Tag Archives: culture

A Fantastic Journey Into the Mind of Collage Artist Wangechi Mutu

by Adam Stossel Posted on October 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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“The power for me is to keep the story of the female in the center, to keep discussing and talking about women as protagonists,” Wangechi Mutu said in a video introduction to A Fantastic Journey, her recent exhibition at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art. For the casual art fancier who happens upon it, as I did this summer, the exhibition was like embedding in Mutu’s mind: Black globes of crumpled plastic hang on strings suspended from the ceiling, a looping video of the artist devouring cake flickers on the floor, and triumphant warrior women occupy magnificent collage landscapes on the walls.

Mutu, a Brooklyn transplant via Nairobi, deploys mixed media to grapple with themes of consumerism and colonization, of gender and race—and war. Her large, lush collages draw from images familiar to us, such as magazine photos of bare flesh and car engines, which she transforms into works that are mysterious, beautiful, and somewhat terrifying. Her animated short, The End of eating Everything, done in collaboration with the singer Santigold, depicts a colossal machine/beast/planet feeding on black birds while floating in a vast industrial dead space. In an interview discussing the piece, Santigold praised Mutu for her “explosive renewal” of artistic expression at a time when vapid materialism dominates the popular culture.

A Shady Promise The Speyer Family Collection, New York. © Wangechi Mutu.

Mutu’s work has shown all over the globe, from New York’s MOMA to London’s Tate Modern. On Friday, her Fantastic Journey continues with an opening at the Brooklyn Museum. Mutu took a break from installing to speak with me about warrior women, consumerism, and why magazines are the “fecal matter of society.”

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A Fantastic Journey Into the Mind of Collage Artist Wangechi Mutu

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Just Look at These Great Old Photos of Glenn Gould, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Billie Holiday

by Larry Daichea Posted on October 11, 2013

Mother Jones

I love words. Sling ’em with ’em all day, matter of fact. But when I pick up a photo book, I want the images to do the lifting. Or to put that in musical terms, I’d rather listen to the song than read the sheet music. Keeping Time: The Photographs of Don Hunstein, a wonderful new retrospective from Insight Editions, accomplishes exactly that. There’s a short foreword by Art Garfunkel (oh, great, now I’ve got “Mrs. Robinson” stuck in my head!) and a foreword and afterword by New York Times pop music critic Jon Pareles, but the rest of this coffee table must-have is all meat and potatoes, showcasing the mostly unseen and intimate images of Hunstein, who spent three decades as Columbia Records’ official photographer. From Pareles’ biopic foreword:

“There was nothing metaphysical about what I did,” he said in conversation with the music producer Leo Sacks who edited the collection. “I’d just like to think I had a good eye for detail, that I captured the moment at hand. But mostly, I just did my job.”

Lucky for Hunstein (who is still alive and kicking), that job involved being a fly on the wall as the musical geniuses of his generation went about their work. Being a label photographer as opposed to, you know, those unpredictable press hounds, he had the opportunity to be around when his subjects had their guards down, at ease in their creative element, laughing or hamming or frustrated or lost in thought. Hunstein’s M.O. was to pretty much vanish into the background.

“Discretion was the better part of valor. Shoot, then disappear. I never photographed during takes. I never wanted to be in the way, to be intrusive. I hope I never was.”

He did live photography, too, but preferred the recording studio setting, which was “less distracting”—never mind the rare portraits it enabled. And although he was limited to his label’s clients, there was no shortage of greatness there. As Pareles writes…

Hunstein photographed Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk. He photographed Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Pablo Casals, Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass, Plácido Domingo, Yo-Yo Ma. He Photographed Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Robert Goulet. He photographed Aretha Franklin, Mathalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Sam Cooke, Labelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Minnie Riperton, Luther Vandross. He photographed Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes. He photographed Johnny Cash, George Jones, Charlie Daniels, the flying Burrito Brothers. He photographed Pete Seeger, Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, Joan Baez, Phoebe Snow; and, extensively, Bob Dylan, including Dylan’s first two album covers.

That’s merely a partial list.

So you’d like to actually see some of these images? I completely understand. Let’s put some vinyl on the phonograph and have a look, shall we? And, mind you, this is but a tiny sampling of the treasures you’ll find in this 200-plus page retrospective. (If you happen to live near Bethel, New York, you can catch a museum exhibition of Hunstein’s photos that runs through year’s end.)

