The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk

"In Istanbul, one hot, sun-soaked day this past summer, the novelist Orhan Pamuk leaned back in his chair, a writerly throne in an overfull study, and looked out the window. He trained his eyes on the unblemished vista before him, where the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn run into one another and emerge as a perfect muddle of turquoise. Today, he announced, he was depressed."
NYT: The Objects of the Exercise
amazon: The Museum of Innocence, (1)
W - The Museum of Innocence
npr: Orhan Pamuk's 'Museum' Of Obsession, Innocence (Video)
Guardian: Orhan Pamuk on The Museum of Innocence (Video)

Troubled Voyage In Calm Weather - The Early Years of the Incredible String Band

"'There is something occult and mysterious and unexplained about the Incredible String Band,' mused Lilian Roxon way back in the Counterculture's famous long ago, 'as if it were conjured out of nowhere with a magic spell, and perhaps it was.' Words of a similar cadence might well be uttered by many of us about the year these ones were written: 1969."
Perfect Sound Forever
Five Thousand Spirits Singing and Gladly Dancing
YouTube: Ithkos and Rehearsal (1972), The Letter - (Live at Woodstock 1969), When You Find Out Who You Are, Everything's fine right now, Empty Pocket Blues (Live 1970), Gently Tender, Red Hair

2008 August: Incredible String Band

A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester

"... Except for that letter, for years I kept largely to myself and have had a limited correspondence. That has begun to change recently but for the most part I still remain wary of my idols despite all the wonderful insight they could bring. Charles Olson would have been an exception to that rule had I been fortunate enough to have been born a full two decades earlier. From all accounts, Olson was one of the great talkers of all time at home, in the library, looming over the lecture hall, sitting at the kitchen table, or holding forth in the barroom."
Reality Studio
Poetry Foundation: I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You
Poetry Foundation: Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]
The Battle of Gloucester: Vincent Ferrini Meets Charles Olson

2009 January: Charles Olson
2009 April: Rockport Harbor
2010 March: Charles Olson: August 1963
2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12
2010 December: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", NET film
2011 January: Woodberry Poetry Room Oral History Initiative
2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957
2011 October: Photograph Database

Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times: Afro-Funk Highlife

"Strut announce the return of their pioneering ‘Nigeria 70’ compilation series with an exclusive new third volume: ‘Sweet Times: Afro Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos’ compiled again by series curator Duncan Brooker. Excavating another choice batch of rare grooves from Nigeria’s label archives, the new edition places the spotlight on some of the deeper fusions happening across the country during the 1970s as traditional guitar highlife blended with jazz and funk, hypnotic juju grooves became more progressive and young Nigerian bands came through with their own heavy West African take on U.S. soul, funk, disco and rock."
Strut
amazon
Duncan Brooker on Nigeria 70: Sweet Times
Nigeria70-Sweet Times (Video)
YouTube: Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times preview trailer, Chief Commander Ebeneza Obey and his International Brothers - Ajoyo

Rosie Sanders

Delphiniums (detail)
"Botanical painting has a long and specific history, cataloguing plant species in excruciating detail, often abstracting them against a plain paper void away from their natural context. Moving away from this conventional approach to botanical art but continuing a tradition of valued documentation of flowers that has earned her five Royal Horticultural Gold Medals, artist Rosie Sanders creates contemporary and striking portraits of backlit blooms in the less than perfect phases of degeneration."
It's Nice That: Contemporary botanical painting in Rosie Sanders' exhibition Against the Light
Rosie Sanders
YouTube: Part 1: The inspiration behind her work, Part 2: Rosie at work in her studio

Speaking in Tongues - Talking Heads

Wikipedia - "Speaking in Tongues is the fifth studio album by the band Talking Heads, released in 1983. The album was a commercial breakthrough that produced the band's first (and only) American Top 10 hit, 'Burning Down the House', which was accompanied by a promotional video."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone
YouTube: Burning Down the House, Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend Is Better, Slippery People, Swamp, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

"In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War."
The Jewish Museum
NYT: Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience
NYT: 15 Years That Changed Photography

The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)

