Slim Smith - Born to Love (1979)

"Slim Smith was blessed with one of the most haunting voices in Jamaica -- soft, but with astounding power, yet shot through with an astonishing vulnerability that added to the emotional impact of every song he sang. He took the Techniques to fame, then did the same with the Uniques, while at the same time also recording as a solo artist (although usually backed by members of his current group). Born to Love focuses on the rocksteady era and compiles some of Smith's best-loved solo songs from the age, along with a number of rarer offerings. A clutch of these tracks are covers, mostly Motown and R&B hits, but each is reborn in Smith's hands. All are produced by Coxsone Dodd, whose upbeat, perky arrangements are often at odds with the actual mood of the song, but the singer's emotion is so palpable that it matters not. ..."
allmusic
W - Slim Smith
YouTube: Born To Love, I've Got Your Number, You Don't Care, Rougher Yet/Rougher Version, I'll be around, Never Let Go b/w The Soul Vendors - Version, Happy Times, The New Boss, Keep That Light, Do you love me

Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World

Fragmentary Colossal Head of a Youth, Greek, Hellenistic period, 2nd century B.C.Marble.
"The conquests of Alexander the Great transformed the ancient world, making trade and cultural exchange possible across great distances. Alexander's retinue of court artists and extensive artistic patronage provided a model for his successors, the Hellenistic kings, who came to rule over much of his empire. For the first time in the United States, a major international loan exhibition will focus on the astonishing wealth, outstanding artistry, and technical achievements of the Hellenistic period—the three centuries between Alexander's death, in 323 B.C., and the establishment of the Roman Empire, in the first century B.C. This exhibition will bring together some 264 artworks that were created through the patronage of the royal courts of the Hellenistic kingdoms, with an emphasis on the ancient city of Pergamon. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Press
WSJ: Mass Invasion of Greek Art Comes to the New York Met
NewYorker: A Show About the Hellenistic One Per Cent
NY Times: Reaching Peak Greek at the Met Museum

Fela Ransome Kuti & His Koola Lobitos - Highlife-Jazz And Afro-Soul (1963-1969)

"Before Afrobeat, there was Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul. Highlife music, originally from Ghana and widely popular across West Africa, dominated the music scene in Lagos when Fela Kuti returned to the newly independent Nigeria in 1963. Fela had been studying trumpet at Trinity College of Music in London where he met drummer Tony Allen, who also joined him in new group Koola Lobitos as they sought to mix things up by introducing the sounds they had heard in the capital's jazz clubs. The music of Fela Kuti has never been easy for beginners to know where to start – later groups Africa '70 and Egypt '80 released more than 50 albums – and this set of early recordings with Koola Lobitos represents a largely unknown, or at least unheard, period of his career. ..."
The Quietus
Discogs
amazon
Soundcloud: It's Highlife Time, I Know Your Feeling
YouTube: Highlife - Jazz and Afro- Soul (1963-1969)

Molly Crabapple

Displaced Syrians at a camp south of the Turkish border.
"Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer living in New York. Her memoir Drawing Blood was published by HarperCollins in December 2015. Her work has been described as 'God’s own circus posters,' by Rolling Stone, but beneath the lavishly detailed surface, it engages injustice and rebellion. Because of Molly’s 2013 solo exhibition, Shell Game, a series of large-scale paintings about the revolutions of 2011, she was called 'an emblem of the way that art could break out of the gilded gallery' by The New Republic. ..."
Molly Crabapple | About
Molly Crabapple
Wikipedia
VICE
Vanity Fair - From Pussy Riot to Snowden: the Dissident Fetish
Guernica: Up in Arms
amazon: Molly Crabapple
VICE: Taking Drawing Lessons from Artist and Journalist Molly Crabapple (Video)

John Ashbery with Jarrett Earnest

Late for School, c. 1948. Collage, 12 1/2 × 8 inches.
"For half a century John Ashbery has remained a solid contender for the title of 'greatest living poet.' For much of that time he also wrote art criticism, first for ARTnews, and the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune, New York and Newsweek. He is a central link between French and American ideas and aesthetics, publishing lyrical and authoritative translations of the French avant-garde including Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Roussel, and Giorgio de Chirico. Last year he published the collection of poems Breezeway and his newest, Commotion of the Birds, will be out this fall. He met with Jarrett Earnest to discuss some aspects of his life and work. ..."
Brooklyn Rail

All-Transistor Radio

"If you're the type of person who spends hours on YouTube trawling through rare recordings, you may have happened upon Magic Transistor, an incredible resource for music nerds that's appallingly underpublicized. I stumbled across it while searching for the Willie Mitchell sample that GZA used in 'Liquid Swords.' That led me to YouTube user page for a guy named Ben Ruhe, the founder of Magic Transistor. His playlists were jaw-dropping. There were only six of them at the time (there are now many more), each with upwards of 100 songs, most from rare vinyl rips that listeners could have only dreamed of hearing before YouTube. Ruhe's playlists led me to the Magic Transistor website, a seemingly-infinite internet radio player. It's a straightforward, four-station radio that plays hundreds of these wonderful relics of music history every day. ..."
VICE: Magic Transistor Is the Best and Weirdest Thing to Ever Happen to Internet Radio
All-Transistor Radio - Magic Transistor (Video)

The Birth of the Bronx's Universal Hip Hop Museum

"The old, shuttered Bronx Borough Courthouse was once something like the Goree Island of New York City: A point of no return for many black and Latino youth who, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, were detained in its chambers before being sent off to feed the beast of mass incarceration. The young and restless Bronx denizens who were able to evade the courthouse’s rapture would go on to birth the streets-based culture of hip hop—a lifestyle of art, dance, and music that continues to hold tremendous social and artistic influence today. ..."
CityLab (Video)
Universal Hip Hop Museum (Video)
Hip-Hop Museum Coming To The Old Bronx Courthouse?
YouTube: Universal Hip Hop Museum

The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust (1920-21)

Wikipedia - "The Narrator's family has moved to an apartment connected with the Guermantes residence. Françoise befriends a fellow tenant, the tailor Jupien and his niece. The Narrator is fascinated by the Guermantes and their life, and is awed by their social circle while attending another Berma performance. He begins staking out the street where Mme de Guermantes walks every day, to her evident annoyance. He decides to visit her nephew Saint-Loup at his military base, to ask to be introduced to her. After noting the landscape and his state of mind while sleeping, the Narrator meets and attends dinners with Saint-Loup's fellow officers, where they discuss the Dreyfus Affair and the art of military strategy. ... Saint-Loup visits on leave, and they have lunch and attend a recital with his actress mistress: Rachel, the Jewish prostitute, toward whom the unsuspecting Saint-Loup is crazed with jealousy. ..."
W - Volume Three: The Guermantes Way
The Guermantes Way | The two-minute 'Guermantes'
Reading Proust for Fun
Proust Reader
Behold the Stars
amazon

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator.

The Hunters in the Snow - Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565)

Wikipedia - "The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw), also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. ... The painting shows a wintry scene in which three hunters are returning from an expedition accompanied by their dogs. By appearances the outing was not successful; the hunters appear to trudge wearily, and the dogs appear downtrodden and miserable. ... The landscape itself is a flat-bottomed valley (a river meanders through it) with jagged peaks visible on the far side. A watermill is seen with its wheel frozen stiff. In the distance, figures ice skate, play hockey with modern style sticks and curl on a frozen lake; they are rendered as silhouettes. ..."
Wikipedia
Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, 1565
Visual Arts
Don Gray
YouTube: Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow (Winter)(Video)

2010 May: Peasant, 2011 March: "The Harvesters", Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 2012 February: The Mill and the Cross - Lech Majewski, 2012 December: The Lord of Misrule and the Feast of Fools., 2013 July: Netherlandish Proverbs, 2014 August: Children's Games (1560).

The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York - Ed Hamilton (2015)

"In seven stories and a novella, Hamilton takes on NYC gentrification and the clash of cultures that ensues, as his characters are forced to confront their own obsolescence in the face of a rapidly surging capitalist juggernaut. Gentrification has been going on for a long time, maybe for as long as there have been cities. In the past, gentrification was almost an organic phenomenon, with creative/alternative lifestyle types moving into poor neighborhoods for the cheap rent; then, when the creatives had 'improved' the neighborhoods to a certain degree, they, in their turn, were replaced by more affluent homeowners. ... This is the story told by The Chintz Age.
Powerhouse Arena
Living with Legends (Video)
WIPs Conversation: Ed Hamilton on his work in progress
Ed Hamilton: “A Bowery Romance”
YouTube: A book talk with author Ed Hamilton

