“Damnation (Hungarian: Kárhozat) is a 1988 black-and-white Hungarian film directed by Béla Tarr. The screenplay was co-written by Tarr and his frequent collaborator, László Krasznahorkai. The movie has been compared to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Michelangelo Antonioni. Damnation tells the story of Karrer (Miklós B. Székely), a depressed man in love with a married torch singer (Vali Kerekes) from a local bar, the Titanik. The singer breaks off their affair, because she dreams of becoming famous. Karrer is offered smuggling work by Willarsky (Gyula Pauer), a local bartender. Karrer offers the job to the singer's husband, Sebestyén (György Cserhalmi). This gets him out of the way, but things do not go as Karrer plans. Betrayals follow. Karrer despairs. ...”
The Ballad of Harlan County
“Mud sucked on my boots. Runoff flowed around my feet, gentle but quick. I was climbing the mountain of my relatives’ former coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, walking the land where my grandfather worked for nearly forty years. Brittle vines covered the old office building, the commissary, and the beer hall, which looked as though they could double as a movie set for a Wild West ghost town. This mine, called Brookside, attained national notoriety in the early 1970s after my family sold it to Eastover Mining, a subsidiary of Duke Power, one of the country’s largest energy corporations. ...”
‘We Do Not Want Unknown Graves’: The Struggle to Identify Bucha’s Victims
“BUCHA, Ukraine — It was supposed to be the bright spot in a grim day. Of a dozen unclaimed bodies set for burial recently at Bucha City Cemetery, one had just been identified. The dead man’s family was present and would be able to bury him with full ceremony. His grave would be marked with his name instead of just a number. But there was a hitch. No one could find the body. In a macabre drama, as the family wilted at the gravesite in the August heat, gravediggers climbed over stinking body bags in the back of a truck, checking the tags for the missing body. As they heaved bodies aside, the deputy mayor, clutching a sheaf of papers, looked on in silence. ...”
When Russian troops withdrew from the region around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, at least 458 bodies were discovered in Bucha and the surrounding area, often found lying on the streets and in buildings, gardens, cellars and makeshift graves.
A Constellation of Stars From the Latin Art World
“Of the powerhouse exhibitions headed our way this season, ’Murillo: From Heaven to Earth’ at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (Sept. 18-Jan. 29) heads my list for its title alone. Given the state of our combusting, war-racked planet, we could use some outside help, and in the painterly cosmos of the 17th-century Spanish Baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo it’s there: Angels and saints beam down to succor ordinary folk, and everyone looks touched by grace. A popular art of immense sophistication in a one-stop-only show. ...”
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, “The Marriage Feast at Cana,” circa 1672, from a powerhouse exhibition of the Spanish painter coming to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
Sweet Reggae Music Pon di Attack: A History of Soundclash
“Jamaican culture is defined by competition. Athletics is a national virtue, showcased in force on track at the 2016 Olympics. The country has also managed to make a sport out of music. From lyrical contests to dance competitions to car stereo standoffs, there are numerous musical battles held in Jamaica, but none as fundamental to the culture as the sound clash. ... A soundsystem is often defined as a mobile discotheque, but it’s more than just speakers connected to music. ...”
Tenor Saw
Six months in, the Ukraine war is a brutal stalemate with no end in sight
“Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of staff for the Prussian army, once made the astute observation that no war plan survives ‘first contact’ with a hostile force. If there was ever a war to validate that claim, it’s the one currently churning in Ukraine. As the conflict in Europe’s largest country marks its six-month anniversary on Wednesday, 24 August, the main protagonists have all experienced their fair share of jolted assumptions, operational mistakes, and misplaced beliefs about what is and isn’t possible. Inflated expectations have been punctured, hopes have been dashed, and strategies crafted to cause the enemy discomfort instead produced unintended consequences that are just as painful. Take Russia as an example. Sensing Ukrainian forces would either flee or fold in matter of days, Vladimir Putin believed a military operation in Ukraine could easily dispose of the Volodymyr Zelenskiy administration with minimal resistance. ...”
