“... Following our launch with Laraaji to coincide with World Mental Health day, we welcome Nairobi-based producer Joseph Kamaru a.k.a KMRU. With a proclivity for drones and field recordings, Joseph’s sounds is warm and enveloping, maximal in its textured simplicity. Based in a city whose musical identity is vibrant and multi-faceted, KMRU is an outlier of sorts, but his authenticity is tantamount to his success; a quality instilled by his grandfather of the same name, whose work as a benga musician and political activists has made him a Kenyan hero. ...”
U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Grows to Historic Proportions — Along With Risks
“Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February, the U.S. government has pumped more money and weapons into supporting the Ukrainian military than it sent in 2020 to Afghanistan, Israel, and Egypt combined — surpassing in a matter of months three of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in history. Keeping track of the numbers is challenging. Since the war started, U.S. officials have announced a flurry of initiatives aimed at supporting Ukrainian defense efforts while keeping short of a more direct involvement in the conflict. On Thursday, on a surprise visit to Kyiv, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new $675 million package of U.S. military equipment as well as a $2.2 billion ‘long-term’ investment to bolster the security of Ukraine and 17 of its neighbor countries. ...”
Nancy Kay Turner
“... Nancy Kay Turner’s two and three -dimensional mixed –media works incorporate text and image while exploring the intersection of memory and identity. The work– which mediates between past, present and future, examines the mysterious way objects retain remembrance, how fragments can suggest an entire story, and how we have a fickle relationship to our own history.She grew up in an apartment in the Bronx. Deprived of an attic and family objects of historical or emotional importance, she has had to look through others actual and metaphorical ‘attics.’ Her mixed-media work has been written about in ‘Crossing Over: Feminism and the Art of Social Concern’ by Arlene Raven, and ‘The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970’s, History and Impact’ edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. ...“
Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photos - Martha Cooper (2022)
“... Page after page of golden NYC hits from the Martha Cooper archive; this new hardcover tome expands the galaxy for fans and academics of that amber-soaked period when it seemed like New York was leading a Spray Nation of graffiti for cities across the country. Known for her ability to capture graffiti writers’ work in its original urban context, Ms. Cooper once again proves that her reputation as the documentarian of an underground/overground aesthetics scene is no joke. With an academics’ respect for the work, the practice, and the practitioners, Cooper recorded volumes of images methodically for history – and your appreciation. ...”
Ukraine’s wins turn focus back on Europe’s waning military aid
“Ukraine’s swift battlefield advances are forcing European governments to once again confront an uncomfortable question: Will they significantly boost weapons deliveries? It’s a touchy subject in many European capitals, where the energy crisis and cost-of-living woes have dominated public attention over the past weeks, prompting warnings of war fatigue. But Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia in recent days has changed the narrative — at least for the moment — giving a new opening to those wanting European governments to step up their arms deliveries. First among them is the Ukrainian government itself. ...”
A Russian soldier, taken prisoner, stays on a tank with Ukrainian soldiers after the city was recaptured from Russian forces on Sunday in Izyum, Ukraine.
Jean-Luc Godard, Daring Director Who Shaped the French New Wave, Dies at 91
“Jean-Luc Godard, the daringly innovative director and provocateur whose unconventional camera work, disjointed narrative style and penchant for radical politics changed the course of filmmaking in the 1960s, leaving a lasting influence on it, died on Tuesday at his home in the district of Rolle, Switzerland. He was 91. His longtime legal adviser, Patrick Jeanneret, said Mr. Godard died by assisted suicide, having suffered from ‘multiple disabling pathologies.’ ... In practice he seldom scrambled the timeline of his films, preferring instead to leap forward through his narratives by means of the elliptical “jump cut,” which he did much to make into a widely accepted tool. ...”
The First Transit Map: a Close Look at the Subway-Style Tabula Peutingeriana of the 5th-Century Roman Empire
“The first subway train, as we know such things today, entered service in 1890. Its path is now part of the Northern line of the London Underground, itself the first urban metro system. The success of the Tube, as it’s commonly known, didn’t come right away; the whole thing was on the brink of failure, in fact, before creations like 1914’s Wonderground Map of London Town aided its public understanding and bolstered its public image. At the time, Britain still commanded a great empire with London as its capital; the Wonderground Map placed the London Underground in the context of the city, making legible the still fairly novel concept of an underground train system with copious whimsical detail. ...”