4 Hours of Charles Bukowski’s Riotous Readings and Rants

"An old man sits alone, ranting in a nasally monotonous drone. He breaks into rueful laughter, threats of violence, mockery, maudlin lament…. An angry drunken uncle crying out into the wilderness of a Tuesday night bender? A tough guy left behind in the world, unable to stomach its restrictions and blithe hypocrisies? A mad poet on his way to the grave? An everyman rambler whose seen-it-all candor and hardass sense of humor command the common people’s ear? All of the above was beloved novelist, raconteur, poet, and trenchant essayist Charles Bukowski. It’s easy to caricature Bukowski for his lifelong romance with booze, a dominant theme in nearly all of his autobiographically-inspired poems and stories. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2012 December: Three Interpretations of Charles Bukowski’s Melancholy Poem “Nirvana”, 2014 December: Dostoyevsky Got a Reprieve from the Czar’s Firing Squad and Then Saved Charles Bukowski’s Life

The Animals

Wikipedia - "The Animals were an English band of the 1960s, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne, during the early part of the decade. The band moved to London upon finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature song and transatlantic No. 1 hit single, 'The House of the Rising Sun', as well as by hits such as 'We Gotta Get out of This Place', 'It's My Life', 'I'm Crying' and 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood'. The band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-oriented album material. They were known in the US as part of the British Invasion. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Animals discography
allmusic
YouTube: The House of the Rising Sun, Please Don´t Let Me Be Misunderstood, It's My Life, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, See See Rider, DON´T BRING ME DOWN, I'm Crying, Inside Looking Out, When I Was Young, Sky Pilot, San Franciscan Nights

Touring the East Village’s Incubator of Experimentation

"Seen head-on, behind the scaffolding, Performance Space 122 looks about the same as it has for years: that red-brick facade overlooking First Avenue, those hulking metal gates guarding the door. But stroll a few yards up the sidewalk, peek around the edge of the building, and the scruffiness gives way to a gleaming new exterior. Its sleekness betrays no hint of the gentrifying neighborhood’s tatty, crime-ridden past or the creative experiments that have gone on there since 1980, when PS122 opened at the corner of East Ninth Street. What began as a squat in an old public school building would become a stage for people like Spalding Gray and Meredith Monk, for Eric Bogosian and the preglobal Blue Man Group. ..."
NY Times
PS122
PS122 Mobile Walking Tour (Video)
Lower East Side History Month
Under the Radar (Video)

The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 by Frank Dikötter

Teenage Red Guards brandishing copies of Mao’s Little Red Book in 1968 Beijing.
"'To rebel is justified,' the Great Helmsman intoned. He named his teenage followers Red Guards, and it was they who packed Tiananmen Square, waving copies of the Little Red Book filled with his sayings as they stood in their millions for a brief sight of him. Like their western contemporaries who encountered the Beatles, they told each other that their lives were changed. But Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution also had a darker side. It was necessary to destroy the bourgeois past, and this involved the wholesale looting of shrines, the destruction of books and parchment, the smashing of ornaments and the pillaging of homes belonging to the wealthy."
Guardian
NY Times
amazon

1976-1978 CBGB's House Photographer

"Seminal New York music venue CBGB (country, bluegrass and blues, since you asked) opened in 1973 at the meeting of Bowery and Bleecker Street, and was run by Hilly Kristal. During the late '70s, CBGB was the epicenter of the punk and new wave music scenes. David Godlis was its primary documenter. Here he talks exclusively to Retronaut about his photographs. ... But in the most unlikely of all places — in the slumping New York City’s infamous Bowery, among the skid row bums on loser’s lane, far away from the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan — a group of like-minded musicians and artists had their sights set on the future. In a small, dingy club, they would rewrite the past and set a template for the last quarter century in music, fashion, art, literature and film. ..."
Mashable
17 Awesome Photos That Captured CBGB’s Iconic 1970s Punk Scene
Guardian - Picture this: rock stars at New York’s punk mecca CBGB – in pictures

2009 April: CBGB, 2011 January: CBGB's the roots of punk documentary, 2013 September: CBGB's Final Show With Patti Smith - 15 October 2006

