Africa remix: the artists subverting colonial imagery

Folsade Adeoso, The ocean is a woman, 2013.
"Share, click, repost, send. These are the daily habits of hundreds of thousands of Africans living parts of their life online, connecting them to regions, histories and people that, like for all of us, were previously inaccessible. Africa’s major urban centres have since 2000 become rapidly digital ready: investment in mobile broadband, fibre-optic cables, and the expansion of power supplies has enabled millions of people across the continent to get online. Coupled with the declining costs of smartphones and tablets, reports celebrating Africa 'going digital' proliferate. But few focus on the more creative and unusual side of digital engagement: how this world has become a playground for artists. ..."
Guardian

The Scandalous Legacy of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Collector of Art and Men

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner (detail), (1888).
"The first time I encountered Isabella Stewart Gardner was the way most people do: through her museum. The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is located near Fenway Park in Boston, just a short walk from the Museum of Fine Arts. ... Isabella smoked cigarettes, and the newspaper ran stories claiming she had taken zoo lions for a stroll in the park. A dahlia bears her name, and so does a mountain peak in Washington. She once shocked all of Boston Society by showing up to the Boston Symphony Orchestra bearing a headband that declared, 'Oh you Red Sox.' She invited the Harvard Football team to her home after they beat Yale. She hosted a boxing match at her home and, while the men fought, she danced. She had two large diamonds attached to wires and wore them bouncing in her hair. At the opening of her museum, she served champagne and donuts. The woman courted the world, and the world courted the woman. ..."
Broadly

2012 April: Renzo Piano’s Addition to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 2013 March: Gardner Museum Heist Case Might Crack, 2014 April: Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community

Tom Waits - Franks Wild Years (1987)

"... Rather, this is just the third installment in Waits' eccentric series of Island Records albums in which he seems most inspired by German art song and carnival music, presenting songs in spare, stripped-down arrangements consisting of instruments like marimba, baritone horn, and pump organ and singing in a strained voice that has been artificially compressed and distorted. The songs themselves often are conventional romantic vignettes, or would be minus the oddities of instrumentation, arrangement, and performance. For example, 'Innocent When You Dream,' a song of disappointment in love and friendship, has a winning melody, but it is played in a seesaw arrangement of pump organ, bass, violin, and piano, and Waits sings it like an enraged drunk. ..."
allmusic
The Quietus - 25 Years On: Franks Wild Years By Tom Waits Revisited
NY Times
W - Franks Wild Years
Spotify
YouTube: Way Down in the Hole, Hang On St. Christopher, Innocent when you dream, You're Innocent When You Dream

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, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985), 2015 February: Mule Variations (1999), 2015 April: Swordfishtrombones (1983), 2015 July: Alice (2002), 2015 September: Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985.

Recollections of Gran Apachería - Ed Dorn (1974)

"... In his next book, Recollections of Gran Apachería, Dorn presents the Apaches as noble 'not in themselves / so much as in their Ideas.' Apache thought, like the Gunslinger’s, arises from dwelling undistractedly in a timeless, local space, defined by actual geographical features: 'Their leading ideas / come directly from the landform.' Western culture, in contrast, wants to control everything through the abstract force of predictive reason, which Dorn labels 'Mind.' Mind is a deadly tool in the wrong hands, and Dorn distinguishes it from the thinking practices of people who think with the landform. ..."
Jacket2: Introduction to Edward Dorn
Tom Clark: Geronimo in Exile (Edward Dorn: Recollections of Gran Apacheria)
Wordplay this week: Ed Dorn
Ron Silliman: Way More West: New and Selected Poems
Bill Sherman On Ed Dorn’s Collected
Edward Dorn's Derelict Air: From Collected Out, edited by Justin Katko and Kyle Waugh
amazon: Recollections of Gran Apachería, Way More West: New and Selected Poems
PennSound: Reading at SUNY Buffalo, April 19, 1974; Reading SUNY Buffalo, April 20, 1974 (Video)

2007 December: Edward Dorn, 1929-1999, 2011 February: Slinger, 2011 April: The North Atlantic Turbine, 2012 September: Fulcrum Press, 2014 September: Tom Clark - Edward Dorn (1929-1999), 2015 November: The Collected Poems 1956 - 1974.

