M Train - Patti Smith

"Patti Smith’s achingly beautiful new book, 'M Train,' is a kaleidoscopic ballad about the losses dealt out by time and chance and circumstance. Losing her husband, the guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith, to heart failure in 1994 at the age of 45. Losing her brother, Todd, a month later to a stroke. Losing her early New York friend and roommate, Robert Mapplethorpe, to AIDS in 1989. Her book is about moving from a time when her children were little and 'the things I touched were living' ('my husband’s fingers, a dandelion, a skinned knee') to a time when she increasingly began to capture and memorialize moments from her life in photos and words — to create, as an artist, talismanic souvenirs of the past. Of which this book is one. ..."
NY Times
PBS: In ‘M Train,’ Patti Smith journeys to where art comes from (Video)
Vanity Fair: Patti Smith Talks Fame, Youth, and Her New Memoir, M Train
amazon
CBC: Patti Smith tackles memories in M Train
YouTube: Legendary Patti Smith on Her New Memoir "M Train", In ‘M Train,’ Patti Smith journeys to where art comes from

Hidden Islam - Nicoló Degiorgis

"While the media is abuzz with talk of the large Muslim populations in France, Germany, Holland and England, Islam and Italy are terms not often heard in tandem. Italy is, in fact, home to 1.5 million practicing Muslims—a figure that has grown rapidly within the last 10 to 15 years with new waves of immigration from countries such as Albania, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan, among others. The country, however, contains a mere eight mosques on paper, only one of which holds official state recognition. Though freedom of religious practice without discrimination is enshrined within the Italian constitution, Islam is the second-most widely practiced religion in the country behind Catholicism and it has yet to receive formal recognition from the state. In 2008, a bill was introduced to block the construction of mosques in much of the country, meaning the millions of Muslims in Italy have had to find other spaces in which to gather and pray. ..."
artbook
Collector Daily
amazon: Nicoló Degiorgis: Hidden Islam: Islamic Makeshift Places of Worship in North East Italy, 2009-2013

The Germans Play Monopoly - Existential Comics

"Existential Comics imagines what would probably happen if several of the greatest German thinkers sat down to a game of Monopoly…"
Existential Comics

2014 January: Existential Comics, 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics.

A Family Swept Up in the Migrant Tide

"Zain al-Abideen Majid’s father lifts him over a coil of glittering razor wire in the moonlit darkness of a Serbian farm, stretching to hand the boy to a relative on the other side. Though Zain is only 4, this is by no means his first surreptitious border crossing, and he remembers his father’s admonition at the very start of their journey, when they slipped from their homeland of Syria into Turkey: Don’t make a sound, or the guards will beat us. On this night, as Zain is passed over the wire from Serbia into Hungary, the barbs rip two bloody gashes in his right shin, like the flicks of a scalpel. He stays silent. ..."
NY Times (Video)

2015 September: NY Times: Traveling in Europe’s River of Migrants

African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds (2008)

"If you're a fan of classic music from the African continent, you're living in rich times. Interest in the music outside of the communities it was made in is at an all-time high, and there is a new crop of intrepid reissue labels willing to put in enormous amounts of time and energy to bring this music to a whole new set of waiting ears. These are not the fly-by-night exploito outfits of old-- Popular African Music, Sound Way, Analog Africa, the newly resurrected Strut, and Graeme Counsel's recent series of African music projects on Stern's/Syllart do it the right way, tracking down the original masters when available, finding the artists, and making sure they get paid. ..."
Pitchfork
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds From Benin & Togo 70s [full album]

The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Venice, the Doge's Palace, 1881.
"Showcasing the Clark's renowned holdings of French Impressionist paintings, this exhibition features seventy-three works of art, including works by Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Also represented are Pierre Bonnard, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jéan-Leon Gérôme, Jean-François Millet, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others. The MFAH exhibition tells not only the story of Sterling and Francine Clark's devotion and passion for collecting but also of painting in nineteenth-century France, including the Orientalist works of Gérôme, Barbizon paintings of Corot and Théodore Rousseau, Impressionist masterpieces of Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, and Early Modern output of Bonnard and Lautrec. Portraits, landscapes, marines, still lifes, and scenes of everyday life by twenty-five artists, spanning seventy years, are on view."
The Clark
Kimbell Art Museum
amazon: Great French Paintings from the Clark: Barbizon through Impressionism
vimeo: The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Scratching DJs

Wikipedia - "Scratching, sometimes referred to as scrubbing, is a DJ and turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the mid-1970s, it has been used in some styles of pop and in nu metal. ... Although previous artists such as William S. Burroughs had experimented with the idea of manipulating a reel to reel tape manually for the sounds produced (such as with his 1950s recording, 'Sound Piece'), vinyl scratching as an element of hip hop pioneered the idea of making the sound an integral and rhythmic part of music instead of uncontrolled noise. Christian Marclay was one of the earliest musicians to scratch outside of hip hop. In the mid-1970s, Marclay used gramophone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages. He developed his turntable sounds independently of hip hop DJs. ..."
Wikipedia (Video)
PBS: The Art Of Turntablism
Scratching On Controllers: 5 Myths Busted (Video)
School Of Scratch (Video)
facebook

