12 Years a Slave

Wikipedia - "12 Years a Slave is a 2013 British-American historical drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northup's memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account and concluded it to be accurate. This is the third feature film directed by Steve McQueen. ... Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012. The locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Magnolia, Bocage, and Destrehan. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the actual plantation where Northup was held."
Wikipedia
NYT: The Blood and Tears, Not the Magnolias (Video)
Twelve Years a Slave - Documenting the American South
Grantland: The Song of Solomon
Vanity Fair: “What’ll Become of Me?” Finding the Real Patsey of 12 Years a Slave
YouTube: 12 Years a Slave - Official Trailer, 12 Years A Slave Featurette - Solomon Northup (2013)

Vivian Maier

Wikipedia - "Vivian Dorothea Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer, who was born in New York City and spent much of her childhood in France. After returning to the United States, she worked for approximately forty years as a nanny in Chicago, Illinois. During those years, she took more than 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide. Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier's death, her work began to receive critical acclaim."
Wikipedia
Vivian Maier (Video)
Finding Vivian Maier (Video)
YouTube: Vivian Maier slideshow, Vivian Maier

Lindsay Cooper, 1951-2013

September 20, 2013 - "Last night, after taking the stage with a large band at Brooklyn's Roulette, Fred Frith, about to play the entirety of his wonderful 1980 album Gravity, told the audience, 'I know some of you have already heard that my dear friend and colleague Lindsay Cooper passed away yeaterday. This is for her.' Frith's voice cracked as he made the announcement and it was clear his hear was broken. Mine broke a little bit too. The opening band last night was a horns-and-reeds-led combo led by Aaron Novik, who was also in Frith's band. They were pretty wonderful, but I also thought as I listened that they did their thing very well, and their thing was one of about ten things that Henry Cow did amazingly well. Which led me to think of Lindsay Cooper, the multi-instrumentalist (although she was most proficient on bassoon and oboe) and composer whose work I first heard in the context of that great British progressive (in every sense of the word) band."
Some Came Running (Video)
YouTube: Lindsay Cooper in 'Democratie' from Mike Westbrook's 'The Cortege', Lindsay Cooper "Nightmare" - Sarajevo Suite Live 1994, Lindsay Cooper "Oh Moscow" (1991), Lindsay Cooper - Song of the Shirt, Lindsay Cooper - The assasination waltz, Lindsay Cooper - As She Breathes, Art Bears -Terrain (1978), News From Babel - Klein's Bottle
YouTube: Fred Frith’s Gravity - Roulette, NYC, Terrain (for Lindsay Cooper)

December 2009: Lindsay Cooper, 2010 February: Art Bears, 2011 April: Rags (1980)/The Golddiggers (1983), 2012 July: The Art Box - Art Bears, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 October: Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival.

PinaBausch - Fur die Kinder von Gestern, Heute und Morgen (2002)

"... Für Die Kinder is not new, because Bausch has repeatedly been telling stories of mankind through metaphors and children's games. But for the first time Bausch openly and warmly acknowledges her reference to children, in her title and on the stage, and the piece develops as a hopeful dedication to humankind and its children. This optimism offers a radical departure from her prior dark and pessimistic criticisms of adults represented as children. She no longer hides behind children, pointing out her criticisms through them; rather, she celebrates the spirit, imaginative freedom, and potential of childhood. The dancer-actors no longer need to represent children representing the adult world; their challenge becomes representing children being children."
Project MUSE: Fur die Kinder von Gestern, Heute und Morgen (For the Children of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow)
Ballet Dance
The Pina Bausch Sourcebook: The Making of Tanztheater - Rita Felciano (Dance Magazine)
The Pina Bausch Smorgasbord: Brooklyn’s Favorite Take-Away
YouTube: Für die Kinder von gestern, Fur die Kinder (Splitter) Venedig 2005 15:48

