Jenny Holzer Installation at the Guggenheim and Protect Protect

"Jenny Holzer was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum create this work for the exterior of the museum to celebrate it's unveiling after an extended renovation of its facade. The work quotes from the poet Wislawa Szymborska's work. The video was produced by Howard Silver for Bloomberg MUSE. Lindsay Pollock interviewed Holzer. Sam Henriques shot the walk and talk and the Guggenheim exterior."
vimeo

2008 January: Jenny Holzer

Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson - Trance and Dance in Bali

"This is an early film of historical significance by pioneers of visual anthropology, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, circa 1939. It explores the themes of trance and dance in the rituals and religion of Bali. The famous Kris Dance is performed. Narrated by Margaret Mead. Filmed by Gregory Bateson. Converted from 16mm film reel."
YouTube

2008 March: Margaret Mead. 2009 June: Gregory Bateson. 2011 March: Gamelan.

Music from Big Pink - The Band

Wikipedia - "Music from Big Pink is the 1968 debut album by rock band The Band. It features their best-known song, 'The Weight'. The music was composed partly in 'Big Pink', a house shared by Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson in West Saugerties, in upstate New York. The album itself was recorded in studios in New York and Los Angeles in 1968. With a distinctive blend of country, rock, folk, classical, R&B, and soul, Music From Big Pink was the first album released by The Band in the summer of 1968."
Wikipedia, Tears of Rage, The Weight, King Harvest, Long Black Veil, Chest Fever, This Wheel's On Fire, I Shall Be Released

Stanisław Lem

Wikipedia - "Stanisław Lem (... 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire."
Wikipedia, VITRIFAX: The writing of Stanislaw Lem, First ever direct English translation of Solaris published, IMDb, Stanisław Lem

Mario Bauzá

Wikipedia - "Mario Bauzá (28 April 1911 – 11 July 1993) was an important Cuban musician. He was one of the first to introduce Latin music to the United States by bringing Cuban musical styles into the New York jazz scene. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of Afro-Cuban music, and his innovative work and musical contributions have many jazz historians to call him the 'founding father of Latin jazz'. If so, it is an exaggeration, since Cuban jazz was established much earlier."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Mario Bauzá Corta Historia - 1, (2), Sun Sun Babae, Tanga, Yo soy el son cubano, A night in Tunisia, Mambo Rincon, El Manisero

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Wikipedia - "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans first published in 1941 in the United States. The title is from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach that begins, 'Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.'"
Wikipedia, amazon, part six: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, YouTube - Let Us Now Praise Walker Evans

Patricia Johanson

Plans for stormwater purification ponds, Petaluma, Calif.
Wikipedia - "Patricia Johanson (Born September 8, 1940, New York City). Patricia Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife. She designs her functional art projects, created with and in the natural landscape, to solve infrastructure and environmental problems, but also to reconnect city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place."
Wikipedia, Patricia Johanson, YouTube - ecoartspace video archive: Patricia Johanson Interview, Patricia Johanson at Headlands Center for the Arts

Robert Johnson

Wikipedia - "Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime."
Wikipedia, Robert Johnson, The Robert Johnson Notebooks, YouTube - Sweet Home Chicago, Alleged Video Footage Of Robert Johnson, Exposed, Me and the Devil Blues, Crossroad, Stop Breaking Down Blues, Rambling On My Mind, Come on in my Kitchen, Preaching blues (up jumped the devil), Love In Vain Blues, Kind Hearted Woman Blues, 32-20 Blues

A Hard, Merciless Light. The Worker-Photography Movement, 1926-1939

"A Hard, Merciless Light. The Worker-Photography Movement, 1926-1939 examines the period during the history of 20th century photography in which photography joined forces with various worker movements (ranging from trade unionism to the creation of 'workers' states' like the Soviet one), motivated by growing working-class consciousness and the idea of taking over the means of production and reproduction of images."
Magnum Photos, RURAL Contemporánea

Gimble's Swing

"Johnny Gimble ... is one of the country’s leading fiddlers and former star of Hee Haw, grew up in Texas at the same time western swing did and his memories of the greats who taught him form a Who’s Who of the genre."
folkstreams