Billie Holiday recording Lady in Satin, New York City, December 1957.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Tony Bennett at a Miami nightclub, December 1957.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Debuting songs from The Fabulous Johnny Cash at a Nashville press party, February 1959.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Mahalia Jackson at a Rotary International Convention, New York City, June 1959.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Johnny Cash during the recording of Ride This Train, October 1959.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Aretha Franklin at her first Columbia recording sessions, New York City, August 1960.

Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Boxer Cassius Clay with soul man Sam Cooke, New York City, March 1964.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Bob Dylan, June 1965. Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

Paul Simon, left, and Art Garfunkel, London, October 1966.
Don Hunstein © 2013 Sony Music Entertainment

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Just Look at These Great Old Photos of Glenn Gould, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Billie Holiday

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Real-Life Captain Phillips: The Pirates "Did Not Let Me Urinate"

by Shicsshaw Posted on October 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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Captain Phillips is a solid if ultimately forgettable “true story” movie. The film, directed by Paul Greengrass, tells the story of Captain Richard Phillips (played by a New England-accented Tom Hanks), a merchant mariner taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009. After being held for five days aboard a lifeboat, Phillips was rescued when Navy Seal snipers took out three of his Somali captors. “I share the country’s admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew,” President Obama said in a statement on April 12, 2009. “His courage is a model for all Americans.”

Last week, Phillips attended a special screening of Captain Phillips at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Hanks was there, taking selfies with sailors. Barkhad Abdi (who plays the pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse) was in attendance, as were Navy Commander Frank Castellano (one of the men who saved Phillips) and Greengrass. The 58-year-old English director is a former journalist who directed two other acclaimed docudramas: Bloody Sunday and United 93. “Films aren’t journalism,” Greengrass emphasized while introducing his film, though he argued that dramatizations are capable of conveying certain “truths.”

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Real-Life Captain Phillips: The Pirates "Did Not Let Me Urinate"

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How Population Genetics May Help Explain Economic Growth

by deqc16rl Posted on October 7, 2013

Mother Jones

Alex Tabarrok links to a short post today by a couple of researchers who study the transmission of ideas throughout history. Their conclusion is that the speed of diffusion depends on a country’s “genetic distance” from the source of the idea, and when I first read this I thought they were using genetic distance as a metaphor of some kind. That is, they were measuring the distance between various cultures, and the math happened to be similar to the math for measuring the genetic distance between human population groups, so that’s what they called it.

But no. The two researchers, Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, are literally talking about population genetics:

Measures of average differences between vectors of allele frequencies (different genes) across any two populations provide a measure of genetic distance….The goal of this approach is not to study any genetic characteristics that may confer any advantage in development….On the contrary, they are neutral: their spread results from random factors and not from natural selection. For instance, neutral genes include those coding for different blood types….Instead, genetic distance is like a molecular clock — it measures average separation times between populations. Therefore, genetic distance can be used as a summary statistic for divergence in all the traits that are transmitted with variation from one generation to the next over the long run, including divergence in cultural traits.

Their hypothesis is that populations that are genetically more distant are also culturally more distant and are therefore more resistant to trading and adopting each others’ cultural traits. In the case of the Industrial Revolution, the epicenter was in Great Britain, so the adoption of new technology was strongly influenced by the genetic distance of different populations from Britain. Sure enough, they claim that was the case. The chart on the right shows the effect of genetic distance from Britain on the adoption of machine technology. It starts out fairly modestly, rises to a high level by 1913, and then declines as technology finally diffuses everywhere.

In a sense, this comes as no surprise. Genetic distance is pretty obviously correlated with both physical distance and cultural distance, so you’d expect that it might also correlate with the spread of ideas as well. Path dependence and deliberate policy (for example, colonial rules that deliberately inhibited the spread of technology) can then account for most of the rest. Spolaore and Wacziarg’s conclusion:

In sum, we find considerable evidence that barriers introduced by historical separation between populations are central to account for the world distribution of income….These results have substantial policy implications. A common concern when studying the persistent effect of long-term history is that not much can be done today. But if a major effect of long-term historical divergence is due to barriers, there is much room and scope for policy action. Populations that are historically farther from the frontier can benefit from policies that specifically aim at reducing barriers to exchange and communication.

Needless to say, “reducing barriers” is a two-edged sword. But it’s an interesting proposition nonetheless.

