The Black Island - The Adventures of Tintin (1937)

Wikipedia - "The Black Island (French: L'Île noire) is the seventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island. The Black Island was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion. ..."
Wikipedia
History of The Black Island
The Black Island
amazon
YouTube: The Black Island 40:15

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy

Friday Night Jazz

"Reuben takes you on a new adventure every Friday night, exploring the great American invention called jazz.  You’ll explore the back roads and alleys of the genre, the musicians and standards you love, and experience that essential element of surprise.  Reuben also shares his in-depth knowledge of the stories behind the music. And for jazz 24/7, listen to VPR Jazz 24."
VPR
VPR: Introducing Friday Night Jazz With Reuben Jackson

Charles Simonds

Dwelling, 1975. Rue des Cascades, Paris
"Since 1970 Simonds has created Dwelling places for an imaginary civilization of “Little People” who are migrating through the streets of neighborhoods in cities throughout the world; New York, Paris, Shanghai, Berlin, London, Dublin, among others. Each Dwelling is a different time and place in the history of the lives of Little People, a chronology of some of the Dwellings that have been photographed is available below."
Charles Simonds: Dwelling
Charles Simonds (Video)
BOMB: Charles Simonds's Absence
The legends of Charles Simonds
YouTube: Dwellings 1972

How Afropunk Became a Full-Blown Movement

"... And then a news anchor cut in, and the camera panned away. 'I thought that was punk rock,' says Hanif Abdurraqib, a 32-year-old poet and, most recently, the essayist behind Pitchfork's 'I Wasn't Brought Here, I Was Born: Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough To Find Afropunk.' 'I think Janelle Monáe is wholly punk rock.'Anyone associated with the Afropunk festival, where Monáe has performed three times, would agree. This weekend, the black-centric fest will celebrate its eleventh year in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood, proving that it's not a blip, but a movement — one that's needed more than ever before. ..."
racked
Afro Punk Fest (Video)
Untitled (An Oral History of D'Angelo)
Pitchfork: I Wasn't Brought Here, I Was Born: Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough To Find Afropunk

2014 September: Afropunk Before Afropunk

Jimmy Witherspoon ‎– Hey Mr. Landlord

"... This satisfying collection covers the early part of the great blues singer's career from his mid-forties, Philo and Mercury days through his tenures at Modern and Chess in the early '50s. The 17 rare cuts have been nicely remastered and feature Witherspoon backed by the Jay McShann Band and other, unknown personnel on blues, jazz, and jump blues cuts. Being equally at home in all these idioms, Witherspoon is commanding on everything from ballads like 'Strange Woman Blues' to the gospel revival novelty 'Practice What You Preach.' He also eats up the big-band swing number 'Geneva Blues' and makes decent work of rock & roll cuts like 'My Girl Ivy.' Witherspoon is at his best, though, on driving blues swingers like 'Big Daddy,' 'Why Do I Love You Like I Do,' and 'Daddy Pinocchio.' A fine collection that compliments both his other early collections and the comeback recordings he made for Prestige in the early '60s."
allmusic
Discogs
YouTube: Hey Mr. Landlord, Cain river blues, Shipyard Woman Blues, I want a little girl, Confessin' the blues, All my geets are gone, Hard Working Man´s Blues, Strange Woman Blues, Third floor blues, Wee Baby Blues, Big Daddy, Daddy Pinocchio, My Girl Ivy

Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (1972)

"Despite an absence of the band's best-known songs, the sweaty, grimy Exile on Main St. has grown into the Rolling Stones' most universally acclaimed record. Despite dozens of hits, putting together a cohesive album often seemed to be beyond the Stones, tripped up by either manager Allen Klein's publishing-rights parasitism or the band's 1970s hubris. That leaves a catalog in which only Exile is built not on hits but on vibe and: the album's singularly sleazy sound and making-of legend. To create Exile, the band escaped Britain as tax exiles, decamping to a French villa. Paradoxically, the posh surroundings created the band's rawest effort. They were a heroin-ragged band, jamming late into the night with calloused fingers and vocal cords in a stale basement with sweaty walls. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Exile on Main St
Keith Richards Discusses the Making of The Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main St.'
NY Times: Revisiting ‘Main St.,’ Rethinking the Myth
YouTube: Exile On Main Street (Full Deluxe Album) 1:48:25

FAILE “Wishing On You” At The Flashy Crossroads of NYC

"A folk-art pagoda sitting quietly in the basin of a valley richocheting with electronic propaganda and consumption worship, the newest public piece by Brooklyn’s street art duo FAILE has a few mysteries to reveal to the river of tourists flowing around it and through it. You may need a place to pray in this land of fake Muppets, Three Card Monte and thong-strung patriotic painted ladies. 'Wishing On You' draws on European, Asian, and American forms and culture, a tribute to traditions, myths, and big screen adventure. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88

"Between 1975 and 1988 New York City spawned an incredible and wild array of artistic communities that overlapped and interbred with scant heed for generic 'purity' (let alone posterity): every musician, it seemed, was also an artist, every artist a filmmaker and every filmmaker was in a band. These heady years saw the births of Punk at CBGB and Max's Kansas City, of Hip Hop in the Bronx, the emerging art music activities of Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson, Free Jazz and the No Wave art/rock scene around James Chance, Lydia Lunch and Mars. New York Noise is Paula Court's photographic tour of these colliding worlds. From her arrival in New York City in 1978, Court diligently photographed the likes of Glenn Branca, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Byrne, Rhys Chatham, Lou Reed, James Chance, Patti Smith, Afrika Bambaata, John Cage, Robert Longo, Jim Jarmusch, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, as well as bands like DNA, Suicide, Bush Tetras, ESG and the Rock Steady Crew. ..."
artbook
Guardian - New York Noise: The underground in pictures

Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968

"At the end of the Civil Rights Movement, the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, an exhibition that sought to explore the history and value of the predominantly Black community of Harlem, New York. In organizing one of the most controversial exhibitions in United States history, the Metropolitan decided to exclude Harlemites from participating in the exhibition planning and to exclude artwork by Harlem’s thriving artist community from the exhibition. ... This article details the struggles of Harlem-based artists to confront and challenge the unethical machinations of the institutional epicenter of the postwar international art world. This discussion addresses the critical appropriations of the event forged by black visual artists, photographers, and visitors who brought a competing set of political and emotional investments in the documentary works on display. ..."
American Studies
[PDF] Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1969)
NY Times: What I Learned From a Disgraced Art Show on Harlem

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Moanin' (1958)

"Moanin' includes some of the greatest music Blakey produced in the studio with arguably his very best band. There are three tracks that are immortal and will always stand the test of time. The title selection is a pure tuneful melody stewed in a bluesy shuffle penned by pianist Bobby Timmons, while tenor saxophonist Benny Golson's classy, slowed 'Along Came Betty' and the static, militaristic 'Blues March' will always have a home in the repertoire of every student or professional jazz band. 'Are You Real?' has the most subtle of melody lines, and 'Drum Thunder Suite' has Blakey's quick blasting tom-tom-based rudiments reigning on high as the horns sigh, leading to hard bop. 'Come Rain or Come Shine' is the piece that commands the most attention, a highly modified, lilting arrangement where the accompanying staggered, staccato rhythms contrast the light-hearted refrains. Certainly a complete and wholly satisfying album, Moanin' ranks with the very best of Blakey and what modern jazz offered in the late '50s and beyond."
allmusic
W - Moanin'
All About Jazz
YouTube: Moanin' (Live)
YouTube: Moanin' (Full Album)

Parliament - Chocolate City (1975)

"Parliament's second album for Casablanca, following Up for the Down Stroke (1974), Chocolate City isn't one of the group's better-known albums. Unlike its predecessor and successive albums such as Mothership Connection (1976), it lacks a signature hit; even though the title track and 'Ride On' charted as singles, they're minor in comparison to definitive classics such as 'Up for the Down Stroke' and 'Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).' Though it's not one of the better-known Parliament albums, Chocolate City is nonetheless one of their best and perhaps most underrated. There's a wealth of musical talent to be heard here -- most notably Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, and Eddie Hazel -- and an emphasis on horns and harmony vocals. Plus, there's no overarching narrative as there would be on successive albums, occasionally to a fault. Instead, this is a collection of stand-alone songs, none topping the six-minute mark. Regardless of its lack of signature hits, Chocolate City is a Parliament album that shouldn't be overlooked."
allmusic
W - Chocolate City
YouTube: Chocolate City (Full)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums.

Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the Middle East

Shirin Neshat (Iran, Qazvin, United States, New York City, born 1957), Speechless, 1996
"In recent years, the parameters of Islamic art have expanded to include contemporary works by artists from or with roots in the Middle East. Drawing inspiration from their own cultural traditions, these artists use techniques and incorporate imagery and ideas from earlier periods. LACMA has only recently begun to acquire such work within the context of its holdings of Islamic art, understanding that the ultimate success and relevance of this collection lies in building creative links between the past, present, and future. Islamic Art Now marks the first major installation of LACMA’s collection of contemporary art of the Middle East. As the first of a two-part program, this exhibition features approximately 25 works by artists from Iran and the Arab world, including Shirin Neshat, Susan Hefuna, Lalla Essaydi, Mitra Tabrizian, Mona Hatoum, Hassan Hajjaj, Wafaa Bilal, Barbad Golshiri, and Youssef Nabil, among others."
LACMA
LACMA - Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the Middle East
Islamic Art Now
NPR: At LA Museum, A Powerful And Provocative Look At 'Islamic Art Now' (Video)

Burning Spear - Man In The Hills / Dry & Heavy (1976)

"Coming after the highly acclaimed Marcus Garvey (1975), Burning Spear's fourth album, Man in the Hills (1976), had a lot to live up to. It is generally conceded that they did not craft an equally impressive follow-up, but Man in the Hills has its charms nevertheless. Lead singer and main songwriter Winston Rodney turns back to reflections on his rural Jamaican childhood for many of the lyrics, which gives the album a gentler, more nostalgic message than the political, exhortative Marcus Garvey. Rodney's tenor is well suited to the sentiments, and the all-star band assembled to back him is supportive and, especially in the horn charts, complementary to the lead voice. The demands of recording schedules may have caused Burning Spear to recast earlier songs, but that contributes to the album's theme of looking back. ..."
allmusic
W - Man in the Hills (1976), W - Dry & Heavy (1976)
popmatters
amazon
YouTube: Man In The Hills ~ Live 1981, I W.I.N., It's A Long Way Around, Dry and Heavy, Groovy, People Get Ready

2009 June: Burning Spear, 2010 October: Marcus Garvey / Garvey's Ghost, 2012 March: Burning Spear 1981 - Markthalle Hamburg, 2012 December: Hail H.I.M.

