View the Passport Photos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & Other Cultural Icons

"If you’ve had the fortune of travelling for leisure, you know that there are three types of mementoes that unfailingly elicit pangs of nostalgia. The first are photographs. The second are the running commentaries we write down in journals and blogs, documenting the various impressions, thoughts, and minutiae we experience. The third are passports. When brimming with exit stamps and tattered visas, passports are the mark of a worldly traveller: a grimy, well-worn sign to fellow hostel guests that you’re wanted company when the time comes to compare stories."
Open Culture
Passport Photos of Iconic Figures in The Past
The Untravelled Paths
W - Passport

Side By Side on Monhegan: The Henri circle and the American Impressionists

"Exhibition catalogue from the Monhegan Museum. Featuring landscapes and seascapes of George Wesley Bellows, Clarence K. Chatteron, Henry Bill Selden, Edward F. Rook, Randall Davey, Robert Henri, Edward Willis Redfield, Bernard Guttman, Rockwell Kent, John McPherson, William Chadwick, Frank Bicknell, Henrietta Shore, Woodhull Adams, and many more."
amazon: Side By Side on Monhegan
NYT: Maine Through Artists' Eyes

2009 September: Monhegan Island, 2012 August: Monhegan, The Artists' Island.

The Great War: July 1, 1916

"Joe Sacco is a cartoonist, graphic novelist and journalist; he's best-known for his dispatches from today's regions of conflict, like the Middle East and Bosnia, in cartoon form. But for his latest book, The Great War, Sacco turns his eye on history. He's recreated of one of the worst battles of World War I, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, from its hopeful beginning to its brutal end. The book is unconventional in form — it folds out to form a 24-foot-long panorama. And while a separate author's note provides historical context, the book itself is wordless; no dialogue, no captions."
NPR: The Great War (Video)
Slate: A 24-foot Panorama of the Most Infamous Day of World War
TCJ: The Great War: July 1, 1916
W.W. Norton
NYT: Solemn Panorama of Battle

Romantic Reflections’ photo-shoot & behind-the-scenes

"Two years after Audiocentric, Jason Minnis and I collaborated again earlier this month on his latest musical project: Romantic Reflections. Jason is a Brooklyn based producer & classical pianist and he asked me to take the lead on the visual concept of his classical piano EP. We did a ghost-dog style photo-shoot on a roof-top in East New York for the album cover and ended-up shooting a short film as well. In the video below, Jason talks about the concept behind the album. Album cover and photo-shoot behind-the-scenes after the jump."
Stephane Missier aka Charles le Brigand
 (Video)

Bruce Davidson

USA. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
Wikipedia - "Bruce Davidson (born September 5, 1933) is an American photographer. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1958. His photographs, notably those taken in Harlem, New York City, have been widely exhibited and published. Bruce Davidson was born on born September 5, 1933 in Oak Park, Illinois. ... Davidson’s next project, East 100th Street, is perhaps his most famous. East 100th Street was a two-year documentation of an infamous block in East Harlem. This project was also displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. Davidson followed this with Subway, a classic portrayal of the New York subway system, in the late 1970s. Using color to convey mood, Davidson documented a gritty and lively urban underworld. Over a decade later, in the early 1990s, Davidson completed a four-year exploration of Central Park, showing it as a beautiful and grand homage to New York City."
Wikipedia
15 Lessons Bruce Davidson Can Teach You About Street Photography
Bruce Davidson and 1950s gangs of Brooklyn
New Yorker - Bruce Davidson: Time of Change
Magnum Photos: Bruce Davidson
New Yorker: Bruce Davidson on Street Photography (Video)
YouTube: A Time of Change - Bruce Davidson's Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, Bruce Davidson: A Lifetime with Leica, TateShots: Bruce Davidson's Subway, Everybody Street: Bruce Davidson

Blood Money - Tom Waits (2002)