Paris Vagabond - Jean-Paul Clébert

"Jean-Paul Clébert was a boy from a respectable middle-class family who ran away from school, joined the French Resistance, and never looked back. Making his way to Paris at the end of World War II, Clébert took to living on the streets, and in Paris Vagabond, a so-called 'aleatory novel' assembled out of sketches he jotted down at the time, he tells what it was like. His 'gallery of faces and cityscapes on the road to extinction' is an astonishing depiction of a world apart—a Paris, long since vanished, of the poor, the criminal, and the outcast—and a no less astonishing feat of literary improvisation: Its long looping breathless sentences, streetwise, profane, lyrical, incantatory, are an adventure in their own right. Praised on publication by the great novelist and poet Blaise Cendrars and embraced by the young Situationists as a kind of manual for living off the grid, Paris Vagabond — here published with the starkly striking photographs of Clébert’s friend Patrice Molinard — is a raw and celebratory evocation of the life of a city and the underside of life."
NYRB Classics (Click to enlarge image)
NY Times: ‘Paris Vagabond,’ by Jean-Paul Clébert By Edmund White
W - Jean-Paul Clébert
Bookslut

Rizan Sa’id – Electric Mawwal (2015)

"There is no other Syrian dabke musician that has enjoyed the local, regional, national, and international recognition that Rizan Said has, and for that, the world is lucky. Rizan is a musical ambassador from a disappeared Syria, and this is not to be taken lightly. Once upon a time, not too long ago, Syria was a culturally diverse country possessing a certain unity. A place not synonymous with barbarism and savagery. Far from the capital of Damascus, the northeast of the country, known as the Jazeera, was rich with history and culture. Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians, Yezidis, and Arabs had lived together for centuries in this largely agricultural region. The area is closer to Iraq in proximity and culture than the rest of Syria – evident in the dialects, clothing, food and music. ..."
Cargo Records
Soundcloud: Rizan Said - Electric Mawwal I (King Of Keyboard, 2015), High Tension Zamer
beatport: King Of Keyboard (Video)
YouTube: Wenu Wenu // full album 39:51
YouTube: Omar Souleyman - Warni Warni (Official Video)

Super Black Blues (1969)

"Bob Thiele, the former head of blues at ABC Records who founded the Flying Dutchman imprint BluesTime in the late '60s, designed the 1969 album Super Black Blues as a way to showcase the label's three recently signed blues legends, T-Bone Walker, Joe Turner, and Otis Spann. ... The emphasis on improvisation and long grooves certainly made Super Black Blues different than the original '40s and '50s sides by Walker, Turner, and Spann -- those were restricted by technology and taste -- and it's fun to hear them stretch out with George 'Harmonica' Smith, Arthur Wright, Ernie Watts, Ron Brown, and Paul Humphrey in tow. ..."
allmusic (Video)
YouTube: Blues Jam, Jot's Blues, Paris Blues, Here Am I Broken Hearted

What Comes Next for Cuban Modern Dance?

Amanda Batista Robaina, center, is a 16-year-old student in contemporary dance at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Cuba’s arts university, in Havana.
"HAVANA — Idania Wambrug teaches dance in a capacious, brick-vaulted studio with so much light streaming down from high windows that it almost feels like an outdoor pavilion. It’s the same studio where she was a student in the 1960s, and over the years, all that natural light has been helpful when the electricity has gone out. The studio is in the National School of Dance here in Havana, part of the National Arts Schools, an avant-garde architectural project conceived not long after the 1959 Cuban Revolution but never completed. What Ms. Wambrug teaches comes from that time as well. With a mandate from the revolutionary government, the Cuban choreographer Ramiro Guerra created 'técnica cubana,' a hybrid of American modern dance — the language of Martha Graham, José Limón and others, which Mr. Guerra had studied in the United States — with ballet and Cuban tradition, both Spanish and African. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Slide Show
Joyce: Cuba Festival
Danza Contemporanea de Cuba (Video)
YouTube: Cuban Contemporary Dance Technique, Cuban-Modern-Dance, Contemporary Dance Training, Contemporary Class / Floor work

Something Out There - Zeena Parkins (1987)

"Zeena Parkins is a New York-based (Detroit-born) harpist who has introduced the instrument in the context of improvised music. Her first major experience was in prog-rock outfits Skeleton Crew and News from Babel. She designed her own electric version of the harp (with help from Tom Cora), and continued to enhance it throughout her career. Something Out There (No Man's Land, 1987) collects solos, duos and trios with drummer Ikue Mori, cellist Tom Cora, turntablist Christian Marclay, percussionist Samm Bennett, etc. There are pieces that focus on creating rhythm by dissonant harp and drums, like the powerful Firebrat and Cornered, there are pointillistic vignettes like Without Words and Sidereal Messenger, and there are mere displays of atonal bravura like Left-Handed Walk and Appointment In Samarkind. Marclay dominates the collage art of Mother Tongue and Southern Exposure, which end up stealing the show. ..."
Scaruffi
Discogs
allmusic
illustrated amateur: Southern Exposure
YouTube: Firebrat, Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori - Jezebel

2011 January: Zeena Parkins, 2012 December: Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins / sound. at REDCAT, 2014 October: Janene Higgins & Zeena Parkins (2000), 2012 October: Ikue Mori, 2015 March: Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori, 2016 April: News from Babel (1983-1986).

