How did noise music appear in Russia?


"In the 1920s, industrial music was performed for the first time in the USSR – on carpenter's instruments and locomotive horns. However, the beginnings of ‘noise music’ in Russia were discovered by a German scientist as early as in 18th century! ...  The first Russian musical work with a full noise scene (and not individual notes, as in the case of Tchaikovsky's cannons) was created by the avant-garde composer Mikhail Matyushin. In the futuristic opera 'Victory over the Sun' (1913), which Matyushin created together with the poet Alexei Kruchenykh and the artist Kazimir Malevich, there was a scene with a parade over which airplanes flew. ... In Soviet Russia, ‘noise music’ experienced rapid development – in all spheres of art there was an era of the avant-garde. Revolutionary, stereotype-breaking ideas elicited much interest from the general public. ... And although noise and industrial music in Russia will begin to develop again only in the 1980s, its foundations were laid in the 1910s-1920s, much earlier than such stars of specific music as Pierre Schaeffer or John Cage began their work. ..."


Arseniy Avraamov, first Russian noise music composer
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Ghost addresses of 19th century Williamsburg found on tenement walls


"Walk through any New York City neighborhood that still has tenements anchoring street corners, and you’ll probably see them: the names of the tenement’s cross streets carved into a terra cotta band on the building’s exterior. Not every tenement had them back around the turn of the 20th century, when builders lined the urbanscape with thousands of these squat flats buildings across the city. Time and the elements have worn away many others. But it’s always a treat to spot these subtle relics of a pre-GPS era when not all city streets—especially tenement blocks, populated by poor and working-class families—had official street signs. Seeing the street names etched into a corner building helped newcomers navigate confusing street grids. On blocks darkened by elevated trains, they also made it easier for riders to track where they were. The street names typically aligned with the second or third floor, roughly at eye level with the train. ..."


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Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Punk


"'If it doesn’t work in New York, we’re in big f**king trouble,' New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain says in the fascinating BBC 4 documentary Once Upon a Time in New York, about the creativity generated in a mid-1970s Lower Manhattan realm that Lenny Kaye calls 'far from the glitz of Times Square.' The doc dives into the cultural stew that across five shocking years became the birthplace of punk, disco and rap. It’s worth an hour of your time. 'With California taking center stage, New York felt like an abandoned city,' the detached narrator says of the period, when the city was on the verge of bankruptcy, entire blocks were dense with boarded buildings and much of lower New York was an open-air heroin bazaar. Chris Stein of Blondie recalls being able to buy cocaine in 'at least ten different little stores' near his flat. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale says that so much space was empty in the area that City Hall offered dirt cheap housing to anyone who presented a painting and declared themselves a working artist. ..."


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Trump-Carroll Defamation Trial: Jury Orders Trump to Pay Carroll $83.3 Million for Years of Defamation

E. Jean Carroll, arriving at the courthouse on Friday, had testified that Donald J. Trump’s repeated taunts and lashing out had mobilized many of his supporters, leading to an onslaught of attacks.

"A Manhattan jury on Friday ordered former President Donald J. Trump to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in social media posts, news conferences and even on the campaign trail ever since she first accused him in 2019 of raping her in a department store dressing room decades earlier. The award included $65 million in punitive damages, which the nine-member jury assessed after finding Mr. Trump, 77, had acted maliciously after Ms. Carroll’s lawyers pointed to Mr. Trump’s persisting attacks on her, both from the White House and after leaving office. On a single day recently, Mr. Trump made more than 40 derisive posts about her on his Truth Social website. Ms. Carroll, 80, testified that his repeated taunts and lashing out had mobilized many of his supporters, leading to an onslaught of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that frightened her and 'shattered' her reputation as a well-regarded advice columnist for Elle magazine. ..."