An international agreement to unblock Ukraine's ports has allowed more of its crops to reach international markets
All of Aaron Judge’s Homers, From 1 to 51
“Aaron Judge did not stay at 50 home runs for long. One day after slugging No. 50 he connected for No. 51, crushing a high fastball to right-center for a three-run homer. While it had seemed as if Judge might have been slowing down a bit as the season stretched on, he has now homered in three of his last five games. As Judge pursues the Yankees’ single-season home run record — every non-Yankee who has hit at least 60 home runs has been connected to performance-enhancing drugs — we are tracking his progress against where Roger Maris was at in 1961 (when he hit 61) and where Babe Ruth was at in 1927 (when he hit 60). ...”
‘The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein’: Parliament Unleashes An Intergalactic Funk Classic
“In an age when funk was ubiquitous as an expression of Black popular music, George Clinton and Parliament reigned supreme as its quintessential representatives. Wielding a rare combination of unbridled, free-form musicality; an Afrofuturism ethos; a critique of the American social order; and humor, Parliament was almost peerless within the pantheon of funk music. ...”
2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology, 2019 September: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic, 2019 December: Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic (1973), 2020 July: How George Clinton Made Funk a World View, 2021 November: ‘Computer Games’: How George Clinton’s Solo Debut Played To Win
Collective punishment or effective sanction? Europe weighs banning Russian tourists
“KYIV, Ukraine — Outraged and anguished after six months of war in Ukraine, Europe is wrestling over a question with deep diplomatic and moral implications: whether to ban Russian travelers. Kyiv’s allies have been aghast at the split-screen juxtaposition of Russian tourists sunning themselves on Mediterranean beaches while many Ukrainians spend some of their summer in bomb shelters, dodging missiles and artillery. Fueled by a plea from Ukraine’s government earlier this month, the debate over visa bans is raging from Brussels to Washington, underscoring longstanding fractures within the West over how aggressively to confront Russia in the war’s next phase. At the heart of the moral question hanging over European capitals is the Russian public’s culpability: Whether ordinary citizens, by putting up little visible opposition, are enabling President Vladimir Putin’s war. ...”
Documenta 15
“‘Ideas are to objects,’ suggested Walter Benjamin, ‘as constellations are to stars.’ This metaphor comes to me as I drift through the Fridericianum, which has been restyled as a school by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, artistic directors of Documenta 15. Etched across the walls on its ground floor are notes and diagrams elaborating the pedagogical methods of Gudskul, an alternative art school devoted to collective practices and ecosystem studies. ... Such inquiries drive Documenta 15, a sprawling affair that has taken over thirty-two venues in Kassel this summer and seeded further projects across the world. ...”
Gudskul banner, Fridericianum, Kassel, June 11, 2022.
The Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp: August 2022
“All kinds of experimental music can be found on Bandcamp: free jazz, avant-rock, dense noise, outer-limits electronics, deconstructed folk, abstract spoken word, and so much more. If an artist is trying something new with an established form or inventing a new one completely, there’s a good chance they’re doing it on Bandcamp. Each month, Marc Masters picks some of the best releases from across this wide, exploratory spectrum. August’s selection includes VHS-inspired composition; bell and gong improvisations; far-out synth exploration; and the hectic sounds of ‘rummaging.’ ...”
Ukraine war: History is rewritten for children in occupied areas
“When Ukrainian children in occupied areas return to school on 1 September, history lessons will be taught very differently. The BBC has discovered that Ukrainian teachers are being pressured to use the Russian curriculum, which means studying the world according to the Kremlin. Most names in this report have been changed. In the occupied areas of Ukraine's south, administrative and educational buildings - including schools - have been dressed with Russian flags. In Russian-controlled Melitopol, Iryna's 13-year-old child is getting ready to begin the 8th grade. Iryna is worried. ...”
Children going to school in occupied areas of Ukraine will be taught the Russian curriculum
Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests
“The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday. The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8. ...”
In its court filing, the Justice Department included a photograph of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age
“In the legend of the Buddha, prince Siddhartha encounters the poor souls outside his palace walls and sees, for the first time, the human condition: debilitating illness, aging, death. He is shocked. As Simone de Beauvoir paraphrases in The Coming of Age, her groundbreaking study of the depredations of growing old, Siddhartha wonders, ‘What is the use of pleasures and delights, since I myself am the future dwelling-place of old age?’ ...”