"Unearthed some 40 years after the fact, this has to be one of the finest blues collections ever assembled on video. Thanks to a couple of young promoters who brought the musicians to Europe--where they were treated with a good deal more respect and dignity than in America--we get an extraordinary lineup of bluesmen and women: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace... the list goes on."
amazon: The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)
YouTube: 1:10:50. 01. T-Bone Walker — Call Me When You Need Me 02. Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee — Hootin' Blues 03. Memphis Slim — The Blues is Everywhere 04. Otis Rush — I Can't Quit You Baby 05. Lonnie Johnson — Another Night to Cry 06. Sippie Wallace — Women Be Wise 07. John Lee Hooker — Hobo Blues 08. Eddie Boyd — Five Long Years 09. Walter "Shakey" Horton 10. Junior Wells — Hoodoo Man Blues 11. Big Joe Williams — Mean Stepfather 12. Mississippi Fred McDowell — Going Down to the River 13. Willie Dixon — Weak Brain and Narrow Mind 14. Sonny Boy Williams — Nine Below Zero 15. Otis Spann — Spann's Blues 16. Muddy Waters — Got My Mojo Working 17. Finale: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon — Bye Bye Blues 18. Earl Hooker — Walking The Floor.Over You/Off The Hook

Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno

Wikipedia - "Here Come the Warm Jets is the debut solo album by Brian Eno. Produced by Eno, it was released on Island Records in 1974. The musical style of Here Come the Warm Jets is a hybrid of glam rock and art rock, similar to Eno's previous album work with Roxy Music but with songs that are more quirky and experimental. The album features various guest musicians, including Robert Fripp of King Crimson and members of Roxy Music, Hawkwind, Matching Mole, and The Pink Fairies. In developing the album's words and music, Eno used unusual methods such as dancing for his band members and having them play accordingly, and singing nonsense words to himself that would form the basis of subsequent lyrics."
Wikipedia
enoweb/lyrics
YouTube: China My China, More Blank than Frank, Baby's on Fire - The BBC Sessions (1974), Blank Frank, Dead Finks Don't Talk

The Ex + Tom Cora

"The Ex is an anarchist band from the Netherlands. They formed in 1979 at the height of the original punk explosion and have released more than twenty full length albums since. In the early 1990s they collaborated with the late Tom Cora (September 14, 1953 - April 9, 1998), who was a United States cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock."
last.fm
W - The Ex
YouTube: Lamp Lady, State of Shock, Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek, The Flute's Tale, Hickwall 1993, New Clear Daze, The Big Black

2010 June: Tom Cora
2012 February: Fred Frith & Tom Cora

Philip Wolfhagen

"Philip Wolfhagen is, quintessentially, a painter of the Australian landscape, one whose work has been exclusively absorbed into his private obsession with Tasmania, the terrain of his personal origins. His work is physical, dense in its application, sombre in mood and tonality, the result of a deeply experienced, enduring engagement with an ancient, yet eternally living subject."
Sherman Galleries
Karen Woodbury

The German Issue (1982)

"The German Issue (1982) was originally conceived as a follow-up to Semiotext(e)'s Autonomia/Italy issue, published two years earlier. Although ideological terrorism was still a major issue in Germany, what ultimately emerged from these pages was an investigation of two outlaw cities, Berlin and New York, which embodied all the tensions and contradictions of the world at the time. The German Issue is the Tale of Two Cities, then, with each city separated from its own country by an invisible wall of suspicion or even hatred. It is also the complex evocation of the rebelling youth—squatters, punks, artists and radicals, theorists and ex-terrorists—who gathered all their energy and creativity in order to outlive a hostile environment."
MIT Press
W - Semiotext(e)
Semiotext(e)
Afterall / : The German Issue, Annette Weisser
Re:Print: The German Issue: Still Straddling the Berlin Wall
How leftist intellectuals once approached bifurcated Berlin
amazon

The Righteous Brothers

Wikipedia - "The Righteous Brothers were the musical duo of Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. They recorded from 1963 through 1975, and continued to perform until Hatfield's death in 2003. Their emotive vocal stylings were sometimes dubbed 'blue-eyed soul'. Medley and Hatfield both possessed exceptional vocal talent, with range, control and tone that helped them create a strong and distinctive duet sound and also to perform as soloists."
Wikipedia
YouTube: You've lost that loving feeling, Unchained Melody, (You're My) Soul And Inspiration, Little Latin Lupe Lu

