What Makes James Joyce’s Ulysses a Masterpiece: Great Books Explained

"Here on Open Culture, we’ve often featured the work of gallerist-Youtuber James Payne, creator of the channel Great Art Explained. Not long ago we wrote up his examination of the work of René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter responsible for such enduring images as Le fils de l’homme, or The Son of Man. Payne uses that famous image of a bowler-hatted everyman whose face is covered by a green apple again in the video above, but this time to represent a literary character: Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses. ..."

Open Culture (Video)

The Last Angel of History - John Akomfrah (1996)

"The Last Angel of History is a 45-minute documentary, directed in 1996 by John Akomfrah and written and researched by Edward George of the Black Audio Film Collective, that deals with concepts of Afrofuturism as a metaphor for the displacement of black culture and roots. The film is a hybrid documentary and fictional narrative. ... The structure of the film makes it a meta-narrative commenting on while also becoming part of the genre of Afrofuturism. The film uses concepts based on George Clinton's Mothership Connection and features interviews with Clinton, Derrick May, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Nichelle Nichols, Juan Atkins, DJ Spooky, Goldie, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Bernard Harris, Kodwo Eshun, Carl Craig, and A Guy Called Gerald to explore the link between black music as a way of exploring the future. The film makes mention of Sun Ra, whose work centres on the return of blacks to outer space in his own Mothership.

Wikipedia  

YouTube: The Last Angel of History 45:06

The Lasting Whole Earth Catalog

"When the Whole Earth Catalog arrived in the Fall of 01968, it came bearing a simple, epochal label: ‘Access to Tools.’ As its editor and Long Now Co-founder Stewart Brand wrote in the introduction to that first edition, the goal was for the Catalog to serve as an ‘evaluation and access device’ for tools that empowered its readers ‘to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.’ The key word in all of that idealistic declaration of purpose was ‘access.’ The Whole Earth Catalog did not intend to directly grant its readers this knowledge, wisdom, and mastery, but to provide a kaleidoscopic array of gateways from which they could attempt to find it themselves. ..."

The Long Now Foundation X: The Lasting Whole Earth Catalog 

The Long Now Foundation X: Ideas 

Whole Earth Index

The George Orwell guide to the perfect cup of tea

"British novelist George Orwell dedicated his writing to unravelling complex societal structures. Best known for penning Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, his opposition to totalitarianism and ardent support of socialism undercut his most major works. He tackled class inequality, bleak dystopian futures, and capitalism in his poetry, fiction, and journalism – but in 1946, he tackled his most divisive subject yet. How to make the perfect cup of tea. ..."

FAR OUT (Video)

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938), 2017 January: Guernica (2016), 2019 September: What Makes Guernica So Shocking? An Animated Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Monumental Anti-War Mural, 2021 November: Down and out in George Orwell’s Paris: A guide to the secret Paname

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values

"Israel stands on the verge of invading Gaza in response to the terrorist attacks by Hamas that many, including Israel’s leaders, have compared to Sept. 11 not just because of the scale and savagery but also because the terrorists sought to destroy the tranquillity of daily life. They killed the very young and the very old, the strong and the weak, civilians and soldiers; they took some 150 hostages, including children, and survivors said the attackers raped women — all to send a message that no Israeli was safe. Israel has a responsibility to its citizens to hold accountable the perpetrators of this violence, but as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week, 'How Israel does this matters.' ..."

NY Times: Opinion | Editorial Board

The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

"... The guitar is the most universal instrument, the most primal, and the most expressive. Anybody can pick up a little guitar in no time at all, but you can spend a lifetime exploring its possibilities. That’s why thinking about what makes a great guitarist is so much fun. Rolling Stone published its original list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists in 2011. It was compiled by a panel of musicians, mostly older classic rockers. Our new expanded list was made by the editors and writers of Rolling Stone. This one goes to 250. ..."

Rolling Stone

89 | Lou Reed

A Left That Refuses to Condemn Mass Murder Is Doomed

"This weekend in Israel, a far-right Islamist group perpetrated the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, murdering entire families, including babies, in their beds and slaughtering 260 concertgoers. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in all, and over 100 others taken hostage. Israel’s far-right government predictably responded by choking off all food, electricity, and fuel to Gaza’s 2 million residents and then preparing a military assault more untempered by concern for civilian casualties than ever before. ..."

Intelligencer_  

NY Times: The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military (Video)  

Free Palestine

Damaged vehicles in the camp of the Israeli music festival that was overrun by Hamas terrorists.

