Deep Art Nature

A Whirlwind Architectural Tour of the New York Public Library–“Hidden Details” and All

“The New York Public Library opened in 1911, an age of magnificence in American city-building. Eighteen years before that, writes architect-historian Witold Rybczynski, ‘Chicago’s Columbian Exposition provided a real and well-publicized demonstration of how the unruly American downtown could be tamed though a partnership of classical architecture, urban landscaping, and heroic public art.’ ...”

Open Culture (Video)

2015 August: The New York Public Library, 2015 August: Underground New York Public Library, 2016 January: Lifting the Veil on the New York Public Library’s Erotica Collection, 2016 March: 11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library, 2017 September: Get NYPL Digital Collections Tab for Your Browser, 2017 September: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, 2021 November: Reading Around New York

Two months of horror and resilience: 7 takeaways from the war in Ukraine

“The war in Ukraine is two months old. There were many who didn’t think it would last two weeks. The day after the Russian invasion, Grid wrote that “tectonic shifts” were likely. It wasn’t that bold a prediction; from the beginning, it was clear that NATO would be tested severely, a new refugee crisis was possible and geopolitical alliances might be scrambled as well.In truth, none of us guessed the extent of it, nor in some cases did we imagine where those tectonic shifts would occur. At the two-month mark, Grid’s global team looked at the surprises and key takeaways from the war to date. ...”

GRID

VOX: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fracturing the delicate peace in the Arctic (Video)

ARTFORUM: Russia Increases Arts Funding as Sanctions Take Hold

Aljazeera: Five things to know about Russian-backed Transnistria (Video)

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 25

The Russian “50 Years of Victory” nuclear-powered icebreaker is seen at the North Pole on August 18, 2021.

Control and Chaos: Cate Blanchett

Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt, 2014)

“In 2014, Cate Blanchett collaborated with German artist Julian Rosefeldt on a 13-channel film installation, Manifesto. Blanchett plays 12 different roles in the project, each a distinct archetype: a stockbroker, a tattooed punk, a choreographer, a machine operator, and more. In separate 10-minute chapters, each unfolding in a different setting, these figures deliver fragmented monologues comprising snippets of artistic manifestos collaged from various authors, sorted by movement and theme (’Surrealism,’ ‘Architecture,’ ‘Film’). Molding her countenance and gestures to embody each character, Blanchett is transformed beyond recognition. ...”

Film Comment

Film Comment - The Film Comment Podcast: In Conversation with Cate Blanchett (Audio)

2014 March: Blue Jasmine (2013), 2016 April: Carol (2015)

Learn About Québec City, a European-Style Walled City in North America

The Quebec City skyline with the Chateau Frontenac at sunset.

“Are you wishing to travel to the fairytale-like cities of Europe but are North America-bound for now? Québec City, the capital of the beautiful Canadian province of Québec, has all the charm of cathedrals, chateaus, and magnificent vistas. It is the perfect weekend trip for history nerds and winter sports enthusiasts alike. The only walled city north of Mexico, Québec City is the crown jewel of French-speaking Canada. From pitched battles to ice canoe races, the city's history and present are both complex and fascinating. ...”

My Modern Met

A 1797 engraving by Hervey Smyth of the siege of Quebec on September 13, 1959.

The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized

“Vladimir Putin’s Russia is driven by conspiracy theories. For two decades, journalists and officials, in concert with the Kremlin, have merrily spread disinformation. However far-fetched or fantastical — that the C.I.A. was plotting to oust Mr. Putin from power, for example — these tales served an obvious purpose: to bolster the regime and guarantee public support for its actions. Whatever the personal views of members of the political establishment, it seemed clear that the theories played no role in political calculations. They were stories designed to make sense of what the regime, for its own purposes, was doing. Not anymore. ...”