Detroit: Evolution of a City

"Detroit: Evolution of a City is an interactive look at the growth, decline, and revival of the city of Detroit through historic and present-day pictures. To move back and forth between the old picture and the new, click and drag on the green bar in the center of the image. You can also click anywhere inside the image, and the slider will automatically move to that point. If you're interested in doing this yourself, there are two components in shooting pictures that match up with historic ones: Location and composition. Location can be determined by basic information provided by the picture, such as place and street names, signage, notable buildings nearby, and captions. Approximate locations can be further refined by studying aerial photography, detailed fire insurance maps, blueprints, publications, and Google Maps."
DETROITURBEX

Open Access Maps at NYPL

"The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution downloads. We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions. To the extent that some jurisdictions grant NYPL an additional copyright in the digital reproductions of these maps, NYPL is distributing these images under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The maps can be viewed through the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections page, and downloaded (!), through the Map Warper. First, create an account, then click a map title and go. Here’s a primer and more extended blog post on the warper."
Open Access Maps at NYPL
Open Culture: New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use

Earl Hooker - Two Bugs and a Roach (1968)

"Earl Hooker's Two Bugs and a Roach is a varied lot, with vocals from Hooker, Andrew Odom, and Carey Bell in between the instrumentals, all cut in 1968. All in all, it's one of the must-haves in this artist's very small discography -- a nice representative sample from Chicago's unsung master of the electric guitar, including the title track, 'Anna Lee,' and the atmospheric instrumental, 'Off the Hook.' For a compact disc reissue, Arhoolie added some tracks to the original lineup, including two tracks from stray sessions in late 1968 and July, 1969, along with four very early sides probably recorded in Memphis in the company of Pinetop Perkins, Willie Nix, and an unknown bass player. ..."
allmusic
W - Earl Hooker
ANNIVERSARIES: Earl Hooker Died 40 Years Ago
YouTube: Two Bugs And A Roach (Full Album) 1. Two Bugs And A Roach 0:00 2. Wah Wah Blues 4:19 3. You Don't Love Me 8:56 4. Earl Hooker Blues 14:33 5. Anna Lee 19:47 6. Off The Hook 26:17 7. Love Ain't A Plaything 30:12 8. You Don't Want Me 35:11 9. The Hook 40:28 10. New Sweet Black Angel 45:29 11. I'm Going Down The Line 50:45 12. Sweet Black Angel 53:06 13. Guitar Rag 56:19 14. Earl's Boogie Woogie 59:18

"Draft Dodger Rag" - Phil Ochs (1965)

Wikipedia - "'Draft Dodger Rag' is a satirical anti-war song by Phil Ochs, a U.S. protest singer from the 1960s known for being a harsh critic of the American military industrial complex. Originally released on his 1965 album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, 'Draft Dodger Rag' quickly became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement.  ... (One historian of the draft resistance movement wrote that Ochs 'described nearly every available escape from conscription'.) As the song ends, the young man tells the sergeant that he'll be the first to volunteer for 'a war without blood or gore'. 'Draft Dodger Rag' was the first prominent satirical song about the draft during the Vietnam War."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "Draft Dodger Rag"

2010 July: Draft dodger, Conscientious objector, War resister
2008 September: Phil Ochs, 2011 December: All the News That's Fit to Sing, 2012 February: There but for Fortune, 2013 February: Pleasures of the Harbor.