The Amazing Architectural Evolution of the Filling Station

Roarin’ Rohrer’s Streamline Moderne gas station, McAlester, Oklahoma, ca. 1930–1945
"Gas stations might be boring or even ugly places, but for the most part, you can’t avoid stopping by one on a long trip. However, they have been so many more beyond the basic design of columns, roof and shop over their history. The following 60+1 filling stations encompass almost a century of architectural progression, showcasing some of the best Art Deco, Bauhaus, futurist, brutalist, minimalist, modernist, Googie building designs of the motorist history. Enjoy the ride!"
gizmodo
W - Filling station
W - U.S. Route 66

Motherlode - James Brown (1988)

"During the mid- and late '80s, after Brown and Polydor parted ways, the label began to reissue his work, some of which had been out of print for close to a decade. Motherlode is one of the finest compilations. Coming a few years after In the Jungle Groove, a compilation effort that culled some of Brown's harder-edged 1969-1971 tracks, this covers 1969-1973 and has the smoothness of a regular release effort. By this point, Motherlode producers Cliff White and Tim Rogers began to know more about Brown's 'classic' work than he did and could do compilations where the tracks were all potent. ... The track, which manages to subtly cross reggae with bebop, again features Brown with his 1971-1975 band and it exhibits their chemistry and the band's unbelievable versatility. Although Motherlode has been lost in the shuffle due to a plethora of other compilations, this is still illuminating and enjoyable."
allmusic
W - Motherlode
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Motherlode [Full Album]

Work Rest and Play - Madness (EP - 1979)

Wikipedia - "Work Rest and Play is an EP by British ska/pop band Madness. ... The EP's success was largely down to 'Night Boat to Cairo', which headlined the set and had an accompanying music video. The fourth song, 'Don't Quote Me On That', was a commentary on press coverage which had tried to paint the band as racists who supported the National Front. Some of the band's shows had been disrupted by skinhead violence and, in a 1979 NME interview, Madness member Chas Smash was quoted as saying 'We don't care if people are in the NF as long as they're having a good time.' This was quoted to add to the speculation that Madness was a racist band supporting the National Front, although the band members denied those allegations. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Night Boat To Cairo (Live)
YouTube: NIGHT BOAT TO CARIO - DECEIVES THE EYE - THE YOUNG AND THE OLD - DONT QUOTE ME ON THAT

Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Night House 1, 2013
"Among the more moving art experiences is seeing a painter excel late in life. Alex Katz, 87, is well known for landscapes and portraits that combine direct perception; wet-on-wet speed-painting and scale; and a distinct merging of Pop Art, abstraction and the plein-air tradition. But now he is having one of the best gallery exhibitions of his career, a display of landscape paintings — lately his surest work — that while seeming to modulate his familiar style have a new, more emotional resonance. ..."
NY Times
Gavin Brown's enterprise
WSJ: A Look At Alex Katz’s Late Career
No Sad Songs: Q+A With Alex Katz and Gavin Brown
When Gavin Brown Met Alex Katz: An Artist's New Show Is At An Unexpected Venue
YouTube: Alex Katz at GAVIN BROWN'S ENTERPRISE

2008 February: Alex Katz, 2010 December: Life Imitates Art, 2012 June: Alex Katz Prints, 2013 April: On Painting: Alex Katz & Felix Vallotton

Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing.

The rafters in Pablo Neruda's studio.
"In 1967, Milton Rogovin was invited to collaborate on a project with the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. While at Neruda's home in Isla Negra, Chile, Milton photographed Neruda's living room. The ceiling had the names of poets who were influential to Neruda. Windows that Open Inward contains poems by Pablo Neruda and photographs by Milton Rogovin. This book was published in 2004 by White Pine Press. Milton's involvement with Neruda and his month-long photographing trip to Chile is spoken about in films and books on Milton's photography. ..."
Milton Rogovin
W - Casa de Isla Negra
BBC - Chile through Pablo Neruda's eyes
Fundación Pablo Neruda
Google - Windows that Open Inward
amazon

February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved.