NY Times: Opinion | The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized

NY Times: America’s Road to the Ukraine War

NY Times: In a Ukrainian School, 12 People Await the War’s End, or Their Own

CNN Navalny (Video), NY Times - ‘Navalny’ Review: Speaking Truth to Power in a Corrupt System (Video)

The Intercept_: American Phone- Tracking Firm Demo'd Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA (Video)

Natalia Skvortsova sheltering in the basement of Kharkiv Municipal Gymnasium No. 172. A school secretary, she wants to protect against looting and prevent records from being destroyed.

Long Island Dirt: Recovering Our Buried Past

“Long Island is rich in diverse histories, and archaeology is one way those histories can be explored. Long Islanders understand that their life experiences are shaped by the region in which they live, and that their communities are often defined in relation to each other. In a sense, their identity is tied up within a series of boundaries and relationships—through municipal boundaries like town and village limits; school district boundary lines that sometimes transcend town and village borders; the environment; transportation routes; and other factors. As a result, they have developed bounded senses of community that are not so easily understood by outsiders. Long Island Dirt is about exploring what we can learn from micro-histories or place-based narratives, investigating how those local narratives might be connected to other sites. ...”

Gotham Center

Long Island: Understanding the Place and its People

National Geographic Celebrates Earth Day with Murals Across the US

A close-up from the NYC mural — fashioned by Steffi Lynn — located at 573 Johnson Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn

“In celebration of Earth Day, National Geographic has partnered with ABC Owned Television Stations (OTV) and local artists in four major cities to fashion murals centered on four themes: wildlife, the Amazon, forests and oceans. All of the murals have been inspired by photos from National Geographic’s archive. The image featured above was painted here in NYC by Brooklyn-based muralist and illustrator Steffi Lynn. Several more images of environmentally-conscious murals that have surfaced this month in collaboration with National Geographic follow. ...”

Street Art NYC

Warsaw’s Welcome Mat Risks Fraying Under Strain of a New Refugee Surge

Ukrainian refugees in Krakow, Poland, singing their national anthem during an antiwar protest this past week.

“WARSAW — Warsaw’s biggest pediatric hospital has put patients from Ukraine on its waiting list for liver transplants, sometimes ahead of Polish children. Schools in Poland’s capital have had to search for extra teachers to keep up with the influx of new pupils. Public transport has risked buckling under the strain of so many new residents. Yet, to just about everyone’s surprise, Warsaw has kept working, defying predictions of a breakdown and an angry public backlash. The city, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of fleeing refugees, has decked itself with Ukrainian flags and banners of support for Poland’s war-ravaged eastern neighbor. ...”

NY Times

W - Ukraine genocide

NY Times: Rattled by Ukraine War, Moldova Strives to Dodge Russia’s Long Shadow

Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (Video)

For the Record: April 22, 2022.

Toshimaru Nakamura

“For the Record is a weekly round-up of new and upcoming recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it. This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. ...”

Night After Night (Audio)

33 Best Cyberpunk Books of All-Time

“In case you haven’t noticed, cyberpunk is huge in 2019. While we clearly love sci-fi as a whole, cyberpunk is probably our second favorite subgenre – second only to post-apocalyptic books, of course. Below, discover over 30 of our favorite cyberpunk novels of all-time, including well-known classics and a few obscure titles you probably have never heard of. Here are the best cyberpunk books of all-time. ...”

nerd much

Guardian - Neon and corporate dystopias: why does cyberpunk refuse to move on? (Oct. 2018)

2010 October: Bruce Sterling, 2011 July: William Gibson, 2015 May: Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology - edited by Bruce Sterling (1986), 2015 July: A Global Neuromancer, 2016 May: The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (1990), 2017 August: Sprawl trilogy, 2019 February: Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science - Edited by Larry McCaffery (1992), 2019 December: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real, 2020 May: We’re on the Brink of Cyberpunk, 2020 August: The Origins of Sprawl, 2020 November: Cyberpunk

‘Worst crisis since the second world war’: Germany prepares for a Russian gas embargo

The Kasimovskoye underground gas storage facility, operated by Gazprom in Russia.