Crumbling Movie Houses that Were Main Attractions

Loews Palace Theatre
"For Matt Lambros, a photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, grand movie palaces of the United States hold such fascination that he has spent six years documenting them, and counting – his fascinating spin on the history of the giant cultural hubs is to show what has become of the many that have fallen into disuse and dilapidation. ... That may well be readers’ response to his book, due out soon, presenting his photographs of a remarkable theater in a state of decay, but also detailing its planning, construction, and soul, as well as images of its gradual renovation over the last four years. Kings Theatre, The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Brooklyn’s Wonder Theatre, which will likely appear towards the end of 2015, will cover the entire history of the Loew’s Kings Theatre on Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue, from its opening in 1929 to its closure in 1977 to its and recent reopening [in March 2015] as a performing-arts center after extensive repair. ..."
Moving Image Archive News

Landscape - Marianna Gioka

"Rosenfeld Porcini is proud to present Greek painter Marianna Gioka’s inaugural UK solo show ‘Landscape’. This follows her participation in the gallery’s fifth themed group exhibition ‘Around Drawing’, which gathered artists who clearly use traditional drawing methods to forge their artistic language, and artists –who although not traditional draughtsmen, have produced works which can be closely related to a vision of what does, in fact, constitute a drawing. The gallery will feature Gioka’s most recent paintings and works from earlier periods in her career."
rosenfeld porcini
Artwort
Marianna Gioka

A Great Day in Harlem

Wikipedia - "A Great Day in Harlem or Harlem 1958 is a 1958 black-and-white group portrait of 57 notable jazz musicians photographed in front of a brownstone in Harlem, New York City. The photo has remained an important object in the study of the history of jazz. Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture around 10 a.m. on August 12 in the summer of 1958. The musicians had gathered at 17 East 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem. Esquire published the photo in its January 1959 issue. Kane calls it 'the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken.' Jean Bach, a radio producer of New York, recounted the story behind it in her 1994 documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. The film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. As of January 2015, only two of the 57 musicians who participated are still living (Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins)."
Wikipedia
W - A Great Day in Harlem (film)
A Great Day in Harlem: The Spirit Lives - 50 Years On
NPR: Behind 'A Great Day In Harlem': Jean Bach On Piano Jazz (Video)
A Great Day in Harlem
amazon
YouTube: A Great Day In Harlem - Harlem 58 - The Photograph - Part 1-7

The Concept of Anxiety - Søren Kierkegaard (1844)

Wikipedia - "The Concept of Anxiety (Danish: Begrebet Angest): A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. ... For Kierkegaard (writing as a pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis), anxiety/dread/angst is unfocused fear. Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences a focused fear of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our 'dizziness of freedom.' ..."
Wikipedia
Second Period: Indirect Communication (1843-46) - The Concept Of Anxiety
Kierkegaard
[PDF] Kierkegaard: The Concept of Dread
Kierkegaard's Concept of Dread - Marxists Internet Archive
amazon

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics, 2015 July: I still love Kierkegaard.

"Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been)" - DJ Premier, Rakim, Nas & Krs-One (2007)

Wikipedia - "'Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been)' is Grammy nominated collaboration song between Kanye West, Nas, KRS-One and that is co-produced by Rick Rubin and DJ Premier. The song was released as a single on February 20, 2007 by Nike Records. ... Its remix, 'Better Than I've Ever Been DJ Premier Remix', is produced by DJ Premier, and it features Rakim along with the aforementioned rappers. It features DJ Premier's signature scratches from prior songs such as Nas' 'One Love' and 'It Ain't Hard to Tell'. ..."
Wikipedia
Classic (Nike Air Force Remix) Lyrics
Soundcloud: Kanye West ft. Dj Premier, NAS, Rakim, Krs-one - Classic (Video)
YouTube: DJ Premier, Rakim, Nas & Krs-One - Classic (HD)

Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels

"Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels is an eight hundred-page thank-you letter to the cartoonists whose steadfast belief in a Canadian micro-publisher never wavered. In 1989, a prescient Chris Oliveros created D+Q with a simple mandate to publish the world’s best cartoonists. Thanks to his taste-making visual acumen and the support of over fifty cartoonists from the past two decades, D+Q has grown from an annual stapled anthology into one of the world's leading graphic novel publishers. With hundreds of pages of comics by Drawn & Quarterly cartoonists, D+Q: 25 features new work by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael DeForge, Tom Gauld, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, James Sturm, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi alongside rare and never-before-seen work from Guy Delisle, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, John Porcellino, Art Spiegelman, and Adrian Tomine, and a cover by Tom Gauld. ..."
Drawn & Quarterly
Montreal Review of Books: A Montreal Powerhouse Celebrates Its Silver Anniversary
The Comics Journal
Guardian
amazon