Joyce Kozloff: Co-Ordinates

Maui: Sugar Plantation, 2007
"Joyce Kozloff: Co-Ordinates considers the New York-based artist's paintings and works on paper--which employ the formal structure and conventions of cartography to examine issues of power, gender and global politics--from the late 1990s to the present. This is the first book to consider Kozloff's work since the late 1990s within the broader context of her career and the history of map-related art. Charting her influential contribution to the Pattern and Decoration movement--which was an integral part of the downtown New York art scene of the 1970s--the volume also explores Kozloff's later, large-scale public artworks."
artbook
W - Joyce Kozloff
DC Moore Gallery

Richard Myers

"37-73"
Wikipedis - "Richard Myers (or Richard L. Myers) is an American experimental filmmaker based in northeast Ohio. Myers taught at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio and is particularly known for his 1970 film Confrontation at Kent State, which he filmed in Kent during the week following the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970; it is an important document of the period. Myers began to produce independent films in the early 1960s. Many of his films are highly personal, with non-narrative or loose narrative structures derived from his dreams. Although some films (as, for example, his 1993 film Tarp) feature no actors at all, instead focusing entirely on inanimate objects, most films feature nonprofessional actors and are produced on very small budgets."
Wikipedia
The Films of Richard Myers
UbuWeb: The Path (1960), First Time Here (1964), The Coronation (1965)
YouTube: Akran (1969)

John Zorn - "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008

"Uri Cane & Masada String Trio performs the Static Compositions of the Book Of Angels! / live in Marciac, 2008 // a film by Samuel Thiebaut // Uri Cane - Piano // Mark Feldman - vioin / Erik Friedlander - cello / Greg Cohen - bass // John Zorn - composer // album 'Book Of Angels' available at Tzadik Records."
vimeo: "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008 55:04

2009 March: John Zorn, 2010 August: Spillane,  2011 October: Filmworks Anthology : 20 Years of Soundtrack Music, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 January: Bar Kokhba and Masada, 2013 September: Masada String Trio Sala, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010).

Tom Waits - Telephone call from Istanbul (1987)

All night long on the broken glass
Livin' in a medicine chest
Mediteromanian hotel back
Sprawled across a roll top desk

The monkey rode the blade on an overhead fan
They paint the donkey blue if you pay
I got a telephone call from Istanbul
My baby's comin' home today
YouTube: Telephone call from Istanbul (Live), Telephone call from Istanbul

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money.

Great Shakespeare Plays Retold with Stick Figures in Three Simple Drawings

"Other than Romeo and Juliet and possibly Hamlet, Shakespeare doesn’t exactly lend himself to the elevator pitch. The same creaky plot devices and unfathomable jokes that confound modern audiences make for long winded summaries. Not to say it can’t be done. Mya Gosling, a Southeast Asia Copy Cataloger at the University of Michigan, has been amusing herself, and more recently others, with 'Good Tickle Brain,' a web comic that reduces each of the complete works to a mere three panels. (Titus Andronicus‘ bloodbath required but one.) Those of us who are semi-versed in the Bard should delight in the way major characters and complex side plots are glibly stricken from the record."
Open Culture
Good Tickle Brain

Jacob Hashimoto's Gas Giant

"Jacob Hashimoto (b. 1973, Greeley, Colorado), is an artist whose work studies visual experience in space, artifice, and craft through the use of materials such as handmade kites, fiberglass, marble and the skillful use of light. Combining traditional kite-making techniques and painting into sculptural environments, Hashimoto creates massive space-altering installations with thousands of thin paper sheets. For MOCA Pacific Design Center, Hashimoto is producing the third and final edition of Gas Giant. The work was previously presented in Venice, Italy in 2013 Fondazione Querini Stampalia by Studio la Citta and in Chicago in 2012 at Rhona Hoffman Gallery."
MoCA
MoCA: 1 of 4
Jacob Hashimoto's Gas Giant at MOCA Pacific Design Center (PHOTOS)
NYT (Video)

Listen: Nicolas Jaar's Hour-Long John Lennon Memorial Mix

"Yesterday, December 8, marked 33 years since John Lennon was murdered. To honor his memory, Nicolas Jaar shared an hour-long mix through his Other People imprint. It's titled 'OUR WORLD' and you can stream it above. The mix pieces together clips of drone, film music, and experimental piano works with beat-oriented clips. It opens with a Lennon interview segment and a broadcast regarding his death, and ends with Jaar's mix of 'Oh My Love' from 1971's Imagine. About 21 minutes in, Jaar splices in a clip documenting a Black Friday fight at a Wal-Mart."
Pitchfork (Video)
YouTube: Nicolas Jaar Performs A 5 Hour Improvised Set At MoMA PS1 +1

