A funeral for three Ukrainian soldiers on Friday in Lviv. Since the start of the war, for most Ukrainians the threat from Russia has far overshadowed that of the virus.
Could Putin actually fall?
Jóhann Jóhannsson ~ Drone Mass
“The long goodbye to Jóhann Jóhannsson continues with the release of Drone Mass, commissioned by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble in 2015 and premiered by ACME and Roomful of Teeth under Jóhannsson’s direction. Inspired by Nag Hammadi texts, the work is rife with vowels, a reflection of the text, which delves into repetition as mantra. As such, the singing is percussive and ritualistic, although the music is often more modern composition than drone. ...”
Ukrainians in race to save cultural heritage
Cultural objects in Lviv secured in case of Russian shelling
“Standing in front of Lviv’s Latin cathedral, Lilya Onyshchenko offered her view of the invading Russians. ‘They are barbarians. They don’t care what they destroy,’ she said. ‘I haven’t met Hitler. I think Putin is worse. He’s a devil, not a human,’ she added, standing in the historic centre of one of Europe’s most culturally important cities. Behind her, construction workers were busy erecting scaffolding around a Renaissance chapel. The friezes showing Jesus – in the garden of Gethsemane, being arrested by Roman soldiers – were about to be wrapped up. Around the corner a team perched on a giant crane were boarding up the cathedral’s stain-glass windows. ...”
NY Times: Opinion | The Price of Putin’s Belligerence
Turner paintings not seen in UK for 100 years to go on show at National Gallery
Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening.
“Two oil paintings by one of Britain’s greatest artists that have not been seen in the UK for more than 100 years will go on display at the National Gallery later this year. The paintings by JMW Turner are of European scenes that feature the artist’s trademark expanses of water and sky. ... Painted in the mid-1820s, the works reflect Turner’s lifelong fascination with ports and harbours as dynamic, transitional places, depicted in both oil and watercolours throughout his career. He travelled extensively around Europe, drawing in sketchbooks and producing paintings from them back in his studio in England. ...”
November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014), 2018 November: The Slave Ship (1840), 2018 December: Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape, 2020 September: The Fighting Temeraire (1838), 2021 August: Sun Rising Through Vapour, Before 1807
Harbour of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile.
Suffering goes on in encircled Mariupol as evacuation fails
People settle in a bomb shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022.
“MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Corpses lie in the streets of Mariupol. Hungry people break into stores in search of food and melt snow for water. Thousands huddle in basements, trembling at the sound of Russian shells pounding this strategic port city. ‘Why shouldn’t I cry?’ Goma Janna demanded as she wept by the light of an oil lamp below ground, surrounded by women and children. ‘I want my home, I want my job. I’m so sad about people and about the city, the children.’ A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in this encircled city of 430,000, and Tuesday brought no relief: An attempt to evacuate civilians and deliver badly needed food, water and medicine through a designated safe corridor failed, with Ukrainian officials saying Russian forces had fired on the convoy before it reached the city. ...”
The chimney and cooling towers of the Schkopau lignite coal-fired power plant give off steam behind a wind farm in Bad Lauchstädt, Germany.
Robert Fripp - Music For Quiet Moments (2021)
“When Robert Fripp’s Music For Quiet Moments started to appear with relatively little fanfare in May 2020, as a series of weekly uploads to YouTube and streaming services, their overall effect was one of balm. Moving through the digital ether, Fripp’s ambient soundscapes slowly drifted their way through a collective psychological environment grappling with the uncertainty of pandemic times. The series unfolded over a year, 52 weekly entries, each offering another aspect of an ever-changing same: Fripp performing live in various contexts, quietly testing out the possibilities afforded to him by music that drops the pretense of narrative and lets itself just be. ...”
2010 April: Robert Fripp, 2011 September: Frippertronics, 2014 April: The New World 1986 (Frippertronics), 2017 September: The Essential Fripp & Eno (1994)
Russia, Blocked From the Global Internet, Plunges Into Digital Isolation
The Kremlin in Moscow last month. Russians have been cut off from many Western internet services in a matter of days.
