Adam Pendleton

Untitled Woman, 2013
"The oldest manufactured mirrors to have come down to us are made of obsidian, their black surfaces polished until they became reflective. ‘I’ll Be Your’, Adam Pendleton’s first solo show in the UK, as well as his first with Pace, was all surface. The title is emphatically cropped – like many of the black silkscreen images on display, applied to canvas, mirror, Perspex or transparencies – leaving it to the viewer to supply the missing word (‘Mirror’) from the 1967 song by the Velvet Underground & Nico. Crying out to be completed, it gestures towards the ‘Incomplete Open Cube series’, begun in 1974 by Sol LeWitt, an early supporter of the young American artist’s work. Photocopied reproductions of LeWitt’s white Minimalist sculptures, blown up out of all recognition and silkscreened onto canvas, furnish Pendleton with the matter of his own ‘Black Dada’ works (2008–ongoing). ..."
Africanah
Adam Pendleton
Pace
W - Adam Pendleton
vimeo: Adam Pendleton Brings “Black Lives Matter” to Venice
YouTube: Salon | Artist Talk | Black Dada: How does it feel to be a problem?

Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box (1991)

Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery, 1943
"Susan Sontag, Tony Curtis and Stan Brakhage all shared an appreciation for the work of American artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972), and all appear in a 51-minute documentary Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box directed by Mark Stokes for the BBC in 1991. Susan Sontag was also the subject of one of Cornell’s collages, something she discusses here. Tony Curtis collected many of Cornell’s boxes and used to visit the artist when he was in New York; in Stokes’s film he discusses their relationship and reads from Cornell’s writings. I’ve had a tape of this for years courtesy of Kerri Sharp who worked on the film (hi Kerri!) but it’s taken a while to turn up on YouTube. The value of films such as this isn’t so much the view they give of the works themselves—all of which are better judged in books or museums—but the way they function as mini-biographies which give a sense of the environment from which the art emerged. ..."
feuilleton
YouTube: Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box 51-min.
BBC
NY Times
MFA - Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell a biography by Deborah Solomon

2007 November: Joseph Cornell, 2010 September: Stan Brakhage, Joseph Cornell - The Wonder Ring, 1955, 2011 April: Rose Hobart (1936), 2012 June: "Bookstalls" - Joseph Cornell, 2012 December: Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels, 2015 May: Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination.

Alias Kurban Saïd (2004)

"The real identity of the author of the exotic love story Ali & Nino has been the subject of much speculation ever since the book was first published in Vienna in 1937. With its recent translation into English and its subsequent 'rediscovery,' the controversy has grown. (Indeed no pen name has aroused so much curiosity since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and other books signed 'B. Traven' launched a decades-long inquiry into the man behind that pseudonym.) Sometimes dubbed 'the Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus,' Ali & Nino tells the story of a pair of lovers from neighboring Caucasian lands -- a Christian girl from Georgia and a Muslim boy from Azerbaijan -- set against the turmoil of early 20th Century Baku. It ends tragically with the young man's death and with Russia's occupation of the Caucasus and displays a remarkably acute knowledge of the interaction between two ancient cultures. ..."
Tribeca Film Festival
W - Ali and Nino
W - Kurban Said
Fandor: Alias Kurban Saïd

"Bad as Me" - Tom Waits (2011)

Wikipedia - "'Bad as Me' is a song by American rock musician Tom Waits, written collectively by Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan. Written and recorded during the sessions for his studio album of the same name, the song was released as Waits' seventeenth single on August 23, 2011 and was the first new studio material by Waits in seven years, since Real Gone in 2004. ... Stereogum also described the song as 'a characteristically unhinged caterwaul,' and SFWeekly further commented that the song was 'pure, melodramatic Waits, with a dragging blues beat, stabbing, reverb-dipped guitars, and a horn section that plays accomplice to the gritty unfoldings [...] making the whole thing feel like the perfect soundtrack to some dusty bar full of misfits and killers in a Robert Rodriguez film.' ..."
Wikipedia
Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Luce" - A Cautionary Tale
Slate: Tom Waits on His Grandma’s Pistol, His New Record, and Keith Richards
YouTube: "Hell Broke Luce"

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, 2015 December: Franks Wild Years (1987).