2010 June: Simone de Beauvoir, 2021 November: The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949), 2022 June: Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece...
A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Trade Tanks and Artillery
“DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The Ukrainian sergeant slid the captured Russian rocket launcher into the center of a small room. He was pleased. The weapon was practically brand-new. It had been built in 2020, and its thermobaric warhead was deadly against troops and armored vehicles. But the sergeant, nicknamed Zmei, had no plans to fire it at advancing Russian soldiers or at a tank trying to burst through his unit’s front line in eastern UkraineInstead, he was going to use it as a bargaining chip. ...”
Repairing a captured Russian armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region of Ukraine this month.
It’s Not Just You — Blank Street Coffee Is Suddenly Inescapable
“In August 2020, a tiny, seafoam-green, electric-powered coffee cart opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, advertising local pastries and bagels and coffee beans. On Wythe Avenue, in the heart of one of New York City’s most coffee-saturated neighborhoods, another cute spot to buy an iced latte wasn’t cause for commotion. But looming behind that friendly little vehicle, labeled Blank Street, was a stack of market research, venture capital and new technology. ...”
2010 September: Espresso, 2013 April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?, August 2021: The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented, 2021 October: Brew: A Brief History of Coffee, 2021 November: Coffee and Climate Have a Complicated Relationship, 2022 January: The Bialetti Moka Express: The History of Italy’s Iconic Coffee Maker, and How to Use It the Right Way, 2022 April: All Espresso Drinks Explained: Cappuccino, Latte, Macchiato & Beyond, 2022 June: How to Make the Perfect Cup of Italian Coffee, 2022 August: Café A Brasileira
In just two years, the Blank Street coffee chain expanded from this tiny cart to 40 locations in New York City and five in London.
Kabyle people
"The Kabyle people ... are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber-speaking population of Algeria and the second largest in North Africa. Many of the Kabyles have emigrated from Algeria, influenced by factors such as the Algerian Civil War, cultural repression by the central Algerian government, and overall industrial decline. Their diaspora has resulted in Kabyle people living in numerous countries. ...”
Six months in, how are sanctions impacting Russia’s economy?
“Six months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, severe economic sanctions initiated by the US and the EU seem to be having the twofold effect of stifling Russia’s economy and encouraging divestment by large corporations, with the US-based Citibank the latest to announce its formal withdrawal from the Russian market.Citibank on Thursday issued a press release stating its intention to wind down its consumer and local commercial banking enterprises in Russia as part of a longer-term ‘global strategic refresh’ first announced in April 2021. ‘We have explored multiple strategic options to sell these businesses over the past several months. It’s clear that the wind-down path makes the most sense given the many complicating factors in the environment,’ CEO of Legacy Franchises Titi Cole said in the release. ...”
A view of a crater from a night Russian rocket attack, near to damaged buildings in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022.
Lou Reed - Words & Music (May 1965)
“... Around the time [ Elise] Cowen was being driven out of New York, across the city on Long Island, a teenage Lou Reed was seeking refuge (’despite all the computations…’) in the doo-wop, R&B and rock & roll he heard on the radio, singing and playing along on a cheap guitar he’d had since he was nine. They were similar in ways, Cowen and Reed – young, hungry intellectuals from well-off Jewish backgrounds, socially awkward, bisexual, adventurous in terms of hedonistic pleasures and transgressive culture, and both facing immense familial and societal pressure to conform. There were significant differences, of course, with the Beat poet Gregory Corso later pointing out, ‘In the 50s, if you were male, you could be a rebel, but if you were female, your families had you locked up.’ ...”
