​Watch remarkable footage of Neil Young busking on the streets of Glasgow, 1976

 

“Neil Young has always been a man of the people, despite spending the majority of his career on a stage looking down on his audience, truthfully, he’d prefer to be right in there with them. In April 1976, after flying to Glasgow, Scotland, with his Crazy Horse band for a gig at The Apollo, Young headed out into the streets to meet the locals to prove it. He did so, as he did almost every other aspect of his life, with a smile on his face, a song in his heart and a guitar in his hands. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

​U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say

 

A Russian tank stuck in the mud in Zavorychi, outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, in early April.

“WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials. Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts. The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Europe’s Quest to Replace Russian Gas Faces Plenty of Hurdles

GRID - Ukraine war in photos: Mariupol, then and now

 

A woman stands in the courtyard of a destroyed building in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 29.

Samizdat

 

Russian samizdat and photo negatives of unofficial literature

“Samizdat (Russian: самиздат, lit. ‘self-publishing’) was a form of dissident activity across the socialist Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because most typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship. ... The Ukrainian language has a similar term: samvydav (самвидав), from sam, ‘self’, and vydavnytstvo, ‘publishing house’. …”

Wikipedia

NY Times: Samizdat Is Russia’ Underground Press (March 1970)

Samizdat: How did people in the Soviet Union circumvent state censorship

Russian Newspaper Turns To Samizdat To Reach Readers ‘Poisoned By Propaganda’

 

Typed copy of Bulgakov’s ‘Heart of a Dog’

Chestnut Trees - Hermann Hesse

 

“Everywhere we’ve lived takes on a certain shape in our memory only some time after we leave it. Then it becomes a picture that will remain unchanged. As long as we’re there, with the whole place before our eyes, we see the accidental and the essential emphasized almost equally; only later are secondary matters snuffed out, our memory preserving only what’s worth preserving. If that weren’t true, how could we look back over even a year of our life without vertigo and terror! Many things make up the picture a place leaves behind for us—waters, rocks, roofs, squares—but for me, it is most of all trees. ...”

The Paris Review

amazon: Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings

2012 August: Hermann Hesse

​A Crumbling Russian ‘Spyville’ Returns to Polish Hands

 

The abandoned former Soviet diplomatic housing complex in Warsaw. The city has seized the building and plans to turn it into accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.

“WARSAW — Soviet diplomats moved out of the hulking Warsaw housing compound more than 30 years ago. But some Russians stayed behind, sheltering until the early 2000s behind a fence topped with barbed wire from a city that, with the collapse of their empire, had suddenly become hostile territory — and an important intelligence target.A moldering, Russian pulp fiction paperback left behind inside the now derelict property, perhaps provides a clue to the preoccupations of the Russians who lived in the compound that was notorious since its heyday in the 1980s as a nest of spies: ‘Game on a Foreign Field.’ ...”

NY Times

VOX: Are sanctions against Russia working?

 

The complex, dubbed “Spyville,” was officially emptied of diplomats and their families when the Soviet empire crumbled in the late 1980s, but some Russians continued to live there until the early 2000s.

Why does this lady have a fly on her head?

 

“As we look at this portrait of a woman with an elaborate white headdress, one of the first things that grabs our attention is the fact that there's a fly on the painting ... but upon closer inspection, the fly is IN the painting, or rather, the artist painted the fly as part of the portrait.  What is going on here??? Share this page via: The official title of this painting is Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family, and it was painted around 1470 by an unknown artist from the ‘Swabian"’area of Europe.  Never heard of Swabia?  In the middle ages, it covered an area including southern Germany, part of Switzerland, and part of France. ...”

artsology

National Gallery (Video)

Soccer capitalism

 

“Soccer academies are springing up across Africa with remarkable speed, evidence of the immense popularity of the sport and the many aspirations it arouses. These academies—institutions that at their core combine a sportive and an educational system—first arrived in Africa from Europe in the late 1990s, following three interrelated processes: (1) the mistreatment by unscrupulous agents of young African players who migrated to Europe; (2) the Bosman ruling of 1995 that further increased the migration of African players to Europe; and (3) the introduction of new transfer regulations by FIFA in 2001 that aimed at curbing the abuse of young migrant players by making it harder for clubs to sign players under the age of 18. ...”

Africa Is a Country

A Long Way Home for Ukrainian Sailors

 

Despite the powerful engines, there was nowhere for the Ocean Force to go. 

“The Ukrainian crew was celebrating with cheesesteak sandwiches on board the cargo ship Ocean Force in late February. After more than a year on anchor in Delaware Bay and dockside in Philadelphia, repairs had been made, and the seven remaining crew members—the minimum required to maintain the cargo vessel while in port—had received long-overdue back pay. A new owner had taken over. They were going home. And then Russian bombs began falling on their homeland and Russian infantry poured across the border. It was Wednesday evening, February 23, in Philadelphia, already Thursday in Ukraine. ...”

