Record Row: Documentary of major Chicago Soul labels

"Wonderful documentary here narrated by none other than Etta James, which chronicles the rise and subsequent fall of the early independent record labels from Chicago which provided the world with so much great Soul music ~ all from not much more than a stones throw from each other."
YouTube - Record Row Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4, Pt.5

The Structure of a Medieval Manuscript

"For more than a thousand years all manuscripts were written and illustrated by hand. By the Middle Ages, books were being made by folding sheets of parchment, arranging them into gatherings, and assembling and binding them together. This animation illustrates how medieval books were constructed—a feat of engineering that remains essentially the same today."
Art Babble - The J. Paul Getty Museum

West Fourth Street – Washington Square

Wikipedia - "West Fourth Street – Washington Square is an express station on the IND Sixth Avenue and IND Eighth Avenue Lines of the New York City Subway, located at the intersection of West Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It is served at all times by the A, D, E, and F trains; by the B and M trains on weekdays; and by the C train at all times except late nights."
Wikipedia, NYC Subway, YouTube - E train at West 4th Street-Washington Square #3

The Moon

Wikipedia - "The Moon (XVIII) is the eighteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination."
Wikipedia

Machito

Wikipedia - "Machito (died April 19, 1984), born as Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo, was an influential Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana alongside the singer Graciela, his foster sister. In New York City, Machito formed the band the Afro-Cubans in 1940, and with Mario Bauzá as musical director, brought together Cuban rhythms and big band arrangements in one group. He made numerous recordings from the 1940s to the 1980s, many with Graciela as singer."
Wikipedia, Machito, anazon, YouTube - MACHITO & HIS AFROCUBANS: EL BAILE DEL TORNILLO, NAGUE, TAMBO, Cubop City, Carambola, Sambia

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy

Wikipedia - "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the second studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released April 14, 1988, on Def Jam Recordings. Recording sessions for the album took place at Chung King Studios, Greene Street Recording, and Sabella Studios in New York City. Noting the enthusiastic response over their live shows, the group intended with Nation of Millions to make the music of a faster tempo than the previous album for performance purposes."
Wikipedia, Don't Believe The Hype, Louder Than A Bomb, Night Of The Living Baseheads (Dope Version), Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, Rebel Without A Pause, Bring the noise

2011 Tour de France

Wikipedia - "The 2011 Tour de France is the 98th Tour de France. It starts today with a 180km 1st stage at the Passage du Gois, and will end on the Champs-Elysées in Paris on 24 July. The complete route of the 2011 Tour de France was announced on 19 October 2010. The route this year also enters Italy for a short stretch."
Wikipedia, W - Tour de France, Guardian: Tour de France, steephill, INRNG, YouTube - Kraftwerk- tour de france

Ingénue - k.d. lang

Wikipedia - "Ingénue is the second solo album by k.d. lang, released in 1992 (see 1992 in music). It has more of a cabaret flavor than Lang's previous work, and was her most successful album on the pop charts both in her native Canada and internationally. The salsa-inspired 'Miss Chatelaine' was ironic; Chatelaine is a Canadian women's magazine which once chose lang as its 'Woman of the Year,' and the song's video depicted lang — who was usually best known for a fairly androgynous appearance — in an exaggeratedly feminine manner, surrounded by bright pastel colours and a profusion of bubbles reminiscent of a performance on the Lawrence Welk show."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Save Me, The Mind Of Love, Miss Chatelaine, Outside Myself, Season Of Hollow Soul, Constant Craving

"Image-Nation 21 (territory" - Robin Blaser

"Canadian poet Robin Blaser reads from the poem 'Image-Nation 21 (territory' from The Holy Forest, winner of the 2008 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize."
YouTube, The Holy Forest

“The Urban Prisoner” - Matt Weber

"I want you to enjoy my galleries of street photography without getting lost. There are many different galleries with subjects you can peruse. If you you are interested in Subway photos there are plenty of images which show the NYC subway system in all its 'splendor'. You can leave comments if you feel so inclined."
Matt Weber, amazon

Mary McCaslin

Wikipedia - "Mary McCaslin (born December 22, 1946 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is an American folk singer who wrote, recorded and performed some of the most beautiful contemporary folk music of this era. Her tunes, with their sensitive finger picking, the piquant lyrics, and memorable, moving imagery remains unparalleled in the singer song writer and folk traditions."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Mary McCaslin Profile, Prairie In The Sky, Back to Salinas w/ Wake the Dead, Dust Devils, Last Cannonball, Way Out West

"Bookstalls" - Joseph Cornell

"Bookstalls is interesting in that its footage looks old and is thus clothed with a feeling of nostalgia. It is also interesting as an exercise in putting pieces of film together. A boy leafs through volumes at a Paris bookstall and he imagines faraway places."
UbuWeb

