Russia’s Brutality in Ukraine Has Roots in Earlier Conflicts

 Ukrainian emergency workers at a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol last week.

“As Russian artillery and rockets land on Ukrainian hospitals and apartment blocks, devastating residential districts with no military value, the world is watching with horror what is, for Russia, an increasingly standard practice. Its forces conducted similar attacks in Syria, bombing hospitals and other civilian structures as part of Russia’s intervention to prop up that country’s government. Moscow went even further in Chechnya, a border region that had sought independence in the Soviet Union’s 1991 breakup. During two formative wars there, Russia’s artillery and air forces turned city blocks to rubble and its ground troops massacred civilians in what was widely seen as a deliberate campaign to terrorize the population into submission. ...”

Aïda Gómez Sculpts Housing for Squirrels and Birds in Roma Verde MXCD

 

“An earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 reduced much of the Roma neighborhood to rubble, the remaining structures largely empty even now because of their unsafe condition. ‘Everywhere there are people living on the street while houses stand empty,’ says Spanish artist Aïda Gómez, ‘This is something I cannot understand. I believe that we are doing something wrong here.’ During her art residency in the neighborhood at Huerto Roma Verde at the end of last year, Gómez decided to draw attention to the housing problem in the public sphere using her education in sculpting at Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin; She built a series of multispecies houses that serve to provide shelter from the elements. ...”

 
“Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City.

Laurent Bardainne & Tigre d’Eau Douce — Hymne au Soleil

 
“Paris-based composer, bandleader and tenor saxophonist Laurent Bardainne returns with his quintet project Tigre d’eau Douce, following the group’s impressive 2020 debut Love Is Everywhere, with a brilliant new cosmic jazz album on Heavenly Sweetness, titled Hymne au Soleil. Building off the core music elements of Love Is Everywhere, this superb new 11-track recording blends together Bardainne’s soaring saxophone lines with soulful B3 organ melodies, spacey synths, funky bass grooves, and layered percussion rhythms. The album ranges from spiritual and meditative-like astral jazz to tracks geared up for the dancefloor. ...”

​Citizens of Kyiv

 
Kateryna Hryshchenko 

“In the weeks after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv, the capital, became a city transformed. Much of its population evacuated. New defense units gathered and took up arms. Impromptu social support — field kitchens, aid stations, bomb shelters, evacuation convoys — sprouted into functional shapes. The city endured intermittent bombardment throughout. This altered streetscape became the uneasy milieu of Alexander Chekmenev, a Ukrainian documentary and portrait photographer who since the 1990s has visually chronicled his country’s post-Soviet life. ...”

 
до війни—do viyny—before the war

Copyright is colonialism - Boima Tucker

 
“Africa Is a Country Radio continues its literary theme for its third season on Worldwide FM. The fourth installment takes a look at the politics of copyright, and the long history of resistance (or indifference) to that regime from the global margins. Larisa Mann aka DJ Ripley takes a look at the specific case of Jamaica in her book Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power. This episode is essential for anyone who has an interest in music industry futures, from NFTs to streaming and beyond. We open the show with a selection of (colonial/copyright) resistance music, and DJ Ripley takes us out with a selection of classic jungle and dancehall tunes that inspired her work as a musician and academic. Listen below, or on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.“

George Inness - Green Landscape (1886)

 
“While working on this landscape, Inness shifted the female figure, originally positioned in the middle of the canvas, farther to the left. In the finished work, the shepherdess and grazing calf are perfectly balanced on either side of the vertical line of the central tree. This subtle adjustment typifies the care Inness took to enhance what he called the ‘great spiritual principle of harmony’ in his compositions.“

2009 August: George Inness, 2008 August: Hudson River School

​Russia Is Destroying Kharkiv

 
And the university gym was destroyed.