Voice

NY Times: Russia Could Sell More Energy to Asia, but Has to Slash Prices

POLITICO: What the Kremlin’s rubles-for-gas threat is about (Audio)

NY Times: Opinion | Putin’s Failure to Hold on to the Educated Could Be the World’s Gain

​Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows

 

“The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO. The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. ‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,’ Alito writes. ...”

POLITICO

NY Times: A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach

NY Times: Opinion | This Supreme Court Is Out of Step With Most Americans

***NY Times: Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade

Langlois Bridge at Arles - Vincent van Gogh

 

The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing, 1888,

“The Langlois Bridge at Arles is the subject of four oil paintings, one watercolor and four drawings by Vincent van Gogh. The works, made in 1888 when Van Gogh lived in Arles, in southern France, represent a melding of formal and creative aspects. Van Gogh used a perspective frame that he built and used in The Hague to create precise lines and angles when portraying perspective. Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese woodcut prints, as evidenced by his simplified use of color to create a harmonious and unified image. ... The reconstructed Langlois Bridge is now named Pont Van-Gogh. ...”

Wikipedia

2010 March: Van Gogh Museum, 2010 May: Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?, 2012 April: Van Gogh Up Close, 2015 May: Van Gogh and Nature, 2016 January: Van Gogh's Bedrooms, 2016 November: Wheat Fields - Van Gogh series, 2019 April: At Eternity’s Gate - Julian Schnabel (2018), 2020 April: The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen (1884), 2021 February: Vincent van Gogh Paris painting from 1887 to make public debut

​They Fell Deeply in Love in Bucha. One Russian Bullet Ended It All.

 

Iryna Abramova at the grave of her husband, Oleh Abramov, who was killed by Russian forces outside their home in Bucha, Ukraine.

“BUCHA, Ukraine — She called him Sunshine. He called her Kitty. They met nearly 20 years ago when she was working at a hospital and he sauntered through the door, young, muscular and beautiful, to fix the roof.Iryna Abramova said she made the first move and followed him to where he smoked cigarettes behind a wall. They started talking and fell in love, she said, ‘word by word.’ But a few weeks ago, the special connection she had with Oleh, the love of her life, and everything they built together ended in a single cruel gunshot. What follows is difficult for Iryna to describe, she said, because it feels so raw and real but, at the same time, it’s almost impossible to believe. ...”

NY Times

Aljazeera: Russian theatre drops directors who spoke out against Ukraine war (Video)

Aljazeera: Evacuation of civilians from Ukraine’s besieged Mariupol delayed (Video)

GRID - Wars, nuclear tests and Taliban 2.0: Global hotspots, far from Ukraine

Samuel Beckett: Film (1965), Notfilm - Ross Lipman (2015)

 

“In 1964, the great playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett began his only venture into cinema. The twenty-two-minute Film, as it was eventually titled, was a collaborative effort of formidable talents. Directed by Alan Schneider, the premiere American interpreter of Beckett’s plays, it starred silent comedian Buster Keaton, was photographed by On the Waterfront (1954) cinematographer Boris Kaufman, and produced by Barney Rosset, legendary founder of Grove Press, the first US publisher of Beckett and such other figures of the European avant-garde as Genet and Ionesco. ...”

ARTFORUM: Not I

W - Film (film), W - Notfilm

Criterion: FILM and NOTFILM

YouTube: Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider - Film (1965), NOTFILM by Ross Lipman

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”, 2022 March: Waiting for Godot (1955)

May Day rallies held around world with calls for peace in Ukraine

 

Protesters take part in the annual May Day rally marking the international day of the workers on May 1, in Toulouse, southern France.

“Citizens and trade unions have rallied around the world to mark May Day, sending messages of protest to their governments and issuing calls for peace in Ukraine. It is a time of high emotion for participants and their causes, and Sunday’s May Day marches were no different with police at the ready as street demonstrations commemorated International Workers’ Day, or May Day. The war in Ukraine was also front and centre of this year’s May Day messages, with national leaders and union officials calling for peace and also warning that Russia’s war could spread further in Europe. ...”