Spools Out 3: A Cassette Reviews Column For March

Friesen / Waters Duo - FW
"It's a constant reassurance. Digging deeper and deeper into the pile of tapes, one gets an invaluable insight to the sheer weight of ambition and creativity still out there; confirmation that affordable MIDI controllers and desktop condenser mics have levelled the playing field in a truly big way. The overgrown long tail of new music could be considered to have diluted creativity on a global scale, yet the opposite appears to be true. Creative thought begets creative thought, and inspiration flows via groups, and effectively the cultural conversation ends up a global game of musical Chinese whispers, throwing up twisted and morphed replicas of replicas until turning points emerge. Releasing music on cassette post-internet is perhaps two steps back in response to one giant leap forward, but the physical embodiment of it seemingly offers some small legitimacy to artists that would have to fight beyond their means to get heard in other ways."
The Quietus (Video)

2013 December: Spool's Out: 2013's Best Tapes Reviewed, 2014 January: Spool's Out: A Cassette Reviews Column For January.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village - Paul Mazursky (1976)

Wes Anderson's 10 favorite New York movies
Wikipedia - "Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a 1976 romantic comedy drama film, set in the early 1950s, written and directed by Paul Mazursky, featuring, amongst others, Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lois Smith, and Christopher Walken. The film was generally well received by critics. ... Filmmaker Mazursky had made his acting debut in Stanley Kubrick's 1953 film Fear and Desire (shot in New York) and Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a semiautobiographical account of Mazursky's early life as an actor in that city. The film was entered into the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. The film takes place in 1953. Larry Lipinsky is a young Jewish boy from Brooklyn, New York, who has dreams of stardom."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
NYT: Next Stop, Greenwich Village
New York Film Locations
YouTube: Stop a Greenwich Village - Trailer, Christopher Walken in "Next Stop Greenwich Village", 1976

Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara: The Beloved Poet Reads His “Metaphysical Poem”

"'Love is metaphysical gravity', Buckminster Fuller wrote in his scientific revision of 'The Lord’s Prayer.' From beloved poet Frank O’Hara (March 27, 1926–July 25, 1966) comes a very different and very wonderful cross-pollination of love, metaphysics, and the art of verse. In this short, damaged, yet infinitely delightful reading recorded at the Lockwood Memorial Library at SUNY-Buffalo on September 25, 1964, two years before his death, O’Hara reads his 'Metaphysical Poem,' found in the altogether spectacular volume Selected Poems (public library)."
brainpickings (Video)

2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara,  2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966), 2013 June: A Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana.

August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century

The Brick Layer 1928
"People of the Twentieth Century, the collective portrait of German society made by German photographer August Sander, has fascinated viewers from its earliest presentation in a 1927 exhibition and the controversial publication of a selection of 60 images in the book Face of the Time published two years later. Despite Sander's dedication over five decades to the idea and compilation of this portrait atlas of the German people, the project remained unfinished. Nonetheless, his photographs remain compelling, in part because he chose to categorize his subjects by profession or social class. The images are thus representations of types, as he intended them to be, rather than portraits of individuals."
Detty
MoMA
W - August Sander
Luminous-Lint
vimeo: August Sander - People of the 20th century by Reiner Holzemer

"English Civil War" - The Clash (1979)

Wikipedia - "'English Civil War' is a song by British punk rock band The Clash, featured on their second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, and released as a single on 23 February 1979. It reached number 25 in the UK Singles Chart and number 28 in the Irish Singles Chart. The song is derived from an American Civil War song, 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home', written by Irish-born Massachusetts Unionist Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, which is in turn derived from the Irish anti-war song 'Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye'. It was popular among both sides of the conflict. Having learnt the song at school, Joe Strummer suggested that the band should update it. Those on the left wing saw the rise during the mid-1970s of far right groups such as the British National Front as alarming and dangerous omens for Britain's future. The song is about this state of politics in the country and warns against all things uniformed and sinister."
Wikipedia
YouTube: English Civil War