 

Maps of the 2023 ‘Ring of Fire’ Solar Eclipse

"The darkest part of the moon’s shadow will slide from Oregon to Texas on Saturday morning, then cross the Gulf of Mexico into Central America. Viewers inside this dark band — the path of annularity — will see a ring of light around the moon for up to 5 minutes. Viewers outside the path of annularity will see the crescent sun of a partial solar eclipse. The map below shows the path of the eclipse, and the approximate local time when the ring of fire will be visible. ..."

NY Times

Interviews - Henry Taylor: B Side

"Henry Taylor is one of those artists who just does it—puts shit together, paints what he feels like painting. He works, as they say, intuitively. But that’s not to dismiss the thoughtful way he’s arranged his subjects: urban life, Black life, the artist’s life. Whether working on tree-like assemblages, installations that bring the city’s grit into the gallery, or (his calling) figurative painting, Taylor approaches the world and the people in it not as an aloof observer or “student of man,” but as someone full of empathy, someone who lives here too. ..."

ARTFORUM: Interviews  

artbook: Henry Taylor: B Side

Untitled, 2023,, acrylic on wood panel, 36 × 48"

Devo’s Future Came True

"Devo isn’t overjoyed about being prescient. The band got started half a century ago as a satirical art statement. But by now, much of what Devo mocked has become inescapable. Gerald Casale, who founded Devo with Mark Mothersbaugh, said, 'If somebody would have told you 50 years ago where we would be at as a culture now, you probably wouldn’t have believed it. Neither would I. But here we are.' Devo’s lone hit, 'Whip It' in 1980, only reached No. 14 in the United States. But the influence of Devo’s buzzy, blippy synthesizer tones, its robotic moves and its re-contextualized retro graphics has grown ubiquitous, from commercials to cartoons and perhaps even into K-pop, where synthesizers, uniforms and tightly synced dance routines reign. ..."

NY Times (Video)

They are not men, they are Devo: From left, Bob Casale, Gerald Casale, Bob Mothersbaugh and Mark Mothersbaugh performing in the late ’70s.

Orioles’ season was special, which is why the last four days were so painful

"The best teams to be around are the ones who catch you by surprise, the groups who captivate a city and worm their way into even the most irresolute fan’s heart.It’s June and you’re just glad they’re still fun to watch. It’s July and you’re braving the humidity just to get a closer look at the Homer Hose and the Splash Zone, as the stadium is buzzing again.  ... The 2023 Orioles brought baseball back to Baltimore, where local businesses hung Orioles signs in their windows and fans yelled until the stadium vibrated and the players — many in their first year — looked at each other wide-eyed and thought, is this what the big leagues is always like? This group was special. It’s what made this season so great. It’s what made the last four days so painful. ..."

The Athletic

Hamas Leaves Trail of Terror in Israel

"They were killed waiting for the bus, dancing at a festival, doing morning chores and hiding as best they could. Searching bullet-riddled houses, streets and lawns, Israeli soldiers are still finding them. The soldiers, retaking control of the kibbutzim, towns and settlements near the Gaza Strip that came under attack by Palestinian terrorists over the weekend, have recovered body after body after body. Hamas gunmen, hitting more than 20 sites in southern Israel, killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children, and abducted an estimated 150 more people. ..."

NY Times (Video)  

YouTube: The Israel-Hamas War — and What It Means for the World | TED  47:57

 

1970 Jazz: Free, Avant-Garde and Experimental

"In previous articles about jazz music recorded in 1970, we featured albums on major jazz labels including Atlantic, Impulse! and Blue Note, with some of the releases showcasing free and experimental jazz by artists such as Chick Corea’s Circle Quartet, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. In this article we will review other recordings of the esoteric sides of jazz, all recorded in 1970 and released on various labels. We open with a free jazz royalty. In April 1968, as a shareholder in a co-op that purchased an old seven-story factory at 131 Prince Street in Soho, just south of Greenwich Village in New York, Ornette Coleman became the owner of the street-level and third floors in the building. ..."

The Music Aficionado (Video)

Ed Blackwell, Dewey Redman, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden at 131 Prince Street, May 1971. 

In New York City’s Coolest Clubs, Remixing Cumbia for the Hipster Set

"It was 1 a.m., and Thursday night had become Friday morning when Anthony Dominguez, known around the New York City D.J. scene as hellotones, took the stage at the Market Hotel, a club in a 19th-century building whose windows look directly on the elevated J and M trains passing through Bushwick, Brooklyn. The theme of the evening was 'experimental Latin sounds,' and arriving at his console, Mr. Dominguez unleashed a thunderous bass. Then came the beat, from a metal comb scraping a ridged, hollow tube, known as the guacharaca: chik-chika-chik-chika-chik, repeating over and over. ..."

