Identity Series by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada

"I went to the city of Manama in Bahrain to make a mural as part of the Alwan 338 festival put together by the Al Riwaq Art Space. Knowing the current situation there, I was a little apprehensive but a good friend working with the gallery explained the special nature of what the Al Riwaq Art Space was doing. I met some truly extraordinary people who believe in the role of contemporary art in their country's future. Against all odds they strive to change the barren artistic landscape that exists in Bahrain today. There are so many layers to Bahrain."
YouTube: Yousif / Manama Bahrain . Identity Series by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada at Galería Ignacio de Lassaletta, Show Preview

2009 June: Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada
2010 May: Fresh Stuff from Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada in Monterrey, Mexico

Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Wikipedia - "Sweetheart of the Rodeo is the sixth album by American rock band The Byrds and was released on August 30, 1968 on Columbia Records (see 1968 in music). Recorded with the addition of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons, it was influential as the first major country-rock album by an established act and represented a stylistic move away from the psychedelic rock of the band's previous LP, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The Byrds had occasionally experimented with country music on their four previous albums, but Sweetheart of the Rodeo represented their fullest immersion into the genre thus far. The album was also responsible for bringing Gram Parsons, who had joined The Byrds prior to the recording of the album, to the attention of a mainstream rock audience for the first time. Thus, the album can be seen as an important chapter in Parsons' personal and musical crusade to make country music fashionable for a young audience."
Wikipedia
amazon: Sweetheart of the Rodeo: Legacy Edition
Byrds Wathher
The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo: Legacy Edition
Rolling Stone
Pitchfork
YouTube: You Ain't Going Nowhere (1968), I Am a Pilgrim, The Christian Life, Under Your Spell Again, You Don't Miss Your Water, You Don't Miss Your Water, You're Still On My Mind [Live At The Fillmore 1969], Pretty Boy Floyd (live at the Fillmore West)1969, Hickory Wind, Rome May,1968, Blue Canadian Rockies (Take 14) (1968), Life In Prison, Nothing was delivered

2008 March: Gram Parsons
2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973

A Brief History of John Baldessari

"A towering figure in the art world, standing at 6'7", John Baldessari's epic career crammed into 5 and a half frenzied minutes...narrated by Tom Waits."
YouTube: A Brief History of John Baldessari, sings sol le witt (1972), Suggestion RE: I Am Making Art by John Baldessari (1972), READ/WRITE/ THINK/DREAM; An Installation by John Baldessari, John Baldessari. Pure Beauty, John Baldessari: Recycling Images | Art21 "Exclusive"

2009 October: John Baldessari

Tape loops

Daphne Oram, tape loop at Broadcasting House, Frederick Bradnum, 1956 or '57
Wikipedia - "In music, tape loops are loops of prerecorded magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound. Contemporary composers such as Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen used tape loops to create phase patterns and rhythms. ... In the mid-1980s, digital sampling overtook much tape loop use. In the 1990s and 2000s, digital looping pedals became more affordable. One-man bands use looping pedals to record a groove or riff, and then they solo over the riff as it repeats."
Wikipedia
disquiet: The Happy Mutant Cassette Tape Loop (YouTube)
Good Old-fashioned Tape Looping by Pat Kirtley
SOS: The Story Of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Analog Tape Recorders
YouTube: Tape loop
YouTube: "Come Out" (after Steve Reich), Stockhausen: "Telemusik"

2010 Sepember: Sampling
2011 Sepember: Frippertronics
2012 January: Loop

Chuck Brown

Wikipedia - "Chuck Brown (August 22, 1936 – May 16, 2012) was a guitarist and singer who is affectionately called 'the Godfather of Go-go'. Go-go is a subgenre of funk music developed in and around Washington, D.C. in the mid- and late-1970s. While its musical classification, influences, and origins are debated, Brown is regarded as the fundamental force behind the creation of go-go music."
Wikipedia
amazon: Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Grantland - Chuck Brown: An Elegy for Chocolate City
YouTube: The Soul Searchers - We The People, Wind Me Up!, Bustin Loose, FUNKY BEAT,HOOCHIE COOCHIE MAN, GOGO SWING,MIDNIGHT SUN,MOODY'S MOOD, We Need Some Money, Chuck Baby, If It Ain't Funky (1979), The Party Roll, Block Party