In an artist’s sketch, former President Trump walks out of court during closing arguments Friday in New York.
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Coltrane '58: Prestige Recordings

"John Coltrane recorded the music for a staggering eight albums in just one year–1958. They were released over the course of the next eight years by Prestige Records, a New York label founded by Bob Weinstock in 1949. In tribute to and celebration of the 60th anniversary of these recordings in 2018 as well as the 70th anniversary of Prestige Records in 2019, these 1958 Coltrane classics have just been reissued by Craft Recordings in beautiful 8-LP/5-CD custom box sets. Coltrane’s artistry was just beginning to flower in 1958. In his early 30’s and clean off dope, Coltrane was honing his already prodigious skills and focusing on his sound and improvisation like never before. Thelonious Monk, with whom Coltrane studied and performed just the year before, also exerted a big influence on the saxophonist’s growing conception of musical possibilities. ..."

KCRW (Audio)

Bandcamp: A Guide to the Early Music of John Coltrane on Prestige Records (Audio)

Bandcamp - Coltrane '58: The Prestige Recordings (Audio)

amazon

YouTube: Coltrane '58: The Prestige Recordings  40 videos

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DJ Boboss and the mad mix of DIY electronics


"'This is the spoon for eating music!' DJ Boboss exclaims as he motions to a mangled tablespoon connected to a slim magnetized wire protruding from a wooden box that functions as his make-shift DJ decks. Also attached to the box are a pair of metallic knobs taken from a towel rack, the nozzle of a kettle, the tiny mixing unit of a battery, several bottle caps, and miscellaneous colorful wires. This particular set of decks is painted red, green, and yellow and covered in scratch marks, dents, and wax drippings, a testament to years of persevering trial and error. The self-taught DJ, producer, artist, and electrician has been feeding on music since class 3, when his dad bought him a 'small one-battery radio,' and he was fascinated by the voices that emanated from the mysterious box. ..."




 
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Oppenheimer - Christopher Nolan (2023).


"Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic biographical thriller film written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project—the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles the career of Oppenheimer, with the story predominantly focusing on his studies, his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II, and his eventual fall from grace due to his 1954 security hearing. The film also stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife 'Kitty', Matt Damon as head of the Manhattan Project Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as United States Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss, and Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer's communist lover Jean Tatlock. The ensemble supporting cast includes Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh. ..."






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Why We Should All Read Hannah Arendt Now - Lyndsey Stonebridge


"It’s like a novel, Mary McCarthy observed of the completed edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt and McCarthy had clashed in 1945 when they first met at a New York party hosted by Partisan Review’s Philip Rahv, McCarthy’s ex-lover. Another fierce wit who rarely suffered fools gladly, McCarthy, when they were introduced, made a sarcastic quip about Hitler’s unpopularity in Paris. Arendt, exhausted from work and war and grieving her dead, exploded with uncharacteristic and dramatic self-importance: How can you say such a thing in front of me—a victim of Hitler, a person who has been in a concentration camp! They met again a few years later, realized that they actually rather liked one another, exchanged apologies, and then, soon after, the first of many books. McCarthy sent Arendt her crisp, slim, satirical roman-à-clef on self-important American intellectuals, The Oasis (1949). Arendt upped the stakes of their early friendship considerably by reciprocating with the neither crisp nor slim The Origins of Totalitarianism. ..."




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Dissent


"Dissent is an American Left intellectual magazine edited by Natasha Lewis and Timothy Shenk and founded in 1954. The magazine is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas. Former co-editors include Irving Howe, Mitchell Cohen, Michael Walzer, and David Marcus. The magazine was established in 1954 by a group of New York Intellectuals, which included Lewis A. Coser, Rose Laub Coser, Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, Henry Pachter, and Meyer Schapiro. Its co-founder and publisher for its first 15 years was University Place Book Shop owner Walter Goldwater. From its inception, Dissent's politics deviated from the standard ideological positions of the left and right. Like politics, the New Left Review and the French socialist magazine Socialisme ou Barbarie, Dissent sought to formulate a third position between the liberalism of the West and the communism of the East. Troubled by the rampant bureaucratization of both capitalist and communist society, Dissent was home to writers like C. Wright Mills and Paul Goodman who identified themselves as radical democrats as well as to editors who like Irving Howe and Michael Harrington more closely identified with democratic socialism. ..."