Gamelan gong kebyar

Wikipedia - "Gamelan gong kebyar is a modern style or genre of Balinese gamelan music. Kebyar means 'the process of flowering', and refers to the explosive changes in tempo and dynamics characteristic of the style. It is the most popular form of gamelan in Bali, and its best known musical export. Gong kebyar music is based on a five-tone scale called pelog selisir (tones 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the 7-tone pelog scale), and is characterized by brilliant sounds, syncopations, sudden and gradual changes in sound colour, dynamics, tempo and articulation, and complex, complementary interlocking melodic and rhythmic patterns called kotekan."
Wikipedia, GSJ Ensembles Overview, YouTube - gamelan gong kebyar

Emma Goldman

Wikipedia - "Emma Goldman (June 27 (NS), 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century."
Wikipedia, PBS, Emma Goldman Papers Project, YouTube - Emma Goldman, Emma Goldman Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Babel - Alejandro González Iñárritu

Wikipedia - "Babel is a 2006 international drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, starring an ensemble cast. The multi-narrative drama completes Iñárritu's Death Trilogy, following Amores perros and 21 Grams. The film portrays multiple stories taking place in Morocco, Japan, Mexico, and the United States."
Wikipedia, amazon, amazon - Various Artists, YouTube - Babel, Endless Flight

A distressing matter of connoisseurship

"Fake or Fortune is a remarkable new BBC series. It explores the processes involved in authenticating artworks to determine their value as well as gain acceptance as part of a particular artist's body of work. The first episode focused on an alleged Claude Monet presently owned by retired Royal Navy Officer David Joel."
three pipe problem

"I'm Your Man" - Leonard Cohen

Wikipedpa - "I'm Your Man is the eighth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in 1988. The album marked Cohen's further move to a more modern sound, with many songs having a synthpop production. The song 'Everybody Knows' was one of Cohen's first writing collaborations with Sharon Robinson, who would become a frequent collaborator in the future."
Wikipedia, YouTube - First We Take Manhattan, Ain't No Cure For Love, Everybody Knows, I'm your man, Take this waltz, I Can't Forget, Tower of Song

The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair MacLeod

Wikipedia - "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood is a collection of short stories by Canadian author Alistair MacLeod. It was originally published in 1976. All of the stories contained is the collection were later republished in the book Island, together with other works by Alistair MacLeod. According to the blurb of the book; 'The evocative and haunting collection is set Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland, a remote region where Gaelic is still spoken, old legends live on, and the same cold sea that washes the Hebrides beats against the granite cliffs. With a tearing lyricism, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood lays bare the joys, the fears, the darkness, and the shining hope of communities whose isolation is at once a curse and a blessing.'"
Wikipedia, W - Alistair MacLeod, Google - The lost salt gift of blood, amazon

Film (1965) - Samuel Beckett

"With every new wavelet of contemporary cinema turning directors, in effect, into authors, it took the surprising author of Film, playwright Samuel Beckett, to become, not too surprisingly, its real director. Not that I wasn't always around, red director's cap flying, riding the camera dolly, or telling Buster what to do."
UbuWeb - On Directing Samuel Beckett's Film, UbuWeb - Film (1965)

The Sopranos

Wikipedia - "The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads. The series also features Tony's family members and Mafia associates in prominent roles and storylines, most notably his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and cousin and protégé Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli). The many conflicts in his life lead to an on-off professional relationship with psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco)."
Wikipedia, W - The Sopranos Episodes, HBO: The Sopranos, A&E, amazon, The Italian Grocer, YouTube - The Sopranos intro, 9 Nine Minute Sopranos

Maya Deren - The Very Eye Of Night (1958)

"Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion."
YouTube

Alcheringa Archive: A Journal of Ethnopoetics, 1970-1980

"Reissues is excited to launch an online archive of Alcheringa, the trailblazing ethnopoetics journal edited by Dennis Tedlock and Jerome Rothenberg through Boston University from 1970 to 1980. Commisioned for Internet distribution by Dennis Tedlock and Jon Cotner in 2010, with site design and information architecture by Danny Snelson, the Alcheringa archive presents a robust network of resources including searchable PDFs, high-resolution images, rapid magazine browsing, and full information on each issue and disc insert of this essential journal operating at the crossroads of translation, ethnography, performance, and contemporary poetics."
jacket2, Alcheringa: A Journal in Ethnopoetics, 1970-1980, PennSound

Rocker's Almighty Dub - 1979

"Mixing Engineer : Ossie Hibbert & Pat Kelly & Prince Douglas & Brad Osbourne. Producer : Brad Osbourne. Backing Band : The Revolutionaries & The Aggrovators."
Roots Archives, amazon, YouTube - I And I Land, Rocker's Almighty Dub, Dunza Dub [Money Money Dub], Storm And Lightning, Something Nice 'Bout Da Dub, Ten Pieces In One, Freedom Joy Dub, Upful And Positive Dread, Hold This Dub, 21 Gun Salute To Brother Marcus

Maximilien Luce

A Paris Street in May, 1871 (La Commune)
Wikipedia - "Maximilien Luce (March 13, 1858 – February 6, 1941) was a French Neo-impressionist artist. A printmaker, painter, and anarchist, Luce is best known for his pointillist canvases. He grew up in the working class Montparnasse, and became a painter of landscapes and urban scenes which frequently emphasize the activities of people at work."
Wikipedia, artnet, YouTube