“Last month, Dmytro Kuzubov put on his headphones and walked around Kharkiv for hours. He felt that the war would start soon and he wanted to visit some of his favorite places. Kharkiv is his hometown: a vibrant, youthful city of nearly 1.5 million people steeped in academia, art and literature. The attacks started a few days later. Unable to take control of the city, Russia has resorted to destroying it. As in Syria and Chechnya, Russia aims to demoralize the city’s inhabitants with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower. It is following a similar plan in other Ukrainian cities, such as Mariupol and Mykolaiv. ‘The most horrible thing was the whistle of jets. I will remember them all my life,’ said Mr. Kuzubov, who has since fled Kharkiv, along with hundreds of thousands of others. ...”

 
This was a kindergarten classroom.

​Using Thoreau’s Notebooks to Understand Climate Change

 
Site of Thoreau's Hut, Concord, Mass

Walden was more than a thought experiment. During Henry David Thoreau’s contemplative time by the pond, he recorded countless observations on spring flowering and bird arrivals. These notes are the backbone for a recent study that examines how the area surrounding Walden Pond has been gradually impacted by climate change. In a 2016 study, a team of scientists from Boston University examined Thoreau’s records and compared them to their own leaf-out (dates on which leaf buds begin to open) and spring flower notes from the same area, showing how citizen science can help scientists better understand how climate change is impacting ecosystems worldwide. ...”

 
Thoreau’s 1846 map of Walden Pond

Ghetto-ology Dub -- Sugar Minott (1979/2000

 
“... His roots side is most visible on the Ghetto-o-logy, Black Roots and African Soldier LP's. Ghetto-o-logy came out in 1979 and established his name in the reggae world. The musicianship is faultless, but the album is still outstanding today for the quality of the lyrics in songs like ‘Man Hungry,’ ‘The People Ought to Know,’ ‘Dreader Than Dread’ and of course the title-track which makes the claim that to Minott the ghetto was a university from which he graduated in ‘ghetto-ology’ whereas other people majored in science or biology. The jazz-like arrangements on tracks like ‘Walking Through the Ghetto’ distinguished the album from many other roots albums of the day and Minott's singing was full of passion. ...”

​Zelensky Evokes U.S. History in Appeal to Congress

 
President Volodomyr Zelensky

"President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made an urgent and emotional appeal to Congress on Wednesday to come to his country’s aid as it fights off a brutal Russian invasion, asking for help protecting its air space, military assistance and stronger sanctions as part of what he cast as a war for the cause of democracy itself.In a remarkably direct appeal by a wartime leader to policymakers in Washington, Mr. Zelensky addressed lawmakers on a large screen in a movie theater-style auditorium under the Capitol, invoking the memories of Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — when the United States came under attack — as he pleaded for support saying, ‘we need you right now.’ ...”

 
Residents leave the badly damaged residential building that was hit by a Russian shell.

Bernadette Mayer / Vito Acconci: 0 To 9

 
“Bernadette Mayer is one of the most acclaimed poets of the ‘New York School’ of poetry. Her avant garde and exquisitely rendered final pieces are a result of adventurous journal keeping and writing experiments, some of which will be evident September 13 when the Walker and Rain Taxi Review of Books co-present Bernadette Mayer along with poets Jennifer Karmin and Philip Good, an evening of collaborative literary mayhem. Mayer’s life as a literary artist has been well pronounced in the world of visual art. In the late 1960s, she — along with artist Vito Acconci — edited the groundbreaking mimeographed magazine 0 to 9, which brought together the era’s leading figures of experimental poetry and conceptual art. ...”

The Billion-Dollar Brackets of March Madness

 
“One in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That’s over nine quintillion, for those of you who gave up after the fourth comma. Those are the odds of a coin-flipping novice filling out a perfect March Madness bracket, calculated by realizing the two possible outcomes for every game in every round, expressed 2^63. The astronomical odds dwarf the likelihood of death by a vending machine falling on you (roughly 1 in 127 million) or winning Powerball (1 in 292 million). In fact, with the CDC stating the odds of being hit by lightning are 1 in 500,000 in any given year, you’re more likely to be zapped 18 trillion times before predicting the outcome of every match in the famed college basketball tournament, which explains why nobody ever has since the tradition was born back in 1977 within the walls of a Staten Island bar called Jody’s Club Forest. ...”