"Tom Waits has said: 'I like a beautiful song that tells you terrible things. We all like bad news out of a pretty mouth.' When it comes to the material on Blood Money, I don't know if I can call Waits' mouth pretty, but he certainly offers plenty of bad news in a very attractive, compelling way. Released simultaneously with Alice, a recording of songs written in 1990, Blood Money is a set of 13 songs written by Waits and Kathleen Brennan in collaboration with dramatist Robert Wilson. The project was a loose adaptation of the play Woyzeck, originally written by German poet Georg Buchner in 1837. The play was inspired by the true story of a German soldier who was driven mad by bizarre army medical experiments and infidelity, which led him to murder his lover -- cheery stuff, to be sure. ..."
allmusic
Wikipedia
Tom Waits Albums From Worst To Best
YouTube: Misery Is The River Of The World, Coney Island Baby, All The World Is Green, God's Away On Business, Knife chase, Starving in the belly of a whale, A good man is hard to find, Another Man's Vine, Lullaby, The Part You Throw Away, Woe, Calliope

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974).

The Great Speckled Bird

Wikipedia - "The Great Speckled Bird was a counterculture underground newspaper based in Atlanta, Georgia from 1968 to 1976. It was founded by New Left activists from Emory University and members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee, an offshoot of SDS. Founding editors included Tom and Stephanie Coffin, Howard Romaine and Gene Guerrero Jr. The first issue appeared March 8, 1968, and within 6 months it was publishing weekly. By 1970 it was the third largest weekly newspaper in Georgia with a paid circulation of 22,000 copies. The paper subscribed to Liberation News Service, a leftist news collective. The office of The Great Speckled Bird at the north end of Piedmont Park (240 Westminster Dr.) was firebombed and destroyed on May 6, 1972 after the paper published an exposé of the mayor of Atlanta."
Wikipedia
The Great Speckled Bird
Georgia State University
New Georgia Encyclopedia
Paper Service Answering Hippies ...
Atlanta Progressive News
YouTube: The Great Speckled Bird

The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard (1958)

Wikipedia - "The Poetics of Space (French: La Poétique de l'Espace) is a 1958 book by Gaston Bachelard. Bachelard applies the method of phenomenology to architecture basing his analysis not on purported origins (as was the trend in enlightenment thinking about architecture) but on lived experience of architecture. He is thus led to consider spatial types such as the attic, the cellar, drawers and the like. This book implicitly urges architects to base their work on the experiences it will engender rather than on abstract rationales that may or may not affect viewers and users of architecture. It is about the architecture of the imagination."
Wikipedia
[PDF] The Poetics of Space
amazon
Google - The Poetics of Space

2011 June: Gaston Bachelard

Still Feel Gone - Uncle Tupelo (1991)

"Uncle Tupelo clearly defined their nervy Gram Parsons-meets-the Minutemen sound on their debut album, 1990's No Depression, and their 1991 follow-up, Still Feel Gone, found them branching out into new variations of their previously established themes. While No Depression was dominated by breakneck tempos with the occasional slow, contemplative number thrown in for variety, Still Feel Gone found Uncle Tupelo taking a closer look at the middle ground, as evidenced by the high-strung acoustic guitars of 'Still Be Around,' the measured but powerful Crazy Horse stomp of 'Looking for a Way Out,' the lonesome shuffle of 'True to Life,' and the stark atmospherics of 'If That's Alright' (the latter of which in retrospect sounds like the first dawning of the ideas Jeff Tweedy would explore with Wilco). ..."
allmusic
Wikipedia
YouTube: Gun, Looking For A Way Out, Fall Down Easy, Nothing, Still Be Around, Watch me fall, True to Life, Cold Shoulder, Discarded

2011 July: Uncle Tupelo, 2012 December: No Depression, 2013 August: March 16–20, 1992.

The Cutlass Dance Band, Los Issifu and his Moslem

"One of the rarest and most desirable Ghanaian 45s and definitely the heaviest two funk tracks ever to be recorded by The Cutlass Dance Band. As with all of our 45s, this record was licensed directly from the artists. And here are two stone cold Afro Funk bangers by Los Issifu and his Moslems. Directly licensed from the man himself and we are also in the process of tracking down the tapes for two so far unreleased albums by Los Issifu!"
Voodoo Funk (soundcloud)

