Measure (1957-1962) - John Wieners

"... So impressed with the elder poet, Wieners spent a year at Black Mountain College studying with Olson and Robert Duncan. In 1957, while working with the Poet’s Theater in Cambridge, he edited the first issue of Measure. By 1958 Wieners moved to San Francisco where no. 2 was published. Subtitled 'Magic,' contributors include: Michael Rumaker, Robin Blaser, Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Edward Dorn, Stuart Z. Perkoff, V.R. (Bunny) Lang (one of the founders of the Poet’s Theater in Cambridge), Gregory Corso, James Broughton, Michael McClure, Richard Duerden and Stephen Jonas. By no. 3 (1962), Wieners was back in Milton where he published work by James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Helen Adam, Madeline Gleason, Jack Spicer, Larry Eigner, John Haines and others, including Gerrit Lansing who was living in Gloucester."
Granary Books
Measure 2 (Magic), 1958 edited by John Wieners
[PDF] Measure 2 (1958)
Notebook (John Wieners, Charles Olson, &c.)
Red Lemonade
Jacket 21 - The Hipster of Joy Street

2008 July: John Wieners, 2009 December: John Wieners - 1, 2011 May: John Wieners: June 21, 1959, 2012 May: Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike, 2012 August: John Wieners - 707 Scott Street, 2013 January: Mass: John Wieners.
2012 April: A Secret Location on the Lower East Side.

City of Disappearances

Enrique Metinides, Untitled p36,(1990)
"In a city with a transient population, like San Francisco, it's uncommon to meet someone who has lived here since birth. Populated by foreigners passing through, high-tech commuters, and more dogs than children, the percentage of home-owners is well below the national average. Yet despite an ability to identify such tendencies, cities like San Francisco (or London) remain unstable and elusive, subject to physical as well as ideological shifts and disappearances—whether sudden and violent like an earthquake or gradual like the fading of a memory. The exhibition City of Disappearances dramatizes this shared resemblence of the world's cities by borrowing the title of Iain Sinclair's psycho-geographic 'anthology of absence' written by and about London."
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
e-flux
Guardian: You might become a park
LONDON: CITY OF DISAPPEARANCES

Record Player: Christian Marclay (2000)

"Although the history of musical pillage certainly starts way before the 20th century, the practice of plunderphonics (stealing snippets of pre-recorded sounds, often leaving its sources perfectly recognisable, in order to create something new and normally at odds with its original purposes) arose with the broadening of the aural spectrum brought about by the musique concrète revolution of the 1950s. The fact that it took so long after the invention of the first recording devices to take this decisive step is probably due to the resilience of modern ego-centered concepts of authorship and individuality that, although still prevalent in face of all the contradictory evidence, gradually started weakening after WWII. Inspired by the roads previously paved by concrète musicians and theorists, but also heavily influenced by the worlds of performance art, punk rock and no wave, Christian Marclay was probably the first musician to steal the plunder from the academic domain and to consistently work on the possibilities of disarranging previously ordered sonic artefacts."
UbuWeb (Video)

2008 September: Christian Marclay, 2010 July: Christian Marclay Festival, 2010 October: Night Music, 2011 March: Christian Marclay - Part I: Race to ‘The Clock’, 2011 July: Christian Marclay's Video Quartet, 2011 August: Cyanotype, 2012 July: Fred Frith at Cafe Oto, with Christian Marclay, John Edwards, and Mark Sanders.

Seven Sisters

Carrie Mae Weems, The Edge of Time - Ancient Rome from Roaming, 2006
"... Seven Sisters features ethnically diverse and world-renowned artists’ commentaries on the intersection of ethics, race, culture, and self-expression. Among the hottest young and established artists of today, Seven Sisters includes Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, Rina Banerjee, Patricia Piccinini, Camille Rose Garcia, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Toyin Odutola, and Vanessa Prager."
Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco

Robert Ashley’s opera “The Old Man Lives in Concrete”

"Iconoclast composer Robert Ashley revisits his opera, Concrete, with eight new songs. Each evening’s performance features four solo songs (Portraits) about ordinary people who did extraordinary things for which they’ll never be recognized, alternating with ensemble sections (Meditations) with short solos sung by Ashley (as The Observer)."
Roulette (Video)
vimeo: Roulette TV: ROBERT ASHLEY (Video)

2008 March: Robert Ashley, 2011 November: Perfect Lives - Robert Ashley.

Marcel Dzama

The Revolution’s been defeated, before you begin, 2010.
Wikipedia - "Marcel Dzama (born 1974) is a contemporary artist from Winnipeg, Canada who currently lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally, in particular his ink and watercolor drawings. ... Dzama works extensively in sculpture, painting, collage, and film. The artist is also known for his intricate dioramas and large scale polyptychs that draw from his talents across a range of media. Dzama works in multiple disciplines to bring his cast of human figures, animals, and imaginary hybrids to life, and has developed an international reputation and following for his art that depicts fanciful, anachronistic worlds."
Wikipedia
David Zwirner (Video)
amazon: Marcel Dzama
Guardian - Cult artist Marcel Dzama: 'I try not to censor myself'
Marcel Dzama: The End Game (Video)
NYT: Drawn to Trouble

French Revolution of 1848

Lamartine in front of the Town Hall of Paris rejects the red flag on 25 February 1848, Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux
Wikipedia - "The 1848 Revolution in France, sometimes known as the February Revolution (révolution de Février), was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France the revolutionary events ended the Orleans monarchy (1830–48) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. Following the overthrow of Louis Philippe in February, the elected government of the Second Republic ruled France. In the months that followed, this government steered a course that became more conservative. On 23 June 1848, the people of Paris rose in insurrection, which became known as June Days Uprising - a bloody but unsuccessful rebellion by the Paris workers against a conservative turn in the Republic's course. On 2 December 1848, Louis Napoleon was elected President of the Second Republic, largely on peasant support. Exactly three years later he suspended the elected assembly, establishing the Second French Empire, which lasted until 1871."
Wikipedia
The French revolution of 1848 European history summary France

2012 May: Realism, 2013 March: Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert.

Blank City

"Céline Danhier’s 'Blank City' uses conventional documentary methods — talking-head reminiscences intercut with clips from the archives — to explore the work of a group of aggressively anticonventional artists. This is not a criticism. The movie is about the iconoclastic filmmakers clustered in the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1970s and early ’80s. The chaotic, fast-moving, hazily remembered scene they created deserves and benefits from the scholarly consideration Ms. Danhier offers. A dogged journalist and a careful, enthusiastic cultural historian, she illuminates a hectic and fascinating place and time, bringing it back to life and tracing its continuing influence."
NYT: That ’80s Moment When Nothing and (Almost) Everything Mattered
Roger Ebert
Blank City
vimeo: Blank City trailer

A Promised Exhibition

Mystic Transport, 1992
"The most comprehensive presentation of Gülsün Karamustafa’s works to date, both in Turkey and internationally, A Promised Exhibition is on view at both SALT Beyoğlu and SALT Galata, through January 5, 2014. A long-overdue survey, A Promised Exhibition takes its name from the artist’s series Promised Paintings (1998-2004) and puts in perspective the two disparate yet concurrent aspects of Karamustafa’s artistic career: paintings made with the local audience in mind and a more intrepid experimental practice, which coalesces with this specific series of paintings. The exhibition spans the artist’s entire oeuvre including painting, collage, installation, and video works from the early 1970s to today. Comprising a comprehensive selection of her works, A Promised Exhibition does not unfold in a chronological manner, but rather mimics the spiral movement of the artist’s practice."
SALT
‘A Promised Exhibition’ for Gülsün Karamustafa