Akalé Wubé - Alègntayé feat. Genet Asefa (Digital Single, 2015, Paris DJs)

"While discussing the possibility of releasing Akalé Wubé's sax & flute player Etienne de la Sayette's solo recordings on Paris DJs, the idea of getting Grant Phabao to put to good use his reggae-remixing skills on one of Akalé Wubé's songs arose quickly. But what about the Ethiopian horn or vocal harmonies, would they fit on a reggae groove? Well you can't really know until you try, so that's exactly what happened. ..."
Paris DJs (Video)

The Lomax Kentucky Recordings

Aunt Molly Jackson
"These are documentary sound recordings of rural Kentucky music and lore collected under the auspices of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress between 1933 and 1942. Performed by farmers, laborers, coal miners, preachers, housewives, public officials, soldiers, grandparents, adolescents, and itinerant musicians, they present a full spectrum of traditional expressive culture from twelve of Eastern Kentucky’s mountain counties: ballads and lyric songs, play-party ditties and comic pieces, topical and protest material, fiddle and banjo tunes, hymns and sacred songs, children's games and lullabies, and a variety of spoken lore—religious testimonies, occupational reminiscences, tall tales, jokes, and family and personal narratives. ..."
The Lomax Kentucky Recordings (Video)
LOC: American Folklife Center (Video)

The Ecology of Freedom - Murray Bookchin (1982)

"... With this succinct formulation, Murray Bookchin launches his most ambitious work, The Ecology of Freedom. An engaging and extremely readable book of breathtaking scope, its inspired synthesis of ecology, anthropology, and political theory traces our conflicting legacies of hierarchy and freedom, from the first emergence of human culture to today's globalized capitalism, constantly pointing the way to a sane, sustainable ecological future. On a college syllabus or in an activist's backpack, this book is indispensable reading for anyone who's tired of living in a world where everything is an exploitable resource."
AK Press
W - The Ecology of Freedom
[PDF] The Ecology of Freedom
The Ecology of Freedom in the Democratic City
amazon

2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders, 2015 October: Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971).

Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007)

"Library Journal - The ABA was born in 1967 and in nine tumultuous seasons introduced such legendary stars as Julius Erving, Connie Hawkins, George Gervin, and Moses Malone. Pluto, a basketball writer for the Akron Beacon Journal , spins an irreverent history in interview format of the league with the three-point shot, the slam dunk contest, the red, white, and blue ball. The ABA saga includes unsettled finances, ever-changing teams, and constant war with the more established National Basketball Association. As well as the stars, we meet the owners (Earl Foreman, John Y. Brown, and Charles O. Finley), the coaches (Hubie Brown, brother Larry Brown, Bob Bass, and Slick Leonard), the bad boys (Warren Jabali and John Brisker), the characters (Wendell Ladner and Marvin Barnes), and dozens of others. Well-told by participants, this is a history laced with humor from a league filled with fun."
Wikipedia
Review of Terry Pluto’s “Loose Balls”
The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association
amazon

2011 June: American Basketball Association, 2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2012 November: Your Guide to the Brooklyn Nets, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2013 October: Rucker Park, 2013 November: Free Spirits', 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 June: Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle, 2015 September: SLAM Magazine, 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business.

"Who's Making Love" - Johnnie Taylor (1968)

Wikipedia - "'Who's Making Love' is a single written by Stax staffers Homer Banks, Bettye Crutcher, Don Davis and Raymond Jackson, and recorded by singer Johnnie Taylor. ... It became one of the few singles Taylor would become primarily known for in the mainstream. The song featured Stax in-house band Booker T. & the MG's, and Isaac Hayes (on keyboards) and was Taylor's best-selling single to date before the release of 'Disco Lady' almost a decade later. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Who's Making Love

William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels

"If you’ve ever had difficulty pronouncing the word Yoknapatawpha—the fictional Mississippi county where William Faulkner set his best-known fiction—you can take instruction from the author himself. During his time as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, Faulkner gave students a brief lesson on his pronunciation of the Chickasaw-derived word, which, as he says, sounds like it’s spelled. If you’ve ever had difficulty getting around in Yoknapatawpha—getting the lay of the land, as it were—Faulkner has stepped in again to help his readers. He drew several maps of varying levels of detail that show Yoknapatawpha, its county seat of Jefferson in the center, and various key characters’ plantations, crossroads, camps, stores, houses, etc. from the fifteen novels and story cycles set in the author’s native Mississippi. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner

The Band - The Band (1969)

"The Band's first album, Music from Big Pink, seemed to come out of nowhere, with its ramshackle musical blend and songs of rural tragedy. The Band, the group's second album, was a more deliberate and even more accomplished effort, partially because the players had become a more cohesive unit, and partially because guitarist Robbie Robertson had taken over the songwriting, writing or co-writing all 12 songs. ... The arrangements were simultaneously loose and assured, giving the songs a timeless appeal, while the lyrics continued to paint portraits of 19th century rural life (especially Southern life, as references to Tennessee and Virginia made clear), its sometimes less savory aspects treated with warmth and humor."
allmusic
W - The Band
The Band - The Brown Album
Across the Great Divide: The Band's "Brown Album"
YouTube: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Live), King Harvest, Up On Cripple Creek, Rag Mama Rag- Winterland (San Francisco, CA) Nov 25, 1976, Whispering Pines (alternate take)
YouTube: The Band (1969)

2009 July: The Band, 2011 June: Music from Big Pink, 2011 September: The Last Waltz, 2012 December: King Harvest 2012 January: Rare Concert Footage of The Band, 1970, 2015 January: Stage Fright (1970).