Sturtevant Drawing Double Reversal

Sturtevant, Johns 0 Through 9, 1965.
"In the rooms of the MMK 1, a selection of more than one hundred drawings dating from 1964 to the present – and thus from throughout the late artist’s œuvre – is on display. Among them are eighty drawings here on view to the public for the first time. The intense research and study of Sturtevant’s graphic work carried out in preparation for the show led to the conclusion that the early drawings are the key to understanding her conceptual work. Particularly the so-called Composite Drawings of 1965 and 1966 convey an impression of her radical artistic thought and the status of her work in recent art history. ..."
Domus
artbook
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac - Solo
W - Elaine Sturtevant
NY Times: Elaine Sturtevant, Who Borrowed Others’ Work Artfully, Is Dead at 89
YouTube: STURTEVANT I RELOADED I GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC PARIS MARAIS I 2014/2015, Sturtevant's Repetitions, In Paris with Sturtevant

Celebrating Jane Jacobs

"The writer, activist, and urban theorist Jane Jacobs was born 100 years ago today. Best known for her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs pulled together her experiences as an architecture journalist, New York City resident, and long-time observer of urban life (she grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, watching the city’s slow economic decline) to form her ideas about how cities and neighborhoods work best. In the book, which she called 'an attack' on established ideas of city planning, Jacobs argued strongly for urban density and diversity. ..."
Curbed
#jj100 (Video)
W - Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs Walk
TIME - Defending Vibrant City Life: Jane Jacobs at 100 (Video)
Jane Jacobs believed cities should be fun — and changed urban planning forever (Video)
W - The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
A MARVELOUS ORDER an opera about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Celebrating the City: Jane Jacobs at 100, Jane Jacobs vs Robert Moses: Urban Fight of the Century, Jane Jacobs - The Little Woman That Could, Jane Jacobs: Neighborhoods in Action

One Step Forward Two Steps Backward: 1976, Reggae & Critical Amnesia

"Be wary of the curators, including me, and the path they choose for you in ‘building a collection’. Always revealing, those artifacts a dominant culture deems representative of marginal cultures. Reggae music, as an expression of black Jamaican consciousness, as the music that most uniquely summates the imaginative and spiritual desires, and brute reality of Jamaican life, is now usually critically reduced to a half-handful of album-length transmissions. Noticeable also, among even the ‘collector’ mindset and in the tiny worlds of avant-garde rock-crit and even dance-crit, that increasingly the emphasis on dub’s studio-sorcery or dancehall’s digi-manipulation is paramount. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
YouTube: Peter Tosh - Them A Fi Get A Beaten, Power and the glory - Ernie Smith

“Daze World”, the Artist and Book from City to Canvas and Back

"'This is not an autobiography in the practical sense. I didn’t cover the day-to-day minutia of my childhood or formative teenage years all the way to the present. Rather, I have chosen to take the reader on a journey that covers some of the seminal moments in my life. Those moments shaped my art and allowed me to continue to evolve as an artist,' says graffiti/street/studio artist DAZE of the brand new collection of images and essays that make up 'Daze World,' the new hardcover from Schiffer. The trains of the 1970s are formative and foundational to the NYC story and Daze is happy to talk to you about his love affair with the cars, tracks, tunnels, yards. Also important to him is his gradual transition in the early and mid-1980s to canvas and galleries. It is a transition that may be insurmountable, or at least treacherous, for a graffiti writer. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

The Slits - "Typical Girls" / "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (1979)

"Following on from the more recent spiky, punky, dubby sound of MIA’s ‘Paper Planes’, we have this classic from proto riot girrrls The Slits. Their take on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine‘ (Motown’s lament about 'the rumor mill that swirls around a cheating lover') has been described as 'the gold standard in violently recontextualized punk covers' and 'transcendent'. The song is memorable by virtue of it doing what all the best covers surely should: radically reinterpreting a song (a classic in its own right in this case, though I’d suggest it doesn’t have to be) and making it into something new. Apart from the genre shift, Ari’s vocal twists and ingenious insertion of 'I heard it through the bassline' at one point in the song give it a life of its own. Meanwhile, the lack of change in terms of heterosexist and standard gender appropriate alterations is refreshing. ..."
Song of the day: The Slits – I Heard it Through the Grapevine
Discogs
YouTube: Typical Girls, I Heard It Through The Grapevine

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, 2015 August: Return Of The Giant Slits (1981/2007)