The Miners' Hymns

"Above is a trailer for Bill Morrison's film The Miners' Hymns, a melancholy celebration of coal-mining culture in the great northern English city of Durham. The film is centered on the Durham Miners' Gala, an annual summertime meeting which, from the late nineteenth century until the Thatcher era, brought thousands of celebrants into the city. The gala was famous not only for its union activism but for its carnival atmosphere, its massed choral singing, and its myriad brass bands."
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise (Video), Johann Johannsson, 12 Tónar, Tribeca Film

"Poses" - Yolanda Dominguez

"'Poses' is a direct criticism of the absurd and artificial world of glamour and of fashion that magazines present. Specifically, the highly-distorted image of women that they transmit through models that do not represent real women and that avoid all those who are not within their restricted parameters. These images are virtually the only feminine reference in the mass media and they have a great influence in both men and women when building our roles in terms of behavior and ways of thinking."
Yolanda Dominguez (Video), Yolanda Dominguez - Works, It's Nice That

WNYC's Guide to 9/11 Arts Events

Thomas Hirschhorn's "Mondrian Altar", 1997. MoMA PS1.
"This month, cultural institutions around the city are paying respect to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks through literature, visual arts, theater, dance, music, and film. Here's our guide to what's happening around town..."
WNYC's Guide to 9/11 Arts Events (Video)

Tompkins Square Park

Wikipedia - "Tompkins Square Park is a 10.5 acre (42,000 m) public park in the Alphabet City section of the East Village neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is square in shape, and is bounded on the north by East 10th Street, on the east by Avenue B, on the south by East 7th Street, and on the west by Avenue A. St. Marks Place abuts the park to the west."
Wikipedia, W - Tompkins Square Park Riot (1988), YouTube - Tompkins Square Park Riot

Southern Gothic

'The Ghost of Bernadette Soubirous,', 1890, photograph
"To grow up in the South is to be fed a steady diet of grits and ghost stories. Ask any household in Alabama, and they’ll tell you about a friend or family member with a rogue phantom that blows out candles or stomps around in the attic. Being haunted is a permanent condition below the Mason-Dixon, one that defines the region as much as the voracious kudzu and the iced tea so sugary it hurts your teeth. William Faulkner, who was known to spin particularly scary fireside stories, described the Deep South in Absalom, Absalom! as 'dead since 1865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts.'"
The Paris Review - Margaret Eby

Can

Wikipedia - "Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music. Can constructed their music largely through collective spontaneous composition –– which the band differentiated from improvisation in the jazz sense –– sampling themselves in the studio and editing down the results;[1] bassist/chief engineer Holger Czukay referred to Can's live and studio performances as 'instant compositions'."
Wikipedia, Spoon Records, YouTube - Hier und Heute 1971, Mother Sky, Don't Turn On the Light, Leave Me AloneDeadlock, Bring Me Coffee or Tea, Song Swan Song, Paperhouse, Spoon (1971), Vernal Equinox, Don't Say No.
The Can (from "Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany" Documentary).

Workers Wearing Toeshoes

Edgar Degas, The Dance Lesson, c. 1879
"In 1903, when ballet had been a prolific subject of Edgar Degas for over 30 years, an American collector, Louisine Havemeyer, asked him, 'Why, monsieur, do you always do ballet dancers?' His quick reply was, 'Because, madame, it is all that is left us of the combined movements of the Greeks.' This already said much: in ballet he had found a modern source of classicism. Yet Degas’s body of work shows that he had found far more. His views of dance — in oil, sculpture, pastel, gouache, lithographs and other mediums — include those who aren’t dancing, those who can’t dance well yet, those who once danced but can do so no longer, and a great many of those who can but happen not to be doing so just now."
NYT: Workers Wearing Toeshoes, Royal Academy of Arts: Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement

Fame megamix

"EPMD vs Lady Gaga & Lady Starlight vs David Bowie & John Lennon vs Jay-Z vs Irene Cara vs James Brown vs Ultramagnetic MCs vs Godfather Don vs Sage Francis. It's widely believed that David Bowie ripped the guitar lick off of James Brown, but actually it's the other way around."
SoundCloud (Video)

