ARTFORUM: Up Against the Well - J. Hoberman
Black Mask, the Radical Collective Who Tried to Shut Down MoMA
Google: Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action
Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action - Nadja Millner-Larsen
"There are many paths through the radical arts of the 1960s. Nadja Millner-Larsen’s Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action takes one back alley and turns it into a bustling boulevard.
Her central figure: Ben Morea, artist-activist and acolyte of the
Living Theatre and of East Village anarchist Murray Bookchin; member of
Aldo Tambellini’s anti-commodification mixed-media Group Center;
cofounder of the Neo-Dada provocateurs known as Black Mask (their name
likely referencing the 1920s pulp magazine as well as eliding Franz
Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks); and de facto leader of Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers (UAW/MF), the notorious 'street gang with an analysis.' ...”
The Strange World Of... Gavin Bryars
"Gavin Bryars' music presents the listener with sublime paradoxes. It
sounds both familiar and uncanny; archaic and modern; elegiac and
impassive. His unfurling melodies tug at the heartstrings, but drift
away from any anticipated climaxes. His scores draw on 20th century
minimalist and experimental music, refracted through Renaissance choral
music, cushioned by an Edwardian gauze of dark-hued strings. It's music
for time travellers. ...."
2023 April: The Sinking Of The Titanic (1975)
When Metalsmiths Found Their Groove
"On a heavy incense burner made some 700 years ago, a laudatory
inscription in Arabic encircles the name of the sultan. From a distance,
the inlaid strokes of its naskhi script burst like golden sunrays. For a
small pen case of about the same age, only a close-up view reveals a
universe of intertwining inlaid designs where silver birds fly inside
golden spheres. So opulent are such pieces that it is hard to believe
the amount of precious metal in them is small. Mostly, they are made of a
common metal alloy that, in the 12th century CE, metalsmiths in the
Turco-Persian Seljuq world transformed into luxury ware. Today, it is as
iconic of Islamic art as lavishly illustrated manuscripts or tilework
tessellated with arabesques and geometry. ..."
The open grooves of this 12th-century bronze-cast vessel once held inlaid silver and copper.
The Avantgarde Series
"I recently received a 21CD box set from the Deutsche Grammophon label, reissuing almost all of the two dozen albums they put out between 1968 and 1971 in their Avantgarde series. Four boxes, each containing six LPs, were released, one each year, premiering works by composers including Luciano Berio, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Luc Ferrari, Vinko Globokar, Mauricio Kagel, Roland Kayn, Gyorgy Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Krszystof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. There are string quartets, organ pieces, vocal works, electronic and tape compositions, things that sound like weirdo theater happenings, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. ..."
Various Artists - The Avantgarde Series (Audio)
Ukraine Has Gained Ground. But It Has Much Farther to Go.
"In June, Ukraine prepared to launch its counteroffensive facing immense
risks: Without a decisive victory, Western support could weaken, and
Kyiv could face pressure to negotiate a ceasefire. Since then, Ukrainian forces have breached the first line of defense in
some Russian positions along this southern line of advance, the
counteroffensive’s most promising front. Kyiv’s forces have recaptured the tiny village of Robotyne, a tactical
victory that highlighted the enormous challenges that lie ahead. Progress has been grueling and slow. In some weeks, troops have moved only a few yards at a time along this line of advance. ..."
Slapp Happy's Sort Of (50th Anniversary)
"The borders between what gets termed prog rock and post punk were far
more porous and negligently policed than the conventional histories of
either have tended to credit. How did John Lydon transform British music
for a second time in two years? By walking backwards into his teenage
loves of prog acts such as Van der Graaf Generator and Captain
Beefheart. The Fall may have loudly scoffed at hippiedom, but they
emerged from a Hawkwind-listening, spliff-smoking, psychedelic-gobbling
counterculture in Prestwich that owed a lot to those ideals. ..."