BSA Film Friday: 10.16.15

"1. Welcome To America Owen Dippie by Erin Dippie. A nice homemade video this week by New Zealand painter Owen Dippie’s talented wife Erin, who documented his trip to New York and LA. Without the hype this gives you an idea what it is like to be a tourist here, and it is good to see the experience through the eyes of a loving partner. 2. Covert To Overt: Photography of Obey Giant by Jon Furlong 3. Taken By Storm: The Art Of Storm Thorgerson And Hipgnosis Trailer 4. Sobecksis Mural 'Motion' in Mannheim"
Brooklyn Street Art (Video)

W.G. Sebald - The Rings of Saturn (1999)

"Early on in W.G. Sebald‘s strange and beautiful novel The Rings of Saturn, the erudite narrator (seemingly) offhandedly alludes to Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 engraving Melencolia I. Rings is larded with such references, stuffed to the gills with analysis of history and literature and art (and so much more), but the quick allusion to Melencolia I seems a particularly informative way of interpreting–or at least comprehending–Sebald’s grand, glorious book. Before we begin though, it will be useful to quickly summarize the plot: In 1992, a German intellectual named W.G. Sebald takes a walking tour of the east coast of England. He visits old English manors, the homes of dead writers, decaying seaside resorts, abandoned islands, and many other melancholy spots."
biblioklept
Guardian: The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald – walking through history (Video)
W - The Rings of Saturn
NYT: In the Company of Ghosts
A SHORT WALK THROUGH THE RINGS OF SATURN
amazon

2015 February: ‘Drowned in a sea of salt’ Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast, 2015 April: Patience (After Sebald) - (2010)

The Middle East Friendship Chart

"With overlapping civil wars in Syria and Iraq, a new flare-up of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, and tense nuclear talks with Iran, Middle Eastern politics are more volatile than ever and longtime alliances are shifting. Here's a guide to who's on whose side in the escalating chaos. Click a cell to learn more information."
Slate

Sleepy John Estes

Wikipedia - "John Adam Estes (January 25, 1899 – June 5, 1977), best known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was an American blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee. In 1915, Estes' father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes accidentally lost the sight in his right eye when a friend threw a rock at him. At the age of 19, while working as a field hand, he began to perform professionally. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
American Music
YouTube: Drop Down Mama, Diving Duck Blues, Liquor Store Blues, Floating Bridge, Someday Baby Blues, Mailman Blues (Live), The Girl I love, She Got Long Curly Hair, Broken-Hearted, Ragged And Dirty Too, Street Car Blues, Lawyer Clark Blues, Watcha Doin, Everybody Oughta Make A Change, Fire Department Blues (Martha Hardin), I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More, Stop That Thing, Death Valley Blues, Broke And Hungry, Jailhouse Blues

Bob Dylan - "Positively 4th Street" / "From a Buick 6" (1965)

Wikipedia - "'Positively 4th Street' is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, first recorded by Dylan in New York City on July 29, 1965. ... The song, like most of Dylan's, is composed of a simple harmonic, or chordal, and melodic structure; the verse has a I-ii-IV-I progression followed by I-V-IV-vi-V. Dylan begins by telling the unspecified second-person target of the song that they have a lot of nerve to say that they are his friend and then goes on to list a multitude of examples of their backstabbing duplicity. While the lyrics are distinctly negative, the organ-dominated backing music is that of care-free folk-rock. ... The lyrics of 'Positively 4th Street' are bitter and derisive, which caused many, at the time of the song's release, to draw a comparison with Dylan's similarly toned previous single 'Like a Rolling Stone'. ..."
Wikipedia
amazon: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña
NY Times: CHAPTER ONE - Positively 4th Street By DAVID HAJDU
NY Times: Protest and Soap Opera for 4 Singers of the 60's
YouTube: Positively 4th Street, From a Buick 6

