MEMORA8ILIA

a filing cabinet for 8sided.blog

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Today's episode of Spotlight On might become one of my favorites as it's straight in my wheelhouse, and I learned so much. Host Lawrence Peryer welcomes authors Kerry O'Brien and William Robin to the show, and they discuss their book On Minimalism, a 'revisionist history of minimalism's transformative rise.' Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and La Monte Young all get their due, of course, alongside other essential yet marginalized figures. It's a fascinating and entertaining chat, and I hope you'll listen!

On Minimalism: Kerry O'Brien and William Robin in conversation

Authors and musicologists O'Brien and Robin discuss On Minimalism, their comprehensive book on the history of minimalist music.

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the real reason I leave the ringer on my phone set to silent

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Centro Niemeyer, Avilés, Spain,

Oscar Niemeyer Architect

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Simon Berz is a fascinating artist working with sound and visuals via a variety of mediums, including trash and sediment. He's also an innovative drummer and percussionist. Simon's latest album is Breath versus Beats, a collaboration with a pair of greats: Bill Laswell and the late Kondo Toshinori. I highly recommend it.

Simon Berz is the guest on this week's Spotlight On podcast, and his generous conversation with host Lawrence Peryer is an insightful glimpse into the daily life and processes of an artist driven to learn and experiment.

Simon Berz creates art with drums, sound, and trash

Swiss sound artist and experimental drummer Simon Berz discusses Breath versus Beats, his recently released collaboration with Bill Laswell

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The music site Bandcamp is beloved and unique. I shudder at its corporate takeover | Tom Hawking

The prospect of something so valuable becoming just another strip-mined corporate wreck inspires genuine grief

❝ The key assets that distinguished Bandcamp from its competitors were the very things sacrificed this week: its commitment to ideals beyond the prioritization of profit, the editorial staff who functioned as human discovery engines in an age of algorithms, and, above all, the respect Bandcamp commanded from music lovers and musicians alike. [...] It’s no accident that none of those assets have easily quantifiable dollar values. The great Mark Fisher argued in Capitalist Realism that “neoliberalism has sought to eliminate the very category of value in the ethical sense”. For “ethical”, we can increasingly substitute “cultural”: artists’ real incomes have been declining for decades, valued by the market at a fraction of the worth it places on swashbuckling CEOs or venture capitalists. [...] It’s not surprising, then, that it seems the executive class neither understands nor cares about culture. In the worst cases, it celebrates its ignorance as a virtue, and more generally, it sees “content” as just another line item … ❞ *

🔵 This "Bandcamp is over/dying/dead" narrative needs to stop.

Why the persistent negative chatter around Bandcamp isn't helping anyone

❝ … proliferating a “Bandcamp is doomed” narrative does not help anybody. Quite the opposite. I firmly believe that you get the future you dream of, and if everyone keeps saying a platform isn’t worth using anymore because it is dying, it is highly likely that reality come to pass. [...] So, whatever your views on Songtradr, spare a thought for the team at Bandcamp who are still working just as hard as ever to deliver an amazing experience for its community of artists, labels and fans. ❞ *

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❝ I first saw Gysin's calligraphic works as abstract paintings. Gysin told me they were paintings of light and, once I saw they were depictions of light striking things, I began to see people, trees, landscapes, all kinds of vistas that were realities I hadn't seen before. He basically paints portals that shift our perception as we look, changing the way we see things. ❞ *

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❝ Aside from a Xerox machine, the key materials needed for a punk rock flyer tended to include: newspapers and magazines from which text and images could be ripped and reassembled; pens with which dates, times, and illustrations could be scrawled; and glue to assemble the collage that would be flattened into a photocopy. In addition to appropriating existing imagery, some emerging punk artists created their own, playing with the visual vernacular in the form of cartoons and drawings. Raymond Pettibon, perhaps best known for creating the barcode-like Black Flag logo, created photocopy-ready pen and ink illustrations, taking formal cues from traditional comics but infusing his images with subversive themes, dialogue, and settings. Others, like Winston Smith, who created much of the Dead Kennedys’ most recognizable artwork, collaged already lo-fi newspaper imagery into disturbing juxtapositions of advertised versus actual life. When run through the photocopier, toner smears and other imperfections made these images literally darker, producing an oddly nocturnal final copy that perfectly reflected the milieu and mood of punk. ❞ *

Xerox and Roll: The Corporate Machine and the Making of Punk - JSTOR Daily

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on (an

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museu oscar niemeyer

curitiba pr (brasil)

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I've been here. It was as amazing in person as it looks in these photos.