Impressions Of Light: The French Landscape From Corot To Monet

"This large, lavish journey through the art of the 19th-century French landscape offers a host of masterful works, among them Corot's Forest of Fontainbleau, Millet's End of the Hamlet of Gruchy, Renoir's Rocky Crags at L'Estaque, and Monet's Rue de la Bavolle, Honfleur. As is often the case, however, some of the most wonderful things to see are also the least expected: rare and unusual monotypes by Degas, three states of a softground etching by Pissarro, and numerous works by some of their lesser-known but equally important contemporaries. Unlike previous books on the topic, Impressions of Light presents a unique and stunningly complete group of work that introduces a new level of complexity into the discussion of French landscapes."
amazon

Le Pas Du Chat Noir - Anouar Brahem

"Oud player Brahem has established his own little niche with the instrument; his music, strongly Arab-inflected, has the spare, chamber feel that makes it a perfect fit in the ECM catalog. He's a contemplative player, and this melding with piano and accordion suits his style perfectly, as notes and ideas draw out marvelously. The interplay between musicians is as delicate as lace -- thoughtful, with everyone listening as much as playing."
All Music
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Toi qui sais (Live), Le pas du chat noir, Leila au pays du carrousel, var.
vimeo: 2002 - Full Album, 1:10:39

Meredith Monk: Spring Variation from Songs of Ascension

"New Sounds Live: Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble with the Todd Reynolds Quartet from The Greene Space on May 18, 2011."
YouTube

2011 July: Songs of Acsension

The Beats — A Graphic History

"NYT: The writers of the Beat Generation had the good fortune to give themselves a name and to write extensively about their lives, in novels like Jack Kerouac’s 'On the Road' and William Burroughs’s 'Junkie,' in poems like Allen Ginsberg’s 'Howl' and, later, in memoirs like Joyce Johnson’s 'Minor Characters' and Hettie Jones’s 'How I Became Hettie Jones.' Jones once said they couldn’t be a generation because they could all fit in her living room, but in the popular imagination they were much more than the sum of their body parts or writings. They were a brand."
NYT: The Mad Ones
amazon: The Beats: A Graphic History

B-boying

Wikipedia - "B-boying, often called 'breakdancing', is a popular style of street dance that was created and developed as part of hip-hop culture among African American and Latino youth in New York City. The dance consists of four primary elements: toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. It is danced to both hip-hop and other genres of music that are often remixed to prolong the musical breaks. The musical selection for b-boying is not restricted to hip-hop music as long as the tempo and beat pattern conditions are met. A practitioner of this dance is called a b-boy, b-girl, or breaker. These dancers often participate in battles, formal or informal dance competitions between two individuals or two crews."
Wikipedia
npr: Breakdancing, 'Present at the Creation' (Video)
W - Capoeira
B-BOYING (Breaking)
Urban Dictionary
YouTube: FURIOUS ROCKERS-BREAKDANCING 1984, The Suns of James Brown feat, NEW YORK CITY BREAKERS OLD FOOTAGE, New York City Breakers on SoulTrain 1984, New York Subway Break Dance

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

"As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes."
YouTube
amazon: Alone Together

2011 April: Sherry Turkle

Albert Marcoeur

"Albert Marcoeur, French multi-instrumentalist/composer, was born on December 12 1947, in Dijon, France. During his formal education of clarinet at the National Academy of Music and Dance of Dijon, Marcoeur actively participated in many straightforward college rock 'n roll bands. Closing an end to his formal training Marcoeur's musical visions had gravitated towards the experimental facets of music, wishing 'to do nothing else but make my own music'."
Albert Marcoeur
Marcoeur
last.fm
YouTube: Compte-rendu d'analyse, Simone, Formule 1 & 2, La salle d'attente, Comment Tu T'Sens, Téléphone privé (Celui où y'a Joseph, 1984)