On The Road Again ...

"APRIL 14. Biloxi, Mississippi. The Coast Bar/Restaurant at the Beau Rivage Casino. TECHNO THURSDAY doesn't drop for another two days, which means the packed crowd inside the casino bar tonight is here for only one reason: Biloxi's first official event of the Shuckers' inaugural season as the Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. But there's a catch. Tonight's event will serve as both a meet-and-greet and a bon voyage. After relocating from Huntsville, Alabama, at the end of last season, the team faced a string of political, financial and environmental snafus, all of which delayed the opening of the Shuckers' new stadium. In fact, right now the ballpark is little more than a shell, with no seats or grass, and center field is submerged in swampy rainwater. ..."
ESPN

The Muse of Place and Time: An Interview with William Christenberry (2004-2005)

"RH: Describe your family background in Tuscaloosa, and its impact on your work. WC: It has been said that I was born in Hale County, but I was actually born in the city of Tuscaloosa, which is just a few miles north. My grandparents on both sides, the Smith Family and the Christenberry Family, were farming families in Hale County. It was made, however you want to look at it, famous or infamous, in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [1939], which is a coincidence since James Agee and Walker Evans were there in the summer of 1936 putting that work together. I was born in November 1936, so I tell people that I didn’t meet them [laughter]. I was born and raised in Tuscaloosa, went to high school there, and to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. My summer forays past and present into Hale County are constant. Since the early 1960s that’s the only time of year and about the only place I make photographs. My earliest color snapshot is from 1960. ..."
American Suburb X
Southern Spaces: Place, Time, and Memory (Video)

Underground New York Public Library

“Black Spring,” by Henry Miller
"The Underground New York Public Library is a photo series featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways. The photos come together as a visual library. This library freely lends out a reminder that we’re capable of traveling to great depths within ourselves and as a whole. I’m Ourit Ben-Haim. I make the pictures and the posts. I’m fascinated by how we apply ourselves to stories and discourse. In so doing, we shape who we understand ourselves to be."
Underground New York Public Library

Songs of the Spanish Civil War

"Songs of the Spanish Civil War rekindles the hymnal of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, more than 2,600 American volunteers who fought General Francisco Franco and his fellow fascists from Italy and Nazi Germany to defend the popularly elected Spanish Republic during the 1936-1939 conflict. These songs, recorded around the time of the war’s end and later reissued in the 1960s by Folkways Records, still inspire supporters of democratic causes around the world. Singers include Pete Seeger, Tom Glazer, Butch and Bess Hawes, Woody Guthrie, Ernst Busch, and Bart van der Schelling."
Smithsonian Institution
Revisiting the Timeless Tracks of the Spanish Civil War (Video)

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2013 January: The Real George Orwell

Clifford Ross: Landscape Seen & Imagined

A test print of the augmented-reality work. Summer, shot in his Red Hook, Brooklyn studio.
"In this major mid-career museum survey, Landscape Seen & Imagined documents Clifford Ross’s longstanding project to reconcile realism and abstraction. The exhibition takes place throughout two buildings, six galleries, and an exterior performing arts courtyard. Among other works, the exhibition includes a 24’ high x 114’ long photograph on raw wood that spans the length of MASS MoCA’s tallest gallery and an immersive installation of animated video on twelve separate 24’ high screens. Ross’s hyper-detailed photographs of hurricane waves and mountains are included along with a new 'invisible art' project featuring animated virtual elements only accessible by means of the viewer’s smartphone. ..."
MASS MoMA
Clifford Ross
Steven Kasher Gallery
NY Times: Clifford Ross’s Wave Mechanics

Billy Bragg - Workers Playtime (1987)

"By the time Billy Bragg began recording Workers Playtime in the fall of 1987, he'd gone from a rabble-rousing leftist songwriter and D.I.Y. one-man punk band to a bona fide pop star in the U.K., and had won a sizable cult following (and a major-label recording contract) in the United States. In addition, Bragg had begun expanding the stark sound of his early recordings on his 1986 album Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, and the sessions for Workers Playtime found Bragg and producer Joe Boyd building actual arrangements around his tunes as he struggled to balance a broader and more eclectic musical approach with the small-p politics that were his stock in trade. ..."
allmusic
W - Workers Playtime
Spotify
YouTube: Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards (1988)
YouTube: billy bragg - the short answer, The Only One, Waiting For The Great Leap Forward, The Price I Pay

2011 November: Billy Bragg, 2012 November: Strange Things Happen (Live on The Tube 1984), 2012 December: The Internationale, 2013 May: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, 2014 June: Tooth & Nail (2013), 2014 September: Peel Session, 2014 December: Don't Try This at Home (1991), 2015 April: Between the Wars EP (1985).