NY Times (Video)

Soundcloud: DjExtreme Cumbia 2023 Mix (Audio)

The Fantastic Women Of Surrealism: An Introduction

"When André Breton, a leader of the Surrealist movement and author of its first manifesto, wrote that 'the problem of woman is the most marvelous and disturbing problem in all the world,' he was not alluding to the unfair lack of recognition experienced by his female peers. Marquee name Surrealists like Breton, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, René Magritte, and Max Ernst positioned the women in their circle as muses and symbols of erotic femininity, rather than artists in their own right. ..."

Open Culture (Video)

Israel-Hamas war: what has happened and what has caused the conflict?

"What happened on the border between Israel and Gaza on Saturday? Shocked Israelis woke on the last day of the Jewish high holidays to the wail of sirens as Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired thousands of rockets from Gaza and armed militants broke down the hi-tech barriers surrounding the strip to enter Israel, shooting and taking hostages. Militants in boats also tried to enter Israel by sea. It was a staggering and unprecedented offensive by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and a catastrophic intelligence failure by Israel – and both will have long-lasting repercussions and consequences. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Israel was at war and that Palestinians would pay a heavy price. ..."

Guardian (Video)  

NY Times - Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza

Offensive launched from Gaza represents large failure of Israeli intelligence and is likely to have long-lasting repercussions.

Remanence ~ Sepiadrone (2023)

"... It feels like a small miracle that this album has even seen the light of day. Like a collection of old photos, most of this material languished in boxes for years while partner John Phipps gradually moved west to Portland and I moved southwest to Santa Fe. We tried picking up the pieces numerous times but lost momentum as soon as a recording session came to an end or we said goodbye over the phone. Ultimately, the distance proved too great and Remanence slowly drifted apart, leaving 'Sepiadrone' in limbo. ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)  

YouTube: Sepiadrone 1 / 11

What the 1910s stained glass windows say about a 19th century Brooklyn tavern

"With its tin ceiling, mosaic tile floor, and handsome mahogany bar, Teddy’s Bar and Grill is like stepping into a late 19th century time machine. This corner tavern on Berry and North Eighth Streets in Williamsburg opened in 1887 as a family-run Irish tavern, according to Teddy’s website. At the time, Brooklyn was a separate city and Williamsburg was a working-class district of Irish and German immigrants, many of whom worked along the waterfront a few blocks away in sugar refineries and other industrial plants. ..."

Ephemeral New York

Israel’s Worst Day at War

"When I need the most accurate analysis about Israel, the first call I always make is to my longtime friend and reporting partner there, Nahum Barnea, a veteran Yediot newspaper columnist. When I called him on Saturday afternoon for his read on the Hamas attack on Israel, I was stunned by his first response: 'This is the worst day that I can remember in military terms in the history of Israel, including the blunder of the Yom Kippur war, which was terrible.' Nahum is a careful reporter who has covered every major event in Israel for the past half century, and when he explained his rationale, I realized it was an understatement. ..."

NY Times: Opinion | Thomas L. Friedman

Maxim Barkalifa stood on the roof of his neighbor’s house and surveys the damage to another neighbor’s house that was struck by a rocket fired from Gaza in Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday. 

The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions - Howlin' Wolf (1971)

"The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions is an album by blues musician Howlin' Wolf released in 1971 on Chess Records, and on Rolling Stones Records in Britain. It was one of the first super session blues albums, setting a blues master among famous musicians from the second generation of rock and roll, in this case Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman. It peaked at #79 on the Billboard 200. ... Clapton secured the participation of the Rolling Stones rhythm section (pianist Ian Stewart, bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts), while Dayron assembled further musicians, including 19-year-old harmonica prodigy Jeffrey Carp, who died in 1973 at age 24. ..."

Wikipedia  

What happened when Howlin' Wolf hooked up with rock royalty to make an album (Video)  

YouTube: The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions 1 / 13

 

The Neil Young song that attacks Starbucks

"Neil Young has consistently voiced his concerns throughout his career. While his constant desire to stand up for what’s right has earned him several enemies over the years, nobody can question Young’s authenticity, and his unwillingness to stay quiet deserves to be respected. It’s a character trait that continues to follow him today, with businesses from Spotify to Starbucks among those in the firing line. ... Young was eventually the victor as the GMA were unsuccessful in their attempt to overturn Vermont’s decision to enforce labelling on genetically modified produce. However, it’s improbable he’s returned to Starbucks to get his daily coffee fix. ..."

FAR OUT (Video)  

Neil Young's New Music Video Mocks Starbucks, Monsanto, and GMOs (Video)  

Neil Young’s new anti-GMO song confuses science on Starbucks, Monsanto

Cooking with Madame d’Aulnoy By Valerie Stivers

"The fairy tales of Mary-Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, Baronesse d’Aulnoy—first published in French in the 1690s—are full of jewel-like foods, poisoned drinks, and violent feats of baking. The cooking is extreme. In one story, 'Finette-Cendron,' a Cinderella figure, pleases her fairy godmother by baking her a cake with 'two pounds of butter'; later, she serves her a feast made from two chickens, a cock, and 'two little rabbits that were being fed up with cabbage.'... Lest anyone find d’Aulnoy’s repasts and their power unrealistic, the opposite is true, as I discovered while attempting to re-create the food with my friend Celia Bell, whose novel, The Disenchantment, published this May, was inspired by d’Aulnoy’s life and work. ..."

The Paris Review  

The Paris Review - Author Archives: Valerie Stivers

Music That Listens to Itself (Playlist)

"I just got back home from the 'Music That Listens to Itself' event that I hosted in Berkeley at the Alembic. Here, quickly, is the evening’s 80-minute playlist (I trimmed one track to get the full set to fit). The first six tracks came from the recent Disquiet Junto project (0611) that engaged with the theme of the evening. More details soon. I had a blast. Major thanks to Erik Davis, Samuel Plattner, and everyone who came. Each of the Junto tracks in the list links to its SoundCloud page, and each of the other six links to the album, on Bandcamp, where it originated. ..."

disquiet (Video/Audio)

Carl Jung on the Power of Tarot Cards: They Provide Doorways to the Unconscious & Perhaps a Way to Predict the Future

"... The eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung, however, might have done so. As Mary K. Greer explains, in a 1933 lecture Jung went on at length about his views on the Tarot, noting the late Medieval cards are 'really the origin of our pack of cards, in which the red and the black symbolize the opposites, and the division of the four—clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts—also belongs to the individual symbolism. They are psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents.' ..."

Open Culture  

Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog: Carl Jung and Tarot (Video)  

Tarot: A Gateway to the Unconscious

Let's Ride: Art history after Black studies

"BLACK STUDIES—as modeled by the transdisciplinary work of contemporary thinkers such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Saidiya Hartman, Kara Keeling, Katherine McKittrick, Christina Sharpe, Fred Moten, and Frank B. Wilderson III—has grown increasingly central to critical thought in the art world and the academy, with especially urgent implications for art-historical praxis: How do the discipline’s notions of objecthood and objectivity shift in light of transatlantic slavery’s production of persons as property? How must art-historical methods, given their origins in racist, sexist, and colonialist epistemologies, be retooled to engage with complexities of Black life and expression that are designed to evade capture?..."

ARTFORUM

Living Dub Volume One & Two - Burning Spear

"Like many records from the first murky decade of reggae's mature period, this one has a complicated history. It is the dubwise companion to Burning Spear's classic album of 1978, Social Living. However, Social Living was also released under the title Marcus Children. Living Dub, Vol. 1, which consisted of dub mixes by Sylvan Morris, was originally released as a vinyl record shortly after the album on which it is based, but the CD reissue released under that title in 1993 actually consists of a completely different set of dub mixes by Barry O'Hare; the original mixes were released on CD ten years later, on the revived Burning Spear label, as Original Living Dub, Vol. 1. ..."

allmusic: Vol. 1 (Audio), allmusic: Vol. 2 (Audio)  

W - Living Dub Vol. 1, W - Living Dub Vol. 2  

YouTube: Living dub vol 1 38:50, Living dub vol 2 39:49

Glasgow to the rescue! Blast of realism gives the new Scottish galleries punch

"One thing rapidly becomes clear in these lavish new purpose-built galleries of Scottish art: Scotland likes itself. Or at least, Scottish curators are far fonder of their country than their opposite numbers at Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery are of the UK as a whole. Whereas these London museums have recently opened rehangs that call out past injustices and national guilt, Edinburgh’s new look at Scotland’s artistic story is a celebration. It’s also ravishing. ..."

Guardian

Passion for place … detail from Wandering Shadows, 1878, Peter Graham.

Sun Ra Sundays

"Linked below (as pdf) are two compilations—one by me, one by Sam Byrd—of blog posts about SUN RA recordings authored by RODGER G. COLEMAN from 2008 to 2015. These were originally posted each Sunday at nuvoid.blogspot.com. Coleman's blog contains hundreds of posts on a myriad of music subjects; we've harvested the Ra content. To preserve and circulate this 'Saturn research,' I compiled a chronological text-only edition in late 2018, whereas Sam sequenced Rodger's posts in discographical order with blog graphics...."

