Ori Gersht - History Repeating

"Ori Gersht is a conduit between the past and the present. With the latest digital technology, Gersht’s work poetically revisits sources ranging from 19th-century romantic landscape painting to the Holocaust, which imbue his work with a compelling tension between beauty and violence, memory and history. In twenty-five works, including large-scale photographs and films dating from the late 1990s to today, Gersht examines the evolving relationship between cultural, political, and art histories to shape an exhibition The New York Times describes as 'beauty, tender and fleeting, amid history’s ire.'"
MFA Boston (Video)
NYT: Beauty, Tender and Fleeting, Amid History’s Ire

Sound Sculptures

"Sound Sculptures is a series of a sonic responses to various sculptures commissioned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority's Percent for Art program. In this project audiences are able use their cellphones, smartphones, or mp3 players to listen to the various sound works while at the sculpture's physical locations. It is the aim of the project to explore the ‘living landscape’ of each project's site, bringing a new perspective to the contextual and artistic intensions of the original work."
Sound Sculptures (Video)

Parov Stelar

Wikipedia - "Marcus Füreder aka Parov Stelar (born November 27, 1974) is a musician who lives and works in Linz, Austria. He performs with his band — the Parov Stelar Band — and as a DJ worldwide. Parov Stelar is the head of Etage Noir Recordings. After gaining experience as a DJ at nightclubs during the mid-late 1990s, Parov Stelar got involved in producing and publishing in 2000. After early works under the pseudonym Plasma and his real name, and also being a partner of the label Bushido Recordings, in 2004 he started producing under the pseudonym Parov Stelar. In the same year he founded his own label: Etage Noir Recordings."
Wikipedia
Parov Stelar
Soundcloud: Parov Stelar (Video)
Etage Noir (Video)
YouTube: Catgroove (TSC - Forsythe), Love, Chambermaid Swing (full song), Matilda, The Mojo Radio Gang, Lets Roll, Booty Swing, Libella Swing, CHAMBERMAID SWING Parov Stelar Band LIVE, Parov Stelar Band - A Night in Torino

Chris Marker

Wikipedia - "Chris Marker (... 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée (1962), A Grin Without a Cat (1977), Sans Soleil (1983) and AK (1985), an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Marker is often associated with the Left Bank Cinema movement that occurred in the late 1950s and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Henri Colpi and Armand Gatti."
Wikipedia
NYT: Chris Marker, Pioneer of the Essay Film, Dies at 91
YouTube: The Jetty [Chris Marker SF Masterpiece With English Dub], Chris Marker Documentary, Junkopia - A Short Film by Chris Marker, Grin Without a Cat (Opening Sequence) - Chris Marker

Music for Films (1978) - Brian Eno

Wikipedia - "Music for Films (1978) is an ambient album by Brian Eno. It is a conceptual work intended as a soundtrack for imaginary films. ... Originally released as a limited-edition (five hundred copies) LP in 1976 which was sent to a selection of filmmakers for possible inclusion in their work, the commercial Music for Films release was expanded to include a number of pieces for, as Eno put it, 'possible use as soundtracks to imaginary films.'"
Wikipedia
amazon
design contest 8: music for films, brian eno
YouTube: Music For Films (Whole Album)

Baden Powell: O Universo Musica de Baden Powell

"Baden Powell was a legendary Brazilian guitarist whom many consider the best of all time. A prodigy at the age of six, classically trained, his powerful sound and personality are unique and instantly recognizable. Unlike the velvety Joao Gilberto, who rode the bossa nova wave, and Tom Jobim, whose guitar technique was just enough to sketch his beautiful songs, there's no hint of pop in Powell. In fact, he left for Brazil for Paris just when the bossa wave was cresting, in 1963, and remained there for the rest of his life."
All About Jazz
amazon: O Universo Musica de Baden Powell
YouTube: O universo musical de baden powell 54:24

The Art of William S. Burroughs: Cut-ups, Cut-ins, Cut-outs

"The influence of William Burroughs on popular culture has been enormous: the Beatles, the Stones, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Keith Haring, David Cronenberg and Sonic Youth have all paid homage to the Beat writer in various media. While Burroughs’ life story and sexual/narcotic proclivities have had their own legacy, the 'cut-up' method that he developed in the 1960s with his friend Brion Gysin has proved his most generative legacy."
artbook
amazon

