Inside Mesa Verde Cliff Palace: North America's architectural wonder
Hugo Lioret – Pomone (2021)
“... In the case of Hugo Lioret, maybe sometimes it’s good to handle this reality thing with a little diplomacy. Lioret, a French native (but since relocated to The Hague NL) blurs the line between, let’s call it this second-generation “non” reality (making recordings of the natural world) …and the completely inorganic electronic processing that the Acousmatic world thrives on. ...”
15,000 Are Sheltering in Kyiv’s Subway
Officials in Kyiv say as many as 15,000 people, including many children, have taken refuge in the subway system to escape bombing and artillery fire as Russian forces advance on the capital.
“KYIV, Ukraine — As the escalator glides down the final few yards into the subway stop deep in Kyiv’s normally immaculate mass transit system, a sprawl of foam mattresses, suitcases and plastic bags filled with food comes into view. The space is surprisingly quiet, almost silent, despite the 200 or so people camped there to escape the bombing and artillery fire above. They sleep three or four to a single mattress. The children push toy cars over the gray granite slabs of the station floors, watching their mothers scroll endlessly on their cellphones, searching for news of the war.Little hands and feet stick out from underneath blankets, though it is noticeably warmer in the station than above ground. Volunteers come and go, bringing food and other necessities of life. One mother sets up a tent, for a modicum of privacy. ...”
Sandbags protecting a door at City Hall on March 01, 2022, in Kyiv.
Eivind Aarset: When Tonality Is the Excusion
“Norwegian musician Eivind Aarset opens this piece for his quartet (featuring bassist Auden Erlien and two credited drummers, Wetle Holte and Erland Dahlen, though one of them, Holte, only spends some of the time drumming) with syrupy held notes, Aarset’s electric guitar’s tone extended beyond the instrument’s inherent, unmediated possibilities. Delays that slowly fade keep notes in play, clock-like pings becoming whisps, strums becoming halos. There seems to be a precognition of this early on: right at the start, it’s as if another performance is layered under this one, if you listen closely — perhaps bleed from a nearby room, perhaps an intended substrate, perhaps a bit of something caught in the digital buffer of one of those tools arrayed in front of Aarset. ...”
500,000 Ukrainian Refugees Are Headed to Fortress Europe
“According to the U.N Refugee Agency, more than half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion, and at least another 160,000 have been internally displaced. Many of the countries these refugees are fleeing to, including Hungary and Poland, have been the sites of strong repression against immigrants in recent years. So far more than 150,000 Ukrainians have reached Poland, 70,000 have arrived or passed through Hungary, and 40,000 have reached Romania, Moldova, or Slovakia, among other countries. The UN also estimates that if the war were to continue to escalate or drag on, as many as four million people, or almost ten percent of the population, could flee Ukraine. Such a mass exodus would put Ukrainian refugees up against one of the most militarized borders and one of the most repressive anti-immigration regimes in the world. ...”
The Ukraine Refugees Response Moldova
Showing Solidarity With The Ukrainian Underground
Casa Ukrania of Odesa
“This article was commissioned mid-way through 2021 as a companion piece to the last feature we ran on New Weird Ukraine – a guide to the country's DIY, experimental, underground music scene – something we thought we should point out here in case it seems odd there is no mention of the current conflict with invading Russian forces. This is the first of a series of articles we have coming to you this year from Ukraine – some were commissioned before the war, some are being commissioned as we write this. ...”
Messages in the Maps
The original of this world map was likely drawn in the 12th century CE by an anonymous and likely Egyptian scholar for the Kitab Ghara’ib al-funun wa-mulah al-’uyun (Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes), and the earliest-known version of it is this 13th-century CE copy. ...
“Using a gentle two-finger pinch, Emilie Savage-Smith turns a page of an 800-year-old manuscript on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. She leans forward and pauses, carefully reviewing each illustration. ’This entire treatise is one of the universe,’ says Savage-Smith, professor of the history of Islamic science at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, describing the Book of Curiosities, a 13th-century compendium of Islamic maps. ...”