Mary Kelly

Documentation VI: Pre-Writing Alphabet, Exergue and Diary, 1978
Wikipedia - "Mary Kelly (born 1941) is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer. Mary Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings. Kelly’s work mediates between conceptual art and the more intimate interests of artists of the 1980s. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she is considered among the most influential contemporary artists working today."
Wikipedia
Mary Kelly
frieze: The Body Politic
23 Questions for Conceptual Artist Mary Kelly
YouTube: Mary Kelly, Moderna Museet - del/part 1(2), del/part 2(2)

Lucinda Williams - World Without Tears

"If we lived in a world withought tears
How would bruises find
The face to lie upon
How would scars find skin
To etch themselves into
How would broken find the bones"
npr - Lucinda Williams: 'World Without Tears' (Video)
YouTube: World Without Tears, Fruits Of My Labor, Ventura, Overtime, Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings, Sweet Side

Gene Chandler

Wikipedia - "Gene Chandler (born Eugene Dixon, July 6, 1937) also known as 'The Duke of Earl' or simply 'The Duke', is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, producer and record executive. He is one of the leading exponents of the 1960s Chicago soul scene."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Duke Of Earl

Solaris - Andrei Tarkovsky

Wikipedia - "Solaris ... is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris (1961), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station, to learn and evaluate the situation—yet soon encounters the same mysterious phenomenon like the others. The Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert: Solaris (1972)
Guardian: Out of this world
Senses of Cinema - Andrei Tarkovsky: Truth Endorsed by Life
Criterion: Solaris (1972)
YouTube: Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union, 1972, Oxygen

2009 June: Andrei Tarkovsky
2011 June: Stanisław Lem
2012 March: Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Lee Friedlander - Mannequin

New York City, 2011
"In one mesmerizing, vertigo-inducing composition, a female mannequin seems to stand proudly in a ruched evening dress. Her back arches, her hip juts, her chin reaches, and her neck is as long and lean as the vertiginous skyscrapers behind her. Busybody city-dwellers humming below remind the viewer that the image came from a real, not an imagined, world.
SF Examiner
artnet

2010 August: Lee Friedlander
2010 November: Lee Friedlander: America By Car

Saul Fletcher

Untitled, 2010
"Saul Fletcher's work compresses issues of human existence into intimately scaled photographs brimming with psychic energy. Moody, intense, and hermetic in nature, these photographs use a time-honored vocabulary of subjects, ranging from religious symbols to common objects, from abstract expressionist marks to posed models, in order to grapple with complex issues of mortality, sexuality, spirituality, and redemption."
CMOA
Alison Jacques Gallery

Balanescu Quartet

Wikipedia - "The Balanescu Quartet is an avant-garde string quartet founded in 1987 by Alexander Bălănescu that achieved fame through the release of several complex cover versions of songs by German experimental electronic music band Kraftwerk on their album 'Possessed'. The driving force behind the quartet has always been main composer and founder Alexander Bălănescu. Clare Connors, violin, has also played a great part. The quartet are mainly notable for their very distinctive style of music, which encompasses odd time rhythms, sound dissonances and complex arrangements."
Wikipedia
Balanescu Quartet
YouTube: The young conscript and the moon, Turning Wheels, Kovács Ferenc, Waltz (The Dying Swan), Meryl Tankard's POSSESSED, Insomnia, Mother, David Byrne and the Balanescu Quartet - Model

Pet Shop Boys - "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk"

Wikipedia - "'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk' is a single by UK electronic music group Pet Shop Boys, released as the third and last single from their album Nightlife in 2000."
Wikipedia
YouTube

Ten Women Who Use Film

Imogen Stidworthy, I Hate, 2007. Installation view, Documenta 2007
"In the summer of 2010, while lecturing on UbuWeb in London, I met Jennifer Higgie, co-editor of Frieze. Jennifer enthusiastically told me that she had been using Ubu extensively in her teaching. As I frequently do when I hear that someone has been engaging deeply with UbuWeb, I asked her how it could be better. She swiftly replied, 'UbuWeb could use more women filmmakers.' She's right. Ubu's film & video collection is based on the historical avant-garde, a genre overwhelmingly male. With the exception of a Marie Menken or Maya Deren -- and then later a Carolee Schneemann or Yvonne Rainer -- it isn't until the 1980s that women filmmakers' numbers increase, and even then, it's far from the norm."
Ubu Web