Rena Effendi

Wikipedia - "Rena Effendi is an Azerbaijani photographer. Her work is focused on themes of environment, post-conflict society, the effects of oil industry on people, and social disparity. She is currently (2013) based in Cairo, Egypt. Effendi was born on April 26, 1977, in Baku. She studied at the Azerbaijan State Institute of Languages. She began photographing in 2001 and became a full-time photographer in 2005 after quitting her job as an Economic Development Specialist at the United States Agency for International Development in Baku. Effendi's first monograph 'Pipe Dreams', published by Schilt Publishing, focuses on lives of ordinary citizens in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey along the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline."
Wikipedia
Rena Effendi
New Yorker: Between Here and Paradise: Rena Effendi’s Havana
Prix Pictet
INSTITUTE
Visura Magazine
YouTube:Rena Effendi at HOST Gallery

Nicolas Jaar - Other People

"I first met Nicolas Jaar when I was working for DFA. He must have been seventeen or eighteen years old at the time. I came back from lunch one day and found him talking enthusiastically but eloquently and immediately assumed he was some band’s manager, because those are the only types who command that kind of attention in the laid back office. He was talking about Joy Division in relation to Wolf + Lamb, so the context was wild, but Nico’s monologue felt inspired and energetic. Of course, Nico’s personality is large. He’s a tenacious guy, and it speaks through his music and performances. He’s never not doing something, which is rare for young guys finding their way. In my opinion, he’s on a pioneering artist track that not many people I know lead."
Electronic Beats
YouTube: Nicolas Jaar Feature (Slices Issue 4-12), Nicolas Jaar Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset x RBMA Takeover, Nicolas Jaar live in Budapest (2012)

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar

In Which He Could Visit Her And Did Not Need To Write

Ted Berrigan - 1967 (Alex Katz)
"Ted Berrigan met Sandy Alper and seven days later they were married. She wrestled him to the ground, sat on his lap, and asked him to marry her. He agreed. She dropped out of college and boarded a bus with him to Houston, where she pawned her watch to pay for the marriage license. She said she dropped out of college because she could tell, in an instant, that 'living with Ted would be far more educational than staying in school.' ... The letters between Ted Berrigan and Sandy Alper were published for the first time in Dear Sandy, Hello. In it Sandy explains that she was young (19) but she knew what she was doing. Once married, they visited her parents in Miami, who searched Ted's things and found letters from Ron Padgett about the drug scene on the Columbia campus. The next day the police arrived to take Sandy to Jackson Memorial Hospital mental ward."
This Recording

2011 January: Ted Berrigan - Two prose poems, 2011 September: Public Access Poetry, 2011 November: Twenty-Four Sonnets (1971), 2012 June: Recovering "Memorial Day".

Arena Hotel Chelsea

"A 1981 BBC documentary, produced for the series Arena, about New York City's legendary Chelsea Hotel and its colourful inhabitants."
YouTube: Arena Chelsea Hotel Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4, Pt.5, Pt.6

2010 October: Hotel Chelsea

This Not That - John Baldessari (2010)

"As one of the most unusual of all contemporary art forms, conceptual art is an art form that finds the ideas or concepts attached to the work taking on much greater importance than visual concerns. The mode, which frequently overlaps with the concept of artistic installations, took on greatest popularity in the 1960s, and went on to inspire and shape the work of artists over the next several decades. Examples include Fred Forest buying a blank space in the newspaper and inviting readers to contribute their own art, and Robert Rauschenberg sending a short note that claimed to be a portrait as his contribution to a gallery exhibit. Artist John Baldessari (b. 1931) helped launch this movement and thus earned a reputation as one of its true harbingers."
amazon
YouTube: This Not That 1:27:52