Henry Flynt

Wikipedia - "Henry Flynt (born 1940 in Greensboro, North Carolina) is a philosopher, avant-garde musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist often associated with Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Nihilism."
Wikipedia, Henry Flynt, Stewart Home Society, YouTube - Sky Turned Red, Violin Strobe, Missionary Stew (1966), You Are My Everlovin' (1981) / Part 1, Part 2.
Henry Flynt in New York (vimeo)

Paroles -Jacques Prévert

"This edition was translated by Beat godfather and proto-Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was published by his own press, City Light Books. Paroles struck a chord with the young people who lived through Pétain, the Occupaion, la Resistance, even though Prévert, who was born in 1900, was part of an earlier generation. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies."
The Coffee Philosopher, amazon

Public Image Ltd.- Poptones & Careering (American Bandstand 1980)

"ABC, 'American Bandstand'. PiL's, hilarious, and now infamous, 'performance' on the prime time US pop show is broadcast on National TV. Pre-recorded on 3rd May, PiL mime to 'Poptones' and 'Careering.' Presenter Dick Clarke introduces the band as, 'a memorable moment in rock n roll, something special and interesting'. The longstanding mainstream music show is thrown into chaos as Lydon invites almost the entire audience up to dance with the band on stage! John barely pretends to mime, and the band swap instruments."
YouTube

Exposition Monet 2010

"An amazing website featuring works of Claude Monet, the famous French Impressionist painter. Browse the gallery in Galeries Nationales, Grand Palais to discover Monet’s work through this unique digital experience."
Exposition Monet 2010

The Workers - MASS MoCA

"We all know what Rosie the Riveter looked like, and what she stood for. Ford-era production line labor -- and the rise of powerful unions -- left us indelible portraits of work in mid 20th century America. Before that, Dickens created searing portraits of labor in the proto-industrial era, as Millet and his followers recorded a vivid picture of agrarian labor in mid 19th century Europe. But what does work look like today in a global economy marked by outsourcing, rapid migration, disruptive economies, and a state of labor that seems fractured, precarious, and almost invisible? With video, sculpture, photography, and performance art from 25 artists, this exhibition examines the way labor is represented today (and how some contemporary workers choose to represent themselves)."
MASS MoCA, The MASS MoCA Blog, Bureau for Open Culture

Party Supplies "Firecrackers" Mixtape

"Party Supplies is part of the Fool's Gold family here in Brooklyn. Instead of writing a paragraph about what he does, watch the video below for some live Party Supplies remix action! He just released a new mixtape with his take on tracks of Arcade Fire, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, the Weeknd and more."
Brooklyn Radio, "PS", YouTube - Party Supplies "Home" Remix, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home (Party Supplies Remix), "Mama Don't Dance" LIVE, Remixing a few original ideas live...

The Time

Wikipedia - "The Time is a funk and dance-pop ensemble formed in 1981. They are close Prince associates and arguably the most successful artists who have worked with him."
Wikipedia, YouTube - 777-9311, JerkOut, The Walk, Jungle Love, Fishnet

Hurricane Irene 2011 (Hurricanes and Tropical Storms)

"Hurricane Irene, which first hit the Bahamas on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011, is a slow-moving massive storm. It advanced at 14 miles an hour, half the speed of typical hurricanes along the coast, in an unusually broad path that extended more than 260 miles from the center in some directions. It has affected at least a dozen states along the East Coast of the United States."
NYT, NYT: Readers’ Photos of Hurricane Irene, NYT: Damage and Flooding Scar Atlantic Seaboard, CBS News (Video), YouTube - Hurricane "Irene" 2011 (Video)