Gasoline - A Journey Into Abstract Hip-Hop (1998)

Wikipedia - "Gasoline est un groupe de musique français créé en 1998 par Yoann l'agence. Le style musical de Gasoline, relevant de l'abstract hip-hop et du hip-hop est caractérisé par des ambiances cinématographiques tirées de films noirs et de films de rue. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Gasoline - A Journey Into Abstract Hip-Hop [Full album] 1:05:05

Sanctuary of Ruin: Touring Western Australia's Piano

"Legend has it that when an elephant becomes aware its own death is imminent, it leaves the herd and travels alone to a final resting place known by instinct, an arched cathedral of bleached bones and ivory known as the elephant graveyard. Here all past elephants have converged, creating a reverent repository of sorts. The graveyard is thought apocryphal but some facets of the myth ring true: elephants do venerate the bones of their dead, especially the ivory, carrying the tusks about or gently rolling them back and forth beneath their sensitive feet. And elephant remains are often found en masse; perhaps due to ivory-poaching massacres or the tendency of older elephants to congregate around waterholes where plants are soft on the palate. The myth conjures a mysterious place, heavy with memory and metaphor, where one might ruminate on lost things, the majesty of life, and the inevitability of ruin. And on treasure. ..."
Terrain

Blind Willie McTell

Wikipedia - "Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was a Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Delta bluesmen, such as Charley Patton. McTell embodied a variety of musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music and hokum. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
amazon: Blind Willie McTell
American Music
YouTube: You Was Born To Die, Statesboro Blues, Southern Can Is Mine, Lord, Send Me An Angel, Searching The Desert For The Blues, Dying Crapshooters Blues, Broke Down Engine, Delia, Lay Some Flowers On My Grave, Mama, 'Tain't Long Fo' Day, Writin' Paper Blues, Low Rider's Blues, Drive Away Blues
YouTube: Blind Willie McTell talking about his life and the blues
YouTube: Georgia Blues: Blind Willie McTell 56:45

The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society (1968)

"It takes a Village Green Preservation Society to love The Kinks. The problem facing The Kinks when they released The Village Green Preservation Society in late November 1968 wasn't merely the competition-- Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin's debut, and the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet offered plenty-- but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. ... Critics praised the album, the public ignored it, and Davies-- surveying the scene-- asserted that it wasn't created for public consumption. Intentions aside, The Kinks simply moved on, leaving small knots of fans to pledge secret allegiance to Village Green. However, as years passed and the weather changed, its following grew, and finally, one day, the verdict reversed and the album was touted as a masterpiece. Ironically, it might have happened sooner had the band not been so prolific up through the late 80s. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Village Green Preservation Society
allmusic
Dusting ‘Em Off: The Kinks – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
Esquire: The Best Rock Album You've Never Heard
Spotify
YouTube: Village Green Preservation Society, Last Of The Steam Powered Trains / Picture Book, Picture Book
YouTube: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society - Full Album
YouTube: JoshMan4492 / Village Green Preservation Society

2012 February: The Kinks, 2013 July: "Sunny Afternoon"

Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter

From Book of Ruth
"The art of Robert Seydel (1960–2011) is a rare hybrid species of the visual and literary that dissolves boundaries between the lyrical and the narrative and the acts of reading and looking. In a body of work marked by an unrelenting sense of play, Seydel collapses the historical past with the notated, emotional present and mingles actual personages with fictional characters. Much of his work is made under the auspices of various personas in place of the singular first person perspective. Beginning in 2000, Seydel created this series of works using the alter ego Ruth Greisman, a resident of Queens, New York, who was inspired by his aunt of the same name. 'Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter' features a definitive selection from this fictional archive with a selection of Ruth’s 'journal pages' and almost one hundred collages (many previously unpublished and unexhibited), and Seydel’s notebooks, open to pages that reveal glimpses of the process of making this visionary body of work. ..."
Queens Museum
[PDF] Download the brochure.
NY Times - Review: ‘Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter’ Looks at an Artist’s Traces
Two Works by Robert Seydel
Tupelo Quarterly

The Slits - Return Of The Giant Slits 2CD (1981/2007)

"The full, original 1981 Return of the Giant Slits album + a bonus CD that features ALL the archived dub versions and an American radio interview conducted at the time that was subsequently used by CBS for an ultra-rare promo disc. Including new cover art and two of the classic photos by Anton Corbijn from the NME magazine cover session. The 1981 second and final Slits studio album features the same line-up as their first album, Cut: Ari Up, Tessa Pollit and Viv Albertine. This record has often been overshadowed by their more controversial 1979 debut. It represents their natural development as artistes by focusing more on their interests in dub and 'world music' sound eclecticism (featuring Steve Beresford and ex-Pop Group drummer, Bruce Smith) that is well suited to their, by then, more accomplished playing style. Perhaps, in retrospect, the Jamaican half-sister to The Raincoats recordings. A 'lost' gem, ripe for reappraisal, of this still vastly influential and important group, in both musical and sociological terms."
Forced Exposure
W - Return of the Giant Slits
Pitchfork
YouTube: Return Of the Giant Slits 2CD (Full Album), Return Of the Giant Slits(Full Album)

2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980

¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography

"Burt Glinn was at a New Year’s Eve party in New York in 1958 when he heard that Fidel Castro’s rebel army had ousted president Batista from power in Cuba. Using money he borrowed from fellow photographer Cornell Capa, he hot-footed it to Miami just in time to catch the last commercial flight to Havana, where he immediately immersed himself in the chaotic scenes of street-fighting around the presidential palace. Glinn’s on-the-ground photography is a potent reminder of the reality of this revolution that would soon be romanticised in shots that showed Castro and Che Guevara as triumphant heroes, all but erasing the inevitable violence of their guerrilla struggle and its aftermath. ..."
Guardian: This is the real Cuba: a timeline of gripping photography since the 50s
Guardian: 'Take me to Fidel!' 65 years of revolutionary Cuban photography – in pictures
ICP

