Walls

The Mothership Touches Down in Brooklyn

PFunk and George Clinton want to funk you up: The Mothership set down at Metrotech Commons in Downtown Brooklyn Thursday afternoon for a little transfusion from the Galactic over soul. The lunchtime crowd was not disappointed.

'(Anybody Goin' to) San Antone': The Late, Great Doug Sahm

Doug Sahm, child musical prodigy, co-founder of the Sir Douglas Quintet and originator of the Tex-Mex Sound, and Band perform 'Anybody Goin' to San Antone' in Austin Texas, 1975.

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn holds a special and abiding affection for this tune.

How Can We Even Think of Dropping Him from the Ten Spot? 'Hamilton' goes to Broadway

This Founding Father, an immigrant from the Caribbean, whose amazing life encompassed sex scandals, intense political battles, and ended in gun violence, and whose vision led to the development of the American economy, may be dumped from the $10 bill to make way for the first woman. For reasons why there may be other, better candidates to replace (Andrew Jackson on the $20 is a popular choice), Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Hamilton', a hip hop retelling of his life will be exploding on Broadway with huge advance sales and lots of critical and audience anticipation.

More in the NY Times here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/theater/hamilton-heads-to-broadway-in-a-hip-hop-retelling.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

Two Louises at Storm King: Bourgeois & Nevelson Up Close

    

                  Royal Tide 1, 1960

                   Louise Nevelson 

                      (Excerpt below)

     

      

              Number Seventy-Two 

             (The No March), 1972

                 Louise Bourgeois

The two Louises, inhabiting the same space, for the viewer, a moment suspended in time, outside of time, the organic and the found, sacred, but simply one moment of many, of the  magic of the Storm King Art Center,  

New Windsor, NY

"Don't Worry Bout Me. No": The Grateful Dead's Final Shows.. & Legacy

Were they ever here at all?

They came. They saw. They conquered the hearts of generations of fans. With the close of the Fare Thee Well 50th Anniversary Shows at Chicago's Soldier Field - site also of the final show where the late Jerry Garcia performed - the Grateful Dead move on into the stuff of memory - and legend.

Lots of parting shots -  

The New York Times on the Final Show:

The Grateful Dead Close Out Their Final Concert With Music and the Words ‘Please, Be Kind’: http://nyti.ms/1KJAkPL

10,173 free archived GD performances on the Internet http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/8976_free_grateful_dead_concert_recordings_in_the_internet_archive_explored_by_the_inew_yorkeri.html

Annotated hyperlinked compendium of Grateful Dead song lyrics via Open Culture http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/#songs

A recent Rolling Stone interview earlier this year with Robert Hunter, GD lyricist, in house poet, songwriting collaborator with Jerry Garcia http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/grateful-deads-robert-hunter-on-jerrys-final-days-we-were-brothers-20150311?page=2

Grace Hartigan's 'Myth and Malls'at Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz

               Reisterstown Mall 1962 

                 by Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan 1922- 2008 was an Abstract Expressionist and member of the New York School of painters. Associated with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and writers such as Frank O'Connor, Hartigan continued exploring new directions in painterly expression parallel to her long career as a professor at the Maryland Institute School of Art.

SUNY New Paltz's Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art is presenting a brief but very colorful exhibit on Ms Hartigan's work. Through July 12.

http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum/exhibitions/hartigan.html

What is Coding? A little bit of science, a little bit of soul

Great overview in Bloomberg Business Week by writer Paul Ford with interactive demonstration exercises on coding - the bones of contemporary technology and culture. A must read.

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/

Anticipating Dark Futures and What Can Be Done

Nick Bostrum's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is an original and unsettling book that explores the possibile scenarios leading to the development of Artificial Intelligence, the risks for society and humanity, and the steps that could conceivably be taken to contain it as a service rather than a threat to our existence. 

 As an example, Bostrum discusses Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, generally conceived as both the first and last word on AI, and describes how these laws written in 1942 fall woefully short of the precautions and logical and philosophical structures that are required to avoid an AI apocalypse once the genie is out of the bottle. A complex, challenging but engrossing read.

More on the book here http://www.nickbostrom.com/views/superintelligence.pdf

--Anthony Napoli

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Her Toys are Broken Boys: Ryuichi Sakamoto - YMO and Beyond

Ryuichi Sakamoto as part of Yellow Magic Orchestra performing "Nice Age"

http://youtu.be/pO_mmXgPx6Q

And his later solo work the trance opera classic Harry to Hospital from Wild Palms a 1993 ABC mini series directed by Oliver Stone and written by Bruce Wagner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMy_Hvk7cGI&sns=tw

Rooftop Films: 'The Wolfpack' - Living Inside and Outside of a Cinema Reality

Director Crystal Moselle and the Angulo Brothers, stars of the documentary,The Wolfpack

 

Opening later this week, The Wolfpack had its NYC premier at Rooftop Films at Industry City in Brooklyn's Sunset Park. The film follows the emergence of the Angulo Brothers from a cloistered family life in their parents' Loisaida NYCHA apartment into what will certainly be even wider celebrity status following the film's opening. Through director Moselle's footage and extensive family home movies we watch the guys stage Batman, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and other films as their homeschooled homebound childhood/adolescence served as the stage setting for a UCLA- USC- or NYU-worthy cinema education. 

Although they were prevented from venturing out into the Mean Streets by their parents they had extensive access to films and videos. But it wasn't clear if they had exposure to mass media as the boys did not have access to computers or presumably the web and only recently learned of Google as a verb.

The limitations of their early lives seemed so extreme that their skillful use of language and art and their film knowledges had me momentarily wondering if this would prove to be some  kind of hoax. But then although they appeared fairly comfortable and adept at handling the post-screening Q & A with their director, what seems like a fairy tale with a happy ending is clearly a more complex and human story as it appears they are continuing to take major and difficult steps toward independence and socialization in the larger world though now with the support of their proud and warm mom.

 

The Wolfpack opens in NYC on June 12. The Rooftop Films 2015 season, off to a bang up start,continues. http://rooftopfilms.com/

The evening opened with a cool and dreamlike performance by Nicholas Nicholas. The band's understated melodic explorations were a great counterpoint as Night fell over NYC and the planet Venus appeared in the late spring sky.

--Anthony Napoli

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Rooftop Films summer kickoff with 7 Chinese Brothers starring Jason Schwartzman

It must be summer --- Rooftop Films releases another exciting schedule of outdoor movies. Tickets available online.Tonight - Brooklyn premier of Bob Byington's  7 Chinese Brothers starring Jason Schwartzman .. Later this season The Wolfpack, Welcome to Leith, and many others, scheduled for various Brooklyn locations: Gowanus, Sunset Park and Metrotech Commons. Happy Summer. Details here

NYT: 'Havana' - A Biennial and a New Relationship- & Artistic Freedom?

Holland Cotter in the NY Times:  "If the 12th Havana Biennial has any theme, it is Havana itself. The kind of shop-window viewing favored by more conventional shows is discouraged; so is celebrity spotting."

DITHOB: Nevertheless the hope and opportunity of this new relationship has already been marred by the arrest last week of a Cuban artist for a public pro-democracy performance. Clearly this new relationship with the U.S. may remain  delicate but the support of free speech and artistic expression must remain an absolute condition. If the Administration and the Cuban governent have a vision and an agenda beyond investment and new market opportunities this is the perfect opportunity to express it, on behalf of performance artist Tania Bruguera.

Holland Cotter's report:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/arts/design/the-havana-biennial-is-running-at-full-throttle.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

The Politics Behind the Killing of Osama Bin Ladin

Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books on The Killing of Osama Bin Ladin

And the political jockeying, intrigue and dissimulation that accompanied it 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

A Slate interview with Mr Hersh on the LRB article 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.html

On the Feast of Crispian

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.