The earliest Islamic maps of the Mediterranean were drawn in the late 10th century ce by geographer and cartographer Ibn Hawqal in his Kitab surat al-ard (Book of a picture of the earth). ...
Explosions Shake Kyiv and Ukraine’s Second-Largest City
A projectile hit the main radio and television tower in Kyiv, on Tuesday.
“On Day 6 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow appeared to target civilian areas with increasingly powerful weapons and a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles sat about 20 miles north of Kyiv, a menacing presence that raised the possibility that Moscow could attempt an encirclement of the capital. Raising already high tensions, the Russian Defense Ministry threatened to conduct strikes against facilities in the city belonging to Ukraine’s security service and to a special operations unit to prevent information attacks against Moscow. Video showed a projectile hitting Kyiv’s main radio and television tower, forcing television stations off the air, according to Ukrainian officials. ...”
Walking Mexico City in the footsteps of Luis Buñuel
“We tend to associate Luis Buñuel with Paris. Many of his best-known films were made in France, including ‘Un Chien Andalou‘ (1929), the surrealist masterpiece Buñuel made in collaboration with fellow-Spaniard Salvador Dali, and which saw the two artists mine their dreams for imagery derives from the very depths of their subconscious. It was France that sparked Buñuel’s career and it was also where it concluded, with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). ... Forced to flee Spain during the Civil War, Buñuel spent many years working at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and for Warner Bros. However, he soon tired of the Hollywood studio system and decided to resettle in Mexico City to start his film career afresh. ...”
Cold Comfort: Sarah Manguso’s icy debut novel
Christian Skredsvig, Vinter (1880).
“Sarah Manguso’s turns of phrase have a way of instantly crystallizing into idiom. Ever since I finished reading her novel Very Cold People, shards of her precision keep surfacing in my head. When I pull the olive wool-blend cardigan that lives on the back of my desk chair over my shoulders, I think, ‘warming sweater,’ as in, ‘an old Irish cable-knit cardigan with leather buttons hung in the downstairs coat closet, which smelled of hot farts and smoke. If anyone ever needed a sweater, they could go and put on the warming sweater, which was its name, as if other sweaters were merely decorative.’ ...”
Initial Talks End Between Russia and Ukraine
Russia hits Ukraine fuel supplies, airfields in new attacks Ukrainian soldiers take positions outside a military facility after an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. ...
“As Ukraine’s second-largest city reeled under a barrage of Russian rockets that officials said killed dozens of people, a Ukrainian delegation met counterparts from Russia for several hours of talks on Monday in Belarus. The bombardment of a residential area of Kharkiv five days after Russia’s invasion began signaled a possible intensification of the conflict. Moscow’s actions have fueled nationwide resistance, forced half a million refugees to flee Ukraine and left Russia to deal with growing sanctions and increasing isolation. Among Monday’s other major developments. Belarus hosted the first face-to-face talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials since the Russian invasion began, but President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said before the meeting that he was not hopeful that it would end the hostilities. The Treasury Department announced that it would freeze assets of the Russian Central Bank that are held in the United States and impose sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The value of the ruble plunged by more than 25 percent as the effects of Western sanctions shook Russia’s economy. ...”
BBC - Ukraine maps: Tracking Russia's invasion, NY Times - Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Navigating Pete Namlook’s Sprawling Musical Universe
“It was on the banks of the River Main in Frankfurt, Germany that one of the most powerful visions of electronic ambient music was born. An employee at the city center bank, a 30-year-old named Peter Kulhmann was walking along the Main with his gig bag in hand—Kuhlmann played guitar in his free time. At the time, he was a skilled jazz fusion player, but the scene had left him feeling disenchanted. He decided to stop for a moment, take out his guitar, and look out on the lapping waters of the city river. He began to strum the instrument, aligning his playing to the natural sound of the water. As he played, he could feel himself opening up fully to nature—and to the present moment—finally hearing the natural music that existed all around him. ....”