Iwan Baan

Urban Think Tank (2010), Caracas, Venezuela
Wikipedia - "Iwan Baan (born February 8, 1975 in Alkmaar) is a Dutch architectural photographer. He has challenged a long-standing tradition of depicting buildings as isolated and static by representing people in architecture and showing the building's environment, trying "to produce more of a story or a feel for a project" and "to communicate how people use the space". He has photographed buildings by many of the world's most prominent architects, including Rem Koolhaas and Toyo Ito."
Wikipedia
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan: Contemporary Architectural Photographs
YouTube: Photographer Iwan Baan | Euromaxx

Calico Mingling - Lucinda Childs (1973)

"Calico Mingling, a 1973 dance by Lucinda Childs that took place outdoors at Robert Moses Plaza in Fordham University, is recorded in a grainy ten-minute black and white film. Seen from a distance, and sometimes from above like chess pieces on a board, four dancers march backward and forward, raising and lowering their arms. In the photos, others performers are sometimes caught frozen in midair, while the slide show is a shifting succession of static photographic objects. ..."
UbuWeb (Video)

2008 June: Lucinda Childs, 2010 January: Einstein on the Beach, 2011 March: Carnation, 2012 February: Choreographic, Lucinda Childs.

Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival

"... An Art Bears 'review' took place in May 2008 at the world premiere of the Art Bears Songbook at the 25th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Quebec. It was performed by Cutler (drums), Frith (guitar, bass guitar, violin, piano), Jewlia Eisenberg (voice), Carla Kihlstedt (violin, voice), Zeena Parkins (keyboards, accordion), Kristin Slipp (voice) and The Norman Conquest (sound manipulation). Krause was unable to participate, so Frith and Cutler decided to rework the trio's repertoire for an expanded group, with the voices of Eisenberg, Slipp and Kihlstedt replacing Krause's 'eccentric and idiomatic delivery'. The project was so-named because Frith and Cutler did not want it to be seen as an Art Bears reunion."
Wikipedia
YouTube: ART BEARS SONGBOOK au RIO 2010, Art Bears Songbook: truth

2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: The Art Box., 2013 July: Coda To "Man & Boy"

JFK November 22, 1963: A Bystander's View of History

"When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, the event and its aftermath were broadcast to a stunned nation through photography and television. Reporters used dramatic spot news photographs by professional photojournalists as well as snapshots by unsuspecting witnesses to explain the events: the shooting of the President, the hunt for the assassin, the swearing in of the new President, the widow's grief, the funeral, the shooting of Oswald. Viewers interpreted these photographs in various ways: to comprehend the shocking news, to negotiate their grief, to attempt to solve the crime. The combination of personal photographs assuming public significance and subjective interpretations of news images disrupted conventional views of photography as fact or evidence."
International Center of Photography
The day JFK was assassinated as seen by bystanders: Rare snapshots from fateful event in Dallas to go on show
11-22-1963: New Evidence

Blind Willie Johnson

Wikipedia - "'Blind' Willie Johnson (January 22, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was a gospel blues singer and guitarist. While the lyrics of his songs were often religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions and is distinguished by his powerful bass thumb-picking and gravelly false-bass voice, with occasional use of a tenor voice. Blind Willie Johnson, according to his death certificate, was born in 1897 near Brenham, Texas, United States (before the discovery of his death certificate, Temple, Texas had been suggested as his birthplace). When he was five, he told his father he wanted to be a preacher and then made himself a cigar box guitar. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried soon after her death."
Wikipedia
Blind Willie Johnson: His Life and Music (Video)
allmusic
Dark Was the Night: The Life and Times of Blind Willie Johnson
YouTube: Trouble will soon be over (1927), Let Your Light Shine On Me, It's Nobody's Fault But Mine, Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed, If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Builing Down

2013 August: "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"

Cinévardaphoto - Agnès Varda (2004)