Tenderloin

John Sloan, The Haymarket, 1907.
Wikipedia - "The Tenderloin was the name given to an entertainment and red-light district in the heart of the New York City borough of Manhattan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The area originally ran from 23rd Street to 42nd Street and from Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue. By the turn of the 20th century, it had expanded northward to 57th or 62nd Street and west to Eighth Avenue, encompassing parts of what is now the Flatiron District, NoMad, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, the Garment District and the Theater District. ... By the 1880s, the Tenderloin encompassed the largest number of nightclubs, saloons, bordellos, gambling casinos, dance halls, and 'clip joints' in New York City, to the extent that one estimate made in 1885 was that half of the buildings in the district were connected with vice. ..."
Wikipedia
Untapped Cities Tour: The Remnants of Manhattan’s Tenderloin Red Light District
Ephemeral New York: A Chelsea block lined with brothels in the 1870s
Ephemeral New York: The “loud and lurid” Haymarket on 30th Street
Friday Night Fever: Haymarket, New York’s Moulin Rouge

Laurie Spiegel: Grassroots Technologist

"People often speak about computers and technology as though these things are completely antithetical to nature and tradition, though this is largely a false dichotomy. Electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel began her musical life as a folk guitar player and has never abandoned that music. But she fell in love with machines the first time she saw a mainframe tape-operated computer at Purdue University on a field trip there with her high school physics class and has been finding ways to humanize them in her own musical compositions and software development ever since. She sees a lot of common ground between the seemingly oppositional aesthetics of folk traditions and the digital realm. In fact, when we met up with her last month in her Lower Manhattan loft crammed full of computers, musical instruments, and toys of all sorts, she frequently spoke about how in her world view the computer is actually a folk instrument."
New Music Box (Video)

2011 May: Laurie Spiegel, 2012 November: Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe, 2014 February: The Interstellar Contract, 2015 September: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music.

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists

"As travellers go, I am an inexcusably snobby one. Not about places or cultures, but about the concept of travel itself: tourists are awful. Wherever I go, I gleefully scorn the straggles of tour groups lumbering around town, with their bumbags and schedules, trapped in someone else’s snapshot of a place. From my lofty pedestal of AirBnb sofa mattresses and activity-free itineraries, I spend most of my holidays feeling comparatively local. Which is, of course, complete rubbish."
Guardian - Journeys in literature

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here.

Spool's Out: October's Tapes Reviewed By Tristan Bath

"David Birchall/ Andrew Cheetham/ Colin Webster/ Otto Willberg - Night Streets of Madness. Recorded at the Islington Mill in Salford, this tape on Tombed Visions captures four of the best improvisers in the UK at what sounds like a revelatory moment. Drummer Andrew Cheetham, guitarist David Birchall, and double bassist Otto Willberg all play or have played in explosive free rock band (and basically greatest fucking guitar band in the world right now) Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, while saxophonist Webster has been carving out his place as leading voice in UK free jazz."
The Quietus (Video)
The Quietus: Spool's Out

In Grain: Contemporary Work in Wood

"Wood, readily available throughout the world and easier to shape than metal or stone, is one of the oldest sculptural mediums. Yet artists still find inspiration in this humble material, whether looking back to traditional forms and techniques, or employing it in strikingly innovative ways. With the exhibition, In Grain: Contemporary Work in Wood, the Fleming presents a diverse group of international artists, many of whom are working in Vermont, a place with a long history of wood carving in craft and art."
Fleming Museum
Art Review: 'In Grain: Contemporary Work in Wood' at Fleming Museum

Nathaniel Dorsky

“The Return” (2011)
Wikipedia - "Nathaniel Dorsky, born in New York City in 1943, is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. He has resided in San Francisco since 1971. 'The major part of my work is both silent and paced to be projected at silent speed (18 frames per second). Silence in cinema is undoubtedly an acquired taste, but the delicacy and intimacy it reveals has many rich rewards. In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting them. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, curiosity, the sense of stepping into the world, sudden murky disruptions and undercurrents, expansion, pulling back, contraction, relaxation, sublime revelation. In my work, the screen is transformed into a 'speaking character', and the images function as pure energy rather than acting as secondary symbol or as a source for information or storytelling. I put shots together to create a revelation of wisdom through delicate surprise.' ..."
Wikipedia
about Nathaniel Dorsky
NY Times: Unseen Guide’s Silent Journeys to Lyric Nature
Interview: Nathaniel Dorsky
Interviews | The Inmost Leaf: An Interview with Nathaniel Dorsky
vimeo: Nathaniel Dorsky
YouTube: Super 8 Abstract Film, 18 FPS, Station Blue

Fabulous '40s and '50s Fashions for Femme Fatales of Film Noir Paper Dolls

"As a little boy growing up in Ohio, David was fascinated by his older cousin's collection of movie star paper dolls from the 1940s and 50s. The glamour of fashion and film resonated with the artistic, bookish child and set him on a path that would lead to a highly successful career in the fashion industry. ... Having ended his career as a fashion illustrator long ago, David is happy that paper dolls allow him to again create glamorous artwork. His recognizable style is a very deliberate re-creation of the lush, lavish technique employed by artists during the 1940s and '50s, the golden years of paper dolls."
amazon: Fabulous '40s and '50s Fashions for Femme Fatales of Film Noir Paper Dolls

The Clash - "Straight to Hell" / "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