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Quantum Computer Music. What the heck?

Eduardo Reck Miranda
Eduardo Reck Miranda

"A technological leap that will make current computation and AI systems look obsolete? Tapping into the properties and laws of quantum mechanics, the nascent field of quantum computing promises just that. Eduardo Reck Miranda, composer and pioneer in the field of AI and music, gives a brief overview of the history of computing and sound that lead to this new leap, and adds examples of his own music practice with quantum computing. ..."

Premiere of »Spinning« at Goethe-Institute in London, December 2022.

"... »Zeno« is a milestone for me. What I have achieved with a rudimentary quantum computer sporting only a few qubits would require rather sophisticated AI programming running on a state-of-the-art desktop digital machine. This reinforced my hunch that music technology is on the verge of a significant leap. The thought of what these new machines might afford to musicians in 20 or even 10 years is mind-boggling. But what is quantum computing? How can a quantum algorithm represent musical rules? How can the results of processing a quantum algorithm make music? ..."

The Bloch sphere, a geometric representation of a two-level quantum system. 

"... For more details about QuPoly, the paper »Teaching Qubits to Sing: Mission Impossible?« introduces an earlier incarnation referred to as QuSing. The underlying mechanisms are identical. The two above examples are only a glimpse of how quantum computing can be harnessed for music. There is a growing community of enthusiasts embracing this technology. They are developing innovative approaches to music making. Several of these were presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Quantum Computing for Musical Creativity, which took place in Berlin in October 2023. If you are interested in a more in-depth introduction to the emerging field of Quantum Computer Music, I recommend the book, Quantum Computer Music: Foundations, Methods and Advanced Concepts, published by Springer in 2022. ..."
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Unknown Pleasures: Great, Under-The-Radar Music Books


"Dubiously attributed to sources ranging from Machiavelli to Winston Churchill, the phrase 'history is written by the victors' is generally used in relation to military offensives, but it could just as easily relate to successful literary campaigns. While many books richly deserve the adulation they attract, shelves full of underappreciated publications gather dust before they’ve even had the chance to register in the wider public consciousness. So, while we’ve recently revisited a number of the most enduring biographies written in the name of a myriad of musical genres at uDiscover Music, we’re also keen to reappraise some of the most criminally unsung, yet riveting reads known to rock, in our list of the best music books you’ve never read. ..."


"... Also an iconic figure during the 60s, fashion model and Andy Warhol superstar Nico appeared on the massively influential The Velvet Underground & Nico LP, but Songs They Never Play On The Radio (written by her latter-day pianist James Young) focuses on her final years existing in semi-obscurity in 80s Manchester. Some of the drug-related minutiae is not for the faint-hearted, but the author’s affection for his subject always shines through. ..."


"... Trends such as grunge and Britpop may have held sway during the 90s, but one of the decade’s lesser-publicized but vital scenes is explored in Brooklyn-based writer and musician Trends such as grunge and Britpop may have held sway during the 90s, but one of the decade’s lesser-publicized but vital scenes is explored in Brooklyn-based writer and musician Sara Marcus’ Girls To The Front: a passionate insider’s account of the uncompromising feminist-inspired Riot Grrl movement which nurtured the artistic breakthroughs of bands such as Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and the all-too short-lived Huggy Bear.: a passionate insider’s account of the uncompromising feminist-inspired Riot Grrl movement which nurtured the artistic breakthroughs of bands such as Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and the all-too short-lived Huggy Bear. ..."

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House of Games - David Mamet (1987)


"House of Games is a 1987 American neo-noir heist thriller film directed by David Mamet, his directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, and J. T. Walsh. Psychiatrist Margaret Ford has achieved success with her recently published book about obsessive-compulsive disorder, but feels unfulfilled. Her patient, Billy Hahn, says his life is in danger because he owes money to a criminal figure named Mike Mancuso. He threatens suicide, brandishing a gun. Margaret persuades him to surrender the weapon to her and promises to help him. That night, Margaret visits a pool hall called House of Games where she confronts Mike. He is willing to forgive Billy's debt if Margaret accompanies him to a back-room poker game and watch for the tell of George, another player: he plays with his ring when he bluffs. She agrees, and notices George playing with his ring after making a big bet. She discloses this to Mike, who calls the bet. However, George wins and demands that Mike pay the $6,000 bet, which he is unable to do. George pulls a gun, but Margaret intervenes and offers to pay the debt with a personal check. She then notices the gun is a water pistol, and realizes the entire game is a set-up for her money. She declines to pay, but spends the rest of the night socializing with the con men. The experience excites her and she returns the next night. She asks Mike to teach her about con games so she can write a book about it. Mike appears skeptical, but agrees. Margaret is enchanted by Mike showing her simple con tricks.  ..."






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Can You Crack the Uncrackable Code in Kryptos, the CIA’s Work of Public Art?


"It can be challenging to parse the meaning of many non-narrative artworks. Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview. Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created? Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point? Are multiple interpretations possible? Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation. But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what… He wants someone else to identify it. Kryptos’ main mystery — more like 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma' to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws. Professional cryptanalysts, hobbyists, and students have been attempting to crack the code of its 865 letters and 4 question marks since 1990, when it was installed on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. ..."

The hands-on part fell well within Sanborn’s purview. But a Masters in sculpture from Pratt Institute does not automatically confer cryptography bonafides, so Sanborn enlisted Edward Scheidt, the retired chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center, for a crash course in late 20th-century coding systems.

Sanborn sampled various coding methods for the finished piece, wanting the act of deciphering to feel like “peeling layers off an onion.”

That onion has been partially peeled for years.

Deciphering three of its four panels is a pelt shared by computer scientist and former president of the American Cryptogram Association, James Gillogly, and CIA analyst David Stein.

Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created?

Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point?

Are multiple interpretations possible?

Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation.

But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what…

He wants someone else to identify it.

Kryptos’ main mystery — more like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws.

Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview.

Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created?

Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point?

Are multiple interpretations possible?

Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation.

But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what…

He wants someone else to identify it.

Kryptos’ main mystery — more like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws.




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The Music of the Pelican State Rises Up From Somewhere Deep

A map to deep musical realms, with crawfish on the side. Rafael Alvarez

"A week and a half before Mardi Gras — early February, in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans — a crowd gathered in the sanctuary of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church, on Esplanade. Though the season of Lent and repentance was just around the bend, they hadn’t come to pray or confess. About a hundred folks had paid the piper to dance to klezmer tunes as old as Hasidic weddings and jazz as local as a wiener sold from a cart shaped like a hot dog on Bourbon Street. ... This was not for tourists, not some clichéd derivative of Bourbon Street Dixieland. It had enough soul to satisfy both musician and audience. An older woman in a pew near the back, sounding as though she had discovered a fat and spicy shrimp in an otherwise inferior gumbo, yelled, 'REAL MUSICIANS!' Indeed, present were banjo, drums, sax, trombone, tuba, and accordion, in addition to Schenck’s rollicking licorice stick. It was seven bucks to get in and seven bucks for a bowl of pasta with crawfish and shrimp. Volunteers sold beer and hard liquor, with plenty of cold water to cool the faithful down. ..."


Dance your way out of the pews. 

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Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession


"As the train hurtles along, the art critic sniffs scornfully at the idea that tarot cards can tell your future. But he lets Dr Terror lay out his pack anyway, as does everyone else in the compartment. And, one by one, they are all dealt the same final card. It is Death. This chilling scene, from the 1965 film Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, is fairly standard tarot fare. Many people use the cards to tell the future, or to meditate and find mindfulness. In any occult shop, you’ll find a huge selection of decks. Just in time for Christmas, traditionally a great time for card games, a famous pack – created in 1910 by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith – is being reissued by Taschen, complete with Waite’s booklet explaining the supposed mystic roots of tarot and what the symbols all mean: 'Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy.' ... The world’s oldest surviving tarot decks come from 15th-century Italy. They were commissioned by wealthy rulers who stipulated what they wanted, often adding in different picture cards, which they called “triumphs”. Today, these are known to occultists as the Major Arcana. One lost set, known only from a descriptive booklet, featured the pagan gods. The oldest pack that still (partially) exists – the Cary-Yale deck, created for Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan – mixes images that are still in today’s tarot, such as Death and The Lovers, with unique cards representing Faith, Hope and Charity. ..."

The lure of hocus pocus … three cards by Salvador Dalí.
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What do you do when anything goes? Duchamp’s Telegram

Thierry de Duve’s bag of non-art illustration, 2015. 

"The following conversation which took place at Kerri Scharlin’s 'salon' in New York on November 5, 2023, is published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the series of six articles that Michelle Kuo, then chief editor of Artforum, commissioned from Thierry de Duve and published in 2013–14. ... BARRY SCHWABSKY: Thierry, your book is divided into two parts and deals with two historical time frames. The first part concerns 1917 and the Independents’ Exhibition where we believe Marcel Duchamp, under the pseudonym Richard Mutt, submitted the artwork Fountain. And it was rejected. That’s the sending of the telegram, which you say was only widely received in the 1960s. And so the second half of the book really concerns the 1960s and several artists who then acknowledged receipt of this telegram. ..."




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Nicolas Poussin: The Rape of the Sabine Women, 1637-1638

The Rape of the Sabine Women, 1637-1638

"The legendary rape of the Sabine women is the subject of two oil paintings by Nicolas Poussin. The first version was painted in Rome about 1634 or 1635 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, catalogued as The Abduction of the Sabine Women. The second, painted in 1637 or 1638, is in the Louvre in Paris, catalogued as L'enlèvement des Sabines. The theme of kidnapping was very successful in Renaissance and Baroque art. Among the legendary episodes relating rapes, kidnappings or abductions may be mentioned those of Helen by Paris, of Europa by Zeus, of Deianeira by the centaur Nessus, and of Proserpina by Pluto; the latter was sculpted by Bernini (1621–1622). Beginning in the quattrocento, scenes of the abduction and reconciliation of the Sabine women were often figured on Tuscan cassoni (wedding chests), probably as domestic instruction for brides. Shortly after Poussin arrived in Rome in 1624, Pietro da Cortona painted a celebrated picture of the abduction (c. 1630), which was possibly influenced by such cassoni, and which in turn influenced Poussin. ..."


artsy
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Phill Niblock


"Phill Niblock (October 2, 1933 – January 8, 2024) was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium. ... Niblock's first musical compositions date from 1968. Unusually, even among the avant-garde composers of his generation, he has no formal musical training. He cites the musical activities of New York in the 1960s (and occasional memorable performances, such as the premiere of Morton Feldman's Durations pieces) as a stimulus. All his compositions are worked out intuitively rather than systematically. His early works were all done with tape, overdubbing unprocessed recordings of precisely tuned long tones played on traditional instruments in four, eight, or sixteen tracks. ... The layering of long tones only very slightly distinct in pitch creates a multitude of beats and generates complex overtone patterns and other fascinating psychoacoustic effects. The combination of apparently static surface textures and extremely active harmonic movement generates a highly original music that, while having things in common with early drone-based Minimalism, is utterly distinct in sound and technique.  ..."


"... Niblock’s most monumental film production, The Movement of People Working, has taken over twenty years to complete, from 1973 to 1992. It is a series of more than twenty-five hours of 16mm films and videos made around the world, in such countries as Mexico, China, Hungary, Brazil, Indonesia, and others. In each film, the artist shows people doing manual labor: fishing, repairing boats, stacking hay, carrying heavy loads, and performing a wide variety of physically demanding chores required for survival in basic, pre-industrial conditions. The films are silent, and the workers show no awareness of the camera and the recording process. When projected, the films are accompanied by music that Niblock composes independently from the footage. ..."