Twentysix Gasoline Stations - Ed Ruscha

"Twentysix Gasoline Stations is the first artist's book by the American pop artist Ed Ruscha. Published in April 1963 on his own imprint National Excelsior Press, it is often considered to be the first modern Artist's book, and has become famous as a precursor and a major influence on the emerging artist's book culture, especially in America. The book does exactly what its title suggests, reproducing 26 photographs of gasoline stations next to captions indicating their brand and location."
Wikipedia
Twentysix Gasoline Stations
APX: ED RUSCHA: “Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962″ (1997)
A Kind of a ‘Huh?’: The Siting of Twentysix Gasoline Stations
lens culture

Philip Perkins

"Philip Perkins was born in 1951 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. During the first half of the 1970s he made numerous experimental films in Eugene, Oregon before relocating to San Francisco in 1977. Starting 1979, he focused on sound engineering and music, yet still making videos for local bands The Residents, Tuxedomoon or MX-80, for instance."
Continuo: Philip Perkins ‘Drive Time’
FUN MUSIC
Continuo: Philip Perkins ‘Neighborhood With A Sky’
Philip Perkins
Artist Detail
last.fm

Tiina Heiska

Twin Room, 2009
"For some years now, I have been creating series of paintings in which my themes evolve from one painting to the next. My work is based on photography, which I use as a sketch or a draft for the later painted image, and it’s intricately linked to cinematography. However where traditional cinema relies on a continuous flow of events and thereby creates a story with a beginning and an end, my work is comprised of several series of stills. My paintings form no obvious storyline but rather leave it to the viewer’s imagination to bridge the gap between image and story."
Escape Into Life
Tiina Heiska

Fela Kuti live in England, 1984 - "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense"

"Fela 'Anikulapo' Kuti and Egypt 80 perform live in Glastonbury, England, 1984.
Fela gives a brief interview and denies the very existence of Democracy as a political system before launching into his song 'Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense,' son, Femi Kuti, is featured on alto sax."
YouTube: Fela Kuti live in England, 1984 (1/3), (2/3), (3/3)

"One Night in Brooklyn"

"Taylor Deupree and Stephen Vitiello played a concert together earlier this month. If you follow either musician, and anyone who admires ambiguously melodious ambient music should, then you knew this, because they mentioned it on Twitter, and posted photos as they were gearing up, such as the one above. It took place in Brooklyn, and fortunately for those of us not in the area, Vitiello has subsequently posted a six-minute piece from the show."
disquiet (Video)

Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms

V. Hugo’s Bedchamber
"It's true; we find the secret lives of others fascinating. Especially if those others are writers. We get to know them through their work, and we yearn to learn more about them as people... We feel a kinship, with their experiences or with their characters, and we begin to imagine what their lives must be like. We read biographies about them, tour their homes and visit their graves, all in an effort to gain insight into their own particular genius. And nowhere is the essence of the artist more present than in the bedroom."
Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms

Dusty Springfield

"Britain's greatest pop diva, Dusty Springfield was also the finest white soul singer of her era, a performer of remarkable emotional resonance whose body of work spans the decades and their attendant musical transformations with a consistency and purity unmatched by any of her contemporaries; though a camp icon of glamorous excess in her towering beehive hairdo and panda-eye black mascara, the sultry intimacy and heartbreaking urgency of Springfield's voice transcended image and fashion, embracing everything from lushly orchestrated pop to gritty R&B to disco with unparalleled sophistication and depth."
YouTube: I Only Want To Be With You, Wishing and Hoping, I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself, In The Middle Of Nowhere, Son of a Preacher Man, 24 Hours From Tulsa, Live at the BBC (1/8), (2/8), (3/8), (4/8), (5/8), (6/8), (7/8), (8/8), Nothing has been proved, In Private, Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This

2009 May: Dusty Springfield

A Secret Location on the Lower East Side

"A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, based on a 1998 exhibition at The New York Public Library, documents the confluence of the New American Poetry with the mimeo revolution. The various strains identified in Donald Allen's watershed anthology The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 (Grove, 1960)--Beat, Black Mountain, New York School, San Francisco Renaissance, and others--extended into and evolved throughout the 60s and 70s, finding expression in 'underground' magazines and presses."
NYPL: A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980
amazon
Arthur Magazing
Granary Books