Cyber tensions rise as West fears invasion of Ukraine
A day before Ukraine announced its Defense Ministry and banking servers had been hacked, our video team toured the country’s Cybercommand Center, where officials have been preparing for this scenario for years.
“In the online world, the West and Russia are already at loggerheads over Ukraine.As government leaders scramble to come up with a diplomatic deal to avert all-out war in Ukraine, cybersecurity officials warn of a potential wave of Russia-backed cyberattacks that could destabilize NATO countries. Meanwhile, disinformation experts fret Moscow is pushing false narratives through Russian state-affiliated media to tee up a pretext for war by fueling claims that Kyiv or NATO members may soon attack Russian military targets. ...”
NY Times: A hack of the Defense Ministry, army and state banks was the largest of its kind in Ukraine’s history. (Video)
The Enigma of Roberto Bolaño
“I discovered the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s work in 2008, which, not coincidentally, was also the year I discovered that the United States had helped deliver his native country into 17 years of ultra-right-wing authoritarianism. I learned this history shortly after stumbling into a student exchange program that dropped me in Quillota, Chile, where I went to a high school that happened to be the dictator Augusto Pinochet’s alma mater. Everybody I knew in Quillota was lovely to me, and very patient with both my error-riddled Spanish and my shocking historical ignorance. ...”
Protesters taking to streets of Russia are warned they face TREASON charges
Anti-War Germany
A Sleepless Night of Russian Air Strikes in Ukraine “At only takes one thumping, window-shaking boom to reach a state of sudden, adrenaline-fuelled alertness. I was already awake in my room in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, when a burst of three explosions went off at five in the morning. A moment later, I was hustling downstairs to the hotel’s basement with Emanuele Satolli, an Italian photographer with whom I’ve been travelling. We looked at our phones in silence and tracked all the places where the bombs and missiles were landing: not just in Kramatorsk—where, on the outskirts of town, there is a military airfield that houses the Ukrainian command overseeing the war in the Donbas—but in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Kyiv. Days earlier, I had been staying in a sleek business hotel in the center of the capital; a colleague who was still there posted an Instagram story of the breakfast buffet on the fifteenth floor, with shelling and air-raid sirens in the distance. ...”
Thousands take to the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine for the Unity March to show solidarity and patriotic spirit over the escalating tensions with Russia.
Fast Radio Burst's Unlikely Home Puzzles Astronomers
A cluster of ancient stars at the outskirts of spiral galaxy M81 is the source of extraordinarily bright and short radio flashes.
“A baby shower in a retirement home – that would surely raise some eyebrows. Likewise, astronomers were surprised to find a fast radio burst in a globular cluster. Astronomers think the enigmatic, millisecond-duration flashes of radio waves arise on newborn neutron stars. However, the stars in globular clusters are almost as old as the universe itself. ... Fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered in 2007. In about one-thousandth of a second, they release as much energy as the Sun does in days. ...”
With Russian troops moving on Kyiv, the Kremlin sends mixed signals on talks.
The body of a Russian soldier lies next to a Russian vehicle, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Friday.
“Ukrainians on Friday battled for their capital, Kyiv, as officials warned residents to stay indoors and ‘prepare Molotov cocktails’ to defend against Russian forces who had entered a northern district of the city. Kyiv could fall quickly, the Biden administration warned Congress on Thursday. As missile strikes hammered Kyiv and a rocket crashed into a residential building, President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians to defend the country. Russian officials signaled an openness to talks, but President Vladimir V. Putin derided the Ukrainian government and it was unclear under what conditions the Kremlin would consider negotiations. ... Mr. Putin urged Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and described Mr. Zelensky’s government as ‘a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.’ The brutal language suggested he was not seriously planning to engage Mr. Zelensky in peace talks. ...”