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams - Darcy Frey (1994)

Wikipedia - "Darcy Frey is an American writer from New York. Best known for his 1994 book The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams, Frey has published articles in New England Monthly, Rolling Stone, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine. ... Frey published a single book entitled The Last Shot, about basketball and the game's effect on urban youth. Beginning in the summer of 1991, Frey spent nine months with members of the Abraham Lincoln High School basketball team. The school, located in Coney Island, is well known for its basketball program. One of the players Frey followed, Stephon Marbury, has been an NBA All-Star and was a player for the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics before playing in China. ... The Last Shot reveals the demeaning aspects of urban athletics – children are tempted by the multi-millionaire lifestyle of NBA stars and become convinced of their heroic prowess, usually at the expense of their education; most don't end up with a basketball career. It also documents the harsh effects of Proposition 48, the rule that requires at least a 700 on the SAT for NCAA eligibility. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Something's Got to Give By Darcy Frey
amazon

Dance, Valiant & Molecular - Trisha Brown Dance Company

"On the surface, Trisha Brown’s proscenium dances are kinetically intriguing and relatable, formed of waves of roiling, fluid phrases. But dig down, and the intellectual rigor and self-imposed rules factoring into their creation reveal Brown’s fascinating thought processes, and connect them to her early task-based or site-specific works such as Walking on the Wall or Roof Piece. Three major proscenium works will be performed by the Trisha Brown Dance Company at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from January 28—30, celebrating a relationship that dates from 1976. As organic as her movement appears, Brown laid down fairly specific action guidelines. ..."
BAM 150 Years
Trisha Brown Dance Company
BAM: 2016 Winter/Spring Season

2008 May: Trisha Brown, 2010 December: "A Walk Across the Rooftops", 2011 January: Trisha Brown - Floor of the Forest (1970), 2011 March: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s, 2012 February: Dance/Draw.

Sanders Is Not Trump

"In the burgeoning genre of think pieces linking the rises of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Stephen Marche’s vapid Guardian essay over the weekend is perhaps the definitive contribution. Over the past several months, the two have been variously equated on the basis of their policy positions, hostility to party establishments, and allegiance to political 'extremism' — in other words, as somehow equivalent political phenomena. Both Trump and Sanders, we are ceaselessly told, are essentially vehicles for outrage, addressing discontent through demagogy, and are therefore similar. ..."
Jacobin

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (1965-1966)

Wikipedia - "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One is a 1965 album by the jazz musician Sun Ra. The back cover describes it as an 'album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra'. The album is a notable example of the radical break which Sun Ra's music of that time had made with 'previous notions of melody or harmony'. Although heavily percussive, the music also dispenses with a continuous beat; instead Ra's music is reconstructed around 'interweaving compositional and improvisatory creative principles with programmatic affects'. ..."
W - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
W - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two
allmusic - Vol. 1, allmusic - Vol. 2
A Fickle Sonance - Point of Departure
dusted magazine
New York Night Train
amazon
Spotify - Vol. 1, Vol. 2
YouTube: Vol. 1, Vol. 2

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.10.16

Scoutpines
"You did it! First week of 2016 DONE! Congratulations sis we still have a few blocks to go. Exciting new gallery shows already this weekend with Esteban Del Valle in LA and Dalek / Interezni Kazki in NYC and a home-baked hard nut trio of El Sol 25, Specter, and Russell Murphy 'Putting It In' in Brooklyn this week. Actually the latter would like to further the dialogue with you about what is the current rightful state of illegal work among all the pretty murals going up now on the streets. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

The Best Rapper Alive, Every Year Since 1979

"Rap fans—that is to say, people who are passionate and informed about the culture—tend to get into arguments with other rap fans. Debates are often sparked when one mischievous soul declaims their Favorite Rapper. Your favorite rapper is a personal preference, one that requires the most subjective defenses. If you’re rooting for the rookie of the year or a washed up veteran experiencing a career resurgence or someone no one has heard of as your favorite, then so be it. The choice is yours. (Got too many favorites to pick one? Here's a test: If you logged onto Complex.com and saw that three new singles from your three favorite rappers had just dropped, whomever's song you listened to first is your favorite rapper.) ..."
Complex (Video)

Truman Capote’s Brooklyn Heights: A Personal MemoirBrooklyn: Never-Before-Seen Pictures of Truman Capote, Taken by David Attie