“An embargo on Russian natural gas could cause Germany’s economic output to drop as much as 5 percent this year, the Bundesbank warned on Friday, potentially driving the country into a recession while pushing up already high consumer prices. The central bank’s predictions, largely in line with those of several economic institutes, also served as a warning of the danger that Europe’s largest economy could face if Russia decides to cut off gas exports to Europe. The central bank said its predictions were couched in uncertainty, given the unpredictable nature of the crisis surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ...”

NY Times: Germany’s economy is expected to contract under a Russian gas embargo.

W - Russia in the European energy sector

CNN: Germany faces $240 billion hit if Russian gas is cut off (Video)

The art of the third-man run (feat. Son, Smith Rowe and De Bruyne)

“Xavi knows a thing or two about passing and movement patterns, and about how to navigate a way through the opposition press. ‘I’ve been hearing about the third man since I was 11, 12, 13 years old at Barcelona,’ Xavi, who is now managing the Catalan club he starred for as a player, told Coaches’ Voice last year. The third man is a relatively simple but fascinating concept to explore in terms of freeing up a player to receive possession in between the lines, or in some cases to break through on goal, after two team-mates exchange passes. Essentially, how player A passes to player B, who is marked and unable to receive the ball from him directly, via player C. Picture a defender playing the ball into the striker, who lays it off for a midfielder. ...”

The Athletic

The Multifaceted Mingus

’70s Mingus, with (L to R) John Foster, Roy Brooks, and Charles McPherson

“Charles Mingus was everything all at once: jazz, folk, dance, theater, label owner, brave Black man. In an era where the wrong opinions could get him killed or, at the very least, exiled from the music business, he expressed himself boldly, and exorcised strong emotions through the strings of his upright bass. His playing style was fierce, almost violent, as if the trauma of American racism was coming through it. Born 100 years ago on Friday along the United States-Mexico border, in a body that confounded easy racial categorization (one of his most memorable ballads is ’Self-Portrait in Three Colors’), Mingus lived, wrote and played bass in a state of agitated brilliance. ...”

NY Times (Video)

Charles Mingus at 100: The Legacy Continues

NPR: Charles Mingus contained multitudes, but his native language was protest (Video)

2015 August: "Meditations On Integration" - Filmed in Belgium on April 19 1964., 2016 February: XXL’s A Great Day in Hip Hop: 16 Years Later (2014), 2017 May: Mingus at the Bohemia (1955), 2017 September: Blues & Roots (1960), 2021 December: Charles Mingus’s Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass

Charles Mingus & Eric Dolphy

The new phase of the war in Ukraine, explained

People walk down a debris-laden Mariupol avenue on April 12.

“This week, the new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine has taken form. It is a war over control of the Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region where Russia has been supporting a separatist rebellion since 2014. Whereas the war — which began with the Russian invasion on February 24 — previously spanned the country, centering on a Russian push to seize Ukraine’s capital and most populous city, Kyiv, its newest offensive is narrowly focused on a region several hundred miles to the east. ‘The Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a Tuesday address.This is, in one sense, a smart move by the Russians. ...”

VOX

Aljazeera: At Venice Biennale, Ukrainian artists defy Russia’s invasion (Video)

Guardian - ‘We are fighting for our culture’: Ukrainian artists head to Venice Biennale

Guardian - Empty galleries and fleeing artists: Russia’s cultural uncoupling from the west (Video)

NY Times: Opinion | Acknowledging the Limits of Sanctions

Jacobin: The US Has No Idea Where Its Ukrainian Military Aid Is Going

People hide in one of the official underground shelters during an air alarm in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 22. - Ukraine war in photos, April 21: Life underground

Celebrate Spring with the Lyrids

“Lyra, the Lyre (an ancient kind of harp), gives its name to the annual Lyrid meteor shower. While they’re no summer Perseids — more like a gentle April shower — the Lyrids reliably return every year to add a little pizzazz to the early spring sky. Since the last significant shower (the Quadrantids) occurred in early January, these meteor-starved eyes welcome their return. The term 'Lyrids' is something of a misnomer because the shower's radiant — the point in the sky from which the meteors emanate — is located 8° southwest of Vega (Lyra's brightest star) in eastern Hercules. ...”