Photographs from "Dog Ear" - Erica Baum

Fallout, 2010
"A dog-eared page — a folded corner — is the simplest memory system: it marks a stopping point, a favorite passage, a place to remember. Along with marginalia, underlining, and other notational strategies, dog ears map a history of reading and remind us that reading is a physical act: an encounter with words, to be sure, but also a tactile experience with paper and individual pages of a book."
jacket 2, Ugly Duckling Presse, jacket 2: In moveme/braces,

Sun Ra Arkestra - Face the Music / Space is the Place

"Live on Night Music. Don't miss my other Sun Ra video 'Retrospekt'."
YouTube

Hans Richter

Wikipedia - "Hans Richter (April 6, 1888 – February 1, 1976) was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland."
Wikipedia, senses of cinema, ArtNet, UbuWeb - Video

Black Swan

Wikipedia - "Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, and Mila Kunis. Its plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City company. The production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself."
Wikipedia, Feminist Spectator, Rolling Stone, YouTube

Van Morrison & The Caledonia Express

"Not sure if this is Dixieland or Swing or whatever. Seems “Caldonia’ gets spelled a little differently depending on who releases it. In fact, it’s even spelled two different ways on this label copy alone. The James Brown version was my favorite for years and still is, yet lately I’ve been spinning this. Yeah, it’s very SNL but hey, he was the singer of Them and the single sounds just that little bit better given it’s a wlp."
SO MANY RECORDS, SO LITTLE TIME - Video, Wikipedia - Caldonia

New Order live, 1984

"New Order live performance of 'Blue Monday' at BBC Radio 1 studios, 1984."
YouTube - Blue Monday, Sooner Than You Think, Age Of Consent, In A Lonely Place, Temptation

Gaston Bachelard

Wikipedia - "Gaston Bachelard (June 27, 1884, Bar-sur-Aube – October 16, 1962, Paris) was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. ... He rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the Académie française and influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida."
Wikipedia, amazon, gaston bachelard: “the poetics of space” + desire paths., Google - The poetics of space, YouTube - Poetics of Space and Reverie, Poetics Derived and Applied, God of Nothing, Art Language Ambiguity

Swing Time (1936)

Wikipedia - "Swing Time is a 1936 RKO musical comedy film set mainly in New York City and stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Eric Blore and Georges Metaxa, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. The film was directed by George Stevens."
Wikipedia, YouTube

Holger Czukay - Persian Love

"On Persian Love, Czukay backs up clips of an Iranian singer recorded off short-wave with lilting guitar and keyboard riffs that sparkle like light. The album is all pleasant, playful textures, with little of the darkness that Can dallied with."
YouTube

American Basketball Association

Julius "Dr. J" Erving
"If you can identify any of the pro basketball players and coaches pictured above and to the left, then you remember the 'red, white and blue' league: the defunct American Basketball Association. The ABA existed from 1967 to 1976 -- for nine full seasons. During that time, the ABA fought a bitter war with the established National Basketball Association (the NBA) for players, fans, and media attention."
Remember the ABA, Bob Costas Interview, YouTube - Remembering The A.B.A., 1970s: The NBA vs. the ABA, ABA - Dunk Contest 1976 - Cyberdunk, Connie Hawkins, The Hawk, George Gervin - The Iceman, Fly Williams, David Thompson - SkyWalker, Julius Erving: The ABA Years, "Dr. J" Julius Erving - 1974 Rare Biography, Dr. J - Magnificent Highlights Package, 1976 ABA Finals G6 Nuggets@Nets, May 22, 1975 ABA Finals G5 Pacers@Colonels, 1972 ABA vs NBA All Star Game
The History of the ABA Part 1-6, Part 2-6, Part 3-6, Part 4-6, Part 5-6, Part 6-6

Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen, “Oyster” Dress
"I’m Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. I think the title 'Savage Beauty' very much epitomizes the contrasting opposites in McQueen’s work. As you enter the exhibition, you’re faced with two mannequins—the two mannequins that I think represent many of the themes and ideas that McQueen revisited throughout his career: polarized opposites, whether it’s to do with life or death, lightness or darkness, predator/prey, man/machine."
Metropolitan Museum of Art, YouTube