2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982), 2016 March: New Sensations (1984), 2016 May: Coney Island Baby (1976), 2017 March: Celebrating Lou Reed: 1942–2013, 2017 November: Watch Footage of the Velvet Underground Composing..., 2018 February: Street Hassle (1978), 2018 October: Lou Reed at The Ritz (07-16-1986), 2019 February: Lou Reed, John Cale And Nico - Le Bataclan '72 (1972), 2020 November: Concert Film Berlin Streaming Free Online for the Next Week
All Things Are Possible: Mario Vargas Llosa on the Eternal Youth of Flaubert’s Writing
“At some point in the last century, I arrived in Paris and that very day bought a copy of Madame Bovary in a bookstore called Joie de Vivre in the Latin Quarter. I stayed up nearly all night reading it and by dawn I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. Thanks to Flaubert, I was starting to get familiar with all the secrets of the art of the novel. No one did more to further the genre of the novel than the Hermit from Croisset. ... This is how Flaubert created the modern novel and laid the foundation for what, years later, would be the infinite devices and techniques that James Joyce invented with which to supply the genre and differentiate it from the past and its classic iteration. ...”
2015 March: Mario Vargas Llosa, 2019 April: The Metamorphosis, 2022 July: Mario Vargas Llosa: Fiction and hyper-reality
Six Months Later, Are We Forgetting Ukraine?
“New Yorkers have a reputation for standing up for their home city. This came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic when city residents acted together in the battle against the virus. That same tough mindset supported the city’s Ukrainian community in the days and weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What once sounded like a joke or an unlikely scenario became a somber reminder of the brutality of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the fragility of young democracies. ... Seemingly overnight, New York’s attention turned to Ukraine. The city is home to 150,000 Ukrainian Americans, the largest community in the country, and everywhere New Yorkers turned there were symbols of support for Ukraine. People flocked to Ukrainian businesses and to cultural hubs in ‘Little Ukraine,’ in the East Village, and many attended protests demanding that NATO ‘close the skies’ over Ukraine. ...”
Support for Ukraine in the East Village: On “President Zelenskyy Way,” at Big Bar, on East 7th Street, and at the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, on Second Avenue.
The staircases left behind after the original Penn Station was demolished
“It took five years to build Penn Station: millions of tons of granite, steel, stone, and bricks were transformed into a triumphant Beaux Arts monument to modern transportation that officially opened in 1910. (Constructing Penn Station leveled several blocks and hundreds of tenements in the Tenderloin, but that’s another story.) A half century later, it took three years to demolish what was now an underused, money-losing station. On October 28, 1963, small groups of protestors could not stop the team of wreckers who began jackhammering the exterior and carting away the rubble. ...”
Cooking with Nora Ephron - Valerie Stivers
“I am a baker of pies and a believer in pleasures, but also the kind of killjoy who can’t take a rom-com in the spirit it’s intended. Hence my fraught relationship with Heartburn by Nora Ephron. I remember—from 1983, the year the book was published—it being marketed as a ‘hilarious’ comedy about a woman cooking her way out of a broken heart at the end of a marriage. Heartburn was a cultural sensation in the suburbs of my youth, such that I recall my mother cackling over the film adaptation and criticizing Meryl Streep’s looks—not pretty enough! ...”
Ukraine war round-up: Russia burns off its excess gas and war memorial torn down
“Satellite images of a fuel plant in north-west Russia show huge amounts of gas being burned off into the air, analysts tell the BBC. The liquified natural gas (LNG) complex is thought to be burning unused fuel that would have normally been sold to Germany, Western countries have been trying to reduce the amount of Russian energy they use to end their dependence on Moscow. But left with too much unsellable gas, it now appears that Russian operators have simply decided to burn it into the air - prompting environmental concerns too. ...”
A colourised version of this satellite image captures infrared radiation from the burning of gas at the Portovaya plant
Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law
The Editorial Board: “Over the course of this summer, the nation has been transfixed by the House select committee’s hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and how or whether Donald Trump might face accountability for what happened that day. The Justice Department remained largely silent about its investigations of the former president until this month, when the F.B.I. searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., in a case related to his handling of classified documents. The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers. Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. ...”
Alex Katz Is Still Perfecting His Craft
“Entering Alex Katz’s home and studio, on the block in New York’s SoHo neighborhood where he has lived and worked since 1968, is like stepping directly into his mind, from which his enveloping aesthetic world originates. When I arrive at his light-washed loft space late on a summer morning, Katz, who turned 95 this past July, is in the spare nook of the kitchen, where he has just put the finishing brushstrokes on a study of lavender peonies — one of the first iterative steps toward creating his monumental works, which are hung on walls and leaning against various surfaces in the living space and adjacent studio. ... Through the doorway of a room off the kitchen, I glimpse his reclusive wife, Ada, 94, a spectral, gray-haired figure. ...”