"... In Cinévardaphoto, a collection of three cinematic essays, Varda includes two shorts, Ulysses, made in 1982, and Salut Les Cubains (1963), with a new short, Ydessa, The Bears and etc., about an exhibit of teddy-bear photos by a Canadian collector. The only obvious link among the three films is that photos provided the inspiration. ... Salut les Cubains is a curiosity, but a delightful one. On a trip to Cuba a few years after the revolution, Varda shot thousands of black-and-white photos which in the short become a celebration of socialism and of the Cuban love of dance and music."
Film Journal International
Cinema Guild Home Entertainment
NYT: The Innocence Is Deceptive in This Teddy Bear World
NYT: Cinevardaphoto (Video)

August 2010: Agnès Varda, May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000).

Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969

"It’s difficult to describe the full impact The Gilded Palace of Sin, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut album, had on me in February 1969, when I came across a promotional copy of the A&M Records album as an 18-year-old college disc jockey. Gram Parsons -- shaggy-haired and draped in a Western suit from Nudie’s of Hollywood festooned with marijuana leaves, pills, and naked women -- squinted out coolly from the record’s cover, looking glamorous, dangerous, and alien, a rock ‘n’ roller with attitude to burn in spangled country mufti."
Amoeba
W - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969
YouTube: Flying Burrito Brothers - Avalon Ballroom 1969 1:10:54

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel.

Art Made from Books: Altered Sculptured, Carved, Transformed

Paper Typerwriter, 2011, by Jennifer Collier 
"Art Made from Books: Altered Sculptured, Carved, Transformed, released this month by Chronicle Books, is a collection of incredibly detailed works by more than 25 artists who use books as their medium. Using a variety of techniques — from carving to stitching — artists transform the bound pages into thought-provoking sculptures. A relatively new art form that was started in the late 1960s by artist Tom Phillips, the finished products often present layers of meaning that speak to the source material as well as the artist's interpretations of the texts."
The Week
amazon

Christian Boltanski

Altar to the Chases High School (Autel Chases), 1987
Wikipedia - "Christian Boltanski (born 1944) is French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker. He is the brother of Luc Boltanski and the partner of Artist Annette Messager. ... In the 1970s, Boltanski started using mainly photography for expressing form, exploration of consciousness, and remembering. After 1976, he started treating photography as painting, making collages of sliced photographs of still nature and everyday life banality in order to reflect collective aesthetic condition of modern civilization in ordinary, stereotypical way. As a departure from his earlier medias, he started using readymade objects. His use of small, colorful figures made from cardboard, thread and cork, transposed photographically into large picture formats, helped him creating effective theatrical compositions. These works encouraged him to start creating kinetic installations."
Wikipedia
MoMA | The Collection
artnet
NYT: Exploring Mortality With Clothes and a Claw
Armory On Park
BOMB: Christian Boltanski by Irene Borger
YouTube: Christian Boltanski at Grand Palais Paris, Théâtre d'ombres, Chance. French Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2011, Possible Lives - Les vies possibles 52:12

Slave Capitalism

"In 1835, at the height of the Southern cotton boom, the master class of the Mississipi Delta region had an attack of its worst phobia: fear of slave rebellion. One slaveholder in the countryside saw some of her slaves acting unusually, seeming defiant, appearing to plot. She began to eavesdrop and overheard one slave fantasize about being 'her own mistress.' In another conversation, she caught the word 'kill.' Her son squeezed a slave for information and drew out details of a coming insurrection. The masters sounded the alarm: patrols were instituted, investigators fanned out, the countryside came alive with tipsters."
n+1: Walter Johnson. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom
NYT: King Cotton’s Long Shadow By Walter Johnson
W - Wage slavery
amazon
YouTube: River of Dark Dreams

CBGB's Final Show With Patti Smith - 15 October 2006

"Legendary punk club CBGB closed five years ago tomorrow. In its final week, the venue hosted a string of shows paying tribute its storied thirty year run, and it all culminated with a headlining set from Patti Smith. There were only a couple hundred people lucky enough to get tickets to that last hurrah, and one of them was me."
RFT
CBGB: Closing Night with Patti Smith Group [uncut#10] (Video)