U.N. General Assembly: Zelensky Warns World Leaders That Russian Aggression Could Expand Beyond Ukraine
World leaders debate pressing issues. Here’s the latest. "At
the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly on
Tuesday in New York City, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine
presented Russia’s aggression as a worldwide unrelenting threat that
would not stop at the borders of Ukraine. 'The
goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our
people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the
international rules-based order,' Mr. Zelensky told the assembled
leaders. He added that Russia was weaponizing essentials like food and
energy 'not only against our country, but against all of yours, as
well.' His
remarks were among the most scathing in a series of addresses by world
leaders, including President Biden, who condemned Russia’s 'naked
aggression' and said the United States would continue to stand with the 'brave people of Ukraine.' ..."
NY Times: Abrams Tanks Expected to Arrive in Ukraine Soon, Austin Says (Video)
Aroun Haouzi El Baidi – Ana nadi bel ghram [Sides 1-2], Polyphon, 1932
"'I am the one who is in love,' Aroun Haouzi El Baidi sang majestically into a microphone in a Constantine recording studio in 1932, 'O my desired one.' On this ninety year old recording of “Ana al-ladhi bil-gharam ya saʿfaya” (أَنَا الذِي بَالغْرَامْ يَا سَعْفَايَا), the Aïn Beïda-born Algerian Jewish musician expertly executes an integral song-text of the mahjuz repertoire, itself part of the extended family of Constantine’s classical maluf tradition (and sometimes considered to be an antecedent to it). ..."
2019 February: Gharamophone
The story of a magnificent 1850s house dubbed the Blue Belle of Brooklyn
"It’s the blue belle of Brooklyn; a former country villa that stands
alone at 271 Ninth Street, between walkup flats and a featureless
one-story Post Office. Passing this dowager beauty, which has stood on the block between Fourth
and Fifth Avenues since the Antebellum era, is like being in a time
machine. Everything about it is a wonderful anachronism: the mansard
roof, the lacy ironwork over the bay windows, the front yard with
rosebushes and lavender. ..."
The “Caribbeanization” of Afrobeat in Colombia
"Bogotá Orquesta Afrobeat (La BOA), the first self-designated Afrobeat
band in Colombia was created in 2009, about 37 years after Fela’s Shakara
became a hit on the western coast of Colombia, and 12 years after
Fela’s death.. In this article, I trace Afrobeat’s memorable arrival in
Colombia, its impact on the cultural landscape, and the transformations
it is undergoing in a country where, since the Frente Amplio
(Large Front) won elections in June 2022, a complex process of
self-renewal and 'total peace' is underway to tackle the scourge of
para-military, state and drug trafficking violence, as well as the
impact of guerrilla warfare. ..."
YouTube: Fela Kuti And The Africa '70 - Shakara Oloje
A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge.
"While visiting Kyiv last week, my first
trip to Ukraine since Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022, I
tried to get my exercise every morning by walking the grounds of St.
Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery. Its serenity, though, has been
disrupted by a jarring exhibit of destroyed Russian tanks and armored
personnel carriers. During my walks, I’d poke my head into these jagged,
rocket-pierced hulks, wondering what terrible death must have come to
the Russian soldiers operating them. But
the shock of this tangled mass of rusting steel, sitting in the middle
of this grand, whitish-stone piazza, evoked a different image in my
mind’s eye: a meteor. ..."
NY Times: Opinion | Thomas L. Friedman
Destroyed Russian military equipment is exhibited in Kyiv at St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery.
Lonesome Sundown
"... And there were those exotic names again: Lightnin’ Slim, Slim Harpo,
Lonesome Sundown … Almost as if a semi-intoxicated copy writer had
looked at the Chess roster with its Sonny Boy’s, Muddy’s etc. and said I
can do better than that. Lonesome Sundown was allotted two tracks on Authentic R&B,
just down from the three each for Lightnin’ Slim and Slim Harpo, and
probably an indication of the compiler’s view of these artists’ relative
importance. ..."