"Truman Capote effectively launched my father’s career. Which is something I learned five months ago, decades after my father’s death. If that seems odd to you, well, it’s odd to me, too. The road to this book has been filled with strange accidents, surprising discoveries, and incredible good fortune. And, oh yeah, the brilliant work of David Attie. At this point you’re probably wondering: Who the hell was David Attie? My father was a steadily working commercial photographer for about 25 years. He was a student and protégé of the famed art director Alexey Brodovitch—who had similarly mentored the careers of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn—and his work appeared on magazine covers, book jackets, even subway posters throughout my childhood. He had gallery shows, published a beautiful book of photographs he took in the Soviet Union, and landed prints in the National Portrait Gallery. ..."
Vanity Fair
Lost Photographs Uncovered of Truman Capote's Brooklyn - 10 Photos
W - Brooklyn Heights: A Personal Memoir
amazon

The Mystery Of Sacagawea - Natalie Shure

"If Grace Hebard gave half a damn about the opinions of men, perhaps she would’ve married one. But she never had the time: Since ditching Iowa in 1882 for a pioneer’s life in Wyoming, she had become one of the most renowned scholars in the West. So when U.S. government officials kept rejecting requests for public cash, Hebard simply took matters into her own hands: In the spring of 1933, now in her seventies, Hebard shelled out $150 of her own money to round out a set of three historical markers up the road from Fort Washakie. The center monument honored the gravesite of Sacagawea, the fabled Shoshone interpreter who hiked with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific. The other two were for her sons: one for Bazil, and one for Jean-Baptiste, whose life began as a transcontinental papoose strapped to his mother’s back. ..."
Buzzfeed
W - Grace Raymond Hebard
W - Sacagawea

Clash on Broadway (1991)

"Clash on Broadway is a fine triple-disc, 63-song box set covering the Clash's entire career. Although there are very few rarities, it does include all of the band's important songs, including cuts that were only available on EPs, singles, and B-sides. As a result, it's a useful box set even for dedicated fans, presenting the band's evolution in a logical fashion. Nevertheless, compilations don't always suit the Clash well because The Clash and London Calling were powerful individual works in their own right, and hearing them cut up in this fashion alters their impact. Even so, for anyone looking for one set illustrating why the Clash were a great, important, and influential band, Clash on Broadway explains exactly why."
allmusic
W - Clash on Broadway
amazon
Dangerous Minds (Video)
YouTube: PART 1/3, PART 2/3, PART 3/3

Thingamajigs Festival 2013 - Tim Phillips, Todd Lerew, Sudhu Tewari, Fred Frith

"Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. ... Sudhu Tewari has been called a professional bricoleur, junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer. An early interest in disassembling alarm clocks and coffee makers gave rise to electro-acoustic instruments constructed with the remains of discarded stereo equipment, kinetic sculptures and sound installations. Sudhu builds audio electronics, acoustic instruments, kinetic sculptures, interactive installations, wearable sound art and recently began working with bicycles with wide variety of end results. ... Todd Lerew is a Los Angeles-based composer and instrument inventor, currently pursuing an MFA in Experimental Sound Composition at CalArts. His work deals with the physical properties of sound and the nature of perception, exploring the use of sound as a plastic medium, and revisiting our understanding of what sound is and how it operates. ... Tim Phillips is an English sound artist, musician and inventor based in Oakland, CA. His work looks at making people curious about sounds and rhythms, while using participation and collaboration to encourage interdisciplinary and unexpected outcomes. ... Thingamajigs presents another year of exciting new musical works for homemade instruments, found objects, DIY inventions, and alternate tunings by some of the Bay Area's most innovative artists. "
Brown Paper Tickets
YouTube: Thingamajigs Festival 2013 - Tim Phillips, Todd Lerew, Sudhu Tewari, Fred Frith 1:10:00

Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964–1979

One and Three Brooms, Joseph Kosuth
"Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964–1979 traces the course of conceptual art in Britain from its origin in the 1960s until the late 1970s – encompassing a defining period in British history that takes in the first Labour government of Harold Wilson and the election of Margaret Thatcher. The exhibition gathers together artists who set out to think beyond the limits of traditional art, predominantly using text and photography to place in question the material, aesthetic and philosophical conditions and purpose of art, and which in certain cases led to a direct engagement with society and issues of identity politics. Artists featured within the show include, among others: Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Conrad Atkinson, Victor Burgin, Michael Craig-Martin, Hamish Fulton, Margaret Harrison, Susan Hiller, John Hilliard, Mary Kelly, John Latham, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, David Tremlett and Stephen Willats."
Tate