Afrikafestival Hertme - Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou

"... Only after a career of 40 years did Orchestre Poly-Rythmo break through internationally with the release last year of the compilation CD "The Vodoun Effect", thanks to the perseverance of Samy Ben Rajab, owner and driving force behind the label Analog Africa. The group experiences a rebirth and is touring this summer to promote their brandnew album "Cotonou Club". With their psychedelic guitar riffs, swinging organ, bold horn section and complex 'polyrhythms' they revive the irresistible Afro-funk and soul of the 'seventies'."
YouTube

2011 August: Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou

George Chinnery

Figures at a ghat
Wikipedia - "George Chinnery (... 5 January 1774 – 30 May 1852) was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China. ... Other than artistic value, his paintings are historically valuable as he was the only western painter resident in South China between the early and mid 19th century. He vividly depicted the life of ordinary people and the landscape of the Pearl River Delta at that period. Among the subjects of his portraits are the Scottish opium traders William Jardine and James Matheson as well as the diarist Harriet Low."
Wikipedia
Connected by a 'River of Smoke': Amitav Ghosh and Jonathan Spence at The Asia Society (Video)
Independent - Eastern promise: George Chinnery
Wikimedia
Google

The Artists’ Postcard Show

Anna Banana and the Dada Brothers 'Dada Land'. (1977
"Intimate and immediate, the artist’s postcard is a microcosm, a miniature work of art designed for a specific social purpose through which we can also trace the rich histories of modern and contemporary art. The Artists’ Postcard Show is a selective survey of the postcard as a distinctive artistic medium from the mid-twentieth century to present day. All of the works have been produced with the idea, if not always the function, of the postcard in mind: that distinctive double-sided greeting designed for use without an envelope."
Spike Island
Artists' Books and Multiples
amazon

Mighty Diamonds

Wikipedia - "Mighty Diamonds are a Jamaican harmony trio, recording roots reggae with a strong Rastafarian influence. The group, which comprised Donald 'Tabby' Shaw, Fitzroy 'Bunny' Simpson, and Lloyd 'Judge' Ferguson, was formed in 1969, and remains together as of 2010."
Wikipedia
Mighty Diamonds
amazon
YouTube: Pray unto thee, I Need A Roof, I Need A Roof (U Roy Feat), The Roots Is There, Tell Me What's Wrong, Identity, Africa, Gates of Zion 12' -1980

The Fame Studios Story - 1961-1973

"... In the fifty years since, FAME Studios and its idiosyncratic founder Rick Hall have been at the forefront of the Muscle Shoals Sound. FAME begat the process whereby a little known Alabama backwater would evolve into the very crucible of southern soul, a holy place to where musicians, singers and fans still make a very specific pilgrimage in the hope of experiencing a little bit of the magic behind so many hit records: 'I'm Your Puppet', 'Land Of 1,000 Dances', 'Tell Mama' and countless others."
MOG: The Fame Studios Story - 1961-1973 (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Wilson Pickett - Land Of 1000 Dances - Live `66, Bobby Gentry - Fancy (Don't Let Me Down), Etta James - Tell Mama, Bettye Swann - I Can't Let You Break My Heart, Candi Staton - I'm Just a Prisoner Of Your Good loving, Bobby Marchan - Funny Style, Maurice & Mac (Radiants) - Why Don't You Try Me, Barbara Perry - A Man Is a Mean Mean Thing, Clarence Carter - Snatching It Back

Anselm Kiefer

20 Jahre Einsamkeit, 1998
Wikipedia - "Anselm Kiefer (born March 8, 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah."
Wikipedia
WebMuseum
White Cube
amazon
YouTube: Anselm Kiefer, Ansem Kiefer Interview
MASS MoCA (vimeo)

The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed

"Seth Apter is a mixed-media artist from New York City, focused primarily on works on paper, book arts, and textural assemblage. His artwork has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and can be found in multiple books, independent zines, and national magazines including Somerset Studio, Cloth Paper Scissors, Studios, and Artful Blogging."
amazon
The Altered Page
Getting My Feet Wet