lack of colour and vibrancy in so much of our lives through his tiny figures."
Isaac Cordal

"Movement" - New Order

Wikipedia - "Movement is the debut album by New Order, released in November 1981 on Factory Records. At the time of its release, the album was not particularly well received by critics or consumers, only peaking at #30 on the UK albums chart."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Dreams never End, Everything's Gone Green, Procession, Temptation, Truth, Chosen Time, Denial, In A Lonely Place, ICB, Senses, Ceremony

Anarchy Comics

Wikipedia - "Anarchy Comics was a series of underground comic books published by Last Gasp between 1978 and 1987."
Wikipedia, Anarchy Comics, Anarchy Comics 2, Anarchy Comics 3, Anarchy Comics 4

Henges

Avebury
Wikipedia - "There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork which are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three types is that they feature a ring bank and ditch but with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside. Because of the defensive impracticalities of an enclosure with an external bank and an internal ditch, henges are not considered to have served a defensive purpose (cf. circular rampart)."
Wikipedia, Marden Henge: Stonehenge's big brother

Paris Métro

Wikipedia - "The Paris Métro or Métropolitain ... is the rapid transit metro system in Paris. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km (133 mi) in length."
Wikipedia, Paris Métro, Paris Pages, YouTube - Métro de Paris -MF 01, Ligne 2

Jorge Macchi

La Espera
"I first met Jorge Macchi in 1998, in a workshop on experimentation in theater which brought together a group of writers, composers, theater directors, and visual artists. I’m a composer and sound artist, so we met on my turf, in the territory of the performing arts. My involvement with the visual arts was minimal then."
BOMB Magazine, Jorge Macchi, YouTube - La Flecha de Zenon, Super-8, Streamline, Shadows theatre, La canción del final, Caja de música

Keith Rowe

Wikipedia - "Keith Rowe (born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth, England) is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the hugely influential AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums."
Wikipedia, Paris Trans Atlantic, YouTube - Prepared Guitar, Live 2001, Czechia, Brno, Keith Rowe & Kjell Bjørgeengen 2010

PJ Harvey - "Let England Shake"

"'The West's asleep,' PJ Harvey declares on the first line of her new album, Let England Shake, before spending the next 40 minutes aiming to shame, frighten, and agitate it into action. When Polly Jean Harvey burst into the public consciousness in the early 90s, her gravelly voice, outsized personality, and often disturbing lyrics gave the alt-rock world a crucial shot of excitement."
Pitchfork, amazon, npr - Let San Francisco Shake: PJ Harvey In Concert, YouTube - Let England Shake, The Last Living Rose, The Glorious Land, The Words That Maketh Murder, All And Everyone, On Battleship Hill, England, In The Dark Places, Bitter Branches, Hanging In The Wire, Written On the Forehead, The Colour Of The Earth, BBC interview

Sarah Anne Johnson

Dripping Fireworks‭ (‬2009‭)
"Canadian artist Sarah Anne Johnson completed her MFA at Yale in 2004 with a thesis project entitled Tree Planting. This ambitious installation recorded her summers spent in northern Canada in which she engaged in the communal activity of reforesting as a means of income. In this project, Johnson combines straight photographs with photographs recording 'tableaux,' scenes she created with little sculptural figures set in the landscape."
Saul Gallery, (1)

Autoharp

Wikipedia - "The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Wayfaring Stranger, June Carter Cash - Autoharp Instrumental, Little Old Log Cabin In the Lane, You ain't woman enough to take my man

Dada - Europe after the rain

"Dada came out of the craziness of World War One. 'The birth of Dada was not the beginning of art but of disgust.' Surrealism tried to systematize Dada's anarchy into an artistic blend of Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist provocation. In the interests of conquering the irrational, Salvador Dali opened exhibitions dressed in a diving suit, Marcel Duchamp turned himself into woman, Benjamin Peret assaulted priests, and Yves Tanguy ate spiders. Andre Breton, nicknamed 'the Pope of Surrealism', led an inspired gang of artists, lunatics and writers."
IMDb, YouTube - "Dada - Europe after the rain" 1/12, 2/12, 3/12, 4/12, 5/12, 6/12, 7/12, 8/12, 9/12, 10/12, 11/12, 12/12