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How Population Genetics May Help Explain Economic Growth

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Such a Nice Band: The Head and the Heart

by johnsmithwindows Posted on October 7, 2013

Mother Jones

The Head And The Heart Maggie Caldwell

There is a certain sound that became popular in indie music four or five years ago that seemed to have sprung forth in reaction to the gloomy mood of the Great Recession. It is a stripped down, bombast-free, rustic folk sound popularized by such acts as The Fleet Foxes, The Great Lake Swimmers, and Mumford and Sons. The songs often feature swelling choruses and invoke a spirit that rallies against the dying of the light. This boot-strap hitching, mellow optimism also has been the hallmark of a band of six strangers from Seattle, who, through mutual admiration of each other’s talents at open mic nights around the Emerald City, agreed to join forces, record an album, and head out on the road, recession be damned.

It’s been four years since the members of The Head and the Heart released their self-produced eponymous first album, a collection of heart-on-your-sleeve, piano-driven acoustic folk songs laced with violin; rounded out by a clean, driving percussion section; and driven home by gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies. Through heavy touring and word of mouth, they’ve sold more than 10,000 copies. And when Seattle’s Sub Pop label re-released an expanded edition in 2010, The Head and the Heart’s NPR darling status was sealed.

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Such a Nice Band: The Head and the Heart

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How The US Naval Institute Gave the Late Tom Clancy His First Big Break

by rqu0hfl0 Posted on October 2, 2013

Mother Jones

Tom Clancy, the American author famous for such thrillers as The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger, died Tuesday night at the age of 66. The Baltimore-born writer passed away at the Johns Hopkins Hospital following a “brief illness.”

Starting in the mid-1980s, Clancy built a one-man empire of books, film, and video games. His name has become synonymous with the spy and Cold War-era thriller genre of American popular fiction, earning him a net worth of around $300 million. His books were widely read, the movies adapted from his novels were often big hits, and his fame and ubiquity were enough for The Simpsons to feature him on the show twice (he even got to voice himself one time).

In a way, Clancy owed his great success to the United States Naval Institute. Years before The Hunt for Red October became a critically acclaimed, high-grossing film starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, it was just another manuscript in search of a publisher. This was Clancy’s first novel, which he wrote in his 30s while working as an insurance salesman. After several rejections from mainstream publishing houses, the Naval Institute Press picked it up and paid Clancy a $5,000 advance in 1984. It was the first fictional work that the Institute had published, and it attracted the praise of President Ronald Reagan (one of Clancy’s political heroes), who called it, “my kind of yarn.” The success of this first novel propelled Clancy into the the stardom he enjoyed until his final days.

Politically, he was a hardened conservative. His earlier work was steeped in cold warrior mentality. For instance, here’s a map of international alliances in his 1986 World War III novel Red Storm Rising:

ClarkK1/Wikimedia Commons

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How The US Naval Institute Gave the Late Tom Clancy His First Big Break

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Open-Access Champion Michael Eisen "Sets Free" NASA’s Paywalled Mars Rover Research

by Teofilnpc Posted on September 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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Wait, did science publishing maverick Michael Eisen just borrow a tactic from the late internet whiz kid Aaron Swartz?

Why yes, he did.

The headline for my new profile of Eisen wasn’t meant to be taken literally. As I explain in “Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.),” Swartz was indicted by the federal government for trying to do just that: He’d gained access to MIT networks to “liberate” millions of copyrighted scientific papers, most of them bankrolled by taxpayers through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies. Swartz and others in the open-access movement believed that the public should be able to view publicly-funded research without forking over stiff access fees to science publishers. Seems like a no-brainer, huh?

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Open-Access Champion Michael Eisen "Sets Free" NASA’s Paywalled Mars Rover Research

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Jennifer Hudson Promotes Obamacare, Impersonates Olivia Pope in New Funny or Die Video

by wjtydf3g Posted on September 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s the first video from Funny or Die’s new series of pro-Obamacare videos. The above two-minute segment, titled “Scandalous with Jennifer Hudson,” is a playful spoof of Scandal, ABC’s hit political-thriller series starring Kerry Washington. “I prefer covert scandal manager,” Hudson says when people refer to her as a “fixer.” But the main point of the video is to promote the benefits of Obamacare and to show viewers how to sign up. The sketch ends with this image, with the narrator encouraging you to visit the website:

funnyordie.com

On October 1, the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges—in which uninsured Americans will be able to buy coverage using federal subsidies—open up for business. While conservative groups are emphasizing doom and government excess (this includes the Koch brothers-backed young-conservatives group Generation Opportunity, which recently released this creepy, sort of rapey anti-Obamacare ad), Funny or Die, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay‘s comedy site, has planned a short series of comedic celebrity web videos aimed at educating American twenty-somethings about the law.

In July, a cluster of Hollywood big-names attended a meeting at the White House to chat about how they could help spread the word about Obamacare. (President Obama swung by for roughly half an hour to mingle and hear some of their ideas.) The meeting was run by senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who gave a presentation on health care reform and talked about pushing back against conservative memes surrounding the law. Here is Jarrett tweeting about Funny or Die’s Scandal-themed PSA, using the hashtag “#GetCovered,” a hashtag that appears in the video:

And here’s the White House sharing it:

Hudson and Mike Farah, president of production and “ambassador of lifestyle,” were both present at the July meeting. “We want to make the right amount of videos—ones that are smart and break through the clutter and rhetoric,” Farah told Mother Jones. “If we can help make signing up for Obamacare a normal thing, something that isn’t politicized, something that comes second nature to younger people (like putting your seatbelt on), that is something we’d want to do…It’s not like one Funny or Die video can change the world—it’d be nice if it could! But people have to hear about this issue from all sorts of directions.”

Funny or Die has generated and promoted Obamacare-related content before, including “The Mis-Informant” (starring Jack Black as a “professional mis-informant who gets paid a buttload of cash” to lie about Obamacare) and “Injured Americans Against Obamacare.” The website pumps out a lot of political satire in general. Shortly after the 2008 election, it released the star-studded “Prop 8 – The Musical.” More recently, Funny or Die produced a sketch warning of the dangers of sequestration, and worked with actress Alyssa Milano on her “sex tape” that turned out to be all about the bloodshed in Syria.

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Jennifer Hudson Promotes Obamacare, Impersonates Olivia Pope in New Funny or Die Video

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Breaking Bad, Narco Cultura, and the Ballad of Walter White

by Reinold Keillor Posted on September 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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The hit TV series Breaking Bad, which, in case you hadn’t heard, concludes its incredible five-season run tonight, is known for its disorienting opening scenes—brief cryptic bits of foreshadowing before the first titles flash on screen with that now-iconic guitar and bass snippet. The technique has been employed in other shows, but never with such regularity and success as in Vince Gilligan’s Emmy-dominating opus.

But one of the teasers, appearing mid-way through Season 2, has stood out from all others: It’s a video of the Mexican band Los Cuates de Sinaloa performing a narcocorrido (drug anthem) honoring Heisenberg, Walter White’s drug-trafficking alter ego. (White is portrayed by the actor Bryan Cranston.)

If you don’t speak Spanish, the song sounds like an upbeat Mexican folk ditty. But the lyrics allude to Heisenberg’s blossoming meth business, which, at this point in the series, has left the Mexican cartels fuming over lost territory and profits. Shots of Heisenberg’s nonpareil blue meth, guns, fat stacks of cash, and a trail of bloodied bodies flashes over Los Cuates’ frenetic playing.

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Breaking Bad, Narco Cultura, and the Ballad of Walter White

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Roman Mars on the Secret Allure of Highway Stripes and Manhole Covers

by Alexandra Smith Posted on September 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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Radio host Roman Mars, creator of the architecture-and-design podcast 99% Invisible, wasn’t always interested in the structures around him—”I found architecture kind of distancing, quite honestly,” he says—until the day he embarked on a boat tour of Chicago. The guide pointed out how one of the Montgomery Ward buildings was explicitly designed without corner offices to prevent squabbling among company vice-presidents over who should get one. It “made me realize I wasn’t invested in the aesthetics of buildings, but I loved the stories of buildings a whole lot.”

In 2010, when an architecture trade group partnered with San Francisco radio station KALW to launch a bite-size design segment, Mars, who’d gotten his start at the station nine years earlier, jumped in to produce. Soon he was doing longer stories about things most if us take for granted: a decrepit bridge in Golden Gate Park, highway stripes, the modern toothbrush, the dark logic of solitary-confinement cells.

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Roman Mars on the Secret Allure of Highway Stripes and Manhole Covers

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