NY Times: Opinion - Mr. Putin Launches a Sequel to the Cold War
A woman gets assistance fleeing from a civilian apartment complex that was bombed in Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv, Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan
Riverside reality … Whistler’s Wapping, 1860–64.
“Joanna Hiffernan’s close professional and personal relationship with artist James McNeill Whistler lasted more than two decades—yet who was she? She is featured in numerous works by Whistler, including his three famous ‘Symphony in White’ paintings, which are being shown together for the first time in the United States. While the intriguing “woman in white” has inspired artists from the Victorian era to today, little has been shared about Hiffernan and her influential role in Whistler’s life and work—until now.”
Understanding the Ukraine Crisis: A Comprehensive Reading List
“... I work as book buyer for the largest bookstore in the country, mostly specializing in nonfiction. In my role, I am responsible for curating the range of books to order and highlight. Sometimes I am asked to consult the overall book-buying for the company in my areas of interest.Many articles have been written in the last few days about whether the Russians will stop when they reach the combat lines between the rebel-held territory and Ukraine. We now have our answer. ... Over the last 48 hours, customers, booksellers, and other managers as well as head-office personnel have asked me for ideas on key reading material that the company has to ensure is ready, available, and relevant to a sudden onrush of interest in Ukraine and Russia. ...”
Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism
“... How did the minority party of Hitler and Goebbels take over and break the will of the German people so thoroughly that they would allow and participate in mass murder? Post-war scholars of totalitarianism like Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt asked that question over and over, for several decades afterward. Their earliest studies on the subject looked at two sides of the equation. Adorno contributed to a massive volume of social psychology called The Authoritarian Personality, which studied individuals predisposed to the appeals of totalitarianism. He invented what he called the F-Scale (’F’ for ‘fascism’), one of several measures he used to theorize the Authoritarian Personality Type. ...”
2013 December: Hannah Arendt
From James Brown to Tom Waits: Robert Pattinson's 15 favourite songs of all time
“Robert Pattinson had been crystallised as Twilight’s Edward Cullen in popular culture but he has been delving into uncharted territory in recent years which has proven that he is one of the most talented actors of our generation. Pattinson has gone on to collaborate with pioneers of the artform in films that are nothing short of modern masterpieces. Ranging from his anxiety-inducing powerhouse of a performance in the Safdie brothers’ Good Time to the fever dream that was Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, Pattinson has played unconventional characters with grace and intelligence by establishing his command over his craft. ...”
Claire Denis’s Closet Picks
“When the great French director Claire Denis stopped by our offices for a visit this spring, she had plenty of reason to be feeling ecstatic. ... And her latest work, a mysterious sci-fi project called High Life, was just a few months away from being selected for some of the world’s most prestigious festival lineups (just yesterday, it was announced as part of the New York Film Festival’s main slate). ... In the above video, she recalls her formative encounters with the transcendent works of Carl Theodor Dreyer, jokes about Howard Hawks making her feel like ‘such a failure,’ and gets emotional about Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika, a wistful ode to young love that fills her with a sense of nostalgia and lost time. ...”
2009 September: Claire Denis, 2013 October: Claire Denis Dialogue with Eric Hynes, 2017 June: White Material (2009)
Ukraine Live Updates: Biden Joins Europe in Punishing Russia With Sanctions
What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Revolutionary Painting
“The Birth of Venus, we often hear, depicts the ideal woman. Yet half a millennium after Sandro Botticelli painted it, how many of us whose tastes run to the female form really see it that way? ‘I’ve always been struck by how Venus is strangely asexual, and her nudity is clinical,’ says gallerist James Payne, creator of the Youtube channel Great Art Explained. ‘Maybe that’s because she represents sex as a necessary function: sex for procreation, the ultimate goal in a dynastic marriage.’ This, safe to say, isn’t the sort of thing that gets most of us going in the 21st century. ...”