Reverend Gary Davis

Wikipedia - "Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica. His finger-picking guitar style influenced many other artists and his students in New York included Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Woody Mann, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Winslow, and Ernie Hawkins."
Wikipedia
Reverend Gary Davis
YouTube: Slow Drag / Cincinnati Flow Rag, Death Dont Have No Mercy, Lord, I Feel Just Like Going On, Rev Gary Davis pt 1, pt 2, Hesitation Blues, Two Step, I Am The Light, Cocaine Blues, Cross And Evil Woman Blues, I Heard The Angels Singing

The Historical Box

"'The Historical Box', currently on view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich, is a group exhibition curated by Mara McCarthy, director of The Box, a Los Angeles gallery whose ambitious programme focuses on presenting artists that have previously had little formal recognition in the American art world. The exhibition features sculpture, drawing and photography by influential American artists including John Altoon, Judith Bernstein, Simone Forti, Wally Hedrick, Robert Mallary, Barbara T. Smith and Stan VanDerBeek, and is accompanied by artist talks, performances and film screenings. 'The Historical Box' brings together a collection of works created during some of the most turbulent political and social times in American history."
Hauser & Wirth, Zürich
YouTube: The Historical Box. Curated by Mara McCarthy

Peter Tosh

Wikipedia - "Peter Tosh, born Winston Hubert McIntosh (19 October 1944 – 11 September 1987), was a Jamaican reggae musician who was a core member of the band The Wailers (1963–1974), and who afterwards had a successful solo career as well as being a promoter of Rastafari. Peter Tosh was born in Grange Hill, Jamaica, and was raised by his aunt. He began to sing and learn guitar at an early age, inspired by American radio stations. After a notable career with The Wailers and as a solo musician, he was murdered at his home during a robbery."
Wikipedia
The Talking Drum
amazon
YouTube: The Wailers - You Can't Blame The Youth, Equal Rights, Bush Doctor, Captured,Legalize it, Stepping Razor, Downpressor man, Pick Myself Up, Don't look back (Mick Jagger), Wanted Dread & Alive

Invisible Cities - MASS MoCA

Diana Al-Hadid, Spun of the Limits of My Lonely Waltz, 2006
"Titled after Italo Calvino's beloved book - which imagines Marco Polo's vivid descriptions of numerous cities of a fading empire to Kublai Khan - the exhibition features the work of ten diverse artists who re-imagine urban landscapes both familiar and fantastical. Like Marco Polo's poetic imagery, which leaves the reader wondering if the cities he describes are real or perhaps all different versions of his own Venetian home, the works in the show explore how our perceptions of place are shaped by personal influences as diverse as memory, desire, and loss, as well as by cultural forces such as history and the media."
MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA: Invisible Cities
Diana Al-Hadid

Continuumix #13 – Transwonderland

"Named after Noo Saro Wiwa’s book Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, published by Granta in 2012. Artwork after Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, as reconstituted at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 2011."
Continuo (Video)

Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight

"Over the past several years, Gertrude Stein’s war time record has been subjected to a stream of misinterpretations, distortions, and disinformation in the mainstream press. Most of these articles are written by authors who are hostile to Stein's literary works and who admit to their inability (and unwillingness) to read her work, including the works by Stein that directly address the issue at hand. In this Stein dossier, key documents are provided that refute the sensational tabloid accounts of Stein's activities, views, and affiliations during the war years, when she and Alice B. Toklas lived in Bilignin, France (near Lyon and Geneva). Stein's connection to the Vichy government is complex and these complexities are fully explored in the essays and articles linked here."
Jacket2
Jacket2: Edward Burns, Gertrude Stein: A complex itinerary, 1940-1944


In Which Gertrude Stein And Alice B. Toklas Cuddle To Keep Warm

2007 November: Gertrude Stein
2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons"
2012 March: The Steins Collect

Old Ideas - Leonard Cohen

"Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour. Born in Montreal in 1934 of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cohen was first a modestly successful poet."
Slate: Hallelujah for Leonard Cohen
amazon
YouTube: Show Me The Place, Crazy To Love You, Going Home<, Banjo, Amen