Boston desegregation busing crisis
"The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students. The call for desegregation and the first years of its implementation led to a series of racial protests and riots that brought national attention, particularly from 1974 to 1976. In response to the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate, W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city. The hard control of the desegregation plan lasted for over a decade. ..."
NY Times: Two Documentaries on School Integration Offer New Views of an Old Problem
YouTube: The Busing Battleground | Full Documentary | AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | PBS
Accompanied by motorcycle-mounted police, school buses carrying African American students arrive at formerly all-white South Boston High School on September 12th, 1974.
Living in the Future, Lost in the Snow
"The annual Musicmakers Hacklab at CTM has traditionally brought people together from various places and backgrounds in hopes of catalysing interdisciplinary, hybrid reactions. So when a core component of the yearly project was removed – namely, the ability to travel to Berlin and share physical space – how could new modes of remote collaboration be developed?... "
YouTube: CTM 2021: »MusicMakers Hacklab Finale«
MusicMakers Hacklab finale is getting ready to start at silent green Betonhalle. Hacklab fellows are visible on the screen suspended above the stage
Six Photos from W. G. Sebald’s Albums
"... The pebbles, rocks, and boulders that can be found in the stream that
runs down into the Bay of Ficajola, Corsica, share a waypoint but not an
origin. Some have been dislodged from adjacent hills and mountains by
rain and conveyed downstream until friction and gravity curtail their
transport to the sea. Some preexist the flow of water, their geological
makeup stubbornly resisting any attempt to shift or dissolve them.
Others have been placed there deliberately, to serve as stepping stones
or to dam the stream and divert its course. They differ in age by
millennia. But there in the riverbed, the ragged edges of their cleaved
histories worn smooth by the agency of the current, the stones share a
resemblance. ..."
My Generation
"I recall having breakfast at a hotel in Brussels in 2017 and sitting across from Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture,
the 1991 book that gave my generation a sort of name that was really
only a placeholder for a name. I wanted to tell him how much I resented
him for this, but I couldn’t muster the courage to be disagreeable.
At the time it was my firm belief that
generations did not exist, that they were simply a retroactive
periodization that imposed narrative cohesion on history, one which had
really no more legitimacy than such contested categories as 'the Dark
Ages' or 'postmodernity.' ..."
10 Lost & Extant Storefronts of Mom-and-Pop Shops of NYC
"New York City photographers James and Karla Murray
have been using photography to preserve the disappearing mom-and-pop
shops of the city for decades. The husband and wife duo traverses all
five boroughs of New York searching for those hidden gems that might
vanish at any moment. In their new book, Store Front NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present,
they share images of long-disappeared icons and still-thriving favorite
haunts. Here, the Murrays give us a sneak peek inside the book by
sharing a few of their favorite lost and extant mom-and-pop shops
featured, along with a bit of history about each spot! ..."
Everybody Loves Red Hook. Or So They Say.
"One doesn’t accidentally end up in Red Hook. It’s not a neighborhood you pass through on your way somewhere else. Unless you take a wrong turn coming out of the tunnel from Manhattan, it’s not a place you are likely to stumble across. It’s a destination. A choice. Or sometimes a fate, depending on where in the neighborhood you call home.Despite its proximity to Manhattan, Red Hook — a Brooklyn enclave that juts into Upper New York Bay where it connects with the East River, right across the water from Wall Street — can feel like an industrial seaside town that time forgot. The weather is different. There is salt in the air. The storms are stronger, the rain heavier, the winter harsher. ..."
NY Times: Everybody Loves Red Hook. Or So They Say.