“Even as President Vladimir V. Putin tightened his grip on Russian society over the past 22 years, small pockets of independent information and political expression remained online. Any remnants of that are now gone. As Mr. Putin has waged war on Ukraine, a digital barricade went up between Russia and the world. Both Russian authorities and multinational internet companies built the wall with breathtaking speed. And the moves have ruptured an open internet that was once seen as helping to integrate Russia into the global community. ...”
NY Times: An agreement on nuclear plants in Ukraine is urgently needed, the U.N. nuclear agency says. (Video)
War Is Calling Crypto’s ‘Neutrality’ Into Question
The teens who found splendor on the gritty East Side docks of the 1940s
“The smokestacks and storage tanks of the East River waterfront of the 1930s or 1940s should be an unappealing place to meet friends. But painter Joseph Lambert Cain has captured a group of teenagers gathered on a pier here to sunbathe, talk, and pair off. For these teens, perhaps from the Lower East Side or the Gas House District in the East 20s, the waterfront is an idyllic location—away from the critical eyes of adults and into the warm embrace of the working class city they likely grew up in. Cain titled his painting ‘New York Harbor.’ I’m not sure of the date, but my guess is about 1940. The riverfront industry surrounds them, but the modern city of skyscrapers is within sight and reach.“
Leaving Kharkiv with children, suitcases and trauma.
Days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops have faced resistance from Ukrainian forces as they threaten major cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv and drive hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian residents to flee to neighboring countries.
“LVIV, Ukraine — Passengers streaming off the train from Kharkiv looked shellshocked, their faces drawn with tiredness. They clutched children with big, staring eyes. ‘From Kharkiv,’ said Olena Tuliakova, dragging a wheeled suitcase and holding her 3-year-old son, Ilya, by the hand. ‘I left my parents there,’ she added, breaking into tears. She said she planned to travel across Europe to Spain, where her husband was working. She had taped a label to Ilya’s jacket with his name and the family’s phone numbers in case he got lost in the crush or worse. ...”
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett (1955)
“Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh) is a play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir(Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s translation of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) ‘a tragicomedy in two acts’. The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. …”
Open Culture: Hear Waiting for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Production Starring The Wizard of Oz’s Bert Lahr (Video)
2009 November: Samuel Beckett, 2010 April: A Piece of Monologue, 2011 June: Film (1965) - UbuWeb, 2012 March: “fathoms from anywhere”, 2017 April: Krapp's Last Tape (1957), 2017 May: The Alternative Facts of Samuel Beckett’s “Watt”
Tram 83, a soundtrack
“Africa Is a Country Radio continues its literary theme for its third season on Worldwide FM. The third installment in our theme of African literature is inspired by the debut novel from Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Tram 83. The story takes place in the fictional City-State, a resource rich secessionist state in central Africa. ... These are places that have also influenced my own musical tastes. So, as a dedication to all the central places of gathering at or of the global margins around the world, I present Tram 83, a soundtrack.Listen below, get the tracklist on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.”
Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Don’t Believe It’s a War
“LVIV, Ukraine — Four days after Russia began dropping artillery shells on Kyiv, Misha Katsiurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, was wondering why his father, a church custodian living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, hadn’t called to check on him. ... As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all. ...”
Places for Peace - Various Artists
How the Manhattan D.A.’s Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled
“On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States. The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges. ...”
2022 anti-war protests in Russia
Police officers detain an antiwar demonstrator in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday. Social media companies are rolling out new tools to protect users in Ukraine and Russia from harassment, hacking or other repercussions for online speech.
“Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, ongoing anti-war demonstrations and protests broke out across Russia. The protests have been met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities, with over 6,500 arrests being made in the seven days from 24 February to 2 March. ... On 1 March, reports and photographs appeared in social media, also republished and confirmed by Novaya Gazeta, showing primary school children behind bars, arrested by police in Moscow for laying flowers at the Ukrainian embassy and holding signs saying ‘No to war’. A special detention center set up in Yekaterinburg ran out of room for prisoners arrested from protests. On 2 March, the artist Yelena Osipova, aged 77 and born to survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, was amongst those arrested at an anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg. Videos of her arrest were widely shared on Twitter and Reddit. Police action against the protesters continued the following day. On 4 March, the activist Yulia Galyamina was detained and held in custody pending trial, charged with violating the law on public events by trying to organize an anti-war protest. On 5 March, ahead of protests planned for 6 March, police raided, searched and detained hundreds of Russian journalists, politicans and activists. ...”
In Russia, thousands defy police threats to protest the invasion of Ukraine. Can it make a difference? (Video)
Yelena Osipova survived the Siege of Leningrad from 1941-45
Homebrew Computer Club
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak learned valuable lessons at Homebrew.
“The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex. Several high-profile hackers and computer entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Computer. With its newsletter and monthly meetings promoting an open exchange of ideas, the club has been described as ‘the crucible for an entire industry’ as it pertains to personal computing. ...”
2021 August: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy (1984), 2021 August: Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World
Apple-1: Steve Wozniak debuted the prototype Apple-1 at the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976.
‘It’s stomach-turning’: the children caught up in Ukraine war
“When the air raid sirens wail, Natalya Tyshchuk feels relatively lucky. She only has to get herself and her daughter Mia – born three months premature in December but no longer in a cumbersome incubator – down to the basement that serves as a bomb shelter for the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in central Kyiv. Racing down the stairs beside them are nurses and families of premature babies in intensive care, who have to be rushed underground with their life support machines, oxygen canisters, and all the tubes and wires monitoring their fragile young lives. ...”
Inside Mesa Verde Cliff Palace: North America's architectural wonder
Hugo Lioret – Pomone (2021)
“... In the case of Hugo Lioret, maybe sometimes it’s good to handle this reality thing with a little diplomacy. Lioret, a French native (but since relocated to The Hague NL) blurs the line between, let’s call it this second-generation “non” reality (making recordings of the natural world) …and the completely inorganic electronic processing that the Acousmatic world thrives on. ...”
15,000 Are Sheltering in Kyiv’s Subway
Officials in Kyiv say as many as 15,000 people, including many children, have taken refuge in the subway system to escape bombing and artillery fire as Russian forces advance on the capital.
“KYIV, Ukraine — As the escalator glides down the final few yards into the subway stop deep in Kyiv’s normally immaculate mass transit system, a sprawl of foam mattresses, suitcases and plastic bags filled with food comes into view. The space is surprisingly quiet, almost silent, despite the 200 or so people camped there to escape the bombing and artillery fire above. They sleep three or four to a single mattress. The children push toy cars over the gray granite slabs of the station floors, watching their mothers scroll endlessly on their cellphones, searching for news of the war.Little hands and feet stick out from underneath blankets, though it is noticeably warmer in the station than above ground. Volunteers come and go, bringing food and other necessities of life. One mother sets up a tent, for a modicum of privacy. ...”
Sandbags protecting a door at City Hall on March 01, 2022, in Kyiv.
Eivind Aarset: When Tonality Is the Excusion
“Norwegian musician Eivind Aarset opens this piece for his quartet (featuring bassist Auden Erlien and two credited drummers, Wetle Holte and Erland Dahlen, though one of them, Holte, only spends some of the time drumming) with syrupy held notes, Aarset’s electric guitar’s tone extended beyond the instrument’s inherent, unmediated possibilities. Delays that slowly fade keep notes in play, clock-like pings becoming whisps, strums becoming halos. There seems to be a precognition of this early on: right at the start, it’s as if another performance is layered under this one, if you listen closely — perhaps bleed from a nearby room, perhaps an intended substrate, perhaps a bit of something caught in the digital buffer of one of those tools arrayed in front of Aarset. ...”