2010 March: Cut-up technique
2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag

Baobab issue #9 – Altagor

"French proto-Lettrist poet Altagor (real name Jean Vernier, 1915-1992) used onomatopeia in his 'Métapoésie' writings and an invented language in the 'Parole transformelle' visual poetry. Also an instrument builder, he accompanied his poetry readings on the pantophone, a stringed, bowed instrument, and the plectrophone, played with a stick. For an introduction to the sound world of Altagor, please refer to the article and sound file on Continuo-docs."
Continuo (Video)
Continuo's documents (Video)
UbuWeb (Video)

Northern Soul

Wikipedia - "Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged, initially in Northern England in the late 1960s, from the British mod scene. Northern soul mainly consists of a particular style of black American soul music based on the heavy beat and fast tempo of the mid-1960s Tamla Motown sound. The northern soul movement, however, generally eschews Motown or Motown-influenced music that has met with significant mainstream success."
Wikipedia
Northern Soul
YouTube: Frank Wilson - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), Nothing but a heartache by The Flirtations, Kim Weston - Take me in your arms, Baby You Got It - The Radiants, Jackie Wilson - Higher And Higher, Chuck Wood - Seven days too long, Dena Barnes - If you ever walk out of my Life, The High Numbers - Gotta dance to keep from cryin', Brenda Holloway - Just Look What You've Done, KIM WESTON - You Can Do It, Barbara Mills - Queen Of Fools, Nolan Porter - If I Could Only Be Sure, Linda Carr - Everytime

The Complete Posthumous Poetry - César Vallejo

"This is the first translation into English of the complete poetry of the Peruvian writer César Vallejo (1892-1938), one of the greatest voices in 20th-century poetry. Published in bilingual format, the book includes notes on the translation itself, as well as an introduction and chronology of the Vallejo's life and work. Vallejo's poetry takes the Spanish language to an unprecedented level of emotional rawness and stretches its grammatical possibilities. Striking against theology with the very rhetoric of the Christian faith, Vallejo's is a tragic vision perhaps the only one in the canon of Spanish-language literature in which salvation and sin are one and the same."
Instituto Cervantes
amazon: The Complete Posthumous Poetry
Wikipedia
Poets: César Vallejo
Poetry Foundation

South Street Seaport

Wikipedia - "The South Street Seaport is a historic area in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located where Fulton Street meets the East River, and adjacent to the Financial District. The Seaport is a designated historic district, distinct from the neighboring Financial District. It features some of the oldest architecture in downtown Manhattan, and includes the largest concentration of restored early 19th-century commercial buildings in the city. This includes renovated original mercantile buildings, renovated sailing ships, the former Fulton Fish Market, and modern tourist malls featuring food, shopping and nightlife, with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge."
Wikipedia
South Street Seaport Museum
YouTube: South Street Seaport

Faust

Wikipedia - "Faust (German: fist) are a German krautrock band. Formed in 1971 in Wümme, the group was originally composed of Werner 'Zappi' Diermaier, Hans Joachim Irmler, Arnulf Meifert, Jean-Hervé Péron, Rudolf Sosna and Gunther Wüsthoff, working with record producer Uwe Nettelbeck and engineer Kurt Graupner. Faust formed in 1971 in the rural setting of Wümme. ... The Faust Tapes was a cut-and-paste album which spliced together a large number of bits and pieces from their extensive collection of private recordings, not originally intended for release."
Wikipedia
W - The Faust Tapes
Faust Blog
The Quietus - Faust And Last And Always: Germany's Most Radical Rock Group Talk (Video)
YouTube: FAUST!!! from BBC SPECIAL PRoGRAM Krautrock The Rebirth of Germany, The Faust Tapes (1973), THE FAUST TAPES: 1.Stretch out time 2.Flashback caruso, It's a Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl) 1972, Krautrock, It's a bit of a pain, The Lurcher, J'ai Mal Aux Dents (1973), Meadow Meal, Baby, Caruso

Chris Johanson

Needs the Light, 2002
Wikipedia - "Chris Johanson is an American painter and street artist. He is a member of San Francisco's Mission School art movement. Johanson was born in suburban San Jose, California in 1968. He grew up skateboarding, attending punk rock shows, drawing, and with a dry yet sharp sense of humor. He has no formal training in art, learning some technique by painting skateboards and houses."
Wikipedia
Chris Johanson
ARTFORUM
Back Talk: A Conversation with Chris Johanson
YouTube: Chris Johanson on "The Sunlight of the Spirit is the Warmth of Love", YouTube Curated By Chris Johanson - MOCAtv

Blue Train - John Coltrane (1957)