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486). Tempera on canvas.
Neon Noir: How Miami Vice Helped Me Navigate My Tropical Nightmare
“On a sultry night at the docks of Miami, the shootout ends. Undercover cop James ‘Sonny’ Crockett is cradling Evan Freed, a former friend who gasps for words; Crockett’s partner, Ricardo ‘Rico’ Tubbs, tries to comfort Sonny by throwing his hand over his shoulder. This image in the episode ‘Evan’ from the American series Miami Vice (1984-1990) is a veritable Renaissance painting of brotherly love and despair. Created by Anthony Yerkovich and executive producer Michael Mann, Miami Vice revolved around the Cocaine Cowboys era, when Latin American drug cartels, law enforcement agencies and others were engaged in power games while the US was being knocked-out by false moralism and economic crisis, all making headlines in the news. ...”
Screen Time - Thurston Moore (2021)
“Screen Time is a series of instrumental guitar pieces recorded during the summer of 2021 as the world confronted the pandemic shutdown and as the people of good conscious stood up against the oppression of racist police oppression and murder. ... The cover image of Screen Time is of a youngster curled into a book, the pages vibratory with text radiating through the skin, blood and bone – an aspect entirely missing from digital media, though the actuality of transparency in our daily lives through streaming etc we can only leads to the awareness of fairness. Screen Time is in reflection to dream time, a state of meditation, hypnagogia and pillow talk. ...”
2015 August: Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture - Thurston Moore (2005), 2019 August: Rhythm and Blues Jazz Handbook, edited by Thurston Moore, 2021 June: Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake (1982)
In Orlando, 25 Mysterious Basquiats Come Under the Magnifying Glass
Largely unseen artworks said to be by Jean-Michel Basquiat were installed at the Orlando Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection.”
“It seems like a story too good to be true, and for some in the art world, it is. Last weekend, 25 Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings were publicly unveiled at the Orlando Museum of Art before several thousand V.I.P.s. All of the paintings were said by the museum to have been created in late 1982 while Basquiat, 22, was living and working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, Calif., preparing fresh canvases for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery. ...”
2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian, 2015 February: Now's the Time, 2015 May: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, 2015 December: The Notebooks, 2017 June: New Art, New Money (February 10, 1985), 2021 November: Downtown 81 - Edo Bertoglio (1980-81)
No no no, nonsense, never: Hidden notebooks reveal the tense relationships behind Gertrude Stein’s genius
Illustration by Maira Kalman; from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Illustrated by Gertrude Stein
“In Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007), Janet Malcolm turned to the murky world of Gertrude Stein scholarship. ... In 1948, two years after Stein’s death, while working in the Yale University Library as a doctoral student exploring her early writings, Katz had come across a brown paper packet containing a tranche of grey-covered notebooks. As he leafed through their pages, Katz became gripped. He realized that these were the notes from which Stein had worked during the years 1902 to 1911, while drafting The Making of Americans, a sprawling 1,000-page epic eventually published in 1925, which broke away from previous forms of narrative writing and sought to tell a complete ‘history of everyone who ever was or is or will be living’. ...”
2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 January: The Making of an American by Edward White, May 2020: Seeing Robert Wilson plain, 2020 December: Tender Buttons (1914)
Déneigement Montreal
“Before moving to Montreal in 2020, I had lived my whole life in Toronto. Toronto averages about 120 cm (47 inches) of snow a year - on the lower end for Canada, but respectable - and it always seemed to me that we were pretty good at dealing with it. Sure, we called in the army that one time during the blizzards of 1999, but what else are you supposed to do? And sure, the sidewalks in Toronto are essentially impassable for months, but where exactly is all that snow supposed to go? To me, clamoring over mounds of snow just came with the Canadian territory. One winter in Montreal cured me of that belief. ...”
Francon quarry from above.
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