SUN RA SUNDAYS by Rodger G. Coleman  

amazon

Highlights From A Colorful “Asalto”: Zaragoza's Premier Street Art Festival Flourishes.

"Zaragoza’s Asalto Festival, in its recent edition, once again demonstrates a magnetic pull in the world of street art, attracting both local talent and international artists. Nestled in La Jota, one of Zaragoza’s most historic neighborhoods, the festival radiated creativity on the streets from September 15 to 24. Not only did it reclaim its mural game, but it also embraced a spectrum of activities reminiscent of its pre-pandemic grandeur. ..."

Brooklyn Street Art

Taroe. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain.

The literary World Cup: readers’ best all-time teams

"July 2014: “Back when the World Cup was in those exciting and unpredictable first rounds, we were playing away at Penguin’s imaginary books World Cup, where an England with JK Rowling, George Orwell and Agatha Christie in attack and the likes of Shakespeare and Dickens in the midfield could possibly – possibly – have had a chance to win something. The UK imprint imagined matches and footballing incidents on Twitter, and we joined in the fun, asking for your all-time favourite literary teams. Now that the actual competition is coming to an end, here are our top five writers’ XIs. ..."

Guardian

Yukes – White Ghost beyond the Great Firewall

"1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?  If I’m being honest, the 'feather touch technology' buttons on my Yamaha MT44 4-track cassette machine are just… something else entirely. Back in the 80’s when buttons n’ switches were more mechanical and clicky, a lot of different 'options' were lost to the more common ones. What we have here is a thin ribbon beneath a plastic cover with no click. Sounds bad right? But when you press the button, it causes whatever mechanical function you triggered in the machine to violently come to life somewhere deep within the machine, causing an almost distant haptic shake, despite the button feeling almost unresponsive. ..."

martinyammoller

Yamaha MT44 cassette tape recorder

Face the Music: Nigerian 1970s album covers reflected individual and national identities.

"On the cover of Geraldo Pino and the Heartbeats’ 1972 debut album, Afro Soco Soul Live, is a man breaking his chains. In the background are drums and people dancing. ... Two years later, the cover of their next album, Let’s Have a Party, was a portrait of a woman sitting in an evening gown, wine glass in hand, afro blown out, chin up, gaze transfixed. Placed on a red background, the portrait is edited with an embossed filter such that the woman looks like a silver relief sculpture. ... Global oil price shocks of 1973–1974 resulted in the most monumental transfer of wealth Nigeria has seen to date. Nigeria too was on the clouds—of an oil boom. ..."

Wax Poetics

Waiting for the Nighthawks – Edward Hopper and the Denizens of New York

"Edward Hopper was a visual alchemist. Scenes of life’s mundanities — offices, street corners, apartment blocks, rooftops — entered his eyes, traversed his meticulous brain, quested through spine and viscera, and flowed into fingers wielding brushes to materialize on canvas as mesmerizing dramas of light, volume, and psychology. Even when his workaday spaces are unoccupied, they thrum with mysterious narratives. ..."

Voice

Automat, 1927

 

Judge Rules Trump Committed Fraud, Stripping Control of Key Properties

"A New York judge ruled on Tuesday that Donald J. Trump persistently committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets, and stripped the former president of control over some of his signature New York properties. The surprising decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron is a major victory for Attorney General Letitia James in her lawsuit against Mr. Trump, effectively deciding that no trial was needed to determine that he had fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals. Ms. James has argued that Mr. Trump inflated the value of his properties by as much as $2.2 billion and is seeking a penalty of about $250 million in a trial scheduled to begin as early as Monday. ..."

NY Times  

***NY Times: Trump’s Lawyers Try to Grasp the Implications of Judge’s Fraud Ruling  

NY Times: Ruling Against Trump Cuts to the Heart of His Identity  

NY Times: Read the Judge’s Ruling in the Trump Fraud Case

My Strawberry Plants: On Marcottage

"Recently, I read Virginia Woolf’s first published novel, The Voyage Out, for the first time. There, I made a discovery: it features a character named Clarissa Dalloway. This encounter initially provoked delight, surprise combined with double take, like bumping into someone I thought I knew well in a setting I never expected to find them, causing a brief mutual repositioning, physically, imaginatively. ... Then I remembered why I’d had that 'caught out,' 'I should have known this' feeling: this same technique of novel-growth was also of great interest to Roland Barthes. In his lecture courses at the Collège de France in the late seventies, he named it marcottage. It’s a horticultural term...."

The Paris Review  

W - Strawberry

Alphonse du Breuil, Marcottage en serpenteaux, 1846.