Wikipedia - "Blue Train is a hard bop jazz album by John Coltrane, released in 1957 on Blue Note Records, catalogue BLP 1577. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, it is Coltrane's second solo album, the only one he recorded for Blue Note as a leader, and the only one he conceived personally for the label."
Wikipedia
John Coltrane x Lee Morgan on Blue Train
Coltrane, John: The Ultimate Blue Train
NPR (Video)
Blue Note - Far From Old Fashioned: Blue Train At 55
amazon: Blue Train
YouTube: Blue Train (Full Album)

Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado)

"Oh arthur arthur. we are in Abyssinia Aden. making love smoking cigarettes. we kiss. but it's much more. azure. blue pool. oil slick lake. sensations telescope, animate. crystalline gulf. balls of colored glass exploding. seam of berber tent splitting. openings, open as a cave, open wider, total surrender." —Patti Smith, from "dream of rimbaud"
oceanstar
YouTube: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado)

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud
2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1

Daniel R. Celentano

“Festival,” 1934
"Daniel R. Celentano was a New York, WPA artist and Thomas Hart Benton student. ... Born in 1902 and died in 1980. Daniel Celentano at the age of twelve was Thomas Hart Benton's first and youngest student. Celentano often focused on the Italian neighborhood of NYC where he was born and raised as the subject matter of his drawings, paintings and murals He enjoyed an active career, exhibiting at all the major museums as an accomplished American Scene painter during the WPA and WWII era."
Art News
Ephemeral New York
Art of the Thirties: Rediscovered Masters of the American Scene
Google

Crossroads of the (Art) World

"At what date on the calendar, at what precise location, did counterculture become pop culture? And who do we mark down in the history books as the hero, or the villain, who masterminded the switch? There is an answer: 'The Times Square Show.' In June of 1980, more than a hundred artists, under the auspice and directed by the vision of Colab (Collaborative Projects), took over a four-story building on Forty-first Street and Seventh Avenue and mounted a two-month exhibition. There were big names: Tom Otterness, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, Nan Goldin."
The Paris Review
Times Square Show Revisited
Times Square Show Revisited: Accounts
Times Square: The Underbelly of New York Culture
YouTube: Times Square Show Revisited at Hunter

DJ Jamaican

King Tubby Sound System
Wikipedia - "A deejay (alternatively spelled DJ) is a Jamaican musical term for a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and 'toasts' to an instrumental riddim (rhythm). Deejays are not to be confused with disc jockeys from other music genres like hip-hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays who are more likely to sing are sometimes called singjays."
Wikipedia
amazon: JAMAICAN DEEJAYS FROM THE ROOTS ERA
YouTube: Dennis Alcapone - DJ'ing in Jamaica
YouTube: U-Roy - Stop that train, U Roy feat. Geregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown - Night Nurse, COUNT MACHUKI & SOUND DIMENSION - Doctor Sappa Too, Count Machuki & The Sound Dimension - More Scorcha, KING STITT & CLANCY - DANCE BEAT, King Stitt - Fire Corner, King Tubby - Human Rights Dub, King Tubby - Moving Out (Osbourne Ruddock), Dennis Alcapone - Shades of Hudson, Wake Up Jamaica - Dennis Alcapone, Dillinger - War is Over, Dillinger - Natty Dread A The Ruler

Pina Bausch: 30th Next Wave Festival

"With her passing in 2009, legendary dance-theater pioneer Pina Bausch (the subject of Wim Wenders' Academy Award-nominated film tribute earlier this year) left behind an indelible legacy. This fall, Bausch's company returns to BAM—its exclusive New York home—to present a very special engagement of the choreographer's final work, a singular artistic achievement that resonates with its maker's keen observation and profound grace."
BAM: “… como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si …”. Oct 18—Oct 27, 2012, (Video)
YouTube: The Here and After (Jun Miyake)

2008 May: Pina Bausch
2009 June: Pina Bausch, 1940-2009
2011 November: "Coffee with Pina" (Video)
2012 August: Pina Bausch Costumes (Video)

Jonas Leclasse

"The concept for Jonas Leclasse's clever street photography series titled 'Les Portes' is very simple, draw doors in chalk on street walls, and then ask strangers to pose with them. Speaking about the project Jonas says 'My work often takes public space as a theater and my approach is based on a playful spirit. I am developing a world where reality and fiction mingle, where space, viewer and image interact.'"
Junk Culture
Jonas Leclasse

