The Beaches of Agnès

NYT, A. O. Scott - "And then there is Agnès Varda, the only female filmmaker associated with the Nouvelle Vague at its high-water mark and now, at 81, an artist of undiminished vigor, curiosity and intelligence. That is certainly how she appears in 'The Beaches of Agnès,' her latest film, which opens in New York on Wednesday, after winning a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for best documentary feature in February."
NYT, The Beaches of Agnès, Roger Ebert, YouTube - The Beaches of Agnès, P.O.V. | The Beaches of Agnes: Behind the Lens | PBS

Paleocycle

"One thing is missing from the picture chronicle of the paleocycle: a photo album of paleocyclists. Not a massive album, indeed. From before the spreading of the “safe bicycle” in the 1890s and of the “bicycle craze” it has brought with itself, there are not many bike photos. Not only the bicycle, but also the camera was a new invention and a rare good. Moreover, until the end of the century the moving of any of the two wanted a full man, so the gentleman sensitive of novelties had to choose: either pedaling, or dragging the heavy camera."
Paleocycle

Thirty Second Spots: TV Commercials for Artists (1982-83)

Joan Logue
"Through an intimate and elegant use of the medium, Joan Logue's work defines the art of video portraiture. Capturing the essence of subjects that range from avant-garde artists to New England fishermen, her video portraits are minimalist dramas precisely composed, richly nuanced, and highly expressive of the character of the 'sitter.'"
UbuWeb

Kara Walker

Wikipedia - "Kara Walker (born November 26, 1969) is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes."
Wikipedia, PBS - art21, Google, YouTube - Kara Walker, Kara Walker: Cut and Construct, Meditation on 'My Complement ...'

Danspace Project

Meg Chang, Jill Green, Douglas Dunn, Gabriella Hiatt, Kevin Ho, Kiori Kawai and Elaine Summers
Wikipedia - "Danspace Project was founded in 1974 to provide a performance venue for contemporary dance. Its performances are held in St. Mark's Church in the East Village area of the Manhattan borough of New York City."
Wikipedia, Danspace Project, YouTube - Potemkin Piece at the Danspace Project, Exhausting Love at Danspace Project, Persona - Danspace Project, vimeo - Unbounded - Danspace Project

BOXI

"Last Summer, while in Berlin, BOXI spoke to us about a new project he was working on - an extremely intricate six six layer hand cut stencil of a curtain made on 8mm MDF and illuminated by 12v Dimmable SMD LED's."
Wooster Collective, BOXI

A Tribe Called Quest

Wikipedia - "A Tribe Called Quest is an American hip hop group, formed in 1985. It was composed of rapper/producer Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, formerly Jonathan Davis), rapper Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor), and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad."
Wikipedia, A Tribe Called Quest, last.fm, YouTube - Check the rhime, Electric Relaxation, Oh my god, Jazz(We've Got) & Buggin' Out, Find a Way, Scenario, Award Tour

Juxtapositions: Female Reformers

"The New York Public Library has many items that help to document emerging human rights movements at important times in their development. Two 19th-century works show the struggles of women and gays as they challenged the status quo and progressed toward larger roles in political life."
NYPL - Video

The Strangeloves

"The Strangeloves were the creation of an American songwriting/production team in the 1960s who were from New York, but pretended to be from Australia. Their biggest hits were 'I Want Candy,' 'Cara-Lin' and 'Night Time'."
Wikipedia, YouTube - I Want Candy, Cara Lin

Big Sky

"Foremost, 2011, archival inkjet print, 40" x 60". Courtesy Gallery Jones."
The Paris Review

Very - Pet Shop Boys

Wikipedia - "Very exhibits one of many turning points the Pet Shop Boys would make to their music, shifting from the subdued electronic pop of Behaviour to richly-instrumented dance arrangements. The content and lyrics led to Very being called their 'coming-out' album, since it was during this time that Neil Tennant had publicly discussed his long-rumoured homosexuality."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Can you forgive her?, I wouldn't normally do.., Liberation, Dreaming Of The Queen, Yesterday When I Was Mad, The Theater, To Speak Is A Sin, Young Offender, One In A Million, Absolutely Fabulous, Euroboy, Girls and boys, Go West Live Brits 1994, Go West (Discovery Live in Rio)

Ellen Willis

Wikipedia - "Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, and pop music critic. ... She is also known for her feminist politics and was a member of New York Radical Women and subsequently co-founder in early 1969 with Shulamith Firestone of the radical feminist group Redstockings."
Wikipedia, Ellen Willis, Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis, Was Ellen Willis – Feminist, Activist, Genius – The Best Rock Critic of All Time?, The Paris Review, amazon, YouTube - OUT OF THE VINYL DEEPS: Ellen Willis on Rock Music

East Village Other

Wikipedia - "The East Village Other (often abbreviated as EVO), was an American underground newspaper in New York City, New York, during the 1960s. It was co-founded in late 1965 by Walter Bowart, Ishmael Reed (who named the newspaper), Allen Katzman, Dan Rattiner (of Dan's Papers), Sherry Needham and John Wilcock. The paper's design, in its first years, was characterized by Dadaistic montages and absurdist, non-sequitur headlines. Later the paper evolved a more colorful psychedelic layout that became a distinguishing characteristic of the underground papers of the time."
Wikipedia, Ephemera Press, Google, The East Village Other - Video

Herb & Dorothy

"HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists."
HERB AND DOROTHY, pbs, Wikipedia, YouTube

Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985)

"In 1984, the landmark production of Einstein on the Beach was staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was the first time since 1976 that its principal creators - composer Philip Glass and director/designer Robert Wilson - had collaborated on restaging this tradition-breaking opera. Interviews with Glass and Wilson along with clips of rehearsals and performances offer insight into this important work, making it accessible to all audiences. The film is a rare look at the creative process of two of the most important figures in American contemporary music and theatre, essential viewing for everyone interested in the evolution of the performing arts in our century."
UbuWeb

Claire Barclay

Shadow Spans
"Claire Barclay is a leading figure in a generation of young sculptors who have re-engaged with craft techniques and the symbolic resonance of materials. The architectural mix of the East End with its dark cobbled alleyways, Georgian townhouses and modern buildings are refracted into her sculptures. Door and window-like forms create the basis for structures around which fabrics and objects are gathered."
Whitechapel Gallery - Video

Détournement

Wikipedia - "A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Situationist International, and consist in 'turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself.' Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s."
Wikiedia, A User’s Guide to Détournement, Détournement, Dagwood, Google

Robert Duncan: May 18, 1959

"The Poetry Center presents Robert Duncan reading his poetry from and discussing his book The Opening of the Field (1960)."
Poetry Center

2008 March: Robert Duncan, 1919-1988

Miami Vice and early '80s musical montages.

"This is the segment from Miami Vice Season 2 Ep 8 which has part of the song 'Hello Earth' by Kate Bush in it. I'm posting this because I finally got the episode and a buddy and I have been trying to catch this scene for a long time. Miami Vice was a fun show when we were growing up and we both love Kate Bush."
YouTube - Hello Earth - Kate Bush, David Johansen - King of Babylon, Going Under - Devo, Afrika Bambaataa - Renegades of Funk, Godley and Creme - Cry, The Damned - In Dulce Decorum, Iggy Pop - Real Wild Child, Steve Jones - Mercy, Red 7 - Heartbeat, Pete Townshend - Face The Face, The Who - Baba O'Riley, Public Image Ltd - Order Of Death, Etta James - You Want More, Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa

2009 July: Miami Vice

Ged Quinn

In Heaven Everything is Fine
Wikipedia - "Ged Quinn (born 1963, Liverpool) is an English artist. He studied at the Ruskin in Oxford, the Slade School of Art in London, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He specialises in allegorical paintings that include contemporary images (generally on controversial topics in Western cultural history) in idyllic scenes based on classical paintings such as the pastoral works of Claude Lorrain and Caspar David Friedrich."
Wikipedia, Saatchi Gallery, Wilkinson Gallery, frieze

Living in Havana

"The Directors of Marlborough Chelsea are pleased to announce that an exhibition featuring the contemporary Cuban artists Abel Barroso, Roberto Diago, Kcho, William Pérez, and Ernesto Rancaño will open May 19 and continue through June 18, 2011. The extensive exhibition will be held on both the first and second floors of the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery and will include works varying in size and media, from intimately-sized etchings on acrylic board to large-scale sculptural works."
Marlborough Gallery

Whistler & His Jug Band

"Whistler & His Jug Band came up out of Louisville, Kentucky, and became the first recorded jug band, according to R Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country. They recorded at least twenty-one songs between 1924 and 1931. The names of the musicians remain unknown."
Whistler & His Jug Band, YouTube - Foldin' Bed, Jerry O' Mine, I'm a Jazz Baby, Jail House Blues, Chicago Flip

Patti Smith - "Ghost Dance"

"We shall live again, we shall live. What is it children that falls from the sky? Tayi, taya, tayi, aye aye. Mannah from Heaven from the most high, Food from the father, tayi, taye aye. We shall live again, we shall live again, We shall live again, shake out the ghost dance."
YouTube

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble with the Todd Reynolds Quartet

"Meredith Monk celebrates the release of her new album, Songs of Ascension, with a live concert. Join New Sounds’ John Schaefer for performance and conversation with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, along with the Todd Reynolds Quartet."
WNYC - Video, amazon

Robert Montgomery

"Robert Montgomery works in a poetic and melancholic post-Situationist tradition. Since 2005 he has carried out his WORDS IN THE CITY AT NIGHT project where, echoing the Situationist concept of detournement, he hijacks advertising space in the city, often illegally. His texts are part poetry, part an enquiry into our collective unconscious."
Robert Montgomery

Ah Pook Is Here (1994)

"Directed by Philip Hunt. Writing credits William S. Burroughs. Music By, Performer, John Cale. Dresden Film Festival: 1995 Won Best Animation Film, Philip Hunt"
YouTube

Charles Hardin Holly; Clovis, New Mexico; May 27, 1957

"Dear Lorin, A time comes when it’s healthful to put aside obscurantism and turn to bedrock, if only briefly. And while I flatter myself in thinking you know me as a man not prone to get overly excited about digital-remastering projects, nevertheless there are instances in which the beauty of the original song lay precisely in a primary attempt to expose its elements, and in these cases the additional stripping away of hiss and other shit can be revelatory, or in this instance (Best Ever: Buddy Holly, Techniche 2009), transformative."
The Paris Review - Video, Wikipedia - Not Fade Away, YouTube - Buddy Holly, Not Fade Away

A Country Without Libraries - Charles Simic

Hartland Four Corners, Vermont, 1994.
"All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire."
NYBooks, San Francisco Public Library. Public Library: An American Commons - A photography exhibition by Robert Dawson

Cage - Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939)

Wikipedia - "Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition by the American composer John Cage. Written in 1939 at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, the work is the first in Cage’s series of five Imaginary Landscape pieces."
Wikipedia, Art of the States - Video

Bob Marley & the Wailers Live 1973 - 1975

"Hear the words of the Rastaman say: 'Babylon, you throne gone down, gone down; Babylon, you throne gone down.'"
amazon, YouTube - Concrete Jungle, Rastaman Chant, Stir It Up, Concrete jungle, Duppy Conqueror, Burning and Looting tonight, No Woman No Cry, I shot the sheriff