Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Wikipedia - "Stanisław Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot ..., published in Poland in 1968, and translated to English in two parts (Tales of Pirx the Pilot and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot) in 1979 and 1982, is a series of short stories about a spaceship pilot named Pirx. ... Pirx stories can be classified as a moderate hard science fiction with some comic elements."
Wikipedia
W - Test pilota Pirxa
Transnational Spaces of Science Fiction: An Estonian-Polish coproduction The Test of Pilot Pirx
Blatherberg
The Spinning Image
Test Pilot Pirx (Mark's take)
amazon: Tales of Pirx the Pilot, More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot
YouTube: Pilot Pirx's Test (1979) 1/7, 2/7, 3/7, 4/7, 5/7, 6/7, 7/7

2011 June: Stanisław Lem

Richard Lerman

"Richard Lerman (1944-) is an American composer and sound artist best known for his use of piezoelectric microphones to record minute natural sounds such as the falling of raindrops on blades of grass or the march of ants across the desert floor. Beyond his artistic production in this domain, Lerman has worked for decades to popularize field recording by educating people about the technical and aesthetic principles of the practice."
Acousmata - Travelon Gamelon, promenade version (1978)(Video)
Richard Lerman's Site (Video)
W - Graphic notation

Burning Spear 1981 - Markthalle Hamburg

"01 Intro (9'00'')02 African Postman (7'40'')03 Slavery Days (7'40'')04 Man In The Hills (7'10'')05 Follow Marcus (5'05'')06 Nyah Keith (4'45'')07 Lion (6'18'')08 Columbus (6'10'')09 Ethiopean Live (12'30'')10 Foggy Road (6'50'')11 Institution (6'20'')12 The Sun (7'15'')13 Jah Ago Raid (8'20'')14 Door Peep / African Teacher (21'00'')"
YouTube: Intro (part 1/15 Full concert 120min.), 2/15, 3/15, 5/15, 6/15, 7/15, 8/15, 9/15, 10/15, 11/15, 12/15, 13/15

Musée d'Orsay. 100 Impressionist Masterpieces

"Beginning with the birth of the movement in 1863, until the term 'Impressionism' was first coined un 1874 - almost haphazardly - in relation to painting by Monet, the author traces the artistic milieu from which the movement emerged and the background to the lives of the painters involved. Then followed the glorious years until 1886, during which eight exhibitions were held to assert the ideas and aims of Impressionism. After this date, the group gradually dispersed; each artist, pursuing his own personal and often solitary research, was driven, as Monet described it, by 'the obsession to carry on painting and making progress until the end'."
Musée d'Orsay. 100 Impressionist Masterpieces
amazon

John Coltrane 1960 - 1965

"John Coltrane provides an epic 95-minute detailed overview of the truth of music giant 20-th century. Three concerts have shown increasing creative arc of Coltrane from the hard bop genre as a member of the Quartet Miles Davis Quartet in 1960, at the sole bandleader in 1961, unsurpassed dreamer jazz to 1965. This concert not only represents classic Trane's quartet with Elvin Jones (drums), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and McCoy Tyner (piano), but also with other jazz legends including Stan Getz, Eric Dolphy and Oscar Peterson."
Soft Archive
Live in Germany & Belgium (1960, 1961, 1965) [DVD]
YouTube: Live (1960-1961-1965)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963

Valero Doval

"Every now and then we get nostalgic for the past. Fortunately we need only turn to the pages of history, where we’ll find our forefathers worshiping at the church of triangle, or toiling away in the workhouse of rectangle… wait, what? It’s Valero up to his tricks again! He got us before with his circus pets on postcards – this time he’s taking vintage prints and interjecting his own particular brand of ostentatious geometry. These colourful cut-and-pastes are sure to inject some serious cheer into you afternoon."
It's Nice That
Valero Doval

"The Great Spruce" by Alex Carnelevale

Fairfield Porter, Wheat, 1960
"This summer, the Michael Rosenfeld gallery exhibited a few of Fairfield Porter's paintings of places surrounding his family's summer home in Great Spruce Head, Maine. It was a little underwhelming. For I have always thought that beneath Porter's ostensibly placid paintings lurks something more, evidence of his greatness in the form, if you know the right places to look. Although literature is often easy to enjoy without knowledge of its author, visual art is a different story, and Porter lived passionately in an interesting time and place."
This Recording