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We Are Ukrainians: Learning From the 2023 Kyiv Biennial

Kateryna Lysovenko’s vision anchored the Kyiv Biennial. 

"Vienna in late November recalls Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet. It’s dark — bleak even — akin to time spent with the stereo and the lights down on a gray drizzly day. Austria’s capital city is synonymous with classical music, having been home in the late 1700s and early 1800s to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. It is also a city brimming with galleries, coffeehouses, and ghosts, a place where early-20th-century artists, writers, philosophers, and political radicals once gathered — including Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leon Trotsky, and Adolf Hitler, a second-rate painter twice rejected by the local academy of fine arts. Then, as now, beware the failed artist. Rejection goosed by resentment stirs up shitstorms capable of turbocharging revanchist aesthetics of the most hateful sort. ... Alongside these and other markers of urbanistic excellence, there survives an urgent if temporary effort to examine the fragility of civilization amid the glittering heart of contemporary Europe: the 2023 edition of the Kyiv Biennial. ..."



In Vienna, the De Ne De Collective filled a gallery with pieces of a shattered chandelier from a destroyed cinema.
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Ripping Ivy

"When we moved into our little house, the large beds of English ivy in the front yard didn’t bother me much. It’s not what I would have chosen—who would choose an invasive species?—but my spouse and I agreed we would come up with a Yard Plan and make strategic choices, slowly and deliberately, including eradicating the ivy. Getting rid of ivy is notoriously difficult—my mom warned me it’s “backbreaking work.” I was also, when we moved in, finishing a book project, then in its sixth year and finally arriving at the fact-checking stage. The ivy project existed in the future. ..."


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Punk zine

"A punk zine (or punkzine) is a zine related to the punk subculture and hardcore punk music genre. Often primitively or casually produced, they feature punk literature, such as social commentary, punk poetry, news, gossip, music reviews and articles about punk rock bands or regional punk scenes. Starting in the 1970s, the DIY aesthetic of the punk subculture created a thriving underground press. Amateur magazines related to punk were inspired by the rock fanzines of the early 1970s, which were inspired by zines from the science fiction fan community. Perhaps the most influential of the fanzines to cross over from science fiction fandom to rock and, later, punk rock and new wave music was Greg Shaw's Who Put the Bomp, founded in 1970. One of the earliest punk zines was Punk, founded in New York City by John Holmstrom, Ged Dunn and Legs McNeil. Debuting in January 1976, the zine championed the early New York underground music scene and helped associate the word "punk" with these bands, most notably the Ramones. Other early punkzines from the United States included Search & Destroy (later REsearch), Flipside and Slash. ..."


"Punks did not invent the ‘zine; the DIY fan magazine has, in fact, been going for quite some time. If you allow some flexibility in defining a ‘zine and include any kind of amateur press, then political pamphlets and leaflets have been going for hundreds of years. It is only recently (in the grand scheme of history) that we have come to know them as ‘zines’. But what actually are they? The word ‘zine typically refers to any self-published, cheap/free publication (typically a magazine-style format) that has a small circulation (although this is not always the case) and often covers one particular topic, for example, music, TV, political causes etc. Zines have played a huge part in various subcultures over the years, providing access to information as well as an opportunity to build a community for what might be relatively niche interests. ..."

A Brief History of Zines 

"Among the artefacts to be displayed at Punk 1976-1978, a free exhibition opening this week at the British Library, are 14 fanzines. Titles such as Ripped & Torn, 48 Thrills and London’s Burning were produced by young men and women on a budget of nothing, the products of an intense but brief moment. Quintessentially ephemeral, they nevertheless speak to us four decades on. Inspired by the Sex Pistols and Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue, the fanzine explosion of 1976 and 1977 remains one of the purest and most creative responses to British punk. The speed and cheapness of the format – A4 pages photocopied and stapled together – allowed for instant reportage and considerable creativity. There was no censorship: anything went. ..."




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