Goodbye, alt-weeklies

"Two weeks ago, the 46-year-old alternative weekly the Boston Phoenix vanished in a puff of newsprint, leaving in its place a new publication called simply The Phoenix, a news-culture-lifestyle magazine as glossy as the new condominium buildings sprouting in once working-class Southie. The city’s name — the sense of place — simply disappeared. The loss was a long time for coming."
SALON: Goodbye, alt-weeklies
W - The Phoenix
The sad, inevitable decline of The Boston Phoenix
Axed Cartoonist Blasts Village Voice Ownership, ‘Bain Capital of the Altweeklies’

2010 June: The Real Paper

Eleni Karaindrou - Ulysses' Gaze

"Eleni Karaindrou's long, fruitful partnership with Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos has given birth to several scores for his award-winning films. However, perhaps no previous Karaindrou score contains the evocative power of her compositions for Ulysses' Gaze, the film about memory, artistic quests, and war that won the Grand Prix du Jury at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. An extended suite for viola, oboe, accordion, trumpet, horn, cello, voice, and string orchestra, Ulysses' Gaze embodies the themes of longing, nostalgia, loss, memory, and obsession that are the film's subjects."
AllMusic
amazon: Ulysses' Gaze
amazon: Ulysses' Gaze DVD
YouTube: Ulysses' Gaze Trailer
YouTube: A tribute, Eternity and a day, Eleni Karaindrou at Concert Hall of Athens, Woman's Theme, Lenin Statue, à côté de la silhouette

2008 June: Eleni Karaindrou

"Double Dutch Bus" - Frankie Smith

Wikipedia - "'Double Dutch Bus' is a hit 1981 funk song by Frankie Smith, made famous for its extensive use of the 'izz' infix form of slang. The song title represents a combination of two institutions in Smith's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neighborhood: the double Dutch jump rope game played by neighborhood kids; and the SEPTA bus system that was a backbone of the local transportation network (and for which Smith had unsuccessfully applied for a bus driving position; the Transpass referred to in the song is an actual SEPTA pass)."
Wikipedia
W - -izzle
W - Frankie Smith
YouTube: Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus

John Keats - Nicholas Roe

"This landmark biography of celebrated Romantic poet John Keats explodes entrenched conceptions of him as a delicate, overly sensitive, tragic figure. Instead, Nicholas Roe reveals the real flesh-and-blood poet: a passionate man driven by ambition but prey to doubt, suspicion, and jealousy; sure of his vocation while bitterly resentful of the obstacles that blighted his career; devoured by sexual desire and frustration; and in thrall to alcohol and opium."
Yale Books
amazon: John Keats: A New Life
Guardian: John Keats was an opium addict, claims a new biography of the poet
NYT: Can Opium or Illness Explain a Keats Poem?
Seamus Perry - Truth, Beauty and Enfield
Beauty that must die
W - John Keats
Poets: John Keats

Paolo Angeli

"A former member of the Laboratorio di Musica & Imagina avantgarde ensemble, that released A Propos de (Erosha, 1993), Rosemberg's Revised Timetable (Erosha, 1995), with Jon Rose, and Colpi Secchi Giro di Basso (Erosha, 1996), Italian guitarist Paolo Angeli developed a personal technique at a modified folk guitar through Dove Dormono gli Autobus (Erosha, 1995), Linee di Fuga (Erosha, 1998), the suite Tessuti (2004), MA.Ri. (Auand, 2003), a collaboration with Antonello Salis."
Scaruffi
amazon: Paolo Angeli
YouTube: BUCATO (Etterbeek), Desired Constellation, Ahead in the sand (Frith, Cover), Ritagli di Tempo, Nanni Angeli - Ferri, UN PAESE A SEI CORDE, La Corsicana, Antonello Salis/Paolo Angeli/Gavino Murgia/Hamid Drake - Giornale di Bordo

Dance - edited by André Lepecki

"Dance is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art. This collection surveys the choreographic turn in the artistic imagination from the 1950s onwards, and in doing so outlines the philosophies of movement instrumental to the development of experimental dance. By introducing and discussing the concepts of embodiment and corporeality, choreopolitics, and the notion of dance in an expanded field, Dance establishes the aesthetics and politics of dance as a major impetus in contemporary culture."
The MIT Press
Download PDF (112 KB)

Banned Books Week

"Banned Books Week is the national book community's annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2012 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 30 through October 6. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982."
Banned Books Week

Symphony #8 & #10 (The Mysteries) - Glenn Branca

"Some classic Branca, now back in print. Originally recorded and released in 1994. Minimal and massive, for fans of Sonic Youth, Black Lips, etc. Subtitled The Mystery and The Mystery Pt. 2, these two symphonies concern themselves with the two big questions: Life and Death. They are both scored for eight guitars, two basses, keyboard, drums, vocal and two conductors. Symphony No. 8 has two movements: The Passion and Spiritual Anarchy that both build upon sustained tones that create a counterpoint by means of delays in scale and other patterns and micro tunings. There are also two movements in Symphony No. 10: The Final Problem and The Horror. These are built in a similar manner to the techniques in No. 8 but the tuning and scales employed are different, creating another sensation yet still as intense and continuous in rhythm as No. 8." - "Blue" Gene Tyranny
amazon
YouTube: Symphony Nos.8 & 10: Live At The Kitchen

Rivers and Mountains - John Ashbery

"... Certain pervasive features in John Ashbery's work make their first appearance, full-blown, in Rivers and Mountains, which was published in 1966, four years after The Tennis Court Oath and the same number of years before The Double Dream of Spring. ('The Meandering Yangtze' is a line from 'Into the Dusk-Charged Air.') In the poems of this collection, and especially 'The Skaters,' Ashbery introduces a nonlinear associative logic that averts both exposition and disjunction. Ashbery's aversion (after The Tennis Court Oath) to abrupt disjunction gives his collage-like work the feeling of continuously flowing voices, even though few of the features of traditional voice-centered lyrics are present in his work."
The Meandering Yangtze, Rivers and Mountains (1966) - Charles Bernstein
Poetry Foundation: Rivers and Mountains - John Ashbery
amazon

2007 November: John Ashbery
2009 October: PennSound
2012 February: Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987

Copyright Criminals (2009)

"Packed with a diverse cast, the PBS doc Copyright Criminals explores the hot button issue of sampling, taking a close look at the costly history, the high-profile legal cases (from 3 Feet High and Rising to Biz vs. Gilbert O’ Sullivan to the Danger Mouse The Grey Album stand off), and the impact the practice has had on music, particularly hip-hop."
ego trip land
W - Copyright Criminals
amazon
YouTube: Copyright Criminals Trailer
vimeo: Copyright Criminals (2009)

Renoir: Between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie

"Alongside Monet, Bazille and Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir laid the foundations of Impressionism in 1860s Paris. But acclaim for his painting was slow in coming, primarily because of the tribulations of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, which put a hiatus on so much artistic activity during the 1860s–70s. As a result, the first two decades of Renoir’s career are sometimes ignored, an oversight this superb volume decisively remedies."
@ ARTBOOK
amazon
YouTube: A Renoir Revival Is Long Overdue

Beautiful Losers (2009)

Wikipedia - "Beautiful Losers is a 2008 documentary film by director Aaron Rose and co-directed by Joshua Leonard. ... A series of interviews with these artists explains their reasoning behind their 'do-it-yourself' style of street art. As some of these artists discuss their growth in popular artistic culture they explain how becoming renowned and admired in the art world was something that never occurred to them from their various roots in street culture, or simply creating art for themselves."
Wikipedia
vimeo: Beautiful Losers film trailer
YouTube: Beautiful Losers (2008) 1:30:51

Travel: My Father’s Color Images of Southern California in the 1940′s

"... Those colored slide images fascinate me still. They show a life long gone, and a place just barely recognizable. In the early forties, California had no freeways, and only eight million inhabitants. An yet, it was not a time of innocence. World War II loomed, and then transformed California forever. Spanish architecture, movie studios, cars, oranges and beaches figure prominently in the California of our imagination and in these photos. These images were shot by my father, Ed Alinder, on 35 mm Kodachrome film in Southern California in 1940-44, and on a visit in 1947. Many more photos, after the jump."
MacroChef

The B-52's

Wikipedia - "The B-52's is the eponymous debut album by the Athens, Georgia-based New Wave rock band The B-52's. The kitschy lyrics and mood, and the hook-laden harmonies helped establish a fanbase for the band, who went on to release several chart-topping singles. The album cover was designed by Tony Wright (credited as Sue Ab Surd)."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Rock lobster, Planet claire, 52 Girls, Dance This Mess Around, Lave, There's a Moon in the Sky, Hero Worship, Downtown

2008 October: The B-52's

David Corio

Vesuvio Bakery
"David Corio was born in London, England, in 1960. He began his professional career in 1978 taking photographs for New Musical Express, followed by The Face, Time Out, and Black Echoes, covering a wide range of music and portraiture. After a stint as a music writer at City Limits, he worked as a freelance photographer for the Daily Telegraph, The Times, Q, Theatre Royal Stratford, and Greensleeves Records, among others."
David Corio