Luca Pignatelli

Testa di Afrodite, 2007
"Luca Pignatelli was born in 1962 in Milan, where he lives and works. After studying architecture Pignatelli chooses art and debuts in 1984 in Milan with an exhibition at the Centro San Fedele. He transforms his first training as an architect in refined aesthetic as seen in the artwork in 1998, the year in which Pignatelli decided to use sheets of rail instead of the traditional canvas on which he paints the face of Aphrodite and war planes. The choice to use dark and bleak colours on the landscapes as well as other subjects is a leitmotif that emphasizes and loads the subject of symbolic elements. In Pignatelli’s artwork, the Greek and Roman icons come to life and are mixed into history recently catapulted into anachronistic and imaginative scenarios, that evoke the charm of archeology and the exploration of a myth."
Capri Palace
Google

Stuyvesant Square

Wikipedia - "Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located between 15th Street and 17th Street and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence. The name is also used for the neighborhood around the park, roughly bounded by 14th and 18th Streets and First and Third Avenues. Directly around the square are the Friends Meeting House and Seminary and St. George's Episcopal Church – once attended by J.P. Morgan – both on Rutherford Place. On the eastern side is Beth Israel Medical Center – part of which, the Robert Mapplethorpe Residential Treatment Facility for AIDS patients, was built on the site of Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák's 1893 home at 327 East 17th Street."
Wikipedia
NYT: History and a Dog Run, in One Cozy Package

Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970)

"Gram Parsons had a habit of taking over whatever band he happened to be working with, and on the first three albums on which he appeared -- the International Submarine Band's Safe at Home, the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and the Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin -- he became the focal point, regardless of the talent of his compatriots. Burrito Deluxe, the Burritos' second album, is unique in Parsons' repertoire in that it's the only album where he seems to have deliberately stepped back to make more room for others; whether this was due to Gram's disinterest in a band he was soon to leave, or if he was simply in an unusually democratic frame of mind is a matter of debate. ..."
allmusic
W - Burrito Deluxe
W - "Wild Horses"
YouTube: Cody, Cody, Wild Horses, High Fashion Queen, Lazy Days, Farther Along

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969).

Graphic notation

Bernard Rands - "As All Get Out"
Wikipedia - "Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is often used in combination with traditional music notation. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. A common aspect of graphic notation is the use of symbols to convey information to the performer about the way the piece is to be performed. These symbols first began to appear in the works of avant-garde composers such as Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, as well as the works of experimental composers such as Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff during the 1950s and 60s."
Wikipedia
SoundSpace: Graphic Notation (Video)
WFMU: Gallery of Graphic Musical Notation
Guardian - Playing pictures: the wonder of graphic scores, Composer Tom Phillips
NYT: Scoring Outside the Lines
Graphic notation Art that you can play (Video)
Smithsonian: 5 1/2 Examples of Experimental Music Notation (Video)
vimeo: SYN-Phon (Graphic notation)

Southern Belles

"From Gone with the Wind to Debutante Balls, a Cross-Generational Look at Beauty in the Deep South. A little under 75 years ago, David O. Selznick’s adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind delivered Scarlett O’Hara in all her Technicolor glory, imprinting forever the notion of the Southern belle: the feisty beauty with a honey-laden accent, done-up in yards of antebellum dress, on the hunt for a husband. By exploring Scarlett’s proverbial stomping grounds in and around Atlanta, Georgia, Tim Richmond and James Nutt’s documentary short Southern Belles discovers that, while the plantation no longer remains, the front porches, hospitality, grace, and etiquette persevere."
NOWNESS (Video)