2008 February: Alex Katz, 2010 December: Life Imitates Art, 2012 June: Alex Katz Prints, 2013 April: On Painting: Alex Katz & Felix Vallotton, May 2016: Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 2021 December: Alex Katz: The Brooklyn Rail
One of the artist’s early group portraits, “The Cocktail Party” (1965).
Should Russian Culture Be ‘Canceled’ Over the Ukraine Invasion?
“Should the anti-Russia backlash triggered by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine spare Russian culture, whether in the form of performances by modern-day Russian musicians or courses on classical Russian literature? This question has stoked polemics since the early days of the invasion, when Russian artists such as singer Anna Netrebko, conductor Valery Gergiev, and pianist Alexander Malofeev found their contracts dropped and their concerts canceled, and when an Italian university postponed (though it later reinstated) a lecture course on Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Even many people who fully support the Ukrainian side feel that ‘canceling’ Russian artists and writers, including long-dead ones, for Vladimir Putin’s or the Russian army’s sins is taking things too far; meanwhile, pro-Russian and Ukraine-skeptical voices invoke such cancellations as evidence of mindless Russophobic zeal in the pro-Ukraine corner. But there are also those who say that Russian culture, current or past, cannot be separated from Russian imperialism and militant nationalism—and that promoters of this aggressive ideology must be held to account. ...”
A plinth in Ternopil, Ukraine sits empty after a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in April 2022. Similar statues came down around Ukraine as part of the “Pushkinopad” (Pushkinfall) in response to the Russian invasion.
Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources - Claude Berri (1986)
“Jean de Florette... is a 1986 period drama film directed by Claude Berri, based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol. It is followed by Manon des Sources. The story takes place in rural Provence, where two local farmers plot to trick a newcomer out of his newly inherited property. The film starred three of France's most prominent actors – Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, who won a BAFTA award for his performance, and Yves Montand in one of his last roles. The film was shot back to back with Manon des Sources, over a period of seven months. ...”
Midnight Scorchers - Horace Andy (2022)
“A companion album to the critically acclaimed Midnight Rocker, this is Adrian Sherwood’s ‘sound system’ take on the original sessions. Featuring new tracks; radical dancehall re-works with MC interjections from Daddy Freddy and Lone Ranger; and stripped back instrumental version excursions in classic dub reggae style. Continuing the series that Sherwood began with Heavy Rain, his re-working of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry's Rainford album, Midnight Scorchers is both an essential sequel to Midnight Rocker as well as being a powerful album in its own right. ...”
War and Water: Russia is Destroying Ukraine’s Water Supply
“Today we have a paramount topic. Water and War. Thousands of people in Ukraine are suffering from thirst and lack of safe drinking water. But there were problems with water even before the war. And today’s challenges arose against the background of climate change. Among the countries of Europe, Ukraine is one of the least endowed with water resources—even in the best years, when approximately 1,000 cubic meters of water are available to the average Ukrainian, it is still almost 500 cubic meters under what the UN European Economic Commission recommends to avoid water insecurity. Additionally, only 25% of settlements are provided with a centralized water supply. About 11 million citizens of Ukraine use water from wells, but, according to official Ukrainian data, 15% of those wells are contaminated. How did we get here? Below are three interviews concerning the problem of water and the war in Ukraine. —Oleg Rubel ...”
Water = Life: Bottled water collected by volunteers for citizens of Mykolaiv; algae blooming in ponds.
Against August
“There is something off about August. This part of the summer season brings about an atmospheric unease. The long light stops feeling languorous and starts to seem like it’s just a way of putting off the night. There is no position of the earth in relation to the sun that comes as a relief. Insomnia arrives in August; bedsheets become heavy under humidity. No good habits are possible in August, much less good decisions. All I do is think about my outfits and my commute, constantly trying to choose between my sweatiness and my vanity. People are not themselves. I go see the party girls and find them wistful. I meet up with the melancholics and find them wanting to stay out all night. ...”
Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight, 1960.