365 Parisians

#199 — She was talking on the telephone from the empty alley
"Paris is one of the best cities in the world to enjoy a long walk. The neighborhoods each have their own unique vibe, one completely different from the next. The area's residents seem to build up distinctive personalities, somehow related with their arrondissement's character. At once, Paris is a collection of villages and an amazing melting pot of culture and art. When you take a walk in Paris, most of the time you're surrounded by people. Some of them have appearances that look familiar, but they're all strangers. You will never know where are they going, where they work, what they think. Observing people has long been one of my passions; photography another. To combine them, I decided to take one street portrait, each day, of a random Parisian stranger until I reached 365 pictures. ... - Constantin Mashinskiy, Alexander Strecker"
lensculture (Photo)
365 Parisians
365 Parisians by  Constantin Mashinskiy
Interview with photographer Constantin Mashinskiy – creator of the 365 Parisiens project
vimeo: Film 05 | 365 Parisiens, avec Constantin Mashinskiy

Raymond Roussel - Galerie Buchholz

"Galerie Buchholz is pleased to announce the opening of its New York gallery with an inaugural exhibition on Raymond Roussel. Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), the author of La Doublure (1897), La Vue (1904), Impressions d’Afrique (1909) and Locus Solus (1913), is still one of the least-known and most mysterious writers of the 20th century, despite the fact that his profound and often subterranean influence spread far among the literary and artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century. In the ten works he published during his lifetime—poems, novels in verse, narratives or plays—he made supreme efforts to create a world from scratch where 'imagination is everything', with nothing real to get in the way of the writing. ..."
MOUSSE
Daniel Buchholz Opens in New York, Celebrating the Elusive Raymond Roussel
Galerie Buchholz

2009 September: Raymond Roussel, 2012 January: The Tropological Space of Locus Solus

Nicolas Jaar Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeover

"Nicolas Jaar was born in New York, but mostly raised in Santiago De Chile. He started to get serious about combining his influences from Villalobos to Mulatu Astatke, oscillating between the analog and the digital. He didn’t stop there, though, first crafting a live show built around keyboards, synths and his own singing that already endeared him to the indie crowd as well. From there he went on to pull a live band together, adding drums, saxophone, guitar and further keys and electronics to the mix, taking his tracks further into the unknown. From clubs to festival stages, Jaar has found his place right at the fragile space that lives within the heart, body and spirit of music. A beautiful mind: Electronic music wonderboy Nicolas Jaar takes his blissed-out house runnings to RBMA’s Boiler Room takeover in NYC, along side his label mates at Clown & Sunset, this was a night to remember!!!"
YouTube: Nicolas Jaar Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeover
Soundcloud

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar, 2014 January: Other People, 2015 May: Nicolas Jaar Soundtracks Short Film About Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter, 2015 July: Space Is Only Noise (2010)

The Cup Of Coffee Club: The Ballplayers Who Got Only One Game

"Of the 17,808 players (and counting) who’ve run up the dugout steps and onto a Major League field, only 974 have had one-game careers. In baseball parlance, these single-gamers are known as 'Cup of Coffee' players. The number fluctuates slightly throughout each season as new prospects get called up to fill in for injured veterans, or when roster size expands in September. (Last year, for example, Braves rookie Julio Teheran was a Cup of Coffee player for the eleven days between his MLB debut and a spot start.) But staying on the list for an extended period of time is generally not a good sign. It’s an ominous one, an indication that something’s gone horribly wrong, that however long a person has worked to attain his dreams, all he was allowed was a brief glimpse before the curtain was yanked shut in front of him. The Cup of Coffee club is filled exclusively with people who do not want to be members. ..."
The Awl

Politically and Socially Conscious NYC Street Art, Part II: Caleb Neelon & Katie Yamasaki, Shepard Fairey, Kesley Montague, Icy & Sot, Chris Stain & Josh MacPhee, David Shillinglaw & Lily Mixe

Shepard Fairey Street Art Coney Art Walls
"This is Part II in an ongoing series of posts featuring politically and socially conscious works that have surfaced on NYC streets."
NYC Street Art

Taxi To The Front – The First Battle of the Marne I THE GREAT WAR - Week 7

"The German Army is so close to Paris that French soldiers are brought to the front by taxis. Together with the British Expeditionary Forces, the French are fighting the German advance near the Marne river. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian army is retreating to the Carpathian Mountains after a catastrophic defeat against Russia with hundreds of thousands of casualties."
YouTube: Taxi To The Front – The First Battle of the Marne

2014 December: The Great War: WWI Starts - How Europe Spiraled Into the Great War - Week 1, Europe Prior to WWI: Allies and Enemies I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 1/3, Tinderbox Europe - From Balkan Troubles to WWI I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 2/3, A Shot that Changed the World - The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 3/3, 2015 January: Germany in Two-Front War and the Schlieffen-Plan I - Week 2, 2015 March: To Arms! Deployment of Troops - Week 3, 2015 March:A New War With Old Generals – Carnage on the Western Front - Week 4, 2015 April: The Rape of Belgium – War Crimes in the Summer of 1914 - Week 5, 2015 May: Plans Are Doomed to Fail - The Battle of Galicia I Week 6.