New York Rocker

"In the spring of 1975, more than a year before the release of the Ramones' debut album, Alan Betrock founded the magazine New York Rocker. In doing so, he changed American popular culture forever. The Queens native was already a leading collector and discographer of '60s rock, and the past publisher of the mimeographed fanzine Jamz and the collector-oriented The Rock Marketplace. But New York Rocker was the visionary move, the product of Betrock's realization that the music rising from a run-down Bowery bar deserved its own magazine—one with its own style of photography and graphic design, one that would blend a fan's enthusiasm with an educated critical eye. Through the pages of New York Rocker, Alan Betrock defined the new rock and roll. His covers made stars of Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, and Talking Heads before they'd even crossed the Hudson. ..."
Voice
Perfect Sound Forever: New York Rocker
FANZINE FAVES
W - New York Rocker

Why Black Man Dey Suffer - Fela Kuti (1971)

"Pioneering musician, activist, and bandleader Fela Kuti is the first word in Afro-beat, making such strides in the genre over the course of his career that his contributions are foundational and nothing less than legendary. Why Black Man Dey Suffer is a relatively early chapter in the Fela discography, originally recorded in 1971. Put to tape with early band Africa 70 and Cream drummer/Afro-beat enthusiast Ginger Baker on board as well, the record is made up of two extensive, repetitive, and loping pieces. The rhythmic title track is a blueprint of early Afro-beat and 'Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality' is a deep groove of burning horns and fearless percussion."
allmusic
W - Why Black Man Dey Suffer
Why Black Man Dey Suffer (1971) (Video)
Spotify
YouTube: Why Black Man Dey Suffer, Ikoyi Mentality Versus Mushin Mentality

U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State

"As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war. In fact, when the United States first invaded Iraq, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the move was the man who founded the terrorist cell that would one day become the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He excitedly called the Americans’ 2003 intervention 'the Blessed Invasion.' His reaction — ignored by some, and dismissed as rhetoric by others — points to one of the core beliefs motivating the terrorist group now holding large stretches of Iraq and Syria: The group bases its ideology on prophetic texts stating that Islam will be victorious after an apocalyptic battle to be set off once Western armies come to the region. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Recent Attacks Demonstrate Islamic State’s Ability to Both Inspire and Coordinate Terror
Al Jazeera: US asks allies to step up effort to contain ISIL
Al Jazeera: Playing politics with boots on the ground

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS.

The Trades: Hendrik Beikirch (ECB) Traces Moroccan Faces

"Street Artist ECB is introducing you to the trades of Morocco by painting the faces of current practitioners whom he has met on the street. By now we are familiar with the storytelling role that artists can fulfill with their portraits of individuals who live in a region, town, or neighborhood and Street Artists such as the Parisian C215, Canadian Fauxreel, and the American desert dweller Jetsonorama come to mind as well as more recent Brooklyn social activists like LMNOPI and Tatiana Fazlilazadeh. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Gisèle Vienne – This is how you will disappear (2012)

"... My previous shows have explored seemingly opposite aesthetic realms. I therefore felt it was important to juxtapose these oppositions within a single work. Our springboard is the notion of beauty that stems both from order and from disorder. We shall examine these different types of aesthetic experiences, which are seemingly contrary and yet inseparable, through the prism of Apollonian beauty versus Dionysian beauty. This leads to an inquiry into the Nietzschean view of tragedy -- how it is born from the reconciliation of conflicting gods. The action takes place in a very naturalistic forest. The landscape, at first realistic and then increasingly symbolic, is inhabited by three characters in search of a spiritual experience. ..."
This is how you will disappear
In Performance: Gisèle Vienne – This is how you will disappear
Kaaitheater 15|16
Urban Landfill
YouTube: This Is How You Will Disappear, Interview with Gisèle Vienne