Victor Arnautoff

Coit Tower Murals - City Life by Victor Arnautoff
"... The 210-foot pillar Coit Tower now graces the summit of Telegraph Hill in Pioneer Park, providing tourists with unforgettable views of the city and bay. Completed in 1933, the idea of such a tower was derided at first as an eyesore, but more 'beautification' was still to come. The finishing touches were murals on the interior of the tower, from its base to its summit, depicting California’s life and history. Part of the New Deal’s Public Works Art Program, twenty-six artists worked under the technical direction of muralist Victor Arnautoff, who had trained with Diego Rivera. The effort to provide artists with meaningful work, not just labor, was a deliberate aspect of the program."
Humanities: New Deal Murals
W - Victor Arnautoff
Detail from the mural City Life by Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979)
SF Mural Arts: City Life (1934)
Depression-Era Murals
Art and Architecture – San Francisco

Philip Glass performs "Mad Rush"

"Philip Glass (piano) performs, 'Mad Rush,' a piece originally written and performed by Glass in honor of the Dalai Lama's visit to North America in 1979. Glass begins by remarking that the legacy of Gandhi can be seen in the work of leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama, who advocate for nonviolent, social change and by inviting listeners to consider 'Mad Rush' as a play between wrathful and peaceful deities. Performance at Satyagraha: Gandhi's 'Truth Force' in the Age of Climate Change presented by the Garrison Institute on April 13, 2008 at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City."
YouTube: "Mad Rush"

Blackboard Jungle Dub - Lee Perry and the Upsetters (1973)

"On Blackboard Jungle Dub, Lee Perry and the Upsetters produce another fine example of their subversive brand of dub with a unique blend of murky rhythm tracks, warbling guitar effects and distant-sounding horns. Although it does not quite match the quality of the classic Upsetters album Super Ape, Blackboard nevertheless impresses with both the brevity of 'strictly' drum and bass cuts such as 'Dreamland Dub' and 'Kasha Macka Dub,' and expansive touches like the animated DJ toasting on 'Cloak A Dagger (Ver. 3).' ... Just standard technique for Perry really, and part of the sound which made his productions instantly recognizable amongst many '70s and '80s dub releases. Blackboard Jungle contains classic dub taken to the outer limits and is one of the highlights of the Lee Perry catalog."
allmusic
YouTube: Blackboard Jungle Dub - The Upsetters Lee"Scratch" Perry (complete album)

Leandro Erlich

Building (2004)
"Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. An architect of the uncertain, Erlich creates spaces with fluid and unstable boundaries. Before one tries to make sense of his sculptures and installations, one senses the uncanny. A single change (up is down, inside is out) can be enough to upset the seemingly normal situation, collapsing and exposing our reality as counterfeit. Through this transgression of limits, the artist undermines certain absolutes and the institutions that reinforce them."
Sean Kelly
Leandro Erlich
Telegraph: Artist Leandro Erlich offers 'crazy perspective' at his illusion house in east London (Video)
YouTube: Leandro Erlich: Swimming Pool at P.S.1, Leandro Erlich en Ruth Benzacar - Noviembre 2012

Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra - Sleeping Beauty (1979)

"This is the great late-night Sun Ra chillout album you never knew about. The band had been working in a more groove-oriented setting off and on for over a year, as evidenced by the albums Lanquidity and On Jupiter, with both featuring prominent electric bass and electric guitar. Sleeping Beauty picks up right where On Jupiter left off, with the gentle, swaying 'Springtime Again' echoing the same mellow vibe of 'Seductive Fantasy' from On Jupiter. A skittering intro coalesces as different instruments pick up bits of the melody, which is then fully expressed by the horn section and ensemble vocals. It's a simple two-chord vamp, with beautiful solos that seem to embody the reawakening and rebirth of springtime. 'The Door of the Cosmos' starts with a gospel-like chant and handclaps, with comments from Ra's electric piano and electric guitar. ..."
allmusic
Dusted (Video)
YouTube: Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty [full album]