2009 October: John Baldessari, 2012 May: A Brief History of John Baldessari.

Henry Thomas

Wikipedia - "Henry Thomas (born 1874, Big Sandy, Texas – died 1930) was an American country blues singer, songster and musician, who enjoyed a brief but notable recording career in the late 1920s. Often billed as 'Ragtime Texas', Thomas' style was the basis for what later became known as Texas blues guitar. Thomas was born into a family of freed slaves in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874. He began traveling the Texas rail lines as a hobo after leaving home in his teens. He eventually earned his way as an itinerant songster, entertaining local populaces as well as railway employees. Although the circumstances are not known, Thomas recorded twenty-three sides for Vocalion Records between 1927 and 1929. The repertoire on these cuts includes a combination of reels, gospels, minstrel pieces, ragtime numbers and blues. Besides guitar, Thomas accompanied himself on quills, a folk instrument fabricated from cane reeds whose sound is similar to the zampona played by musicians in Peru and Bolivia. His style of playing guitar was probably derived from banjo-picking styles."
Wikipedia
“Ragtime Texas”: a hobo songster goin’ up the country… A tribute to Henry Thomas
Texas State Historical Association
Illustrated Henry Thomas discography
YouTube: Texas Worried Blues, Don't Leave Me Here (Don't Ease Me In), Bull Doze Blues, Fishing Blues, Railroadin' Some, When The Train Comes Along, The Little Red Caboose, Charmin' Betsy, John Henry

Micol Assaël

Untitled 2004. Engines, electrical resistances, smoke, tables, chair, turnished glasses.
"What was it about this small web image of an installation that made it stick to my memory and made me wish to find out all about it’s context and origin? The documentation of Micol Assaël’s installation Mindfall gives the impression of worn-out machinery, abandoned by its operators and heading towards the unknown. It makes me wonder what happened in this room – what will develop here, and will it in any way be possible to stop? Other parts of her work include large room environments in which she by means of electronics and mechanics creates (fascinating, in different ways charged) rooms where the viewer becomes physically involved through the use of temperature, air flow and electricity. A conversation with Assaël gives a glimpse into a way of thinking where dreams and the as yet unmapped frontiers of natural science become components in – and starting points of – art production."
Short circuits and open endings – a conversation with Micol Assaël
Johann König, Berlin: Micol Assaël
Micol Assaël
Kunsthalle Fridericianum
blip: Micol Assael's container of tortured engines
vimeo: Inner Disorder

History of the high five

"When I first phoned Lamont Sleets this spring, I knew only the following: He is a middle-aged man living in the small town of Eminence, Ky.; he played college basketball for Murray State University between 1979 and 1984; and he reportedly created one of the most contagious, transcendently ecstatic gestures in sports -- and maybe, for that matter, American life. I was calling Sleets because I wanted to talk to the man who invented the high five. I'd first read about him in 2007 in a press release from National High Five Day, a group that was trying to establish a holiday for convivial palm-slapping on the third Thursday in April."
ESPN
W - High five

Rene Gagnon Inaugurates Mecka Gallery : Opening Today in Brooklyn

"Brooklyn hasn’t opened a new Street Art gallery in a little while – in fact it has lost some formal spaces that welcome artists of the street kind over the past couple of years. So you’ll be happy to know we can now announce a new Street Art show at a new Street Art centric gallery is opening tonight. And you’ll jump out of your boots when you find out there will be a free print release to the first hundred people in line. 'HI! My name is… A Solo Exhibition of This and That', a new show by Rene Gagnon opens tonight and inaugurates the Mecka Gallery in Bushwick, or East Williamsburg, depending on which real estate agent or Midwestern transplant is showing you the neighborhood."
Brooklyn Street Art
Rene Gagnon
YouTube: Rene Gagnon at Spring Street, Artistic Process of Rene Gagnon
YouTube: Rene Gagnon

Robert Cottingham

Wikipedia - "Robert Cottingham (born 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is considered to be one of most important original photorealist painters. Cottingham's work focuses on items associated as Americana. He studied art at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. His first solo show was in 1971 at the O.K. Harris Gallery in New York. In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1994. A retrospective of Cottingham's work took place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1998."
Wikipedia
artnet
American Art
YouTube: Robert Cottingham