Sky & Telescope

NY Times: Watch the Lyrid Meteor Shower Peak in Night Skies

When to look up at the sky for the Lyrid meteor shower

‘This is rarely taught’: an exhibition examining African-Atlantic history

Lois Mailou Jones - The Green Door, 1981

“Earlier that day she had presided over the US Senate confirmation of the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would mark the occasion by quoting poetry: ‘I am the dream and the hope of the slave.’ Then, in the evening, Vice-President Kamala Harris headed to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a reception celebrating the opening of Afro-Atlantic Histories, a landmark exhibition that explores the brutal history of the transatlantic slave trade and cultural legacy of the African diaspora. ...”

Guardian

NGA: Afro-Atlantic Histories (Video)

amazon

‘I Don’t Think It’s Going to Stop in Ukraine’: 10 Americans on Putin’s War

“The conventional wisdom is that Americans, scarred by the country’s involvement in wars for the last two decades, are by and large done with all that. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there was never a question of whether President Biden would send in U.S. troops to assist the Ukrainians. This wasn’t just because of a war-weary public: Pitting two nuclear powers against each other was incomprehensible. But in our latest Times Opinion focus group, 10 Americans — representing a range of political parties, ideologies and backgrounds — were clearly struggling with what the United States could or should do about the war and the daily evidence of brutality that increasingly alarms them. They had thought a lot about leadership, grit and hard decisions, especially as shown by Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and about how much they are willing to sacrifice, financially and otherwise, as the fallout from the war and Western sanctions continue. ...”

NY Times - Opinion (Audio/Video) 1:21:04

GRID: U.S. social media giants vowed to remove Russian war propaganda. It’s still there.

W - Media portrayal of the Ukrainian crisis

Aljazeera: US unveils new sponsorship programme for Ukrainian refugees (Video)

NY Times: He Was a Penniless Donor to the Far Right. He Was Also a Russian Spy.

Newspapers for sale at a shop in Bratislava, Slovakia. Outlets friendly to Russia routinely portray it as a champion of peace and lodestar of Christian values, while casting NATO as a warmongering menace.

Henry Cow - Concerts (1975)

“Avant-garde rock & roll of 1970s vintage -- especially, it must be said, of the British variety -- doesn't typically age very well. And although Henry Cow was quite a unique ensemble, even by the standards of the 1970s avant-garde, it would be silly to deny that much of the music captured on these two live discs (originally released on LP in 1976) sounds pretty dated. But this is much more true of the song-based material than the more free-form, improvised music, which still sounds remarkably fresh and surprising 25 years later. And even the more period-specific material is of very high quality: singer Dagmar Krause (previously of Slapp Happy, later of the Art Bears) delivers fine performances on ‘Beautiful As the Moon/Terrible As an Army With Banners’ and ‘Bad Alchemy,’ as does bassist John Greaves. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

BBC Review

W - Concerts (Henry Cow album)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Beautiful as the Moon; Terrible as an Army with Banners / Nirvana for Mice / Ottawa Song / Gloria Gloom (Video)

YouTube: Concerts 11 videos

Keeping Scores: Women Writing Music

Sinéad Gleeson.

“In 2019 I met with Sinéad Gleeson ahead of her Edinburgh Book Festival appearance to interview her about music in Constellations, her book of essays on and of the body. ‘Music,’ she says in the book, ‘binds us together’. I felt strongly when reading it that it was in fact music that bound the book together. I was surprised when she told me that I was the first person to say this because the pages seep sound and vibrate with the pivotal music memories that we carry in our bodies, in how we map our lives. She told me then that she was working on a project that she couldn’t reveal but was sure I would love. That project was This Woman’s Work, a collection of essays on music, edited by Gleeson with Kim Gordon, written by and about women. She was right. ...”