New York Public Library

General Research Division
Wikipedia - "The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress), and fourth largest in the world. It is an independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing. The library has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island, and affiliations with academic and professional libraries in the metropolitan area of New York State. The City of New York's other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are served by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library, respectively. The branch libraries are open to the general public and consist of research libraries and circulating libraries. The library was developed in the 19th century, founded from an amalgamation of grass-roots libraries, and social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, aided by the philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age. ..."
Wikipedia
New York Public Library
NYPL: Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Vanity Fair: Firestorm on Fifth Avenue
n+1: Lions in Winter
The New York Public Library: NYPL Making Headlines 2014 (Vidio)

George Bellows - Men of the Docks (1912)

"Men of the Docks is an oil painting on canvas completed by the American artist George Bellows in 1912. ... It depicts a group of men, wearing overcoats smeared in grime, standing at a dock in Brooklyn together with some draft horses. These men appear to be day laborers, at the docks to find work. They look to the left, as if receiving a message, while a large steam liner looms over them to their right. Behind them are a tugboat and the waters and ice floes of the harbor in winter. Further behind them are the skyscrapers of the lower Manhattan skyline. The winter weather about them is bleak and gray. ..."
Wikipedia
H.V. Allison
Samuel van der Swaagh
Guardian

Dexter Gordon - Ballads

"Along with Gene Ammons and Stanley Turrentine, Dexter Gordon was one of the top ballad players of the '60s. Having already made his name in the bebop era and as an expatriate in Europe, Gordon returned to the States to record a series of fine Blue Note discs during the first half of the decade. This edition of the label's Ballads series features Gordon at his peak and in the company of some of hard bop's best players. Whether melding nicely with trumpeter Donald Byrd from a Paris date in 1964 ('Darn That Dream') or locking in with the stellar rhythm section of Sonny Clark, Butch Warren, and Billy Higgins ('Don't Explain'), Gordon delivers his almost sleepy and smoke-filled solos with regal grace. The same can also be said of the rest of this incredible program, including a latter-day live cut from 1978. A perfect set for those in need of a provocative after-hours session in front of the stereo."
allmusic
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Ballads 1:03:22

2014 April: Night in Tunisia, Whats new, Blues Walk (Holland, 1964), 2015 May: Our Man in Paris (1963)

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips (1970)

"... A Humument is a strange, beguiling work, which [Tom] Phillips found within W.H. Mallock’s long-forgotten novel. A Human Document opens: ‘The following work, though it has the form of a novel, yet for certain singular reasons hardly deserves the name.’ Phillips obscures most of the first page with a blue and orange arrow, leaving a few scattered words that cohere into a version of the opening of Virgil’s Aeneid (‘I sing of arms and of a man’): ‘I sing a book of the art that was/now read on/of mind art/though I have to hide to reveal.’ He treats each page of Mallock’s novel in this way, effacing most of the text, generally by painting, occasionally by cutting, slicing, or even in one instance burning the page, to leave an alternative narrative. Phillips’s revealed story was in one sense always there in Mallock, just lost amid the torrent of other text. This is authorship as pruning, a process of erasure or cutting away that finds in the buttoned-up A Human Document a teeming world of humour, sex, sadness and art that would have baffled and shocked the conservative Mallock. ..."
London Review of Books: Double Act - Adam Smyth
W - A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel
Tom Phillips: Humument Slideshow 1-50
Tom Phillips: Essays
A Humument - ask
[PDF] TOM PHILLIPS A HUMUMENT - The Tactile Word
amazon

2010 October: Tom Phillips, 2011 October: A TV Dante by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway, 2013 September: Art Made from Books: Altered Sculptured, Carved, Transformed

Plan for the Perseids!

"People are asking about this year's Perseid meteors, so here's the scoop. The Perseids should peak late on the night of August 12–13, 2015, and observing conditions this year will be excellent (weather permitting!). No moonlight will brighten the sky. Furthermore, the shower’s exact peak is predicted to run for several hours centered on 4 a.m. August 13th Eastern Daylight Time (1 a.m. PDT; 8h Universal Time). This coincides perfectly with the best meteor-watching hours — from late evening to the first light of dawn — in the time zones of North America."
Sky & Telescope
Sky & Telescope - August’s Perseid Meteors: A “Must-See” Stargazing Event
W - Perseids

NOVA - Documentary on New Art and the Young Artists behind it

"An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. Filmed on the heat of live action of the first edition of ®NOVA Contemporary Culture, which happened in July / August 2010, in MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Starring: Yoshi Sodeoka, Rebecca Ward, Tofer Chin, KRINK, Base V, Yochai Matos, Max Hattler, Highraff, Lucy McRae, Kit Webster, Jimmy Joe Roche, Flavio Samelo, Felipe Brait & Maira Vaz Valente, Shima, Matt W Moore, Zeitguised, Mulheres Barbadas, Gustavo Gagliardo aka Defi, Filippo Minelli, Quayola, Javier Longobardo, This Time, Renaud Hallée, Mark Jenkins, Ljudbilden & Piloten, Lolo, Sosaku Miyazaki, Anna Taratiel aka Ovni, Robert Seidel, Heiko Tippelt, B.Fleischmann, Koen Delaere, Taras Hrabowsky, Cristopher Cichocki, MOMO, Yusk Imai."
NOVA - Documentary on New Art and the Young Artists behind it