2009 April: CBGB, 2011 January: CBGB's the roots of punk documentary

Villa that inspired Lawrence Durrell faces demolition, as Egypt allows heritage to crumble

" The term 'faded grandeur' might have been invented for Alexandria. So much of the resort's cosmopolitan elegance has faded that one more crumbling palace in this part of Egypt might not seem to make much difference. But the planned demolition of one particular house, Villa Ambron, though already a tumbledown wreck, has provoked a reaction that may yet save something of the city's unusual heritage just as it seemed about to be buried. With its belle époque architecture, and the Roman columns built into the wall of its purpose-built artists' atelier, the house has distinctive qualities in its own right. But it is as the home and inspiration of Lawrence Durrell, whose Alexandria Quartet preserved in high-flown prose the city's international flavour, that it is now honoured, and is the reason a campaign is growing to save it."
Telegraph
Guardian: Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria – in pictures

2011 December: The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell

Across 110th Street (1972)

Wikipedia - "Across 110th Street is a 1972 American crime drama film starring Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, and Anthony Franciosa, and directed by Barry Shear. Commonly associated with the blaxploitation genre at the time, it has received considerable critical praise from writer Greil Marcus and others for surpassing the limitations of that genre. This film is set in Harlem, of which 110th Street is an informal boundary line. By-the-book African-American Lieutenant William Pope (Kotto) has to work with crude, racist but streetwise Italian-American Captain Frank Mattelli (Quinn) in the NYPD's 27th precinct."
Wikipedia
Discogs
YouTube: Bobby Womack "Across 110th Street", Across 110th St. REMIX, Across 110th Street Instrumental by J. J. Johnson And His Orchestra

Re : Rosas!

"Precisely 30 years ago, dance company Rosas put itself on the map with the production Rosas danst Rosas. This choreography has since been staged all over the world. And now it’s your turn. Dance your own Rosas danst Rosas, make a video film of it and post it on this site. In the following videos choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and dancer Samantha van Wissen will teach you the moves, step by step, from the second part of the performance."
Re : Rosas
Re : Rosas! (Video)

2009 July: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, 2012 December: Rosas Danst Rosas (1983).

Lost to the Ages. 20th Anniversary

"... You are standing on a dock beside the jutting masts and crow's nest of a sunken ship, water lapping calmly under your feet. A hill rises in front of you, with what appear to be two giant gears perched atop it, and a short concrete staircase curves up the side. To the left, you see a Greek-looking dome structure made of marble, and, as you turn 360 degrees to see your surroundings, there's not a soul in sight. You take a step forward. And another step. Everything is disarmingly still, save for a pair of seagulls flying overhead in the hazy marine layer. You make your way up to a walkway running parallel to the water and see a path constructed of what looks to be railroad ties leading up past the dome and toward another classical edifice. Lying to the side of the path is a weathered piece of paper. You pick it up."
Grantland

2010 December: Myst, Riven

5th Biennale Opens Main Exhibit, 'More Light'

Chinese artist Song Dong
"The Fifth Moscow Biennale will open its long-awaited main exhibit, 'More Light,' in Moscow's Manezh on Friday. With works from nearly 100 artists from six continents, the exhibit fills the immense space of Manezh with a wealth of art, much of it large installations, built around the theme of 'More Light.' ... The exhibit is clearly divided into two sections on separate floors of Manezh. The lower, 'dark' level is dominated by video projections, as well as some large hanging installations which stand in pools of warm light, starkly contrasting with their murky surroundings in Manezh's basement."
5th Biennale Opens Main Exhibit
Anna Tolstova - 5th Biennale Opens Main Exhibit, 'More Light'
NYT: Pinpricks, but No Dagger in Putinland
“More Light,” 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