2008 September: Leonard Cohen
2009 November: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen
2011 June: I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen

Underworld - Don DeLillo

Wikipedia - "Underworld is a novel published in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, was a best-seller, and is one of DeLillo's better-known novels. ... Underworld is a non-linear narrative that has many intertwined themes. A central character is Nick Shay, a waste management executive, who leads an undirected existence in late 20th century America. His wife, Marian, is having an affair with one of his friends. The events of the novel span from the 1950s through the 1990s. The characters in the book respond to several historical events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear proliferation."
Wikipedia
amazon
NYT: A Prescient Novel Retains Its Power
Grantland: Director's Cut: Q&A With Don DeLillo


Director's Cut: Underworld by Don DeLillo
"For the 60th anniversary of the Shot Heard 'Round the World, an excerpt from Pafko at the Wall, the prologue to DeLillo's American epic."
2010 October: Pafko at the Wall

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations

"The Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's 'Impossible Interviews' for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Met Museum: Images
Met Museum: Audio and Video
NYT: Dream Dialogue Between Schiaparelli and Prada

From a Secret Location to the White Cube

"... Brion Gysin famously said, 'Writing is fifty years behind painting.' Well, paradoxically the mimeo revolution is in some respects years behind vinyl records, science fiction, and comic books. Case in point, digital documentation. YouTube is just one of the many topics Kugelberg takes on in his book. Go to YouTube and you can find the most obscure garage classic from the 1960s in a variety of sets and settings. This is to say nothing of all the videos of comic book, science fiction, or vinyl collectors obsessively documenting their collections and finds."
Mimeo Mimeo (YouTube)

Hannah Höch - Brushflurlets and Beer Bellies

Anonyme, Hannah Höch et ses poupées, 1920, collection Galerie 1900-2000, Paris.
"Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was born in Gotha. Her father was the director of an insurance company, her mother a hobby painter. Hannah studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Berlin between 1912 and 1915. She finished her studies under Emil Orlik, concentrating on collage techniques. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for the Ullstein publishing house, designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame (The Lady) and Die Praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman)."
Weimar
Sophie Taeuber Arp// Dada Puppets & Surreal Geometry
Hanna Höch “DaDa Dolls” 1916
NGA: DADA - Hannah Höch
DaDa in Zürich
History of Radical Puppetry

2009 April: Hannah Höch

Ritchie Valens

Wikipedia - "Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela; May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959) was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted only eight months. During this time, however, he scored several hits, most notably 'La Bamba', which was originally a Mexican folk song that Valens transformed with a rock rhythm and beat that became a hit in 1958, making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement."
Wikipedia
Ritchie Valens
YouTube: La Bamba, Come on Let's go, Donna, Cry Cry Cry

The Cartoon Crier

"The word 'comic' has always been a bit of a misnomer and The Cartoon Crier hopes to set the record straight. Sorrow and woe is the focus of this free 36-page newspaper tabloid that highlights the work of The National Cartoonists Society members and of The Center for Cartoon Studies’ community."
The Cartoon Crier: Read It and Weep
The Cartoon Crier (Issue 1)

Pedrito Martinez Group

"The Pedrito Martinez Group has its roots planted firmly in the Afro-Cuban Rumba tradition and in the bata rhythms and vocal chants of the music of Yoruba and Santeria. Ben Ratliff summed it up aptly for the New York Times (June 15, 2010) calling it, 'complex, blenderized Africa-to-the-New-World funk.' With its formation in the current lineup in 2008, the group has developed into an extraordinarily tight and creative unit."
Pedrito Martinez Group
YouTube: La Luna, Live at Guantanamera in New York City, Que Palo, Foundation, Richmond Folk Festival 2011

George Bellows

Dempsey and Firpo
Wikipedia - "George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 - January 8, 1925) was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, 'the most acclaimed American artist of his generation'."
Wikipedia
Google
National Gallery: An American Experiment, George Bellows and The Ashcan Painters
NGA

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts

"As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz are publishing a series of notebooks, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, that is comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations. A note is a trace, a word, a drawing that all of a sudden becomes part of thinking, and is transformed into an idea."
dOCUMENTA (13)
Documenta 13: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts
Leftloft