Wikipedia - "... Like many songs by the Clash, the lyrics of 'Straight to Hell' decry injustice. The first verse refers to the shutting down of steel mills in Northern England and unemployment spanning generations, it also considers the alienation of non English speaking immigrants in British society. The second verse concerns the abandonment of children in Vietnam who were fathered by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The third verse contrasts the American Dream as seen through the eyes of an Amerasian child with a dystopian vision of American reality. The final verse broadly considers the life of immigrants throughout the world. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Should I Stay or Should I Go
The Story of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” Spanish Lyrics (Video)
YouTube: "Straight to Hell", "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (Live)

History of the Acadians

Wikipedia - "The Acadians (French: Acadiens) are the descendants of the original French settlers and often Métis, of parts of Acadia (French: Acadie) in the northeastern region of North America comprising what is now the Canadian Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, Gaspé, in Quebec, and to the Kennebec River in southern Maine. The history of the Acadians was significantly influenced by the six colonial wars that took place in Acadia during the 17th and 18th century (see the four French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War). Eventually, the last of the colonial wars—the French and Indian War—resulted in the British Expulsion of the Acadians from the region. After the war, many Acadians came out of hiding or returned to Acadia from the British Colonies. ..."
W - History of the Acadians
Ethnic Cleansing of the Acadians – Prompted by Greed
History of the Acadians
ACADIAN - CAJUN Genealogy, History, & Culture
YouTube: Acadian Driftwood - The Band

Walker Evans’ “lineup of faces” on the subway

"Walker Evans might be best known for his stark, intimate photographs of Depression-era sharecroppers across a Deep South landscape of roadside cafes and churches. But Evans also has an extensive history as a New York City street photographer. A St. Louis native, he settled into a Bohemian life in Manhattan in the 1920s, first intending to be a writer before discovering a different kind of poetry in photography. He captured glimpses of everyday city street life, taking pictures of people on tenement stoops and inside lunchrooms. And from 1938 to 1941, he took his camera underground and shot closeups of anonymous New Yorkers on the subway. He shot these unsentimental subway portraits secretly, hiding the camera lens between the buttons of his coat, waiting for just the right moment to click the shutter hidden in his coat sleeve. ... Viewing these naked, powerful images today, they demonstrate that subway riding in 1938 was pretty similar to today: a dance of looking away, getting lost in dreams or worries, busying yourself with a newspaper, or finding yourself the object of an off-putting subway stare."
Ephemeral New York
NY Times: Review/Photography; What Walker Evans Saw on His Subway Rides">
NGA: Walker Evans - Subway Photographs and Other Recent Acquisitions

2011 June: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 2011 May: A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, 2013 June: Cotton Tenants: Three Families, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2014 October: Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, 2014 December: Walker Evans: Decade by Decade, 2015 August: Walker Evans: A Life's Work.

Fred Frith & John Zorn - The Art of Memory (1994), The Art of Memory II (2006)

"Based upon the ancient Roman methodology for remembering architectural sites and the meanings built into their structures, guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist John Zorn pull out all the stops in creating a body of improvisation that does not rely on symbolic invitations or responses, but is instead a collaboration that builds an imposing musical structure from forgotten trends, hidden sonic languages, and metaphorical tonal construction. ... By the time you reach "The Fountain and the Mirror," the players have switched roles many times, each playing support and leader, turning what were merely notions for collaborating along a certain path into audible bodies with their own pulses, minds, and blood. This is a revelatory album, and a near matchless collaboration."
allmusic - The Art of Memory
allmusic - The Art of Memory II
W - The Art of Memory, W - The Art of Memory II
YouTube: The Art Of Memory Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, Track 4, Track 5, Track 6, Track 7, Track 8, The Wood

Darkside EP - Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington (2011)

"Nicolas Jaar creates slow, strange, cloistered songs with keyboards and field recordings, breath, and drums. He makes synthesizers feel like natural elements, mingled with running waters, murmuring voices, and sighing winds. Jaar called his breakthrough record Space Is Only Noise, expanded on a key track to 'Space Is Only Noise if You Can See'. Titles are often red herrings, but this is the rare case where we might pause and come to understand something essential about Jaar's perspective. No one has found a good box for him yet, likely because he doesn't make a kind of music, but a way of music. ... Jaar's new EP as Darkside, a collaboration with guitarist and bassist Dave Harrington, clarifies things further, but we've got to unpack a little before we come to it. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Darkside
Darkside interview: “What are you gonna argue about if you make good music together?”
Soundcloud: A1 (Ft. Dave Harrington), Golden Arrow, Paper Trails
YouTube: A1, A2, A3

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), 2015 August: Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeove, 2015 September: Work It (Bluewave edit)