"To Be," Lynn Behrendt

"Lynn Behrendt is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Acquiescence and This is the Story of Things That Happened, both as part of the Dusie Kollektiv 5. A full length collection, petals, emblems, is available through Lunar Chandelier press. She co-edits the Annandale Dream Gazette, an online chronicle of poets' dreams, as well as Peep/Show, an electronic journal of innovative contemporary poetry."
Lines Chapbook

The Shadows

Wikipedia - "The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Apache 1964, F.B.I., Wonderful Land

The Ghost of a Flea - William Blake

Wikipedia - "The Ghost of a Flea is a small tempera mixture with gold painting on mahogany type tropical hardwood panel by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake, held in the Tate Gallery, London. Completed between 1819 and 1820, it is part of a series of works depicting 'Visionary Heads' commissioned by the watercolourist and astrologist John Varley (1788-1842). Fantastic, spiritual art was very popular in Britain from around 1770 to 1830, during this time Blake often worked on unearthly, supernatural panels to amuse and amaze his friends."
Wikipedia, Great Works: The Ghost of a Flea (c.1819-20) (21.4cm x 16.2cm), William Blake

Frank Stella - 1972

"Frank Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction."
YouTube

Robert Farris Thompson

Wikipedia - "Robert Farris Thompson (born December 30, 1932, El Paso, Texas) is the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. ... He lived in the Yoruba region of southwest Nigeria for many years while he conducted his research of Yoruba Arts History. He affiliated with the University of Ibadan and frequented Yoruba village communities. Thompson has studied the African Arts of the Diaspora in the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Peurto Rico, and several Caribbean islands. Robert Farris Thompson is also an authority in hip-hop culture."
Wikipedia, A Tango with Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of Mambo: Robert Farris Thompson—Master T—teaches “the black aesthetic of the cool.”, amazon, Video: Robert Farris Thompson Speaks: Daughters of the Dust, The Afro-Argentine Legacy of Tango: Robert Farris Thompson and Facundo, Knocking and Kicking (Kugonga Na MaTeke)

Crooked Still - Some Strange Country

"Crooked Still's five musicians know how to make traditional songs sound new again, in the process creating a genre fusion in which alternative folk blends with bluegrass and the sounds of string bands."
npr, amazon, YouTube - Sometimes in This Country, The Golden Vanity, Half Of What We Know, Locust in the Willow, Distress, You Were Gone b/w Rainroad Bill, Henry Lee, Locust in the Willow, Cold Mountains, You Got the Silver

Jenny Holzer Installation at the Guggenheim and Protect Protect

"Jenny Holzer was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum create this work for the exterior of the museum to celebrate it's unveiling after an extended renovation of its facade. The work quotes from the poet Wislawa Szymborska's work. The video was produced by Howard Silver for Bloomberg MUSE. Lindsay Pollock interviewed Holzer. Sam Henriques shot the walk and talk and the Guggenheim exterior."
vimeo

2008 January: Jenny Holzer

Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson - Trance and Dance in Bali

"This is an early film of historical significance by pioneers of visual anthropology, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, circa 1939. It explores the themes of trance and dance in the rituals and religion of Bali. The famous Kris Dance is performed. Narrated by Margaret Mead. Filmed by Gregory Bateson. Converted from 16mm film reel."
YouTube

2008 March: Margaret Mead. 2009 June: Gregory Bateson. 2011 March: Gamelan.

Music from Big Pink - The Band

Wikipedia - "Music from Big Pink is the 1968 debut album by rock band The Band. It features their best-known song, 'The Weight'. The music was composed partly in 'Big Pink', a house shared by Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson in West Saugerties, in upstate New York. The album itself was recorded in studios in New York and Los Angeles in 1968. With a distinctive blend of country, rock, folk, classical, R&B, and soul, Music From Big Pink was the first album released by The Band in the summer of 1968."
Wikipedia, Tears of Rage, The Weight, King Harvest, Long Black Veil, Chest Fever, This Wheel's On Fire, I Shall Be Released

Stanisław Lem

Wikipedia - "Stanisław Lem (... 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire."
Wikipedia, VITRIFAX: The writing of Stanislaw Lem, First ever direct English translation of Solaris published, IMDb, Stanisław Lem

Mario Bauzá

Wikipedia - "Mario Bauzá (28 April 1911 – 11 July 1993) was an important Cuban musician. He was one of the first to introduce Latin music to the United States by bringing Cuban musical styles into the New York jazz scene. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of Afro-Cuban music, and his innovative work and musical contributions have many jazz historians to call him the 'founding father of Latin jazz'. If so, it is an exaggeration, since Cuban jazz was established much earlier."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Mario Bauzá Corta Historia - 1, (2), Sun Sun Babae, Tanga, Yo soy el son cubano, A night in Tunisia, Mambo Rincon, El Manisero