Neue Deutsche Welle

Fehlfarben - 33 Tage in Ketten (1981)
Wikipedia - "Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW 'New German Wave') is a genre of German music originally derived from punk rock and new wave music. The term 'Neue Deutsche Welle' was first used in a record shop advertisement by Burkhardt Seiler in the German magazine Sounds in August 1979, and then coined by journalist Alfred Hilsberg whose article about the movement titled 'Neue Deutsche Welle — Aus grauer Städte Mauern' ('New German Wave — From Grey Cities' Walls') was published in Sounds in October 1979. The history of the Neue Deutsche Welle consists of two major parts. From its beginnings to 1981, the Neue Deutsche Welle was mostly an underground movement with roots in British punk and new wave music; it quickly developed into an original and distinct style, influenced in no small part by the different sound and rhythm of the German language which many of the bands had adapted from early on. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Category:German New Wave musical groups
vimeo: Neue deutsche welle (80's german new wave) video mix
Soundcloud: Neue Deutsche Welle Mix
YouTube: Grauzone - Eisbaer, Kraftwerk - Das Model, Fehlfarben - Ein Jahr (es geht voran), DAF - Der Mussolini, Falco - Der Kommissar, Tone Band - Germany Calling (1982), Front 242 - Headhunter, WELTKLANG - VORWAERTS

2011 January: D.A.F., 2010 September: Einstürzende Neubauten, 2012 September: Imaginary Sounds Feature, 2013 September: Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Wieder Offen (2007), 2011 June: Fehlfarben, 2012 August: Grauzone, 2011 May: Holger Hiller, 2014 October: Palais Schaumburg

Top of the Lake (2013)

"In ‘Top of the Lake,' Jane Campion’s extraordinary new crime series, beginning tonight on the Sundance Channel, Holly Hunter plays GJ, a plainspoken spiritual guru, tending to a flock of lost middle-aged women — among them, a sex addict, a woman reeling from the loss of her beloved chimpanzee — with minimal spiritual mumbo jumbo, maximum hard truths. She wears her hair long and white, her shirts buttoned up to the collar, looking like an impatient Mexican gangster lost in the New Zealand bush (or as Emily Nussbaum points out in her review of the series, something like Jane Campion). I’m going to channel GJ’s particular harsh bluntness here, because 'Top of the Lake,' gorgeous and ambiguous and gripping like a hallucination, deserves it: Watch it. Do it now. Elisabeth Moss — who when 'Mad Men' begins in a few weeks, will have the distinction of being the best part of the two best shows currently on television — stars as Robin Griffin, a detective who specializes in sexual assault, with which she has too much personal experience. ..."
Salon
NY Times: Pregnant Girl Vanishes, and Story Lines Fork
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: TOP OF THE LAKE Official Extended Trailer (2013), TOP OF THE LAKE Sundance on Set

Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014

"Boo-Hooray, in collaboration with Emory University, is presenting a William S. Burroughs centenary exhibition dedicated to the Cut-Up technique. On view will be hand-edited typescript drafts from the Nova Trilogy, rarely seen publications like the mimeographed newsletter The Burrough and the Sigma Portfolio, alongside correspondence with Brion Gysin, vinyl releases, as well as the original cut-up paper components that went on form his novels. The Cut-Ups began in October of 1959, when Brion Gysin sliced through a pile of newspapers with his Stanley knife, his intention had been to 'cut mounts for his water colours' and the newspapers were there simply to protect his desktop. However, while observing the patterns created by the different layers of cut paper he decided to reshuffle them to compose a new narrative. ..."
Boo-Hooray, NYC

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971).

Patter and Patois by Walter Mosley

"I am what you might call a grandchild of Louisiana. My father was born there as were many of his friends and relatives. Most of my neighbors in Los ­Angeles came from there too — black rural folk who had traveled west through southern Texas on their migration to escape the South’s heavy hail of racial hatred. They came to California for the tattered shelter of mocking freedom that the Golden State had to offer people like them, poor people willing to work hard. My father and his family brought the Deep South with them — barbecues and gumbos, dirty rice and soul food. They brought their strong accents and multiplicity of tongues, their histories from Africa, France, Native America mingled with generous drams of so-called white blood, European blood. Louisiana flowed in that blood and across those tongues. ..."
NY Times

Blame it on Fidel (2006)

Wikipedia - "Blame it on Fidel (French: La Faute à Fidel) is a 2006 French-Italian drama film directed by Julie Gavras. The screenplay, written by Gavras, is based on Domitilla Calamai's Italian novel of the same name. The film stars Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, and Stefano Accorsi. The film covers an array of philosophy and ideology - everything from Communism to Catholicism to Greek and Asian mythology - which the protagonist must reconstruct from confusion into her own set of beliefs. Nine-year-old Anna de la Mesa weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris. Her Spanish-born lawyer father Fernando is inspired by his sister's opposition to Franco and by Salvador Allende's victory in Chile; he quits his job and becomes a liaison for Chilean activists in France. ..."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
NY Times
YouTube: Blame It On Fidel - Trailer

Larry Williams - "Slow Down" / "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (1958)

"'Slow Down' is a 24-bar blues written and performed by Larry Williams. Released as a single in 1958, it was a rhythm and blues hit that influenced the growing Rock & Roll movement of the time. It was released as a 7" single (45RPM). The A-Side was 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy' and the B-Side was 'Slow Down.' ...
Well, come on pretty baby, won't you walk with me? / Come on, pretty baby, won't you talk with me? / Come on pretty baby, give me one more chance / Try to save our romance // Slow down / Baby, now you're moving way too fast / You gotta gimme little loving gimme little loving / Ow! If you want our love to last"
YouTube: Slow Down, Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Cesare Pavese