Samuel Palmer

The Gleaning Field, c.1833
Wikipedia - "Samuel Palmer (27 January 1805 – 24 May 1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings. ... He sketched in Devonshire and Wales around this time. His peaceful vision of rural England had been disillusioned by the violent rural discontent of the early 1830s. His small financial legacy was running out and he decided to produce work more in line with public taste if he was to earn an income for himself and his wife. He was following the advice of his father-in-law. Linnell, who had earlier shown remarkable understanding of the uniqueness of William Blake's genius, was not as generous with his son-in-law, towards whom his attitude was authoritarian and often harsh. Palmer turned more to watercolour which was gaining popularity in England. ..."
Wikipedia
Tate
BBC
Guardian - Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Tom Clark

"Thomas Willard Clark was born on March 1, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. While growing up in Chicago as a young man, he served as an usher at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park, where he saw such renowned figures of the era as Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Hull, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Harry S. Truman. His experiences among these figures are reflected in his poems, which frequently feature these and other prominent figures from the 1950s and ’60s. ... During this time, Clark began writing and publishing poetry in earnest; he cites Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams as influences. While in England, he also hitchhiked across the country with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg."
Poets
Poetry Foundation
W - Tom Clark
Tom Clark: Beyond the Pale
Jacket#9
Jacket#35
The Great One by Tom Clark
amazon: Tom Clark

Leap Before You Look - Black Mountain College 1933 - 1957

Jacob Lawrence, Watchmaker, 1946
"In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. Among the instructors were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Karen Karnes, M. C. Richards, and Willem de Kooning, and students included Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly. Leap Before You Look is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there."
Yale
Sneak peek: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957
WSJ: Return to Black Mountain College
ICA Boston to Survey Black Mountain College
YouTube: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 | ICA/Boston

2010 June: Black Mountain poets, 2010 April: Letters from Camp

In a Brooklyn Chinatown, One Chance to get the Shot

"Yunghi Kim often pretended she wasn’t taking photographs when she started documenting Sunset Park’s Chinatown. She got in the habit of shooting from the hip rather than raising the camera to her eye in the bustling, if camera-shy, Brooklyn neighborhood. 'I’ve been all over the world,' said Ms. Kim, who herself lives in Brooklyn. 'I’ve traveled to 40 countries, and of all the places I’ve gone into, this one was one of the hardest.' The Chinatown in Sunset Park is in fact just one of many Chinatowns in Brooklyn. It has the distinction of being the first, with a direct connection to Manhattan’s Chinatown via the N and D express trains. ..."
New York Times

Places, Strange and Quiet - Wim Wenders

"It was while shooting his breakthrough 1984 film Paris, Texas that landmark German director Wim Wenders first felt compelled to take up photography; 27 years later, a penchant for documenting his films’ environs has fostered a canon of sparse panoramic landscapes captured on location at such far-flung locales as Brazil, Italy, Japan, Australia and Germany. Next month’s exhibition at London's Haunch of Venison Gallery, Places, Strange and Quiet, presents 40 of Wenders’s large-scale images spanning from 1983 to 2011, which we preview in the slideshow above. The product of an artistic method the filmmaker sums up as 'turning left at junctions where others turn right,' the collection features everything from a set of polka-dotted sun loungers in Palermo to a washed out seascape in Japanese island town Naoshima––all happened upon by chance, and each imbued with a feeling of profound solitude."
NOWNESS
Guardian: Wim Wenders: Places, Strange And Quiet – in pictures
amazon
YouTube: Places, Strange and Quiet

2009 November: Wings of Desire (1987), 2010 April: New German Cinema, 2010 November: The American Friend (1977), 2012 March: Paris, Texas (1984)

Nas - Illmatic (1994)

"Two decades since it hit the Earth like a comet (invasion), what more can possibly be left to say about Illmatic? Nas's debut was widely and correctly acclaimed at the time as one of the finest albums ever made, in any genre; and its lustre has only been burnished since. Boasting a concise 39-minute track listing bursting with ideas, the album arrived just as every other rapper seemed convinced the 74-minute upper limit on a CD's duration was a 'fill to here' mark that had to be reached, rather than a capacity they didn't need to get near if they had insufficient material ready to include. It has gone way beyond the impact its relatively modest sales might seem to imply: it wasn't certified platinum in the United States until a shade under eight years after its release, yet Illmatic has always been seen as something rather more than a classic rap LP. The perform-the-whole-album tour (2012), the 10th anniversary 'platinum' edition with extra tracks (2004), and this month's 20th anniversary double-disc release, finally uniting the original LP with the remixed singles, are just the tip of an iceberg of the kind of deep and broad acclaim that fills a good swathe of the distance between 'sublime' and 'ridiculous'. ..."
The Quietus - Back Down Memory Lane: Illmatic By Nas Revisited (Video)
W - Illmatic
How Filmmaker Erik Parker Is Reigniting Nas's Illmatic On Its 20th Anniversary (Video)
allmusic: Illmatic [10th Anniversary Platinum Edition]
amazon: Illmatic 10th Anniversary Platinum Edition, Illmatic XX
YouTube: Illmatic (Full Album), Illmatic XX (Full Album, Remastered) Disc: 1 [HD], Illmatic XX (Full Album, Demos, Remixes & Live Radio) Disc: 2 [HD]