A close-up of the Tabula Peutingeriana.
Ukraine’s surprising counteroffensive forces Russian troops to flee
“A surprise counteroffensive over the weekend saw Ukrainian troops push into areas around Kharkiv in the northeast, liberating villages and cities, and catching Russian troops flat-footed. The swift maneuvers threatened to encircle a portion of the Russian army and led them to rapidly abandon positions and military hardware as Ukrainian troops closed in. The counteroffensive has recaptured around 1,160 square miles of territory since it began in earnest earlier this month, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy told the Associated Press Sunday. The eastward push caught Russian forces off-guard and forced several units to abandon their posts as Ukrainian troops took control of the strategic cities of Izyum, Balakliia, and Kupiansk — critical areas for the Russian supply and logistics line in the Donbas region. ...”
NBC News: Ukraine drove Russian forces back with a stunning offensive. What now for Putin's war? (Video)
Ukrainian flag waves after Ukrainian army liberated the town of Balakliya in the southeastern Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine, on September 11, 2022.
Read Your Way Through Mexico City
“Álvaro Pombo, a Spanish author, came to Mexico City in 2004. He’d written a novel that took place during the religious revolts of early 20th century Mexico, and wanted to know what the country he’d studied in books was like, he said. So he installed himself in a hotel in the city center and went for a walk. He saw the murals of the Palacio Nacional, the Aztec dancers outside the cathedral, the ruins of the Templo Mayor and the skulls alluding to human sacrifice. Later, he toured a street market filled with a baroque assortment of fruit, animals and Chinese goods. ...”
“The Angels Rejoiced Last Night” - Gram Parsons / Emmylou Harris
“... Instead, he headed back to Los Angeles late in 1971, spending the rest of the year and the first half of 1972 writing material for an impending solo album. He met Emmylou Harris through Chris Hillman, and Gram Parsons asked her to join his backing band; she accepted. By the summer of 1972, he was prepared to enter the studio to record his first solo album. Parsons had assembled a band -- which included Harris, guitarist James Burton, bassist Rick Grech, Barry Tashian, Glen D. Hardin, and Ronnie Tutt -- and had asked Merle Haggard to produce the album. ...”
2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970), 2014 May: GP (1973), 2014 September: Grievous Angel (1974), 2015 October: Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs, 2016 November: Death of Gram Parsons, 2017 March: Sleepless Nights (1976), 2017 April: The Complete Reprise Sessions (2006)
Ukraine recaptures territory from Russian forces in Kharkiv
“Ukraine's armed forces have recaptured large swaths of territory and are making ‘significant gains’ against Russia's occupation of the northwest region of Kharkiv, the U.K.'s defense ministry said in an intelligence briefing Sunday. Russian forces have likely ‘withdrawn units from the area,’ but fighting continues around the strategically important cities of Kupiansk and Izyum, it said in its daily update on the war in Ukraine, posted to Twitter. Ukraine's government claims Russia's retreat from Kharkiv is a major turning point in the six-month-old conflict, as thousands of Russian soldiers abandoned their weapons and ammunition stockpiles to flee the Ukrainian advance, they said....”
A destroyed Russian military vehicle in Balakliya, in the eastern Kharkiv region, on Saturday.
History of the World Map by Map
“History of the World Map by Map proves that maps don't just show us where to go, but also where we've been. A stunning overview of all human history, side by side with 140 custom maps. This stunning visual reference book starts with the evolution and migration of our oldest ancestors out of Africa. You can then look up maps about the Greece and Persian War, the Mongol Conquests, Medieval Europe's trade routes, and the rise of the Ottomans. There are maps about the colonization of North America, the scientific revolution, Napoleon's advances, and Britain's control of India. There's more in later centuries, like the Age of Imperialism, the American Civil War, industrialized Europe, and the transformation of Japan. ...”
Fall Music Preview ~ Experimental
“The world may often seem stagnant, but as long as there is art, there is hope. In every field ~ art, music, cinema, literature and more ~ experimentalists test the boundaries of the expected, breaking through to unexplored territories. Today’s experimental music may become tomorrow’s mainstream, or may not ~ the value is in the searching, striving and finding. Why play the note as it is written? Why play the note at all? Is music found only in instruments? Can the random be considered composed? These questions and more are tackled by this season’s roster. ...”