Aljazeera

May Day rallies held across Europe to honour workers, call for peace

NY Times: Deaths of foreign fighters draw renewed attention to the  military volunteers in Ukraine. (Video)

War Has Come to Visit Me (March 22, 2022)

Corrupt Russian Oligarchs Trying to Destroy You? Better Call John Moscow

 

Nikita Kadan. From series ‘The shadow on the ground‘. 2022. Charcoal on paper

The May Pamphlet - Paul Goodman (1945)

 

“The May Pamphlet is a collection of six anarchist essays written and published by Paul Goodman in 1945. Goodman discusses the problems of living in a society that represses individual instinct through coercion. He suggests that individuals resist such conditions by reclaiming their natural instincts and initiative, and by ‘drawing the line’, an ideological delineation beyond which an individual should refuse to conform or cooperate with social convention. While themes from The May Pamphlet—decentralization, peace, social psychology, youth liberation—would recur throughout his works, Goodman's later social criticism focused on practical applications rather than theoretical concerns. ...”

Wikipedia

amazon: Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings

2020 October: Growing Up Absurd (1960)

How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable

 

“Tucker Carlson burst through the doors of Charlie Palmer Steak, enfolded in an entourage of producers and assistants, cellphone pressed to his ear. On the other end was Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of the Fox empire and his de facto boss. Most of Fox’s Washington bureau, along with the cable network’s top executives, had gathered at the power-class steakhouse, a few blocks from the office, for their annual holiday party. Days earlier, Mr. Carlson had set off an uproar, claiming on air that mass immigration made America ‘poor and dirtier.’ Blue-chip advertisers were fleeing. Within Fox, Mr. Carlson was widely viewed to have finally crossed some kind of line. Many wondered what price he might pay. ...”

NY Times: American Nationalist Part 1 - How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable, Part 2: How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir, Part 3: Look inside the apocalyptic worldview of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” (Audio)

Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures

 

Members of a de-mining team check for unexploded devices in a school ...

“Moscow has confirmed it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit on Thursday by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, while Russian forces are again attacking the huge Azovstal steel plant where fighters and some civilians are holed up in the southern city of Mariupol. Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing on Friday that two ‘high-precision, long-range air-based weapons’ had destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday night. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said on Friday one body had so far been recovered from the rubble of a 25-storey residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district after the strike, which Guterres’s spokesperson described as ‘shocking’. ...”

Guardian (Video)

BBC: How many Ukrainians have fled their homes and where have they gone? (Video)

The Booksellers (2019)

 

“The Booksellers is a 2019 American documentary film that was directed, edited, and produced by D.W. Young. It was also executive produced by Parker Posey, who provides narration in the film. The film explores the world of antiquarian and rare book dealers and their bookstores. It focuses primarily on booksellers in New York City, including Adina Cohen, Naomi Hample and Judith Lowry, the three sisters of the Argosy Book Store; Stephen Massey, founder of Christie’s NY Book Department; and Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand Bookstore. Other prominent people featured in the film include Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, Justin Croft, Zack Hample, Susan Orlean, William S. Reese, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Jay S. Walker, and Kevin Young....”

Wikipedia

NPR: 'The Booksellers' Speaks Volumes About Old Books And Those Who Love Them

YouTube: The Booksellers Movie Trailer (2020) , Documentary Movies Series

Sound American #24 – The Sun Ra Issue

 

“A journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American  starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. ... Sound American is also an editorial platform for other print or music projects. Sun Ra (1914-1993) is an African-American experimental jazz pianist and composer. ...”

les presses du reel

Sound American #24

​They Survived the Holocaust. Now, They Are Fleeing to Germany.

 

“I understand the pain of these people, I know who they are,” said Pini Miretski, the medical evacuation team leader.

“HANOVER, Germany — Their earliest memories are of fleeing bombs or hearing whispers about massacres of other Jews, including their relatives. Sheltered by the Soviet Union, they survived.Now elderly and fragile, Ukraine’s Holocaust survivors are escaping war once more, on a remarkable journey that turns the world they knew on its head: They are seeking safety in Germany. For Galina Ploschenko, 88, it was not a decision made without trepidation. ... Ms. Ploschenko is the beneficiary of a rescue mission organized by Jewish groups, trying to get Holocaust survivors out of the war wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: On the Trail of Russian War Crimes

NY Times: A Body Bag and a Sister in Denial

 

Charred identification papers that were found with Oleksandr Pokhodenko’s body this month.

Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’—and He Damn Well Knows It

 

“Astral Weeks turns 50 this month. What a record. Lester Bangs, in perhaps the greatest piece of rock criticism ever written, poetically referred to the 1968 Van Morrison album as a ‘beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk.’ Greil Marcus, less poetically, called it ‘a profoundly intellectual album,’ and meant it as a compliment. Both would agree that Astral Weeks is one of the best 47-minute pieces of music ever created. A landmark in the fusion of rock and jazz. A masterpiece. ...”