2008 May: Fairfield Porter
2010 June: Fairfield Porter - 1
2011 August: "Respect For Things As They Are" - by John Ashbery

Lou Stoumen

"In one of the catalogues that accompanied his many showings, Stoumen wrote: 'I try to learn enough art, compassion and laughter to stop time occasionally--to manifest on photographic paper a few ordinary miracles.' Born in Pennsylvania, he worked as a journalist and photographer in New York just before World War II, a period in which he took many of the Times Square photos for which he was famous. In 1985, he put them between hard covers and published the anthology 'Times Square: 45 Years of Photographs'."
Lou Stoumen
Joel Soroka Gallery

Iva Bittová

Wikipedia - "Iva Bittová (born 22 July 1958) is a Czech avant-garde violinist, singer and composer. She began her career as an actress in the mid 1970s, appearing in several Czech feature films, but switched to playing violin and singing in the early 1980s. She started recording in 1986 and by 1990 her unique vocal and instrumental technique gained her international recognition. Since then, she has performed regularly throughout Europe, the United States and Japan, and has released over eight solo albums."
Wikipedia
Iva Bittová
YouTube: Déšť (když zpívá), Uspavanka, Proudem mleka, Improvisation -- 1, Improvisation -- 2, Improvisation -- 3, Bang on a can & Bolis me lasko, Lullabies

Happenings: New York, 1958-1963

Wikipedia - "A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere (from basements to studio lofts and even street alley ways), are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation. This new media art aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art. In the later sixties, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a pool hall meetup or a jamming of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party."
Wikipedia
NYT: What Happened at Those Happenings? (Slide)
amazon: Happenings: New York, 1958-1963, Mildred L. Glimcher
NYMag: How Happenings Happened
artnet
artcritical - Time Regained: The “Happenings” Show at Pace

The Original Sound of Cumbia

"Soundway set sail for Colombia once again, delving deeper into the South American country’s rich musical past. Boasting 55 tracks spread over two CDs and two triple LPs, ‘The Original Sound of Cumbia’ is Soundway’s definitive guide to the origins of Colombian cumbia and porro and the result of five years pain staking re-search by Will ‘Quantic’ Holland."
Soundway: The Original Sound of Cumbia (Video)
SoundCloud: 'The Original Sound of Cumbia' Medley (Video)
amazon
YouTube: The Original Sound of Cumbia
Telegraph: The Original Sound of Cumbia

Sylvia Plimack Mangold

Wikipedia - "Sylvia Plimack Mangold (born September 18, 1938) is an American artist, painter, printmaker, and pastelist. She is known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes. ... Her paintings in the early 1960s were photorealistic renderings of floors, compositions characterized by hard-edged angles into which mirror images were introduced, making more complex the works' illusionism."
Wikipedia
Brooklyn Rail: SYLVIA PLIMACK MANGOLD with John Yau
artnet
MoMA
amazon

Time Lapse - Michael Nyman Band

"Time Lapse is one of the few non-Darwinian pieces in the soundtrack and it was, unusually, designed for a specific scene - the long tracking shot through the laboratory where the time lapse photography of the decaying animals was taking place. Against the profusion of camera shutter clicks I decided to establish a slow, funereal steady pulse. The emotional content was my private affair, not really related to the requirement of the film. I suppose it also became the model for Memorial, mad familiar in The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover."
Chester Novello
YouTube: Live - Time Lapse, Metrópolis (Fritz Lang; música: Michael Nyman, Time Lapse), Time Lapse form :: Zed & Two Noughts Peter Greenaway

2008 April: Michael Nyman
2010 March: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond
2010 August: Decay Music
2010 December: After Extra Time
2011 August: Michael Nyman Band

The Steins Collect

"Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife Sarah were important patrons of modern art in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century. This exhibition unites some two hundred works of art to demonstrate the significant impact the Steins' patronage had on the artists of their day and the way in which the family disseminated a new standard of taste for modern art. The Steins' Saturday evening salons introduced a generation of visitors to recent developments in art, particularly the work of their close friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, long before it was on view in museums."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
NYT: ‘The Steins Collect’, A Movable Feast for the Eyes
amazon: The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
The Steins' Collection Of Parisian Avant-Garde Art Hits The Met (Photos)
YouTube: The Steins Collect at SFMOMA