​The Iconic Doomsday Clock Now Says It’s 100 Seconds to Midnight, Following Putin’s Nuclear Threats

 
“Last year, the fates handed the New York Times‘ Maria Cramer an enviably striking lede: ‘Humanity is 100 seconds away from total annihilation. Again.’ That we all know immediately what she was writing about speaks to the power of graphic design. Specifically, it speaks to the power of graphic design as practiced by Martyl Langsdorf, who happened to be married to ex-Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf. This connection got her the gig of creating a cover for the June 1947 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She came up with a simple image: the upper-left corner of a clock, its hands at seven minutes to midnight. ...”

 
Protest signs against the invasion of Ukraine left outside the Russian embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Belfast - Kenneth Branagh (2021)

 
“Romanticism reigns in ‘Belfast,’ Kenneth Branagh’s cinematic memoir of his childhood in a turbulent Northern Ireland. From the lustrous, mainly black-and-white photography to the cozy camaraderie of its working-class setting, the movie softens edges and hearts alike. The family at its center might have health issues, money worries and an outdoor toilet, but this is no Ken Loach-style deprivation: In these streets, grit and glamour stroll hand-in-hand. So when Ma (Caitriona Balfe) sits in her doorway to peel potatoes for dinner, what we notice is the soft afternoon light dancing on her luminous skin and brunette curls. And when Pa (Jamie Dornan), square of jaw and shoulder, strides toward home after a spell working in England, the camera shoots him like a returning hero. ...”

​Leaked Chats Show Russian Ransomware Gang Discussing Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine

 
“Internal chat logs leaked from the notorious Russian ransomware gang Conti reveal unfiltered conversations between ultranationalist hackers in which they repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conspiratorial lies about Ukraine, discuss the impact of early Western sanctions against their country, and make antisemitic comments about Ukraine’s Jewish president. The logs were leaked late last month, reportedly by a Ukrainian security researcher, after Conti publicly announced its support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and threatened to retaliate against any cyber warfare targeted at the Russian-speaking world. The logs span two years and multiple chat services and were released alongside training documentation, hacking tools, and source code. ...”

 
Tens of thousands of Russians have fled to Istanbul, but tens of thousands more have gone to Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which are better known as sources of migration to Russia.

​The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac

 
“Jack Kerouac – anti-establishment icon, revolutionary author of the American classic On the Road, pioneer of the Beat Generation and, perhaps most of all, enduring symbol of cool.If a dog-eared paperback of On the Road slung in your back pocket was once the ultimate avant-garde accessory, 100 years after his birth, a Kerouac namecheck has become something of a trope on dating apps. New analysis by OkCupid has shown that mentions of the Beat poets and On the Road in profiles (more often on those belonging to men) have increased more than threefold in the past five years. With their themes of travelling, male friendship and flight from the nine-to-five to explore a world of sex, drugs and art, it’s easy to see why men want to align themselves with Kerouac’s books. ...”

​Could Putin actually fall?

“As Russia’s war in Ukraine looks increasingly disastrous, speculation has mounted that President Vladimir Putin’s misstep could prove to be his downfall. A litany of pundits and experts have predicted that frustration with the war’s costs and crushing economic sanctions could lead to the collapse of his regime. ‘Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine will result in the downfall of him and his friends,’ David Rothkopf declared in the Daily Beast. ‘If history is any guide, his overreach and his miscalculations, his weaknesses as a strategist, and the flaws in his character will undo him.’ But what events could actually bring down Putin? And how likely might they be in the foreseeable future?The best research on how authoritarians fall points to two possible scenarios: a military coup or a popular uprising. ...”
 
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.

​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. ...”

 
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. ...”

 
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. ...”