Gasoline - Snap Your Neck Back (2005)

"Abstract hip hop. That’s the realm of France’s Yoann Letard b.k.a. Gasoline. Drawn into hip hop in the late 80s with the hardcaroe groups of the day such as Public Enemy and LL Cool J, Gasoline actually became inspired by the British hardcore rap scene. He may have been more in line to be the French answer to the Bomb Squad if it had not been for a meeting with Alain, owner of Pamplemousse Productions, a label known to cater more to techno and house DJs. But Alain introduced abstract hip hop to Gasoline and he took off from there. Often comapred to Japan’s DJ Krush, Gasoline emphasizes atmospheric instrumentals and crazy turntable performances."
World Hip Hop Market
amazon
facebook
BATTLE WEAPONS
YouTube: Snap Your Neck Back [FULL ALBUM]

2015 August: Gasoline - A Journey Into Abstract Hip-Hop (1998)

Mother Jones

Wikipedia - "Mother Jones (abbreviated MoJo) is an American magazine featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. ... The magazine caters to the left side of politics. The magazine was named after Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, an Irish-American trade union activist and ardent opponent of child labor. The stated mission of Mother Jones is to produce revelatory journalism that in its power and reach informs and inspires a more just and democratic world. ..."
Wikipedia
Mother Jones
W - Mary Harris Jones
amazon, facebook

Abraham Cruzvillegas

The Simulteneous Promise, 2011
"The evolving and social nature of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, which has been the stage for protest, art and recently dancing, can be compared with many of the interests of Abraham Cruzvillegas (b1968), who on 13 October 2015 will unveil the first Hyundai Commission. He predominantly creates sculptures in a process of improvisation out of an eclectic variety of materials (previous works have included wood, plastics, human hair, glass, screws, plants, ceramic, bone, cement, feathers) that result in forms that appear to be caught in a moment of suspended transformation. The pieces are interwoven with references from across the history of art, but also from social and communal creative practices. ..."
TATE: An interview with Abraham Cruzvillegas
W - Abraham Cruzvillegas
BOMB Magazine
Open Systems: Q+A with Abraham Cruzvillegas
YouTube: TateShots, The Autoconstrucción Suites
Blouin: Mexico's Abraham Cruzvillegas at The Walker

Boijeot + Renauld Update : Rain, Wind, & Inquisitive Upper West Side

"The French duo Boijeot & Renauld have logged one full week and three days of crossing Manhattan via Broadway. As you know they are embarking on an ambitious project where they intend to cross Manhattan with their living room, breakfast room and bedroom in tow. They started in Harlem on 125th Street and the last time we caught up with them they were moving down the Upper West Side and running into the inquisition of friendly and sometimes oddly parochial locals. The first few days they enjoyed typical NYC Autumn weather with crisp air and sunny days. Then things turned for the worse with the prickly hurricane season wrecking havoc somewhere offshore in The Atlantic bringing heavy winds and downpours. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz (1978), Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life - Richard Grossinger, Lisa Conrad (1992)

Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz
"Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life - This book includes Donald Hall, Jack Kerouac, Robert Kelly, Bill Lee, Paul Metcalf, Anne Waldman, Tom Clark, and Bernadette Mayer. The quality of the work in this anthology varies widely, but the sheer unlikeliness of a volume of neo-beat baseball poetry and new-age-inflected essays cannot help but inspire generosity. The photography is remarkable, and the photo essays of baseball stars of the 1950s and 1960s have this awe-inspiring sense of the mundane about them."
amazon
Google: Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
W - Mikhail Horowitz
amazon: Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz (1978 - City Lights Books)

The Palestinian Museum

Wikipedia - "The Palestinian Museum is a flagship project of the Welfare Association, a non-profit organization for developing humanitarian projects in Palestine. The Museum is currently under construction in Birzeit (25 km north of Jerusalem) and will be opened in Spring 2016. ... The Palestinian Museum was conceived as an institution capable of transcending political and geographical borders, and as such it aims to resist the restrictions to mobility imposed by the Israeli occupation and overcome the divisions currently threatening its body politic. Through local, regional and international partnerships and affiliate centers, the Museum will connect Palestinians from all over the world, and thus bring together a people that has been fragmented for decades. An extensive network of partnerships within historic Palestine will also allow it to act as a hub for cultural activity there. In this sense, it is one among a number of cultural projects aiming to resist the ghettoization and fragmentation of the Palestinian people."
Wikipedia
The Palestinian Museum (Video)
Organizers Prepare Palestinian Museum For 2015 Opening
“Museum without borders” to open in Palestine
YouTube: The Palestinian Museum

The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983)

Wikipedia - "The Golden Palominos is an American musical group headed by drummer and composer Anton Fier, first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership has been wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis appearing on every album. ... The group first featured Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others. The album has some of the first recorded turntable scratching outside of rap music, courtesy of Laswell and M.E. Miller. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Golden Palominos (album)
YouTube: The Golden Palominos (1983) full album 43:04