Wikipedia - "Cesare Pavese (9 September 1908 – 27 August 1950) was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator. He is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country. ... Pavese moved in antifascist circles. In 1935 he was arrested and convicted for having letters from a political prisoner. After a few months in prison he was sent into 'confino', internal exile in Southern Italy, the commonly used sentence for those guilty of lesser political crimes. (Carlo Levi and Leone Ginzburg, also from Turin, were similarly sent into confino.) A year later Pavese returned to Turin, where he worked for the left-wing publisher Giulio Einaudi as editor and translator. Natalia Ginzburg also worked there. Pavese was living in Rome when he was called up into the fascist army, but because of his asthma he spent six months in a military hospital. When he returned to Turin, German troops occupied the streets and most of his friends had left to fight as partisans. ..."
Wikipedia
Poetry Foundation
thoughts on two Cesare Pavese poems
amazon

Drone And Dusted: Tony Conrad Interviewed

"Although Tony Conrad is now firmly ensconced as a legend in minimalism and avant garde performance, playing shows at leading festivals and high profile gigs around the world, it is very nearly a story that did not happen. For many years his early recordings in the Theatre Of Eternal Music with his also legendary cohorts – La Monte Young, Angus MacLise, John Cale, Terry Riley, Marian Zazeela – were merely a rumour. These batches of unreleased reels were lost somewhere in the 1960s slums of New York, and Conrad himself became a lost figure, his whereabouts mainly unknown within the music world even though his artistic activities continued. ..."
The Quietus
Bomb — Artists in Conversation
Wikipedia
Tony Conrad: Holder of Parking Karma & Drip Coffee Skills

Hugh Mundell - Africa Must Be Free By 1983 + Dub (1978)

"The teenaged Hugh Mundell cut Africa Must Be Free by 1983 under the tutelage of the legendary producer Augustus Pablo in the mid-'70s, and had a Jamaican hit with the title track. Mundell's artlessly fervent singing is attractive far out of proportion to his technical skill. It's the sincerity and devotion in his voice that make successes of songs like 'Let's All Unite' and 'My Mind' -- that and the rock-solid instrumental backing of Pablo's studio band, which at this time included bassist and trombonist Leroy 'Horsemouth' Wallace and guitarists Earl 'Chinna' Smith and Jeffrey Chung. The CD issue of this album includes dub versions of six of the original album's eight tracks, as well as several other miscellaneous dub tracks. Like too many of Jamaica's best reggae musicians, Mundell died young -- in an almost creepy irony (given the title of his hit song), he was shot and killed in 1983 at the age of 21."
allmusic
YouTube: Africa Must Be Free By 1983 [Full Album], Africa Must Be Free by 1983 Dub [Full Album]

2010 September: Hugh Mundell, 2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, 2015 April: Valley of Jehosaphat (1999), 2015 June: Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version).

Greene Street Project

"The entirety of Greene Street in SoHo is pretty short, as New York City streets go -- just five blocks long. Walk along it today between Houston and Prince Streets and you’ll pass an Apple Store, a Ralph Lauren store, and a variety of other high-end retailers. A hundred and forty years ago, you’d be walking by brothels. A new website, The Greene Street Project: A Long History of a Short Block, covers more than four hundred years of that one block section -- just 486 feet long -- illustrated with photographs, maps, newspaper clippings, survey data, and charts. - zarq"
Greene Street Project
The Economics Lessons in a Single New York City Block
Wired: From Brothels to Luxury, Mapping 400 Years on One NYC Block
Subway Map Floating on a NY Sidewalk
NYC’s MOST UNUSUAL SUBWAY MAP

2012 July: 112 Greene Street, 2012 November: Alternative Histories New York Art Spaces, 1960-2010

Lisa Tan

"Waves" (2014–15)
"The videos in this series unfold like conversations. Seemingly inconsequential things pop-up and take hold. A phone call interrupts, the sun starts to set, a stranger asks a question, translations are needed, and the ocean meets the shore. Each work narrates my engagement with enigmatic writers, with close friends, with histories, technologies and geographies that I know, in order to mediate those that I don't. I filmed in places and at times that exist at some threshold, such as where sea meets land, and while traversing above and below the surface of the earth, and during the time when day gives way to night. ..."
Lisa Tan: Current (Video)
Lisa Tan
The Intimate Art of Active Reading
Interview: Lisa Tan
vimeo: Waves (6.5 minute excerpt)

The Cultivist’s Top 12 International Hidden Art Gems

Leighton House Museum
"The women at the helm of the Cultivist, a members’-club-cum-concierge-service for art enthusiasts, are just the kind of people you would want to e-mail before taking a trip. They’re well traveled, well connected and able to suggest places to visit that won’t be glutted with tourists — as well as the secret spots tucked away in even the world’s best-known museums. ... Membership in the first year of the Cultivist’s existence is limited to 1,000, and perks of membership include free, skip-the-line access to 70 museums — with three guests each — and over 30 art fairs, as well as a number of member events, worldwide. With the explicitly international scope of the project in mind, we asked Verhoeven and Peat, along with three of their colleagues in the Cultivist’s programming and membership departments, to share a dozen favorite, far-flung art destinations — that haven’t yet been Instagrammed to death. ..."
NY Times