The not-so-secret history of comics drawn by women

In 2014 the only woman who made the long list for the Grand Prix Angoulême International Comics Festival was Marjane Satrapi. In 2015, no women made the list.
"This week the largest comics festival in France announced its 30 nominees for what many consider the most prestigious prize in comics, the Grand Prix. Not one nominee was a woman. Usually there are at least few women on the longlist for the Angoulême International Comics Festival (known in French as the Festival international de la bande dessinée or FIBD). Last year’s list included only Marjane Sartrapi. In fact, in the festival’s 43-year history, there has only been one female Grand Prix winner: Florence Cestac, who got the prize in 2000. But this year, there was a swift reaction. ..."
Guardian
Welcome to 2016, When You Can't Afford to Ignore Women in Comics

Crescent - John Coltrane (1964)

"John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you. ... In the liner notes, a quote from Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka states John Coltrane was 'daringly human,' and no better example of this quality transferred to musical endeavor is available than on this definitive, must have album that encompasses all that he was and eventually would become."
allmusic
W - Crescent
Slate: John Coltrane's Finest Hour
Carving Coltrane’s “Crescent”
Spotify
YouTube: Crescent (full album)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960).

A Surge of Interest in East-Bloc Mementos

Lithographic portraits of Lenin (1972) in a Warholian style by the Hungarian artist Tibor Zala.
"When Communist regimes in Europe were unraveling in 1989, collaborators and dissidents alike began destroying vital historical material, from statues of dictators to family snapshots of government informers to manuals that exaggerated the quality of East German car engines. Now relics of ordinary life and heinous acts in the Soviet bloc are resurfacing in museums, publications and auctions. Recent books have delved into East German propaganda posters and Stalinist architecture as well as apartment life, bus-stop design, children’s books and store-window aesthetics in the Eastern bloc. ..."
NY Times

Making Chocolate the Traditional Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

"Chef turned restaurateur Alain Ducasse has rather a lot to say on the subject of chocolate. On the website of Le Manufacture, the small-batch chocolate factory he founded in a former Renault Garage, he waxes poetic, sharing wide-eyed childhood memories of the 'terribly sensual and bewitching substance.' He’s a bit more mercenary in the pages of the The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, noting that the chocolate operation grew out of his desire to control the process from cacao beans to dessert plates in his numerous fine dining establishments. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2015 January: Chocolate

Brooklyn, the Remix: A Hip-Hop Tour (2013)

A mural of the Notorious B.I.G., killed in 1997, in today’s Bedford-Stuyvesant.
"For current real estate purposes, the block where the Brooklyn rapper Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, once sold crack is now well within the boundaries of swiftly gentrifying Clinton Hill, though it was at the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant when he was growing up. Biggie, who was killed under still-mysterious circumstances in 1997, was just one of the many rappers to emerge from Brooklyn’s streets in the ’80s and ’90s. Including successful hardcore rappers, alternative hip-hop M.C.s, respected but obscure underground groups and some — like KRS-One and Gang Starr — who were arguably all of the above, the then-mean streets gave birth to an explosion of hip hop. Among the artists who lived in or hung out in this now gentrified corner of the borough: Not only Jay-Z, but also the Beastie Boys, Foxy Brown, Talib Kweli, Big Daddy Kane, Mos Def and L’il Kim. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Photo-Poetics: An Anthology

Moyra Davey, Les Goddesses, 2011. HD color video, with sound, 61 min., edition 5/5.
"This group exhibition features more than 70 works by ten artists: Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue examine an important new development in contemporary photography, offering an opportunity to define the concerns of a younger generation of artists and contextualize their work within the history of art and visual culture. Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism, these artists pursue a largely studio-based approach to still-life photography that centers on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. ..."
Guggenheim
aperture: Photo-Poetics: An Anthology at the Guggenheim
YouTube: "Photo-Poetics: An Anthology" (10.7.-30.8. 2015) @ Deutsche Bank KunstHalle

Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism

"... But even the nail-pounders and wrench-twisters and fishermen and farmers and writers out here have a sense that the politics of the nation are exuding an unfamiliar stench: Fascism is in the air. It's a special kind of gold-plated fascism, a fascism with a special orange color, a fascism with special turned-out lips, a fascism with a special voice, a fascism in a special shiny suit, a fascism that rides around in special big black cars and flies around in special big private jets, a fascism that arises not from ideology but from a special sort of privilege and a special sort of resentment unique to New York City: outer-borough resentment. In short, it's from Queens and it's Donald Trump's kind of fascism. It's Toy Fascism."
Voice
Jacobin: When Fascism Was American
The Nation:  Schlonged? Donald Trump’s Pathetic Frat-Boy Politics
NY Times: A Crass Act

Fifty Years Later, Looking for Last Exit (BKLYNR - 2014)

"Fifty years ago this fall, Grove Press published Last Exit to Brooklyn, a collection of revolting interweaving stories — which Hubert Selby Jr. had begun publishing in literary magazines as early as 1957 — that became a controversial instant classic of postwar urban degeneracy, populated by drunks, drug addicts, violently repressed homosexuals, victimized transvestites, worn-out laborers, and idle thugs. It’s not the only one of Selby’s six novels (and one story collection) still in print — Da Capo Press still publishes his other best-known book, Requiem for a Dream, thanks surely in part to Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film adaptation — though it’s the only one I’ve ever seen on shelves in Brooklyn’s independent bookstores, when they stock any Selby books at all. Still, neither Grove nor anyone else has announced plans for a 50th anniversary edition; it seems like Allen Ginsberg’s hope (once used in a full-page ad in the New York Times, now a pull quote on the paperback) that the book 'should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years' may have been dashed. ..."
BKLYNR
W - Last Exit to Brooklyn (1963)
W - Hubert Selby, Jr.
amazon: Last Exit to Brooklyn
NPR: In 'Last Exit,' Brooklyn Is A Character, Too (Video)
Guardian: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr – review
Too Horrible [LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN]
YouTube: Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)
YouTube: Hubert Selby Jr - 'It/ll Be Better Tomorrow'

Stick McGhee & John Lee Hooker - Highway of Blues (1959)

"Rare King Records material from these two postwar blues greats – each of whom get a single side of the record! Sticks McGhee really shines on side one – with that playful, jazzy approach to blues that he used on his late 40s recordings for Atlantic – almost somewhere in the territory of Louis Jordan, especially given Sticks' sense of wit – but served up in more of an R&B mode, with similar styles to Roy Brown's King material of the early 50s. Titles include 'Head Happy With Wine', 'Get Your Mind Out Of The Gutter', 'Jungle Juice', 'Whiskey Women & Loaded Dice', and 'Sad Bad Glad'. John Lee Hooker is in a much rootsier mode on side two – recorded in a rough-edged style that's almost back to the delta, save for the use of electricity on the guitar! The spare setting really unlocks Hooker's power – and titles include 'Nightmare Blues', 'Devil's Jump', 'Thinking Blues', 'Late Last Night', and 'Moaning Blues'."
dusty groove
YouTube: Sticks McGhee - Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice (1953), Jungle juice, John Lee Hooker - Devil's Jump, John Lee Hooker - Moanin ' Blues
YouTube: Stick McGhee & John Lee Hooker - Highway of Blues (1959)

Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight

"As his armored vehicle bounced along a dirt track carved through the ruins of this recently reconquered city on Wednesday, Gen. Ali Jameel, an Iraqi counterterrorism officer, narrated the passing sites. Here were the carcasses of four tanks, charred by the jihadists of the Islamic State. Here, a police officer’s home that the jihadists had blown up. Here, a villa reduced to rubble by an airstrike. And another. And another. In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes. 'Homes?' he said. 'There are no homes.' The retaking of Ramadi by Iraqi security forces last week has been hailed as a major blow to the Islamic State and as a vindication of the Obama administration’s strategy to fight the group by backing local ground forces with intensive airstrikes. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi

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, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State.