John Wieners: June 21, 1959

"The Poetry Center presents John Wieners reading from an unpublished manuscript and The Hotel Wentley Poems."
Poetry Center

Shepard Fairey's New Music Video For Death Cab For Cutie

"Shepard writes about the video: 'I have been a fan of Death Cab for years so I was excited to hear from bassist Nick Harmer about his idea to collaborate on a video piece for their song Home Is A Fire.'"
Wooster Collective

Instant Cinema

"Instant Cinema is a comprehensive platform for experimental film, video and computer art, making the best audio-visual work of artists of all generations available to a worldwide audience. For many years, experimental films and art films were almost exclusively screened in museums and at film festivals. Instant Cinema aims to compensate for half a century of under-exposure of film/video and computer art by exhibiting some of the great classics of recent history, side by side with the work of today’s most talented media artists."
Instant Cinema, Instant Cinema - Film Archive

The Death

Wikipedia - "The Death card commonly depicts a skeleton riding a horse. Surrounding it are dead and dying people from all classes, including kings, bishops and commoners. The skeleton carries a black standard emblazoned with a white flower. Some decks depict the Crashing Towers from The Moon with The Sun rising behind them in the background. Some decks, such as the Tarot of Marseilles, omit the name from the card."
Wikipedia

Autobahn - Kraftwerk

Wikipedia - "Autobahn is the fourth studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, released in November 1974. The 22-minute title track 'Autobahn' was edited to about 3 minutes for single release and reached number 25 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and performed even higher around Europe, including number 11 in the UK. This commercial success came after the band had released three experimental and purely instrumental albums. Autobahn is also the first of Kraftwerk’s concept albums of sorts, which they have done up to 2003."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Autobahn 1974, Kraftwerk Autobahn on BBC Tomorrow's World 1975

A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now

"Cuba’s attempt to forge an independent state with an ambitious set of social goals, all the while moored to powerful political and economic interests, has been a source of fascination for nations, intellectuals, and artists alike. On display at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, May 17—October 2, 2011, A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, looks at three critical periods in the island nation’s history as witnessed by photographers before, during, and after the country’s 1959 Revolution."
A Revolutionary Project: ‘Cuba from Walker Evans to Now’, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, YouTube

On Orientalism - Edward Said

Wikipedia - "Orientalism is a book published in 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term 'Orientalism' to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a 'subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture.' He argued that a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for European and the American colonial and imperial ambitions."
Wikipedia, YouTube - On Orientalism-Edward Said 1/4, 2/2, 3/4, 4/4

Elliott Hundley

Untitled, 2005
Wikipedia - "Elliott Hundley (born 1975) is an American artist, living and working in Los Angeles. ... Los Angeles-based artist Elliott Hundley's sculptures provide a multi-faceted and profound journey into history, mythology, and contemporary culture. The dense surfaces built from a myriad of materials including wood, string, wire, paper, canvas, photographs, textiles, sequins, colored yarn, wax, and beads are laced with historical references and mythological narratives."
Wikipedia, Saatchi Gallery, YouTube - Elliott Hundley at Andrea Rosen, NYC, A Work of Persol

J. B. Lenoir

Wikipedia - "J. B. Lenoir (March 5, 1929 – April 29, 1967) was an African American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, active in the 1950s and 1960s Chicago blues scene."
Wikipedia, J. B. Lenoir, YouTube - Slow Down, Man Watch Your Woman, The Whale Has Swallowed Me, My Name Is J.B. Lenoir, God's Word, Slow Down..., Alabama March, YouTube - I feel so good, Vietnam Blues, Grandma's Advice/Farmors Råd, Round and Round

The Complaint of an Empress (1990)

"The Complaint of an Empress was produced between October 1987 and April 1989. It is the first film by choreographer Pina Bausch, who was born in Solingen in 1940 and has died on 30 June last year. The general framework is set by the changing seasons - autumn, winter and spring. The film's inner structure reflects Pina Bausch's method of working as developed with the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance during the 1973/74 season. The film consequently does not tell a story, but is made up of various scenes put together as a collage reflecting certain moods and invoking different associations. The film scenes, some of which are thoroughly absurd, are set in different locations, such as the woods and fields around Wuppertal, the city centre, the suspension railway, a carpet shop, a greenhouse and the rehearsal room in a former cinema (Wuppertal's 'Lichtburg')."
UbuWeb - Video