The Clash - "Clash City Rockers" / "Jail Guitar Doors" (1978)

Wikipedia - "'Clash City Rockers' is a song and single by The Clash. First released in February 1978 with the b-side 'Jail Guitar Doors,' a re-worked version of a song from Joe Strummer's pub rock days. It was later included as the opening track of the belated US version of the band's eponymous debut album. The song was first played live at Mont De Marsan (Landes - France), in August 1977 and recorded the same year in the band's October and November sessions at CBS Studios. ... The Clash's first overt attempt at self-mythology, 'Clash City Rockers' is, by and large, a song about positivity and moving forward, and revisits themes common in Clash songs of the era, specifically dead-end employment and having a purpose in life. ..."
Wikipedia
W - "Jail Guitar Doors"
Jail Guitar Doors - Billy Bragg
YouTube: Clash City Rockers, Jail Guitar Doors, Billy Bragg sings "Jail Guitar Doors" - Joe Strummer Tribute in S.F. 10-2-09

The Square (2013)

Wikipedia - "The Square is a 2013 Egyptian-American documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which depicts the ongoing Egyptian Crisis until 2013, starting with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards. ... A.O. Scott from the New York Times wrote, 'The Square, while it records the gruesome collision of utopian aspirations with cold political realities, is not a despairing film. It concludes on a note of resolve grounded in the acknowledgment that historical change can be a long, slow process.' ..."
Wikipedia
The Square (Video)
Al-Jazeera: The Egypt outside ‘The Square’
NY Times: Brave Optimism of Tahrir Square Meets Other Fierce Forces (Video)
Washington Post: ‘The Square’ is a beautiful documentary. But its politics are dangerous.
Guardian - The Square: an Egyptian Oscar nominee that won't be shown in Egypt
YouTube: THE SQUARE Movie Trailer (Official Documentary Release 2013)
DailyMotion: The Square 1:42:29

2014 July: Stories of Change – Beyond the ‘Arab Spring’

John Baldessari - Concrete Couples (2015)

Concrete Couples, 2015
"Concrete Couples marks the artist’s sixth project in his two decade partnership with the Mixografia Workshop. In this new series Baldessari continues his ongoing exploration into the visual language of contemporary American culture. Concrete Couples draws inspiration from the iconic sidewalk outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, where countless celebrities have preserved their handprints, footprints and signatures along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In his rendition, Baldessari has created nine panels of what appear to be sections of sidewalk, into which he has carefully composed and etched the names of famous couples from throughout history and fiction. These drawings follow the archetype of teenagers chronicling their love by scratching their names into wet concrete, poking fun at some of history’s most notorious couples. ..."
Art Miami Fair

2009 October: John Baldessari, 2012 May: A Brief History of John Baldessari, 2014 January: This Not That (2010).

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

5 Umezebi Street, New Haven, Enugu, 2012 (acrylic, charcoal, pastel, colored pencil and transfer on paper)
Wikipedia - "Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Her works on paper combine collage, drawing, painting, printmaking, and photo transfers. Akunyili Crosby negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating works that expose the challenges of occupying these two worlds. She has created a sophisticated visual language that pays homage to the history of Western painting while also referencing African cultural traditions. Akunyili Crosby depicts deeply personal imagery that transcends the specificity of individual experience and engages in a global dialogue about trenchant social and political issues. A hallmark of her compositions is the use of small photographic images as if they were swatches of fabric. She photocopies pictures from various sources such as wedding albums and magazines and transfers them to paper using acetone solvent. The result is a memory-book textile that evokes the feelings of nostalgia, rootedness, homesickness, and loss, adding the dimension of time to the work and demonstrating the artist’s culture of origin is present in her daily life. ..."
Wikipedia
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Victoria Miro
Studio Museum Awards 2015 Wein Artist Prize to Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Artist to Know: Njideka Akunyili Crosby (Video)
SF MoMA: Njideka Akunyili Crosby on painting cultural collision