Pazuzu

Wikipedia - "In Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, Pazuzu (sometimes Fazuzu or Pazuza) was the king of the demons of the wind, brother of Humbaba and son of the god Hanbi. He also represented the southwestern wind, the bearer of storms and drought. Pazuzu is often depicted as a combination of diverse animal and human parts. He has the body of a man, the head of a lion or dog, talons of an eagle, two pairs of wings, a scorpion's tail, and a serpentine penis. Pazuzu is the demon of the southwest wind known for bringing famine during dry seasons, and locusts during rainy seasons. Pazuzu was invoked in apotropaic amulets, which combat the powers of his rival, the malicious goddess Lamashtu, who was believed to cause harm to mother and child during childbirth. Although Pazuzu is, himself, considered to be an evil spirit, he drives and frightens away other evil spirits, therefore protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes."
Wikipedia
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Pazuzu: Beyond Good and Evil (Video)
Louvre: Statuette of the demon Pazuzu with an inscription

Reality Studios, 1978–88 (ed. Ken Edwards)

"Over the course of its ten-year span, Reality Studios introduced a vital new interface between the various permutations around the British Poetry Revival in the UK and emergent strands of Language writing in the US. Edited by Ken Edwards and published in London, the magazine followed Alembic (1973–78) and immediately preceded Edwards’s Reality Street press, which continues publishing experimental poetry and prose to this day. First released in April of 1978, the magazine was originally published as a monthly corner-stapled newsletter. ... Investigating experimental language arts across international borders and beyond local poetic coteries, Reality Studios delivered a wildly heterogeneous array of writing that ranged from Neo-Dadaist and Situationist experiments to sound-text poetry, experimental prose, conceptual writing, and graphic art. ..."
Jacket2
Reality Street

Leon Bridges: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

"We probably should have shot this Tiny Desk Concert in black-and-white. Listening to Leon Bridges, I hear a sound with its heart and soul rooted in 1962. There's purity in his soulful voice that's unadorned, untouched and unaffected by 21st-century pop. Still, the songs from this 26-year-old Texas singer feel refreshing in the context of the day. Surely there are touches of Sam Cooke's sound, but Bridges has a way of making the familiar feel adventurous and new. That may be because this is new to him. Bridges only picked up the guitar around age 20, and only began listening to classic soul music after friends told him he sounded like R&B musicians from long ago. What he's tapped into on his debut album Coming Home — recorded with fellow Fort Worth musicians, including Austin Jenkins from White Denim — is a universal sound. He's easy to love and tough to resist, and his performance at the Tiny Desk with his fabulous band is a testament to that."
NPR (Video)

2015 June: Leon Bridges

The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death - John Fahey (1965)

Wikipedia - "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death is a 1965 album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. Originally issued in a hand-lettered edition of 50, it was Fahey's first album to be released by a label other than his own Takoma Records. As with all of Fahey's independently released early albums, it had little critical recognition upon release. The album has grown in stature since its reissue on CD in 1997 and is now highly regarded critically. ... The title refers to a fictional bluesman named Blind Joe Death, first introduced by Fahey on his debut album Blind Joe Death. For years Fahey and Takoma Records continued to treat the imaginary guitarist as a real person, including booklets with their LPs containing biographical information about him and that he had taught Fahey to play. ..."
Wikipedia
Ace
Tiny Mix Tapes
YouTube: 1965 - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

2009 March: John Fahey, 2011 March: Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965), 2012 September: Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice), 2013 February: The Mill Pond, 2013 August: Railroad (1983), 2013 December: Dances of the Inhabitants of the Invisible City of Bladensburg (1973).

Solar System Featured on New U.S. Stamps

"What do Pluto, Shirley Temple, and quilting have in common? This year the U.S. Postal Service will issue stamps highlighting all three. In fact, recently the USPS unveiled three sets of stamps that celebrate the solar system and NASA's exploration thereof. The ones likely to draw most interest involve Pluto and NASA's New Horizons mission. The USPS plans to issue a sheet of four stamps, titled 'Pluto — Explored,' that showcase an image of the dwarf planet and of New Horizons. It's sweet vindication for the mission's scientists — not only because July's flyby proved spectacularly successful but also because they've been trying to get their spacecraft on a stamp since 2012. At that time, an online petition drew only 12,000 supporters — far short of the 100,000 needed. ..."
Sky & Telescope

James Casebere: Fugitive

Mosque (After Sinan), 2006
"The photographic works of James Casebere (born in 1953, Lansing, Michigan, United States) explore architectural subjects such as domestic settings, flooded corridors of grand mansions, bare spaces of prison interiors, Moorish and Islamic architecture, ancient water tunnels in Bologna, or the Jewish Ghetto in Venice. However, these images emerge from a singular approach of production: they are photographs of detailed, self-made architectural models in which completely imagined and fabricated scenes are subsequently transposed into a pictorial record. Thus Casebere generates images that hover somewhere between the fugitive and the sublime, between the representational and the staged. ..."
SKNY
Hausder Kunst
Lisson Gallery
W - James Casebere
ArtNet