The Dial-A-Poem Poets (1972)

"... On this LP of Dial-A-Poem Poets are 27 poets. The records are a selection of highlights of poetry that spontaneously grew over 20 years from 1953 to 1972, mostly in America, representing many aspects and different approaches to dealing with words and sound. The poets are from the New York School, Bolinas and West Coast Schools, Concrete Poetry, Beat Poetry, Black Poetry and Movement Poetry. - John Giorno, August 1972"
UbuWeb (Video)
W - Giorno Poetry Systems
Discogs

2012 June: The Dial-A-Poem Poets: The Nova Convention

Cool and the Counterculture: 1960–79

James Dean
"In the 1960s and 1970s, to be cool was to be antiauthoritarian and open to new ideas from young cultural leaders in rock and roll, journalism, film, and African American culture. Cool was a badge of opposition to 'the System,' by turns a reference to the police, the government, the military-industrial complex, or traditional morality. Using drugs such as marijuana or even LSD was an indicator of risk taking and expanding one’s consciousness; not experimenting with drugs suggested a fear of opening one’s mind or perspective, of being 'uptight' or 'square.' The same was true of sexual exploration, social protest, and ethnic politics. The aesthetic of stylized understatement still held power, yet cool itself morphed under the era’s social upheavals."
Cool and the Counterculture: 1960–79
Defining cool, from Walt Whitman and James Dean to Steve Jobs and Tony Hawk

Danzig Baldaev

"Danzig Baldaev grew up in a Russian children's home, his father having been denounced as an enemy of the people. He was later ordered to take a job as a warden in Kresty, an infamous Leningrad prison, where he worked from 1948 to 1981. It was a job that allowed Baldaev to continue his father's work as an ethnographer – by documenting the tattoos of criminals. Heavy with symbolism and hidden meanings, the tattoos depicted a complex world of hierarchies, disgraces and achievements. Mostly anti-Soviet and frequently obscene, they are a portal into a violent world that ran alongside the worst excesses of the Communist era."
Guardian
FUEL Design
FUEL Design (Video)
amazon: Soviets: Drawings by Danzig Baldaev. Photographs by Sergei Vasiliev.
W - FUEL Design
Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia and Books by Danzig Baldaev

Emilie Brzezinski

"The Kreeger Museum presents an exhibition of monumental wood sculptures by Emilie Brzezinski September 2 through December 27, 2014. The Lure of the Forest expresses Brzezinski’s fascination with trees and her love and respect for the environment. The Museum pays homage to this masterful sculptor, who for over thirty years has chain sawed and hand-chiseled tree trunks into majestic forms. Each work exhibits beauty, grace, sensuousness, and strength. Her imposing installations are awe-inspiring and express the passion and respect Brzezinski has for her trees. This exhibition will be curated by Milena Kalinovska."
Kreeger Museum
Re-Forestation: Emilie Brzezinski at Grounds for Sculpture (PHOTOS)
Emilie Brzezinski
YouTube: Emilie Brzezinski on CBS Sunday Morning, "Family Trees" Sculpture by Emilie Brzezinski on display in Gdańsk, Poland

Lisa Anne Auerbach

"The artist Lisa Anne Auerbach likes to make statements, which are most often knitted. She is best known for her sweater-and-skirt works that feature clever, assertive slogans offering commentary and critique on issues that are important to her, whether political or personal. After receiving an M.F.A. in photography from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., she no longer had access to the school’s darkroom and taught herself to knit instead."
NYT: Seeing Things | Studio Visit: Lisa Anne Auerbach
Lisa Anne Auerbach
vimeo: Lisa Anne Auerbach, artist
Lisa Anne Auerbach's Politically Charged Knitted Sweaters Rock Our World (PHOTOS)
YouTube: 2014 Biennial: Lisa Anne Auerbach