The Quietus

This Woman’s Work

Kim Gordon.

In the fog of dementia, one grandmother learns again and again that her country is at war.

Many elderly Ukrainians with dementia have woken up to a new war, day after day.

“Every morning, Olga Boichak’s grandmother wakes up at her home in western Ukraine, turns on the television and discovers anew that her country is at war.Panicked and flashing back to childhood memories of bombings during World War II, she starts packing to evacuate, her granddaughter said. Her husband of six decades hides the house keys and reassures her everything will be all right, and that their home is the safest place for them. Before long, the war, the fear and the reassurance will dissipate into the fog of dementia — as have all new memories in recent years. Until the next morning, or the next air raid siren, when the reality of the invasion that has subsumed Ukraine for more than 50 days will find her once more. ...”

NY Times

Ukraine war: Russia launches attacks along 300-mile eastern front as battle for Donbas begins (Video)

Guardian - ‘Fortress in a city’: steel plant becomes Ukrainian hold-out in Mariupol

Aljazeera - Russian forces seize Kreminna in eastern Ukraine, says governor (Video)

NY Times: The U.S. Races to Arm Ukraine With Heavier, More Advanced Weaponry

Charles Olsen: “The poet as pedagogue / Is the teacher”

“Charles Olson was a didactic poet, poetical pedagogue, a ‘poet-teacher’ par excellence. This inclination, however, must be understood as more than the mere juxtaposition or conjunction of two separate but equal vocations. For Olson, to be a poet was perforce to be a teacher and visa versa, the two inextricably entwined, the practices of one intending the principles of the other. Pedagogy necessitates a poetics, which I mean in both its narrowest sense—as the art, theory or study of any versified literary text—as well as more broadly—as the discursive formation of concepts. Olson believed tacitly that, since all communication is educative and poetry is the highest form of communication, poetry is naturally the preeminent means of educative communication. ...”

Black Mountain Research

Plan for the Operation of Black Mountain College after 1956, Charles Olson, ca. 1954

2009 January: Charles Olson, 2009 April: Rockport Harbor, 2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12, 2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957, 2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length, 2013 January: Mass.Charles Olson, 2013 May: The Maximus Poems, 2013 November: A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson , 2015 March: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket" (1950), 2017 May: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson edited by George Butterick, 2017 May: Gloucester HarborWalk #: Charles Olson 3rd Letter on Georges, unwritten to Schooner Footage, 2020 March: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester, 2021 May: Projective Verse (1959)

ROAR is closing down, but the struggle goes on

“A little over a decade ago, when the world was just emerging from the ruins of the financial crisis, two Dutch guys met in an Amsterdam apartment and set out on a mission: to build an online platform to cover the emerging wave of global uprisings. ... There was an urgent need for in-depth coverage and critical analysis of these historic developments, but few online platforms capable of providing it. It was in this context that we (the two Dutch guys) decided to set up a new activist publication, dedicated to providing grassroots perspectives on the global struggle for real democracy. We called it Reflections on a Revolution — or ROAR. Over the next years, this activist publication grew into a thriving online magazine with a diverse community of contributors and a growing international readership. ...”

ROAR

Ukraine’s Greatest Living Filmmaker Explains What the Images Online Aren’t Showing

“Although he’s long been acclaimed on the international festival circuit, with five movies at Cannes in the past decade, it has taken the war in Ukraine to bring Sergei Loznitsa his due attention in the U.S. His documentary Babi Yar. Context, about a notorious massacre of Jews that took place outside Kyiv during World War II, opened in the U.S. last week, and his 2018 movie Donbass, a fiction feature set during the 2014 conflict between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russian separatists, will see a belated theatrical release beginning April 8. New York’s IFC Center is pairing the latter with screenings of Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature and Maidan, the latter a documentary about the uprising that unseated Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, part of the anti-corruption movement that eventually swept Volodymyr Zelensky into office. ...”