New York Dolls on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert

"New York Dolls live concert on television in 1975, near the end of the bands existence till 2003. 1. (There's Gonna Be a) Showdown 2. Stranded in the Jungle 3. Trash 4. Chatterbox 5. Don't You Start Me Talking 6. Personality Crisis"
YouTube

The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill

Wikipedia - "The Threepenny Opera ... is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. By 1933, when Brecht and Weill were forced to leave Germany by the rise of Hitler, the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages."
Wikipedia
The Threepenny Opera
NYT: Toxic Dispatches From Weimar (Robert Wilson)
TheaterMania: The Threepenny Opera (Robert Wilson)
BAM Presents Robert Wilson's Glittering Nihilist Romp
W - The Threepenny Opera (1931 - Film)
YouTube, 1931: Shooting Down Pictures, amazon: 1931
YouTube: L'Opera da Tre Soldi: Robert Wilson's jewel at Spoleto51

Earth, Wind & Fire

Wikipedia - "Earth, Wind & Fire is an American R&B musical group founded in Chicago, Illinois, in 1971 by Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. ... The band's music contains elements of African, Latin American, funk, soul music, pop and rock music, jazz and other genres. The band is known for the dynamic sound of their horn section, and the interplay between the contrasting vocals of Philip Bailey's falsetto and Maurice White's tenor. The kalimba (African thumb piano) is played on all of the band's albums."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Boogie wonderland, September, Lets Groove, That's The Way Of The World, Shining Star, Head to the Sky, Early 70's live medley

Alejandro Cartagena

"Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues. His work also engages with a larger history of photography by reinterpreting or rethinking the ways in which poignant issues have been addressed or represented in the past. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited and published internationally, and is in several public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States."
Alejandro Cartagena
Alejandro Cartagena Blog (vimeo)
monterrey (vimeo)

Downton Abbey

Wikipedia - "Downton Abbey is a television series, coproduced by Carnival Films in the UK and WGBH Boston in the US. The series is set on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and features an ensemble cast. It was created and principally written by actor and writer Julian Fellowes, and premièred on ITV on 26 September 2010 and on PBS on 9 January 2011."
Wikipedia
pbs: Downton Abbey (Video)
itv: Downton Abbey (Video)
NYBooks: The Abbey That Jumped the Shark
The Paris Review: The Aristocrats
Under the Sign of Sylvia: Downton Abbey as Amos 'n Andy for lower-, to middle-middle class whites, Think of me as the dead maid, one of the absent women (say Vinnie), A parallel: Oakland, Ohio & Damascus, Syria: Another Maggie Smith
Vulture: Print Out Vulture’s Downton Abbey Paper Dolls
Washington Post: ‘Downton Abbey’ fashion, from costume to the runway
amazon: Downton Abbey, 2
amazon: The World of Downton Abbey

"The House at Pooneil" - Jefferson Airplane

Wikipedia - "The House at Pooneil corners is a song by the American rock group Jefferson Airplane which firsts appears in their successful album Crown of Creation in which it is the eleventh track on the album (track five of side two). It also appears in their album The Roar of Jefferson Airplane alongside the similarly named song 'The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil' suggesting that they are related, though they were made at different times. Unlike The Ballad, The House At Pooneil Corners was mainly written by Marty Balin and not Paul Kantner. This song was the only one Jefferson Airplane was able to complete when performing on RCA's roof in New York before the police men stopped the show."
Wikipedia
YouTube: House at Pooneil Corners (In a New York roof 1968)

So Percussion

Wikipedia - "So Percussion (often styled Sō Percussion) is an American percussion quartet based in New York City. Composed of Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Beach, the group is well known for recording and touring internationally and for its work with composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang, Paul Lansky, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey, Fred Frith, Dan Trueman, Evan Ziporyn, and Arvo Pärt."
Wikipedia
So Percussion
amazon
disquiet: So Percussion Remixes So Percussion (Video)
SoundCloud (Video)
I Care if You Listen (YouTube)
YouTube: Amid the Noise, Steve Reich's "Drumming", Steve Mackey's "It Is Time", "Shifty" by Dennis DeSantis, Paul Lansky's "3rd Mvmt", Behind the scenes with So Percussion

French Painting of the 19th Century

Jean Beraud, Au Cafe
"As the century began, the academic style favored by the official Salon still dictated the success of artists and public taste. But soon that began to change. Realists turned convention on its head to give heroic character to everyday subjects. Manet scandalized the public with his images of modern life. Impressionists tried to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere."
NGA (Video)
Wikipedia

Cliff Bruner & His Texas Wanderers

Wikipedia - "Cliff Bruner (April 25, 1915 – August 25, 2000) was a fiddler and bandleader of the western swing era of the 1930s. Bruner's music combined elements of traditional string band music, improvisation, blues, folk, and popular melodies of the times."
Wikipedia
amazon: Cliff Bruner & His Texas Wanderers
YouTube: It Makes No Difference Now~1938, Kangaroo Blues, One Sweet Letter From You, When You're Smiling, Sugar, Sublime Western Swing, One Sweet Letter From You

Pulp magazines

Wikipedia - "Pulp magazines (often referred to as 'the pulps'), also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long. Pulps were printed on cheap paper with ragged, untrimmed edges. The name pulp comes from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. Magazines printed on better paper were called "glossies" or 'slicks.' In their first decades, they were most often priced at ten cents per magazine, while competing slicks were 25 cents apiece."
Wikipedia
NYT: Want to Be a Pulp Fiction Writer? Here’s Your Chance
Google
Picasa Web
Pulp Maps
Going Postal T-shirts

Ted Kincaid

"Twenty-two images line the wall of Marty Walker Gallery, foggy, silvery alien landscapes: an iceberg adrift in the sea, craggy mountain ranges, the glowing surface of the moon. Ted Kincaid’s new work breaks from the wistful austerity of artist’s pristine cloudscapes with images that are grittier, dreamier. That the work in Every Doubt that Holds You Here looks like the mid-19th century photographs of Gustave Le Gray or early films like Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) is every bit the point. This is an homage, of sorts, to photography and photographic process, made, we are told, without the use of any 'photographic material'."
Front Row
Ted Kincaid
Ted Kincaid Blog
YouTube: Ted Kincaid Every Doubt That Holds You Here

Trojan Dub Box Set (Trojan, 1998)

"One of at least 10 3-CD box sets issued by Trojan recently, a testament to the vastness of their vaults. The Dub Box Set, however, also reveals their limitations, as each of these 3 CDs seems to contain the same artists -- Roots Radics, The Upsetters, Gregory Isaacs, King Tubby, Tommy McCook & The Aggrovators, Sly & The Revolutionaries, The Observers, et al. Indeed, although there are 50 tracks, only about 16 different acts are represented. Thus, I don't feel like I got as broad an overview of '70s dub that I would've expected; this is certainly not a definitive collection."
Trojan Dub Box Set (Trojan, 1998)
amazon
YouTube: #1. Marijuana [Sly & The Revolutionaries] #2. Storming The Death Star [Roots Radics Band#3. Public Eyes [Gregory Isaacs], #1. Love Of Jah Jah Children [The G.G.All Stars] #2. A Dancing Version [Tommy McCook & The Aggrovators] #3. Miss Know It All [Scientist], The Observer All Stars - Rebel Dance, The Upsetters - Freedom dub, King Tubby & Observer All Stars - Rema Dub

“fathoms from anywhere” - Samuel Beckett

"'I don’t find solitude agonizing, on the contrary. Holes in paper open and take me fathoms from anywhere.' So wrote Samuel Beckett to Nancy Cunard on 26 January 1959. That land—'fathoms from anywhere' is like no other land in literature. It is consistent from work to work, as are the people who inhabit it. But within the homogeneity of background, of character, of theme, are subtle shadings of approach, of definition, of presentation that open up for the reader—or, in Beckett’s plays, the viewer—vistas as varied as the range of human emotions."
U. Texas: “fathoms from anywhere” - Samuel Beckett
Final and Posthumous Works
Beckett Timeline
Manuscripts
Publications