2016 May: GOWANUS! Brooklyn’s Troubled Waters , 2017 October: On the Hook, 2021 June: Gowanus Canal
Vacant Lot with Lady Liberty, 2004
The Otherworldly Music of Carl Stone
"For over 50 years, the composer and musician Carl Stone
has been focused on the art of sampling. He’s built one of the most
dynamic bodies of work in modern music, first with synthesizers and tape
manipulation, then with the compositional and live performance
possibilities of computer programming. His work has developed a
distinctive deconstructivist tact, going from the minimalism of his
early work through to his expanded play with melodic and pop structures
in recent albums. Influenced by many years spent living and teaching in
Japan and frequent trips across South Asia, picking up sounds along the
way. Throughout his career, Stone has been committed to collapsing
barriers between the avant-garde, folk, and pop to a remarkable degree. ..."
2010 August: Carl Stone, 2012 September: Carl Stone' DARDA performance Super Deluxe Tokyo, 2013 December: Tetsu Inoue and Carl Stone - pict.soul (2001), 2016 August: Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (2016), 2022 April: Mom's (1992)
Marcel Proust: Ghost Writer By Michael Wood
"The narrator in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time refers quite often to the text we are reading, naming 'the invisible vocation which is the subject of this book' and 'the rest of my story.' ... But who is talking to whom when we read these allusions to a novel in progress? As actual readers of Proust’s book, we have seen or read precisely these words and many others. But then is the fictional narrator speaking to us or to his fictional audience? Do we get a little dizzy thinking about his imagining as part of the past a beginning he hasn’t arrived at yet, or do we think Proust could just be making casual use of an old convention: the writer pretends she is telling a tale and readers pretend they are listening? The material acts of writing and reading are bracketed or forgotten. ..."
Office Board, by John F. Peto, 1885. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Story Behind The Song: how Patti Smith created the reggae-inspired 'Redondo Beach'
"In 1975, Patti Smith released one of punk rock’s most influential records: Horses. After
moving to New York City in 1967, Smith began writing and performing in
underground venues, such as CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. By 1974, she
had released her debut single, ‘Hey Joe/Piss Factory’, which was
followed by a two-month residency at CBGBs alongside Television,
performing live every weekend. Soon enough, Smith was ready to record her debut album,
with production carried out by The Velvet Underground’s very own John
Cale. The artist’s unique blend of spoken word poetry, raw
instrumentation, and a distinctively feminine perspective made Smith
stand out among her predominantly male contemporaries. ..."
FAROUT (Video), Redondo Beach - 1976 - Stockholm (LIVE)
Earthquake in Morocco
Here is the latest on the deadly earthquake. "Search
and rescue efforts were intensifying on Saturday night, nearly 24 hours
after a powerful and deadly earthquake surged across western Morocco,
as emergency teams raced to prevent more deaths in remote mountain
villages that are not easily accessible. The quake, which struck in the High Atlas Mountains
shortly after 11 p.m. on Friday, has killed more than 2,000 people and
raised the specter of a humanitarian disaster in a seismically
vulnerable area of Africa. ..."
NY Times - Scenes From Morocco: A Deadly Earthquake Strikes
Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion by Charlie Porter review – style revolution
"When Virginia Woolf invited TS Eliot
down for a country weekend in 1920 she concluded with 'Please bring no
clothes'. ... Eliot
was famously wedded to his three-piece suit to the point where, Woolf
joked, he would have worn a four-piece one if such a thing existed. What
she meant by 'bring no clothes' was that at Monk’s House
they did not dress for dinner, change for church (there was no church),
or worry about getting their best clothes grubby in the garden. This
was Bloomsbury, albeit a rural version, and the clothing conventions to
which the rest of upper-middle-class society had returned after the
first world war had no place there. ..."
Charlie Porter’s New Book ‘Bring No Clothes’ Is A Radical Account Of The Bloomsbury Group
Virginia Woolf with fellow Bloomsbury Group member Lytton Strachey, in a photograph by Lady Ottoline Morrell.
The Greatest Debut 45 Records In History
"The medium may change from analog to digital, but there’s always
something magical about a great single, a record that can change your
life in four minutes or less, and there’s a special knack to coming up
with a classic your first time out of the gate. Even the most brilliant
artists haven’t always managed that and there are a few world-class
bands who had an underwhelming single or two before their big
breakthrough. Still, there are quite a few artists who claimed their
territory with the first notes of their first single, and below are the
greatest debut 45 records. A few were great one-offs, but most were the
start of a long career. ..."
JR: ‘I realised I was giving people a voice’
"... JR still pastes things in the street; it’s just that the things have got
bigger. And the world has an expanded idea of what’s vandalism and
what’s art. JR’s canvases are now tower blocks, whole buildings, entire
streets. His scale is epic, monumental. He turned the separation wall
between Israel and Palestine into a giant gallery of faces
– Palestinians on the Israeli side, Israelis on the Palestinian side,
though no one could tell. He transformed a huge favela in Brazil into a vast artwork
in which he literally gave the town eyes, and he displayed a pregnant
refugee on the point of giving birth on half a mile of the Seine
embankment in the solidly bourgeois Ile Saint-Louis. ..."
Guardian - JR: ‘I realised I was giving people a voice' (Video)
Guardian - Can art change the world? The work of street artist JR – in pictures
JR in his Spring Street studio in New York: ‘he is pure energy’.
Black Star Line
"The Black Star Line (1919−1922) was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, the organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and other members of the UNIA. The shipping line was created to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy. It derived its name from the White Star Line, a line whose success Garvey felt he could duplicate. The Black Star Line became a key part of Garvey's contribution to the Back-to-Africa movement, but it was mostly unsuccessful, partially due to infiltration by federal agents. It was one among many businesses which the UNIA originated, such as the Universal Printing House, Negro Factories Corporation, and the widely distributed and highly successful Negro World weekly newspaper. ..."
Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line
YouTube: Culture - Two Sevens Clash - 07 - Black Starliner Must Come, Burning Spear - Marcus Senior (Disco Marcus Children 1978)
Ukrainians Embrace Cluster Munitions, but Are They Helping?
"The images of Russian troops retreating
from a village in Ukraine under fire leave little doubt of the impact of
cluster munitions. Soldiers running from a constellation of at least a dozen explosions around them. An armored vehicle speeding down a road before being hit in a cascade of simultaneous eruptions salting the surrounding ground. The August drone footage of the Russian withdrawal from the southeastern village of Urozhaine, verified by The New York Times, highlights the power of the weapons. ..."
Aljazeera: What are depleted uranium munitions and why is US sending them to Ukraine? (Video)
Vox: Are the US and Ukraine at odds over the counteroffensive?
Guardian - Depleted uranium munitions: what are they and what risks do they pose?
A Ukrainian soldier firing a 155 mm howitzer, the type of weapon used to launch cluster munitions, in the Donetsk region in March.
In This Essay I Will: On Distraction
"... In this moment of mild delusion, I’m
distracted. I’ve always wanted to write an essay about distraction, I
think. Add it to the laundry list of incomplete ideas I continue to
nurse because some part of me suspects they will never come to fruition,
and so will never have to be endured by readers. These are things you
can keep in the drawer of your mind, glittering with unrealized
potential. In the top row of my bedroom bookshelf is a copy of
Flaubert’s final novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet. Something about it seems appropriate, though I’m not sure exactly what. I pluck it down. ..."
2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education - 1(1869), 2017 August: The Sentimental Education (1869), 2018 May: In Which Our Tragic Effects Remain Purely Professional, 2019 March: The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (1911), 2021 November: Madame Bovary and the Impossibility of Re-reading - Anjali Joseph, 2021 December: In Which a Direct Line is Drawn From Flaubert’s Unfinished Novel, 2022 May: Three Tales (1877)
Celebrating Five Decades of LA’s Self Help Graphics & Art Center
"Founded 50 years ago in the East Los Angeles garage of Franciscan nun Sister Karen Boccalero, Self Help Graphics & Art (SHG) established itself in the ensuing decades as a vital and vibrant community-focused arts space and printmaking studio. Now, a series of exhibitions staged over the coming months will contextualize the organization’s history and legacy, delving deep into different aspects of its cultural and social resonance. The inaugural show Marking an Era: Celebrating Self Help Graphics & Art at 50 opened last month at the Laguna Art Museum, one of the first institutions to acquire a significant number of prints made by artists at SHG. ..."