The Ringer (Video), YouTube: Astral Weeks (2015 Remaster)

Astral Weeks – Lester Bang

A Moment in Time: Van Morrison & Astral Weeks (Video)

Discogs (Video), amazon: Astral Weeks (Expanded & Remastered)

W – His Band and the Street Choir, amazon, YouTube: His Band and the Street Choir

​True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780–1870

 

“In this unique exhibition, explore the inventive ways artists in the 18th and 19th centuries recorded fleeting moments in nature, capturing the effects of light, drama, and atmosphere first-hand in the open air. The exhibition unites for the first time more than 100 oil sketches from the remarkable collections of The Foundation Custodia in Paris, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, and The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, together with a distinguished private collection of sketches, never before seen in public. Featuring works by artists including John Constable, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, J.M.W. Turner, Edgar Degas and Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, the thrill of these painters’ encounters with nature is palpable in their highly skilled, rapidly painted sketches. ...”

The Fitzwilliam Museum (Video)

 

Storm at Handeck, Alexandre Calame.

​The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear

 

“The madness of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has once again turned the spotlight on the creepy, enigmatic guru who has been called ‘Putin’s brain’ or, irresistibly, ‘Putin’s Rasputin’: maverick ‘political philosopher’ Aleksandr Dugin. And indeed, in many ways this is Dugin’s moment: For more than a quarter century, he has been talking about an eternal civilizational war between Russia and the West and about Russia’s destiny to build a vast Eurasian empire, beginning with a reconquista of Ukraine. Both the war in Ukraine and the new Cold War against the West can be said to represent the triumph—or the debacle—of Dugin’s vision. ...”

The Bulwark

AP: East Ukraine under heavy fire in advance of Russian holiday (Video)

NY Times: Opinion | What the Inventor of the Word ‘Genocide’ Might Have Said About Putin’s War

GRID - The war in data: 2,000 Russian armored vehicles destroyed

 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, fourth left, is seen during his visit to Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 28, 2022.

​Sasha Waltz’s ‘In C’ Marries Choreography and Improvisation

 

The choreographer Sasha Waltz at Radialsystem, a performing arts space she established in Berlin.

“BERLIN — ‘I started in the deep lockdown,’ said the German choreographer Sasha Waltz. ‘Everything was closed. And it was in the winter. It was gray and everybody was depressed. And we said, we have to keep working. We cannot go on like this.’ Waltz, 59, was talking about ‘In C,’ a dance she choreographed during the pandemic with her Berlin troupe, Sasha Waltz and Guests. The hourlong work, set to Terry Riley’s 1964 composition — a milestone of minimal music — will be performed Thursday through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Waltz and company performed frequently before the pandemic. ...”

NY Times

W - Sasha Waltz

 

Waltz said that “In C” “is almost like a dance that is similar to a football game.”

​Five astonishing ghost towns lost to natural disaster

 

“Why are we so fascinated by abandoned places? Perhaps because they offer a humbling reminder that nothing can endure for eternity, that even the most powerful civilisations must eventually fall. In this way, ghost towns and lost cities can be seen to serve as archaeological mirrors, capable of reflecting our beliefs about the past as well as our fears for the future. ... Here, we’ve put together a selection of the most astonishing sites lost to natural disasters. From Earthquakes to coastal erosion and volcanic eruptions, these five locations all boast rich and complex histories. Better still, they’re all available to visit. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

​They Flooded Their Own Village, and Kept the Russians at Bay

 

Though some people complained about the sluggish clean-up process, which is expected to take weeks or months, much of the village has banded together in almost joyous communal effort to dry out their homes. 

“DEMYDIV, Ukraine — They pull up soggy linoleum from their floors, and fish potatoes and jars of pickles from submerged cellars. They hang out waterlogged rugs to dry in the pale spring sunshine.All around Demydiv, a village north of Kyiv, residents have been grappling with the aftermath of a severe flood, which under ordinary circumstances would have been yet another misfortune for a people under attack by Russia. This time, though, it was a tactical victory. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Standing in the path of war, a small Ukrainian town braces as Russians advance. (Video)

Aljazeera: Russian provinces bordering Ukraine report series of blasts (Video)

Ukrainian Actor Questioned by Police After Venice Biennale Guerrilla Performance

POLITICO: What’s Putin’s Next Move? Look to Syria

​The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America edited by LeRoi Jones

 

“An anthology called The Moderns had better, one thinks, be good. If it isn’t, it will be difficult for it to avoid appearing pretentious, which, I am afraid, is how Mr. Jones’s collection strikes me. His Introduction does not help me to feel otherwise. It has its perceptive moments, but on the whole it is too arcane for my understanding; and I wish he could have spelt out his assumptions and his principles of selection more simply and with expanded references. What he means by ‘modern’ seems clear enough. ...”

NYBooks: What’s New? – Walter Allen (January 9, 1964)

amazon

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)