Michael Nyman Band

"The Michael Nyman Band, formerly known as the Campiello Band, is a group formed as a street band for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni's 1756 play, Il Campiello directed by Bill Bryden at the Old Vic. The band did not wish to break up after the production ended, so its director, Michael Nyman, began composing music for the group to perform, beginning with 'In Re Don Giovanni', written in 1977. Originally made up of old instruments such as rebecs, sackbuts and shawms alongside more modern instruments like the banjo and saxophone in order to produce as loud a sound as possible without amplification, it later switched to a fully amplified lineup of string quartet, double bass, clarinet, three saxophones, horn, trumpet, bass trombone, bass guitar, and piano. This line up has been variously altered and augmented for some works."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, Water Dances, The Heart Asks Pleasure First, Dreams of a Journey, Wedding Tango, The Promise

Tolkien Library

"The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, may be the most important and influential fantasy books ever published. Next to these, Tolkien wrote and published an enormous amount of other books: Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, Roverandom, Mr. Bliss, Children of Hurin, Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun... to name some. The aim of this website is to show all books which are curently inside the Tolkien Library."
Tolkien Library, YouTube

Horst Ademeit

"White Columns is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the United States by Dusseldorf-based Horst Ademeit (b. 1937.) Working independently, and outside of the context of art, since the late 1980s Ademit has embarked on an obsessive program of collecting evidence – through photography and meticulous note-keeping – that would establish, in his mind, the existence of what he called 'cold rays,' unseen forces that he believed severely impaired and impacted upon his life and surroundings."
White Columns, Hamburger Bahnhof, ArtCritical, Galerie Susanne Zander

The Band - The Weight, Across the Great Divide, Rag Mama Rag...

"The Weight, Across the Great Divide, Rag Mama Rag. The night they drove old dixie down, Up on Cripple. Rockin' chair. Unfaithful servant. Whispering Pines, King Harvest."
YouTube, (2), (3), (4), (5)

David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

"Since the break-up of Talking Heads in 1991, David Byrne has made a good career for himself as a solo artist, working in film and music, and also becoming an active supporter of cycling. Overtly intellectual, Byrne has given lectures on a great variety of topics – from Carl Jung to the ways in which venue and context shape artistic creation. The TED talk above was given in February 2010 in Long Beach, California, and here David Byrne presents his ideas on the interrelationship between music and architecture."
YouTube - Open Culture

Lightnin’ Hopkins

Wikipedia - "Sam John Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982), better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Baby Please Dont Go, Goin Down Slow, Mojo Hand, Rare Performances 1960-1979 - Parte 1, Parte 2, Parte 3, Parte 4, Parte 5, Parte 6, Parte 7, Parte 8, Parte 9, Texas blues legend - Where Lightnin' Strikes

Sterling Ruby

Installation view of Pig Pen
Wikipedia - "Sterling Ruby is a multi-disciplinary artist who has become known for his richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, various forms of collage, and video work. ... He takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, the mechanisms of warfare, and urban gangs. His work has often been cited as invoking minimalism as a means to expose underlying systems and social power structures."
Wikipedia, Foxy Production, Sprueth Magers, YouTube - Lifestyle Sterling Ruby

Cyanotype - Christian Marclay

"Christian Marclay is a New York based visual artist and composer whose innovative work explores the juxtaposition between sound recording, photography, video and film. As a performer and sound artist Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records and turntables since 1979 to create his unique 'theater of found sound.' A dadaist DJ and filmmaker, his installations and video/film collages display provocative musical and visual landscapes."
USF, Met Museum

James Sturm

"The educator and cartoonist James Sturm is another of my favorite people in comics. He's the co-founder of The Center For Cartoon Studies, the author of 2010's fine book Market Day and one of the driving forces behind the publication of Denys Wortman's New York. If there were a tree chart of 2010 comics events and underlying issues with lines drawn to the cartoonists engaged in some element of said issues, Sturm would appear on it looking like a marionette with tangled strings."
CR Holiday Interview #17, NYT: In One Sad Day, an Old World Artisan Confronts a New World, npr: 'Market Day': Beauty And History In Handmade Art, Products by James Sturm, James Sturm Heads to the "Market", Slate: Life Without the Web, YouTube - The Conversation: Giving Up the Web

New Wave Time Warp

Joy Division - “Love Will Tear Us Apart” YouTube
"thirty years ago
today, people wore
shiny things"
New Wave Time Warp

Jitish Kallat - Public Notice 3

"In the first major presentation in an American museum of Jitish Kallat’s work, the contemporary Indian artist has designed a site-specific installation that connects two key historical moments—the First World Parliament of Religions held on September 11, 1893, and the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that very date, 108 years later. The resulting work, Public Notice 3, creates a trenchant commentary on the evolution, or devolution, of religious tolerance across the 20th and 21st centuries."
The Art Institute of Chicago, YouTube - Jitish Kallat's Public Notice 3 at the Art Institute of Chicago

Eddie Cochran

Wikipedia - "Eddie Cochran (October 2, 1938 – April 17, 1960), was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as 'C'mon Everybody', 'Somethin' Else', and 'Summertime Blues', captured teenage frustration and desire in the late 1950s and early 1960s."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Summertime Blues, C'mon Everybody, Money Honey, Nervous breakdown, Don't blame it on me, Be honest with me, Long Tall Sally, White lightening, Teenage Heaven, Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young (1955)

Philip Glass Ensemble - "Train/Spaceship"

"Philip Glass Ensemble perform 'Train/Spaceship' live at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in 1982."
YouTube, (1)

Robert Breer

Robert Breer, top, in a shot from “Fist Fight” (1964).
Wikipedia - "Robert Carlton Breer (September 30, 1926 – August 11, 2011) was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. 'A founding member of the American avant-garde,' Breer was most well known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials."
Wikipedia, frieze, mubi, Robert Breer, Kinetic Poet of the Avant-Garde, YouTube - Eyewash (1959), A Man And His Dog Out For Air (1957), Blazes (1961), Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons (1980), 69 (1968), 70 (1970), Robert Breer, Screening Room with Robert Breer (1976)

Gaspesia: Les portraits en papier -- Fresh Stuff From Dan Bergeron

"The large-scale portraits in Gaspesia: Les portraits en papier represent former employees of Papiers Gaspesia, a pulp and paper mill founded in 1912 by Percy Milton Chandler in Chandler, Quebec. Named for the mill’s founder, the port city’s economy and social organization depended heavily upon this industry."
Wooster Collective

"I Only Want You to Love Me" - Rainer Maria Fassbinder

"The title of this documentary on Rainer Maria Fassbinder is just slightly changed from the title of a film that director made in 1976, entitled Ich Will Doch Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt ('I Only Want You to Love Me'). The wunderkind of postwar German filmmaking died at age 36 in 1982 after making over 50 films in his short fifteen year career. He tended to produce resolutely experimental films using members of his theatrical troupe, the 'Anti-Theater'."
bing, YouTube

"Spirit in the Night" - Bruce Springsteen

Wikipedia - "'Spirit in the Night' is a song written and originally recorded by New Jersey based singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen for his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973). It was also the second single released from the album."
Wikipedia - "Spirit in the Night", YouTube - "Spirit in the Night", Live 1973 in Los Angeles

Madness

Wikipedia - "Madness are a British pop/ska band from Camden Town, London, that formed in 1976. The band continue to perform with their most recognised lineup of seven members, although their lineup has varied slightly over the years. They were one of the most prominent bands of the late-1970s 2 Tone ska revival."
Wikipedia, YouTube - One Step Beyond, Night Boat To Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Our House

Amateur astronomy

Wikipedia - "Amateur astronomy, also called backyard astronomy and stargazing, is a hobby whose participants enjoy watching the night sky (and the day sky too, for sunspots, eclipses, etc.), and the plethora of objects found in it, mainly with portable telescopes and binoculars. Even though scientific research is not their main goal, many amateur astronomers make a contribution to astronomy by monitoring variable stars, tracking asteroids and discovering transient objects, such as comets."
Wikipedia, Amateur Astronomers, Backyard Astronomy