2009 November: Samuel Beckett
2010 April: A Piece of Monologue
2011 June: Film (1965) - UbuWeb

Neil Young Busking in Glasgow, 1976: The Story Behind the Footage

"The day was April 2, 1976. Neil Young was flying into Glasgow, and a local camera crew was waiting at the airport to meet him. Director Murray Grigor and cinematographer David Peat had been hired by Young through his record company. As they waited there, at the airport, they had no idea what to expect."
Open Culture (DailyMotion)

2010 August: Busking

Malin Gabriella Nordin

"Malin Gabriella Nordin, born 1988 in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently lives and works in Bergen, Norway."
Malin Gabriella Nordin
For my friends & family

Bluebird Records

Wikipedia - "Bluebird Records is a sub-label of RCA Victor Records originally created in 1932 to counter the American Record Company in the '3 records for a dollar' market. Along with ARC's Perfect Records, Melotone Records and Romeo Records, and the independent US Decca label, Bluebird became one of the best selling 'cheap' labels of the 1930s and early 1940s. (RCA pressed the 'two hits for two bits' cheap Crown label, independently owned in New York City, from 1930–1933, and Crown's sales probably also influenced RCA to get in on the cheaper priced market.)"
Wikipedia
The 78rpm Record Home Page
Big Road Blues
YouTube: Fats Waller & His Rhythm-Undecided, California Ramblers-Two Shadows (Kay Ray), Carter Family-When The World's On Fire, Earl Hines & His Orch-Number 19, Red Nichols & His Orch-Poor Butterfly, Erskine Hawkins & His Orch-Bicycle Bounce, Artie Shaw & His Orch-Non-Stop Flight, Tampa Red-Mean & Evil Woman, Washboard Sam-Bucket's Got A hole In It

Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune

Wikipedia - "Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune is a documentary film on the life and times of folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. The film, released theatrically in January 2011, was written and directed by Kenneth Bowser. Its title is taken from one of Ochs' best known songs, 'There but for Fortune'. The film features extensive archival footage of Ochs, as well as scenes reflecting the turbulent political climate of the 1960s during which he emerged as a spokesperson on causes such as racial injustice, political oppression, the horrors of war, and labor issues."
Wikipedia
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune
pbs: Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune (Video)
amazon
The Mumpsimus (YouTube)
Remembering Phil Ochs

2008 September: Phil Ochs
2011 December: All the News That's Fit to Sing

Art in the streets of Kabul

"Inside the blackened ruin of Kabul's cultural centre, a spray-painting of a woman in a burqa sits at the foot of a staircase to nowhere, beside a line of poetry mourning everything that has been lost to Afghanistan in three decades of violence. The painting is the work of Shamsia Hassani, 24, probably her country's first serious graffiti artist."
Guardian
Guardian: Kabul graffiti – in pictures
BBC - Graffiti art hits the streets of Kabul (Video)

Iconic Artist Talk: Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk, '16mm Earrings', 1966, performance
"It seems like Meredith Monk has always worn her hair in braids. Sometimes several, sometimes only one or two, but always braids. It’s a fitting consistency for an artist who’s been just as unwavering in her artistic goals. Sure, there have been changes in scale, in personnel, and the occasional need for a magnificent tower with a double helix staircase, like artist/collaborator Ann Hamilton's."
BAM 150 (YouTube - Quarry (1977) and impermanence (2006)
THE VOICE IS A LANGUAGE

REVOLUTIONESQUE

"In more radical radical poetry journal news, you’ve got to check out Esque Mag Issue 3, called 'Revolutionesque,' which was just released today. For this one, editors Amy King and Ana Božičević asked contributors to respond to the idea of revolution."
Poetry Foundation: Let’s Read Revolutionesque
REVOLUTIONESQUE

Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam

Catalan Atlas, Majorcan Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques, 1375
"One of the five pillars of Islam central to Muslim belief, Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim must make at least once in their lifetime if they are able. This major exhibition charts the history of this deeply personal journey."
British Museum (Video)
Telegraph - Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, British Museum, review
British Museum Blog (Video)
Guardian - Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum; in pictures
NYBooks: Bringing Mecca to the British Museum
YouTube - The Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum