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Salt Lake Crucifixion Blues
Jared Paul ~ Providence-based spoken word artist Jared Paul has a new album out. It's his first, and it was recorded live. The rationale of this, according to the press release is that in the studio, "the performer can’t feed off the energy of the audience and the crowd isn’t able to interact with the poet." This track, "Salt Lake Crucifixion Blues," is a representative example of the album's flow, bringing together the personal and political... Read... The Last Symphony John Halle ~ Doug Henwood is not the first to observe that the American empire has entered a decadent phase. He is, however, among the few to focus his attention on how the “social rot produced by market-regulated societies, from the macro level of investment down to the socially shaped psychology (has begun to dictate) how we think and feel.” Henwood is right to wonder “how the imperium can long survive this sort of pervasive rot” ... Read... The Odds Are Never In Our Favor Laura Durkay ~ In a country capable of producing enormous riches, the vast majority of the population slaves away at dangerous, mind-numbing jobs for poverty wages, pitted against each other in life-or-death competition. Meanwhile, most of the wealth they produce goes to enrich a tiny minority who live in unimaginable luxury and leisure, producing nothing and relying on high-tech surveillance and brutal police repression to keep the whole system in place... Read... On 5 Pointz and Decolonization Amanda A. ~ Calle 13 says it better than I can in the band's new song "Multi Viral," "Si la prensa no habla, Nosotros damos los detalles, Pintando las paredes, Con aerosol en las calles." Translation: "If the media doesn't dare, We do, We paint the walls, Graffiti on the streets." This week the battle to keep 5 Pointz from being demolished seems to have been lost after the building's owner... Read... Whatever Happened to Wolde Ayele? Robert Boyd ~ There are people like me who love digging up Houston's forgotten cultural history. For most people who ever have cause to think about such things, the juxtaposition of the phrase "cultural history" and "Houston" is utterly laughable. But there were times when such derisive laughter could be heard when people expressed an interest in the cultural histories of Los Angeles and Chicago... Read... The Person In the Painting Paul Mullan ~ Fascism is ascendant in Europe. Influence of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (GD) has burgeoned in Greece, one of the countries most impacted by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Greece has also experienced one of the most advanced left political responses to that crisis: in multiple mass strikes and spontaneous youth uprisings since 2007... Read... A Waking Nightmare Into Hell and Profit Ryan Nanni ~ 12 Years a Slave has received countless accolades from critics. The New Yorker has called it “easily the greatest feature film ever made about American slavery.” High praise, and the end result lives up to it. The film is a moving portrait of Solomon Northup's struggle to survive as a man while he is made to be a beast to enrich a Southern ruling class. By adapting Northup's story, director Steve McQueen captures the highest contradiction of an artist... Read... What Arthur Danto Meant to Me Ben Davis ~ Arthur Danto, who died on October 25th at the age of 89, was that rare and heroic thing: a real weirdo. I say that admiringly. The legendary critic, who made his name writing about difficult art for a popular audience in the Nation, formed a school of one. Unmoved by the critical vogues of the 1980s and ’90s, he drew on the supremely uncool doctrines of analytic philosophy (in which he was academically credentialed) and Hegel... Read... |
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