Buffalo Skinners - Woody Guthrie

Still-hunting Buffaloes on the Range: from a painting by J. H. Moser
"Come all you jolly skinners, and listen to my song,
There are not many verses, it will not detain you long:
It's concerning some young fellows who did agree to go
and spend one summer pleasantly of the range of the buffalo."
Woody Guthrie
Bob Dylan: Trail of The Buffalo - traditional (Video)
YouTube: Buffalo Skinners - Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston

Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Wieder Offen (2007)

"If Einsturzende Neubauten's 2007 effort Alles Wieder Offen ('All Open Again') seems to be more of a follow-up to 2000s Silence Is Sexy than 2004's Perpetuum Mobile, it could be because it delivers on EN's 2002 dream of a listener-supported official album. Mobile appeared on the band's usual home label Mute so a tour could be financed. Even if it was hardly a throwaway album, the group's hunger for progress seemed undercut by the use of air horn blasts, metal crashes, and other devices that referenced the sound that made early Neubauten so infamous. Alles, on the other hand, was paid for by 'supporters' who received interim recordings and an expanded final product different from the general release with bonus tracks and a DVD. ..."
allmusic
W - Alles Wieder Offen
Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Wieder Offen
YouTube: Nagorny Karabach, Alles was irgendwie nützt, Die Wellen, Weil Weil Weil, Ich hatte ein Wort, Ich Warte

2010 September: Einstürzende Neubauten, 2012 September: Imaginary Sounds Feature

Little Syria

Harper's Weekly Aug. 10, 1895
"'When one leaves the hurry and roar of lower Broadway and walks southward through narrow Washington-st., the average New-Yorker of Caucasian descent might easily believe he was in the Orient. A block to the east roar the trains of the elevated. A little further eastward are the rushing throngs of Broadway. In the midst of all this tumult and confusion is situated the quiet village of Ahl-esh-Shemal.' And so, in 1903, the New-York Tribune endeavors to take its readers into Little Syria. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Little Syria, Manhattan
Saudi Aramco World : Little Syria, NY
Little Syria, NY: The Life & Legacy of an Immigrant Community
Helene Wecker
NYT - A Brief Encore for Little Syria: Sights, Sounds and Even Smells
NPR: Trying To Preserve What's Left Of Manhattan's Little Syria (Video)
BBC: Preserving New York City's 'Little Syria' (Video)
YouTube: Little Syria @ Washington Street, Manhattan, New York City

Sensitive Geometries. Brazil 1950s – 1980s

Anna Maria Maiolino — Capítulo II, from Mapas Mentais series, 1976
"In the years after World War II, Brazil found itself in a state of dramatic change. Economic prosperity, political democratization, and social reorganization marked the decade of the 1950s as one of the most expansive in Brazilian history. In the cultural realm, urban renewal propelled the construction of Brasilia and witnessed the creation of modern art museums in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The first São Paulo Biennale was held in 1951, signaling the advent of an artistic revolution that would capture the attention of both the Brazilian public and wider circles of artists, intellectuals, and critics abroad. Brazil in the mid-20th century was emerging as a dynamic cultural center of international significance."
Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth - 1

Horace Andy Meets Naggo Morris/Wayne Jarrett -- Mini Showcase (2002)

"This intriguing reissue (packaged to look like a vintage Jamaican dub plate) brings together two samplers of 12" singles from Lloyd 'Bullwackie' Barnes' New York-based Wackies label, both of which were originally released in 1983. The first sampler (originally called Wayne Jarrett-Mini Showcase) features five tracks by Wayne Jarrett, along with dubs of three of the songs, while the second (originally entitled Horace Andy Meets Naggo Morris) offers two songs each (and their corresponding dubs) from Horace Andy and Naggo Morris."
allmusic
YouTube: Satta Dread, Bubble Up, Magic in the air, Brimstone & Fire, Every Tongue Shall tell, Holy Mount Zion