SLATE

Guardian: 20 of the best films to help understand what’s happening in Ukraine (Video)

NY Times: Russia and Ukraine Have Long Been This Filmmaker’s Subject

W - Cinema of Ukraine

The European film industry reacts to the Russian attack on Ukraine

VOX: Will this grim satire help you understand what’s happening in Ukraine? Kind of., YouTube: Donbass new trailer clip official from Cannes

An Introduction to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Radical Nigerian Bandleader, Political Hero, and Creator of Afrobeat

“I cannot write about Nigerian bandleader, saxophonist, and founder of the Afrobeat sound, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, with any degree of objectivity, whatever that might mean. Because hearing him counts as one of the greatest musical eye-openers of my life: a feeling of pure elation that still has not gone away. It was not an original discovery by any means. Millions of people could say the same, and far more of those people are African fans with a much better sense of Fela’s mission. In the U.S., the playfully-delivered but fervent urgency of his activist lyricism requires footnotes. Afrobeat fandom in many countries does not have to personally reckon with the history from which Fela and his band emerged—a Nigeria wracked in the 60s by a military coup, civil war, and rule by a succession of military juntas. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

The Ringer – “We Can’t Die, We’re With Fela”: The Revolutionary Greatness of the Black President

#AfroNation: Fela’s Vagabonds In Power (Video)

W – Afrobeat

How Did Roman Aqueducts Work?: The Most Impressive Achievement of Ancient Rome’s Infrastructure, Explained

“At its peak, ancient Rome enjoyed a variety of comforts that, once lost, would take centuries to recover. This process, of course, constitutes much of the story of Western civilization. Though some knowledge didn’t survive in any useful form, some of it remained lastingly embodied. The mighty ruins of Roman aqueducts, for example, continued to stand all across the former Empire. Together they once constituted a vast water-delivery system, one of whose construction and operation it took humanity quite some time to regain a functional understanding. Today, you can learn about both in the video from ancient-history Youtuber Garrett Ryan just above. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

Atrocities in Ukraine War Have Deep Roots in Russian Military

Tetiana Petrovna reacted in horror in a garden where Roman Havryliuk, his brother Serhiy Dukhli and an unidentified victim were found on April 4 in Bucha, Ukraine.

“In a photograph from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, a woman stands in the yard of a house, her hand covering her mouth in horror, the bodies of three dead civilians scattered before her. When Aset Chad saw that picture, she started shaking and hurtled 22 years back in time. In February 2000, she walked into her neighbor’s yard in Chechnya and glimpsed the bodies of three men and a woman who had been shot repeatedly in front of her 8-year-old daughter. Russian soldiers had swept their village and murdered at least 60 people, raped at least six women and plundered the victims’ gold teeth, human rights observers found. ...”

NY Times

W - Battle of Kyiv (2022)

Aljazeera: Russia’s Putin says Western sanctions have failed (Video)

POLITICO: Ukraine refugees’ trauma creates ‘crisis on top of a crisis’ for Eastern Europe

It Looks Like Genocide

A participant displays a placard reading 'Say no to genocide' during a protest of pro-Ukrainian activists in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin on April 6, 2022.

An independence revue

"This month on Africa Is a Country Radio, we wrap up our literary theme with a show inspired by Chinua Achebe, and take a listen to music from the post-independence era. We start out with music from the early 1960s, the point at which many African nations first came into being (after many years of imagining what nationhood might mean), where we can hear how some of the threads of national identity we have today were formed—borrowing global influences, and inserting local perspectives into both the form and content of the music. ... The music recordings from throughout this era is some of the most inspired, popular, and globally influential the African continent has ever produced.Listen below, or on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.”

Africa Is a Country (Audio)

2012 October: Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebet