David Wojnarowicz: Artist, Activist, American Visionary

Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City prostituting himself and also worked as a farmer on the Canadian border.

Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made super-8 films, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries. Wojnarowicz is also connected to other prolific artists of the time, appearing in or collaborating on works with artists like Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Luis Frangella, Kiki Smith, Richard Kern, James Romberger,Ben Neill and Phil Zwickler.

In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act. Wojnarowicz' successful lawsuit represented a notable and affirmative step towards artists rights in the United States.Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related complications on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37.His personal papers are part of the Downtown Collection held by the Fales Library at New York University.

His works include: Untitled (One Day This Kid...); Untitled (Buffalo); Water; Birth of Language II; Untitled (Shark), Untitled (Peter Hujar); Tuna; Peter Hujar Dreaming/Yukio Mishima: St. Sebastian; Delta Towels; True Myth (Domino Sugar); Something From Sleep II; Untitled (Face in Dirt); and I Feel a Vague Nausea among others.

After his death, photographer and artist Zoe Leonard, who was a friend of Wojnarowicz, exhibited a work inspired by him, entitled "Strange Fruit (for David)".

In November 2010, the video, A Fire in the Belly, which was included in the exhibit "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" at the National Portrait Gallery (United States) was removed by SMithsonian Director Wayne Clough, after complaints from the Catholic League (U.S.) and Rep. John Boehner.

Details here

Friday on My Mind: Masoko Tanga

Yes, while there is concern, fear, despair, complex economic dislocations, political concerns and conflict, etc., in the air, nevertheless, to the working stiffs of New York City, for example, the working women and men who ride the northbound Q/B train in Brooklyn at 7 AM, the nurses, lawyers, clarks, 'crats of all stripes, messengers, skilled produce workers, editors, sheetrockers, web designers, college students, and other workers and dreamers, today is a Friday, during the year-end holiday season, and as such, there is still room for hope and a little joy.  There is a simple happiness, letting go at the end of the week, holding onto the pole at the end of the subway car, looking at morning light, and the sleepy faces, knowing that it's Friday and there is a bit of weekend ahead. Maybe after paying a few bills, there will be room for a nice glass of wine shared with a loved one, or a single malt nursed over a good book, with some music in the background. Fortification against the early winter, as we hold onto our dreams and push back the darkness for another day.

On another hopeful Friday, DITHOB salutes you all with a bit of world jazz/rock from the singin' Police -- Masako Tanga.

Anarchy in the U.K.

Tuition hike protestors attack car containing British royals, set fire to giant Christmas tree in TrafalgarSquare here

...

Vandals hack down 2,000-year-old Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury here

"Vandals have destroyed one of the most celebrated Christian pilgrimage sites in Britain and chopped down a tree said to have sprouted from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea 2,000 years ago.


The Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury, Somerset, is visited by thousands every year to pay homage and leave tokens of worship. Those visiting today were moved to tears on finding the tree cut to a stump.


The sacred tree is unique in that it blossoms twice a year - at Christmas and Easter - and sprigs taken from the thorn are sent to The Queen each year for the festive table."

After

Before

John Winston Lennon - October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980

30 years after the passing of a legend. I still remember that December night. I was in my early 20s, in my first apartment on Prospect Park West and 8th street in Park Slope. Freelancer for a research publisher, copywriter, and film reviewer for a few trade magazines, I was busy hacking away on my portable manual Olivetti typewriter, with a little 8" black and white broadcast TV on in the background, when the news flash interrupted the regular programming. It was a shocking, sickening feeling, that a cultural figure of John Lennon's prominence and magnitude could be killed in New York City, right outside his home. But, coming on the heels of the election of Ronald Reagan just a month before, and the clear ascendancy of many elements of the right in the US that this represented, there was an eerie sense that this was the ultimate formalization of the retrenchment, as the great wave of the 60s, as Hunter S. Thompson had written, had reached its furthest shore only to roll back over the age of Aquarius and all the possibilities that it represented. And the realization that this was, overtly, covertly or metaphorically, an assassination, resulting not only  in the death of this extraordinarily talented world figure, but it also represented the final nails in the coffin of an aspect of an American dream for many young people here and around the world.

--Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Coda: Details on Rolling Stone's "Last Interview with John Lennon" by Jonathan Cott here

GIMME SHELTER by the Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin Released in NYC in 1970

40 years ago today the landmark film, Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin was released in NYC, recording, of course, the Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour that culminated in the Altamont Speedway free concert in San Francisco, CA, on Satursdday, December 6, 1969. Violence etween the Hells Angels, audience members, and even the performers. By the time The Stones hit the stage, it was evening, and the crowd was especially restless. The Stones opened with "Jumpin' Jack Flash", and are also shown performing "Sympathy for the Devil", as the tension continues to build. It is during the next song, "Under My Thumb", that a member of the audience, 18 year old Meredith Hunter, pulls out a revolver in the course of a melee near the stage, and is stabbed to death by Alan Passaro, a Hells Angels member.

This remains a remarkable film, associated with the Direct Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Maysles Brothers, who directed it, are strong figures of the era, having also directed  "Grey Gardens," "Salesman" and "The Beatles: First US Visit."  Filmmaker Charlotte Zwerin was an essential collaborator with the Mayles in the making of the film. The "Direct Cinema" movement revolves around the philosophy of being a "reactive" filmmaker. Rather than investigating a subject matter through such documentary techniques as interviews, reconstruction and voiceover, direct cinema simply records events as they unfold naturally and spontaneously, although edited to provide a broad, wide ranging and comprehensive story.

More on the film's background here

Gimme Shelter trailer here"


Film essays by the filmmakers, participants and others from the excellent Criterion Collection here


When I was a high school student, back in the early 1970s in Brooklyn, we rented and screened a 16 mm copy of the film. Then, as now, a visionary, troubling work about the flip side of "the Age of Aquarius."

Snow Flurries in Brooklyn@ Around 7:25 AM

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Well, not exactly "Jingle Bells," but this is an interesting winter song, spiritual but devoid of all holiday cheer.
Snow in San Anselmo by Van Morrison from "Hard Nose the Highway" 

    

Friday on My Mind: Lua Soberana ("Sovereign Moon")

The wonderful "Lua Soberana" from Sergio Mendes album Brasilero. I think originally composed by Brazilian composer Ivan Lins.

NASA: SURPRISE! LIFE CAN TAKE MANY UNEXPECTED FORMS

 NASA PRESS RELEASE: 10-32
NASA-FUNDED RESEARCH DISCOVERS LIFE BUILT WITH TOXIC CHEMICAL

WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The
microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to
seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth.

The research is published in this week's edition of Science Express.
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that
carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to
phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology research
fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated
that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.

The key issue the researchers investigated was when the microbe was grown on arsenic did the arsenic actually became incorporated into the organisms' vital biochemical machinery, such as DNA, proteins and
the cell membranes. A variety of sophisticated laboratory techniques were used to determine where the arsenic was incorporated.
The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake's isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.
The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth's evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research.

These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.

"The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

The research team included scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in Menlo Park.

NASA's Astrobiology Program in Washington contributed funding for the research through its Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. NASA's Astrobiology Program supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth.

For more information about the finding and a complete list of researchers, visit:

http://astrobiology.nasa.go/

-end-

CODA 1: "Aliens" from Right Here?

The time has finally come for NASA's heavily anticipated press conference, which has generated quite the Internet buzz since the space agency released an enticingly ambiguous press briefing previewing the announcement of an "astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."


However, according to more sober minded, but still panting-with-anticipation, chomping at the bit web observers, the truth may be a bit closer to home:
According to Steven Hoffer at the AOL News Surge Desk:
"Rumors hold that NASA researchers have discovered an arsenic-based bacteria living in California's Lake Mono, a finding that radically expands the number of potential habitats for extraterrestrial life to places previously considered unsuitable..."

The NASA News Conference is scheduled for 2 PM here.

Space is the Place: NASA News Conference 2PM Today on Extraterrestrial Life Stirs Excitement

It might be an overhyped bit of scientific minutiae, but NASA's astrobiology team plans to have an important announcement for today, Thursday, December 2. All NASA will say about the press conference is that it will "discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."



Brad Sylvester of "Space Matters" via Yahoo News offers his best guess: "My guess, and it is only a guess, is that a new chemical basis for life has been modeled resulting in the discovery of a unique chemical signature that, if found in an extraterrestrial rock (or a terrestrial rock, for that matter), would be a smoking gun for the past presence of this type of life. Perhaps, they have even actually found such evidence, either with a visual examination of martial soils by the rovers, or in meteorite fragments found in the arctic."

Brad Sylvester's article here

Megan Levy of New Zealand's Stuff online reviews and shares rebuttals of some of the rumors here including those stoked by Blogger Jason Kottke's website here

The NASA News Conference is scheduled for 2 PM, Eastern Standard Time. Official NASA site here

Brooklyn Knows: Free HIV Testing/Counseling and AIDS Memorial Quilt Display to Mark World AIDS Day at Brooklyn Borough Hall

On Wednesday, December 1, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham will host events at Brooklyn Borough Hall to mark World Aids Day 2010.


The New York City Health Department will conduct a lighting ceremony at the Brooklyn Borough Hall for the 23rd Annual World AIDS Day. The event is for today, Wednesday, December 1,  from 5-6:30pm at the Brooklyn Borough Hall Rotunda (209 Joralemon St near Court Street).

The lighting ceremony will be part of a celebration of the launch of Brooklyn Knows, which is a campaign encouraging folks in Brooklyn to get tested for HIV/AIDS and know their status. This ceremony is part of a full day of activities to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Brooklyn and sub-Saharan Africa. Joining BP Markowitz and Deputy BP Graham will be Malaak Compton-Rock, founder and director of Journey for Change: Empowering Youth Through Global Service; former supermodel, maternal health advocate and founder of Every Mother Counts, Christy Turlington Burns; actress and activist Gabrielle Union; Brooklyn-born Academy Award-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe; teens from Journey for Change; a representative from (RED); and New York City officials.

The Brooklyn Borough Hall will also be one of the 80 landmarks around the world that will be turning (RED) to help spread the message that 2015 is the due date for an AIDS-free generation.

Throughout the day, from 11 AM - 7 PM, the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in the Courtroom in partnership with EAC Brooklyn TASC, who will also offer free HIV testing, counseling, prevention measures and literature on the HIV/AIDS epidemic.


WORLD AIDS DAY established on December 1, 1988, brings messages of compassion, hope, solidarity and understanding about HIV/AIDS to the world, and gratitude and encouragement to those committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS.  According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), there are currently more than 107,177 people living with HIV/AIDS in NYC.  ODHMH is committed to preventing and controlling the spread of HIV and ensuring that people living with HIV/AIDS have the best possible treatment and care.  For more information, please visit www.nyc.gov/health or call 311.

NYC Public Schools: Now, A Chimera at the Helm

Andrew Wolf on the Mayor's latest education maneuver:

"So (Deputy Chancellor for Instruction) Mr. Polokow-Suransky hasn’t been working with curriculum or instructional techniques and strategies, the jobs of the educational professional. He has been spinning the stats, which remain the biggest question confronting the mayor’s claims on education. And now Mr. Steiner has caved in to the mayor. The brief euphoria in serious education circles, when on Tuesday evening it looked like the state education commissioner would deny Ms. Black her waiver, was just a mirage.


"If Ms. Black’s mandated deputy, Mr. Polokow-Suransky, is supposed to be the chief educator, shouldn’t he be the chancellor, and shouldn’t the technocrat, Ms. Black, get a title like chief operating officer? Mr. Steiner’s plan has this reversed. Certainly one doesn’t want the educational policy emanating from the administrative office. Are we deciding the way we are teaching children to read or do math to conform to some management imperative?" The post of chancellor should go to a person with top education credentials, a distinguished figure up to whom everyone in New York — and the rest of the country — can look as having substance. Instead we have a chancellor with no education credentials who will have by her side a person who has been facilitating the cooking of the books using bogus test scores."

Full article by Andrew Wolf, contributing editor to the NY Sun (online) here

The Annual YWCA Christmas Day Event Seeks Angels

The annual YWCA Christmas Dinner Event, formerly at the YWCA on Atlantic and Third Avenues in Brooklyn, and now relocated to the Park Slope Armory on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, has always been a memorable institution for those in need as well as for those in the community -- whether they celebrate Christmas or not -- who are more fortunate and who join together with their neighbors to volunteer to make this special day happen.

In past years, our entire family has spent the day volunteering as part of this unique and good-spirited event. Mr. Lee Perlman, Event Producer, and Ms. Amy Kaufman, Event Administrator, have been long-time coordinators of this YWCA event, report that plans are well underway for Christmas Day 2010. 

However, Mr. Perlman reports that "Because we have had to relocate the event to the Park Slope Armory and due to the limited financial resources of the YMCA of Brooklyn, the out-of-pocket expenses for this year's event are extraordinary, in excess of $25,000. We have to purchase to toys, rent equipment, publicize the event, and pay certain staffing costs."  In the past, Mr. Perlman and his wife, Linda, have subsidized all the out-of-pocket costs with many volunteers providing donations of clothes and toys. "While we certainly need volunteers to continue to donate these gift items, we are asking anyone who can help defray some of these costs to please chip in toward the expenses of running this dinner. Whether it is $10 or 1000 dollars, all help is appreciated. Again, we do not want finances to be an impediment to anyone volunteering, but we wanted the volunteer team to understand the financial constraints and to consider whether they can help us to make this happen."


Whether you are a volunteer or not, if you are interested in making a tax-deductible donation to this important event for children, families and the elderly of our community who are in need, please make your check payable to the YWCA of Brooklyn. In the subject line on the check, please specify "Christmas Event." Please mail the check to:

Ms. Amy Kaufman
Event Administrator
GNYHA
555 West 57th Street, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10019

For further information on making contributions,  please email Ms. Kaufman at - KAUFMAN@GNYHA.ORG

Fred Tomaselli@ The Brooklyn Museum: From the inner mind to the outer limits..and back

Image: Fred Tomaselli, Super Plant, 1994. Psychoactive plant material, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, 74 x 54 inches. Hort family collection. Copyright the artist. Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York

Made it to the Brooklyn Museum over the holiday. Saw the vibrant Fred Tomaselli show, an extensive collection of the California-born, Brooklyn-based artist's work. Psychedelic, collagist, utopian, graphically stunning, sometimes inspiring, occasionally abstruse, highly recommended. Through January 2, 2011.

Brooklyn Museum website with details here

Art Daily on the net here

The NY Times review here

The artist, with Night Music for Raptors

Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz: 30 Years Later

In the fall of 1980, Rainer Werner Fasbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz was first broadcast on West German television It was a 14-part television film adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name, and stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla,Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John. The complete film is 15½ hours long.

Episode Guide
No.	Title	First aired	Runtime (mins.)
1	"The Punishment Begins"	3 October 1980	82
2	"How is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die?"	12 October 1980	59
3	"A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul"	20 October 1980	59
4	"A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence"	27 October 1980	59
5	"A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord"	3 November 1980	59
6	"Love Has Its Price"	10 November 1980	58
7	"Remember — An Oath can be Amputated"	17 November 1980	58
8	"The Sun Warms the Skin, but Burns it Sometimes Too"	24 November 1980	58
9	"About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few"	1 December 1980	59
10	"Loneliness Tears Cracks of Madness Even in Walls"	8 December 1980	59
11	"Knowledge is Power and the Early Bird Catches the Worm"	15 December 1980	59
12	"The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent"	22 December 1980	59
13	"The Outside and the Inside and the Secret of Fear of the Secret"	29 December 1980	58
14	"My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue"	29 December 1980	112

It was a co-production between the West German WDR, Bavaria Film Gmbh and the Italian network RAI. Production of the film at the Bavaria Film Studios took nearly a year. In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States, where a theatre would show two or three parts per night. It garnered a cult following and subsequently, it was released on VHS and broadcast on PBS and then Bravo.

Director Fassbinder dreamed of making a 'parallel' film specifically for theatrical distribution after the completion of this series. The cast list he made for this fantasy included Gérard Depardieu as Franz Biberkopf and Isabelle Adjani as Mieze.

Fassbinder died on June 10, 1982.