Los de Abajo Collective (Kay Brown, Judith Duran, Poli Marichal, Victor Rosas, and Marianne Sadowski), “You don’t want to know” (2008), mounted prints
Submission – Official Map: Long Island Rail Road Screen Maps at Grand Central Madison
"... Oh, I do like this. Graphically strong with bright, poppy colours and
making good use of the unusual display format – eight vertical screens
next to each other. The map looks to have been specifically designed for
this format, as none of the labels cross over the breaks between panels
– nicely done! Here’s hoping it doesn’t get blanked out by
advertisements too much! It’s hard to see in this photo, but it looks like there’s a lovely
wavy texture to the water background, which is a nice design touch.
Addition of ferry routes and points of interest on Long Island are also
welcome. ..."
The best South African jazz of 2023 so far
"Early this May, the Johannesburg-based performance outfit The Brother
Moves On embarked on a tour to Cape Town where they played three shows
in three very different settings. The second of those dates fell on a
Saturday, May 6th, at an art studio bordering Woodstock and Salt River.
The daytime party that turned into a full-blown live music extravaganza
when darkness crept brought two schools of live music under a single
roof, with the exciting Kujenga bringing their musical juice to home
turf. The audience, comprising a fair balance of old and new fans, as
well as the truly curious appreciators of culture, packed the
warehouse-sized studio, a shared space housing acclaimed artists like
host Breeze Yoko. ..."
From Ashes to Hard Courts: Can Willets Point Be Saved?
"'About half-way between West Egg and New York
the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a
quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of
land,' wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. 'This is the valley of ashes.' In September 1999, in the exact place Fitzgerald describes, Serena
Williams won her initial U.S. Open Final, becoming the first Black
woman to win a Grand Slam tournament since Althea Gibson, in 1956. And
in 2012, it became the spot where, six decades after the team was
founded, Johan Santana would finally throw the first no-hitter in Mets
history. ..."
Come to Willets Point for whatever ails your auto.
Get Up, Stand Up: The 20 Best Reggae Singers Of All Time
"From versatile voices such as Bob Marley’s, to the soul- and gospel-tinged style of Toots Hibbert and the fully committed, utterly convincing messaging of Winston Rodney,
the best reggae singers of all time are a varied bunch proving that the
music has much more to offer than the obvious stereotypes. Whether they
fronted bands or made a name for themselves as a solo artist, here are
the 20 best reggae singers of all time. ..."
The Last Emperor - Bernardo Bertolucci (1987)
"Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE LAST EMPEROR won nine Academy Awards, unexpectedly sweeping every category in which it was nominated—quite a feat for a challenging, multilayered epic directed by an Italian and starring an international cast. Yet the power and scope of the film was, and remains, undeniable—the life of Emperor Pu Yi, who took the throne at age three, in 1908, before witnessing decades of cultural and political upheaval, within and without the walls of the Forbidden City. Recreating Ching dynasty China with astonishing detail and unparalleled craftsmanship by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, THE LAST EMPEROR is also an intimate character study of one man reconciling personal responsibility and political legacy."
Slant: Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor on the Criterion Collection
Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor”: Beneath the Gold Ornamentation
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The 100 Most Significant Political Films of All Time
"We wanted to do something special for this double July-August issue of The New Republic, but we weren’t sure what; then it hit us that summer is movie season, so why not combine that fact with this magazine’s great passion and come up with a list of history’s best political movies? (TNR, by the way, is no stranger to motion pictures. ..."
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