C215

"C215 once called himself a streetart junkie, surrounded by stencil and grafitti everyday. If that’s so, no need for rehab Christian, you’re just fine as it is. C215’s college education in History of Art didn’t keep him captive of art in its classic forms, but stirred the fire within him to travel around the world making his own art. His urban pieces have left his mark in many countries and also in many hearts, making his work a definitive chapter in the History of Urban Art, if ever that discipline may come to exist."
Wooster Collective, flickr, Artists by curfew

All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground

Wikipedia - "'All Tomorrow's Parties' is a song by The Velvet Underground, written by Lou Reed and released on the group's 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Inspiration for the song came from Reed's observation of the Warhol clique; according to Reed, the song is 'a very apt description of certain people at the Factory at the time. ... I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things.' The song was Andy Warhol's favorite by The Velvet Underground."
Wikipedia, SO MANY RECORDS, SO LITTLE TIME, YouTube - All Tomorrow's Parties, 2 - All Tomorrow's Parties, 3 - Nico, All Tomorrows Parties

A Woman Under the Influence - John Cassavetes

Wikipedia - "A Woman Under the Influence is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It focuses on a woman whose psychotic behavior leads her confused husband to commit her for psychiatric treatment, leaving the family even more dysfunctional than before."
Wikipedia, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE Review – Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk d: John Cassavetes, amazon, YouTube - A Woman Under the Influence, (2), (3)

Incidental Comics - Grant Snider

"Writing and drawing, that is your calling."
Incidental Comics

Leon Russell- High Heel Sneakers - Oct 28 1964

"Put on your red dress, baby
Ya know we're goin' out tonight
Put on your red dress, mamma'
Lord, we're goin' out tonight
And-a bring along some boxin' gloves
In case some fool might wanna fight"
YouTube - High Heel Sneakers - Oct 28 1964, Roll over Beethoven, 11/18/1964, Jambalaya, On the Bayou, 2/03/1965

The History Of Dub

70s, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Black Ark Studio. Kingston, Jamaica.
"Dub started in Jamaica in the late '60s with engineer Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby. Either way, Jamaica has always been a sanctuary for this type of music, and hundreds of great dub records have been produced and mixed there. Jamaican producers have been pioneers in sound engineering, with an exceptional and daring capacity to innovate in sonic terms. They all shared a fresh approach towards the use of tape machines, mixers, effects and experimentation, never scared to pick up a screwdriver and open up the equipment to fix it or alter its sound."
SOS, Wikipedia, YouTube - The History Of Dub - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - "I Put a Spell on You"

Wikipedia - "Jalacy Hawkins (July 18, 1929, Cleveland, Ohio — February 12, 2000, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), best known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins was an African-American musician, singer, and actor. Famed chiefly for his powerful, operatic vocal delivery and wildly theatrical performances of songs such as 'I Put a Spell on You', Hawkins sometimes used macabre props onstage, making him one of the few early shock rockers."
Wikipedia, YouTube - I Put a Spell on You, I Put A Spell On You (Okeh) 78 rpm

I Put a Spell on You - Nina Simone, Alan Price, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bryan Ferry, Bette Midler, David Gilmour, Marilyn Manson, Nick Cave / Bobby Gillespie / Glen Matlock / Johnny Depp / Chrissie Hynde / Paloma Faith / Eliza Doolittle - Haiti

Rodney Graham

The Avid Reader 1949
"Hauser & Wirth Zürich is delighted to present an exhibition of major new works, including three lightboxes and one film, by the Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Graham’s art examines the complexities of Western culture through strategies of disguise and quotation. Casting himself as a succession of motley characters, Graham inhabits different personae, genres and art forms, working with diverse media such as film, photography, installation, painting, music and text."
Hauser & Wirth

Glenn Ligon

Untitled (There is a consciousness we all have...)
Wikipedia - "Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, and identity. He engages in intertextuality with other works from the visual arts, literature, and history, as well as his own life."
Wikipedia, Whitney, YouTube