Composing Myself: Philip Glass (2015)

"Philip Glass, early protagonist of the Minimalist movement, studied with Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger. His first job, assisting Ravi Shankar on a film soundtrack, heralded the start of his own successful cinema career, and to date he has scored over fifty movies. Early works tended to be abstract, but from the mid-1970s his attention shifted towards the stage. His first operatic triumph, Einstein on the Beach, did much to reinvigorate the international contemporary opera scene. Profoundly interested in traditional cultures, Glass often draws on Eastern traditions, as in Monsters of Grace (1997), a multimedia collaboration based on the writings of Rumi."
Music Sales Classical
YouTube: Composing Myself

2009 November: Philip Glass, 2010 April: Satyagraha, 2010 May: Koyaanisqatsi, 2010 July: The CIVIL warS, 2010 November: Akhenaten, 2011 January: Landscape with Philip Glass (1975), 2011 May: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985), 2011 August: Philip Glass Ensemble - "Train/Spaceship", 2011 December: The Satyagraha protest, 2011 December: Glassworks, 2015 June: THE EARTH MOVES. A documentary about Einstein on the Beach.

A New Yorker in “Little Syria” tells his story

WWI, New York City — Little Armenia on Lexington Avenue and Little Syria
"The late 19th century city was home to a massive tide of new immigrants: Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Chinese. Amid the lower Manhattan neighborhoods these newcomers settled in was Little Syria. Also known as the Syrian Quarter, it was a vibrant enclave along Washington Street near the Battery where thousands of Syrian Christians, Armenians, Greeks, and others from Middle Eastern and Mediterranean communities lived. Here, they resided in tenements and operated dry goods stores, textile factories, and cafes selling pastries and coffee. The following account of arriving in Little Syria and making a home in the neighborhood comes from a 1906 book about the immigrant experience. ..."
Ephemeral New York
A trip to Little Syria, New York’s first Middle Eastern neighborhood
Making Music in Prewar New York

2013 September: Little Syria

The Other Paris - Luc Sante

"Luc Sante is no doubt a well-behaved person whose lodgings are neat as a pin, but his mind teems with filth and disorder, his nostrils alert to the dankness of slums. To this explorer of the urban under­belly, the squalid and the tawdry are manna from heaven. Lost neighborhoods, the way the other half lived and died, buried treasure in the form of old photographs and documents, what he has called the 'husks' cast off by the past, are the main attraction for this literary scavenger. The Belgian-born and vastly erudite Sante has followed his appetite for the detritus of the past in essays and translations and in books like 'Low Life' (1991) and now 'The Other Paris.'  ..."
NY Times
Luc Sante
Work in Progress - The Other Paris by Luc Sante (Excerpt)
The Paris Review - Colossally Sordid: An Interview with Luc Sante
LA Times: Author Luc Sante's 'The Other Paris' wanders the city streets of past and present
amazon
YouTube: The Other Paris

Ghost Streets of Los Angeles

"In a short story called 'Reports of Certain Events in London' by China Miéville—a text often cited here on BLDGBLOG—we read about a spectral network of streets that appear and disappear around London like the static of a radio tuned between stations, old roadways that are neither here nor there, flickering on and off in the dead hours of the night. For reasons mostly related to a bank heist described in my book, A Burglar's Guide to the City, I found myself looking at a lot of aerial shots of Los Angeles—specifically the area between West Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard—when I noticed this weird diagonal line cutting through the neighborhood...."
BLDGBLOG