Michael Rakowitz - The Breakup

"Michael Rakowitz’s admiration for the Beatles began at the age of seven, on the day that John Lennon died, as he conveyed in The Breakup, 2010, a ten-part radio series originally broadcast on Amwaj Radio in Ramallah. Written and narrated by Rakowitz, it is presented as an audio installation in his current exhibition in New York and blends Beatles songs and the band members’ intimate conversations from the shooting of the 1970 documentary Let It Be with international audio and television reports of events leading to the 1967 Six-Day War. In the gallery’s back room, Rakowitz offers a forty-five-minute video, also titled The Breakup, 2010–12. Here the band’s demise is made analogous to the splintering of a nascent pan-Arab nationalism in the Middle East in the wake of the 1967 war."
ARTFORUM
From Invisible Enemy to Enemy Kitchen - Michael Rakowitz in conversation with Anthony Downey
vimeo: The Breakup, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4a, Part 4

Indochine (1992)

Wikipedia - "Indochine is a 1992 French film set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 50s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, with the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement set as a backdrop. The screenplay was written by novelist Erik Orsenna, script writers Louis Gardel, Catherine Cohen, and Régis Wargnier, who also directed the film. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. At the outset of the film, Camille, a young girl from the Nguyen Dynasty (powerless under French colonial rule), is adopted by Éliane Devries after her parents die in a plane crash at the end of the 1910s. Madame Devries owns and operates a large rubber plantation in Indochina that employs many indentured laborers. Unmarried, she raises Camille as her own daughter, where she lives with her father, who oversees the day-to-day operations of the plantation. At an auction bidding on the same painting, Madame Devries meets Jean-Baptiste Le Guen, a lieutenant in the French Navy. This culminates into a brief, torrid love affair. When Camille is sixteen, a French police officer shoots a Vietnamese prisoner who is escaping through the city streets."
Wikipedia
NYT: Indochine (1992)
Vincent Perez
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Indochine Trailer, Indochine 1992 de Regis Wargnier English Sub

Intersection: Brooklyn Heights Vintage

"Irwin Susskind, a Brooklyn Heights resident for 42 years, says he likes antique clothing and gets a lot of his clothes at thrift shops and street sales."
NYT: Intersection: Brooklyn Heights Vintage (Video)

Another Green World - Brian Eno (1975)

Wikipedia - "Another Green World is the third studio album by English musician Brian Eno. Produced by Eno and Rhett Davies, it was originally released by Island Records in September 1975. As he had done with previous solo albums, Eno worked with several guest musicians including Phil Collins, John Cale and Robert Fripp. The album marked a great musical change from Eno's previous albums. Using his instruction cards the Oblique Strategies for guidance, the album contained fewer lyric-based rock songs and had stronger emphasis on instrumental productions; many without the aid of guest musicians. The dark humour of the lyrics also changed to more dreamlike and obscure songs."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: Arena - Brian Eno - Another Green World, Another Green World(Full album).

Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998)

"Expatriate American writer Paul Bowles came to the limelight with an adaptation to screen by Bernardo Bertolucci of his first novel The Sheltering Sky. Subsequently, ambitious documentarists from several countries went down to Tangiers, Morocco where Bowles has been living for more than 50 years to capture the last days of an aging artist and composer, who played an important role in shaping the artistic trends of the 20th century along with other celebrities such as Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and William S. Burroughs. In this definitive film biography which took director Jennifer Baichwal more than four years to complete, the 87-year-old Bowles reflects on his life, work and friends while lying in bed at his home in Tangier smoking kif (cannabis) from an elegant black cigarette holder."
NYT - Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998)
Film Journal
amazon
YouTube: Let it Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles.