500,000 Ukrainian Refugees Are Headed to Fortress Europe
“According to the U.N Refugee Agency, more than half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion, and at least another 160,000 have been internally displaced. Many of the countries these refugees are fleeing to, including Hungary and Poland, have been the sites of strong repression against immigrants in recent years. So far more than 150,000 Ukrainians have reached Poland, 70,000 have arrived or passed through Hungary, and 40,000 have reached Romania, Moldova, or Slovakia, among other countries. The UN also estimates that if the war were to continue to escalate or drag on, as many as four million people, or almost ten percent of the population, could flee Ukraine. Such a mass exodus would put Ukrainian refugees up against one of the most militarized borders and one of the most repressive anti-immigration regimes in the world. ...”
The Ukraine Refugees Response Moldova
Showing Solidarity With The Ukrainian Underground
Casa Ukrania of Odesa
“This article was commissioned mid-way through 2021 as a companion piece to the last feature we ran on New Weird Ukraine – a guide to the country's DIY, experimental, underground music scene – something we thought we should point out here in case it seems odd there is no mention of the current conflict with invading Russian forces. This is the first of a series of articles we have coming to you this year from Ukraine – some were commissioned before the war, some are being commissioned as we write this. ...”
Messages in the Maps
The original of this world map was likely drawn in the 12th century CE by an anonymous and likely Egyptian scholar for the Kitab Ghara’ib al-funun wa-mulah al-’uyun (Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes), and the earliest-known version of it is this 13th-century CE copy. ...
“Using a gentle two-finger pinch, Emilie Savage-Smith turns a page of an 800-year-old manuscript on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. She leans forward and pauses, carefully reviewing each illustration. ’This entire treatise is one of the universe,’ says Savage-Smith, professor of the history of Islamic science at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, describing the Book of Curiosities, a 13th-century compendium of Islamic maps. ...”
The earliest Islamic maps of the Mediterranean were drawn in the late 10th century ce by geographer and cartographer Ibn Hawqal in his Kitab surat al-ard (Book of a picture of the earth). ...
Explosions Shake Kyiv and Ukraine’s Second-Largest City
A projectile hit the main radio and television tower in Kyiv, on Tuesday.
“On Day 6 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow appeared to target civilian areas with increasingly powerful weapons and a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles sat about 20 miles north of Kyiv, a menacing presence that raised the possibility that Moscow could attempt an encirclement of the capital. Raising already high tensions, the Russian Defense Ministry threatened to conduct strikes against facilities in the city belonging to Ukraine’s security service and to a special operations unit to prevent information attacks against Moscow. Video showed a projectile hitting Kyiv’s main radio and television tower, forcing television stations off the air, according to Ukrainian officials. ...”
Walking Mexico City in the footsteps of Luis Buñuel
“We tend to associate Luis Buñuel with Paris. Many of his best-known films were made in France, including ‘Un Chien Andalou‘ (1929), the surrealist masterpiece Buñuel made in collaboration with fellow-Spaniard Salvador Dali, and which saw the two artists mine their dreams for imagery derives from the very depths of their subconscious. It was France that sparked Buñuel’s career and it was also where it concluded, with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). ... Forced to flee Spain during the Civil War, Buñuel spent many years working at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and for Warner Bros. However, he soon tired of the Hollywood studio system and decided to resettle in Mexico City to start his film career afresh. ...”
Cold Comfort: Sarah Manguso’s icy debut novel
Christian Skredsvig, Vinter (1880).
“Sarah Manguso’s turns of phrase have a way of instantly crystallizing into idiom. Ever since I finished reading her novel Very Cold People, shards of her precision keep surfacing in my head. When I pull the olive wool-blend cardigan that lives on the back of my desk chair over my shoulders, I think, ‘warming sweater,’ as in, ‘an old Irish cable-knit cardigan with leather buttons hung in the downstairs coat closet, which smelled of hot farts and smoke. If anyone ever needed a sweater, they could go and put on the warming sweater, which was its name, as if other sweaters were merely decorative.’ ...”
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