The Notebooks - Jean-Michel Basquiat

"Brooklyn-born Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) was one of the most important artists of the 1980s. A key figure in the New York art scene, he inventively explored the interplay between words and images throughout his career, first as a member of SAMO, a graffiti group active on the Lower East Side in the late 1970s, and then as a painter acclaimed for his unmistakable Neoexpressionist style. From 1980 to 1987, he filled numerous working notebooks with drawings and handwritten texts. This facsimile edition reproduces the pages of eight of these fascinating and rarely seen notebooks for the first time. The notebooks are filled with images and words that recur in Basquiat’s paintings and other works. Iconic drawings and pictograms of crowns, teepees, and hatch-marked hearts share space with handwritten texts, including notes, observations, and poems that often touch on culture, race, class, and life in New York. ..."
Princeton University Press
An Intimate Reading of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Poetry
YouTube: The Notebooks

2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian, 2015 February: Now's the Time, 2015 May: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks

Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959)

"This 1959 concert in Paris by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers has been sporadically available on various labels, but this reissue in Verve's Jazz in Paris series is the best sounding and best packaged of the lot. Blakey's group of this period (Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Jymie Merritt, and Walter Davis, Jr.) is in great form during an extended workout of Morgan's intense blues 'The Midget,' and Dizzy Gillespie's timeless 'A Night in Tunisia' is kicked off by Blakey's an electrifying solo. But it is the addition of some special guests for the first two numbers that proves to be extra special. Bud Powell, sitting in for Davis, and French saxophonist Barney Wilen, on alto rather than his normal tenor sax, are both added to the band for inspired versions of Powell's 'Dance of the Infidels' and 'Bouncing with Bud.' Morgan's trumpet playing is outstanding throughout the concert. This is one of the essential live dates in Art Blakey's rather extensive discography."
allmusic
W - Paris Jam Session
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Paris Jam Session (Full Album)

2014 February: Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, 2014 August: A Night at Birdland Vol. 1 - Art Blakey (1954), 2015 August: Moanin' (1958)

Burning Spear - Rockin' Time (1974)

"Winston Rodney is, hands down, one of reggae's (or any other genre's) most prolific artists. His unorthodox singing styles range from subtle whisper, through mystical chant, to painful wailing without warning. In the late '60s, as the popular dance tunes of the rocksteady era began to give way to an influx of Rasta consciousness, Rodney (who adopted the Burning Spear moniker from a Kenyan freedom fighter) cut two records for Studio One's Clement Dodd that were subsequently overshadowed by his more celebrated releases on Island/Mango Records. Studio One has re-released these gems, many of which are being heard for the first time in 30 years. This is cosmic reggae at its rawest, before the sound became super-produced. ..."
allmusic
W - Rockin' Time
BURNING SPEAR ALBUMS AT STUDIO ONE
YouTube: Rocking Time ( full album )studio 1 records 1974

2009 June: Burning Spear, 2010 October: Marcus Garvey / Garvey's Ghost, 2012 March: Burning Spear 1981 - Markthalle Hamburg, 2012 December: Hail H.I.M., 2015 August: Man In The Hills / Dry & Heavy (1976)

The Eye of the Shah: Qajar Court Photography and the Persian Past

"The Eye of the Shah: Qajar Court Photography and the Persian Past presents some 200 photographic prints, a number of vintage photographic albums, and memorabilia that utilized formal portraiture of the shah, the exhibition shows how photographers—many of them engaged by Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-1896), the longest reigning Shah of the Qajar Dynasty (1785-1925)— ultimately created a portrait of the country's ancient and recent past . Most of the photographs in the exhibition have never been publicly displayed. ..."
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World: Introduction
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World: Highlights
Princeton University (Press Click to enlarge)

Hank Willis Thomas

"Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist living and working in New York City. His work focuses on themes related to perspective identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. He often incorporates recognizable icons into his work, many from well-known advertising and branding campaigns. On advertising, in an interview with Time, Thomas said, 'Part of advertising’s success is based on its ability to reinforce generalizations developed around race, gender and ethnicity which are generally false, but [these generalizations] can sometimes be entertaining, sometimes true, and sometimes horrifying.' After the senseless robbery and murder of his cousin, Songha Willis Thomas in 2000, Hank became known for B®anded, a series of photographs, and Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008, a body of work created from appropriating advertising images. He was thinking about the root of black-on-black violence in the US. ..."
Jack Shainman (Video)
Hank Willis Thomas (Video)
W - Hank Willis Thomas
Hank Willis Thomas | BRANDING USA
YouTube: "Am I Going Too Fast?" a short film by Hank Willis Thomas and Christopher Myers, Hank Willis Thomas: Artists Should Work in Society's Subconscious, Hank Willis Thomas on Race

William S. Burroughs - Destroy All Rational Thought

"There is a point during one of the last recorded interviews with William S Burroughs — which features on this occasionally mildly interesting, but mostly infuriating, DVD—where he laments the passing of so many of the 20th century’s ‘great minds’. His fear is that there will be no-one to take their place; no new innovators, no literary outlaws, no risk takers. Ostensibly this comment refers in particular to his deceased friend, the artist Brion Gysin, who along with Burroughs is the subject of this ‘celebration’. Yet when you consider the ongoing fascination with the mid-century decadents of the Beat generation that has lead to a DVD release for this nebulous, amateurish, though no doubt well intended documentary (merely because it has the name of Burroughs attached to it), you can perhaps see his point. ..."
pop matters
YouTube: Destroy All Rational Thought 48:12

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014.

The Delights and Perils of Navigating New York City With a Guidebook From 1899

"A century before the travel guide shelves at bookstores were bursting with Lonely Planets, Fodor’s, and Frommer’s, there was just one book for the discerning solo explorer: the Baedeker guide. Established in 1835 in Germany by Karl Baedeker, these pocket-sized books were intended for the well-to-do gentleman traveler. With their maps, restaurant recommendations, and practical information on international cities, Baedeker guides proved hugely popular among independent travelers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But could an adventurer use one today? To find out, I spent a weekend exploring New York City, directed solely by the fourth edition of the 1899 Baedeker guide to the United States. ..."
Atlas Obscura

To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar (2015)

"The sentiment is universal, but the viewpoint on his second LP is inner-city and African-American, as radio regulars like the Isley Brothers (sampled to perfection during the key track 'I'), George Clinton (who helps make 'Wesley's Theory' a cross between 'Atomic Dog' and Dante's Inferno), and Dr. Dre (who literally phones his appearance in) put the listener in Lamar's era of Compton, just as well as Lou Reed took us to New York and Brecht took us to Weimar Republic Berlin. These G-funky moments are incredibly seductive, which helps usher the listener through the album's 80-minute runtime, plus its constant mutating (Pharrell productions, spoken word, soul power anthems, and sound collages all fly by, with few tracks ending as they began), much of it influenced, and sometimes assisted by, producer Flying Lotus and his frequent collaborator Thundercat. ... Free your mind, and your ass will follow, and at the end of this beautiful black berry, there's a miraculous 'talk' between Kendrick and the legendary 2Pac, as the brutalist trailblazer mentors this profound populist. To Pimp a Butterfly is as dark, intense, complicated, and violent as Picasso's Guernica, and should hold the same importance for its genre and the same beauty for its intended audience."
allmusic
W - To Pimp a Butterfly (Video)
Pitchfork
Why Did Everyone Claim to Enjoy Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp a Butterfly'?
Spotify
YouTube: Alright, King Kunta, i, For Free? (Interlude), These Walls (Live on Ellen) ft. Bilal, Anna Wise, Thundercat, Wesley's Theory (con George Clinton & Thundercat) [Subtitulado al Español] | TPAB
YouTube: To Pimp a Butterfly (16 Video)

Stacy Doris, 1962-2012

"We at Harriet are deeply saddened to report the loss of poet and translator Stacy Doris, who died on January 31 at the age of 49 after a battle with cancer. We discussed Doris’s book-length poem The Cake Part (Publication Studio, 2011) just recently. This work, which acts as 'an eruption of all the repressed joy and terror of [the] 18th century revolution, back into our time, into the 21st century,' was released with a series of video adaptations of the book, in which many of Doris’s poets and friends in the Bay area and beyond enacted their parts or songs with a rather plucky and loving spirit. It’s clear that Doris 'begins with complexity and mixture and continues with complexity and mixture.' ..."
Poetry Foundation (Video)
Electronic Poetry Center
W - Stacy Doris
PennSound (Video)
[PDF] Violence of the White Page

Wagner Collection at the Whitney, 25 Years of Astute Buying

"More collectors of contemporary art should follow the lead of Thea Westreich Wagner and her husband, Ethan Wagner. They are neither building a private museum to house their holdings nor sending their trove off to auction hoping for headline-grabbing profits, although this is partly because their purchases have not especially encompassed the so-called trophy art that earns such profits. Instead, Ms. Westreich Wagner and Mr. Wagner are doing something that is, unfortunately, beginning to feel old-fashioned. They are giving a great deal of a strong collection with an independent bent to two museums historically committed to new art. All told, some 850 works amassed mostly during, and mostly dating from, the last quarter-century will move house (but not quite yet — the majority are promised gifts)...."
NY Times

A Brief History of ISIS

Members loyal to ISIS wave their flag during a parade in June 2014.
"In the wake of the November 13 attacks in Paris, much of the Left has linked the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the deepening imperialist violence in the Middle East. War and imperialism, on one side, and the growing reach of jihadist terrorism, on the other, are said to be locked together in a mutually reinforcing embrace of violence and destruction. 'Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other,' the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) argued shortly after the Paris attacks. In order to break this nihilistic death grip, we need to oppose foreign intervention, put an end to imperialist violence, and halt the ongoing plunder of wealth from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. The basic logic of this argument is undoubtedly sound. But in terms of explanatory value, this kind of analysis does not go far enough. ..."
Jacobin
The Atlantic: What ISIS Really Wants (2015 March)

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency.

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken-World Albums: A Sublime Union of Beat Literature and 1950s Jazz

"At the epicenter of three explosive forces in 1950s America—the birth of Bebop, the spread of Buddhism through the counterculture, and Beat revolutionizing of poetry and prose—sat Jack Kerouac, though I don’t picture him ever sitting for very long. The rhythms that moved through him, through his verse and prose, are too fluid to come to rest. At the end of his life he sat… and drank, a mostly spent force. But in his prime, Kerouac was always on the move, over highways on those legendary road trips, or his fingers flying over the typewriter’s keys as he banged out the scroll manuscript of On the Road in three feverish weeks (so he said). After the publication of On the Road, Kerouac 'became a celebrity,' says Steve Allen in introduction to the Beat writer on a 1959 appearance above, 'partly because he’d written a powerful and successful book, but partly because he seemed to be the embodiment of this new generation.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959).

Robin Rimbaud (Scanner)

Wikipedia - "Robin Rimbaud (born 1964) is an electronic musician who works under the name Scanner due to his use of cell phone and police scanners in live performance. He is also a member of the band Githead with Wire's Colin Newman and Malka Spigel and Max Franken from Minimal Compact. Rimbaud is also a writer and media critic, multi-media artist and record producer. He borrowed his stage name from the device he used in his early recordings, picking up indeterminate radio and mobile phone signals in the airwaves and using them as an instrument in his compositions. ... Born in Southfields, London, Scanner was interested in avant garde literature, cinema and music while growing up. When he was a teenager his family was bereaved when his father was killed in a motorcycle accident. ..."
Wikipedia
Scanner (Video)
Soundcloud: Scanner
The world of scanner... (Video)
YouTube: Scanner

2012 October: Scanner

Sasha Waltz & Guests

Gezeiten (2015)
Wikipedia - "Sasha Alexandra Waltz (born 8 March 1963, Karlsruhe) is a German choreographer, dancer and leader of the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests. Waltz is the daughter of an architect and a curator. At five years old she had her first dance lesson in Karlsruhe with Waltraud Kornhass, a student of Mary Wigman. From 1983 until 1986, Waltz studied at the School For New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Between 1986 and 1987, she did further training in New York. During that period she was a dancer for Pooh Kaye, Yoshiko Chuma & School of Hard Knocks and Lisa Kraus. After that she collaborated intensely with choreographers, visual artists and musicians such as Tristan Honsinger, Frans Poelstra, Mark N Tompkins, David Zambrano. ... Once her 5-year period with the Schaubühne finished she reactivitated Sasha Waltz & Guests as an independent company again, with a base in Berlin. It was established as an international project with 25 permanent and 40 associate collaborators."
Wikipedia
Sasha Waltz & Guests (Video)
Arts Journal
Guardian: Sasha Waltz & Guests review – savage rites marshal wild energies (Video)
Berlin (Video)
vimeo: etc., Dialoge 09 – Neues Museum, Gezeigt, Impromptus
YouTube: Sasha Waltz & Guests feat. Robyn Schulkowsky, noBody, SACRE

The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

"Often referred to as 'The Royal Albert Hall Concert' this live bootleg had a mythical status surrounding it, I remember when I was heavily into the Band I looked for as much footage and recordings from that tour as I could find. I was completely mesmerised by what little I saw, the sound was brutal, raw rock and roll at it's finest, unlike anything people had heard at that time. ... Even though it seemed Dylan was now offering no compromise on his journey he did divide each show into two segments, the first was Dylan in acoustic mode, perhaps a farewell to his past, before bringing The Hawks out for the second electric set. It's pretty well documented that as soon as the band showed up the audience went into uproar and a cacaphony of boos and slow handclapping ensued. Dylan seemingly unperturbed and quite possibly stoned out out of his mind ploughed onwards leaving a bewildered and upset audience in his wake."
nighthawk music
W - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
allmusic
YouTube: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

The County: the story of America's deadliest police

Sgt Brian Holcombe is a 10-year veteran of Bakersfield Police Department and has patrolled higher-crime sectors on the east side for most of his career.
"Seventy-five years after Kern County’s leaders banned The Grapes of Wrath from their schools and libraries, complaining that John Steinbeck’s new book portrayed their policemen as 'divested of sympathy or human decency or understanding', officer Aaron Stringer placed his hands on the body of James De La Rosa without permission. De La Rosa had just been shot dead by police officers in Bakersfield, the biggest city in this central California county, after crashing his car when they tried to pull him over. He was unarmed. Now the 22-year-old oilfield worker lay on a gurney in the successor to the coroner’s office where Tom Joad’s granma awaited a pauper’s funeral in the 1939 novel."Guardian (Video), The County: where deputies dole out rough justice (Video)
Guardian: The Counted

Black Artists and the March Into the Museum

Norman Lewis
"The painter Norman Lewis rarely complained in public about the singular struggles of being a black artist in America. ... In the last few years alone, his work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. This month the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opened the first extensive survey of Lewis, an important but overlooked figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement — and a man who might well have been predicting history’s arc for several generations of African-American artists in overcoming institutional neglect. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Welcome to Smarter Basketball

"On Thursday, 60 of basketball’s most talented prospects will realize a lifelong dream when the NBA conducts its annual draft. Karl-Anthony Towns, the Kentucky University center, has been heavily rumored to be the number one pick, but after that, it’s a bit up in the air. Among the potential picks: Jahlil Okafor, D’Angelo Russell, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Kristaps Porzingis, a versatile 7 foot 1, 19-year-old Latvian who’s as lean as he is skilled. Regardless of who ends up where, this high-potential group will be entering a league that’s undergone a major transformation in the past few years. And it’s a revolution that’s indisputably linked to the NBA’s growing, but controversial, reliance on data to measure a team’s likelihood of winning—a phenomenon vaguely defined as 'analytics.'”
The Atlantic

2011 June: American Basketball Association, 2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2012 November: Your Guide to the Brooklyn Nets, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2013 October: Rucker Park, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 June: Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle, 2015 September: SLAM Magazine, 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 October: Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007), 2015 November: The Sounds of Memphis.