Underground Scene: New York’s Subway Back in the Day

Scene on the New York City subway, 1969.
"Culture: 1942-1969. As difficult as it is to believe, the New York City Subway has not always been the paragon of cleanliness, courtesy and efficiency currently enjoyed by several million New Yorkers and out-of-towners each and every day. In fact, for several decades in the middle of the 20th century, what was then the world’s busiest subway system was actually something of a mess. Unlike today’s flawless high-tech marvels, cars back in the day were relatively rickety affairs, and frequently sauna-hot in the summer. Crime on trains and platforms was not unknown. Sharp-eyed travelers might occasionally spot litter. And while contemporary commuters can, and do, set their watches by trains’ arrivals and departures, the old subway’s schedules could often, to the initiated, seem arbitrary — nonexistent, even. Verily, New Yorkers today live in a mass-transit Golden Age."
LIFE

Guillaume Leblon: Under My Shoe

Sand Rise West 2 (2009)
"On view through April 6, 2014, this first solo exhibition of Paris-based sculptor Guillaume Leblon’s work in a U.S. museum will feature a selection of works made over the last decade, in addition to two major new projects created for MASS MoCA. Leblon’s practice is characterized both by its diversity and the artist’s canny manipulation of space. While he creates powerful, discrete objects, he often choreographs his works into a larger spatial narrative within his exhibition venues."
MASS/MoCA
Bureau for Open Culture
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff

Jem Cohen

Wikipedia - "Jem Alan Cohen (born 1962) is a New York City-based American film maker, especially known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats (16mm, Super 8, video) and collaborations with music artists. He is the recipient of the Independent Spirit Award for feature filmmaking. ... Cohen was born in Kabul, Afghanistan where his father was working for the U.S. Agency for Information and Development. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1984, with a concentration in film and photography. Cohen found the mainstream Hollywood film industry incompatible with his sociopolitical and artistic views. By applying the DIY ethos of Punk Rock to his filmmaking approach, he crafted a distinct style in his films through various small gauge formats of Super 8mm, 16mm, and video."
Wikipedia
Jem Cohen Films
NewYorker - Jem Cohen: Punk-Rock Nature
Jem Cohen Explains Why 'Museum Hours' Will Help You Grapple With Art and Life
NYT: Old Masters, Sweet Mysteries (Video)
“There’s Too Much Music in Films”: An Interview With ‘We Have an Anchor’ Filmmaker Jem Cohen (vimeo)
Video Data Bank (Video)
vimeo: Lost Book Found, We Have An Anchor, Occupy #2 (EXCERPT), Vic Chesnutt – Anecdotal Evidence – A short film by Jem Cohen
YouTube: Jem Cohen's Ground-Level Artistry [Museum Hours, Instrument], Free Jem Cohen, Blessed are the dreams of men (2006), Le Bled (Buildings in a field) - Jem Cohen & Luc Sante, 2009, Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait

The Louvre invites Robert Wilson - Living Rooms

"Some forty years after he first created a sensation on the French theater scene with Deafman Glance, Robert Wilson is the Louvre’s latest guest curator. No mere retrospective or remembrance, this event marks an unprecedented collaboration between the world’s quintessential museum and the artist who, in the words of Louis Aragon, is 'what we, from whom Surrealism was born, dreamed would come after and go beyond us.' The theme of Wilson’s residency at the Louvre, 'Living Rooms,' reflects his wish to infuse the museum with the spirit of the Watermill Center on Long Island, the artists’ community where he lives, works, shares his personal collection of art and artifacts with the public, and nurtures the creativity of young and emerging artists."
Louvre
Blowing Smoke: Robert Wilson Agog Over Gaga in Louvre Show
Robert Wilson, Living Rooms
Robert Wilson au Louvre, Living Rooms
NYT: Paris Embraces ‘Einstein’ Again
[PDF] Living Rooms
VIDEOS: Robert Wilson on His Career in Theater, Watermill Center

2008 April: Robert Wilson, 2010 January: Einstein on the Beach, 2010 July: The CIVIL warS, 2011 May: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera , 2011 August: Stations (1982), 2012 February: Absolute Wilson, 2012 August: Einstein on the Blog: Christopher Knowles’ Typings, 2013 March: The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, 2013 April: Death, Destruction and Detroit, 2013 October: crickets audio recording slowed way down, 2013 October: Beached.