Russians Retreat as Ukraine Presses Lightning Offensive
“KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have scored the most significant battlefield gains since they routed Russia from the area around Kyiv in April by reclaiming territory in the northeast, according to Ukrainian officials, Western analysts and battlefield imagery. In his overnight address to the nation Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian military had captured scores of villages and large chunks of Russian-occupied territory across Ukraine since the offensive began. “In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of September,” he said. On Friday the Ukrainian military appeared to be moving rapidly to cut off the city of Izium, a critical logistical hub for Russian military operations. ...”
Is Aaron Judge Going to Banish that Asterisk for Good?
“Aaron Judge, like Hemingway’s definition of a great novelist, competes only with the dead. As we post this piece, Judge leads the league in Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Runs Scored, Total Bases, On-Base Percentage, Slugging Average, and a bunch of other categories that sound like they were invented by characters on The Big Bang Theory. Most spectacular, of course, is the Yankee outfielder’s 55-home-run mark, a whopping 19 dingers ahead of second-place Kyle Schwarber, of the Phillies. Judge is having the kind of season where any stat he’s not leading the league in doesn’t matter. ...”
Roger Maris has been immortalized for hitting 61 homers in ’61. Is Aaron Judge going to blast past that record – wait for it – 61 years later?
East Harlem “El Barrio”
“... Little Italy, Spanish Harlem, El Barrio. East Harlem runs from 96th St up to 143rd St from the east side of Fifth Avenue to the Harlem River. ... It was Manhattan’s first Little Italy and the political base for legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The Italian community largely moved on in the 1980s. The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the Dancing of the Giglio are remnants of Italian East Harlem. Part of East Harlem became ‘Spanish Harlem’ after World War 1 (1914-1918). ... Like most of New York City, El Barrio was a tough neighborhood in the 1970s. But it also birthed community movements as young people turned from running gangs to running social programs. ...”
2011 November: Charlie Palmieri, 2014 October: Fania at Fifty, 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2017 June: Eddie Palmieri - Unfinished Masterpiece (1976), 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2012 February: Rubén Blades, 2017 December: Carlos Vera: Barcelona's Boogaloo: Mixes and Mashups, 2019 April: An NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree, 2021 February: Fania Records, 2022 January: East Harlem/Spanish Harlem/El Barrio
Mural in El Barrio East Harlem, NYC at 1645 Lexington at 104th St
As Crises Mount, Europe Turns Once Again to Big Spending
“BRUSSELS — Nationalizations. Subsidies. Cash handouts. Price caps. Profit taxes. It’s back to 20th-century economics in Europe. Governments are resorting to old-school solutions, long dismissed as bad policy, throwing vast amounts of money at the energy crisis engulfing the region, in a bid to avert a political, social and economic meltdown. The standoff with Russia over Ukraine is upturning European economic orthodoxy at rapid speed with barely a peep of dissent at the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels, a bastion of neoliberalism that not so long ago imposed brutal austerity on its own members, most notably Greece, even after it became clear it was harmful. ...”
Ukrainian servicemen work inside a Polish 155 mm self-propelled tracked gun-howitzer Krab at a position on the front line in the Donetsk region on Aug. 29.
Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man by Jozef Israëls, 1861
“The crushed and hopeless forms of the people bringing home a fisherman drowned in his daily work are darkly framed against greyness in this compassionate scene of life and death by the North Sea. Dutch painter Israëls spent time living in Zandvoort, a fishing village near Haarlem in the Netherlands, before painting it in his Amsterdam studio. The closeness and common pain of the figures makes us feel the sorrow of an entire community. It is as if they have all drowned. The burden of grief won’t lift lightly. And beyond are the sea and sky, featureless, endless.”
The Slits – Typical Girls/I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1979)
“Following on from the more recent spiky, punky, dubby sound of MIA’s ‘Paper Planes’, we have this classic from proto riot girrrls The Slits. Their take on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine‘ (Motown’s lament about ‘the rumor mill that swirls around a cheating lover‘) has been described as ‘the gold standard in violently recontextualized punk covers’ and ‘transcendent’. The song is memorable by virtue of it doing what all the best covers surely should: radically reinterpreting a song (a classic in its own right in this case, though I’d suggest it doesn’t have to be) and making it into something new. Apart from the genre shift, Ari’s vocal twists and ingenious insertion of ‘I heard it through the bassline’ at one point in the song give it a life of its own. Meanwhile, the lack of change in terms of heterosexist and standard gender appropriate alterations is refreshing. ...”