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❝ In the early moments of the film, there is a disturbing close-up shot of ants crawling over the dead climber’s eye. The ants are attracted to the decay, breaking them down further — suggesting a corruption of sight and seeing. There are echoes of Luis Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog all over Park’s film, particularly in their similar obsession with eyes and the ideological parallels between sight and the visual ontology of cinema itself. […] On the surface, eyes represent openness, allowing living things to access and assess others — the proverbial “windows” to other souls. However, in Decision to Leave, Park instead suggests that eyes are equally capable of deceit through their ability to manipulate and surveil. ❞ *

Decision to Leave is a gloriously frustrating mystery

The latest film from Oldboy director Park Chan-wook

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No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022)

❝ In depicting the absurd constraints that he himself faces, Panahi exposes the absurdities of daily existence in Iran and the pathologies that afflict the population as a result of its misrule. He also displays, with a scathing severity, the guilt and the complicity that he bears in making movies and enlisting the participation—witting or unwitting, intended or incidental—of others. He carries, however unjustly, the mark of dissidence and (political) crime, and this turns out to be as contagious as it is dangerous. ❝ *

❝ Many of the film’s most dramatic sequences are night scenes filmed with daringly little light, as in remote settings illuminated solely by the interior light of Jafar’s car, the screen on his cell phone, or the full moon, or on desolate dirt roads lit only by headlights. Much is done in secret: important things are hard to see and the effort of discernment in high-stakes situations is crucial to the drama. Panahi relies on long takes without longueurs, many executed using pan shots that unite multiple fields of action and a varied array of characters in a single sweep, others featuring fixed-frame compositions in which the action is often multiplied by the presence of interested observers contemplating the dramatic events and extending them into an extra spatial and psychological dimension. ❞ *

❝ Jafar is the Heisenbergian observer whose presence, with or without cameras, perturbs his surroundings and adds to the troubles of those around him. As he makes his way through the village, he unleashes a Pigpen-like whirlwind of chaos, because what he’s really observing, more than any individuals, is the invisible net of unbearable surveillance in which they’re caught—and which tightens with fear, in menacing cruelty, when it’s in danger of being exposed. ❞

Jafar Panahi’s Ingenious, Tragic “No Bears” Is a Formalist Triumph

In his latest film, the now jailed director captures the daily absurdities of Iranian lives ruled by surveillance and superstition.

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More Ghost Than Man - UNVOID

❝ What is the UNVOID, after all? Musically the songs gyrate from sublime stomps reminiscent of More Ghost Than Man's acclaimed album The Worlds We Made There to massive drones of sinister bass and fiery buzz. Choose your poison, but remain hesitant as you tip-toe through the UNVOID. ❞ *

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Rising Tones Cross (Ebba Jahn, 1985)

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The Nightly News II by Candy Chang + James A Reeves

❝ The Nightly News is a participatory installation that invites visitors to delve into the scenes of anxiety, desire, and possibility that fill our heads each night. Devoted to the intensely private yet universal symbols delivered to us each night by forces beyond our control, The Nightly News shows us that we’re all deeply weird creatures bound together by nerves, fantasy, and the unknown. ❞ *

The Nightly News II

MSU Broad Art Museum East Lansing, Michigan 2023

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Oscar Niemeyer

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Eva Lucidity - Radiation

❝ The California-based Eva Lucidity approaches electronic music production with a beginner's mind, saying, "I find making electronic music with simple software a little fraudulent. But, hey — if anything creates music, I believe it's worth going for." Eva initially arrived via the bass guitar; her talents applied to the west coast band The Catholic Comb. On stage, an anti-charismatic demeanor defiantly leads to recognition as 'most charismatic.' Perhaps this contradictory ethos finds its roots in The Cure, a starting point for exploring the sounds of Lucidity. One can hear the magnet draw of Mr. Smith's familiar project in Radiation, especially in its tumultuous Faith era. Moods are rampant. ❞ *