Existential Comics

"It's about some of the basic problems in epistemology and the foundations of absolute knowledge."
Existential Comics

Hendrick Avercamp

Winter landscape with iceskaters, Hendrick Avercamp, ± 1609.
"... The winter landscapes by Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585-1634 Kampen) are some of the most characteristic Dutch panoramas of the 17th century. It was shortly after 1600 that he developed his vistas of frozen rivers and canals into an independent genre of Dutch art. His paintings and drawings convey a timeless atmosphere that continues to strike a familiar chord to this day. They demonstrate to perfection the passion that natural ice has aroused in the Dutch soul for centuries: when the water freezes over, everyone takes to the ice - young and old, rich and poor. The Mute, as Avercamp was known by contemporaries due to his inability to speak, had a sharp eye for a visual anecdote. There are always new details to be discovered in his theatrical settings: couples skating about elegantly, finely-dressed gentlemen playing kolf, children sledding, or a sailing-boat flitting past on skates."
artdaily
W - Hendrick Avercamp
YouTube: Winter Landscapes [Art of 17th Century]

"Colonial Mentality" - Fela Kuti (1977)

"... 'Colonial Mentality' returns to a more seething and slinky musicality. The dark and brooding bassline undulates beneath a brass-intensive Africa 70. Rarely has Kuti's musical arrangements so perfectly imaged James Brown's J.B.'s or Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra. The message is delivered as a fable, demonstrating that it is the individuals who live in a stifling 'Colonial Mentality' who are the slaves. His preface, stating that the colonial man had released them yet they refuse to release themselves, sets out to prove that slavery is a continual and concurrent state of mind for Africans."
allmusic
YouTube: Fela Kuti on Colonial mentality, Colonial Mentality

Entrée des médiums : Spiritisme et art d'Hugo à Breton

Charles Hugo, Marine Terrace, 1853-54
"It is a very odd way to make art without pretending to do so. From 1853 till the early 1930s, it was the golden age of spiritism. This form of spirituality helps in solving certain great questions of the century and responds to spiritual needs, in a strangely atheistic and democratic manner which also agrees with scientism. It is quite astounding, and involves many phenomenons, including what we know as table-turning or talking boards, 'talking' tables that deliver a message. Besides these vocal phenomenons, often of highly political content, there are also artistic phenomenons, mostly drawings and some paintings, mixed with poetry."
Fascineshion (Video)

Prints: Snapshots, Postcards, Messages and Miniatures, 1987-2001 - Fred Frith

"The short story: Prints is Fred Frith's first album of songs in 20 years. The long story: it is actually a collection of compilation tracks and unreleased studio sessions recorded between 1987 and 2001. No matter if you already own a few of these, a pop album by this man is a rarity -- and that is truly a shame. Of course, as a respected improviser, serious composer, and educator, anything lighter from this pillar of modern music will meet with severe criticism from people who take themselves too seriously. Lighten up! Cheap at Half the Price was the best tongue-in-cheek take at the New Wave. ..."
allmusic
W - Prints
YouTube: Stones, Fingerprints, Life of a detective, The Ballad Of Melody Nelson, True Love & I Want It to Be Over, Trocosi, Reduce me

Jules de Balincourt, Paintings 2004–2013

Boys’ Club, 2011
"The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is inviting the artist Jules de Balincourt to present his first solo exhibition in a major North American museum. This show, Jules de Balincourt, Paintings 2004–2013, will run from November 28, 2013, to April 6, 2014, in the Contemporary Art Square. ... American soldiers, men’s clubs, masked groups, fairytale landscapes, public demonstrations, imaginary maps and social admonitions: the subjects of the works shown in Montreal are exemplary illustrations of the remarkable open-mindedness of de Balincourt’s pictorial approach."
e-flux: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Jules de Balincourt
W - Jules de Balincourt
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Art Frame - MMFA 2013: Jules de Balincourt
Victoria Miro
YouTube: GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC | Paris | 2011, "Unknowing Man's Nature" at ZACH FEUER, Interview: Jules de Balincourt