YouTube: Typical Girls, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, I've heard it through the Grapevine (Live)
2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980, 2015 August: Return Of The Giant Slits (1981/2007), 2016 July: "Man Next Door" - Berlin 1981, 2021 April: Avant Gardening - New Age Steppers (2021)
‘We have already lost’: far-right Russian bloggers slam military failures
“’The war in Ukraine will continue until the complete defeat of Russia,’ Igor Girkin, a far-right nationalist, grumbled in a video address to his 430,000 followers on Telegram on Monday. ‘We have already lost, the rest is just a matter of time.’ Girkin, a former Russian intelligence colonel who became a commander of the pro-Russian separatist forces in 2014, is arguably the most prominent voice within an increasingly loud and angry group of ultra-nationalist and pro-war bloggers who have taken to berating the Kremlin for its failure to achieve its tactical objectives as the fighting in Ukraine has entered its seventh month. ...”
Russia has cut the amount of gas it sends to Europe by shutting the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline for the second time in recent months, saying the closure is necessary to allow repairs.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool have lost their identity
“A crestfallen Jurgen Klopp walked across to the travelling Kop inside Stadio Diego Armando Maradona after the final whistle and held his hands up apologetically. ... Liverpool have given their supporters so many memories to cherish with their European exploits during Klopp’s reign. Last season, they became the first club in Champions League history to win all six away matches en route to the final in Paris. Yet the contrast between the team that dug deep to fight for glory on all fronts and the one that was humiliated by the rampant Serie A side on Wednesday could hardly be greater. Rarely has a team fallen so far, so quickly. ...”
Modernism
“Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to ‘Make it New’ was the touchstone of the movement's approach. Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, and divisionist painting. ...”
Piet Mondrian, View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg (1909)
Inside the fight to fend off hackers at Ukraine’s largest telecom
“The operator of Ukraine’s largest mobile phone network is fighting a two-front war: one on the ground and one in cyberspace. Kyivstar serves around 26 million mobile customers in Ukraine and has been jumping from crisis to crisis since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. Russian rockets and other physical attacks have taken out almost 10 percent of its base stations. And in areas that have been taken back from Russian occupation, about 30 percent of the company’s infrastructure — including phone towers and lines — has been damaged, CEO Oleksandr Komarov said in an interview during a visit to Washington. ...”
AI takeovers in popular culture
“AI takeover—the idea that some kind of artificial intelligence may supplant humankind as the dominant intelligent species on the planet—is a common theme in science fiction. Famous cultural touchstones include Terminator and The Matrix. Fictional scenarios typically involve a drawn-out conflict against malicious artificial intelligence (AI) or robots with anthropomorphic motives. In contrast, some scholars believe that a takeover by a future advanced AI, if it were to happen in real life, would succeed or fail rapidly, and would be a disinterested byproduct of the AI's pursuit of its own alien goals, rather than a product of malice specifically targeting humans. ...”
The sad-eyed Wall-E.
Six Definitive Films: The ultimate beginner's guide to Elia Kazan
“Elia Kazan is one of the most celebrated filmmakers in American cinema history. He has been honoured by some of the all-time greats, including Stanley Kubrick, who once declared that Kazan was ‘without question, the best director we have in America, [and] capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses.’ When he was younger, Kazan was a brilliant student who studied dramatic traditions at Yale. Although he initially wanted to be an actor, Kazan eventually gravitated toward filmmaking. However, his deep understanding of the craft of acting influenced his directorial style in numerous ways. ...”
Zaporizhzhia: UN nuclear agency calls for Ukraine plant safety zone
“Shelling of Europe's biggest nuclear power plant could lead to unlimited release of radioactive materials and Russian military equipment on site could undermine its security, the UN's nuclear agency has warned. Russia occupied the Zaporizhzhia plant at the start of its invasion of Ukraine and it has come under repeated attack. After a visit last week, UN's nuclear watchdog has called for a safety and security protection zone. It said shelling must end immediately. The plant lies on the southern bank of the River Dnieper, across the water from Ukrainian-held towns and military positions. ...”
‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry
“A federal judge’s extraordinary decision on Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida residence showed unusual solicitude to him, legal specialists said. This was ‘an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation,’ said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas. Siding with Mr. Trump, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the more than 11,000 government records the F.B.I. seized in its search of Mar-a-Lago last month. ...”
Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s residence and private club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Elodie Lauten as Postminimalist Improviser
Delivered to the Minimalism Conference in Helsinki, September 2015 By Kyle Gann: “Elodie Lauten was born in Paris in 1950, moved to the US in 1972, and tragically died all too young on June 3, 2014. The daughter of the jazz pianist and drummer Errol Parker, she studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire at age seven, and started composing at age twelve. ... Despite these radical beginnings, Elodie poured the creative energy of her later years into the forms of opera and oratorio, beginning in 1985 with The Death of Don Juan, and including such large works as Deus ex Machina, Orfreo, and Waking in New York, this last based on [Allen] Ginsburg poems that he had selected for her. ...”
2010 July: Elodie Lauten, 2016 July: Orchestre Modern (EP - 1981), 2017 October: Transform EP (2014), 2019 November: Piano Works Revisited (2010)
Ukrainians in Rural Ireland Piece Together New Lives, Step by Step
“ARRANMORE ISLAND, Ireland — There are two flags flying over the youth hostel on Arranmore Island, a speck of land off Ireland’s northwestern coast, visible from the ferry as it pulls into its tiny port: the Irish tricolor and the blue and yellow banner of Ukraine. ... Since the middle of this summer, she and her children have been among 25 Ukrainian refugees living on the remote island, where the population had been steadily dropping for decades. They are among the countless Ukrainians grappling with the uncertainty of how the next chapter of their lives will unfold as the war with Russia enters its seventh month, making it clear that their temporary displacement could become long term. But the communities hosting them are also confronting the complexities of assimilating and providing for newcomers as they face their own economic and social challenges. ...”
A Ukrainian woman minding a child at a hostel that hosts Ukrainian families on Arranmore Island, Ireland.
Women in the Algerian War
“Women fulfilled a number of different functions during the Algerian War (1954–1962), Algeria's war for independence. The majority of Muslim women who became active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French included some women, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they charged with the same breadth of tasks as their Algerian sisters. The total number of women involved in the conflict, as determined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number was significantly higher due to underreporting. There exists a distinction between two different types of women who became involved: urban and rural. ...”
Last image of Zoulikha Echaïb, taken moments after her arrest by French troops on 10/15/1957 in the Algerian War. Tortured extensively, she died 10 days later after being thrown from a French Army helicopter while in handcuffs, her body not discovered until 1984 when a farmer found and buried her.
Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects
“Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects is a major publication of the work of one of today’s most important and influential artists. The book is a comprehensive catalogue of Hamilton’s (born 1956) object-based work from 1984 to 2006. The more than 130 color plates document photographs, sculpture, video, audio and language pieces (both unique and editioned), as well as multiples and prints. Many of the objects relate to the large-scale installations for which Hamilton is internationally known. Each object in the inventory is accompanied by a text by Joan Simon, who also contributes a significant new essay setting Hamilton’s objects in critical context. ...”
2007 November: Ann Hamilton, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2010 March: Ann Hamilton - 1, 2011 January: stylus, 2011 April: indigo blue, 2011 December: Objects, 2012 November: phora , 2013 January: Gemini GEL, 2013 September: Ann Hamilton: the event of a thread
Untitled #8-16 (from The Body Object Series)
How Russia Uses Low Tech in Its High-Tech Weapons
“As Russian forces fire precision-guided weapons at military and civilian targets in Ukraine, officers in Ukraine’s security service working with private analysts have collected parts of the crashed missiles to unravel their enemy’s secrets. The weapons are top of the line in the Russian arsenal. But they contained fairly low-tech components, analysts who examined them said, including a unique but basic satellite navigation system that was also found in other captured munitions. Those findings are detailed in a new report issued Saturday by Conflict Armament Research, an independent group based in Britain that identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition used in wars around the world. The research team examined the Russian matériel in July at the invitation of the Ukrainian government. ...”
A composite image of a variety of circuit boards found in satellite navigation receivers of several models of Russian missiles.
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