PJ Harvey - Rid of Me (Big Day Out festival...Sydney, 2001)

"Tie yourself to me, no one else / No, you're not rid of me, you're not rid of me / Night and day I breathe, hey, you're not rid of me / Yeah, you're not rid of me, yeah, you're not rid of me / Yeah, you're not rid of me // I beg you my darling don't leave me, I'm hurting / Lick my legs I'm on fire, lick my legs of desire ..."
YouTube: Rid of Me (Live), Rid Of Me (Private Remaster)

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake, 2013 May: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, 2013 July: White Chalk (2007), 2014 July: LSO St Luke's in London (2005), 2015 March: Who Will Love Me Now (1996).

Mulatu Astatke - New York–Addis–London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965–1975 (2009)

"Ethio jazz. That's what Mulatu Astatke called his style of music when he invented it back in the 1960s, and it means exactly what it implies: Ethiopian melodies played on Western instruments with room for improvisation. Astatke was a pioneer for his country's modern music. His concept of instrumental music as an end in itself was a bit foreign in his homeland, where singers rule the popular music sphere, and he was among the very first musicians from Ethiopia to learn about music while abroad. He started playing as a teenager at school in Wales, and after a stint at London's Trinity School of Music, he jumped the Atlantic for a brief stay at Boston's Berklee College of Music, ultimately winding up in New York City in the mid-60s. There, he was exposed to sounds he simply couldn't have heard back home in Addis Ababa, and his exposure to jazz and Western harmonic concepts led him to formulate Ethio jazz, the perfect hybrid of the traditional and the modern. ..."
Pitchfork
W - New York–Addis–London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965–1975
... my passion for ethiopian music ... (Video)
YouTube: Mulatu Astatke - New York-Addis-London [Full Album]

Alienation and anxiety in a 1950s subway station

"Brooklyn-born painter George Tooker depicts the disquietude of a mundane trip into a contemporary subway station in The Subway, on display at the Whitney Museum. 'Made in 1950 with egg tempera paint, George Tooker’s The Subway, takes as its subject the alienating effects of modern life,' states the museum website. 'Just as the positioning, color, and facial expressions of figures in the painting suggest a dark side to modern life, so too does Tooker’s choice of subject matter: a subway station,' according to the website. 'This location emphasizes feelings of alienation, as any New York subway passenger knows. Subways are labyrinthine and almost prison-like, with low ceilings and barred areas. Tooker accentuates this effect by removing all signs from the subway station of his imagination, so that a person who is lost might never find his or her way out.'”
Ephemeral New York
Wikipedia
NY Times: George Tooker, Painter Capturing Modern Anxieties, Dies at 90
Whitney (Video)
American Art: The Waiting Room, 1959 (Video)
YouTube: GEORGE TOOKER part 1 of 3, part 2 of 3, part 3 of 3

JUDSON AT 50: Robert Morris

Simone Forti, Platforms, 1961. Performance view, Loeb Student Center, New York University, 1961. Foreground: Robert Rauschenberg.
"... Looking back half a century to the days of Judson Dance, it is difficult not to historicize a little. After all, the work that emerged from that time and place did not come out of nothing. In the larger sense it continued the project launched half a century before, when Marcel Duchamp christened that hulking hull of modernism with the fizzy champagne bottle of the readymade. John Cage’s subsequent explorations of chance and indeterminacy were well known by the early 1960s. The awe of 4'33" was part of the conversation. But perhaps the more significant precedent for the new dance seen at Judson was the work of Simone Forti. As part of a series of performances and events organized by La Monte Young at a loft on Chambers Street in 1961, Forti presented an evening of radical dance works that attacked the notion of dance as a format that required the trained body of the dancer. ..."
ARTFORUM
MoMA - Performance 2: Simone Forti. March 7–8, 2009
[PDF] The Minimal Presence of Simone Forti
W - Simone Forti
Where Sculpture and Dance Meet: Minimalism from 1961 to 1979
vimeo: ± I96I Simone Forti@Reina Sofia